The Neapolitan Novels

108.

It all began one evening at dinner. Pietro spoke to him with admiration of a professor from Naples, at the time quite respected, and Nino said: I would have bet that you liked that asshole. My husband was disoriented, he gave an uncertain smile, but Nino piled it on, making fun of him for how easily he had let himself be deceived by appearances. The next morning after breakfast there was another incident. I don’t remember in relation to what, Nino referred to my old clash with the religion professor about the Holy Spirit. Pietro, who didn’t know about that episode, wanted to know, and Nino, addressing not him but the girls, immediately began to tell the story as if it were some grandiose undertaking of their mother as a child.

My husband praised me, he said: You were very courageous. But then he explained to Dede, in the tone he took when stupid things were being said on television and he felt it his duty to explain to his daughter how matters really stood, what had happened to the twelve apostles on the morning of Pentecost: a noise as of wind, flames like fire, the gift of being understood by anyone, in any language. Then he turned to me and Nino speaking with passion of the virtues that had pervaded the disciples, and he quoted the prophet Joel, I will spread my spirit over every flesh, adding that the Holy Spirit was an indispensable symbol for reflecting on how the multitudes find a way of confronting each other and organizing into a community. Nino let him speak, but with an increasingly ironic expression. At the end he exclaimed: I bet there’s a priest hiding in you. And to me, in amusement: Are you a wife or a priest’s housekeeper? Pietro turned red, he was confused. He had always loved those subjects, I felt that he was upset. He stammered: I’m sorry, I’m wasting your time, let’s go to work.

Such moments increased and for no obvious reason. While relations between Nino and me remained the same, attentive to form, courteous and distant, between him and Pietro the dikes broke. At both breakfast and dinner, the guest began to speak to the host in a crescendo of mocking remarks, just bordering on the offensive, humiliating but expressed in a friendly way, offered with a smile, so that you couldn’t object without seeming petulant. I recognized that tone; in the neighborhood the swifter party often used it to dominate the slower one and push him wordlessly into the middle of the joke. Mainly, Pietro appeared disoriented: he liked Nino, he appreciated him, and so he didn’t react, he shook his head, pretending to be amused, while at times he seemed to wonder where he had gone wrong and waited for him to return to the old, affectionate tone. But Nino continued, implacable. He turned to me, to the children, he exaggerated in order to receive our approval. And the girls approved, laughing, and I, too, a little. Yet I thought: Why is he acting like this, if Pietro gets mad their relations will be ruined. But Pietro didn’t get mad, he simply didn’t understand, and as the days passed his old nervousness returned. His face was tired, the strain of those years reappeared in his worried eyes and his lined forehead. I have to do something, I thought, and as soon as possible. But I did nothing; rather, I struggled to expel not the admiration, but the excitement—maybe yes, it was excitement—that gripped me in seeing, in hearing, how an Airota, an extremely well-educated Airota, lost ground, was confused, responded feebly to the swift, brilliant, even cruel aggressions of Nino Sarratore, my schoolmate, my friend, born in the neighborhood, like me.