The Neapolitan Novels

114.

We went on vacation. I paid little attention to the children, I left them with their father most of the time. I was constantly running around to find a telephone, if only to tell Nino that I loved him. Eleonora answered a couple of times, and I hung up. But her voice was enough to irritate me, I found it unjust that she should be beside him day and night, what did she have to do with him, with us. That annoyance helped me overcome my fear, the plan of seeing each other in Florence seemed increasingly feasible. I said to Pietro, and it was true, that while the Italian publisher, with all the will in the world, couldn’t bring out my book before January, it would come out in France at the end of October. I therefore had to clarify some urgent questions, a couple of books would be helpful, I needed to go home.

“I’ll go get them for you,” he offered.

“Stay with the girls, you’re never with them.”

“I like to drive, you don’t.”

“Leave me alone. Can’t I have a day off? Maids get one, why not me?”

I left early in the morning in the car; the sky was streaked with white, and through the window came a cool breeze that carried the odors of summer. I went into the empty house with my heart pounding. I undressed, I washed, I looked at myself in the mirror, dismayed by the white stain of stomach and breast, I got dressed, I undressed, I dressed again until I felt pretty.

Nino arrived around three in the afternoon; I don’t know what nonsense he had told his wife. We made love until evening. For the first time he had the luxury of dedicating himself to my body with a devotion, an idolatry that I wasn’t prepared for. I tried to be his equal, I wanted at all costs to seem good to him. But when I saw him exhausted and happy, something suddenly went bad in my mind. For me that was a unique experience, for him a repetition. He loved women, he adored their bodies as if they were fetishes. I didn’t think so much of the other women of his I knew about, Nadia, Silvia, Mariarosa, or his wife, Eleonora. I thought instead of what I knew well, the crazy things he had done for Lila, the frenzy that had brought him close to destroying himself. I recalled how she had believed in that passion and had clung to him, to the complicated books he read, his thoughts, his ambitions, to affirm herself and give herself the chance for change. I remembered how she had collapsed when Nino abandoned her. Did he know how to love and induce one to love only in that excessive way, did he not know others? Was this mad love of ours the repeat of other mad loves? Was he exploiting a prototype: wanting me in this way, without caring about anything, was it the same way he had wanted Lila? Didn’t even his coming to my and Pietro’s house resemble Lila’s taking him to the house where she and Stefano lived? Were we not doing but redoing?

I pulled back, he asked: what’s wrong? Nothing, I didn’t know what to say, they weren’t thoughts that could be spoken. I pressed against him, I kissed him and I tried to get out of my heart the feeling of his love for Lila. But Nino insisted and finally I couldn’t escape, I seized a relatively recent echo—Here, maybe this I can say to you—and asked him in a tone of feigned amusement:

“Do I have something wrong when it comes to sex, like Lina?”

His expression changed. In his eyes, in his face, a different person appeared, a stranger who frightened me. Even before he answered I quickly whispered:

“I was joking, if you don’t want to answer forget it.”

“I don’t understand what you said.”

“I was only quoting your words.”

“I’ve never said anything like that.”

“Liar, you did in Milan, when we were going to the restaurant.”

“It’s not true, and anyway I don’t want to talk about Lina.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer. I felt bitter, I turned away. When he touched my back with his fingers I whispered coldly: Leave me alone. We were motionless for a while, without speaking. Then he began to caress me again, he kissed me lightly on the shoulder, I gave in. Yes, I admitted to myself, he’s right, I should never ask him about Lila.

In the evening the telephone rang; it must be Pietro, with the girls. I nodded to Nino not to breathe, I left the bed and went to answer. I prepared in my throat an affectionate, reassuring tone, but without realizing it I kept my voice too low, an unnatural murmur, I didn’t want Nino to hear and later make fun of me or even get angry.

“Why are you whispering like that?” Pietro asked. “Every­thing all right?”

I raised my voice immediately, and now it was excessively loud. I sought loving words, I made much of Elsa, I urged Dede not to make her father’s life difficult and to brush her teeth before going to bed. Nino said, when I came back to bed:

“What a good wife, what a good mamma.”

I answered: “You are no less.”

I waited for the tension to diminish, for the echo of the voices of my husband and children to fade. We took a shower together. It was a new, enjoyable experience, a pleasure to wash him and be washed. Afterward I got ready to go out. Again I was trying to look nice for him, but this time I was doing it in front of him and suddenly without anxiety. He watched, fascinated, as I tried on dresses in search of the right one, as I put on my makeup, and from time to time—even though I said, joking, don’t you dare, you’re tickling me, you’ll ruin the makeup and I’ll have to start over, careful of the dress, it will tear, leave me alone—he came up behind me, kissed me on the neck, put his hands down the front and under the dress.

I made him go out alone, I told him to wait for me in the car. Although people were on vacation and the building was half deserted, I was afraid that someone would see us together. We went to dinner, we ate a lot, talked a lot, drank a lot. When we got back we went to bed but didn’t sleep. He said:

“In October I’ll be in Montpellier for five days, I have a conference.”

“Have fun. You’ll go with your wife?”

“I want to go with you.”

“Impossible.”

“Why?”

“Dede is six, Elsa three. I have to think of them.”

We began to discuss our situation, for the first time we uttered words like married, children. We went from despair to sex, from sex to despair. Finally I whispered:

“We shouldn’t see each other anymore.”

“If for you it’s possible, fine. For me it’s not.”

“Nonsense. You’ve known me for decades and yet you’ve had a full life without me. You’ll forget about me before you know it.”

“Promise that you’ll keep calling me every day.”

“No, I won’t call you anymore.”

“If you don’t I’ll go mad.”

“I’ll go mad if I go on thinking of you.”

We explored with a sort of masochistic pleasure the dead end we felt ourselves in, and, exasperated by the obstacles we ourselves were piling up, we ended by quarreling. He left, anxiously, at six in the morning. I cleaned up the house, had a cry, drove all the way to Viareggio hoping never to arrive. Halfway there I realized that I hadn’t taken a single book capable of justifying that trip. I thought: better this way.