The Neapolitan Novels

116.

I hung up in tears and left the phone booth. Elsa asked: Did you hurt yourself, Mamma? I answered: I’m fine, it’s Grandma who doesn’t feel well. I went on sobbing under the worried gaze of Dede and Elsa.

During the final part of the vacation I did nothing but weep. I said I was tired, it was too hot, I had a headache, and I sent Pietro and the children to the beach. I stayed in bed, soaking the pillow with tears. I hated that excessive fragility, I hadn’t been like that even as a child. Both Lila and I had trained ourselves never to cry, and if we did it was in exceptional moments, and for a short time: the shame was tremendous, we stifled our sobs. Now, instead, as in Ariosto’s Orlando, in my head a fountain had opened and it flowed from my eyes without ever drying up; it seemed to me that even when Pietro, Dede, Elsa were about to return and with an effort I repressed the tears and hurried to wash my face under the tap, the fountain continued to drip, waiting for the right moment to return to the egress of my eyes. Nino didn’t really want me, Nino pretended a lot and loved little. He had wanted to fuck me—yes, fuck me, as he had done with who knows how many others—but to have me, have me forever by breaking the ties with his wife, well, that was not in his plans. Probably he was still in love with Lila. Probably in the course of his life he would love only her, like so many who had known her. And as a result he would remain with Eleonora forever. Love for Lila was the guarantee that no woman—no matter how much he wanted her, in his passionate way—would ever put that fragile marriage in trouble, I least of all. That was how things stood. Sometimes I got up in the middle of lunch or dinner and went to cry in the bathroom.

Pietro treated me cautiously, sensing that I might explode at any moment. At first, a few hours after the break with Nino, I had thought of telling him everything, as if he were not only a husband to whom I had to explain myself but also a confessor. I felt the need of it; and especially when he approached me in bed and I put him off, whispering: No, the children will wake up, I was on the point of pouring out to him every detail. But I always managed to stop myself in time, it wasn’t necessary to tell him about Nino. Now that I no longer called the person I loved, now that I felt truly lost, it seemed to me useless to be cruel to Pietro. It was better to close the subject with a few clear words: I can’t live with you anymore. And yet I was unable to do even that. Just when, in the shadowy light of the bedroom, I felt ready to take that step, I pitied him, I feared for the future of the children, I caressed his shoulder, his cheek, I whispered: Sleep.

On the last day of the vacation, things changed. It was almost midnight, Dede and Elsa were sleeping. For at least ten days I hadn’t called Nino. I had packed the bags, I was worn out by sadness, by effort, by the heat, and I was sitting with Pietro on the balcony, each in our own lounge chair, in silence. There humidity was debilitating, soaking our hair and clothes, and our smell of the sea and of resin. Pietro suddenly said:

“How’s your mother?”

“My mother?”

“Fine.”

“Dede told me she’s ill.”

“She recovered.”

“I called her this afternoon. Your mother has always been in good health.”

I said nothing.

How inopportune that man was. Here, already, the tears were returning. Oh good God, I was fed up, fed up. I heard him say calmly:

“You think I’m blind and deaf. You think I didn’t realize it when you flirted with those imbeciles who came to the house before Elsa was born.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You know perfectly well.”

“No, I don’t know. Who are you talking about? People who came to dinner a few times years ago? And I flirted with them? Are you crazy?”

Pietro shook his head, smiling to himself. He waited a few seconds, then he asked me, staring at the railing: “You didn’t even flirt with the one who played the drums?”

I was alarmed. He wasn’t retreating, he wasn’t giving in. I snorted.

“Mario?”

“See, you remember?”

“Of course I remember, why shouldn’t I? He’s one of the few interesting people you brought home in seven years of marriage.”

“Did you find him interesting?”

“Yes, and so what? What’s got into you tonight?”

“I want to know. Can’t I know?”

“What do you want to know? All that I know, you do, too. It must be at least four years since we saw that man, and you come out now with this foolishness?”

He stopped staring at the railing, he turned to look at me, serious.

“Then let’s talk about more recent events. What is there between you and Nino?”