The Neapolitan Novels

13.

I was tempted to flee. I thought of going to Naples—escaping to my mother’s city just as she was arriving in mine—and seeking some tranquility with Nino. But I didn’t move. Although I felt that I was changed, I had remained the disciplined person who had never avoided anything. And besides, I said to myself, what can she do to me? I’m a woman, not a child. At most she’ll bring something good to eat, like that Christmas ten years ago, when I was sick and she came to see me in the dormitory at the Normale.

I went with Pietro to get my mother at the station; I drove. She got off the train proudly, she had new clothes, a new purse, new shoes, even a little powder on her cheeks. You look well, I said, you’re very stylish. She hissed: No thanks to you, and didn’t say another word to me. To make up for it she was very affectionate toward Pietro. She asked about his cast, and since he was vague—he said he had bumped into a door—she began to mumble in hesitant Italian: Bumped, I know who made you bump it. I imagine, bumped.

Once we got home she ended her feigned composure. She made me a long speech, limping back and forth in the living room. She praised my husband in an exaggerated fashion, she ordered me to ask his forgiveness immediately. When I didn’t, she began to beg him herself to forgive me and swore on Peppe, Gianni, and Elisa that she would not go home if the two of us did not make peace. At first, with all her hyperbole, she seemed to be making fun of both me and my husband. The list she made of Pietro’s virtues appeared infinite, and—I have to admit—she didn’t stint on mine, either. She emphasized endlessly that, when it came to intelligence and scholarship, we were made for each other. She urged us to think of Dede’s good—Dede was her favorite granddaughter, she forgot to mention Elsa—the child understood everything and it wasn’t right to make her suffer.

My husband, while she spoke, appeared to agree, even though he wore the incredulous expression he assumed in the face of any spectacle of excess. She hugged him, kissed him, thanked him for his generosity, before which—she shouted at me—I should go down on my knees. She kept pushing us with rude claps toward each other, so that we would hug and kiss each other. I drew back, I was aloof. The whole time I thought: I can’t bear her, I can’t bear that at a moment like this, in front of Pietro, I also have to account for the fact that I am the daughter of this woman. And meanwhile I tried to calm myself by saying: It’s her usual scene, soon she’ll get tired and go to bed. But when she grabbed me for the hundredth time, insisting I admit that I had made a serious mistake, I couldn’t take it anymore, her hands offended me and I pulled away. I said something like: Enough, Ma, it’s pointless, I can’t stay with Pietro anymore, I love someone else.

It was a mistake. I knew her, she was just waiting for a small provocation. Her litany broke off, things changed in a flash. She slapped me violently, shouting nonstop: Shut up, you whore, shut up, shut up. And she tried to grab me by the hair, she cried that she couldn’t stand it any longer, that it wasn’t possible that I, I, should want to ruin my life, running after Sarratore’s son, who was worse, much worse, than that man of shit who was his father. Once, she cried, I thought it was your friend Lina leading you on this evil course, but I was wrong, you, you, are the shameless one; without you, she’s become a fine person. Damn me that I didn’t break your legs when you were a child. You have a husband of gold who makes you a lady in this beautiful city, who loves you, who has given you two daughters, and you repay him like this, bitch? Come here, I gave birth to you and I’ll kill you.

She was on me, I felt as if she really wanted to kill me. In those moments I felt all the truth of the disappointment that I was causing her, all the truth of the maternal love that despaired of subjecting me to what she considered my good—that is, what she had never had and what I instead had and what until the day before had made her the most fortunate mother in the neighborhood—and was ready to turn into hatred and destroy me to punish me for my waste of God’s gifts. So I pushed her away, I pushed her shouting louder than she was. I pushed her involuntarily, instinctively, with such force that I made her lose her balance and she fell to the floor.

Pietro was frightened. I saw it in his face, in his eyes: my world colliding with his. Certainly in all his life he had never witnessed a scene like that, words so aggressive, reactions so frenzied. My mother had overturned a chair, she had fallen heavily. Now she had trouble getting up, because of her bad leg, she was waving one arm in an effort to grab the edge of the table and pull herself up. But she didn’t stop, she went on screaming threats and insults at me. She didn’t stop even when Pietro, shocked, helped her up with his good arm. Her voice choked, angry and at the same time truly grieved, eyes staring, she gasped: You’re not my child anymore, he’s my child, him, not even your father wants you anymore, not even your siblings; Sarratore’s son is bound to stick you with the clap and syphilis, what did I do wrong to come to a day like this, oh God, oh God, God, I want to die this minute, I want to die now. She was so overwhelmed by her suffering that—incredibly—she burst into tears.

I ran away and locked myself in the bedroom. I didn’t know what to do; never would I have expected that a separation would involve such torture. I was frightened, I was devastated. From what obscure depth, what presumption, had come the determination to push back my mother with her own physical violence? I became calmer only when, after a while, Pietro knocked and said softly, with an unexpected gentleness: Don’t open the door, I’m not asking you to let me in; I just want to say that I didn’t want this, it’s too much, not even you deserve it.