The Neapolitan Novels

83.

One night when Lila was speaking disparagingly of Gennaro, Dede gathered her courage and defended him. She became red-faced, she said: He’s extremely intelligent. Lila looked at her with interest, smiled, replied: You’re very nice, I’m his mamma and what you say gives me great pleasure.

From then on Dede felt authorized to defend Gennaro on every occasion, even when Lila was very angry at him. Gennaro was now a large boy of eighteen, with a handsome face, like his father’s as a youth, but he was stockier and had a surly nature. He didn’t even notice Dede, who was twelve, he had other things on his mind. But she never stopped thinking of him as the most astonishing human creature who had ever appeared on the face of the earth and whenever she could she sang his praises. Sometimes Lila was in a bad mood and didn’t respond. But on other occasions she laughed, she exclaimed: Certainly not, he’s a delinquent. You three sisters, on the other hand, you’re clever, you’ll be better than your mother. And Dede, although pleased with the compliment (when she could consider herself better than me she was happy), immediately began to belittle herself in order to elevate Gennaro.

She adored him. She would often sit at the window to watch for his return from the shop, shouting at him as soon as he appeared: Hi, Rino. If he answered hi (usually he didn’t) she hurried to the landing to wait for him to come up the stairs and then tried to start a serious conversation, like: You’re tired, what did you do to your hand, aren’t you hot in those overalls, things of that sort. Even a few words from him excited her. If she happened to get more attention than usual, in order to prolong it she grabbed Imma and said: I’m taking her down to Aunt Lina, so she can play with Tina. I didn’t have time to give her permission before she was out of the house.

Never had so little space separated Lila and me, not even when we were children. My floor was her ceiling. Two flights of stairs down brought me to her house, two up brought her to mine. In the morning, in the evening, I heard their voices: the indistinct sounds of conversations, Tina’s trills that Lila responded to as if she, too, were trilling, the thick tonality of Enzo, who, silent as he was, spoke a lot to his daughter, and often sang to her. I supposed that the signs of my presence also reached Lila. When she was at work, when my older daughters were at school, when only Imma and Tina—who often stayed with me, sometimes even to sleep—were at home, I noticed the emptiness below, I listened for the footsteps of Lila and Enzo returning.

Things soon took a turn for the better. Dede and Elsa frequently looked after Imma; they carried her down to the courtyard with them or to Lila’s. If I had to go out Lila took care of all three. It was years since I had had so much time available. I read, I revised my book, I was at ease without Nino and free of the anxiety of losing him. Also my relationship with Pietro improved. He came to Naples more often to see the girls, he got used to the small, dreary apartment and to their Neapolitan accents, Elsa’s especially, and he often stayed overnight. At those times, he was polite to Enzo, and talked a lot to Lila. Even though in the past Pietro had had definitely negative opinions of her, it seemed clear that he was happy to spend time in her company. As for Lila, as soon as he left she began to talk about him with an enthusiasm she rarely showed for anyone. How many books must he have studied, she said seriously, fifty thousand, a hundred thousand? I think she saw in my ex-husband the incarnation of her childhood fantasies about people who read and write for knowledge, not as a profession.

“You’re very smart,” she said to me one evening, “but he has a way of speaking that I truly like: he puts the writing into his voice, but he doesn’t speak like a printed book.”

“I do?” I asked, as a joke.

“A little.”

“Even now?”

“Yes.”

“If I hadn’t learned to speak like that I would never have had any respect, outside of here.”

“He’s like you, but more natural. When Gennaro was little, I thought—even though I didn’t know Pietro yet—I thought I’d want him to become just like that.”

She often talked about her son. She said she should have given him more, but she hadn’t had time, or consistency, or ability. She accused herself of having taught him the little she could and of having then lost confidence and stopped. One night she went from her first child to the second without interruption. She was afraid that Tina, too, as she grew up would be a waste. I praised Tina, sincerely, and she said in a serious tone:

“Now that you’re here you have to help her become like your daughters. It’s important to Enzo, too, he told me to ask you.”

“All right.”

“You help me, I’ll help you. School isn’t enough, you remember Maestra Oliviero, with me it wasn’t enough.”

“They were different times.”

“I don’t know. I gave Gennaro what was possible, but it went badly.”

“It’s the fault of the neighborhood.”

She looked at me gravely, she said:

“I don’t have much faith in it, but since you’ve decided to stay here with us, let’s change the neighborhood.”