The Neapolitan Novels

98.

I went back to Roberto and harassed him until he gave me the address of the relatives in Giugliano, then I got in the car with Imma and left to look for Carmen.

The heat was suffocating. I had trouble locating the place, the relatives lived on the outskirts. At the door, a large woman answered who told me brusquely that Carmen had returned to Naples. Hardly persuaded, I went off with Imma, who, even though we had walked only a hundred meters, protested that she was tired. But as soon as I turned the corner to go back to the car I ran into Carmen, loaded with shopping bags. It was an instant, she saw me and burst into tears. I hugged her, Imma wanted to hug her, too. Then we found a café with a table in the shade and after ordering the child to play silently with her dolls I got Carmen to explain the situation. She confirmed what Lila had told me: she had been forced to bring a suit against me. And she also told me the reason: Marcello had made her believe that he knew where Pasquale was hiding.

“Is it possible?”

“It’s possible.”

“And do you know where he’s hiding?”

She hesitated, she nodded.

“They said that they’ll kill him whenever they want to.”

I tried to soothe her. I told her that if the Solaras really knew where the person they believed had killed their mother was they would have seized him long ago.

“So you think they don’t know?”

“Not that they don’t know. But at this point for the good of your brother there’s only one thing you can do.”

“What?”

I told her that if she wanted to save Pasquale she should turn him in to the carabinieri.

The effect this produced on Carmen was not good. She stiffened, I struggled to explain that it was the only way to protect him from the Solaras. But it was useless, I realized that my solution sounded to her like the worst of betrayals, something much more serious than her betrayal of me.

“This way you remain in their hands,” I said. “They asked you to bring a suit against me, they can ask you any other thing.”

“I’m his sister,” she exclaimed.

“It’s not a question of a sister’s love,” I said. “A sister’s love in this case has harmed me, certainly won’t save him, and risks ruining you, too.”

But there was no way to convince her, in fact the more we talked, the more confused I got. Soon she began crying again: one moment she felt sorry for what she had done to me and asked my pardon, the next she felt sorry for what they could do to her brother and she despaired. I remembered how she had been as a girl, at the time I would never have imagined that she was capable of such stubborn loyalty. I left her because I wasn’t able to console her, because Imma was all sweaty and I was afraid that she would get sick again, because it became increasingly less clear what I expected from Carmen. Did I want her to break off her long complicity with Pasquale? Why did I believe it was the right thing? Did I want her to choose the state over her brother? Why? To take her away from the Solaras and make her withdraw the suit? Did that count more than her anguish? I said to her:

“Do what you think is best, and remember that anyway I’m not mad at you.”

But Carmen at that point had an unpredictable flash of anger in her eyes:

“And why should you be mad at me? What do you have to lose? You’re in the newspapers, you’re getting publicity, you’ll sell more books. No, Lenù, you shouldn’t say that, you advised me to give Pasquale up to the carabinieri, you were wrong.”

I went away feeling bitter and already on the drive home I doubted that it had been a good idea to want to see her. I imagined that she would now go to the Solaras and that they would force her, after the editor’s article in the Corriere, to take other actions against me.