The Neapolitan Novels

17.

Those were the good days. But soon the bad ones arrived: she was hot, she was cold, she turned yellow, then she flared up, she yelled, she demanded, she broke out in a sweat, then she quarreled with Carmen, whom she called stupid and whiny. After the operation her body seemed even more confused. Suddenly she put an end to the kindnesses; she found Elsa unbearable, reprimanded Dede, treated Imma harshly; while I was speaking to her she abruptly turned her back and went off. In those dark periods she couldn’t stand to be in the house and had even less tolerance for the office. She took a bus or the subway and off she went.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m traveling around Naples.”

“Yes, but where?”

“Do I have to account for myself to you?”

Any occasion could provide a pretext for a fight; it took nothing. She quarreled mainly with her son but ascribed the cause of their disagreements to Dede and Elsa. In fact she was right. My oldest daughter happily spent time with Rino, and now her sister, in order not to feel excluded, made an effort to accept him, and was often with them. The result was that both were inoculating him with a sort of permanent insubordination, an attitude that, while in their case was only a passionate verbal exercise, for Rino became confused and self-indulgent chatter that Lila couldn’t bear. Those two girls, she scolded her son, put intelligence into it, you repeat nonsense like a parrot. In those days she was intolerant, she wouldn’t accept clichéd phrases, maudlin expressions, any form of sentimentality, or, especially, the spirit of rebellion fed by old slogans. And yet at the opportune moment she herself displayed an affected anarchism that to me seemed out of place now. We confronted each other harshly when, at the approach of the electoral campaign of ’87, we read that Nadia Galiani had been arrested in Chiasso.

Carmen hurried to my house in the grip of a panic attack, she couldn’t think, she said: Now they’ll seize Pasquale, you’ll see, he escaped the Solaras but the carabinieri will murder him. Lila answered: The carabinieri didn’t arrest Nadia, she turned herself in to bargain for a lighter sentence. That hypothesis seemed sensible to me. There were a few lines in the papers, but no talk of pursuits, shooting, capture. To soothe Carmen I again advised her: Pasquale would do well to turn himself in, you know what I think. All hell broke loose, Lila became furious, she began to shout:

“Turn himself over to whom.”

“To the state.”

“To the state?”

She made a concise list of thefts and criminal collaborations old and new by ministers, simple parliamentarians, policemen, judges, secret services from 1945 until then, showing herself as usual more informed than I could have imagined. And she yelled:

“That is the state, why the fuck do you want to give it Pasquale?” Then she pushed me: “Let’s bet that Nadia does a few months in jail and comes out, while, if they get Pasquale, they’ll lock him in a cell and throw away the key?” She was almost on top of me, repeating aggressively: “Do you want to bet?”

I didn’t answer. I was worried, this sort of conversation wasn’t good for Carmen. After the death of the Solaras she had immediately withdrawn the lawsuit against me, she had done endless nice things for me, she was always available to my daughters, even if she was burdened by obligations and worries. I was sorry that instead of soothing her we were tormenting her. She was trembling, she said, addressing me but invoking Lila’s authority: If Nadia turned herself in, Lenù, it means that she’s repented, that now she’s throwing all the blame on Pasquale and will get herself off. Isn’t it true, Lina? But then she spoke bitterly to Lila, invoking my authority: It’s no longer a matter of principle, Lina, we have to think of what’s right for Pasquale, we have to let him know that it’s better to live in prison than to be killed: isn’t it true, Lenù?

At that point Lila insulted us grossly and, although we were in her house, went out, slamming the door.