The Neapolitan Novels

20.

Until that moment I had paid little attention to the fact that Dede, unlike her sister, who happily changed suitors every month, had never had a declared and ostentatious passion. I had attributed that withdrawn attitude partly to the fact that she didn’t feel pretty, partly to her rigor, and from time to time I had teased her (Are all the boys in your school unappealing?). She was a girl who didn’t forgive frivolity in anyone, above all in herself, but especially in me. The times she had seen me, I wouldn’t say flirt but even just laugh with a man—or, I don’t know, give a warm welcome to some boy who had brought her home—she made her disapproval clear and on one unpleasant occasion some months earlier had even gone so far as to use a vulgarity in dialect to me, which had made me furious.

But maybe it wasn’t a question of a war on frivolity. After Lila’s words I began to observe Dede and I realized that her protective attitude toward Lila’s son could not be reduced, as I had thought until then, to a long childhood affection or a heated adolescent defense of the humiliated and offended. I realized, rather, that her asceticism was the effect of an intense and exclusive bond with Rino that had endured since early childhood. That frightened me. I thought of the long duration of my love for Nino and I said to myself in alarm: Dede is setting off on the same path, but with the aggravating factor that if Nino was an extraordinary boy and had become a handsome, intelligent, successful man, Rino is an insecure, uneducated youth, without attractions, without any future, and, if I thought about it, more than Stefano he physically recalled his grandfather, Don Achille.

I decided to speak to her. It was a few months until her final exams, she was very busy, it would be easy for her to say to me: I’ve got a lot to do, let’s put it off. But Dede wasn’t Elsa, who was able to reject me, who could pretend. With my oldest daughter it was enough to ask and I was sure that she, at any moment, whatever she was doing, would answer with the greatest frankness. I asked:

“Are you in love with Rino?”

“Yes.”

“And he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Since when have you had that feeling?”

“Forever.”

“But if he doesn’t reciprocate?”

“My life would no longer have meaning.”

“What are you thinking of doing?”

“I’ll tell you after the exams.”

“Tell me now.”

“If he wants me we’ll go away.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know, but certainly away from here.”

“He also hates Naples?”

“Yes, he wants to go to Bologna.”

“Why?”

“It’s a place where there’s freedom.”

I looked at her with affection.

“Dede, you know that neither your father nor I will let you go.”

“There’s no need for you to let me go. I’m going and that’s it.”

“What about money?”

“I’ll work.”

“And your sisters? And me?”

“Some day or other, Mamma, we’ll have to separate anyway.”

I emerged from that conversation drained of strength. Although she had presented unreasonable things in an orderly fashion, I tried to behave as if she were saying very reasonable things.

Later, anxiously, I tried to think what to do. Dede was only an adolescent in love, one way or another I would make her obey. The problem was Lila, I was afraid of her, I knew immediately that the fight with her would be bitter. She had lost Tina, Rino was her only child. She and Enzo had gotten him away from drugs in time, using very harsh methods; she wouldn’t accept that I, too, would cause him suffering. All the more since the company of my two daughters was doing him good; he was even working a little with Enzo, and it was possible that separating him from them would send him off the rails again. Besides, any possible regression of Rino worried me, too. I was fond of him, he had been an unhappy child and was an unhappy youth. Certainly he had always loved Dede, certainly giving her up would be unbearable for him. But what to do. I became more affectionate, I didn’t want any misunderstandings: I valued him, I would always try to help him in everything, he had only to ask; but anyone could see that he and Dede were very different and that any solution they came up with would in a short time be disastrous. Thus I proceeded, and Rino became in turn kinder, he fixed broken blinds, dripping faucets, with the three sisters acting as helpers. But Lila didn’t appreciate her son’s availability. If he spent too much time at our house she summoned him with an imperious cry.