The Neapolitan Novels

37.

That was not Rino’s opinion, however. Elsa’s departure did not stop him, surprising as it may seem, from continuing to live with me. He was in despair for a long time, afraid of falling again into the physical and moral wretchedness from which I had rescued him. Full of devotion he attributed that and many other virtues to me. And he continued to occupy the room that had been Dede and Elsa’s. He naturally did many jobs for me. When I left he drove me to the station and carried my suitcase, when I returned he did the same. He became my driver, my errand boy, my factotum. If he needed money he asked me for it politely, affectionately, and without the least scruple.

At times, when he made me nervous, I reminded him that he had some obligations toward his mother. He understood and disappeared for a while. But sooner or later he returned discouraged, muttering that Lila was never home, that the empty apartment made him sad, or he grumbled: She didn’t even say hello, she sits at her computer and writes.

Lila was writing? What was she writing?

My curiosity at first was faint, the equivalent of an absent-minded observation. I was nearly fifty at the time, I was in the period of my greatest success, I was publishing two books a year, and selling well. Reading and writing had become a career, and, like all careers, it began to burden me. I remember thinking: in her place I’d sit on a beach in the sun. Then I said to myself: if writing helps her, good. And I went on to something else, I forgot about it.