The Neapolitan Novels

26.

One Sunday, in the middle of April, I remember, five of us went out: Lila, Carmela, Pasquale, Rino, and I. We girls were dressed up as well as we could and as soon as we were out of the house we put on lipstick and a little eye makeup. We took the metro, which was very crowded, and Rino and Pasquale stood next to us, on the lookout, the whole way. They were afraid that someone might touch us, but no one did, the faces of our escorts were too dangerous.

We walked down Toledo. Lila insisted on going to Via Chiaia, Via Filangieri, and then Via dei Mille, to Piazza Amedeo, an area where she knew there would be wealthy, elegant people. Rino and Pasquale were opposed, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t explain, and responded only by muttering in dialect and insulting indeterminate people they called “dandies.” We three ganged up and insisted. Just then we heard honking. We turned and saw the Solaras’ 1100. We didn’t even notice the two brothers, we were so struck by the girls who were waving from the windows: Gigliola and Ada. They looked pretty, with pretty dresses, pretty hairdos, sparkling earrings, they waved and shouted happy greetings to us. Rino and Pasquale turned their faces away, Carmela and I were too surprised to respond. Lila was the only one to shout enthusiastically and wave, with broad motions of her arms, as the car disappeared in the direction of Piazza Plebiscito.

For a while we were silent, then Rino said to Pasquale he had always known that Gigliola was a whore, and Pasquale gravely agreed. Neither of the two mentioned Ada, Antonio was their friend and they didn’t want to offend him. Carmela, however, said a lot of mean things about Ada. More than anything, I felt bitterness. That image of power had passed in a flash, four young people in a car—that was the right way to leave the neighborhood and have fun. Ours was the wrong way: on foot, in shabby old clothes, penniless. I felt like going home. Lila reacted as if that encounter had never taken place, insisting again that she wanted to go for a walk where the fancy people were. She clung to Pasquale’s arm, she yelled, she laughed, she performed what she thought of as a parody of the respectable person, with waggling hips, a broad smile, and simpering gestures. We hesitated a moment and then went along with her, resentful at the idea that Gigliola and Ada were having fun in the 1100 with the handsome Solaras while we were on foot, in the company of Rino who resoled shoes and Pasquale who was a construction worker.

This dissatisfaction of ours, naturally unspoken, must somehow have reached the two boys, who looked at each other, sighed, and gave in. All right, they said, and we turned onto Via Chiaia.

It was like crossing a border. I remember a dense crowd and a sort of humiliating difference. I looked not at the boys but at the girls, the women: they were absolutely different from us. They seemed to have breathed another air, to have eaten other food, to have dressed on some other planet, to have learned to walk on wisps of wind. I was astonished. All the more so that, while I would have paused to examine at leisure dresses, shoes, the style of glasses if they wore glasses, they passed by without seeming to see me. They didn’t see any of the five of us. We were not perceptible. Or not interesting. And in fact if at times their gaze fell on us, they immediately turned in another direction, as if irritated. They looked only at each other.

Of this we were all aware. No one mentioned it, but we understood that Rino and Pasquale, who were older, found on those streets only confirmation of things they already knew, and this put them in a bad mood, made them sullen, resentful at the certainty of being out of place, while we girls discovered it only at that moment and with ambiguous sentiments. We felt uneasy and yet fascinated, ugly but also impelled to imagine what we would become if we had some way to re-educate ourselves and dress and put on makeup and adorn ourselves properly. Meanwhile, in order not to ruin the evening, we became mocking, sarcastic.

“Would you ever wear that dress?”

“Not if you paid me.”

“I would.”

“Good for you, you’d look like a cream puff, like that lady there.”

“And did you see the shoes?”

“What, those are shoes?”

We went as far as Palazzo Cellammare laughing and joking. Pasquale, who did his best to avoid being next to Lila and when she took his arm immediately, politely, freed himself (he spoke to her often, of course, he felt an evident pleasure in hearing her voice, in looking at her, but it was clear that the slightest contact overwhelmed him, might even make him cry), staying close to me, asked derisively:

“At school do your classmates look like that?”

“No.”

“That means it’s not a good school.”

“It’s a classical high school,” I said, offended.

“It’s not a good one,” he insisted, “you can be sure that if there are no people like that it’s no good: right, Lila, it’s no good?”

“Good?” Lila said, and pointed to a blond girl who was coming toward us with a tall, dark young man, in a white V-neck sweater. “If there’s no one like that, your school stinks.” And she burst out laughing.

The girl was all in green: green shoes, green skirt, green jacket, and on her head—this was above all what made Lila laugh—she wore a bowler, like Charlie Chaplin, also green.

The hilarity passed from her to the rest of us. When the couple went by Rino made a vulgar comment on what the young woman in green should do, with the bowler hat, and Pasquale stopped, he was laughing so hard, and leaned against the wall with one arm. The girl and her companion took a few steps, then stopped. The boy in the white pullover turned, was immediately restrained by the girl, who grabbed his arm. He wriggled free, came back, addressed directly to Rino a series of insulting phrases. It was an instant. Rino punched him in the face and knocked him down, shouting:

“What did you call me? I didn’t get it, repeat, what did you call me? Did you hear, Pascà, what he called me?”

Our laughter abruptly turned to fear. Lila first of all hurled herself at her brother before he started kicking the young man on the ground and dragged him off, with an expression of disbelief, as if a thousand fragments of our life, from childhood to this, our fourteenth year, were composing an image that was finally clear, yet which at that moment seemed to her incredible.

We pushed Rino and Pasquale away, while the girl in the bowler helped her boyfriend get up. Lila’s incredulity meanwhile was changing into fury. As she tried to get her brother off she assailed him with the coarsest insults, pulled him by the arm, threatened him. Rino kept her away with one hand, a nervous laugh on his face, and meanwhile he turned to Pasquale:

“My sister thinks this is a game, Pascà,” he said in dialect, his eyes wild, “my sister thinks that even if I say it’s better for us not to go somewhere, she can do it, because she always knows everything, she always understands everything, as usual, and she can go there like it or not.” A short pause to regain his breath, then he added, “Did you hear that shit called me ‘hick’? Me a hick? A hick?” And still, breathless, “My sister brought me here and now she sees if I’m called a hick, now she sees what I do if they call me a hick.”

“Calm down, Rino,” Pasquale said, looking behind him every so often, in alarm.

Rino remained agitated, but subdued. Lila, however, had calmed down. We stopped at Piazza dei Martiri. Pasquale said, almost coldly, addressing Carmela: “You girls go home now.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Carmè, I don’t want to discuss it: go.”

“We don’t know how to get there.”

“Don’t lie.”

“Go,” Rino said to Lila, trying to contain himself. “Take some money, buy an ice cream on the way.”

“We left together and we’re going back together.”

Rino lost patience again, gave her a shove: “Will you stop it? I’m older and you do what I tell you. Move, go, in a second I’ll bash your face in.”

I saw that he was ready to do it seriously, I dragged Lila by the arm. She also understood the risk: “I’ll tell Papa.”

“Who gives a fuck. Walk, come on, go, you don’t even deserve the ice cream.”

Hesitantly we went up past Santa Caterina. But after a while Lila had second thoughts, stopped, said that she was going back to her brother. We tried to persuade her to stay with us, but she wouldn’t listen. Just then we saw a group of boys, five, maybe six, they looked like the rowers we had sometimes admired on Sunday walks near Castel dell’Ovo. They were all tall, sturdy, well dressed. Some had sticks, some didn’t. They quickly passed by the church and headed toward the piazza. Among them was the young man whom Rino had struck in the face; his V-necked sweater was stained with blood.

Lila freed herself from my grip and ran off, Carmela and I behind her. We arrived in time to see Rino and Pasquale backing up toward the monument at the center of the piazza, side by side, while those well-dressed youths chased them, hitting them with their sticks. We called for help, we began to cry, to stop people passing, but the sticks were frightening, no one helped. Lila grabbed the arm of one of the attackers but was thrown to the ground. I saw Pasquale on his knees, being kicked, I saw Rino protecting himself from the blows with his arm. Then a car stopped and it was the Solaras’ 1100.

Marcello got out immediately. First he helped Lila up and then, incited by her, as she shrieked with rage and shouted at her brother, threw himself into the fight, hitting and getting hit. Only at that point Michele got out of the car, opened the trunk in a leisurely way, took out something that looked like a shiny iron bar, and joined in, hitting with a cold ferocity that I hope never to see again in my life. Rino and Pasquale got up furiously, hitting, choking, tearing—they seemed like strangers, they were so transformed by hatred. The well-dressed young men were routed. Michele went up to Pasquale, whose nose was bleeding, but Pasquale rudely pushed him away and wiped his face with the sleeve of his white shirt, then saw that it was soaked red. Marcello picked up a bunch of keys and handed it to Rino, who thanked him uneasily. The people who had kept their distance before now came over, curious. I was paralyzed with fear.

“Take the girls away,” Rino said to the two Solaras, in the grateful tone of someone who makes a request that he knows is unavoidable.

Marcello made us get in the car, first Lila, who resisted. We were all jammed in the back seat, sitting on each other’s knees. I turned to look at Pasquale and Rino, who were heading toward the Riviera, Pasquale limping. I felt as if our neighborhood had expanded, swallowing all Naples, even the streets where respectable people lived. In the car there were immediate tensions. Gigliola and Ada were annoyed, protesting that the ride was uncomfortable. “It’s impossible,” they said. “Then get out and walk,” Lila shouted and they were about to start hitting each other. Marcello braked, amused. Gigliola got out and went to sit in front, on Michele’s knees. We made the journey like that, with Gigliola and Michele kissing each other in front of us. I looked at her and she, though kissing passionately, looked at me. I turned away.

Lila said nothing until we reached the neighborhood. Marcello said a few words, his eyes looking for her in the rear-view mirror, but she never responded. They let us out far from our houses, so that we wouldn’t be seen in the Solaras’ car. The rest of the way we walked, the five of us. Apart from Lila, who seemed consumed by anger and worry, we all admired the behavior of the two brothers. Good for them, we said, they behaved well. Gigliola kept repeating, “Of course,” “What did you think,” “Naturally,” with the air of one who, working in the pastry shop, knew very well what first-rate people the Solaras were. At one point she asked me, but in a teasing tone:

“How’s school?”

“Great.”

“But you don’t have fun the way I do.”

“It’s a different type of fun.”

When she, Carmela, and Ada left us at the entrance of their building, I said to Lila:

“The rich people certainly are worse than we are.”

She didn’t answer. I added, cautiously, “The Solaras may be shit, but it’s lucky they were there: those people on Via dei Mille might have killed Rino and Pasquale.”

She shook her head energetically. She was paler than usual and under her eyes were deep purple hollows. She didn’t agree but she didn’t tell me why.