The Neapolitan Novels

27.

I was promoted with nines in all my subjects, I would even receive something called a scholarship. Of the forty we had been, thirty-two remained. Gino failed, Alfonso had to retake the exams in three subjects in September. Urged by my father, I went to see Maestra Oliviero—my mother was against it, she didn’t like the teacher to interfere in her family and claim the right to make decisions about her children in her place—with the usual two packets, one of sugar and one of coffee, bought at the Bar Solara, to thank her for her interest in me.

She wasn’t feeling well, she had something in her throat that hurt her, but she was full of praise, congratulated me on how hard I had worked, said that I looked a little too pale and that she intended to telephone a cousin who lived on Ischia to see if she would let me stay with her for a little while. I thanked her, but said nothing to my mother of that possibility. I already knew that she wouldn’t let me go. Me on Ischia? Me alone on the ferry traveling over the sea? Not to mention me on the beach, swimming, in a bathing suit?

I didn’t even mention it to Lila. Her life in a few months had lost even the adventurous aura associated with the shoe factory, and I didn’t want to boast about the promotion, the scholarship, a possible vacation in Ischia. In appearance things had improved: Marcello Solara had stopped following her. But after the violence in Piazza dei Martiri something completely unexpected happened that puzzled her. He came to the shop to ask about Rino’s condition, and the honor conferred by that visit perturbed Fernando. But Rino, who had been careful not to tell his father what had happened (to explain the bruises on his face and his body he made up a story that he had fallen off a friend’s Lambretta), and worried that Marcello might say one word too many, had immediately steered him out into the street. They had taken a short walk. Rino had reluctantly thanked Solara both for his intervention and for the kindness of coming to see how he was. Two minutes and they had said goodbye. When he returned to the shop his father had said:

“Finally you’re doing something good.”

“What?”

“A friendship with Marcello Solara.”

“There’s no friendship, Papa.”

“Then it means you were a fool and a fool you remain.”

Fernando wanted to say that something was changing and that his son, whatever he wanted to call that thing with the Solaras, would do well to encourage it. He was right. Marcello returned a couple of days later with his grandfather’s shoes to resole; then he invited Rino to go for a drive. Then he urged him to apply for a license, assuming the responsibility for getting him to practice in the 1100. Maybe it wasn’t friendship, but the Solaras certainly had taken a liking to Rino.

When Lila, ignorant of these visits, which took place entirely at the shoemaker’s shop, where she never went, heard about them, she, unlike her father, felt an increasing worry. First she remembered the battle of the fireworks and thought: Rino hates the Solaras too much, it can’t be that he’ll let himself be taken in. Then she had had to observe that Marcello’s attentions were seducing her older brother even more than her parents. She now knew Rino’s fragility, but still she was angry at the way the Solaras were getting into his head, making him a kind of happy little monkey.

“What’s wrong with it?” I objected once.

“They’re dangerous.”

“Here everything is dangerous.”

“Did you see what Michele took out of the car, in Piazza dei Martiri?”

“No.”

“An iron bar.”

“The others had sticks.”

“You don’t see it, Lenù, but the bar was sharpened into a point: if he wanted he could have thrust it into the chest, or the stomach, of one of those guys.”

“Well, you threatened Marcello with the shoemaker’s knife.”

At that point she grew irritated and said I didn’t understand. And probably it was true. It was her brother, not mine; I liked to be logical, while she had different needs, she wanted to get Rino away from that relationship. But as soon as she made some critical remark Rino shut her up, threatened her, sometimes beat her. And so things, willy-nilly, proceeded to the point where, one evening in late June—I was at Lila’s house, I was helping her fold sheets, or something, I don’t remember—the door opened and Rino entered, followed by Marcello.

He had invited Solara to dinner, and Fernando, who had just returned from the shop, very tired, at first was irritated, and then felt honored, and behaved cordially. Not to mention Nunzia: she became agitated, thanked Marcello for the three bottles of good wine that he had brought, pulled the other children into the kitchen so they wouldn’t be disruptive.

I myself was involved with Lila in the preparations for dinner.

“I’ll put roach poison in it,” Lila said, furious, at the stove, and we laughed, while Nunzia shut us up.

“He’s come to marry you,” I said to provoke her, “he’s going to ask your father.”

“He is deceiving himself.”

“Why,” Nunzia asked anxiously, “if he likes you do you say no?”

“Ma, I already told him no.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“What are you saying?”

“It’s true,” I said in confirmation.

“Your father must never know, otherwise he’ll kill you.”

At dinner only Marcello spoke. It was clear that he had invited himself, and Rino, who didn’t know how to say no to him, sat at the table nearly silent, or laughed for no reason. Solara addressed himself mainly to Fernando, but never neglected to pour water or wine for Nunzia, for Lila, for me. He said to him how much he was respected in the neighborhood because he was such a good cobbler. He said that his father had always spoken well of his skill. He said that Rino had an unlimited admiration for his abilities as a shoemaker.

Fernando, partly because of the wine, was moved. He muttered something in praise of Silvio Solara, and even went so far as to say that Rino was a good worker and was becoming a good shoemaker. Then Marcello started to praise the need for progress. He said that his grandfather had started with a cellar, then his father had enlarged it, and today the bar-pastry shop Solara was what it was, everybody knew it, people came from all over Naples to have coffee, eat a pastry.

“What an exaggeration,” Lila exclaimed, and her father gave her a silencing look.

But Marcello smiled at her humbly and admitted, “Yes, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but just to say that money has to circulate. You begin with a cellar and from generation to generation you can go far.”

At this point, with Rino showing evident signs of uneasiness, he began to praise the idea of making new shoes. And from that moment he began to look at Lila as if in praising the energy of the generations he were praising her in particular. He said: if someone feels capable, if he’s clever, if he can invent good things, which are pleasing, why not try? He spoke in a nice, charming dialect and as he spoke he never stopped staring at my friend. I felt, I saw that he was in love as in the songs, that he would have liked to kiss her, that he wanted to breathe her breath, that she would be able to make of him all she wanted, that in his eyes she embodied all possible feminine qualities.

“I know,” Marcello concluded, “that your children made a very nice pair of shoes, size 43, just my size.”

A long silence fell. Rino stared at his plate and didn’t dare look up at his father. Only the sound of the goldfinch at the window could be heard. Fernando said slowly, “Yes, they’re size 43.”

“I would very much like to see them, if you don’t mind?”

Fernando stammered, “I don’t know where they are. Nunzia, do you know?”

“She has them,” Rino said, indicating his sister.

“I did have them, yes, I had put them in the storeroom. But then Mamma told me to clean it out the other day and I threw them away. Since no one liked them.”

Rino said angrily, “You’re a liar, go and get the shoes right now.”

Fernando said nervously, “Go get the shoes, go on.”

Lila burst out, addressing her father, “How is it that now you want them? I threw them away because you said you didn’t like them.”

Fernando pounded the table with his open hand, the wine trembled in the glasses.

“Get up and go get the shoes, right now.”

Lila pushed away her chair, stood up.

“I threw them away,” she repeated weakly and left the room.

She didn’t come back.

The time passed in silence. The first to become alarmed was Marcello. He said, with real concern, “Maybe I was wrong, I didn’t know that there were problems.”

“There’s no problem,” Fernando said, and whispered to his wife, “Go see what your daughter is doing.”

Nunzia left the room. When she came back she was embarrassed, she couldn’t find Lila. We looked for her all over the house, she wasn’t there. We called her from the window: nothing. Marcello, desolate, took his leave. As soon as he had gone Fernando shouted at his wife, “God’s truth, this time I’m going to kill your daughter.”

Rino joined his father in the threat, Nunzia began to cry. I left almost on tiptoe, frightened. But as soon as I closed the door and came out on the landing Lila called me. She was on the top floor, I went up on tiptoe. She was huddled next to the door to the terrace, in the shadows. She had the shoes in her lap, for the first time I saw them finished. They shone in the feeble light of a bulb hanging on an electrical cable. “What would it cost you to let him see them?” I asked, confused.

She shook her head energetically. “I don’t even want him to touch them.”

But she was as if overwhelmed by her own extreme reaction. Her lower lip trembled, something that never happened.

Gradually I persuaded her to go home, she couldn’t stay hiding there forever. I went with her, counting on the fact that my presence would protect her. But there were shouts, insults, some blows just the same. Fernando screamed that on a whim she had made him look foolish in the eyes of an important guest. Rino tore the shoes out of her hand, saying that they were his, the work had been done by him. She began to cry, murmuring, “I worked on them, too, but it would have been better if I’d never done it, you’ve become a mad beast.” It was Nunzia who put an end to that torture. She turned pale and in a voice that was not her usual voice she ordered her children, and even her husband—she who was always so submissive—to stop it immediately, to give the shoes to her, not to venture a single word if they didn’t want her to jump out the window. Rino gave her the shoes and for the moment things ended there. I slipped away.