The Neapolitan Novels

28.

But Rino wouldn’t give in, and in the following days he continued to attack his sister with words and fists. Every time Lila and I met I saw a new bruise. After a while I felt that she was resigned. One morning he insisted that they go out together, that she come with him to the shoemaker’s shop. On the way they both sought, with wavy moves, to end the war. Rino said that he loved her but that she didn’t love anyone, neither her parents nor her siblings. Lila murmured, “What do you mean by love, what does love mean for our family? Let’s hear.” Step by step, he revealed to her what he had in mind.

“If Marcello likes the shoes, Papa will change his mind.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Yes, he will. And if Marcello buys them, Papa will understand that your designs are good, that they’re profitable, and he’ll have us start work.”

“The three of us?”

“He and I and maybe you, too. Papa is capable of making a pair of shoes, completely finished, in four days, at most five. And I, if I work hard, I’ll show you that I can do the same. We make them, we sell them, and we finance ourselves.”

“Who do we sell them to, always Marcello Solara?”

“The Solaras market them; they know people who count. They’ll do the publicity for us.”

“They’ll do it free?”

“If they want a small percentage we’ll give it to them.”

“And why should they be content with a small percentage?”

“They’ve taken a liking to me.”

“The Solaras?”

“Yes.”

Lila sighed. “Just one thing: I’ll tell Papa and see what he thinks.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“This way or not at all.”

Rino was silent, very nervous.

“All right. Anyway, you speak, you can speak better.”

That evening, at dinner, in front of her brother, whose face was fiery red, Lila said to Fernando that Marcello not only had shown great curiosity about the shoe enterprise but might even be interested in buying the shoes for himself, and that in fact, if he was enthusiastic about the matter from a commercial point of view, he would advertise the product in the circles he frequented, in exchange, naturally, for a small percentage of the sales.

“This I said,” Rino explained with lowered eyes, “not Marcello.”

Fernando looked at his wife: Lila understood that they had talked about it and had already, secretly, reached a conclusion.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll put your shoes in the shop window. If someone wants to see them, wants to try them, wants to buy them, whatever fucking thing, he has to talk to me, I am the one who decides.”

A few days later I passed by the shop. Rino was working, Fernando was working, both heads bent over the work. I saw in the window, among boxes of shoe polish and laces, the beautiful, elegant shoes made by the Cerullos. A sign pasted to the window, certainly written by Rino, said, pompously: “Shoes handmade by the Cerullos here.” Father and son waited for good luck to arrive.

But Lila was skeptical, sulky. She had no faith in the ingenuous hypothesis of her brother and was afraid of the indecipherable agreement between her father and mother. In other words she expected bad things. A week passed, and no one showed the least interest in the shoes in the window, not even Marcello. Only because he was cornered by Rino, in fact almost dragged to the shop, did Solara glance at them, but as if he had other things on his mind. He tried them, of course, but said they were a little tight, took them off immediately, and disappeared without even a word of compliment, as if he had a stomachache and had to hurry home. Disappointment of father and son. But two minutes later Marcello reappeared. Rino jumped up, beaming, and took his hand as if some agreement, by that pure and simple reappearance, had already been made. But Marcello ignored him and turned directly to Fernando. He said, all in one breath:

“I have very serious intentions, Don Fernà. I would like the hand of your daughter Lina.”