The Neapolitan Novels

36.

I found Naples submerged in a stinking, devastating heat. My mother, without saying a word about how I had changed—the acne gone, my skin sun-darkened—reproached me because I had returned before the appointed time.

“What have you done,” she said, “you’ve behaved rudely, did the teacher’s friend throw you out?”

It was different with my father, whose eyes shone and who showered me with compliments, the most conspicuous of which, repeated a hundred times, was: “Christ, what a pretty daughter I have.” As for my siblings, they said with a certain contempt, “You look like a negro.”

I looked at myself in the mirror and I also marveled: the sun had made me a shining blonde, but my face, my arms, my legs were as if painted with dark gold. As long as I had been immersed in the colors of Ischia, amid sunburned faces, my transformation had seemed suitable; now, restored to the context of the neighborhood, where every face, every street had a sick pallor, it seemed to me excessive, anomalous. The people, the buildings, the dusty, busy stradone had the appearance of a poorly printed photograph, like the ones in the newspapers.

As soon as I could I hurried to find Lila. I called her from the courtyard, she looked out, emerged from the doorway. She hugged me, kissed me, gave me compliments, so that I was overwhelmed by all that explicit affection. She was the same and yet, in little more than a month, she had changed further. She seemed no longer a girl but a woman, a woman of at least eighteen, an age that then seemed to me advanced. Her old clothes were short and tight, as if she had grown inside them in the space of a few minutes, and they hugged her body more than they should. She was even taller, more developed, her back was straight. And the pale face above her slender neck seemed to me to have a delicate, unusual beauty.

She seemed nervous, she kept looking around on the street, behind her, but she didn’t explain. She said only, “Come with me,” and wanted me to go with her to Stefano’s grocery. She added, taking my arm, “It’s something I can only do with you, thank goodness you’ve come back. I thought I’d have to wait till September.”

We had never walked those streets toward the public gardens so close to one another, so together, so happy to see each other. She told me that things were getting worse every day. Just the night before Marcello had arrived with sweets and spumante and had given her a ring studded with diamonds. She had accepted it, had put it on her finger to avoid trouble in the presence of her parents, but just before he left, at the door, she had given it back to him rudely. Marcello had protested, he had threatened her, as he now did more and more often, then had burst into tears. Fernando and Nunzia had immediately realized that something was wrong. Her mother had grown very fond of Marcello, she liked the good things he brought to the house every night, she was proud of being the owner of a television; and Fernando felt as if he had stopped suffering, because, thanks to a close relationship with the Solaras, he could look to the future without anxieties. Thus, as soon as Marcello left, both had harassed her more than usual to find out what was happening. Result: for the first time in a long, long time, Rino had defended her, had insisted that if his sister didn’t want a halfwit like Marcello, it was her sacrosanct right to refuse him and that, if they insisted on giving him to her, he, in person, would burn down everything, the house and the shoemaker’s shop and himself and the entire family. Father and son had started fighting, Nunzia had got involved, all the neighbors had woken up. Not only: Rino had thrown himself on the bed in distress, had abruptly fallen asleep, and an hour later had had another episode of sleepwalking. They had found him in the kitchen lighting matches, and passing them in front of the gas valve as if to check for leaks. Nunzia, terrified, had wakened Lila, saying, “Rino really does want to burn us all alive,” and Lila had hurried in and reassured her mother: Rino was sleeping, and in sleep, unlike when he was awake, he wanted to make sure that there was no gas escaping. She had taken him back to bed.

“I can’t bear it anymore,” she concluded, “you don’t know what torture this is, I have to get out of this situation.”

She clung to me as if I could give her the energy.

“You’re well,” she said, “everything’s going well for you: you have to help me.”

I answered that she could count on me for everything and she seemed relieved, she squeezed my arm, whispered, “Look.”

I saw in the distance a sort of red spot that radiated light.

“What is it?”

“Don’t you see?”

I couldn’t see clearly.

“It’s Stefano’s new car.”

We walked to where the car was parked, in front of the grocery store, which had been enlarged, had two entrances now, and was extremely crowded. The customers, waiting to be served, threw admiring glances at that symbol of well-being and prestige: a car like that had never been seen in the neighborhood, all glass and metal, with a roof that opened. A car for wealthy people, nothing like the Solaras’ 1100.

I wandered around it while Lila stood in the shadows and surveyed the street as if she expected violence to erupt at any moment. Stefano looked out from the doorway of the grocery, in his greasy apron, his large head and his high forehead giving a not unpleasant sense of disproportion. He crossed the street, greeted me cordially, said, “How well you look, like an actress.”

He, too, looked well: he had been in the sun as I had, maybe we were the only ones in the whole neighborhood who appeared so healthy. I said to him:

“You’re very dark.”

“I took a week’s vacation.”

“Where?”

“In Ischia.”

“I was in Ischia, too.”

“I know, Lina told me: I looked for you but didn’t see you.”

I pointed to the car. “It’s beautiful.”

Stefano’s face wore an expression of moderate agreement. He said, indicating Lila, with laughing eyes: “I bought it for your friend, but she won’t believe it.” I looked at Lila, who was standing in the shadows, her expression serious, tense. Stefano said to her, vaguely ironic, “Now Lenuccia’s back, what are you doing?”

Lila said, as if the thing annoyed her, “Let’s go. But remember, you invited her, not me: I only came along with the two of you.”

He smiled and went back into the shop.

“What’s happening?” I asked her, confused.

“I don’t know,” she said, and meant that she didn’t know exactly what she was getting into. She looked the way she did when she had to do a difficult calculation in her head, but without her usual impudent expression; she was visibly preoccupied, as if she were attempting an experiment with an uncertain result. “It all began,” she said, “with the arrival of that car.” Stefano, first as if joking, then with increasing seriousness, had sworn to her that he had bought the car for her, for the pleasure of opening the door and having her get in at least once. “It was made just for you,” he had said. And since it had been delivered, at the end of July, he had been asking her constantly, not in an aggressive way, but politely, first to take a drive with him and Alfonso, then with him and Pinuccia, then even with him and his mother. But she had always said no. Finally she had promised him, “I’ll go when Lenuccia comes back from Ischia.” And now we were there, and what was to happen would happen.

“But he knows about Marcello?”

“Of course he knows.”

“And so?”

“So he insists.”

“I’m scared, Lila.”

“Do you remember how many things we’ve done that scared you? I waited for you on purpose.”

Stefano returned without his apron, dark eyes, dark face, shining black eyes, white shirt and dark pants. He opened the car door, sat behind the wheel, put the top down. I was about to get into the narrow back space but Lila stopped me, she settled herself in the back. I sat uneasily next to Stefano, he started off immediately, heading toward the new buildings.

The heat dissipated in the wind. I felt good, intoxicated by the speed and by the tranquil certainties released by Carracci’s body. It seemed to me that Lila had explained everything without explaining anything. There was, yes, this brand-new sports car that had been bought solely to take her for a ride that had just begun. There was, yes, that young man who, though he knew about Marcello Solara, was violating men’s rules of masculinity without any visible anxiety. There was me, yes, dragged furiously into that business to hide by my presence secret words between them, maybe even a friendship. But what type of friendship? Certainly, with that drive, something significant was happening, and yet Lila had been unable or unwilling to provide me with the elements necessary for understanding. What did she have in mind? She had to know that she was setting in motion an earthquake worse than when she threw the ink-soaked bits of paper. And yet it might be that she wasn’t aiming at anything precise. She was like that, she threw things off balance just to see if she could put them back in some other way. So here we were racing along, hair blowing in the wind, Stefano driving with satisfied skill, I sitting beside him as if I were his girlfriend. I thought of how he had looked at me, when he said I looked like an actress. I thought of the possibility of him liking me more than he now liked my friend. I thought with horror of the idea that Marcello Solara might shoot him. His beautiful person with its confident gestures would lose substance like the copper of the pot that Lila had written about.

We were driving among the new buildings in order to avoid passing the Bar Solara.

“I don’t care if Marcello sees us,” Stefano said without emphasis, “but if it matters to you it’s fine like this.”’

We went through the tunnel, we turned toward the Marina. It was the road that Lila and I had taken many years earlier, when we had gotten caught in the rain. I mentioned that episode, she smiled, Stefano wanted us to tell him about it. We told him everything, it was fun, and meanwhile we arrived at the Granili.

“What do you think, fast, isn’t it?”

“Incredibly fast,” I said, enthusiastically.

Lila made no comment. She looked around, at times she touched my shoulder to point out the houses, the ragged poverty along the street, as if she saw a confirmation of something and I was supposed to understand it right away. Then she asked Stefano, seriously, without preamble, “Are you really different?”

He looked at her in the rearview mirror. “From whom?”

“You know.”

He didn’t answer immediately. Then he said in dialect, “Do you want me to tell you the truth?”

“Yes.”

“The intention is there, but I don’t know how it will end up.”

At that point I was sure that Lila must not have told me quite a few things. That allusive tone was evidence that they were close, that they had talked other times and not in jest but seriously. What had I missed in the period of Ischia? I turned to look at her, she delayed replying, I thought that Stefano’s answer had made her nervous because of its vagueness. I saw her flooded by sunlight, eyes half closed, her shirt swelled by her breast and by the wind.

“The poverty here is worse than among us,” she said. And then, without connection, laughing, “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about when you wanted to prick my tongue.”

Stefano nodded.

“That was another era,” he said.

“Once a coward, always a coward—you were twice as big as me.”

He gave a small, embarrassed smile and, without answering, accelerated in the direction of the port. The drive lasted less than half an hour, we went back on the Rettifilo and Piazza Garibaldi.

“Your brother isn’t well,” Stefano said when we had returned to the outskirts of the neighborhood. He looked at her again in the mirror and asked, “Are those shoes displayed in the window the ones you made?”

“What do you know about the shoes?”

“It’s all Rino talks about.”

“And so?”

“They’re very beautiful.”

She narrowed her eyes, squeezed them almost until they were closed.

“Buy them,” she said in her provocative tone.

“How much will you sell them for?”

“Talk to my father.”

Stefano made a decisive U turn that threw me against the door, we turned onto the street where the shoe repair shop was.

“What are you doing?” Lila asked, alarmed now.

“You said to buy them and I’m going to buy them.”