The Neapolitan Novels

60.

We were the first young people to enter the reception room. My bad mood got worse. Silvio and Manuela Solara were already at their table, along with the metal merchant, his Florentine wife, Stefano’s mother. Lila’s parents were also at a long table with other relatives, my parents, Melina, Ada, who was furious and greeted Antonio angrily. The band was taking its place, the musicians tuning their instruments, the singer at the microphone. We wandered around embarrassed. We didn’t know where to sit, none of us dared ask the waiters, Antonio clung to me, trying to divert me.

My mother called me, I pretended not to hear. She called me again and I didn’t answer. Then she got up, came over to me with her limping gait. She wanted me to sit next to her. I refused. She whispered, “Why is Melina’s son always around you?”

“No one is around me, Ma.”

“Do you think I’m an idiot?”

“No.”

“Come and sit next to me.”

“No.”

“I told you come. We’re not sending you to school to let you ruin yourself with an auto mechanic who has a crazy mother.”

I did what she said; she was furious. Other young people began arriving, all friends of Stefano. Among them I saw Gigliola, who nodded to me to join them. My mother restrained me. Pasquale, Carmela, Enzo, Antonio finally sat down with Gigliola’s group. Ada, who had succeeded in getting rid of her mother by entrusting her to Nunzia, stopped to whisper in my ear, saying, “Come.” I tried to get up but my mother grabbed my arm angrily. Ada made a face and went to sit next to her brother, who every so often looked at me, while I signaled to him, raising my eyes to the ceiling, that I was a prisoner.

The band began to play. The singer, who was around forty, and nearly bald, with very delicate features, hummed something as a test. Other guests arrived, the room grew crowded. None of the guests disguised their hunger, but naturally we had to wait for the newlyweds. I tried again to get up and my mother whispered, “You are going to stay near me.”

Near her. I thought how contradictory she was, without realizing it, with her rages, with those imperious gestures. She hadn’t wanted me to go to school, but now that I was going to school she considered me better than the boys I had grown up with, and she understood, as I myself now did, that my place was not among them. Yet here she was insisting that I stay with her, to keep me from who knows what stormy sea, from who knows what abyss or precipice, all dangers that at that moment were represented in her eyes by Antonio. But staying near her meant staying in her world, becoming completely like her. And if I became like her, who would be right for me if not Antonio?

Meanwhile the newlyweds entered, to enthusiastic applause. The band started immediately, with the marriage processional. I was indissolubly welded to my mother, to her body, the alienness that was expanding inside me. Here was Lila celebrated by the neighborhood, she seemed happy. She smiled, elegant, courteous, her hand in her husband’s. She was very beautiful. As a child I had looked to her, to her progress, to learn how to escape my mother. I had been mistaken. Lila had remained there, chained in a glaring way to that world, from which she imagined she had taken the best. And the best was that young man, that marriage, that celebration, the game of shoes for Rino and her father. Nothing that had to do with my path as a student. I felt completely alone.

The newlyweds were obliged to dance amid the flashes of the photographer. They spun through the room, precise in their movements. I should take note, I thought: not even Lila, in spite of everything, has managed to escape from my mother’s world. I have to, I can’t be acquiescent any longer. I have to eliminate her, as Maestra Oliviero had been able to do when she arrived at our house to impose on her what was good for me. She was restraining me by one arm but I had to ignore her, remember that I was the best in Italian, Latin, and Greek, remember that I had confronted the religion teacher, remember that an article would appear with my signature in the same journal in which a handsome, clever boy in his last year of high school wrote.

At that moment Nino Sarratore entered. I saw him before I saw Alfonso and Marisa, I saw him and jumped up. My mother tried to hold me by the hem of my dress and I pulled the dress away. Antonio, who hadn’t let me out of his sight, brightened, threw me a glance of invitation. But I, moving away from Lila and Stefano, who were now going to take their place in the middle of the table, between the Solaras and the couple from Florence, headed straight toward the entrance, toward Alfonso, Marisa, Nino.