The Story of a New Name

112

When Ada returned to work, out of breath and extremely agitated, Stefano, menacing but calm, asked her, “Where have you been?” She answered, in the presence of the customers waiting to be served, “To clean up your house, it was disgusting.” And addressing the audience on the other side of the counter: “There was so much dust on the night table you could write in it.”

Stefano said nothing, disappointing the customers. When the shop emptied and it was time to close, Ada cleaned, swept, always watching her lover out of the corner of her eye. Nothing happened, he did the accounts sitting at the cash register, smoking heavily aromatic American cigarettes. Once the last butt was out, he grabbed the handle to lower the shutter, but he lowered it from the inside.

“What are you doing?” Ada asked, alarmed.

“We’ll go out on the courtyard side.”

After that, he struck her in the face so many times, first with the palm of his hand, then the back, that she leaned against the counter in order not to faint. “How dare you go to my house?” he said in a voice strangled by the will not to scream. “How dare you disturb my wife and my son?” Finally he realized that his heart was nearly bursting and he tried to calm down. It was the first time he had hit her. He stammered, trembling, “Don’t ever do it again.” And he went out, leaving her bleeding in the shop.

The next day Ada didn’t go to work. Battered as she was, she appeared at Lila’s house, and Lila, when she saw the bruises on her face, told her to come in.

“Make me the chamomile,” said Melina’s daughter.

Lila made it for her.

“The baby is cute.”

“Yes.”

“Just like Stefano.”

“No.”

“He has the same eyes and the same mouth.”

“No.”

“If you have to read your books, go ahead, I’ll take care of the house and Rinuccio.”

Lila stared at her, this time almost amused, then she said, “Do what you like, but don’t go near the baby.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t do anything to him.”

Ada set to work: she straightened, washed the clothes, hung them in the sun, cooked lunch, prepared dinner. At one point she stopped, charmed by the way Lila was playing with Rinuccio.

“How old is he?”

“Two years and four months.”

“He’s little, you push him too much.”

“No, he does what he can do.”

“I’m pregnant.”

“What?”

“It’s true.”

“With Stefano?”

“Of course.”

“Does he know?”

“No.”

Lila then understood that her marriage really was almost over, but, as usual when she became aware that change was imminent, she felt neither resentment nor anguish nor worry. When Stefano arrived, he found his wife reading in the living room, Ada playing with the baby in the kitchen, the apartment full of good smells and shining like a large, single precious object. He realized that the beating had been of no use, he turned white, he couldn’t breathe.

“Go,” he said to Ada in a low voice.

“No.”

“What’s got into your head?”

“I’m staying here.”

“You want me to go mad?”

“Yes, that makes two of us.”

Lila closed the book, took the baby without saying anything and withdrew into the room where, a long time earlier, I had studied, and where Rinuccio now slept. Stefano whispered to his lover, “You’ll ruin me, like this. It’s not true that you love me, Ada, you want me to lose all my customers, you want to reduce me to a pauper, and you know that circumstances are already not good. Please, tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you.”

“I want to be with you always.”

“Yes, but not here.”

“Here.”

“This is my house, there’s Lina, there’s Rinuccio.”

“From now on I’m here, too: I’m pregnant.”

Stefano sat down. In silence he gazed at Ada’s stomach as she stood before him, as if he were seeing through her dress, her underpants, her skin, as if he were seeing the baby already formed, a living being, all ready, about to jump out. Then there was a knock at the door.

It was a waiter from the Bar Solara, a boy of sixteen who had just been hired. He told Stefano that Michele and Marcello wanted to see him right away. Stefano roused himself, at that moment he considered the demand a salvation, given the storm he had in the house. He said to Ada, “Don’t move.” She smiled, she nodded yes. He went out, got in the Solaras’ car. What a mess I’ve got myself into, he thought. What should I do? If my father were alive he would break my legs with an iron bar. Women, debts, Signora Solara’s red book. Something hadn’t worked. Lina. She had ruined him. What the fuck do Marcello and Michele want, at this hour, so urgently?

They wanted, he discovered, the old grocery. They didn’t say it but they let him understand it. Marcello spoke merely of another loan that they were willing to give him. But, he said, the Cerullo shoes have to come definitively to us, we’re finished with that lazy brother-in-law of yours, he’s not reliable. And we need a guarantee, an activity, a property, you think about it. That said, he left, he said he had things to do. At that point Stefano was alone with Michele. They talked for a long time to see if Rino and Fernando’s factory could be saved, if he could do without what Marcello had called the guarantee.

But Michele shook his head, he said, “We need guarantees, scandals aren’t good for business.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I know what I mean. Who do you love more, Lina or Ada?”

“It’s none of your business.”

“No, Ste’, when it’s a question of money your business is my business.”

“What can I tell you: we’re men, you know how it works. Lina is my wife, Ada is another thing.”

“So you love Ada more?”

“Yes.”

“Resolve the situation and then we’ll talk.”

Many very dark days passed before Stefano found a way of getting out of that chokehold. Quarrels with Ada, quarrels with Lila, work gone to hell, the old grocery often closed, the neighborhood that watched and committed to memory and still remembers. The handsome engaged couple. The convertible. Soraya is going by with the Shah of Persia, Jack and Jackie are going by. Finally Stefano resigned himself and said to Lila, “I’ve found you a nice place, suitable for you and Rinuccio.”

“How generous you are.”

“I’ll come twice a week to see the baby.”

“As far as I’m concerned you don’t have to come see him, since he’s not your son.”

“You’re a bitch, you’re going to make me smash your face.”

“Smash my face when you want, I’ve got a callus there. But you take care of your child and I’ll take care of mine.”

He fumed, he got angry, he really tried to hit her. Finally he said, “The place is on the Vomero.”

“Where?”

“I’ll take you tomorrow and show it to you, in Piazza degli Artisti.”

Lila remembered in a flash the proposal Michele Solara had made long ago: “I’ve bought a house on the Vomero, in Piazza degli Artisti. If you want I’ll drive you there now, I’ll show it to you, I took it with you in mind. There you can do what you like: read, write, invent things, sleep, laugh, talk, and be with Rinuccio. I’m interested only in being able to look at you and listen to you.”

She shook her head in disbelief, she said to her husband, “You really are a piece of shit.”