The Story of a New Name

17

Already on the way home I began to worry both about her and about me. If Stefano killed her? If Antonio killed me? I was racked by anxiety, I walked quickly, in the dusty heat, along Sunday streets that were beginning to empty as lunchtime approached. How difficult it was to find one’s way, how difficult it was not to violate any of the incredibly detailed male regulations. Lila, perhaps based on secret calculations of her own, perhaps only out of spite, had humiliated her husband by going to flirt in front of everyone — she, Signora Carracci — with her former wooer Marcello Solara. I, without intending to, in fact convinced that I was doing good, had gone to argue the case of Antonio with those who years before had insulted his sister, who had beaten him up, whom he in turn had beaten up. When I entered the courtyard, I heard someone calling me, I started. It was him, he was at the window waiting for me to return.

He came down and I was afraid. I thought: he must have a knife. Instead, the whole time he spoke with his hands sunk in his pockets as if to keep them prisoner, calmly, his gaze distant. He said that I had humiliated him in front of the people he despised most in the world. He said I had made him look like someone who sends his woman to ask a favor. He said that he would not go down on his knees to anyone and that he would be a soldier not once but a hundred times, that in fact he would die in the Army rather than go and kiss the hand of Marcello Solara. He said that if Pasquale and Enzo should find out, they would spit in his face. He said that he was leaving me, because he had had the proof, finally, that I cared nothing about him and his feelings. He said that I could say and do with the son of Sarratore what I liked, he never wanted to see me again.

I couldn’t reply. Suddenly he took his hands out of his pockets, pulled me inside the doorway and kissed me, pressing his lips hard against mine, searching my mouth desperately with his tongue. Then he pulled away, turned his back, and left.

I went up the stairs in confusion. I thought that I was more fortunate than Lila, Antonio wasn’t like Stefano. He would never hurt me, the only person he could hurt was himself.