The Story of a New Name

89

Stefano slept all day. When he woke up and realized that his wife wasn’t there he pretended not to notice. He had behaved like that since he was a boy, when his father terrorized him by his mere presence and he, in reaction, had trained himself to that half smile, to slow, tranquil gestures, to a controlled distance from the world around him, to keep at bay both fear and the desire to tear open his chest with his bare hands and, pulling it apart, rip out the heart.

In the evening he went out and did something rash: he went to Ada’s windows, and though he knew she was supposed to be at the movies or somewhere with Pasquale, he called her, kept calling her. Ada looked out, both happy and alarmed. She had stayed home because Melina was raving more than usual and Antonio, ever since he had gone to work for the Solaras, was always out, he didn’t have a schedule. Her fiancé was there keeping her company. Stefano went up just the same, and, without ever mentioning Lila, spent the evening at the Cappuccio house talking politics with Pasquale and about matters connected to the grocery with Ada. When he got home he pretended that Lila had gone to her parents’ and before he went to bed he shaved carefully. He slept heavily all night.

The trouble began the next day. The assistant at Piazza dei Martiri told Michele that Lila hadn’t shown up. Michele telephoned Stefano and Stefano told him that his wife was sick. The illness lasted for days, so Nunzia stopped by to see if her daughter needed her. No one opened the door, she went back in the evening, Stefano had just returned from work and was sitting in front of the television, which was at high volume. He swore, he went to open the door, invited her in. As soon as Nunzia said, “How is Lina?” he answered that she had left him, then he burst into tears.

Both families hurried over: Stefano’s mother, Alfonso, Pinuccia with the baby, Rino, Fernando. For one reason or another they were all frightened, but only Maria and Nunzia were openly worried about Lila’s fate and wondered where she had gone. The others quarreled for reasons that had little to do with her. Rino and Fernando, who were angry at Stefano because he had done nothing to prevent the closing of the shoe factory, accused him of having never understood Lila and said he had been very wrong to send her to the Solaras’ shop. Pinuccia got angry and yelled at her husband and her father-in-law that Lila had always been a hothead, that she wasn’t Stefano’s victim, Stefano was hers. When Alfonso ventured that they should turn to the police, ask at the hospitals, feelings flared up even more, they all criticized him as if he had insulted them: Rino in particular cried that the last thing they needed was to become the laughingstock of the neighborhood. It was Maria who said softly, “Maybe she’s gone to stay with Lenù for a while.” That hypothesis caught on. They continued to quarrel, but they all pretended, except Alfonso, to believe that Lila, because of Stefano, and the Solaras, had decided to go to Pisa. “Yes,” Nunzia said, calming down, “she always does that, as soon as she has a problem she goes to Lenù.” At that point, they all started to get angry about that reckless journey, all by herself, on the train, far away, without telling anyone. And yet that Lila was with me seemed so plausible and at the same time so reassuring that it immediately became a fact. Only Alfonso said, “I’ll leave tomorrow and go see,” but he was immediately checked by Pinuccia, “Where are you going when you have to work,” and by Fernando, who muttered, “Leave her alone, let her calm down.”

The next day that was the version that Stefano gave to anyone who asked about Lila: “She went to Pisa to see Lenù, she wants to rest.” But that afternoon Nunzia was gripped again by anxiety, she went to see Alfonso and asked if he had my address. He didn’t have it, no one did, only my mother. So Nunzia sent Alfonso to her, but my mother, out of her natural hostility toward everyone or to safeguard my studies from distraction, gave him an incomplete version (it’s likely that she herself had it that way: writing was hard for my mother, and we both knew that she would never use that address). In any case Nunzia and Alfonso together wrote me a letter in which they asked in a very roundabout way if Lila was with me. They addressed it to the University of Pisa, nothing else, only my name and surname, and its arrival was much delayed. I read it, I became even angrier with Lila and Nino, I didn’t answer.

Meanwhile, the day after Lila’s so-called departure, Ada, in addition to working in the old grocery store, in addition to attending to her entire family and the needs of her fiancé, also began to tidy up Stefano’s house and to cook for him, which put Pasquale in a bad mood. They quarreled, he said to her, “You’re not paid to be a servant,” and she answered, “Better to be a servant than waste time arguing with you.” On the other hand, to keep the Solaras happy Alfonso was quickly sent to Piazza dei Martiri, where he felt at his ease: he left early in the morning dressed as if he were going to a wedding and returned at night very pleased: he liked spending the day in the center. As for Michele, who with the disappearance of Signora Carracci had become intractable, he called Antonio and said to him: “Find her for me.”

Antonio muttered, “Naples is big, Michè, and so is Pisa, and even Italy. Where do I begin?”

Michele answered, “With Sarratore’s oldest son.” Then he gave him the look he reserved for people he considered worth less than nothing and said, “Don’t you dare tell anyone about this search or I’ll put you in the insane asylum at Aversa and you’ll never get out. Everything you know, everything you see, you will tell me alone. Is that clear?”

Antonio nodded yes.