My Brilliant Friend (34 page)

Sarratore turned very pale.

“Yes,” he said quickly. “I understand, thank you.”

He turned on his heels and hurried off toward the station.

I slipped in under Antonio’s arm, proud of that burst of anger, but I realized that he was trembling. I thought, perhaps for the first time, of what the death of his father must have been for him, as a boy, and then the job, the responsibility that had fallen on him, the collapse of his mother. I drew him away, full of affection, and gave myself another deadline: I’ll leave him after Lila’s wedding.

The neighborhood remembered that wedding for a long time. Its preparations were tangled up with the slow, elaborate, rancorous birth of Cerullo shoes: two undertakings that, for one reason or another, it seemed, would never come to fruition.

The wedding put a strain on the shoemaker’s shop. Fer­nando and Rino labored not only on the new shoes, which for the moment brought in nothing, but also on the thousand other little jobs that provided immediate income, which they needed urgently. They had to put together enough money to provide Lila with a small dowry and to meet the expenses of the refreshments, which they intended to take on, no matter what, in order not to seem like poor relations. As a result, the Cerullo household was extremely tense for months: Nunzia embroidered sheets night and day, and Fernando made constant scenes, pining for the happy days when, in the tiny shop where he was king, he glued, sewed, and hammered in peace, with the tacks between his lips.

The only ones who seemed unruffled were the engaged couple. There were just two small moments of friction between them. The first had to do with their future home. Stefano wanted to buy a small apartment in the new neighborhood, Lila would have preferred to live in the old buildings. They argued. The apartment in the old neighborhood was larger but dark and had no view, like all the apartments there. The apartment in the new neighborhood was smaller but had an enormous bathtub, like the ones in the Palmolive ad, a bidet, and a view of Vesuvius. It was useless to point out that, while Vesuvius was a shifting and distant outline that faded into the cloudy sky, less than two hundred yards away ran the gleaming tracks of the railroad. Stefano was seduced by the new, by the shiny floors, by the white walls, and Lila soon gave in. What counted more than anything else was that, not yet seventeen, she would be the mistress of a house of her own, with hot water that came from the taps, and a house not rented but owned.

The second cause of friction was the honeymoon. Stefano proposed Venice, and Lila, revealing a tendency that would mark her whole life, insisted on not going far from Naples. She suggested a stay on Ischia, Capri, and maybe the Amalfi coast, all places she had never been. Her future husband almost immediately agreed.

Otherwise, there were small tensions, more than anything echoes of problems within their families. For example, if Stefano went into the Cerullo shoe shop, he always let slip a few rude words about Fernando and Rino when he saw Lila later, and she was upset, she leaped to their defense. He shook his head, unpersuaded, he was beginning to see in the business of the shoes an excessive investment, and at the end of the summer, when the strain between him and the two Cerullos increased, he imposed a precise limit on the making and unmaking by father, son, helpers. He said that by November he wanted the first results: at least the winter styles, men’s and women’s, ready to be displayed in the window for Christmas. Then, rather nervously, he admitted to Lila that Rino was quicker to ask for money than to work. She defended her brother, he replied, she bristled, he immediately retreated. He went to get the pair of shoes that had given birth to the whole project, shoes bought and never worn, kept as a valuable witness to their story, and he fingered them, smelled them, became emotional talking of how he felt about them, saw them, had always seen in them her small, almost childish hands working alongside her brother’s large ones. They were on the terrace of the old house, the one where we had set off the fireworks in competition with the Solaras. He took her fingers and kissed them, one by one, saying that he would never again allow them to be spoiled.

Lila herself told me, happily, about that act of love. She told me the day she took me to see the new house. What splendor: floors of polished majolica tile, the tub in which you could have a bubble bath, the inlaid furniture in the dining room and the bedroom, a refrigerator and even a telephone. I wrote down the number, with great excitement. We had been born and lived in small houses, without our own rooms, without a place to study. I still lived like that, soon she would not. We went out on the balcony that overlooked the railroad and Vesuvius, and I asked her warily:

“Do you and Stefano come here by yourselves?”

“Yes, sometimes.”

“And what happens?”

She looked at me as if she didn’t understand.

“In what sense?”

I was embarrassed.

“Do you kiss?”

“Sometimes.”

“And then?”

“That’s all, we’re not married yet.”

I was confused. Was it possible? So much freedom and nothing? So much gossip in the neighborhood, the Solaras’ obscenities, and there had been only a few kisses?

“But he doesn’t ask you?”

“Why, does Antonio ask you?”

“Yes.”

“No, he doesn’t. He agrees that we should be married first.”

But she seemed struck by my questions, much as I was struck by her answers. So she yielded nothing to Stefano, even if they went out in the car by themselves, even if they were about to get married, even if they already had a furnished house, a bed with a mattress, still in its packing. And I, who certainly would not get married, had long ago gone beyond kissing. When she asked me, genuinely curious, if I gave Antonio the things he asked for, I was ashamed to tell her the truth. I said no and she seemed content.

I made the dates at the ponds less frequent, partly because school was about to start again. I was sure that Lila, because of my classes, my homework, would keep me out of the wedding preparations, she had got used to my disappearance during the school year. But it wasn’t to be. The conflicts with Pinuccia had intensified over the summer. It was no longer a matter of dresses or hats or scarves or jewelry. One day Pinuccia said to her brother, in Lila’s presence and unambiguously, that either his betrothed came to work in the grocery, if not immediately then at least after the honeymoon—to work as the whole family always had, as even Alfonso did whenever school allowed him to—or she would stop working. And this time her mother supported her outright.

Lila didn’t blink, she said she would start immediately, even tomorrow, in whatever role the Carracci family wanted. That answer, as Lila’s answers always were, always had been, though intended to be conciliatory, had something arrogant, scornful, about it, which made Pinuccia even angrier. It became clear that the two women saw the shoemaker’s daughter as a witch who had come to be the mistress, to throw money out the window without lifting a finger to earn it, to subdue the master by her arts, making him act unjustly against his own flesh and blood, that is to say against his sister and even his mother.

Stefano, as usual, did not respond immediately. He waited until his sister’s outburst was over, then, as if the problem of Lila and her placement in the small family business had never been raised, said calmly that it would be better if Pinuccia, rather than work in the grocery, would help his fiancée with the preparations for the wedding.

“You don’t need me anymore?” she snapped.

“No: starting tomorrow I have Ada, Melina’s daughter, coming to replace you.”

“Did she suggest it?” cried his sister, pointing to Lila.

“It’s none of your business.”

“Did you hear that, Ma? Did you hear what he said? He thinks he’s the absolute boss in here.”

There was an unbearable silence, then Maria got up from the seat behind the cash register and said to her son, “Find someone for this place, too, because I’m tired and I don’t want to work anymore.”

Stefano at that point yielded a little. “Calm down, I’m not the boss of anything, the business of the grocery doesn’t have to do with me alone but all of us. We have to make a decision. Pinù, do you need to work? No. Mammà, do you need to sit back there all day? No. Then let’s give work to those who need it. I’ll put Ada behind the counter and I’ll think about the cash register. Otherwise, who will take care of the wedding?”

I don’t know for sure if Lila was behind the expulsion of Pinuccia and her mother from the daily running of the grocery, behind the hiring of Ada (certainly Ada was convinced of it and so, especially, was Antonio, who began referring to our friend as a good fairy). Of course, she wasn’t pleased that her sister-in-law and mother-in-law had a lot of free time to devote to her wedding. The two women complicated life, there were conflicts about every little thing: the guests, the decoration of the church, the photographer, the cake, the wedding favors, the rings, even the honeymoon, since Pinuccia and Maria considered it a poor thing to go to Sorrento, Positano, Ischia, and Capri. So all of a sudden I was drawn in, apparently to give Lila an opinion on this or that, in reality to support her in a difficult battle.

I was starting my third year of high school, I had a lot of new, hard subjects. My usual stubborn diligence was already killing me, I studied relentlessly. But once, coming home from school, I ran into Lila and she said to me, point-blank, “Please, Lenù, tomorrow will you come and give me some advice?”

I didn’t even know what she meant. I had been tested in chemistry and hadn’t done well, and was suffering.

“Advice about what?”

“Advice about my wedding dress. Please, don’t say no, because if you don’t come I’ll murder my sister-in-law and mother-in-law.”

I went. I joined her, Pinuccia, and Maria uneasily. The shop was on the Rettifilo and I remember I had stuck some books in a bag, hoping to find some way of studying. It was impossible. From four in the afternoon to seven in the evening we looked at styles, we fingered fabrics, Lila tried on the wedding dresses displayed on the shop mannequins. Whatever she put on, her beauty enhanced the dress, the dress enhanced her beauty. Stiff organza, soft satin, airy tulle became her. A lace bodice, puff sleeves became her. A full skirt and a narrow skirt became her, a long train and a short one, a flowing veil and a short one, a crown of rhinestones, of pearls, of orange blossoms. And she, obediently, examined styles or tried on the models that were flattering on the mannequins. But occasionally, when she could no longer bear the fussiness of her future relatives, the old Lila rose up and, looking me straight in the eye, said, alarming mother-in-law, sister-in-law, “What if we chose a beautiful green satin, or a red organza, or a nice black tulle, or, better still, yellow?” It took my laughter to indicate that the bride was joking, to return to serious, rancorous consideration of fabrics and styles. The dressmaker merely kept repeating enthusiastically, “Please, whatever you choose, bring me the wedding pictures so that I can display them in the shop window, and say: I dressed that girl.”

The problem, however, was choosing. Every time Lila preferred a style, a fabric, Pinuccia and Maria lined up in favor of another style, another fabric. I said nothing, stunned by all those discussions and by the smell of new fabric. Finally Lila asked me in vexation:

“What do you think, Lenù?”

There was silence. I suddenly perceived, with a certain astonishment, that the two women had been expecting that moment and feared it. I set in motion a technique I had learned at school, which consisted of this: whenever I didn’t know how to answer a question, I was lavish in setting out premises in the confident voice of someone who knows clearly where he wishes to end up. I said first—in Italian—that I liked very much the styles favored by Pinuccia and her mother. I launched not into praise but into arguments that demonstrated how suitable they were to Lila’s figure. At the moment when, as in class with the teachers, I felt I had the admiration, the sympathy of mother and daughter, I chose one of the styles at random, truly at random, careful not to pick one of those that Lila favored, and went on to demonstrate that it incorporated the qualities of the styles favored by the two women, and the qualities of the ones favored by my friend. The dressmaker, Pinuccia, the mother were immediately in agreement with me. Lila merely looked at me with narrowed eyes. Then her gaze returned to normal and she said that she agreed, too.

On the way out both Pinuccia and Maria were in a very good mood. They addressed Lila almost with affection and, commenting on the purchase, kept dragging me in with phrases like: as Lenuccia said, or, Lenuccia rightly said. Lila maneuvered so that we were a little behind them, in the evening crowd of the Rettifilo. She asked me:

“You learn this in school?”

“What?”

“To use words to con people.”

I felt wounded. I murmured, “You don’t like the style we chose?”

“I like it immensely.”

“So?”

“So do me the favor of coming with us whenever I ask you.”

I was angry. I said, “You want to use me to con them?”

She understood that she had offended me, she squeezed my hand hard. “I didn’t intend to say something unkind. I meant only that you are good at making yourself liked. The difference between you and me, always, has been that people are afraid of me and not of you.”

“Maybe because you’re mean,” I said, even angrier.

“Maybe,” she said, and I saw that I had hurt her as she had hurt me. Then, repenting, I added immediately, to make up: “Antonio would get himself killed for you: he said to thank you for giving his sister a job.”

“It’s Stefano who gave the job to Ada,” she replied. “I’m mean.”

From then on, I was constantly called on to take part in the most disputed decisions, and sometimes—I discovered—not at Lila’s request but Pinuccia and her mother’s. I chose the favors. I chose the restaurant, in Via Orazio. I chose the photographer, persuading them to include a film in super 8. In every circumstance I realized that, while I was deeply interested in everything, as if each of those questions were practice for when my turn came to get married, Lila, at the stations of her wedding, paid little attention. I was surprised, but that was certainly the case. What truly engaged her was to make sure, once and for all, that in her future life as wife and mother, in her house, her sister-in-law and her mother-in-law would have no say. But it wasn’t the ordinary conflict between mother-in-law, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law. I had the impression, from the way she used me, from the way she handled Stefano, that she was struggling to find, from inside the cage in which she was enclosed, a way of being, all her own, that was still obscure to her.