The Story of a New Name (The Neapolitan Novels) (22 page)

“What’s wrong with Lina?”

“They want to take her to a doctor.”

“Who wants to take her?”

“Stefano, Pinuccia, relatives.”

“Why?”

“To find out why she’s only gotten pregnant once and then never again.”

“And she?”

“She acts like a madwoman, she doesn’t want to go.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “What can I do?”

“You take her.”

I talked to Lila. She started laughing, she said she would go to the doctor only if I swore that I wasn’t angry with her.

“All right.”

“Swear.”

“I swear.”

“Swear on your brothers, swear on Elisa.”

I said that going to the doctor wasn’t a big deal, but that if she didn’t want to go I didn’t care, she should do as she liked. She became serious.

“You don’t swear, then.”

“No.”

She was silent for a moment, then she admitted, eyes lowered, “All right, I was wrong.”

I made a grimace of irritation. “Go to the doctor and let me know.”

“You won’t come?”

“If I don’t go in the bookseller will fire me.”

“I’ll hire you,” she said ironically.

“Go to the doctor, Lila.”

Maria, Nunzia, and Pinuccia took her to the doctor. All three insisted on being present at the examination. Lila was obedient, disciplined: she had never submitted to that type of examination, and the whole time she kept her lips pressed together, eyes wide. When the doctor, a very old man who had been recommended by the neighborhood obstetrician, said knowingly that everything was in order, her mother and mother-in-law were relieved, but Pinuccia darkened, asked:

“Then why don’t children come and if they come why aren’t they born?”

The doctor noticed her spiteful tone and frowned.

“She’s very young,” he said. “She needs to get a little stronger.”

Get stronger
. I don’t know if the doctor used exactly that verb, yet that was reported to me and it made an impression. It meant that Lila, in spite of the strength she displayed at all times, was weak. It meant that children didn’t come, or didn’t last in her womb, not because she possessed a mysterious power that annihilated them but because, on the contrary, she was an inadequate woman. My resentment faded. When, in the courtyard, she told me about the torture of the medical examination, using vulgar expressions for both the doctor and the three who accompanied her, I gave no signs of annoyance but in fact took an interest: no doctor had ever examined me, not even the obstetrician. Finally she said, sarcastically:

“He tore me with a metal instrument, I gave him a lot of money, and to reach what conclusion? That I need strengthening.”

“Strengthening of what sort?”

“I’m supposed to go to the beach and go swimming.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The beach, Lenù, sun, salt water. It seems that if you go to the beach you get stronger and children come.”

We said goodbye in a good mood. We had seen each other again and all in all we had felt good.

She came back the next day, affectionate toward me, irritated with her husband. Stefano wanted to rent a house at Torre Annunziata and send her there for all July and all August with Nunzia and Pinuccia, who also wanted to get stronger, even though she didn’t need to. They were already thinking how to manage with the shops. Alfonso would take care of Piazza dei Martiri, with Gigliola, until school began, and Maria would replace Lila in the new grocery. She said to me, desperate, “If I have to stay with my mother and Pinuccia for two months I’ll kill myself.”

“But you’ll go swimming, lie in the sun.”

“I don’t like swimming and I don’t like lying in the sun.”

“If I could get stronger in your place, I’d leave tomorrow.”

She looked at me with curiosity, and said softly, “Then come with me.”

“I have to work at Mezzocannone.”

She became agitated, she repeated that she would hire me, but this time she said it without irony. “Quit,” she began to press me, “and I’ll give you what the bookseller gives you.” She wouldn’t stop, she said that if I agreed, it would all become tolerable, even Pinuccia, with that bulging stomach that was already showing. I refused politely. I imagined what would happen in those two months in the burning-hot house in Torre Annunziata: quarrels with Nunzia, tears; quarrels with Stefano when he arrived on Saturday night; quarrels with Rino when he appeared with his brother-in-law, to join Pinuccia; quarrels especially with Pinuccia, continuous, muted or dramatic, sarcastic, malicious, and full of outrageous insults.

“I can’t,” I said firmly. “My mother wouldn’t let me.”

She went away angrily, our idyll was fragile. The next morning, to my surprise, Nino appeared in the bookstore, pale, thinner. He had had one exam after another, four of them. I, who fantasized about the airy spaces behind the walls of the university where well-prepared students and old sages discussed Plato and Kepler all day, listened to him spellbound, saying only, “How clever you are.” And as soon as the moment seemed apt, I volubly if somewhat inanely praised his article in
Cronache Meridionali
. He listened to me seriously, without interrupting, so that at a certain point I no longer knew what to say to show him that I knew his text thoroughly. Finally he seemed content, he exclaimed that not even Professor Galiani, not even Armando, not even Nadia had read it with such attention. And he started to talk to me about other essays he had in mind on the same subject. I stood listening to him in the doorway of the bookshop, pretending not to hear the owner calling me. After a shout that was sharper than the others, Nino muttered, What does that shit want; he stayed a little longer, with his insolent expression, and, saying that he was leaving for Ischia the next day, held out his hand to me. I shook it—it was slender, delicate—and he immediately drew me toward him, just slightly, leaned over, brushed my lips with his. It was a moment, then he left me with a light gesture, a caress on the palm with his fingers, and went off toward the Rettifilo. I stood watching as he walked away without turning, walked like a distracted chieftain who feared nothing in the world because the world existed only to submit to him.

That night I didn’t close my eyes. In the morning I got up early, I hurried to the new grocery. I found Lila just as she was pulling up the gate, Carmen hadn’t yet arrived. I said nothing about Nino, I said only, in the tone of someone who is asking the impossible and knows it:

“If you go to Ischia instead of Torre Annunziata, I’ll quit and come with you.”

We disembarked on the island the second Sunday in July, Stefano and Lila, Rino and Pinuccia, Nunzia and I. The two men, loaded down with bags, were apprehensive, like ancient heroes in an unknown land, uneasy without the armor of their cars, unhappy that they had had to rise early and forgo the neighborhood leisureliness of their day off. The wives, dressed in their Sunday best, were annoyed with them but in different ways: Pinuccia because Rino was too encumbered to pay attention to her, Lila because Stefano pretended to know what he was doing and where he was going, when it was clear that he didn’t. As for Nunzia, she had the appearance of someone who feels that she is barely tolerated, and she was careful not to say anything inappropriate that might annoy the young people. The only one who was truly content was me, with a bag over my shoulder that held my few things, excited by the smells of Ischia, the sounds, the colors that, as soon as I got off the boat, corresponded precisely to the memories of that earlier vacation.

We arranged ourselves in two mini cabs, jammed-in bodies, sweat, luggage. The house, rented in a hurry with the help of a
salumi
supplier of Ischian origin, was on the road that led to a place called Cuotto. It was a simple structure and belonged to a cousin of the supplier, a thin woman, over sixty, unmarried, who greeted us with brusque efficiency. Stefano and Rino dragged the suitcases up a narrow staircase, joking but also cursing because of the effort. The owner led us into shadowy rooms stuffed with sacred images and small, glowing lamps. But when we opened the windows we saw, beyond the road, beyond the vineyards, beyond the palms and pine trees, a long strip of the sea. Or rather: the bedrooms that Pinuccia and Lila took—after some friction of the
yours is bigger; no, yours is bigger
type—faced the sea, while the room that fell to Nunzia had a sort of porthole, high up, so that we never discovered what was outside it, and mine, which was very small, and barely had space for the bed, looked out on a chicken coop sheltered by a forest of reeds.

There was nothing to eat in the house. On the advice of the owner we went to a trattoria, which was dark and had no other customers. We sat down dubiously, just to get fed, but in the end even Nunzia, who was distrustful of all cooking that was not her own, found that it was good and wanted to take something home so that she could prepare dinner that evening. Stefano didn’t make the slightest move to ask for the check, and, after a mute hesitation, Rino resigned himself to paying for everyone. At that point we girls proposed going to see the beach, but the two men resisted, yawned, said they were tired. We insisted, especially Lila. “We ate too much,” she said, “it’ll do us good to walk, the beach is right here, do you feel like it, Mamma?” Nunzia sided with the men, and we returned to the house.

After a bored stroll through the rooms, both Stefano and Rino, almost in unison, said that they wanted to have a little nap. They laughed, whispered to each other, laughed again, and then nodded at their wives, who followed them unwillingly into the bedrooms. Nunzia and I remained alone for a couple of hours. We inspected the state of the kitchen, and found it dirty, which led Nunzia to start washing everything carefully: plates, glasses, silverware, pots. It was a struggle to get her to let me help. She asked me to keep track of a number of urgent requests for the owner, and when she herself lost count of the things that were needed, she marveled that I was able to remember everything, saying, “That’s why you’re so clever at school.”

Finally the two couples reappeared, first Stefano and Lila, then Rino and Pinuccia. I again proposed going to see the beach, but there was coffee, joking, chatting, and Nunzia who began to cook, and Pinuccia who was clinging to Rino, making him feel her stomach, murmuring, stay, leave tomorrow morning, and so the time flew and yet again we did nothing. In the end the men had to rush, afraid of missing the ferry, and, cursing because they hadn’t brought their cars, had to find someone to take them to the Port. They disappeared almost without saying goodbye. Pinuccia burst into tears.

In silence we girls began to unpack the bags, to arrange our things, while Nunzia insisted on making the bathroom shine. Only when we were sure that the men had not missed the ferry and would not return, did we relax, begin to joke. We had ahead of us a long week and only ourselves to worry about. Pinuccia said she was afraid of being alone in her room—there was an image of a grieving Madonna with knives in her heart that sparkled in the lamplight—and went to sleep with Lila. I shut myself in my little room to enjoy my secret:
Nino was in Forio, not far away, and maybe even the next day I would meet him on the beach
. I felt wild, reckless, but I was glad about it. There was a part of me that was sick of being a sensible person.

It was hot, I opened the window. I listened to the chickens pecking, the rustle of the reeds, then I became aware of the mosquitoes. I closed the window quickly and spent at least an hour going after them and crushing them with one of the books that Professor Galiani had lent me,
Complete Plays
, by a writer named Samuel Beckett. I didn’t want Nino to see me on the beach with red spots on my face and body; I didn’t want him to catch me with a book of plays—for one thing, I had never set foot in a theater. I put aside Beckett, stained by the black or bloody silhouettes of the mosquitoes, and began to read a very complicated text on the idea of nationhood. I fell asleep reading.

In the morning Nunzia, who felt committed to looking after us, went in search of a place to do the shopping and we headed to the beach, the beach of Citara, which for that entire long vacation we thought was called Cetara.

What pretty bathing suits Lila and Pinuccia displayed when they took off their sundresses: one-piece, of course. The husbands, who as fiancés had been indulgent, especially Stefano, now were against the two-piece; but the colors of the new fabrics were shiny, and the shape of the neckline, front and back, ran elegantly over their skin. I, under an old long-sleeved blue dress, wore the same faded bathing suit, now shapeless, that Nella Incardo had made for me years earlier, at Barano. I undressed reluctantly.

We walked a long way in the sun, until we saw steam rising from some thermal baths, then turned back. Pinuccia and I stopped often to swim, Lila didn’t, although she was there for that purpose. Of course, there was no Nino, and I was disappointed, I had been convinced that he would show up, as if by a miracle. When the other two wanted to go back to the house, I stayed on the beach, and walked along the shore toward Forio. That night I was so sunburned that I felt I had a high fever; the skin on my shoulders blistered and for the next few days I had to stay in the house. I cleaned, cooked, and read, and my energy pleased Nunzia, who couldn’t stop praising me. Every night, with the excuse that I had been in the house all day to stay out of the sun, I made Lila and Pina walk to Forio, which was some distance away. We wandered through the town, had some ice cream. It’s pretty here, Pinuccia complained, it’s a morgue where we are. But for me Forio was also a morgue: Nino did not appear.

Toward the end of the week I proposed to Lila that we should visit Barano and the Maronti. Lila agreed enthusiastically, and Pinuccia didn’t want to stay and be bored with Nunzia. We left early. Under our dresses we wore our bathing suits, and in a bag I carried our towels, sandwiches, a bottle of water. My stated purpose was to take advantage of that trip to say hello to Nella, Maestra Oliviero’s cousin, whom I had stayed with during my summer on Ischia. The secret plan, instead, was to see the Sarratore family and get from Marisa the address of the friend with whom Nino was staying in Forio. I was naturally afraid of running into the father, Donato, but I hoped that he was at work; and, in order to see the son, I was ready to run the risk of having to endure some obscene remark from him.