The Story of a New Name (The Neapolitan Novels) (8 page)

At that point I understood. The problem wasn’t Melina, wasn’t Ada, wasn’t his other brothers and sisters, who would be left without a means of support, and it wasn’t even the harassments of Army life. The problem was me. He didn’t want to leave me, even for a minute, and it seemed that no matter what I said or did to reassure him he wouldn’t believe me. I decided to take the offensive. I told him to follow the example of Enzo: He’s confident, I whispered, if he has to go he goes, he doesn’t whine, even if he’s just gotten engaged to Carmela. Whereas you’re complaining for no reason, yes, for no reason, Antò, especially since you won’t go, because if Stefano Carracci got an exemption as the son of a widowed mother, certainly you will, too.

That slightly aggressive, slightly affectionate tone eased him. But before saying goodbye he repeated, in embarrassment, “Ask your friend.”

“She’s your friend, too.”

“Yes, but you ask.”

The next day I talked to Lila about it, but she didn’t know anything about her husband’s military service; reluctantly she promised that she would find out.

She didn’t do it immediately, as I’d hoped. There were constant tensions with Stefano and with Stefano’s family. Maria had told her son that his wife spent too much money. Pinuccia made trouble about the new grocery, she said that she wasn’t going to be involved, if anyone it should be her sister-in-law. Stefano silenced his mother and sister, but in the end he reproached his wife for her excessive spending, and tried to find out whether she might if necessary be willing to work in the new store.

Lila in that period became, even in my eyes, particularly evasive. She said that she would spend less, she readily agreed to work in the grocery, but meanwhile she spent more than before and if previously she had stopped in at the new shop out of curiosity or duty she no longer did even that. Now that the bruises on her face were gone, she had an urgent desire to go out, especially in the morning, when I was at school.

She would go for a walk with Pinuccia, and they vied to see who was better dressed, who could buy more useless things. Usually Pina won, mainly because, with a lot of coyly childish looks, she managed to get money from Rino, who felt obliged to prove that he was more generous than his brother-in-law.

“I work all day,” said the fiancé to the fiancée. “Have fun for me, too.”

And proudly casual, in front of the workers and his father, he pulled out of his pants pocket a crumpled fistful of money, offered it to Pina, and immediately afterward made a teasing gesture of giving some to his sister, too.

His behavior irritated Lila, like a gust of wind that causes a door to slam and knocks objects off a shelf. But she also saw signs that the shoe factory was finally taking off, and all in all she was pleased that Cerullo shoes were now displayed in many shops in the city, the spring models were selling well, the reorders were increasing. As a result Stefano had taken over the basement under the factory and had transformed it into a warehouse and workshop, while Fernando and Rino had had to hire another assistant in a hurry and sometimes even worked at night.

Naturally there were disputes. The shoe store that the Solaras had undertaken to open in Piazza dei Martiri had to be furnished at Stefano’s expense, and he, alarmed by the fact that no written contract had ever been drawn up, squabbled a lot with Marcello and Michele. But now it seemed that they were arriving at a private agreement that would set out in black and white the figure (slightly inflated) that Carracci intended to invest in the furnishings. And Rino was very satisfied with the result: while his brother-in-law put down the money, he acted like the boss, as if he had done it himself.

“If things continue like this, next year we’ll get married,” he promised his fiancée, and one morning Pina decided to go to the same dressmaker who had made Lila’s dress, just to look.

The dressmaker welcomed them cordially, then, since she was crazy about Lila, asked her to describe the wedding in detail, and insisted on having a large photograph of her in the wedding dress. Lila had one printed for her and she and Pina went to give it to her.

As they were walking on the Rettifilo, Lila asked her sister-in-law how it happened that Stefano hadn’t done his military service: if the carabinieri had come to verify his status as the son of a widowed mother, if the exemption had been communicated by mail from the recruiting office or if he had had to find out in person.

Pinuccia looked at her ironically.

“Son of a widowed mother?”

“Yes, Antonio says that if you’re in that situation they don’t make you go.”

“I know that the only certain way not to go is to pay.”

“Pay whom?”

“The people in the recruiting office.”

“Stefano paid?”

“Yes, but you mustn’t tell anyone.”

“And how much did he pay?”

“I don’t know. The Solaras took care of everything.”

Lila froze.

“Meaning?”

“You know, don’t you, that neither Marcello nor Michele served in the Army. They got out of it owing to thoracic insufficiency.”

“Them? How is that possible?”

“Contacts.”

“And Stefano?”

“He went to the same contacts as Marcello and Michele. You pay and the contacts do you a favor.”

That afternoon my friend reported everything to me, but it was as if she didn’t grasp how bad the information was for Antonio. She was electrified—yes, electrified—by the discovery that the alliance between her husband and the Solaras did not originate in the obligations imposed by business but were of long standing, preceding even their engagement.

“He deceived me from the start,” she repeated, with a kind of satisfaction, as if the story of military service were the definitive proof of Stefano’s true nature and now she felt somehow liberated. It took time before I was able to ask her, “Do you think that if the recruiting office doesn’t give Antonio an exemption the Solaras would do a favor for him, too?”

She gave me her mean look, as if I had said something hostile, and cut me off: “Antonio would never go to the Solaras.”

I did not report a single word of that conversation to my boyfriend. I avoided meeting him, I told him I had too much homework and a lot of class oral exams coming up.

It wasn’t an excuse, school was really hell. The local authority harassed the principal, the principal harassed the teachers, the teachers harassed the students, the students tormented each other. A large number of us couldn’t stand the load of homework, but we were glad that there was class on alternate days. There was a minority, however, who were angry about the decrepit state of the school building and the loss of class time, and who wanted an immediate return to the normal schedule. At the head of this faction was Nino Sarratore, and this was to further complicate my life.

I saw him whispering in the hall with Professor Galiani; I passed by hoping that the professor would call me over. She didn’t. So then I hoped that he would speak to me, but he didn’t, either. I felt disgraced. I’m not able to get the grades I used to, I thought, and so in no time I’ve lost the little respect I had. On the other hand—I thought bitterly—what do I expect? If Nino or Professor Galiani asked my opinion on this business of the unused classrooms and too much homework, what would I say? I didn’t have opinions, in fact, and I realized it when Nino appeared one morning with a typewritten sheet of paper and asked abruptly, “Will you read it?”

My heart was beating so hard that I said only, “Now?”

“No, give it back to me after school.”

I was overwhelmed by my emotions. I ran to the bathroom and read in great agitation. The page was full of figures and discussed things I knew nothing of: plan for the city, school construction, the Italian constitution, certain fundamental articles. I understood only what I already knew, which was that Nino was demanding an immediate return to the normal schedule of classes.

In class I showed the paper to Alfonso.

“Forget it,” he advised me, without even reading it. “We’re at the end of the year, we’ve got final examinations, that would get you in trouble.”

But it was as if I had gone mad, my temples were pounding, my throat was tight. No one else, in the school, exposed himself the way Nino did, without fear of the teachers or the principal. Not only was he the best in every subject but he knew things that were not taught, that no student, even a good one, knew. And he had character. And he was handsome. I counted the hours, the minutes, the seconds. I was in a hurry to give him back his page, to praise it, to tell him that I agreed with everything, that I wanted to help him.

I didn’t see him on the stairs, in the crush of students, and in the street I couldn’t find him. He was among the last to come out, and his expression was more morose than usual. I went to meet him, cheerfully waving the paper, and I poured out a profusion of words, all exaggerated. He listened to me frowning, then he took the piece of paper, angrily crumpled it up, and threw it away.

“Galiani said it’s no good,” he mumbled.

I was confused.

“What’s no good about it?”

He scowled unhappily and made a gesture that meant forget about it, it’s not worth talking about.

“Anyway, thank you,” he said in a somewhat forced manner, and suddenly he leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

Since the kiss on Ischia we had had no contact, not even a handshake, and that way of parting, utterly unusual at the time, paralyzed me. He didn’t ask me to walk a little distance with him, he didn’t say goodbye: everything ended there. Without energy, without voice, I watched him walk away.

At that point two terrible things happened, one after the other. First, a girl came out of a narrow street, a girl certainly younger than me, at most fifteen, whose pure beauty was striking: she had a nice figure, and smooth black hair that hung down her back; every gesture or movement had a gracefulness, every item of her spring outfit had a deliberate restraint. She met Nino, he put an arm around her shoulders, she lifted her face, offering him her mouth, and they kissed: a kiss very different from the one he had given me. Right afterward I realized that Antonio was at the corner. He was supposed to be at work and instead he had come to get me. Who knew how long he had been there.

It was hard to convince him that what he had seen with his own eyes was not what he had for a long time imagined but only a friendly gesture, with no other purpose. “He’s already got a girlfriend,” I said, “you saw it yourself.” But he must have caught a trace of suffering in those words, and he threatened me, his lower lip and his hands began to tremble. Then I muttered that I was tired of this, I wanted to leave him. He gave in, and we made up. But from that moment on he trusted me even less, and the anxiety of departure for military service was welded conclusively to the fear of leaving me to Nino. More and more often he abandoned his job to be in time, he said, to meet me. In reality his aim was to catch me in the act and prove, to himself above all, that I really was unfaithful. What he would do then not even he knew.

One afternoon his sister Ada saw me passing the grocery, where she now worked, to her great satisfaction and to Stefano’s. She ran out to see me. She wore a greasy white smock that covered her to below the knees, but she was still very pretty and it was clear from her lipstick, her made-up eyes, the pins in her hair that, under the smock, she was dressed as if for a party. She said she wanted to talk to me, and we agreed to meet in the courtyard before dinner. She arrived breathless from the grocery, along with Pasquale, who had picked her up.

They spoke to me together, an embarrassed phrase from one, an embarrassed phrase from the other. I understood that they were worried: Antonio lost his temper for no reason, he no longer had patience with Melina, he was absent without warning from work. And even Gallese, the owner of the shop, was upset, because he had known him since he was a boy and had never seen him like this.

“He’s afraid of military service,” I said.

“So if they call him, of course he has to go,” Pasquale said, “otherwise he becomes a deserter.”

“When you’re around, it all goes away,” said Ada.

“I don’t have much time,” I said.

“People are more important than school,” said Pasquale.

“Spend less time with Lina, and you’ll see, you’ll find the time,” said Ada.

“I do what I can,” I said, offended.

“His nerves are fragile,” Pasquale said.

Ada concluded abruptly, “I’ve been taking care of a crazy person since I was a child—two would really be too much, Lenù.”

I was annoyed, and scared. Filled with a sense of guilt, I went back to seeing Antonio often, even though I didn’t want to, even though I had to study. It wasn’t enough. One night at the ponds he began to cry, he showed me a card. He hadn’t received an exemption, he was to leave with Enzo, in the fall. And at a certain point he did something extremely upsetting. He fell on the ground and in a frenzy began sticking handfuls of dirt in his mouth. I had to hold him tight, say that I loved him, wipe the dirt out of his mouth with my fingers.

What kind of mess am I getting myself into, I thought later, in bed, unable to sleep, and I discovered that suddenly the wish to leave school—to accept myself for what I was, to marry him, to live at his mother’s house with his siblings, pumping gas—had faded. I decided that I had to do something to help him and, when he recovered, get myself out of that relationship.

The next day I went to Lila’s, really frightened. I found her overly cheerful; during that period we were both unsettled. I told her about Antonio, and the card, and I told her that I had made a decision: in secret from him, because he would never give me permission, I intended to go to Marcello or even Michele to ask if they could get him out of his predicament.

I was exaggerating my determination. In reality I was confused: on the one hand it seemed to me that I was obliged to try, since I was the cause of Antonio’s suffering; on the other, I was consulting Lila precisely because I took it for granted that she would tell me not to. But I was so absorbed by my own emotional chaos that I hadn’t taken into account hers.