Elena Ferrante - Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

Just then Enzo returned, and she tried to be nice. They ate, but Lila had the impression that the food was struggling to get to her stomach, that it was scratching her chest. As soon as Gennaro fell asleep, they turned to the installments of the Zurich course, but Enzo soon got tired, and tried, politely, to go to bed. His attempts were vain, Lila kept going until it was late, she was afraid of shutting herself in her room, she feared that as soon as she was alone in the dark the symptoms she hadn’t admitted to Armando would appear, all together, and kill her. He asked her softly:

“Will you tell me what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“You come and go with Pasquale, why, what secrets do you have?”

“It’s things to do with the union, he made me join and now I have to take care of them.”

Enzo looked disheartened, and she asked:

“What’s wrong?”

“Pasquale told me what you’re doing in the factory. You told him and you told the people on the committee. Why am I the only one who doesn’t deserve to know?”

Lila became agitated, she got up, she went to the bathroom. Pasquale hadn’t held out. What had he told? Only about the union seed that she wanted to plant at Soccavo or also about Gino, about her not feeling well at Via dei Tribunali? He hadn’t been able to stay silent — friendship between men had its unwritten but inviolable pacts, not like that between women. She flushed the toilet, returned to Enzo and said:

“Pasquale is a spy.”

“Pasquale is a friend. Whereas you, what are you?”

His tone hurt, she gave in unexpectedly, suddenly. Her eyes filled with tears and she tried in vain to push them back, humiliated by her own weakness.

“I don’t want to make more trouble for you than I already have,” she sobbed, “I’m afraid you’ll send me away.” Then she blew her nose and added in a whisper: “Can I sleep with you?”

Enzo stared at her, in disbelief.

“Sleep how?”

“However you want.”

“And do you want it?”

Lila gazed at the water pitcher in the middle of the table, with its comical rooster’s head: Gennaro liked it. She whispered:

“The crucial thing is for you to hold me close.”

Enzo shook his head unhappily.

“You don’t want me.”

“I want you, but I don’t feel anything.”

“You don’t feel anything for me ?”

“What do you mean, I love you, and every night I wish you would call me and hold me close. But beyond that I don’t want anything .”

Enzo turned pale, his handsome face was contorted as if by an intolerable grief, and he observed:

“I disgust you.”

“No, no, no, let’s do what you want, right away, I’m ready.”

He had a desolate smile, and was silent for a while. Then he couldn’t bear her anxiety, he muttered: “Let’s go to bed.”

“Each in our own room?”

“No, in my bed.”

Lila, relieved, went to get undressed. She put on her nightgown, went to him trembling with cold. He was already in bed.

“I’ll go here?”

“All right.”

She slid under the covers, rested her head on his shoulder, put an arm around his chest. Enzo remained motionless; she felt immediately that he gave off a violent heat.

“My feet are cold,” she whispered, “can I put them near yours?”

“Yes.”

“Can I caress you a little?”

“Leave me alone.”

Slowly the cold disappeared. The pain in her chest dissolved, she forgot the grip on her throat, she gave in to the respite of his warmth.

“Can I sleep?” she asked, dazed by weariness.

“Sleep.”

At dawn she started: her body reminded her that she had to wake up. Immediately, the terrible thoughts arrived, all very clear: her sick heart, Gennaro’s regressions, the fascists from the neighborhood, Nadia’s self-importance, Pasquale’s untrustworthiness, the list of demands. Only afterward did she realize that she had slept with Enzo, but that he was no longer in the bed. She rose quickly, in time to hear the door closing. Had he arisen as soon as she fell asleep? Had he been awake all night? Had he slept in the other room with the child? Or had he fallen asleep with her, forgetting every desire? Certainly he had had breakfast alone and had left the table set for her and Gennaro. He had gone to work, without a word, keeping his thoughts to himself.

Lila, too, after taking her son to the neighbor, hurried to the factory.

“So did you make up your mind?” Edo asked, a little sulkily.

“I’ll make up my mind when I like,” Lila answered, returning to her old tone of voice.

“We’re a committee, you have to inform us.”

“Did you circulate the list?”

“Yes.”

“What do the others say?”

“Silence means consent.”

“No,” she said, “silence means they’re shitting in their pants.”

Capone was right, also Nadia and Armando. It was a weak initiative, a forced effort. Lila worked at cutting the meat furiously, she had a desire to hurt and be hurt. To jab her hand with the knife, let it slip, now, from the dead flesh to her own living flesh. To shout, hurl herself at the others, make them all pay for her inability to find an equilibrium. Ah, Lina Cerullo, you are beyond correction. Why did you make that list? You don’t want to be exploited? You want to improve your condition and the condition of these people? You’re convinced that you, and they, starting from here, from what you are now, will join the victorious march of the proletariat of the whole world? No way. March to become what? Now and forever workers? Workers who slave from morning to night but are empowered? Nonsense. Hot air to sweeten the pill of toil. You know that it’s a terrible condition, it shouldn’t be improved but eliminated, you’ve known it since you were a child. Improve, improve yourself? You, for example, are you improved, have you become like Nadia or Isabella? Is your brother improved, has he become like Armando? And your son, is he like Marco? No, we remain us and they are they. So why don’t you resign yourself? Blame the mind that can’t settle down, that is constantly seeking a way to function. Designing shoes. Getting busy setting up a shoe factory. Rewriting Nino’s articles, tormenting him until he did as you said. Using for your own purposes the installments from Zurich, with Enzo. And now demonstrating to Nadia that if she is making the revolution, you are even more. The mind, ah yes, the evil is there, it’s the mind’s discontent that causes the body to get sick. I’ve had it with myself, with everything. I’ve even had it with Gennaro: his fate, if all goes well, is to end up in a place like this, crawling to some boss for another five lire. So? So, Cerullo, take up your responsibilities and do what you have always had in mind: frighten Soccavo, eliminate his habit of fucking the workers in the drying room. Show the student with the wolf face what you’ve prepared. That summer on Ischia. The drinks, the house in Forio, the luxurious bed where I was with Nino. The money came from this place, from this evil smell, from these days spent in disgust, from this poorly paid labor. What did I cut, here? A revolting yellowish pulp spurted out. The world turns but, luckily, if it falls it breaks.

Right before the lunch break she made up her mind, she said to Edo: I’m going. But she didn’t have time to take off her apron, the owner’s secretary appeared in the gutting room to tell her:

“Dottor Soccavo wants you urgently in the office.”

Lila thought that some spy had told Bruno what was coming. She stopped work, took the sheet of demands from the closet and went up. She knocked on the door of the office, and went in. Bruno was not alone in the room. Sitting in a chair, cigarette in his mouth, was Michele Solara.