Elena Ferrante - Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

The next day we all went to see the apartment. It was in poor condition, but Lila was enthusiastic: she liked that it was on the edge of the neighborhood, almost near the tunnel, and that from the windows you could see the gas pump of Carmen’s fiancé. Enzo observed that at night they would be disturbed by the trucks that passed on the stradone and by the trains at the shunting yard. But since she found pleasure even in the sounds that had been part of our childhood, they came to an agreement with the widow for a suitable rent. From then on, every evening Enzo, instead of returning to San Giovanni a Teduccio, went to the neighborhood to carry out a series of improvements that would transform the apartment into a worthy home.

It was now almost May, the date of my wedding was approaching, and I was going back and forth to Florence. But Lila, as if she considered that deadline irrelevant, drew me into shopping for the finishing touches for the apartment. We bought a double bed, a cot for Gennaro, we went together to apply for a telephone line. People saw us on the street, some greeted only me, some both, others pretended not to have seen either of us. Lila seemed in any case relaxed. Once we ran into Ada; she was alone, she nodded cordially, and kept going as if she were in a hurry. Once we met Maria, Stefano’s mother, Lila and I greeted her, she turned her head. Once Stefano himself passed in the car and stopped of his own initiative; he got out of the car, spoke only to me, cheerfully, asked about my wedding, praised Florence, where he had been recently with Ada and the child; finally patted Gennaro, gave a nod to Lila, and left. Once we saw Fernando, Lila’s father: bent and very aged, he was standing in front of the elementary school, and Lila became agitated, she told Gennaro that she wanted him to meet his grandfather. I tried to restrain her, but she wanted to go anyway, and Fernando, behaving as if his daughter weren’t present, looked at his grandson for a few seconds and said plainly, If you see your mother, tell her she’s a whore, and went off.

But the most disturbing encounter, even if at the time it seemed the least significant, was a few days before she finally moved to the new apartment. Just as we came out of the house, we ran into Melina, who was holding by the hand her granddaughter Maria, the child of Stefano and Ada. She had her usual absent-minded air but she was nicely dressed, she had peroxided her hair, her face was heavily made up. She recognized me but not Lila, or maybe at first she chose to speak only to me. She talked to me as if I were still the girlfriend of her son, Antonio: she said that he would be back soon from Germany and that in his letters he always asked about me. I complimented her warmly on her dress and her hair, she seemed pleased. But she was even more pleased when I praised her granddaughter, who timidly clung to her grandmother’s skirt. At that point she must have felt obliged to say something nice about Gennaro, and she turned to Lila: Is he your son? Only then did she seem to remember her. Until that moment she had stared at her without saying a word, and it must have occurred to her that here was the woman whose husband her own daughter Ada had taken. Her eyes were sunk deep in the large sockets, she said seriously: Lina, you’ve gotten ugly and thin, of course Stefano left you, men like flesh, otherwise they don’t know where to put their hands and they leave. Then with a rapid jerk of her head she turned to Gennaro, and pointing to the little girl almost screamed: You know that’s your sister? Give each other a kiss, come on, my goodness how cute you are. Gennaro immediately kissed the girl, who let herself be kissed without protesting, and Melina, seeing the two faces next to each other, exclaimed: They both take after their father, they’re identical. After that statement, as if she had urgent things to do, she tugged her granddaughter and left without another word.

Lila had stood mute the whole time. But I understood that something extremely violent had happened to her, like the time when, as a child, she had seen Melina walking on the stradone eating soap flakes. As soon as the woman and the child were some distance away, she started, she ruffled her hair with one hand, she blinked, she said: I’ll become like that. Then she tried to smooth her hair, saying:

“Did you hear what she said?”

“It’s not true that you’re ugly and skinny.”

“Who gives a damn if I’m ugly and skinny, I’m talking about the resemblance.”

“What resemblance?”

“Between the two children. Melina’s right, they’re both identical to Stefano.”

“Come on, the girl is, but Gennaro is different.”

She burst out laughing: after a long time her old, mean laugh was back.

She repeated: “They’re two peas in a pod.”

I absolutely had to go. What I could do for her I had done, now I was in danger of getting caught up in useless reflections on who the real father of Gennaro was, on how far-seeing Melina was, on the secret motions of Lila’s mind, on what she knew or didn’t know or supposed and didn’t say, or was convenient for her to believe, and so on, in a spiral that was damaging to me. We discussed that encounter, taking advantage of the fact that Enzo was at work. I used clichés like: A woman always knows who the father of her children is. I said: You always felt that child was Nino’s, in fact you wanted him for that reason, and now you’re sure it’s Stefano’s just because crazy Melina said so? But she sneered, she said: What an idiot, how could I not have known, and — something incomprehensible to me — she seemed pleased. So in the end I was silent. If that new conviction helped her to feel better, good. And if it was another sign of her instability, what could I do? Enough. My book had been bought in France, Spain, and Germany, it would be translated. I had published two more articles on women working in factories in Campania, and l’Unità was content. From the publisher came solicitations for a new novel. In other words, I had to take care of countless things of my own; for Lila I had done all I could, and I couldn’t continue to get lost in the tangles of her life. In Milan, encouraged by Adele, I bought a cream-colored suit for the wedding, it looked good on me, the jacket was fitted, the skirt short. When I tried it on I thought of Lila, of her gaudy wedding dress, of the photograph that the dressmaker had displayed in the shop window on the Rettifilo, and the contrast made me feel definitively different. Her wedding, mine: worlds now far apart. I had told her earlier that I wasn’t getting married in a church, that I wouldn’t wear a traditional wedding dress, that Pietro had barely agreed to the presence of close relatives.

“Why?” she had asked, but without particular interest.

“Why what?”

“Why aren’t you getting married in church.”

“We aren’t believers.”

“And the finger of God, the Holy Spirit?” she had quoted, reminding me of the article we had written together as girls.

“I’m grown up.”

“But at least have a party, invite your friends.”

“Pietro doesn’t want to.”

“You wouldn’t invite even me?”

“Would you come?”

She laughed, shaking her head.

“No.”

That was it. But in early May, when I had decided on a final venture before leaving the city for good, things took an unpleasant turn concerning my wedding, but not only that. I decided to go and see Professor Galiani. I looked for her number, I called. I said I was about to get married, I was going to live in Florence, I wanted to come and say goodbye to her. She, without surprise, without joy, but politely, invited me for five o’clock the next day. Before hanging up she said: Bring your friend, Lina, if you want.