Elena Ferrante - Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

It wasn’t like that, the situation was more complicated. On the one hand I vaguely wanted to protect him, on the other I wanted to be on Lila’s side, defend the choices I secretly attributed to her. To the point where every so often I thought of telephoning her and, starting with Pietro, with our conflicts, get her to tell me what she thought about it and, step by step, bring her out into the open. I didn’t to it, naturally, it was absurd to expect sincerity on these subjects on the phone. But one night she called me, sounding really happy.

“I have some good news.”

“What’s happening?”

“I’m the head of technology.”

“In what sense?”

“Head of the IBM data-processing center that Michele rented.”

It seemed incredible to me. I asked her to repeat it, to explain carefully. She had accepted Solara’s proposal? After so much resistance she had gone back to working for him, as in the days of Piazza dei Martiri? She said yes, enthusiastically, and became more and more excited, more explicit: Michele had entrusted to her the System 3 that he had rented and placed in a shoe warehouse in Acerra; she would employ operators and punch-card workers; the salary was four hundred and twenty-five thousand lire a month.

I was disappointed. Not only had the image of the guerrilla vanished in an instant but everything I thought I knew of Lila wavered. I said:

“It’s the last thing I would have expected of you.”

“What was I supposed to do?”

“Refuse.”

“Why?”

“We know what the Solaras are.”

“And so what? It’s already happened, and I’m better off working for Michele than for that shit Soccavo.”

“Do as you like.”

I heard her breathing. She said:

“I don’t like that tone, Lenù. I’m paid more than Enzo, who is a man: What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing.”

“The revolution, the workers, the new world, and that other bullshit?”

“Stop it. If you’ve unexpectedly decided to make a truthful speech I’m listening, otherwise let’s forget it.”

“May I point out something? You always use true and truthfully , when you speak and when you write. Or you say: unexpectedly . But when do people ever speak truthfully and when do things ever happen unexpectedly ? You know better than I that it’s all a fraud and that one thing follows another and then another. I don’t do anything truthfully anymore, Lenù. And I’ve learned to pay attention to things. Only idiots believe that they happen unexpectedly .”

“Bravo. What do you want me to believe, that you have everything under control, that it’s you who are using Michele and not Michele you? Let’s forget it, come on. Bye.”

“No, speak, say what you have to say.”

“I have nothing to say.”

“Speak, otherwise I will.”

“Then speak, let me listen.”

“You criticize me but you say nothing to your sister?”

I was astonished.

“What does my sister have to do with anything?”

“You don’t know anything about Elisa?”

“What should I know?”

She laughed maliciously.

“Ask your mother, your father, and your brothers.”

She wouldn’t say anything else, she hung up, furious. I anxiously called my parents’ house, my mother answered.

“Every so often you remember we exist,” she said.

“Ma, what’s happening to Elisa?”

“What happens to girls today.”

“What?”

“She’s with someone.”

“She’s engaged?”

“Let’s put it like that.”

“Who is she with?”

The answer went right through my heart.

“Marcello Solara.”

That’s what Lila wanted me to know. Marcello, the handsome Marcello of our early adolescence, her stubborn, desperate admirer, the young man she had humiliated by marrying Stefano Carracci, had taken my sister Elisa, the youngest of the family, my good little sister, the woman whom I still thought of as a magical child. And Elisa had let herself be taken. And my parents and my brothers had not lifted a finger to stop him. And my whole family, and in some way I myself, would end up related to the Solaras.

“Since when?” I asked.

“How do I know, a year.”

“And you two gave your consent?”

“Did you ask our consent? You did as you liked. And she did the same thing.”

“Pietro isn’t Marcello Solara.”

“You’re right: Marcello would never let himself be treated by Elisa the way Pietro is treated by you.”

Silence.

“You could have told me, you could have consulted me.”

“Why? You left. ‘I’ll take care of you, don’t worry.’ Hardly. You’ve only thought of your own affairs, you didn’t give a damn about us.”

I decided to leave immediately for Naples with the children. I wanted to go by train, but Pietro volunteered to drive us, passing off as kindness the fact that he didn’t want to work. As soon as we came down from the Doganella and were in the chaotic traffic of Naples, I felt gripped by the city, ruled by its unwritten laws. I hadn’t set foot there since the day I left to get married. The noise seemed unbearable, I was irritated by the constant honking, by the insults the drivers shouted at Pietro when, not knowing the way, he hesitated, slowed down. A little before Piazza Carlo III I made him pull over. I got into the driver’s seat, and drove aggressively to Via Firenze, to the same hotel he had stayed in years before. We left our bags. I carefully dressed the two girls and myself. Then we went to the neighborhood, to my parents’ house. What did I think I could do, impose on Elisa my authority as the older sister, a university graduate, well married? Persuade her to break her engagement? Tell her: I’ve known Marcello since he grabbed my wrist and tried to pull me into the Fiat 1100, breaking Mamma’s silver bracelet, so trust me, he’s a vulgar, violent man? Yes. I felt determined, my job was to pull Elisa out of that trap.

My mother greeted Pietro affectionately and, in turn— This is for Dede from Grandma, this is for Elsa —she gave the two girls many small gifts that, in different ways, excited them. My father’s voice was hoarse with emotion, he seemed thinner, even more subservient. I waited for my brothers to appear, but I discovered that they weren’t home.

“They’re always at work,” my father said without enthusiasm.

“What do they do?”

“They work,” my mother broke in.

“Where?”

“Marcello arranged jobs for them.”

I remembered how the Solaras had arranged a job for Antonio, what they had made him into.

“Doing what?” I asked.

My mother answered in irritation:

“They bring money home and that’s enough. Elisa isn’t like you, Lenù, Elisa thinks of all of us.”

I pretended not to hear: “Did you tell her I was coming today? Where is she?”

My father lowered his gaze, my mother said curtly: “At her house.”

I became angry: “She doesn’t live here anymore?”

“No.”

“Since when?”

“Almost two months. She and Marcello have a nice apartment in the new neighborhood,” my mother said coldly.

He was more than just a boyfriend, then. I wanted to go to Elisa’s house right away, even though my mother kept saying: What are you doing, your sister is preparing a surprise for you, stay here, we’ll all go together later. I paid no attention. I telephoned Elisa, she answered happily and yet embarrassed. I said: Wait for me, I’m coming. I left Pietro and the girls with my parents and set off on foot.

The neighborhood seemed to me more run-down: the buildings dilapidated, the streets and sidewalks full of holes, littered with garbage. From black-edged posters that carpeted the walls — I had never seen so many — I learned that the old man Ugo Solara, Marcello and Michele’s grandfather, had died. As the date attested, the event wasn’t recent — it went back at least two months — and the high-flown phrases, the faces of grieving Madonnas, the very name of the dead man were faded, smudged. Yet the death notices persisted on the streets as if the other dead, out of respect, had decided to disappear from the world without letting anyone know. I saw several even at the entrance to Stefano’s grocery. The shop was open, but it seemed to me a hole in the wall, dark, deserted, and Carracci appeared in the back, in his white smock, and disappeared like a ghost.