Elena Ferrante - Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

“No.”

“And you’re pleased?”

“Very pleased.”

My sister announced to everyone proudly:

“It’s the novel Lenuccia wrote, but with German words.”

And my mother, reddening in return, said:

“You see how famous she is?”

Gigliola took the book, paged through it, said admiringly: the only thing I can understand is Elena Greco . Lila then reached out her hand in an imperative way, indicating that she wanted it. I saw in her eyes curiosity, the desire to touch and look at and read the unknown language that contained me and had transported me far away. I saw in her the urgency for that object, an urgency that I recognized, she had had it as a child, and it softened me. But Gigliola started angrily, she pulled the book away so that Lila couldn’t take it, and said:

“Wait, I have it now. What is it, you know German?” And Lila withdrew her hand, shook her head no, and Gigliola exclaimed: “Then don’t be a pain in the ass, let me look: I want to see what Lenuccia was able to do.” In the general silence, she turned the book over and over in her hands with satisfaction. She leafed through the pages one after another, slowly, as if she were reading a few lines here, a few there. Finally, her voice thickened by the wine, she said, handing it to me: “Bravo, Lenù, compliments for everything, the book, the husband, the children. You might think that we’re the only ones who know you and instead even the Germans do. What you have, you deserve, you got it with hard work, without hurting anyone, without bullshitting with other people’s husbands. Thank you, now I really have to go, good night.”

She struggled to get up, sighing, she had become even heavier, because of the wine. She yelled at the children: Hurry up, and they protested, the older said something vulgar in dialect, she slapped him and dragged him toward the door. Michele shook his head with a smile on his face, he muttered: I’ve had a rough time with that bitch, she always has to ruin my day. Then he said calmly: Wait, Gigliò, what’s your hurry, first we have to eat your father’s dessert, then we’ll go. And the children, in a flash, fortified by their father’s words, slipped away and returned to the table. Gigliola, instead, continued with her heavy tread toward the door, saying in irritation: I’ll go by myself, I don’t feel well. But at that point Michele shouted at her in a loud voice, charged with violence: Sit down right now, and she stopped as if the words had paralyzed her legs. Elisa jumped up and said softly, Come, help me get the cake. She took her by the arm, pulled her toward the kitchen. I reassured Dede with a look, she was frightened by Michele’s shouting. Then I held out the book to Lila, saying: Do you want to see? She shook her head with an expression of indifference.

“Where have we ended up?” Pietro asked, half outraged and half amused, when, once the children had been put to bed, we closed the door of the room that Elisa had given us. He wanted to joke about the more incredible moments of the evening, but I attacked him, we quarreled in low voices. I was angry with him, with everyone, with myself. From the chaotic feeling I had inside, the desire that Lila would get sick and die was re-emerging. Not out of hatred, I loved her more and more, I wouldn’t have been capable of hating her. But I couldn’t bear the emptiness of her evasion. How could you possibly, I asked Pietro, agree to let them take our bags, bring them here, give them the authority to move us to this house? And he: I didn’t know what sort of people they were. No, I hissed, it’s that you’ve never listened to me, I’ve always told you where I come from.

We talked for a long time, he tried to soothe me, I berated him. I said he had been too timid, that he had been put upon, that he knew how to insist only with the well-brought-up people of his world, that I no longer trusted him, that I didn’t even trust his mother, how could it be that my book had come out in Germany two years ago and the publisher had said nothing about it, what other countries had it been published in without my knowing, I wanted to get to the bottom of it, et cetera et cetera. To make me feel better, he agreed, and urged me to telephone his mother and the publisher the next morning. Then he declared a great liking for what he called the working-class environment I had been born and brought up in. He whispered that my mother was a generous and very intelligent person, he had kind words for my father, for Elisa, for Gigliola, for Enzo. But his tone changed abruptly when he came to the Solaras: he called them crooks, vicious scoundrels, smooth-talking criminals. And finally he came to Lila. He said softly: It’s she who disturbed me most. I noticed, I snapped, you talked to her the whole evening. Pietro shook his head energetically, he explained, surprisingly, that Lila had seemed to him the worst person. He said that she wasn’t at all my friend, that she hated me, that she was extraordinarily intelligent, that she was very fascinating, but her intelligence had been put to bad use — it was the evil intelligence that sows discord and hates life — and her fascination was the more intolerable, the fascination that enslaves and drives a person to ruin. Just like that.

At first I pretended to disagree, but in fact I was pleased. I had been wrong then, Lila hadn’t affected him, Pietro was a man practiced in perceiving the subtext of every text and had easily picked up her unpleasant aspects. But soon it seemed to me that he was overdoing it. He said: I don’t understand how your relationship could have lasted so long, obviously you’ve carefully hidden from each other anything that could rupture it. And he added: either I haven’t understood anything about her — and it’s likely, I don’t know her — or I haven’t understood anything about you, and that is more upsetting. Finally he said the ugliest words: She and that Michele are made for each other, if they aren’t already lovers they will be. Then I revolted. I hissed that I couldn’t bear his pedantic overeducated bourgeois tone, that he must never again speak of my friend in that way, that he hadn’t understood anything. And as I was speaking I seemed to perceive something that at that moment not even he knew: Lila had affected him, seriously; Pietro had grasped her exceptionality so well that he was frightened by it and now felt the need to vilify her. He was afraid not for himself, I think, but for me and for our relationship. He was afraid that, even at a distance, she would tear me away from him, destroy us. And to protect me he overdid it, he slandered her, in a confused way he wanted me to be disgusted by her and expel her from my life. I whispered good night, and turned the other way.

The next day I got up very early and packed the suitcases, I wanted to return to Florence right away. But I couldn’t. Marcello said he had promised his brother to take us to Acerra and since Pietro, although I let him know in every possible way that I wanted to leave, was willing, we left the children with Elisa and agreed to let that big man drive us to a long, low yellow building, a large shoe warehouse. The whole way I was silent, while Pietro asked questions about the Solaras’ business in Germany and Marcello equivocated, with disjointed phrases like: Italy, Germany, the world, Professò, I’m more Communist than the Communists, more revolutionary than the revolutionaries, for me if you could flatten everything and build it all again from the beginning I’d be in the first row. Anyway, he added, looking at me in the rear-view mirror in search of agreement, love for me comes before everything.

When we got there, he led us into a low-ceilinged room, illuminated by neon lights. There was a strong odor of ink, of dust, of overheated insulators, mixed with that of uppers and shoe polish. Look, Marcello said, here’s the contraption Michele rented. I looked around, there was no one at the machine. The System 3 was completely unremarkable, an uninteresting piece of furniture backed up to a wall: metal panels, control knobs, a red switch, a wooden shelf, keyboards. I don’t understand anything about it, said Marcello, this is stuff that Lina knows, but she doesn’t have a schedule, she’s always in and out. Pietro carefully examined the panels, the control knobs, everything, but it was clear that modernity was disappointing him, all the more since Marcello answered every question with: This is my brother’s business, I have other problems on my mind.