Elena Ferrante - The Story of a New Name

But at home there was a surprise. My mother didn’t attack me the way she usually did because I was late and she suspected I had been seeing Antonio, or because I had neglected one of the thousands of household tasks. She said to me instead, with a sort of gentle annoyance, “Stefano asked me if you could go with him this afternoon to the dressmaker’s on the Rettifilo.”

Befuddled by tiredness and discouragement, I thought I hadn’t understood. Stefano? Stefano Carracci? He wanted me to go with him to the Rettifilo?

“Why doesn’t he go with his wife?” my father joked from the other room. Formally he was taking a sick day but in reality he had to keep an eye on some of his indecipherable deals. “How do those two pass the time? Do they play cards?”

My mother made a gesture of annoyance. She said maybe Lila was busy, she said we ought to be nice to the Carraccis, she said some people were never satisfied with anything. In reality my father was more than satisfied: to have good relations with the grocer meant that one could buy food on credit and put off paying indefinitely. But he liked to be witty. Lately, whenever the occasion arose, he had found it amusing to make allusions to Stefano’s presumed sexual laziness. At the table every so often he would ask: What’s Carracci doing, he only likes television? And he laughed and it didn’t take much to guess the meaning of his question: how is it that the two of them don’t have any children, does Stefano function or not? My mother, who in those matters understood him immediately, answered seriously: It’s early, leave them alone, what do you expect? But in fact she enjoyed as much as or more than he the idea that the grocer Carracci, in spite of the money he had, didn’t function.

The table was already set; they were waiting for me. My father continued to joke, with a half-sly expression, saying to my mother: “Have I ever said to you, I’m sorry, tonight I’m tired, let’s play cards?”

“No, because you are not a respectable person.”

“And would you like me to become a respectable person?”

“A little, but don’t exaggerate.”

“So starting tonight I’ll be a respectable person like Stefano.”

“I said don’t exaggerate.”

How I hated those duets. They talked as if they were sure that my brothers and sister and I couldn’t understand; or maybe they took it for granted that we caught every nuance, but they considered that it was the proper way to teach us how to be males and how to be females. Exhausted by my problems, I felt like screaming — throw away the plate, run out, never see my family again, the dampness in the corners of the ceiling, the flaking walls, the odor of food, any of it. Antonio: how foolish I had been to lose him, I was already sorry, I wished he would forgive me. If they make me retake the exams in September, I said to myself, I won’t show up, I’ll fail, I’ll marry him right away. Then I thought of Lila, how she had dressed, the tone she had taken with the Solaras, what she had in mind, how spiteful humiliation and suffering were making her. My mind wandered like that all afternoon, with disconnected thoughts. A bath in the tub of the new house, anxiety about that request of Stefano’s, how to tell my friend, what her husband wanted from me. And chemistry. And Empedocles. And school. And quitting school. And finally a cold sadness. There was no escape. No, neither Lila nor I would ever become like the girl who had waited for Nino after school. We both lacked something intangible but fundamental, which was obvious in her even if you simply saw her from a distance, and which one possessed or did not, because to have that thing it was not enough to learn Latin or Greek or philosophy, nor was the money from groceries or shoes of any use.

Stefano called from the courtyard. I hurried down and immediately saw in his face an expression of despair. He said he wanted me to go with him to retrieve the photograph that the dressmaker had displayed in her window without permission. Do me this kindness, he muttered, in a sentimental tone of voice. Then without a word he opened the door of the convertible, and we drove off, assailed by the hot wind.

As soon as we were out of the neighborhood he started talking and he didn’t stop until we got to the dressmaker’s. He spoke in a mild dialect, without cursing or joking. He began by saying that I must do him a favor, but he didn’t immediately explain what the favor was, he said only, stumbling over his words, that if I did it for him, it would be as if I were doing it for my friend. Then he went on to talk to me about Lila, how intelligent, how beautiful she was. But she is rebellious by nature, he added, and either you do things the way she says or she torments you. Lenù, you don’t know what I’m suffering, or maybe you do know, but all you know is what she tells you. Now, listen to me, too. Lina has a fixed idea that all I think about is money, and maybe it’s true, but I’m doing it for the family, for her brother, for her father, for all her relatives. Am I wrong? You are very educated, tell me if I’m wrong. What does she want from me — the poverty she comes from? Should only the Solaras make money? Do we want to leave the neighborhood in their hands? If you tell me I’m wrong, I won’t argue with you, I will immediately admit that I’m wrong. But with her I have to argue whether I want to or not. She doesn’t want me, she told me, she repeats it to me. Making her understand that I’m her husband is a battle, and ever since I got married life has been unbearable. To see her in the morning, in the evening, to sleep next to her and not be able to make her feel how much I love her, with the strength I’m capable of, is a terrible thing.

I looked at his broad hands gripping the steering wheel, his face. With tears in his eyes, he admitted that on their wedding night he had had to beat her, that he had been forced to do it, that every morning, every evening she drew slaps from his hands on purpose to humiliate him, forcing him to act in a way that he never, ever, ever would have wanted. Here he assumed an almost frightened tone: I had to beat her again, she shouldn’t have gone to the Solaras’ dressed like that. But she has a force inside that I can’t subdue. It’s an evil force that makes good manners — everything — useless. A poison. You see she’s not pregnant? Months pass and nothing happens. Relatives, friends, customers ask, and you can see the mockery on their faces: any news? And I have to say, what news, pretending not to understand. Because if I understood I would have to answer. And what can I answer? There are things you know that can’t be said. With that force she has, she murders the children inside, Lenù, and she does it on purpose to make people think I don’t know how to be a man, to show me up in front of everyone. What do you think? Am I exaggerating? You don’t know what a favor you’re doing to listen to me.

I didn’t know what to say. I was stunned, I had never heard a man talk about himself like that. The whole time, even when he spoke of his own brutality, he used a dialect full of feeling, defenseless, like the language of certain songs. I still don’t know why he behaved that way. Of course, afterward he revealed what he wanted. He wanted me to ally myself with him for the good of Lila. He said that she had to be helped to understand how necessary it was to behave like a wife and not like an enemy. He asked me to persuade her to help out in the second grocery and with the accounts. But for that purpose he didn’t have to confess to me in that way. Probably he thought that Lila had kept me minutely informed and therefore he had to give me his version of the facts. Or maybe he hadn’t counted on opening himself up so frankly to his wife’s best friend, and had done so only on the wave of emotion. Or he hypothesized that, if he moved me, I would then move Lila by reporting everything to her. Certainly I listened to him with increasing sympathy. I was pleased by that free flow of intimate confidences. But above all, I have to admit, what pleased me was the importance he attached to me. When in his own words he articulated a suspicion that I myself had always had, that is, that Lila harbored a force that made her capable of anything, even of keeping her body from conceiving children, it seemed that he was attributing to me a beneficent power, one that could win over Lila’s maleficent one, and this flattered me. We got out of the car, and arrived at the dressmaker’s shop. I felt consoled by that acknowledgment. I went so far as to say pompously, in Italian, that I would do everything possible to help them to be happy.