Elena Ferrante - The Story of a New Name

But she didn’t want to joke: “I don’t want to ever forget it,” she said.

“That you’re a monkey?”

“That we’re animals.”

“You and I?”

“Everyone.”

“But he said there are a lot of differences between us and the apes.”

“Yes? Like what? That my mother pierced my ears and so I’ve worn earrings since I was born, but the mothers of monkeys don’t, so their offspring don’t wear earrings?”

A fit of laughter possessed us, as we listed differences, one after the other, each more ridiculous than the last: we were enjoying ourselves. But when we returned to the neighborhood our good mood vanished. We met Pasquale and Ada taking a walk on the stradone and learned from them that Stefano was looking everywhere for Lila, very upset. I offered to go home with her, she refused. Instead she agreed to let Pasquale and Ada take her in the car.

I found out the next day why Stefano had been looking for her. It wasn’t because we were late. It wasn’t even because he was annoyed that his wife sometimes spent her free time with me and not with him. It was something else. He had just learned that Pinuccia was often seen with Rino at his house. He had just learned that the two were together in his bed, that Lila gave them the keys. He had just learned that Pinuccia was pregnant. But what had most infuriated him was that when he slapped his sister because of the disgusting things she and Rino had done, Pinuccia shouted at him, “You’re jealous because I’m a woman and Lina isn’t, because Rino knows how to behave with women and you don’t.” Lila, seeing him so upset, listening to him — and recalling the composure he had always shown when they were engaged — had burst out laughing, and Stefano had gone for a drive, so as not to murder her. According to her, he had gone to look for a prostitute.

The preparations for Rino and Pinuccia’s wedding were carried out in a rush. I was not much concerned with it, I had my final class essays, the final oral exams. And then something else happened that caused me great agitation. Professor Galiani, who was in the habit of violating the teachers’ code of behavior with indifference, invited me — me and no one else in the school — to her house, to a party that her children were giving.

It was unusual enough that she lent me books and newspapers, that she had directed me to a march for peace and a demanding lecture. Now she had gone over the limit: she had taken me aside and given me that invitation. “Come as you like,” she had said, “alone or with someone, with your boyfriend or without: the important thing is to come.” Like that, a few days before the end of the school year, without worrying about how much I had to study, without worrying about the earthquake that it set off inside me.

I had immediately said yes, but I quickly discovered that I would never have the courage to go. A party at any professor’s house was unthinkable, imagine at the house of Professor Galiani. For me it was as if I were to present myself at the royal palace, curtsey to the queen, dance with the princes. A great pleasure but also an act of violence, like a yank: to be dragged by the arm, forced to do a thing that, although it appeals to you, you know is not suitable — you know that, if circumstances did not oblige you, you would happily avoid doing it. Probably it didn’t even occur to Professor Galiani that I had nothing to wear. In class I wore a shapeless black smock. What did she expect there was, the professor, under that smock: clothes and slips and underwear like hers? There was inadequacy, rather, there was poverty, poor breeding. I possessed a single pair of worn-out shoes. My only nice dress was the one I had worn to Lila’s wedding, but now it was hot, the dress was fine for March but not for the end of May. And yet the problem was not just what to wear. There was the solitude, the awkwardness of being among strangers, kids with ways of talking among themselves, joking, with tastes I didn’t know. I thought of asking Alfonso if he would go with me, he was always kind to me. But — I recalled — Alfonso was a schoolmate and Professor Galiani had addressed the invitation to me alone. What to do? For days I was paralyzed by anxiety, I thought of talking to the professor and coming up with some excuse. Then it occurred to me to ask Lila’s advice.

She was as usual in a difficult period, she had a yellow bruise under one cheekbone. She didn’t welcome the news.

“Why are you going there?”

“She invited me.”

“Where does this professor live?”

“Corso Vittorio Emanuele.”

“Can you see the sea from her house?”

“I don’t know.”

“What does her husband do?”

“A doctor at the Cotugno.”

“And the children are still in school?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want one of my dresses?”

“You know they don’t fit me.”

“You just have a bigger bust.”

“Everything of me is bigger, Lila.”

“Then I don’t know what to tell you.”

“I shouldn’t go?”

“It’s better.”

“O.K., I won’t go.”

She was visibly satisfied with that decision. I said goodbye, left the grocery, turned onto a street where stunted oleander bushes grew. But I heard her calling me, I turned back.

“I’ll go with you,” she said.

“Where?”

“To the party.”

“Stefano won’t let you.”

“We’ll see. Tell me if you want to take me or not.”

“Of course I want to.”

She became at that point so pleased that I didn’t dare try to make her change her mind. But already on the way home I felt that my situation had become worse. None of the obstacles that prevented me from going to the party had been removed, and that offer of Lila’s confused me even more. The reasons were tangled and I had no intention of enumerating them, but if I had I would have been confronted by contradictory statements. I was afraid that Stefano wouldn’t let her come. I was afraid that Stefano would let her. I was afraid that she would dress in an ostentatious fashion, the way she had when she went to the Solaras. I was afraid that, whatever she wore, her beauty would explode like a star and everyone would be eager to grab a fragment of it. I was afraid that she would express herself in dialect, that she would say something vulgar, that it would become obvious that school for her had ended with an elementary-school diploma. I was afraid that, if she merely opened her mouth, everyone would be hypnotized by her intelligence and Professor Galiani herself would be entranced. I was afraid that the professor would find her both presumptuous and naïve and would say to me: Who is this friend of yours, stop seeing her. I was afraid she would understand that I was only Lila’s pale shadow and would be interested not in me any longer but in her, she would want to see her again, she would undertake to make her go back to school.

For a while I avoided the grocery. I hoped that Lila would forget about the party, that the day would come and I would go almost secretly, and then I would tell her: you didn’t let me know. Instead she soon came to see me, which she hadn’t done for a long time. She had persuaded Stefano not only to take us but also to come and get us, and she wanted to know what time we were to be at the professor’s house.

“What are you going to wear?” I asked anxiously.

“Whatever you wear.”

“I’m going to wear a blouse and skirt.”

“Then I will, too.”

“And Stefano is sure that he’ll take us and then come and get us?”

“Yes.”

“How did you persuade him?”

She made a face, cheerfully, saying that by now she knew how to handle him. “If I want something,” she whispered, as if she herself didn’t want to hear, “I just have to act a little like a whore.”