Elena Ferrante - The Story of a New Name

I said nothing, but I doubted that Marisa was suffering: she would spend the whole summer with Alfonso in the store in Piazza dei Martiri, and I was happy for her. I noticed instead that Lidia bore deep traces of grief: in her face, which was losing its contours, in her eyes, in her shrunken breast, in her heavy stomach. All the time we talked she was glancing fearfully at her husband, who, playing the role of the kindly man, was devoting himself to Lila and Pinuccia. She stopped paying attention to me and kept her eyes glued to him when he offered to take them swimming, promising Lila that he would teach her to swim. “I taught all my children,” we heard him say, “I’ll teach you, too.”

I never asked about Nino, nor did Lidia ever mention him. But now the black dot in the sparkling blue of the sea stopped moving out. It reversed direction, grew larger, I began to distinguish the white of the foam exploding beside it.

Yes, it’s him, I thought anxiously.

Nino emerged from the water looking with curiosity at his father, who was holding Lila afloat with one arm and with the other was showing her what to do. Even when he saw me and recognized me, he continued to frown.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I’m on vacation,” I answered, “and I came by to see Signora Nella.”

He looked again with annoyance in the direction of his father and the two girls.

“Isn’t that Lina?”

“Yes, and that’s her sister-in-law Pinuccia, I don’t know if you remember her.”

He rubbed his hair with the towel, continuing to stare at the three in the water. I told him almost breathlessly that we would be staying on Ischia until September, that we had a house not far from Forio, that Lila’s mother was there, too, that on Sunday the husbands of Lila and Pinuccia would come. As I spoke it seemed to me that he wasn’t even listening, but still I said, and in spite of Lidia’s presence, that on the weekend I had nothing to do.

“Come see us,” he said, and then he spoke to his mother: “I have to go.”

“Already?”

“I have things to do.”

“Elena’s here.”

Nino looked at me as if he had become aware of my presence only then. He rummaged in his shirt, which was hanging on the umbrella, took out a pencil and a notebook, wrote something, tore out the page, and handed it to me.

“I’m at this address,” he said.

Clear, decisive as a movie actor. I took the page as if it were a holy relic.

“Eat something first,” his mother begged him.

He didn’t answer.

“And at least wave goodbye to Papa.”

He changed out of his bathing suit, wrapping a towel around his waist, and went off along the shore without saying goodbye to anyone.

We spent the entire day at the Maronti, I playing and swimming with the children, Pinuccia and Lila completely occupied by Donato, who took them for a walk all the way to the thermal baths. At the end Pinuccia was exhausted, and Sarratore showed us a convenient and pleasant way of going home. We went to a hotel that was built practically over the water, as if on stilts, and there, for a few lire, we got a boat, entrusting ourselves to an old sailor.

As soon as we set out, Lila said sarcastically, “Nino didn’t give you much encouragement.”

“He had to study.”

“And he couldn’t even say hello?”

“That’s how he is.”

“How he is is rude,” Pinuccia interjected. “He’s as rude as the father is nice.”

They were both convinced that Nino hadn’t been polite or pleasant, and I let them think it, I preferred prudently to keep my secrets. And it seemed to me that if they thought he was disdainful of even a really good student like me, they would more easily put up with the fact that he had ignored them and maybe they would even forgive him. I wanted to protect him from their rancor, and I succeeded: they seemed to forget about him right away, Pinuccia was enthusiastic about Sarratore’s graciousness, and Lila said with satisfaction, “He taught me to float, and even how to swim. He’s great.”

The sun was setting. I thought of Donato’s molestations, and shuddered. From the violet sky came a chilly dampness. I said to Lila, “He’s the one who wrote that the panel in the Piazza dei Martiri shop was ugly.”

Pinuccia had a smug expression of agreement.

Lila said, “He was right.”

I became upset. “And he’s the one who ruined Melina.”

Lila answered, with a laugh, “Or maybe he made her feel good for once.”

That remark wounded me. I knew what Melina had endured, what her children endured. I also knew Lidia’s sufferings, and how Sarratore, behind his fine manners, hid a desire that respected nothing and no one. Nor had I forgotten that Lila, since she was a child, had witnessed the torments of the widow Cappuccio and how painful it had been for her. So what was this tone, what were those words — a signal to me? Did she want to say to me: you’re a girl, you don’t know anything about a woman’s needs? I abruptly changed my mind about the secrecy of my secrets. I wanted immediately to show that I was a woman like them and knew.

“Nino gave me his address,” I said to Lila. “If you don’t mind, when Stefano and Rino come I’m going to see him.”

Address. Go see him . Bold formulations. Lila narrowed her eyes, a sharp line crossed her forehead. Pinuccia had a malicious look, she touched Lila’s knee, she laughed: “You hear? Lenuccia has a date tomorrow. And she has the address.”

I flushed.

“Well, if you’re with your husbands, what am I supposed to do?”

For a long moment there was only the noise of the engine and the mute presence of the sailor at the helm.

Lila said coldly, “Keep Mamma company. I didn’t bring you here to have fun.”

I restrained myself. We had had a week of freedom. That day, besides, both she and Pinuccia, on the beach, in the sun, during long swims, and thanks to the words that Sarratore knew how to use to inspire laughter and to charm, had forgotten themselves. Donato had made them feel like girl-women in the care of an unusual father, the rare father who doesn’t punish you but encourages you to express your desires without guilt. And now that the day was over I, in declaring that I would have a Sunday to myself with a university student — what was I doing, was I reminding them both that that week in which their condition as wives was suspended was over and that their husbands were about to reappear? Yes, I had overdone it. Cut out your tongue, I thought.

The husbands, in fact, arrived early. They were expected Sunday morning, but they appeared Saturday evening, very excited, with Lambrettas that they had, I think, rented at the Ischia Port. Nunzia prepared a lavish dinner. There was talk of the neighborhood, of the stores, of how the new shoes were coming along. Rino was full of self-praise for the models that he was perfecting with his father, but at an opportune moment he thrust some sketches under Lila’s nose, and she examined them reluctantly, suggesting some modifications. Then we sat down at the table, and the two young men gorged themselves, competing to see who could eat more. It wasn’t even ten when they dragged their wives to the bedrooms.

I helped Nunzia clear and wash the dishes. Then I shut myself in my room, I read a little. The heat in the closed room was suffocating, but I was afraid of the blotches I’d get from the mosquito bites, and I didn’t open the window. I tossed and turned in the bed, soaked with sweat: I thought of Lila, of how, slowly, she had yielded. Certainly, she didn’t show any particular affection for her husband; and the tenderness that I had sometimes seen in her gestures when they were engaged had disappeared. During dinner she had frequently commented with disgust at the way Stefano gobbled his food, the way he drank; but it was evident that some equilibrium, who knows how precarious, had been reached. When he, after some allusive remarks, headed toward the bedroom, Lila followed without delay, without saying go on, I’ll join you later; she was resigned to an inevitable routine. Between her and her husband there was not the carnival spirit displayed by Rino and Pinuccia, but there was no resistance, either. Deep into the night I heard the noise of the two couples, the laughter and the sighs, the doors opening, the water coming out of the tap, the whirlpool of the flush, the doors closing. Finally I fell asleep.