Elena Ferrante: The Story of a New Name

My mother froze, even the hand she had struck me with remained still in the air, like the blade of an axe.

Elisa, my little sister, picked up the glasses and said softly, “Here, Lenù, they’re not broken.”

I was overcome by an exhaustion that, no matter how much I rested, wouldn’t go away. For the first time, I skipped school. I was absent, I think, for some two weeks, and not even to Antonio did I say that I couldn’t stand it anymore, I wanted to stop. I left home at the usual time, and wandered all morning through the city. I learned a lot about Naples in that period. I rummaged among the used books in the stalls of Port’Alba, unwillingly absorbing titles and authors’ names, and continued toward Toledo and the sea. Or I climbed the Vomero on Via Salvator Rosa, went up to San Martino, came back down by the Petraio. Or I explored the Doganella, went to the cemetery, wandered on the silent paths, read the names of the dead. Sometimes idle young men, stupid old men, even respectable middle-aged men pursued me with obscene offers. I quickened my pace, eyes lowered, I escaped, sensing danger, but didn’t stop. In fact the more I skipped school the bigger the hole that those long mornings of wandering made in the net of scholastic obligations that had imprisoned me since I was six years old. At the proper time I went home and no one suspected that I, I , had not gone to school. I spent the afternoon reading novels, then I hurried to the ponds, to Antonio, who was very happy that I was so available. He would have liked to ask if I had seen Sarratore’s son. I read the question in his eyes, but he didn’t dare ask, he was afraid of a quarrel, he was afraid that I would get angry and deny him those few minutes of pleasure. He embraced me, to feel me compliant against his body, to chase away any doubt. At those moments he dismissed the possibility that I could insult him by also seeing that other.

He was wrong: in reality, although I felt guilty, I thought only of Nino. I wanted to see him, talk to him, and on the other hand I was afraid to. I was afraid that he would humiliate me with his superiority. I was afraid that one way or another he would return to the reasons that the article about my quarrel with the religion teacher hadn’t been published. I was afraid that he would report to me the cruel judgments of the editors. I couldn’t have borne it. While I drifted through the city, and at night, in bed, when I couldn’t sleep and felt my inadequacy with utter clarity, I preferred to believe that my text had been rejected for pure and simple lack of space. Let it diminish, fade. But it was hard. I hadn’t been equal to Nino’s brilliance, and so I couldn’t stay with him, be listened to, tell him my thoughts. What thoughts, after all? I didn’t have any. Better to eliminate myself — no more books, grades, praise. I hoped to forget everything, slowly: the notions that crowded my head, the languages living and dead, Italian itself that rose now to my lips even with my sister and brothers. It’s Lila’s fault, I thought, if I started down this path, I have to forget her, too: Lila always knew what she wanted and got it; I don’t want anything, I’m made of nothing. I hoped to wake in the morning without desires. Once I was emptied — I imagined — the affection of Antonio, my affection for him will be enough.

Then one day, on the way home, I met Pinuccia, Stefano’s sister. I learned from her that Lila had returned from her honeymoon and had had a big lunch to celebrate the engagement of her sister-in-law and her brother.

“You and Rino are engaged?” I asked, feigning surprise.

“Yes,” she said, radiant, and showed me the ring he had given her.

I remember that while Pinuccia was talking I had a single, twisted thought: Lila had a party at her new house and didn’t invite me, but it’s better that way, I’m glad, stop comparing myself to her, I don’t want to see her anymore. Only when every detail of the engagement had been examined did I ask, hesitantly, about my friend. With a treacherous half smile, Pinuccia offered a formula in dialect: she’s learning . I didn’t ask what. When I got home I slept for the whole afternoon.

The next morning I went out at seven as usual to go to school, or, rather, to pretend to go to school. I had just crossed the stradone , when I saw Lila get out of the convertible and enter our courtyard without even turning to say goodbye to Stefano, who was at the wheel. She had dressed with care, and wore large dark glasses, even though there was no sun. I was struck by a scarf of blue voile that she had knotted in such a way that it covered her lips, too. I thought resentfully that this was her new style — not Jackie Kennedy but, rather, the mysterious lady we had imagined we would become ever since we were children. I kept going without calling to her.

After a few steps, however, I turned back, not with a clear intention but because I couldn’t help it. My heart was pounding, my feelings were confused. Maybe I wanted to ask her to tell me to my face that our friendship was over. Maybe I wanted to cry out that I, too, had decided to stop studying and get married — to go and live at Antonio’s house with his mother and his brothers and sisters, wash the stairs like Melina the madwoman. I crossed the courtyard quickly, I saw her go in the entranceway that led to her mother-in-law’s apartment. I started up the stairs, the same ones we had climbed together as children when we went to ask Don Achille to give us our dolls. I called her, she turned.

“You’re back,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want you to see me.”

“Others can see you and not me?”

“I don’t care about others, I do care about you.”

I looked at her uncertainly. What was I not supposed to see? I climbed the stairs that separated us and delicately pulled aside the scarf, raised the sunglasses.

I do it again now, in my imagination, as I begin to tell the story of her honeymoon, not only as she told it to me there on the landing but as I read it later, in her notebooks. I had been unjust to her, I had wished to believe in an easy surrender on her part to be able to humiliate her as I felt humiliated when Nino left the reception; I had wished to diminish her in order not to feel her loss. There she is, instead, the reception now over, shut up in the convertible, the blue hat, the pastel suit. Her eyes were burning with rage and as soon as the car started she blasted Stefano with the most intolerable words and phrases of our neighborhood.

He swallowed the insults in his usual way, with a faint smile, not saying a word, and finally she was silent. But the silence didn’t last. Lila started again calmly, but panting slightly. She told him that she wouldn’t stay in that car a minute longer, that it disgusted her to breathe the air that he breathed, that she wanted to get out, immediately. Stefano saw the disgust in her face, yet he continued to drive, without saying anything, so she raised her voice again to make him stop. Then he pulled over, but when Lila tried to open the door he grabbed her firmly by the wrist.

“Now listen to me,” he said softly. “There are serious reasons for what happened.”

He explained to her in placid tones how it went. To keep the shoe factory from closing down before it even opened its doors, he had found it necessary to enter into a partnership with Silvio Solara and his sons, who alone could insure not only that the shoes were placed in the best shops in the city but that in the fall a shop selling Cerullo shoes exclusively would open in Piazza dei Martiri.

“What do I care about your necessities,” Lila interrupted him, struggling to get free.