Elena Ferrante - The Story of a New Name

“Do you feel sick?”

“I’m perfectly fine.”

“Then what?”

“Look at the belly I’ve got.”

I looked at her belly, I said to her without thinking: “What about me? Don’t you see these bites on my face?”

She started yelling, she called me an idiot, and ran away to catch up with Lila.

Once at the beach she apologized, muttering, You’re so good that sometimes you make me mad.

“I’m not good.”

“I meant that you’re clever.”

“I’m not clever.”

Lila, who was trying in any case to ignore us, staring at the sea in the direction of Forio, said coldly, “Stop it, they’re coming.”

Pinuccia started. “The long and the short of it,” she murmured, with a sudden softness in her voice, and she put on some lipstick even though she already had enough.

The boys’ mood was just as bad as ours. Nino had a sarcastic tone, he said to Lila, “Tonight the husbands arrive?”

“Of course.”

“And what nice things will you do?”

“We’ll eat, drink, and sleep.”

“And tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow we’ll eat, drink, and sleep.”

“Do they stay Sunday night, too?”

“No, on Sunday we eat, drink, and sleep only in the afternoon.”

Hiding behind a tone of self-mockery, I forced myself to say, “I’m free: I’m not eating or drinking or going to sleep.”

Nino looked at me as if he were becoming aware of something he had never noticed, so that I passed a hand over my right cheek, where I had an especially big mosquito bite. He said to me seriously, “Good, we’ll meet here tomorrow morning at seven and then climb the mountain. When we get back, the beach till late. What do you say?”

I felt in my veins the warmth of elation, I said with relief, “All right, at seven, I’ll bring food.”

Pinuccia asked, unhappily, “And us?”

“You have husbands,” he said, and pronounced “husbands” as if he were saying toads, snakes, spiders, so that she got up abruptly and went to the water’s edge.

“She’s a little oversensitive at the moment,” I said in apology, “but it’s because of her interesting condition, usually she’s not like that.”

Bruno said in his patient voice, “I’ll take her to get some coconut.”

We watched him as, small but well proportioned, his chest powerful, his thighs strong, he moved over the sand at a steady pace, as if the sun had neglected to burn the grains he walked on. When Bruno and Pina set off for the beach bar, Lila said, “Let’s go swimming.”

The three of us moved together toward the sea, me in the middle, between them. It’s hard to explain the sudden sense of fullness that had possessed me when Nino said: We’ll meet here tomorrow morning at seven. Of course I was sorry about the swings in Pinuccia’s moods, but it was a weak sorrow, it couldn’t dent my state of well-being. I was finally content with myself, with the long, exciting Sunday that awaited me; and at the same time I felt proud to be there, at that moment, with the people who had always been important in my life, whose importance couldn’t be compared even to that of my parents, my siblings. I took them both by the hand, I gave a shout of happiness, I dragged them into the cold water, spraying icy splinters of foam. We sank as if we were a single organism.

As soon as we were underwater we let go of the chain of our fingers. I’ve never liked the cold of the water in my hair, on my head, in my ears. I re-emerged immediately, spluttering. But I saw that they were already swimming and I began to swim, in order not to lose them. I had trouble right away: I wasn’t capable of swimming straight, head in the water, with steady strokes; my right arm was stronger than the left, and I veered right; I had to be careful not to swallow the salt water. I tried to keep up by not losing sight of them, in spite of my myopic vision. They’ll stop, I thought. My heart was pounding, I slowed down, I finally stopped and floated, admiring their confident progress toward the horizon, side by side.

Maybe they were going too far. I, too, in the grip of enthusiasm, had ventured beyond the reassuring imaginary line that normally allowed me to return to the shore in a few strokes, and beyond which Lila herself had never gone. Now there she was, competing with Nino. Despite her inexperience she wouldn’t give in, she wanted to stay even, she pushed on, farther and farther.

I began to worry. If her strength failed. If she felt ill. Nino is expert, he’ll help her. But if he gets a cramp, if he collapses, too. I looked around, the current was dragging me to the left. I can’t wait for them here, I have to go back. I glanced down, and it was a mistake. The azure immediately turned bluer, darkened like night, even though the sun was shining, the surface of the sea sparkled, and pure white shreds of cloud were stretching across the sky. I perceived the abyss, I sensed its liquidness, with nothing to hold on to, I felt it as a pit of the dead from which anything might rise up in a flash, touch me, grab me, sink its teeth into me, drag me to the bottom.

I tried to calm myself: I shouted Lila. My eyes without glasses were of no use, defeated by the sparkle of the water. I thought of my outing with Nino the following day. Slowly I turned around, on my back, paddling with legs and arms until I reached the shore.

I sat there, half in the water, half on the beach, I could just make out their heads, black dots like abandoned buoys on the surface of the sea, I felt relieved. Lila not only was safe but she had done it, she had stayed with Nino. How stubborn she is, how she overdoes it, how courageous she is. I got up, joined Bruno, who was sitting beside our things.

“Where’s Pinuccia?” I asked.

He gave a timid smile that seemed to conceal a worry.

“She left.”

“Where did she go?”

“Home, she says she has to pack her bags.”

“Her bags?”

“She wants to go, she doesn’t feel she can leave her husband alone for so long.”

I took my things and, after insisting that he not lose sight of Nino and especially Lila, I left, still dripping wet, to try to find out what else was happening to Pina.

It was a disastrous afternoon followed by an even more disastrous evening. I found that Pinuccia was really packing her bags and that Nunzia was unable to quiet her.

“You mustn’t worry,” she said to her soothingly, “Rino knows how to wash his underwear, he knows how to cook, and then there is his father, his friends. He doesn’t think you’re here to have fun, he understands that you’re here to rest so that you’ll have a fine healthy baby. Come, I’ll help you tidy up everything. I never went on vacation, but today there’s money, thank God, and although you mustn’t waste it, a little comfort isn’t a sin, you can afford it. So Pinù, please, child: Rino worked all week, he’s tired, he’s about to arrive. Don’t let him find you like this, you know him, he’ll worry, and when he worries he gets angry, and if he gets angry what’s the result? The result is that you want to leave to stay with him, he has left to be with you, and now when you’ll be together, and you ought to be happy, instead you’re torturing each other. Does that seem nice to you?”

But Pinuccia was impervious to the arguments that Nunzia rattled off. Then I began to enumerate them, too, since we had reached the point where we were taking her many things out of the suitcases and she was putting them in, she cried, she calmed down, she started again.

Eventually Lila returned. She leaned against the doorpost and stood looking, with a frown, a long horizontal crease across her brow, at that disheveled image of Pinuccia.