Elena Ferrante - The Story of a New Name

Nor did I like a sort of rapid readjustment of roles. Nino, who had always talked to me and Lila together (in fact very often to me alone), immediately began talking only to her, as if it were no longer necessary, now that we were four, to take on the burden of entertaining both of us. Bruno, who until the preceding Saturday had been occupied with Pinuccia and nothing else, now focused on me, in the same timid and solicitous way, as if nothing distinguished us from each other, not even the fact that she was married and pregnant and I was not.

For the first walk that we took along the shore, we left as four, side by side. But soon Bruno spotted a shell turned up by a wave, said, “How pretty,” and bent down to pick it up. Out of politeness I stopped to wait for him, and he gave me the shell, which was nothing special. Meanwhile Nino and Lila continued to walk, which transformed us into two couples taking a walk on the water’s edge, the two of them ahead, the two of us behind, they talking animatedly, I trying to make conversation with Bruno while Bruno struggled to talk to me. I tried to hurry, he held me back, against my will. It was difficult to establish a real connection. His conversation was banal, I don’t know, about the sea, the sky, the seagulls, but it was evident that he was playing a role, the one that he thought was right for me. With Pinuccia he must have talked about other things, otherwise it was hard to know how they had enjoyed spending so much time together. Besides, even if he had touched on more interesting subjects, it would have been hard to know what he was saying. If he was asking the time or for a cigarette or a drink of water, he had a direct tone of voice, clear pronunciation. But when he started with that role of the devoted young man ( the shell, do you like it, look how pretty it is, I’ll give it to you ), he got tangled up, he spoke neither in Italian nor in dialect, but in an awkward language that came to him in an undertone, mumbled, as if he were ashamed of what he was saying. I nodded my head yes but I didn’t understand much, and meanwhile I strained my ears to catch what Nino and Lila were saying.

I imagined that he was talking about the serious subjects he was studying, or that she was showing off the ideas she got from the books she had taken from me, and I often tried to catch up to join in their conversations. But every time I managed to get close enough to pick up some phrase, I was disoriented. He seemed to be telling her about his childhood in the neighborhood, using intense, even dramatic tones; she listened without interrupting. I felt intrusive, retreated, resolved to stay behind to be bored by Bruno.

Even when we all decided to go swimming, I wasn’t in time to restore the old trio. Bruno without warning pushed me into the water, I went under, got my hair wet when I didn’t want to get my hair wet. When I re-emerged, Nino and Lila were floating a few meters farther out and were continuing to talk, seriously. They stayed in the water much longer than we did, but without going too far from the shore. They must have been so involved in what they were talking about that they gave up even the luxury of the long swim.

In the late afternoon Nino spoke to me for the first time. He asked roughly, as if he himself expected a negative answer: “Why don’t we meet after dinner? We’ll come and get you and take you home.”

They had never asked us to go out in the evening. I gave Lila a questioning glance, but she looked away. I said, “Lila’s mamma is at home, we can’t leave her alone all the time.”

Nino didn’t answer nor did his friend intervene to help him out. But after the last swim, before parting, Lila said, “We’re going to Forio tomorrow night to telephone my husband. We could get an ice cream together.”

That remark of hers irritated me, but I was even more irritated by what happened next. As soon as the two boys had set off for Forio, and she was gathering up her things, she began to reproach me, as if I bore the blame for the entire day, hour by hour, micro-event upon micro-event, including that request of Nino’s, and the clear contradiction between my answer and hers, in some indecipherable yet indisputable way.

“Why were you always with Bruno?”

“I?”

“Yes, you. Don’t ever dare to leave me alone with that guy again.”

“What are you talking about? It was you two who rushed ahead without stopping to wait for us.”

“We? It was Nino who was rushing.”

“You could have said that you had to wait for me.”

“And you could have said to Bruno: Get going, otherwise we’ll lose them. Do me a favor: since you like him so much, go out on your own business at night. Then you’re free to say and do what you like.”

“I’m here for you, not for Bruno.”

“It doesn’t look as though you’re here for me, you’re always doing what you please.”

“If you don’t want me here anymore I’ll leave tomorrow morning.”

“Yes? And tomorrow night I have to go and get ice cream with those two by myself?”

“Lila, it was you who said you wanted to get ice cream with them.”

“Of necessity, I have to telephone Stefano, and what an impression we’d make if we meet them in Forio?”

We continued in this vein even at the house, after dinner, in Nunzia’s presence. It wasn’t a real quarrel, but an ambiguous exchange with spikes of malice in which we both tried to communicate something without understanding each other. Nunzia, who was listening in bewilderment, at a certain point said, “Tomorrow we’ll have dinner and then I’ll come, too, to get ice cream.”

“It’s a long way,” I said. But Lila interrupted abruptly: “We don’t have to walk. We’ll take a mini cab, we’re rich.”

The next day, to adjust to the boys’ new schedule, we arrived at the beach at nine instead of ten, but they weren’t there. Lila became anxious. We waited, they didn’t appear at ten or later. Finally, in the early afternoon, they showed up, with a lighthearted conspiratorial air. They said that since they were going to spend the evening with us, they had decided to do their studying early. Lila’s reaction stunned me in particular: she sent them away. Slipping into a violent dialect, she hissed that they could go and study when they liked, afternoon, evening, night, no one was holding them back. And since Nino and Bruno made an effort not to take her seriously and continued to smile as if those words had been just a witty remark, she put on her sundress, impetuously grabbed her bag, and set off toward the road with long strides. Nino ran after her but returned soon afterward with a grim face. Nothing to do, she was really enraged and wouldn’t listen to reason.

“It will pass,” I said, pretending to be calm, and I went swimming with them. I dried in the sun eating a sandwich, I chattered weakly, then I announced that I, too, had to go home.

“And tonight?” Bruno asked.

“Lina has to call Stefano, we’ll be there.”

But the outburst had upset me greatly. What did that tone, that behavior mean? What right had she to get angry at an appointment not kept? Why couldn’t she control herself and treat the two young men as if they were Pasquale or Antonio or even the Solaras? Why did she behave like a capricious girl and not like Signora Carracci?

I got to the house out of breath. Nunzia was washing towels and bathing suits, Lila was in her room, sitting on the bed and, something that was also unusual, she was writing. The notebook was resting on her knees, her eyes narrowed, her brow furrowed, one of my books lying on the sheets. How long it was since I had seen her write.

“You overdid it,” I said.

She shrugged. She didn’t raise her eyes from the notebook, she continued to write all afternoon.