Elena Ferrante - The Story of a New Name

From then on Nino seemed less and less inclined to take her out. First he said that he had to study, and it was true, then he let slip that on various public occasions she had been excessive.

“In what sense?”

“You exaggerate.”

“Meaning?”

He made a resentful list: “You make comments out loud; if someone tells you to be quiet you start arguing; you bother the speakers with your own monologues. It’s not done.”

Lila had known that it wasn’t done, but she had believed that now, with him, everything was possible, bridging gaps with a leap, speaking face to face with people who counted. Hadn’t she been able to talk to influential types, in the Solaras’ shop? Hadn’t it been thanks to one of the customers that he had published his first article in Il Mattino ? And so? “You’re too timid,” she said. “You still don’t understand that you’re better than they are and you’ll do much more important things.” Then she kissed him.

But the following evenings Nino, with one excuse or another, began to go out alone. And if he stayed home instead and studied, he complained of how much noise there was in the building. Or he grumbled because he had to go and ask his father for money, and Donato would torment him with questions like: Where are you sleeping, what are you doing, where are you living, are you studying? Or, in the face of Lila’s ability to make connections between very different things, instead of being excited as usual he shook his head, became irritable.

After a while he was in such a bad mood, and so behind with his exams, that in order to keep studying he stopped going to bed with her. Lila said, “It’s late, let’s go to sleep,” he answered with a distracted, “You go, I’ll come later.” He looked at the outline of her body under the covers and desired its warmth but was also afraid of it. I haven’t yet graduated, he thought, I don’t have a job; if I don’t want to throw my life away I have to apply myself; instead I’m here with this person who is married, who is pregnant, who vomits every morning, who prevents me from being disciplined. When he found out that Il Mattino wouldn’t publish the article he was really upset. Lila consoled him, told him to send it to other newspapers. But then she added, “Tomorrow I’ll call.”

She wanted to call the editor she had met in the Solaras’ shop and find out what was wrong. He stammered, “You won’t telephone anyone.”

“Why?”

“Because that shit was never interested in me but in you.”

“It’s not true.”

“It’s very true, I’m not a fool, you just make problems for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I shouldn’t have listened to you.”

“What did I do?”

“You confused my ideas. Because you’re like a drop of water, ting ting ting . Until it’s done your way, you won’t stop.”

“You thought of the article and wrote it.”

“Exactly. And so why did you make me redo it four times?”

“ You wanted to rewrite it.”

“Lina, let’s be very clear: choose something of your own that you like, go back to selling shoes, go back to selling salami, but don’t desire to be something you’re not by ruining me.”

They had been living together for twenty-three days, a cloud in which the gods had hidden them so that they could enjoy each other without being disturbed. Those words wounded her deeply, she said, “Get out.”

He quickly pulled his coat on over his sweater and slammed the door behind him.

Lila sat on the bed and thought: he’ll be back in ten minutes, he left his books, his notes, his shaving cream and razor. Then she burst into tears: how could I have thought of living with him, of being able to help him? It’s my fault: to free my head, I even made him write something wrong.

She went to bed and waited. She waited all night, but Nino didn’t come back, not the morning after or the one after that.

What I am now recounting I learned from various people at various times. I begin with Nino, who left the house in Campi Flegrei and took refuge with his parents. His mother treated him better, much better, than the prodigal son. With his father, on the other hand, he was quarreling within an hour, the insults flew. Donato yelled at him in dialect that he could either leave home or stay there, but the thing he absolutely could not do was to disappear for a month without telling anyone and then return only to swipe some money as if he had earned it himself.

Nino retreated to his room and had many arguments with himself. Although he already wanted to run back to Lina, ask her pardon, cry to her that he loved her, he assessed the situation and became convinced that he had fallen into a trap, not his fault, not Lina’s fault, but the fault of desire. Now, for example, he thought, I can’t wait to go back to her, cover her with kisses, assume my responsibilities; but a part of me knows perfectly well that what I did today on a wave of disappointment is true and right: Lina isn’t right for me, Lina is pregnant, what’s in her womb scares me; so I must absolutely not return, I have to go to Bruno, borrow some money, leave Naples as Elena did, study somewhere else.

He deliberated all night and all the next day, now pierced by a need for Lila, now clinging to chilling thoughts that evoked her crude ingenuousness, her too intelligent ignorance, the force with which she drew him into her thoughts, which seemed like insights but were, instead, muddled.

In the evening he telephoned Bruno and, in a frenzy, left to go see him. He ran through the rain to the bus stop, barely caught the right bus before it left. But suddenly he changed his mind and got off at Piazza Garibaldi. He took the metro to Campi Flegrei, he couldn’t wait to embrace Lila, take her standing up, right away, as soon as he was in the house, against the entrance wall. That now seemed the most important thing, then he would think what to do.

It was dark, he walked with long strides in the rain. He didn’t even notice the dark silhouette coming toward him. He was shoved so violently that he fell down. A long series of blows began, punching and kicking, kicking and punching. The person who hit him kept repeating, but not angrily:

“Leave her, don’t see her and don’t touch her again. Repeat: I will leave her. Repeat: I won’t see her and I won’t touch her again. You piece of shit: you like it, eh, taking other men’s wives. Repeat: I was wrong, I’ll leave her.”

Nino repeated obediently, but his attacker didn’t stop. He fainted more out of fear than out of pain.

It was Antonio who beat up Nino, but he reported almost none of this to his boss. When Michele asked if he had found Sarratore’s son he answered yes. When he asked with evident anxiety if that track had led to Lila he said no. When he asked him if he had had information about Lila he said he couldn’t find her and the only thing he could absolutely rule out was that Sarratore’s son had anything to do with Signora Carracci.

He was lying, of course. He had found Nino and Lila fairly soon, by chance, the night he had had the job of brawling with the Communists. He had smashed a few faces and then had left the fight to follow the two who had fled. He had discovered where they lived, he had understood that they were living together, and in the following days he had studied everything they did, how they lived. Seeing them he had felt both admiration and envy. Admiration for Lila. How is it possible, he had said to himself, that she abandoned her house, a beautiful house, and left her husband, the groceries, the cars, the shoes, the Solaras, for a student without a cent who keeps her in a place almost worse than the old neighborhood? What is it with that girl: courage, or madness? Then he concentrated on his envy of Nino. What hurt him most was that Lila and I both liked the skinny, ugly bastard. What was it about the son of Sarratore, what was his advantage? He had thought about it night and day. He was gripped by a kind of morbid obsession that affected his nerves, especially in his hands, so that he was constantly interlacing them, pressing them together as if he were praying. Finally he had decided that he had to free Lila, even if at that moment, perhaps, she had no desire to be freed. But — he had said to himself — it takes time for people to understand what’s good and what’s bad, and helping them means doing for them what in a particular moment of their life they aren’t capable of doing. Michele Solara hadn’t ordered him to beat up Sarratore’s son, no: he had not told Michele the most important thing and so there was no reason to go that far; beating him up had been his own decision, and he had made it partly because he wanted to get Nino away from Lila and give her back what she had incomprehensibly thrown away, and partly for his own enjoyment, because of an exasperation he felt not toward Nino, an insignificant limp agglomerate of effeminate flesh and bone, too long and breakable, but toward what we two girls had attributed and did attribute to him.