Elena Ferrante - The Story of a New Name

Then someone rang at the door.

She thought it was Nino: she opened it. It was Enzo. Seeing him didn’t disappoint her. She thought he had come to bring her some fruit — as he had done many years earlier, as a child, after he was defeated in the competition created by the principal and Maestra Oliviero, and had thrown a stone at her — and she burst out laughing. Enzo considered the laughter a sign of illness. He went in, but left the door open out of respect, he didn’t want the neighbors to think she was receiving men like a prostitute. He looked around, he glanced at her disheveled state, and although he didn’t see what still didn’t show, that is, the pregnancy, he deduced that she really needed help. In his serious way, completely without emotion, he said, even before she managed to calm down and stop laughing:

“We’re going now.”

“Where?”

“To your husband.”

“Did he send you?”

“No.”

“Who sent you?”

“No one sent me.”

“I’m not coming.”

“Then I’ll stay here with you.”

“Forever?”

“Until you’re persuaded.”

“And your job?”

“I’m tired of it.”

“And Carmen?”

“You are much more important.”

“I’ll tell her, then she’ll leave you.”

“I’ll tell her, I’ve already decided.”

From then on he spoke distantly, in a low voice. She answered him laughing, in a teasing way, as if none of their words were real, as if they were speaking in fun of a world, of people, of feelings that hadn’t existed for a long time. Enzo realized that, and for a while he said nothing more. He went through the house, found Lila’s suitcase, filled it with the things in the drawers, in the closet. Lila let him do it, because she considered him not the flesh-and-blood Enzo but a shadow, in color, as in the movies, who although he spoke was nevertheless an effect of the light. Having packed the suitcase, Enzo confronted her again and made a very surprising speech. He said, in his concentrated yet detached way,

“Lina, I’ve loved you since we were children. I never told you because you are very beautiful and very intelligent, and I am short, ugly, and worthless. Now return to your husband. I don’t know why you left him and I don’t want to know. I know only that you can’t stay here, you don’t deserve to live in filth. I’ll take you to the entrance of the building and wait: if he treats you badly, I’ll come up and kill him. But he won’t, he’ll be glad you’ve come back. But let’s make a pact: in the case that you can’t come to an agreement with your husband, I brought you back to him and I will come and get you. All right?”

Lila stopped laughing, she narrowed her eyes, she listened to him attentively for the first time. Interactions between Enzo and her had been very rare until that moment, but the times I had been present they had always amazed me. There was something indefinable between them, originating in the confusion of childhood. She trusted Enzo, I think, she felt she could count on him. When the young man took the suitcase and headed toward the door, which had remained open, she hesitated a moment, then followed him.

Enzo did wait under Lila and Stefano’s windows the night he took her home, and, if Stefano had beaten her, he probably would have gone up and killed him. But Stefano didn’t beat her; he welcomed her into her home, which was clean and tidy. He behaved as if his wife really had gone to stay with me in Pisa, even if there was no evidence that that was what had happened. Lila, on the other hand, did not take refuge in that excuse or any other. The following day, when she woke up, she said reluctantly, “I’m pregnant,” and he was so happy that when she added, “The baby isn’t yours,” he burst out laughing, with genuine joy. When she angrily repeated that phrase, once, twice, three times, and even tried to hit him with clenched fists, he cuddled her, kissed her, murmuring, “Enough, Lina, enough, enough, I’m too happy. I know that I’ve treated you badly but now let’s stop, don’t say mean things to me,” and his eyes filled with tears of joy.

Lila knew that people tell themselves lies to defend against the truth of the facts, but she was amazed that her husband was able to lie to himself with such joyful conviction. On the other hand she didn’t care, by now, about Stefano or about herself, and after again repeating for a while, without emotion, “The baby isn’t yours,” she withdrew into the lethargy of pregnancy. He prefers to put off the pain, she thought, and all right, let him do as he likes: if he doesn’t want to suffer now, he’ll suffer later.

She went on to make a list of what she wanted and what she didn’t want: she didn’t want to work in the shop in Piazza dei Martiri or in the grocery; she didn’t want to see anyone, friends, relatives, especially the Solaras; she wished to stay home and be a wife and mother. He agreed, sure that she would change her mind in a few days. But Lila secluded herself in the apartment, without showing any interest in Stefano’s business, or that of her brother and her father, or in the affairs of his relatives or of her own relatives.

A couple of times Pinuccia came with her son, Fernando, whom they called Dino, but she didn’t open the door.

Once Rino came, very upset, and Lila let him in, listened to all his chatter about how angry the Solaras were about her disappearance from the shop, about how badly things were going with Cerullo shoes, because Stefano thought only of his own affairs and was no longer investing. When at last he was silent, she said, “Rino, you’re the older brother, you’re a grownup, you have a wife and son, do me a favor: live your life without constantly turning to me.” He was hurt and he went away depressed, after a complaint about how everyone was getting richer while he, because of his sister, who didn’t care about the family, the blood of the Cerullos, but now felt she was a Carracci, was in danger of losing the little he had gained.

It happened that even Michele Solara went to the trouble of coming to see her — in the beginning even twice a day — at times when he was sure that Stefano wouldn’t be there. But she never let him in, she sat silently in the kitchen, almost without breathing, so that once, before he left, he shouted at her from the street: “Who the fuck do you think you are, whore, you had an agreement with me and you didn’t keep it.”

Lila welcomed willingly only Nunzia and Stefano’s mother, Maria, both of whom followed her pregnancy closely. She stopped throwing up but her complexion remained gray. She had the impression of having become large and inflated inside rather than outside, as if within the wrapping of her body every organ had begun to fatten. Her stomach seemed a bubble of flesh that was expanding because of the baby’s breathing. She was afraid of that expansion, she feared that the thing she was most afraid of would happen: she would break apart, overflow. Then suddenly she felt that the being she had inside, that absurd modality of life, that expanding nodule that at a certain point would come out of her sex like a puppet on a string — suddenly she loved it, and through it the sense of herself returned. Frightened by her ignorance, by the mistakes she could make, she began to read everything she could find about what pregnancy is, what happens inside the womb, how to prepare for the birth. She hardly went out at all in those months. She stopped buying clothes or objects for the house, she got in the habit instead of having her mother bring at least a couple of newspapers and Alfonso some journals. It was the only money she spent. Once Carmen showed up to ask for money and she told her to ask Stefano, she had none; the girl went away discouraged. She didn’t care about anyone anymore, only the baby.