Elena Ferrante - The Story of a New Name

The experience wounded Carmen, who became even more resentful. She still hadn’t forgiven Lila for breaking up their alliance in the new grocery. Now she couldn’t forgive her for not opening her purse. But mainly she couldn’t forgive her because — as she began to gossip to everyone — she had done as she liked: she had vanished, she had returned, and yet she continued to play the part of the lady, to have a nice house, and now even had a baby coming. The more of a slut you are, the better off you are. She, on the other hand, who labored from morning to night with no gratification — only bad things happened to her, one after the other. Her father died in jail. Her mother died in that way she didn’t even want to think about. And now Enzo as well. He had waited for her one night outside the grocery and told her that he didn’t want to continue the engagement. Just like that, very few words, as usual, no explanation. She had run weeping to her brother, and Pasquale had met Enzo to ask for an explanation. But Enzo had given none, so now they didn’t speak to each other.

When I returned from Pisa for Easter vacation and met Carmen in the gardens, she vented. “I’m an idiot,” she wept, “waiting for him the whole time he was a soldier. An idiot slaving from morning to night for practically nothing.” She said she was tired of everything. And with no obvious connection she began to insult Lila. She went so far as to ascribe to her a relationship with Michele Solara, who had often been seen wandering around the Carracci house. “Adultery and money,” she hissed, “that’s how she gets ahead.”

Not a word, however, about Nino. Miraculously, the neighborhood knew nothing of that. During the same period, Antonio told me about beating him up, and about how he had sent Enzo to retrieve Lila, but he told only me, and I’m sure that for his whole life he never spoke a word to anyone else. But I learned something from Alfonso: insistently questioned, he told me he had heard from Marisa that Nino had gone to study in Milan. Thanks to them, when on Holy Saturday I ran into Lila on the stradone , completely by chance, I felt a subtle pleasure at the idea that I knew more than she about the facts of her life, and that from what I knew it was easy to deduce how little good it had done her to take Nino away from me.

Her stomach was already quite big, it was like an excrescence on her thin body. Even her face didn’t show the florid beauty of pregnant women; it was ugly, greenish, the skin stretched over the prominent cheekbones. We both tried to pretend that nothing had happened.

“How are you?”

“Well.”

“Can I touch your stomach?”

“Yes.”

“And that matter?”

“Which?”

“The one on Ischia.”

“It’s over.”

“Too bad.”

“What are you doing?”

“I study, I have a place of my own and all the books I need. I even have a sort of boyfriend.”

“A sort?”

“Yes.”

“What’s his name?”

“Franco Mari.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s also a student.”

“Those glasses really suit you.”

“Franco gave them to me.”

“And the dress?”

“Also him.”

“He’s rich?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad.”

“And how is the studying going?”

“I work hard, otherwise they’ll send me away.”

“Be careful.”

“I’m careful.”

“Lucky you.”

“Well.”

She said her due date was in July. She had a doctor, the one who had sent her to bathe in the sea. A doctor, not the obstetrician in the neighborhood. “I’m afraid for the baby,” she said. “I don’t want to give birth at home.” She had read that it was better to go to a clinic. She smiled, she touched her belly. Then she said something that wasn’t very clear.

“I’m still here just for this.”

“Is it nice to feel the baby inside?”

“No, it repulses me, but I’m pleased to carry it.”

“Was Stefano angry?”

“He wants to believe what’s convenient for him.”

“That is?”

“That for a while I was a little crazy and ran away to you in Pisa.”

I pretended not to know anything, feigning amazement: “In Pisa? You and me?”

“Yes.”

“And if he asks, should I say that’s what happened?”

“Do as you like.”

We said goodbye, promising to write. But we never wrote and I did nothing to find out about the birth. Sometimes a feeling stirred in me that I immediately repressed to keep it from becoming conscious: I wanted something to happen to her, so the baby wouldn’t be born.

In that period I often dreamed of Lila. Once she was in bed in a lacy green nightgown, her hair was braided, which was something she had never done, she held in her arms a little girl dressed in pink, and she kept saying, in a sorrowful voice, “Take a picture but only of me, not of the child.” Another time she greeted me happily and then called her daughter, who had my name. “Lenù,” she said, “come and say hello to your aunt.” But a fat old giantess appeared, and Lila ordered me to undress her and wash her and change her diaper and swaddling. On waking I was tempted to look for a telephone and try to call Alfonso to find out if the baby had been born without any problems, if she was happy. But I had to study or maybe I had exams, and I forgot about it. When, in August, I was free of both obligations, it happened that I didn’t go home. I wrote some lies to my parents and went with Franco to Versilia, to an apartment belonging to his family. For the first time I wore a two-piece bathing suit: it fit in one fist and I felt very bold.

It was at Christmas that I heard from Carmen how difficult Lila’s delivery had been.

“She almost died,” she said, “so in the end the doctor had to cut open her stomach, otherwise the baby couldn’t be born.”

“She had a boy?”

“Yes.”

“Is he well?”

“He’s lovely.”

“And she?”

“She’s lost her figure.”

I learned that Stefano wanted to give his son the name of his father, Achille, but Lila was opposed to it, and the yelling of husband and wife, which hadn’t been heard for a long time, echoed throughout the clinic, so that the nurses had reprimanded them. In the end the child was called Gennaro, that is, Rino, like Lila’s brother.

I listened, I didn’t say anything. I felt unhappy, and to cope with my unhappiness I imposed on myself an attitude of reserve. Carmen noticed:

“I’m talking and talking, but you don’t say a word, you make me feel like the TV news. Don’t you give a damn about us anymore?”

“Of course I do.”

“You’ve gotten pretty, even your voice has changed.”

“Did I have an ugly voice?”

“You had the voice that we have.”

“And now?”

“You have it less.”

I stayed in the neighborhood for ten days, from December 24, 1964, to January 3, 1965, but I never went to see Lila. I didn’t want to see her son, I was afraid of recognizing in his mouth, in his nose, in the shape of his eyes or ears something of Nino.

At my house now I was treated like an important person who had deigned to stop by for a quick hello. My father observed me with pleasure. I felt his satisfied gaze on me, but if I spoke to him he became embarrassed. He didn’t ask what I was studying, what was the use of it, what job I would have afterward, and not because he didn’t want to know but out of fear that he wouldn’t understand my answers. My mother instead moved angrily through the house, and, hearing her unmistakable footsteps, I thought of how I had been afraid of becoming like her. But, luckily, I had outdistanced her, and she felt it, she resented me for it. Even now, when she spoke to me, it was as if I were guilty of terrible things: in every situation I perceived in her voice a shadow of disapproval, but, unlike in the past, she never wanted me to do the dishes, clean up, wash the floors. There was some uneasiness also with my sister and brothers. They tried to speak to me in Italian and often corrected their own mistakes, ashamed. But I tried to show them that I was the same as ever, and gradually they were persuaded.