Elena Ferrante - The Story of a New Name

One morning I went wandering not far from the school, along Via Veterinaria, behind the Botanic Garden. I thought of the conversations I had had recently with Antonio: he was hoping to avoid military service, as the son of a widowed mother and the sole support of the family; he wanted to ask for a raise in the shop, and also save so that he could take over the management of a gas pump along the stradone ; we would get married, I would help out at the pump. The choice of a simple life, my mother would approve. I can’t always please Lila, I said to myself. But how hard it was to erase from my mind the ambitions inspired by school. At the time when classes were over, I went, almost without intending it, to the neighborhood of the school, and walked around there. I was afraid of being seen by the teachers, and yet, I realized, I wished them to see me. I wanted to be either branded irremediably as a no longer model student or recaptured by the rhythms of school and submit to the obligation to go back.

The first groups of students appeared. I heard someone calling me, it was Alfonso. He was waiting for Marisa, but she was late.

“Are you going together?” I asked, teasing.

“No, she’s the one who’s got a crush.”

“Liar.”

“You’re the liar, telling me you were sick, and look at you, you’re fine. Professor Galiani is always asking about you, I told her you had a bad fever.”

“I did, in fact.”

“Obviously.”

He was carrying his books, tied up with elastic, under his arm, his face was strained by the tension of the hours of school. Did Alfonso also conceal Don Achille, his father, in his breast, despite his delicate appearance? Is it possible that our parents never die, that every child inevitably conceals them in himself? Would my mother truly emerge from me, with her limping gait, as my destiny?

I asked him, “Did you see what your brother did to Lina?”

Alfonso was embarrassed. “Yes.”

“And you didn’t say anything to him?”

“You have to see what Lina did to him.”

“Would you be able to act the same way with Marisa?”

He laughed timidly. “No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I know you, because we talk, because we go to school together.”

At the moment, I didn’t understand: what did “I know you” mean, what did “we talk” and “we go to school together” mean? I saw Marisa at the end of the street, she was running because she was late.

“Your girlfriend’s coming,” I said.

He didn’t turn, he shrugged, he mumbled, “Come back to school, please.”

“I’m sick,” I repeated, and left.

I didn’t want to exchange even a hello with Nino’s sister, any sign that evoked him made me anxious. But Alfonso’s obscure words did me good, I turned them over in my mind as I walked. He had said that because he knew me, we talked to each other, we sat at the same desk, he would never impose his authority on a possible wife by beating her. He had expressed himself with a frank sincerity, he wasn’t afraid of attributing to me, even if in a confused way, the capacity to influence him, a male, to change his behavior. I was grateful to him for that tangled message, which consoled me and set in motion a reconciliation between me and myself. It doesn’t take much for a conviction that has become fragile to weaken to the point of giving way. The next day I forged my mother’s signature and returned to school. That evening, at the ponds, clinging to Antonio to escape the cold, I promised him: I’ll finish the school year and we’ll get married.

But I had a hard time making up the ground I had lost, especially in science, and I tried to reduce my meetings with Antonio so that I could concentrate on my books. When I missed a date because I had to study, he became gloomy, he asked me, in alarm, “Is something wrong?”

“I’ve got a lot of homework.”

“How is it that all of a sudden you’ve got more homework?”

“I’ve always had a lot.”

“Before you didn’t have any.”

“It was a coincidence.”

“What are you hiding from me, Lenù?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you still love me?”

I reassured him, but meanwhile the time moved quickly by us and I went home angry at myself because I still had so much studying to do.

Antonio’s fixation was always the same: Sarratore’s son. He was afraid that I would talk to him, even that I would see him. Naturally, to prevent him from suffering, I concealed the fact that I ran into Nino entering school, coming out, in the corridors. Nothing particular happened, at most we exchanged a nod of greeting and went on our way: I could have talked to my boyfriend about it without any problems if he had been a reasonable person. But Antonio was not reasonable and in truth I wasn’t, either. Although Nino gave me no encouragement, a mere glimpse of him left me distracted during class. His presence a few classrooms away — real, alive, better educated than the professors, and courageous, and disobedient — drained meaning from the teachers’ lectures, the pages of books, the plans for marriage, the gas pump on the stradone .

Even at home I couldn’t study. Added to my confusing thoughts about Antonio, about Nino, about the future was my mother’s irritability, as she yelled at me to do this or that, and my siblings, who came one by one to have me look at their homework. That permanent turmoil wasn’t new, I had always studied in disorder. But the old determination that had allowed me to do my best even in those conditions seemed to be used up, I couldn’t or didn’t want to reconcile school with everyone’s needs anymore. So I would let the afternoon go by helping my mother, correcting my sister’s and brothers’ exercises, and studying little or not at all for myself. And if once I had sacrificed sleep to books, now, since I was still exhausted and sleep seemed to me a respite, at night I forgot about homework and went to bed.

And so I began to show up in class not only inattentive but unprepared, and I lived in fear that the teachers would call on me. Which soon happened. Once, in the same day, I got low marks in chemistry, art history, and philosophy, and my nerves were so frayed that right after the last bad grade I burst into tears in front of everyone. It was a terrible moment: I felt the horror and the pleasure of losing myself, the fear and the pride in going off the rails.

As we were leaving school Alfonso told me that his sister-in-law had asked him to tell me to go and see her. Go on, he urged me anxiously, surely you’ll study better there than at your house. So that afternoon I made up my mind and walked to the new neighborhood. But I didn’t go to Lila’s house to find a solution to my problems with school, I took it for granted that we would talk the whole time and that my situation as a former model student would get even worse. I said to myself, rather: better to go off the rails talking to Lila than in the midst of my mother’s yelling, the petulant demands of my siblings, the yearnings for Nino, Antonio’s recriminations; at least I would learn something about married life, a life that soon — I now assumed — would be mine.

Lila greeted me with obvious pleasure. Her eye was no longer swollen, her lip was healing. She was nicely dressed, her hair was carefully combed, she wore lipstick, yet she moved through the apartment as if her house were alien to her and she herself felt like a visitor. The wedding presents were still piled up near the door, the rooms had a smell of plaster and fresh paint mixed with the vaguely alcoholic scent that emanated from the new furniture in the dining room, the table, the sideboard with a mirror framed by dark-wood foliage, the silver chest full of silver, the plates, glasses, and bottles of colored liquors.