Elena Ferrante - The Story of a New Name

One day, Stefano appeared on the landing. He had left the grocery and decided to come and see his son. Rinuccio greeted him joyfully, Stefano played with him for a while. But Lila saw that her husband was bored, he couldn’t wait to leave. In the past it had seemed that he couldn’t live without her and the child; instead here he was, looking at his watch, yawning, almost certainly he had come because his mother or even Ada had sent him. As for love, jealousy, it had all passed, he wasn’t agitated anymore.

“I’ll take the child for a walk.”

“Watch out, he always wants to be picked up.”

“I’ll carry him.”

“No, make him walk.”

“I’ll do as I like.”

They went out, he returned half an hour later, he said he had to hurry back to the grocery. He swore that Rinuccio hadn’t complained, hadn’t asked to be picked up. Before he left he said, “I see that here you’re known as Signora Cerullo.”

“That’s what I am.”

“I didn’t kill you and I won’t kill you only because you’re the mother of my son. But you and that shit friend of yours are taking a big risk.”

Lila laughed, she provoked him, saying, “You’re only tough with people who can’t crack your head open, you bastard.”

Then she realized that her husband was alluding to Solara and she yelled at him from the landing, as he was going down the stairs: “Tell Michele that if he shows up here I’ll spit in his face.”

Stefano didn’t answer, he disappeared into the street. He returned, I think, at most four or five more times. That last time he met his wife he yelled at her, furiously, “You are the shame of your family. Even your mother doesn’t want to see you anymore.”

“It’s clear that they never understood what a life I had with you.”

“I treated you like a queen.”

“Better a beggar, then.”

“If you have another child you’d better abort it, because you have my surname and I don’t want it to be my child.”

“I’m not going to have any more children.”

“Why? Have you decided not to screw anymore?”

“Fuck off.”

“Anyway, I warned you.”

“Rinuccio isn’t your son, and yet he has your surname.”

“Whore, you keep saying it so it must be true. I don’t want to see you or him anymore.”

He never really believed her. But he pretended, because it was convenient. He preferred a peaceful life that would vanquish the emotional chaos she caused him.

Lila told Enzo in detail about her husband’s visits. He listened attentively and almost never made comments. He continued to be restrained in every expression of himself. He didn’t even tell her what sort of work he did in the factory and if it suited him or not. He went out at six in the morning and returned at seven in the evening. He ate dinner, he played a little with the boy, he listened to her conversation. As soon as Lila mentioned some urgent need of Rinuccio’s, the next day he brought the necessary money. He never told her to ask Stefano to contribute to the maintenance of his child, he didn’t tell her to find a job. He simply looked at her as if he lived only to get to those evening hours, to sit with her in the kitchen, listening to her talk. At a certain point he got up, said goodnight, and went into the bedroom.

One afternoon Lila had an encounter that had significant consequences. She went out alone, having left Rinuccio with the neighbor. She heard an insistent horn behind her. It was a fancy car, someone was signaling to her from the window.

“Lina.”

She looked closely. She recognized the wolfish face of Bruno Soccavo, Nino’s friend.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I live here.”

She said almost nothing about herself, since at that time such things were difficult to explain. She didn’t mention Nino, nor did he. She asked instead if he had graduated, he said he had decided to stop studying.

“Are you married?”

“Of course not.”

“Engaged?”

“One day yes, the next no.”

“What do you do?”

“Nothing, there are people who work for me.”

It occurred to her to ask him, almost as a joke: “Would you give me a job?”

“You? What do you need a job for?”

“To work.”

“You want to make salami and mortadella?”

“Why not.”

“And your husband?”

“I don’t have a husband anymore. But I have a son.”

Bruno looked at her attentively to see if she was joking. He seemed confused, evasive. “It’s not a nice job,” he said. Then he talked volubly about the problems of couples in general, about his mother, who was always fighting with his father, about a violent passion he himself had had recently for a married woman, but she had left him. Bruno was unusually talkative, he invited her to a café, continuing to tell her about himself. Finally, when Lila said she had to go, he asked, “Did you really leave your husband? You really have a child?”

“Yes.”

He frowned, wrote something on a napkin.

“Go to this man, you’ll find him in the morning after eight. And show him this.”

Lila smiled in embarrassment.

“The napkin?”

“Yes.”

“It’s enough?”

He nodded yes, suddenly made shy by her teasing tone. He murmured, “That was a wonderful summer.”

She said, “For me, too.”

All this I found out later. I would have liked to use the address in San Giovanni that Ada had given me right away, but something crucial happened to me as well. One morning I was lazily reading a long letter from Pietro and at the end of the last page I found a few lines in which he told me that he had had his mother read my text (that’s what he called it). Adele had found it so good that she had typed it and had sent it to a publisher in Milan for whom she had done translations for years. They had liked it and wanted to publish it.

It was a late autumn morning, I remember a gray light. I sat at the kitchen table, the same one on which my mother was ironing the clothes. The old iron slid over the material with energy, the wood vibrated under my elbows. I looked at those lines for a long time. I said softly, in Italian, only to convince myself that the thing was real: “Mamma, here it says that they are going to publish a novel I wrote.” My mother stopped, lifted the iron off the material, set it down upright.

“You wrote a novel?” she asked in dialect.

“I think so.”

“Did you write it or not?”

“Yes.”

“Will they pay you?”

“I don’t know.”

I went out, ran to the Bar Solara, where you could make long-distance phone calls in some comfort. After several attempts — Gigliola called from the bar, “Go on, talk”—Pietro answered but he had to work and was in a hurry. He said that he didn’t know anything more about the business than he had written me.

“Did you read it?” I asked, in agitation.

“Yes.”

“But you never said anything.”

He stammered something about lack of time, studying, responsibilities.

“How is it?”

“Good.”

“Good and that’s all?”

“Good. Talk to my mother, I’m a philologist, not a literary person.”

He gave me the number of his parents’ house.

“I don’t want to telephone, I’m embarrassed.”

I sensed some irritation, rare in him who was always so courteous. He said, “You’ve written a novel, you take responsibility for it.”

I scarcely knew Adele Airota, I had seen her four times and we had exchanged only a few formal remarks. In all that time I had been sure she was a wealthy, cultivated wife and mother — the Airotas never said anything about themselves, they acted as if their activities in the world were of scant interest, yet took it for granted that these activities were known to everyone — and only now began to realize that she had a job, that she was able to exercise power. I telephoned anxiously, the maid answered, gave her the phone. I was greeted cordially, but she used the formal lei and I did, too. She said that at the publishing house they were all very excited about how good the book was and, as far as she knew, a draft of the contract had already been sent.