Elena Ferrante - My Brilliant Friend

Among the many reasons, open and secret, for that challenge at the end of 1958, it should therefore be added that maybe Rino wanted to make up for his impoverished childhood. So he got busy collecting money here and there to buy fireworks. But we knew — he knew himself, despite the frenzy for grandeur that had seized him — that there was no way to compete with the Solaras. As they did every year, the two brothers went back and forth for days in their 1100, the trunk loaded with explosives that on New Year’s Eve would kill birds, frighten dogs, cats, mice, make the buildings quake from the cellars up to the roofs. Rino observed them from the shop with resentment and meanwhile was dealing with Pasquale, with Antonio, and above all with Enzo, who had a little more money, to procure an arsenal that would at least make for a good show.

Things took a small, unexpected turn when Lila and I were sent to Stefano Carracci’s grocery by our mothers to do the shopping for the dinner. The shop was full of people. Behind the counter, besides Stefano and Pinuccia, Alfonso was serving customers, and he gave us an embarrassed smile. We settled ourselves for a long wait. But Stefano addressed to me, unequivocally to me, a nod of greeting, and said something in his brother’s ear. My classmate came out from behind the counter and asked if we had a list. We gave him our lists and he slipped away. In five minutes our groceries were ready.

We put everything in our bags, paid Signora Maria, and went out. But we hadn’t gone far when not Alfonso but Stefano, Stefano himself, called to me with his lovely man’s voice, “Lenù.”

He joined us. He had a confident expression, a friendly smile. Only his white grease-stained apron spoiled him slightly. He spoke to both of us, in dialect, but looking at me: “Would you like to come and celebrate the new year at my house? Alfonso would really be pleased.”

The wife and children of Don Achille, even after the murder of the father, led a very retiring life: church, grocery, home, at most some small celebration they couldn’t skip. That invitation was something new. I answered, nodding at Lila: “We’re already busy, we’ll be with her brother and some friends.”

“Tell Rino, too, tell your parents: the house is big and we’ll go out on the terrace for the fireworks.”

Lila interjected in a dismissive tone: “Pasquale and Carmen Peluso and their mother are coming to celebrate with us.”

It was supposed to be a phrase that eliminated any further talk: Alfredo Peluso was at Poggioreale because he had murdered Don Achille, and the son of Don Achille could not invite the children of Alfredo to toast the new year at his house. Instead, Stefano looked at her, very intensely, as if until that moment he hadn’t seen her, and said, in the tone one uses when something is obvious: “All right, all of you come: we’ll drink spumante, dance — new year, new life.”

The words moved me. I looked at Lila, she, too, was confused. She murmured, “We have to talk to my brother.”

“Let me know.”

“And the fireworks?”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ll bring ours, and you?”

Stefano smiled. “How many fireworks do you want?”

“Lots.”

The young man again addressed me: “Come to my house and I promise you that we’ll still be setting them off at dawn.”

The whole way home we laughed till our sides ached, saying things like:

“He’s doing it for you.”

“No, for you.”

“He’s in love and to have you at his house he’ll invite even the Communists, even the murderers of his father.”

“What are you talking about? He didn’t even look at me.”

Rino listened to Stefano’s proposal and immediately said no. But the wish to vanquish the Solaras kept him uncertain and he talked about it with Pasquale, who got very angry. Enzo on the other hand mumbled, “All right, I’ll come if I can.” As for our parents, they were very pleased with that invitation because for them Don Achille no longer existed and his children and his wife were good, well-to-do people whom it was an honor to have as friends.

Lila at first seemed in a daze, as if she had forgotten where she was, the streets, the neighborhood, the shoemaker’s shop. Then she appeared at my house late one afternoon with a look as if she had understood everything and said to me: “We were wrong: Stefano doesn’t want me or you.”

We discussed it in our usual fashion, mixing facts with fantasies. If he didn’t want us, what did he want? We thought that Stefano, too, intended to teach the Solaras a lesson. We recalled when Michele had expelled Pasquale from Gigliola’s mother’s party, thus interfering in the affairs of the Carraccis and giving Stefano the appearance of a man unable to defend the memory of his father. On that occasion, if you thought about it, the brothers had insulted not only Pasquale but also him. And so now he was raising the stakes, as if to spite them: he was making a conclusive peace with the Pelusos, even inviting them to his house for New Year’s Eve.

“And who benefits?” I asked Lila.

“I don’t know. He wants to make a gesture that no one would make here in the neighborhood.”

“Forgive?”

Lila shook her head skeptically. She was trying to understand, we were both trying to understand, and understanding was something that we loved to do. Stefano didn’t seem the type capable of forgiveness. According to Lila he had something else in mind. And slowly, proceeding from one of the ideas she hadn’t been able to get out of her head since the moment she started talking to Pasquale, she seemed to find a solution.

“You remember when I said to Carmela that she could be Alfonso’s girlfriend?”

“Yes.”

“Stefano has in mind something like that.”

“Marry Carmela?”

“More.”

Stefano, according to Lila, wanted to clear away everything. He wanted to try to get out of the before . He didn’t want to pretend it was nothing, as our parents did, but rather to set in motion a phrase like: I know, my father was what he was, but now I’m here, we are us, and so, enough. In other words, he wanted to make the whole neighborhood understand that he was not Don Achille and that the Pelusos were not the former carpenter who had killed him. That hypothesis pleased us, it immediately became a certainty, and we had an impulse of great fondness for the young Carracci. We decided to take his part.

We went to explain to Rino, to Pasquale, to Antonio that Stefano’s invitation was more than an invitation, that behind it were important meanings, that it was as if he were saying: before us some ugly things happened; our fathers, some in one way, some in another, didn’t behave well; from this moment, we take note of that and show that we children are better than they were.

“Better?” Rino asked, with interest.

“Better,” I said. “The complete opposite of the Solaras, who are worse than their grandfather and their father.”

I spoke with great excitement, in Italian, as if I were in school. Lila herself glanced at me in amazement, and Rino, Pasquale, and Antonio muttered, embarrassed. Pasquale even tried to answer in Italian but he gave up. He said somberly:

“His father made money on the black market, and now Stefano is using it to make more money. His shop is in the place where my father’s carpenter shop was.”

Lila narrowed her eyes, so you almost couldn’t see them.

“It’s true. But do you prefer to be on the side of someone who wants to change or on the side of the Solaras?”

Pasquale said proudly, partly out of conviction, partly because he was visibly jealous of Stefano’s unexpected central role in Lila’s words, “I’m on my own side and that’s it.”