Elena Ferrante - My Brilliant Friend

Fernando, however, who with his wife had immediately guessed Marcello’s true intentions, spoke with his daughter calmly. He explained to her that Marcello Solara’s proposal was important not only for her future but for that of the whole family. He told her that she was still a child and didn’t have to say yes immediately, but added that he, as her father, advised her to consent. A long engagement at home would slowly get her used to the marriage.

Lila answered with equal tranquility that rather than be engaged to Marcello Solara and marry him she would go and drown herself in the pond. A great quarrel arose, but she didn’t change her mind.

I was stunned by the news. I knew that Marcello wanted to be Lila’s boyfriend at all costs, but it would never have entered my mind that at our age one could receive a proposal of marriage. And yet Lila had received one, and she wasn’t yet fifteen, she hadn’t yet had a secret boyfriend, had never kissed anyone. I sided with her immediately. Get married? To Marcello Solara? Maybe even have children? No, absolutely no. I encouraged her to fight that new war against her father and swore I would support her, even if he had already lost his composure and now was threatening her, saying that for her own good he would break every bone in her body if she didn’t accept a proposal of that importance.

But I couldn’t stay with her. In the middle of July something happened that I should have thought of but that instead caught me unawares and overwhelmed me. One late afternoon, after the usual walk through the neighborhood with Lila, discussing what was happening to her and how to get out of it, I came home and my sister Elisa opened the door. She said in a state of excitement that in the dining room was her teacher, that is, Maestra Oliviero. She was talking to our mother.

I looked timidly into the room, my mother stammered, in annoyance, “Maestra Oliviero says you need to rest, you’re worn out.”

I looked at the teacher without understanding. She seemed the one in need of rest, she was pale and her face was puffy. She said to me, “My cousin responded just yesterday: you can go to her in Ischia, and stay there until the end of August. She’ll be happy to have you, you just have to help a little in the house.”

She spoke to me as if she were my mother and as if my mother, the real one, with the injured leg and the wandering eye, were only a disposable living being, and as such not to be taken into consideration. Nor did she go away after that communication, but stayed another hour showing me one by one the books that she had brought to lend to me. She explained to me which I should read first and which after, she made me swear that before reading them I would make covers for them, she ordered me to give them all back at the end of the summer without a single dog-ear. My mother endured all this patiently. She sat attentively, even though her wandering eye gave her a dazed expression. She exploded only when the teacher, finally, took her leave, with a disdainful farewell and not even a caress for my sister, who had counted on it and would have been proud. She turned to me, overwhelmed by bitterness for the humiliation that it seemed to her she had suffered on my account. She said, “The signorina must go and rest on Ischia, the signorina is too exhausted. Go and make dinner, go on, or I’ll hit you.”

Two days later, however, after taking my measurements and rapidly making me a bathing suit — I don’t know where she copied it from — she herself took me to the ferry. Along the street to the port, while she bought me the ticket, and then while she waited for me to get on, she besieged me with warnings. What frightened her most was the crossing. “Let’s hope the sea isn’t rough,” she said almost to herself, and swore that when I was a child she had taken me to Coroglio every day, so my catarrh would dry out, and that the sea was beautiful and I had learned to swim. But I didn’t remember Coroglio or the sea or learning to swim, and I told her. And her tone became resentful, as if to say that if I drowned it would not be her fault — that what she was supposed to do to avoid it she had done — but because of my own forgetfulness. Then she ordered me not to go far from the shore even when the sea was calm, and to stay home if it was rough or there was a red flag. “Especially,” she said, “if you have a full stomach or your period, you mustn’t even get your feet wet.” Before she left she asked an old sailor to keep an eye on me. When the ferry left the wharf I was terrified and at the same time happy. For the first time I was leaving home, I was going on a journey, a journey by sea. The large body of my mother — along with the neighborhood, and Lila’s troubles — grew distant, and vanished.

I blossomed. The teacher’s cousin was called Nella Incardo and she lived in Barano. I arrived in the town by bus, and found the house easily. Nella was a big, kind woman, very lively, talkative, unmarried. She rented rooms to vacationers, keeping for herself one small room and the kitchen. I would sleep in the kitchen. I had to make up my bed in the evening and take it all apart (boards, legs, mattress) in the morning. I discovered that I had some mandatory obligations: to get up at six-thirty, make breakfast for her and her guests — when I arrived there was an English couple with two children — tidy up and wash cups and bowls, set the table for dinner, and wash the dishes before going to sleep. Otherwise I was free. I could sit on the terrace and read with the sea in front of me, or walk along a steep white road toward a long, wide, dark beach that was called Spiaggia dei Maronti.

In the beginning, after all the fears that my mother had inoculated me with and all the troubles I had with my body, I spent the time on the terrace, dressed, writing a letter to Lila every day, each one filled with questions, clever remarks, lively descriptions of the island. But one morning Nella made fun of me, saying, “What are you doing like this? Put on your bathing suit.” When I put it on she burst out laughing, she thought it was old-fashioned. She sewed me one that she said was more modern, very low over the bosom, more fitted around the bottom, of a beautiful blue. I tried it on and she was enthusiastic, she said it was time I went to the sea, enough of the terrace.

The next day, amid a thousand fears and a thousand curiosities, I set out with a towel and a book toward the Maronti. The trip seemed very long, I met no one coming up or going down. The beach was endless and deserted, with a granular sand that rustled at every step. The sea gave off an intense odor and a sharp, monotonous sound.

I stood looking for a long time at that great mass of water. Then I sat on the towel, uncertain what to do. Finally I got up and stuck my feet in. How had it happened that I lived in a city like Naples and never thought, not once, of swimming in the sea? And yet it was so. I advanced cautiously, letting the water rise from my feet to my ankles, to my thighs. Then I missed a step and sank. Terrified, I gasped for air, swallowed water, returned to the surface, to the air. I realized that it came naturally to move my feet and arms in a certain way to keep myself afloat. So I knew how to swim. My mother really had taken me to the sea as a child and there, while she took the sand treatments, I had learned to swim. I saw her in a flash, younger, less ravaged, sitting on the black sand in the midday sun, in a flowered white dress, her good leg covered to the knee by her dress, the injured one completely buried in the burning sand.

The seawater and the sun rapidly erased the inflammation of the acne from my face. I burned, I darkened. I waited for letters from Lila, we had promised when we said goodbye, but none came. I practiced speaking English a little with the family at Nella’s. They understood that I wanted to learn and spoke to me with increasing kindness, and I improved quite a lot. Nella, who was always cheerful, encouraged me, and I began to interpret for her. Meanwhile she didn’t miss any opportunity to compliment me. She made me enormous meals, and she was a really good cook. She said that I had been a stick when I arrived and now, thanks to her treatment, I was beautiful.