Elena Ferrante - My Brilliant Friend

Then he asked me about Lila.

“Did she go on studying?”

“No.”

“What does she do?”

“She helps her parents.”

“She was so smart, you couldn’t keep up with her, she made my head a blur.”

He said it just that way— she made my head a blur —and if at first I had been a little disappointed because he had said that his declaration of love had been only an attempt to introduce himself into my and Lila’s relationship, this time I suffered in an obvious way, I felt a real pain in my chest.

“She’s not like that anymore,” I said. “She’s changed.”

And I felt an urge to add, “Have you heard how the teachers at school talk about me?” Luckily I managed to restrain myself. But, after that conversation, I stopped writing to Lila: I had trouble telling her what was happening to me, and anyway she wouldn’t answer. I devoted myself instead to taking care of Nino. I knew that he woke up late and I invented excuses of every sort not to have breakfast with the others. I waited for him, I went to the beach with him, I got his things ready, I carried them, we went swimming together. But when he went out to sea I didn’t feel able to follow, I returned to the shoreline to watch apprehensively the wake he left, the dark speck of his head. I became anxious if I lost him, I was happy when I saw him return. In other words I loved him and knew it and was content to love him.

But meanwhile the mid-August holiday approached. One evening I told him that I didn’t want to go to the Port, I would rather walk to the Maronti, there was a full moon. I hoped that he would come with me, rather than take his sister, who was eager to go to the Port, where by now she had a sort of boyfriend with whom, she told me, she exchanged kisses and embraces, betraying the boyfriend in Naples. Instead he went with Marisa. As a matter of principle, I set out on the rocky road that led to the beach. The sand was cold, gray-black in the moonlight, the sea scarcely breathed. There was not a living soul and I began to weep with loneliness. What was I, who was I? I felt pretty again, my pimples were gone, the sun and the sea had made me slimmer, and yet the person I liked and whom I wished to be liked by showed no interest in me. What signs did I carry, what fate? I thought of the neighborhood as of a whirlpool from which any attempt at escape was an illusion. Then I heard the rustle of sand, I turned, I saw the shadow of Nino. He sat down beside me. He had to go back and get his sister in an hour. I felt he was nervous, he was hitting the sand with the heel of his left foot. He didn’t talk about books, he began suddenly speaking of his father.

“I will devote my life,” he said, as if he were speaking of a mission, “to trying not to resemble him.”

“He’s a nice man.”

“Everyone says that.”

“And so?”

He had a sarcastic expression that for a few seconds made him ugly.

“How is Melina?”

I looked at him in astonishment. I had been very careful never to mention Melina in those days of intense conversation, and here he was talking about her.

“All right.”

“He was her lover. He knew perfectly well that she was a fragile woman, but he took her just the same, out of pure vanity. Out of vanity he would hurt anyone and never feel responsible. Since he is convinced that he makes everyone happy, he thinks that everything is forgiven him. He goes to Mass every Sunday. He treats us children with respect. He is always considerate of my mother. But he betrays her continually. He’s a hypocrite, he makes me sick.”

I didn’t know what to say. In the neighborhood terrible things could happen, fathers and sons often came to blows, like Rino and Fernando, for example. But the violence of those few carefully constructed sentences hurt me. Nino hated his father with all his strength, that was why he talked so much about the Karamazovs. But that wasn’t the point. What disturbed me profoundly was that Donato Sarratore, as far as I had seen with my own eyes, heard with my own ears, was not repellent, he was the father that every girl, every boy should want, and Marisa in fact adored him. Besides, if his sin was the capacity to love, I didn’t see anything particularly evil, even of my father my mother would say angrily, Who knows what he had been up to. As a result those lashing phrases, that cutting tone seemed to me terrible. I murmured, “He and Melina were overcome by passion, like Dido and Aeneas. These are things that are hurtful, but also very moving.”

“He swore faithfulness to my mother before God,” he exclaimed suddenly. “He doesn’t respect her or God.” And he jumped up in agitation, his eyes were beautiful, shining. “Not even you understand me,” he said, walking off with long strides.

I caught up to him, my heart pounding.

“I understand you,” I murmured, and cautiously took his arm.

We had scarcely touched, the contact burned my fingers, I immediately let go. He bent over and kissed me on the lips, a very light kiss.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he said.

“But the thirteenth is the day after tomorrow.”

He didn’t answer. We went back to Barano speaking of books, then we went to get Marisa at the Port. I felt his mouth on mine.

I cried all night, in the silent kitchen. I fell asleep at dawn. Nella came to wake me and reproached me, she said that Nino had wanted to have breakfast on the terrace in order not to disturb me. He had left.

I dressed in a hurry, and she saw that I was suffering. “Go on,” she yielded, finally, “maybe you’ll be in time.” I ran to the Port hoping to get there before the ferry left, but the boat was already out at sea.

Some difficult days passed. Cleaning the rooms I found a blue paper bookmark that belonged to Nino and I hid it among my things. At night, in my bed in the kitchen, I sniffed it, kissed it, licked it with the tip of my tongue and cried. My own desperate passion moved me and my weeping fed on itself.

Then Donato Sarratore arrived for his two-week holiday. He was sorry that his son had left, but pleased that he had joined his schoolmates in the Avellinese to study. “He’s a truly serious boy,” he said to me, “like you. I’m proud of him, as I imagine your father must be proud of you.”

The presence of that reassuring man calmed me. He wanted to meet Marisa’s new friends, he invited them one evening to have a big bonfire on the beach. He himself gathered all the wood he could find and piled it up, and he stayed with us until late. The boy with whom Marisa was carrying on a half-steady relationship strummed a guitar and Donato sang, he had a beautiful voice. Then, late at night, he himself began to play and he played well, he improvised dance tunes. Some began to dance, Marisa first.

I looked at that man and thought: he and his son have not even a feature in common. Nino is tall, he has a delicate face, the forehead buried under black hair, the mouth always half-closed, with inviting lips; Donato instead is of average height, his features are pronounced, he has a receding hairline, his mouth is compact, almost without lips. Nino has brooding eyes that see beyond things and persons and seem to be frightened; Donato has a gaze that is always receptive, that adores the appearance of every thing or person and is always smiling on them. Nino has something that’s eating him inside, like Lila, and it’s a gift and a suffering; they aren’t content, they never give in, they fear what is happening around them; this man, no, he appears to love every manifestation of life, as if every lived second had an absolute clarity.

From that evening on, Nino’s father seemed to me a solid remedy not only against the darkness into which his son had driven me, departing after an almost imperceptible kiss, but also — I realized with amazement — against the darkness into which Lila had driven me by never responding to my letters. She and Nino scarcely know each other, I thought, they have never been friends, and yet now they seem to me very similar: they have no need of anything or anyone, and they always know what’s right and what isn’t. But if they’re wrong? What is especially terrible about Marcello Solara, what is especially terrible about Donato Sarratore? I didn’t understand. I loved both Lila and Nino, and now in a different way I missed them, but I was grateful to that hated father, who made me, and all us children, important, who gave us joy and peace that night at the Maronti. Suddenly I was glad that neither of the two was present on the island.