Elena Ferrante - My Brilliant Friend

We were driving among the new buildings in order to avoid passing the Bar Solara.

“I don’t care if Marcello sees us,” Stefano said without emphasis, “but if it matters to you it’s fine like this.”’

We went through the tunnel, we turned toward the Marina. It was the road that Lila and I had taken many years earlier, when we had gotten caught in the rain. I mentioned that episode, she smiled, Stefano wanted us to tell him about it. We told him everything, it was fun, and meanwhile we arrived at the Granili.

“What do you think, fast, isn’t it?”

“Incredibly fast,” I said, enthusiastically.

Lila made no comment. She looked around, at times she touched my shoulder to point out the houses, the ragged poverty along the street, as if she saw a confirmation of something and I was supposed to understand it right away. Then she asked Stefano, seriously, without preamble, “Are you really different?”

He looked at her in the rearview mirror. “From whom?”

“You know.”

He didn’t answer immediately. Then he said in dialect, “Do you want me to tell you the truth?”

“Yes.”

“The intention is there, but I don’t know how it will end up.”

At that point I was sure that Lila must not have told me quite a few things. That allusive tone was evidence that they were close, that they had talked other times and not in jest but seriously. What had I missed in the period of Ischia? I turned to look at her, she delayed replying, I thought that Stefano’s answer had made her nervous because of its vagueness. I saw her flooded by sunlight, eyes half closed, her shirt swelled by her breast and by the wind.

“The poverty here is worse than among us,” she said. And then, without connection, laughing, “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about when you wanted to prick my tongue.”

Stefano nodded.

“That was another era,” he said.

“Once a coward, always a coward — you were twice as big as me.”

He gave a small, embarrassed smile and, without answering, accelerated in the direction of the port. The drive lasted less than half an hour, we went back on the Rettifilo and Piazza Garibaldi.

“Your brother isn’t well,” Stefano said when we had returned to the outskirts of the neighborhood. He looked at her again in the mirror and asked, “Are those shoes displayed in the window the ones you made?”

“What do you know about the shoes?”

“It’s all Rino talks about.”

“And so?”

“They’re very beautiful.”

She narrowed her eyes, squeezed them almost until they were closed.

“Buy them,” she said in her provocative tone.

“How much will you sell them for?”

“Talk to my father.”

Stefano made a decisive U turn that threw me against the door, we turned onto the street where the shoe repair shop was.

“What are you doing?” Lila asked, alarmed now.

“You said to buy them and I’m going to buy them.”

He stopped the car in front of the shoemaker’s shop, came around and opened the door for me, gave me his hand to help me out. He didn’t concern himself with Lila, who got out herself and stayed behind. He and I stopped in front of the window, under the eyes of Fernando and Rino, who looked at us from inside the shop with sullen curiosity.

When Lila joined us Stefano opened the door of the shop, let me go first, went in without making way for her. He was very courteous with father and son, and asked if he could see the shoes. Rino rushed to get them, and Stefano examined them, praised them: “They’re light and yet strong, they really have a nice line.” He asked me, “What do you think, Lenù?”

I said, with great embarrassment, “They’re very handsome.”

He turned to Fernando: “Your daughter said that all three of you worked on them and that you have a plan to make others, for women as well.”

“Yes,” said Rino, looking in wonder at his sister.

“Yes,” said Fernando, puzzled, “but not right away.”

Rino said to his sister, a little worked up, because he was afraid she would refuse, “Show him the designs.”

Lila, continuing to surprise him, didn’t resist. She went to the back of the shop and returned, handing the sheets of paper to her brother, who gave them to Stefano. They were the models that she had designed almost two years earlier.

Stefano showed me a drawing of a pair of women’s shoes with a very high heel.

“Would you buy them?”

“Yes.”

He went back to examining the designs. Then he sat down on a stool, took off his right shoe.

“What size is it?”

“43, but it could be a 44,” Rino lied.

Lila, surprising us again, knelt in front of Stefano and using the shoehorn helped him slip his foot into the new shoe. Then she took off the other shoe and did the same.

Stefano, who until that moment had been playing the part of the practical, businesslike man, was obviously disturbed. He waited for Lila to get up, and remained seated for some seconds as if to catch his breath. Then he stood, took a few steps.

“They’re tight,” he said.

Rino turned gray, disappointed.

“We can put them on the machine and widen them,” Fernando interrupted, but uncertainly.

Stefano turned to me and asked, “How do they look?”

“Nice,” I said.

“Then I’ll take them.”

Fernando remained impassive, Rino brightened.

“You know, Ste’, these are an exclusive Cerullo design, they’ll be expensive.”

Stefano smiled, took an affectionate tone: “And if they weren’t an exclusive Cerullo design, do you think I would buy them? When will they be ready?”

Rino looked at his father, radiant.

“We’ll keep them in the machine for at least three days,” Fernando said, but it was clear that he could have said ten days, twenty, a month, he was so eager to take his time in the face of this unexpected novelty.

“Good: you think of a friendly price and I’ll come in three days to pick them up.”

He folded the pieces of paper with the designs and put them in his pocket before our puzzled eyes. Then he shook hands with Fernando, with Rino, and headed toward the door.

“The drawings,” Lila said coldly.

“Can I bring them back in three days?” Stefano asked in a cordial tone, and without waiting for an answer opened the door. He made way for me to pass and went out after me.

I was already settled in the car next to him when Lila joined us. She was angry.

“You think my father is a fool, that my brother is a fool?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you think you’ll make fools of my family and me, you are mistaken.”

“You are insulting me: I’m not Marcello Solara.”

“And who are you?”

“A businessman: the shoes you’ve designed are unusual. And I don’t mean just the ones I bought, I mean all of them.”

“So?”

“So let me think and we’ll see each other in three days.”

Lila stared at him as if she wanted to read his mind, she didn’t move away from the car. Finally she said something that I would never have had the courage to utter:

“Look, Marcello tried in every possible way to buy me but no one is going to buy me.”

Stefano looked her straight in the eyes for a long moment.

“I don’t spend a lira if I don’t think it can produce a hundred.”

He started the engine and we left. Now I was sure: the drive had been a sort of agreement reached at the end of many encounters, much talk. I said weakly, in Italian, “Please, Stefano, leave me at the corner? If my mother sees me in a car with you she’ll bash my face in.”

Lila’s life changed decisively during that month of September. It wasn’t easy, but it changed. As for me, I had returned from Ischia in love with Nino, branded by the lips and hands of his father, sure that I would weep night and day because of the mixture of happiness and horror I felt inside. Instead I made no attempt to find a form for my emotions, in a few hours everything was reduced. I put aside Nino’s voice, the irritation of his father’s mustache. The island faded, lost itself in some secret corner of my head. I made room for what was happening to Lila.