Elena Ferrante - My Brilliant Friend

The tension was extreme. Lila gently defended her father, she told her fiancé to let it go: her designs were the fantasies of a child, and surely the modifications were necessary, and, besides, were not so great. But Rino supported Stefano and the discussion went on for a long time. It broke off only when Fernando, utterly worn out, sat down in a corner and, looking at the pictures on the wall, said, “If you want the shoes for Christmas take them like that. If you want them exactly the way my daughter designed them, have someone else make them.”

Stefano gave in, Rino, too, gave in.

At Christmas the shoes appeared in the window, a window with the comet star made of cotton wool. I went by to see them: they were elegant objects, carefully finished: just to look at them gave an impression of wealth that did not accord with the humble shop window, with the desolate landscape outside, with the shop’s interior, all pieces of hide and leather and benches and awls and wooden forms and boxes of shoes piled up to the ceiling, waiting for customers. Even with Fernando’s modifications, they were the shoes of our childish dreams, not invented for the reality of the neighborhood.

In fact at Christmas not a single pair sold. Only Antonio appeared, asked Rino for a 44, tried it. Later he told me the pleasure he had had in feeling so well shod, imagining himself with me at the wedding, in his new suit, with those shoes on his feet. But when he asked the price and Rino told him, he was dumbstruck: “Are you crazy?” and when Rino said, “I’ll sell them to you on a monthly installment,” he responded, laughing, “Then I’ll buy a Lambretta.”

At the moment Lila, taken up by the wedding, didn’t realize that her brother, until then cheerful, playful, even though he was exhausted by work, was becoming depressed again, sleeping badly, flying into a rage for no reason. “He’s like a child,” she said to Pinuccia, as if to apologize for some of his outbursts, “his mood changes according to whether his whims are satisfied immediately or not, he doesn’t know how to wait.” She, like Fernando, did not feel in the least that the failure of the shoes to sell at Christmas was a fiasco. After all, the production of the shoes had not followed any plan: they had originated in Stefano’s wish to see Lila’s purest caprice made concrete, there were heavy ones, light ones, spanning most of the seasons. And this was an advantage. In the white boxes piled up in the Cerullos’ shop was a considerable assortment. They had only to wait, and in winter, in spring, in autumn the shoes would sell.

But Rino was increasingly agitated. After Christmas, on his own initiative, he went to the owner of the dusty shoe store at the end of the stradone and, although he knew the man was bound hand and foot to the Solaras, proposed that he display some of the Cerullo shoes, without obligation, just to see how they went. The man said no politely, that product was not suitable for his customers. Rino took offense and an exchange of vulgarities followed, which became known in the whole neighborhood. Fernando was furious with his son, Rino insulted him, and Lila again experienced her brother as an element of disorder, a manifestation of the destructive forces that had frightened her. When the four of them went out, she noticed with apprehension that her brother maneuvered to let her and Pinuccia go on ahead while he stayed behind to talk to Stefano. In general the grocer listened to him without showing signs of irritation. Only once Lila heard him say:

“Excuse me, Rino, do you think I put so much money in the shoe store like that, without any security, just for love of your sister? We have the shoes, they’re beautiful, we have to sell them. The problem is to find the right place.”

That “just for love of your sister” didn’t please her. But she let it go, because the words had a good effect on Rino, who calmed down and began to talk, in particular to Pinuccia, about strategies for selling the shoes. He said they had to think on a grand scale. Why did so many good initiatives fail? Why had the Gorresio auto repair shop given up motorbikes? Why had the dressmaker in the dry goods store lasted only six months? Because they were undertakings that lacked breadth. The Cerullo shoes, instead, would as soon as possible leave the local market and become popular in the wealthier neighborhoods.

Meanwhile the date of the wedding approached. Lila hurried to fittings for her wedding dress, gave the final touches to her future home, fought with Pinuccia and Maria, who, among many things, were intolerant of Nunzia’s intrusions. The situation was increasingly tense. But the damaging attacks came from elsewhere. There were two events in particular, one after the other, that wounded Lila deeply.

One cold afternoon in February she asked me out of the blue if I could come with her to see Maestra Oliviero. She had never displayed any interest in her, no affection, no gratitude. Now, though, she felt the need to bring her the invitation in person. Since in the past I had never reported to her the hostile tones that the teacher had often used about her, it didn’t seem to me right to tell her then, especially since the teacher had recently seemed less aggressive, more melancholy: maybe she would welcome her kindly.

Lila dressed with extreme care. We walked to the building where the teacher lived, near the parish church. As we climbed the stairs, I realized that she was nervous. I was used to that journey, to those stairs; she wasn’t, and didn’t say a word. I rang the bell, I heard the teacher’s dragging steps.

“Who is it?”

“Greco.”

She opened the door. Over her shoulders she wore a purple shawl and half her face was wrapped in a scarf. Lila smiled and said, “Maestra, do you remember me?”

The teacher stared at her as she used to do in school when Lila was annoying, then she turned to me, speaking with difficulty, as if she had something in her mouth.

“Who is it? I don’t know her.”

Lila was confused and said quickly, in Italian, “I’m Cerullo. I’ve brought you an invitation, I’m getting married. And I would be so happy if you would come to my wedding.”

The teacher turned to me, said: “I know Cerullo, I don’t know who this girl is.”

She closed the door in our faces.

We stood without moving on the landing for some moments, then I touched her hand to comfort her. She withdrew it, stuck the invitation under the door, and started down the stairs. On the street she began talking about all the bureaucratic problems at the city hall and the parish, and how helpful my father had been.

The other sorrow, perhaps more profound, came, surprisingly, from Stefano and the business of the shoes. He had long since decided that the role of speech master would be entrusted to a relative of Maria’s who had emigrated to Florence after the war and had set up a small trade in old things of varied provenance, especially metal objects. This relative had married a Florentine woman and had taken on the local accent. Because of his cadences he enjoyed in the family a certain prestige, and also for that reason had been Stefano’s confirmation sponsor. But, abruptly, the bridegroom changed his mind.

At first, Lila spoke as if it were a sign of last-minute nervousness. For her, it was completely indifferent who the speech master was, the important thing was to decide. But for several days Stefano gave her only vague, confused answers, and she couldn’t understand who was to replace the Florentine couple. Then, less than a week before the wedding, the truth came out. Stefano told her, as a thing done, without any explanation, that the speech master would be Silvio Solara, the father of Marcello and Michele.

Lila, who until that moment hadn’t considered the possibility that even a distant relative of Marcello Solara might be present at her wedding, became again the girl I knew very well. She insulted Stefano grossly, she said she didn’t want to ever see him again. She shut herself up in her parents’ house, stopped concerning herself with anything, didn’t go to the last fitting of the dress, did absolutely nothing that had to do with the imminent wedding.