Elena Ferrante: My Brilliant Friend

The procession of relatives began. First came her mother, Nunzia, who spoke to her desperately about the good of the family. Then Fernando arrived, gruff, and told her not to be a child: for anyone who wanted to have a future in the neighborhood, to have Silvio Solara as speech master was obligatory. Finally Rino came, and, in an aggressive tone of voice, and with the air of a businessman who is interested only in profit, explained to her how things stood: Solara the father was like a bank and, above all, was the channel by which the Cerullo shoe styles could be placed in shops. “What are you doing?” he shouted at her with puffy, bloodshot eyes. “You want to ruin me and the whole family and all the work we’ve done up to now?” Right afterward even Pinuccia appeared, and said to her, in a somewhat artificial tone of voice, how pleased she, too, would have been to have the metal merchant from Florence as the speech master, but you had to be reasonable, you couldn’t cancel a wedding and eradicate a love for a matter of such little importance.

A day and a night passed. Nunzia sat mutely in a corner without moving, without caring for the house, without sleeping. Then she slipped out in secret from her daughter and came to summon me, to speak to Lila, to put in a word. I was flattered, I thought for a long time which side to take. There was at stake a wedding, a practical, highly complex thing, crammed with affections and interests. I was frightened. I knew that, although I could argue publicly with the Holy Spirit, challenging the authority of the professor of religion, if I were in Lila’s place I would never have the courage to throw it all away. But she, yes, she would be capable of it, even though the wedding was about to be celebrated. What to do? I felt that it would take very little for me to urge her along that path, and that to work for that conclusion would give me great pleasure. Inside, it was what I truly wanted: to bring her back to pale, ponytailed Lila, with the narrowed eyes of a bird of prey, in her tattered dress. No more of those airs, that acting like the Jacqueline Kennedy of the neighborhood.

But, unfortunately for her and for me, it seemed a small-minded act. Thinking it would be for her good, I would not restore her to the bleakness of the Cerullo house, and so a single idea became fixed in my mind and all I could do was tell her over and over again, with gentle persuasion: Silvio Solara, Lila, isn’t Marcello, or even Michele; it’s wrong to confuse them, you know better than I do, you’ve said it yourself on other occasions. He’s not the one who pulled Ada into the car, he’s not the one who shot at us the night of New Year’s, he’s not the one who forced his way into your house, he’s not the one who said vulgar things about you; Silvio will be the speech master and will help Rino and Stefano sell the shoes, that’s all — he’ll have no importance in your future life. I reshuffled the cards that by now we knew well enough. I spoke of the before and the after, of the old generation and of ours, of how we were different, of how she and Stefano were different. And this last argument made a breach, seduced her, I returned to it passionately. She listened to me in silence, evidently she wanted to be helped to compose herself, and slowly she did. But I read in her eyes that that move of Stefano’s had shown her something about him that she still couldn’t see clearly and that just for that reason frightened her even more than the ravings of Rino. She said to me:

“Maybe it’s not true that he loves me.”

“What do you mean he doesn’t love you? He does everything you tell him to.”

“Only when I don’t put real money at risk,” she said in a tone of contempt that I had never heard her use for Stefano Carracci.

In any case she returned to the world. She didn’t appear in the grocery, she didn’t go to the new house, in other words she was not the one who would seek to reconcile. She waited for Stefano to say to her: “Thank you, I love you dearly, you know there are things one is obliged to do.” Only then did she let him come up behind her and kiss her on the neck. But then she turned suddenly and looking him straight in the eyes said to him, “Marcello Solara must absolutely not set foot in my wedding.”

“How can I prevent it?”

“I don’t know, but you must swear to me.”

He snorted and said smiling, “All right, Lina, I swear.”

March 12th arrived, a mild day that was almost like spring. Lila wanted me to come early to her old house, so that I could help her wash, do her hair, dress. She sent her mother away, we were alone. She sat on the edge of the bed in underpants and bra. Next to her was the wedding dress, which looked like the body of a dead woman; in front of us, on the hexagonal-tiled floor, was the copper tub full of boiling water. She asked me abruptly: “Do you think I’m making a mistake?”

“How?”

“By getting married.”

“Are you still thinking about the speech master?”

“No, I’m thinking of the teacher. Why didn’t she want me to come in?”

“Because she’s a mean old lady.”

She was silent for a while, staring at the water that sparkled in the tub, then she said, “Whatever happens, you’ll go on studying.”

“Two more years: then I’ll get my diploma and I’m done.”

“No, don’t ever stop: I’ll give you the money, you should keep studying.”

I gave a nervous laugh, then said, “Thanks, but at a certain point school is over.”

“Not for you: you’re my brilliant friend, you have to be the best of all, boys and girls.”

She got up, took off her underpants and bra, said, “Come on, help me, otherwise I’ll be late.”

I had never seen her naked, I was embarrassed. Today I can say that it was the embarrassment of gazing with pleasure at her body, of being the not impartial witness of her sixteen-year-old’s beauty a few hours before Stefano touched her, penetrated her, disfigured her, perhaps, by making her pregnant. At the time it was just a tumultuous sensation of necessary awkwardness, a state in which you cannot avert the gaze or take away the hand without recognizing your own turmoil, without, by that retreat, declaring it, hence without coming into conflict with the undisturbed innocence of the one who is the cause of the turmoil, without expressing by that rejection the violent emotion that overwhelms you, so that it forces you to stay, to rest your gaze on the childish shoulders, on the breasts and stiffly cold nipples, on the narrow hips and the tense buttocks, on the black sex, on the long legs, on the tender knees, on the curved ankles, on the elegant feet; and to act as if it’s nothing, when instead everything is there, present, in the poor dim room, amid the worn furniture, on the uneven, water-stained floor, and your heart is agitated, your veins inflamed.

I washed her with slow, careful gestures, first letting her squat in the tub, then asking her to stand up: I still have in my ears the sound of the dripping water, and the impression that the copper of the tub had a consistency not different from Lila’s flesh, which was smooth, solid, calm. I had a confusion of feelings and thoughts: embrace her, weep with her, kiss her, pull her hair, laugh, pretend to sexual experience and instruct her in a learned voice, distancing her with words just at the moment of greatest closeness. But in the end there was only the hostile thought that I was washing her, from her hair to the soles of her feet, early in the morning, just so that Stefano could sully her in the course of the night. I imagined her naked as she was at that moment, entwined with her husband, in the bed in the new house, while the train clattered under their windows and his violent flesh entered her with a sharp blow, like the cork pushed by the palm into the neck of a wine bottle. And it suddenly seemed to me that the only remedy against the pain I was feeling, that I would feel, was to find a corner secluded enough so that Antonio could do to me, at the same time, the exact same thing.