Элена Ферранте - The Lying Life of Adults

He went on like that the whole way, even more chaotically than in this summary of mine. I never understood how a man so devoted to reflection and study, capable of conceiving the most gleaming sentences, could at times, when he was overwhelmed by emotions, make such muddled speeches. I tried to interrupt him several times. I said: I understand Papa. I said: this doesn’t concern me, it’s between you and Mamma, it’s between you and Costanza, I don’t want to know. I said: I’m sorry you feel bad, I feel bad, too, Mamma feels bad, and doesn’t it seem a little ridiculous that all this feeling bad means you love us.

I didn’t intend to be sarcastic. Part of me really wished, at that point, to discuss with him the bad that, while you seem to be good, gradually or suddenly spreads through your mind, your stomach, your whole body. Where does it come from, Papa—I wanted to say to him—how do you control it, and why does it not sweep away the good but, rather, coexists with it. At that moment it seemed to me that, although he was talking mainly about love, he knew the bad better than Aunt Vittoria, and since I felt bad in myself, too, felt that it kept advancing, I would have liked to talk about it. But it was impossible, he noticed only the sarcastic edge of my words and continued anxiously to pile up justifications, accusations, a frenzy of self-denigration and a frenzy to redeem himself by listing his grand reasons, his pain and suffering. When we got home I kissed him on the side of his mouth and ran away, he had an acid smell that disgusted me.

My mother asked without interest:

“How did it go?”

“Fine. Costanza sent you a piece of cake.”

“You eat it.”

“I don’t feel like it.”

“Not even for breakfast tomorrow?”

“No.”

“Then throw it away.”

10.

Some time passed, and Corrado showed up again. I was just outside school, about to go in, I heard someone call me, but even before I heard his voice, before I turned and saw him in the crowd of students, I’d known that I would meet him that morning. I was glad, it seemed a presentiment, but I have to admit that I’d been thinking of him for a while, especially during the boring afternoons of studying, when my mother went out and I was alone in the house and hoped he’d show up suddenly like the other time. I never believed it was a question of love, I had something else in mind. I was worried because if Corrado didn’t come that might mean that my aunt would appear in person to demand the bracelet, and the letter I had composed would be useless, I would have to deal with her directly, which terrified me.

But there was something else. A very violent need for degradation was growing inside me—a fearless degradation, a yearning to feel heroically vile—and it seemed to me that Corrado had sensed that need and was ready to support it without a fuss. So I was waiting for him, I wanted him to appear, and there he was, finally. He asked me, in that way of his that hovered between serious and humorous, not to go to school, and I immediately agreed, in fact I pulled him away from the entrance for fear that the teachers would see him, and I proposed going to the Floridiana, I dragged him there happily.

He started joking to make me laugh, but I stopped him, I took out the letter.

“You’ll give it to Vittoria?”

“And the bracelet?”

“It’s mine, I’m not giving it to her.”

“Look, she’ll be angry, she’s harassing me, you don’t know how important it is to her.”

“And you don’t know how important it is to me.”

“You had a mean look. It was nice, I really liked it.”

“It’s not just a look, I’m all mean, by nature.”

“All?”

We had moved off the paths, and were hidden among trees and bushes that gave off the sweet scent of living leaves. This time he kissed me, but I didn’t like his tongue, it was gross, rough, he seemed to want to thrust mine into the back of my throat. He kissed me and touched my breasts, but roughly, he squeezed them too hard, first on top of the shirt, then he tried to stick his hand in one of the cups of my bra, but without real interest, and he quickly got tired of it. He abandoned my breasts but went on kissing me, he pulled up my skirt and with the palm of his hand pushed violently against the crotch of my underpants and rubbed me for a few seconds. Laughing, I muttered: enough, and I didn’t have to insist, he seemed glad to be spared that duty. He looked around, unzipped his fly, pulled my hand inside his pants. I assessed the situation. If he touched me, he hurt me, he bothered me; I started feeling like I wanted to go home and go to sleep. I decided to act myself, as a way of keeping him from acting. I took it out cautiously, I asked him in a whisper: can I give you a blow job. I knew only the word, nothing else, I pronounced it in an unnatural dialect. I imagined that you had to suck hard, as if you were attached greedily to a large nipple, or maybe lick. I hoped he would explain what to do, and, whatever it was, it would be better than the contact with his raspy tongue. I felt lost, why am I here, why do I want this thing. I felt no desire, it didn’t seem like a fun game, I wasn’t even curious, the smell that came from that large, tense, compact excrescence was unpleasant. Anxious, I hoped that someone—a mother taking her children out for a walk—would see us from the path and shout reproaches and insults. But there was no one, and since he didn’t say anything, in fact to me he seemed in a daze, I decided on a light kiss, a light touch of the lips. Luckily, it was enough. He immediately put his thing back into his pants and let out a short, hoarse cry. Afterward we walked through the Floridiana, but I was bored. Corrado had lost the desire to make me laugh, and was talking now in a serious, affected tone, making an effort to use Italian while I would have preferred dialect. Before we separated he asked me:

“You remember Rosario, my friend?”

“The one with the buck teeth?”

“Yes, he’s sort of ugly but nice.”

“He’s not ugly, he’s so-so.”

“Anyway I’m better-looking.”

“Well.”

“He has a car. Wanna come for a ride with us?”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether you show me a good time or not.”

“We’ll show you a good time.”

“We’ll see,” I said.

11.

Corrado called me a few days later to tell me about my aunt. Vittoria had ordered him to report to me word for word that if I dared to act the teacher as I had done with that letter, she would come to the house and hit me in front of that bitch my mother. For that reason—he urged me—take her the bracelet, please, she wants it absolutely next Sunday, she needs it, she has to show it off at some church event.

He didn’t merely summarize the message, he also told me how we were to organize ourselves for the occasion. He and his friend would come and pick me up in the car and drive me to Pascone. I would give back the bracelet—but listen to me, we’ll drop you off in the square: you can’t tell Vittoria that I came to get you in my friend’s car, remember, that’ll make her mad, you have to say you got there on the bus—and afterward we’ll go and have fun. O.K.?

In those days I was particularly restless; I didn’t feel well, I had a cough. I thought I was hideous and wanted to be more hideous. Before going to school, I’d stand in front of the mirror doing my best to look like a crazy person—my clothes, my hair. I wanted people not to want to be with me, exactly as I tried to let them know that I didn’t want to be with them. Everyone irritated me, neighbors, people on the street, classmates, teachers. My mother especially annoyed me, smoking continuously, drinking gin before going to bed, complaining lethargically about everything, assuming an expression both worried and disgusted as soon as I said I needed a notebook or a book. But mostly I couldn’t stand her because of the increasingly conspicuous devotion she now displayed toward everything my father did or said, as if he hadn’t betrayed her for at least fifteen years with a woman who was her friend, who was the wife of his best friend. In other words, she exasperated me. I’d recently gotten into the habit of erasing my expression of indifference and shouting at her in my improvised Neapolitan, purposely, that she had to stop it, that she had to not care—go to the movies, Ma, go dancing, he’s not your husband anymore, consider him dead, he went to live in Costanza’s house, is it possible that he’s still all you’re concerned with, that he’s still all you think about? I wanted to let her know that I felt contempt for her, that I wasn’t like her and would never be like her. So once when my father telephoned and she started off in her docile fashion with phrases like “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it,” I began repeating her slavish locutions in a loud voice but mixing in insults and obscenities in a dialect I didn’t know well, didn’t pronounce well. She hung up immediately, so as to spare her ex-husband my vulgar voice, stared at me for a few seconds, then went into her study, obviously to cry. I’d had enough, I accepted Corrado’s proposal immediately. Better to confront my aunt and give blow jobs to the two of them than stay shut up here in San Giacomo dei Capri, in this shit life.