Элена Ферранте - The Lying Life of Adults

“Everything Giuliana does she does for him,” she said.

“And isn’t that lovely?”

“You think it’s lovely to be a slave?”

“I think it’s lovely to love.”

“Even if he doesn’t love her?”

“How do you know he doesn’t love her?”

“She says so, she says it can’t be that he loves her.”

“Everyone who loves is afraid of not being loved.”

“If someone makes you live in anguish the way Giuliana lives, what pleasure is there in loving?”

“How do you know she’s anguished?”

“I saw them together once, with Tonino.”

“So?”

“Giuliana can’t bear the idea of him not liking her anymore.”

“It must be the same for him.”

“He’s in Milan, you know how many women he has.”

That last remark was particularly upsetting to me. I didn’t even want to think of the possibility that Roberto had other women. I preferred him devoted to Giuliana and faithful until death. I asked her:

“Is Giuliana afraid of being cheated on?”

“She never said so but I think she is.”

“The time I saw him he didn’t seem the type who cheats.”

“Did your father seem like someone who would cheat? And yet he did: he cheated on your mother with my mother.”

I reacted harshly.

“My father and your mother are liars.”

She had a bewildered expression.

“You don’t like what I’m saying?”

“No. It’s a pointless comparison.”

“Maybe. But I’d like to test this Roberto.”

“How?”

Her eyes lighted up, she half closed her mouth, arched her back, thrusting her chest forward. Like this, she said. She wanted to talk to him with that expression on her face and in that provocative pose. In fact, she would wear something very low-cut and a miniskirt and would nudge Roberto often with her shoulder and lean her bosom against his arm and put a hand on his thigh and take his arm when they walked. Oh, she said, visibly disgusted, what shits men are, you do just a couple of those things and whatever age they are they go mad, whether you’re skin and bones or fat or have pimples and fleas.

This rant made me mad. She had begun with our girlish talk and now suddenly was speaking with a grown woman’s vulgarity. I said, struggling to restrain a threatening tone:

“Don’t you dare do those things with Roberto.”

“Why?” She was surprised. “It’s for Giuliana. If he’s a good guy, fine, but if not that’s how we’ll save her.”

“In her place I wouldn’t want to be saved.”

She looked at me as if she couldn’t understand. She said:

“I was joking. Promise me one thing?”

“What?”

“If Giuliana calls you, call me right away, I want to be at this get-together with Roberto, too.”

“O.K. But if she says that’ll make her fiancé uncomfortable, I can’t do anything.”

She went silent, she lowered her gaze, and when, a fraction of a second later, she raised it again, her eyes held a painful request for clarity.

“It’s all over between us, you don’t love me anymore.”

“No, I love you and will until I die.”

“Then give me a kiss.”

I kissed her on the cheek. She wanted my mouth, I avoided her.

“We’re not children anymore,” I said.

She went unhappily toward Mergellina.

17.

Giuliana called one afternoon to make a date for the following Sunday in Piazza Amedeo; Roberto would be there, too. I felt that the moment so longed for, so intensely imagined, had truly arrived, and again, even more violently, I was afraid. I stammered, I talked about all the homework I had, she said laughing: Giannì, calm down, Roberto won’t eat you, I want him to see that I have friends who study, who speak well, do me this favor.

I retreated, confused, and, just to find something that would complicate things to the point of preventing the meeting, I brought up Angela. I had already decided almost without admitting it that, if Giuliana really intended to have me meet her fiancé, I wouldn’t say anything to Angela, I wanted to avert more annoyance and tension. But sometimes thoughts release a latent force, seize on images against your will, thrust them before your eyes for a fraction of a second. I thought surely that the figure of Angela, once evoked, would not be welcomed by Giuliana and would lead her to say: all right, let’s put it off to another time. But in my mind there was more: I imagined my friend in her low-cut blouse, batting her eyelashes, opening her lips into an O, arching her back; and suddenly it seemed that setting her beside Roberto, leaving her free to disrupt and disconnect that couple, could become a tidal wave. I said:

“There’s a problem: I told Angela we were going to see each other and probably Roberto as well.”

“So?”

“She wants to come.”

Giuliana was silent for a long moment, then said:

“Giannì, I love Angela, but she’s not an easy type, she always wants to be in the middle.”

“I know.”

“What if you didn’t say anything about this date?”

“Impossible. One way or another she’ll find out that I met your fiancé and she won’t speak to me anymore. Better to forget it.”

More seconds of silence, then she agreed:

“O.K., have her come, too.”

From that point on my heart raced. The fear that I might seem ignorant and unintelligent to Roberto kept me from sleeping and brought me within a step of calling my father to ask him questions about life, death, God, Christianity, Communism, so that I could use his answers, which were always crammed with knowledge, in a possible conversation. But I resisted, I didn’t want to contaminate Giuliana’s fiancé, of whom I preserved an image as of a heavenly apparition, with my father’s earthly small-mindedness. And then my obsession with my appearance intensified. How would I dress? Was there some way of improving myself at least a little?

Unlike Angela, who since she was a child had cared a lot about clothes, I, during that long period of crisis, had provocatively abandoned the desire to make myself pretty. You’re ugly—I had concluded—and an ugly person is ridiculous if she tries to beautify herself. So my only mania remained cleanliness, and I washed constantly. Otherwise I bundled myself in black, hiding, or, contrarily, put on heavy makeup, wore bright colors, made myself vulgar on purpose. But for that occasion I tried and tried to see if I could find a middle ground that would make me acceptable. Since I was never happy with myself, in the end all I cared about was that the colors I chose wouldn’t clash, and, after yelling to my mother that I was going out with Angela, I went through the door, hurried down along San Giacomo dei Capri.

I’ll be sick from the tension, I thought as the funicular descended at its usual jangling slow pace toward Piazza Amedeo, I’ll stumble, I’ll hit my head, I’ll die. Or I’ll get mad and rip someone’s eyes out. I was late, sweaty, kept straightening my hair with my fingers in fear that it was pasted to my skull the way Vittoria’s sometimes was. When I reached the piazza, I immediately saw Angela, who beckoned me, she was sitting outside a café, already sipping something. I went over and sat down with her; there was a tepid sun. There they are, the couple, she said in a low voice, and I understood that the couple were behind me. I not only forced myself not to turn, but, instead of getting up, as Angela was already doing, I stayed seated. I felt Giuliana’s hand resting lightly on my shoulder—hi, Giannì—I looked out of the corner of my eye at her manicured fingers, the sleeve of her brown jacket, a bracelet just sticking out. Angela was already uttering the first cordial remarks, now I, too, would have liked to say something, respond to the greeting. But the bracelet half covered by the sleeve of the jacket was the one I had given back to my aunt and I was so surprised I didn’t even say hi. Vittoria, Vittoria, I didn’t know what to think, she really was the way my parents had described her. She had taken it from me, her niece, and now, even though it seemed that she couldn’t do without it, she had given it to her goddaughter. How brightly the bracelet shone on Giuliana’s wrist, how it gained value.