Элена Ферранте - The Lying Life of Adults

“What is there to laugh about?” Michela asked coldly.

“I can’t laugh?”

“Yes, let’s laugh,” Roberto interrupted, using the first person plural even though he hadn’t laughed, “because today we have something to celebrate, Giovanna is sixteen.”

At that moment the lights went out in the room, and a waiter appeared carrying a big cake with sixteen little candle flames wavering on the whiteness of the icing.

16.

It was a wonderful birthday, I felt surrounded by kindness and cordiality. But after a while Giuliana said she was very tired, and we went home. It struck me that, once in the apartment, she didn’t go back to the proprietary tones of the morning, she was spellbound, looking at the darkness outside the living-room window, and let Roberto do everything. He was very thoughtful, gave us clean towels, made a funny speech about how uncomfortable the sofa was and how hard to open. The concierge is the only person who can do it easily, he said, and he had trouble himself, he tried and tried until a double bed all made, with white sheets, spilled out into the middle of the room. I touched the sheets, said: it’s cool, do you have a blanket? He nodded yes, disappeared into the bedroom.

I said to Giuliana:

“Which side do you sleep on?”

Giuliana left the darkness outside the window and said:

“I’ll sleep with Roberto, so you’ll be comfortable.”

I was sure that would happen, but just the same I insisted:

“Vittoria made me swear we’d sleep together.”

“She made Tonino swear, too, but he didn’t keep the oath. You want to keep it?”

“No.”

“I love you,” she said kissing me on the cheek without enthusiasm, while Roberto returned with a blanket and a pillow. Then it was Giuliana who disappeared into the bedroom, and, in case I woke up first and wanted to make breakfast, he showed me where the coffee, biscotti, cups were. The boiler gave off a violent odor of gas, I said:

“There’s a leak, will we die?”

“No, I don’t think so, the window frames are terrible.”

“I’d be sorry to die at sixteen.”

“I’ve lived here for seven years and I’m not dead.”

“Who can assure me of that?”

He smiled, and said:

“No one. I’m glad you’re here. Good night.”

Those were the only words we exchanged by ourselves. He joined Giuliana in the bedroom, closed the door.

I opened my suitcase to get my pajamas, I heard Giuliana crying, he whispered something, she whispered. Then they began to laugh, first Giuliana, then Roberto. I went to the bathroom hoping they would go to sleep right away, I got undressed, brushed my teeth. Door opening, door closing, footsteps. Giuliana knocked, asked: can I come in. I let her in, she had over her arm a blue nightgown with white lace, she asked if I liked it, I praised it. She ran water in the bidet and began to undress. I left in a hurry (how stupid could I be, why did I get myself into this situation), the couch squeaked when I got under the covers. Giuliana crossed the room again in the nightgown that clung to her graceful body. She had nothing on underneath, her breasts were small but firm, shapely. Good night, she said, I answered good night. I turned out the light, put my head under the pillow, pressed it against my ears. What do I know about sex, everything and nothing: what I’ve read in books, the pleasure of masturbation, Angela’s mouth and body, Corrado’s genitals. For the first time, I felt my virginity as a humiliation. What I don’t want is to imagine Giuliana’s pleasure, feel myself in her place. I’m not her. I’m here and not in that room, I don’t want him to kiss me and touch me and penetrate me as Vittoria told me Enzo did, I’m a friend of them both. Yet I was sweating under the covers, my hair was wet, I couldn’t breathe, I pushed the pillow off my head. How yielding and sticky the flesh is, I tried to feel myself as just a skeleton, one by one I classified the noises in the house: wood creaking, refrigerator humming, small clicks perhaps from the boiler, woodworms in the desk. Not a sound came from the bedroom, not a squeaking of springs, not a sigh. Maybe they had confessed to being tired and were already asleep. Maybe they had decided by gestures not to use the bed, in order to avoid any noise. Maybe they were standing up. Maybe they didn’t sigh, didn’t groan, out of discretion. I imagined the joining of their bodies in positions that I had seen only drawn or painted, but as soon as I became aware of those images I banished them. Maybe they didn’t really desire each other, they had wasted the whole day on tourist outings and chat. That was it, no passion, I doubted that one could make love in a silence so absolute: I would have laughed, would have uttered intense words. The bedroom door opened cautiously, I saw Giuliana’s dark silhouette cross the room on tiptoe, heard her shut herself in the bathroom again. The water was running. I cried for a while, I fell asleep.

17.

An ambulance siren woke me. It was four in the morning, I struggled to remember where I was, and when I did I immediately thought: I’ll be unhappy my whole life. I lay in bed awake until daylight, organizing in detail the unhappiness that awaited me. I had to stay near Roberto discreetly, I had to make myself loved. I had to learn more and more of the things that were important to him. I had to get a job that wasn’t too distant from his, teach in the university, maybe in Milan if Giuliana won, in Naples if my aunt won. I had to act so that the relationship of that couple lasted forever, patch up the holes myself, help them bring up their children. In other words I decided conclusively that I would live on their periphery, content with their crumbs. Then, without intending to, I fell asleep again.

I jumped up at nine, the house was still silent. I went to the bathroom, avoided looking at myself in the mirror, washed, hid myself in the shirt I’d worn the day before. Since muffled voices seemed to be coming from the bedroom, I explored the kitchen, set the table for three, got the moka ready. But the level of the sound coming from the other room didn’t rise, the door didn’t open, neither of the two peeked out. Only, after a while, I thought I heard Giuliana repress a laugh or maybe a sigh. That caused me such suffering that I decided—and maybe it wasn’t a decision but, rather, an act of impatience—to knock on the door, with my knuckles, without hesitation.

Absolute silence. I knocked again, a demanding rap.

“Yes?” said Roberto.

I asked in a jolly tone:

“Shall I bring you coffee? It’s ready.”

“We’re coming,” said Roberto, but Giuliana exclaimed, at the same time:

“How nice, yes, thank you.”

I heard them laughing because of that divergent simultaneous answer, and even more gaily I promised:

“Five minutes.”

I found a tray, arranged on it cups, plates, silverware, bread, biscotti, butter, some strawberry jam that I scraped whitish traces of mold off, and the steaming moka. I did it with a sudden contentment, as if my sole possibility for survival were about to take shape at that moment. And the only thing that scared me was the abrupt tilt of the tray as with my free hand I turned the door handle. I was afraid that the moka, everything, would land on the floor, and though that didn’t happen my contentment vanished, the tray’s precarious equilibrium was transmitted to me. I advanced as if not the tray but I were in danger of landing on the floor.

The room wasn’t dark, as I expected. There was light, the blind was rolled up, the window half open. The two were in bed, under a light white blanket. But Roberto had his head against the headboard and an expression of embarrassment—an ordinary male, shoulders too broad, narrow chest—while Giuliana, her shoulders bare, her cheek against his chest with its black hairs, one hand that touched his face as if for a just interrupted caress, was joyful. Seeing her like that swept away all my plans. Being near them didn’t ease my unhappy situation but transformed me into the audience of their happiness: something that—it seemed to me at that moment—Giuliana in particular was hoping for. In the few minutes I had taken to get the tray ready they could have dressed, but she must have prevented him, she had slipped away naked, opened the window to change the air, and gone back to bed to assume the pose of the young woman after a night of love, close to him under the sheets, one leg over his two. No, no, my idea of becoming a sort of aunt always ready to rush in, give a hand, wasn’t the worst of poisons. The spectacle of them—for Giuliana it must have been just that: a displaying of herself as if in a movie, a way, probably not at all malicious, of giving a form to her well-being, capitalizing on my entrance, so that I would see her and, seeing her, fix what was momentary, become its witness—that spectacle felt unbearably cruel. And yet I stayed there, sitting on the edge of the bed, prudently on Giuliana’s side, thanking them yet again for the party of the day before, sipping coffee with the two of them, who had released themselves from their embrace, she barely covering herself with the sheet, he finally putting on a shirt, which I myself, at Giuliana’s request, had handed him.