Элена Ферранте - The Lying Life of Adults

“How nice you are, Giannì, I won’t ever forget this morning,” she exclaimed and wanted to give me a hug, dangerously unsettling the tray that was resting on a pillow. Roberto, instead, said with detachment, after a sip of coffee, looking at me as if I were a painting he’d been summoned to give an opinion of:

“You’re very beautiful.”

18.

On the way home Giuliana did what she hadn’t done on the way there. While the train moved at a wearyingly slow speed, she kept me in the corridor, between the compartment and the window, talking incessantly.

Roberto had come with us to the station, and the farewell between them had been painful; they had kissed and kissed some more and clung tightly to each other. I’d been unable to avoid looking at them, they were a couple pleasing to the eye, without a doubt he loved her and she couldn’t do without that love. But the phrase— you’re very beautiful —wouldn’t leave my mind: what a jolt to the heart it had been. My response had been rude, discordant, emotion mangling the vowels: don’t make fun of me. And Giuliana had immediately added, serious: it’s true, Giannì, you’re really beautiful. I muttered: I’m like Vittoria, but they both exclaimed indignantly, he laughing, she striking the air with her hand: Vittoria, what are you talking about, are you crazy? Then, stupidly, I burst into tears. A brief cry, a few seconds, like a cough immediately choked off, which had, however, upset them. He said softly: what’s the matter, calm down, what did we do wrong? And I recovered instantly, ashamed of myself, but that compliment remained intact in my mind, and was still there, in the station, at the track, while I settled the bags in the compartment and they talked through the window up to the last minute.

The train left, we stayed in the corridor. I said, to set a tone, to drive out Roberto’s voice (you’re very beautiful), to console Giuliana: how he loves you, it must be wonderful to be loved like that. And she, suddenly gripped by despair, began to vent, half in Italian, half in dialect, and never stopped. We were very close—hips touching, she often took my arm, my hand—but in reality separate: I who continued to hear Roberto as he said those three words to me (and I took pleasure in them, they seemed to me the secret magic formula of a resurrection), she who needed to relate in detail what made her suffer. She went on and on, grimacing with anger, with anguish, and I listened to her attentively, I encouraged her to keep talking. But while she suffered, widening her eyes, touching her hair obsessively, wrapping a lock around index and middle fingers and then abruptly freeing the fingers as if they were snakes, I was happy, and always on the point of interrupting her to ask abruptly: do you think Roberto was serious when he said I’m very beautiful?

Giuliana’s monologue was long. Yes, she said, he loves me, but I love him much much more, because he changed my life, he unexpectedly took me away from the place where I was fated to stay and put me at his side, and now that’s the only place I can be, you understand, if he changes his mind and sends me away, I wouldn’t know how to be me anymore, I don’t even know who I am; while he—he’s always known who he is, he knew it as a child, I remember, you can’t imagine what would happen if he just opened his mouth, you’ve seen the lawyer Sargente’s son, Rosario is mean, no one can touch Rosario, and Roberto, instead, charmed him, the way you do with snakes, and pacified him, if you’ve never seen these things you don’t know what Roberto is, I’ve seen a lot of them, and not only with someone like Rosario, who’s a jerk, think of last night, last night they were all professors, they were the absolute best, and yet you saw, they’re there for him, they’re so intelligent, so polite only to please him, because if he weren’t there they’d tear each other apart, you should hear them as soon as Roberto looks away, jealousy, malice, bad words, obscenities; so, Giannì, there’s no equality between him and me, if I were to die now, on this train, oh yes, Roberto surely would be sorry, Roberto would suffer, but then he’d go on being what he is, while I, I won’t say if he dies—I can’t even think of that—but if he leaves me—you saw how all the women look at him, you saw how pretty, intelligent they are, how much they know—if he leaves me because one of them takes him—Michela, for example, who’s there only to talk to him, she doesn’t give a damn about the others, she’s someone important, who knows what she’ll become, and just for that she wants him, because with him she could even become, I don’t know, president of the republic—if Michela takes the place I have now, Giannì, I’ll kill myself, I’d have to kill myself, because even if I went on living, my life would be nothing.

She talked like this more or less for hours, obsessively, opening her eyes wide, twisting her mouth. I listened to the unending murmur in the deserted corridor of the train for that whole time, and, I have to admit, I felt increasingly sorry for her but also a certain admiration. I considered her an adult, I was a girl. Certainly I wouldn’t have been capable of such ruthless lucidity, at the most critical moments I knew how to hide from myself. But she didn’t close her eyes, she didn’t stop up her ears, she outlined her situation with precision. Still, I didn’t do much to console her, I merely repeated every so often a concept that I wanted to acknowledge myself. Roberto, I said, has lived in Milan for a long time, he’s met countless girls like that Michela, and you’re right, it’s obvious that they’re all charmed by him, but it’s with you he wants to live, because you’re absolutely different from the others, so you shouldn’t change, you should stay what you are, that’s the only way he’ll love you forever.

That was it, a little speech uttered with slightly artificial distress. Otherwise, I slipped into a silent monologue of my own that developed parallel to hers. I’m not, I thought, beautiful, I never will be. Roberto perceived that I felt ugly and lost, and he wanted to console me with a comforting lie, that’s probably the reason he said that. But what if he had really seen some beauty in me that I don’t know how to see, if he really liked me? Of course, he said you’re very beautiful in Giuliana’s presence, so without innuendo. And Giuliana agreed, she didn’t see any innuendo, either. But if on the other hand the innuendo were well hidden in the words, escaping even him? And if now, at this moment, it emerged, and Roberto, thinking back, were asking himself: why did I say that, what was my intention? Yes, what was his intention? I have to get to the bottom of this, it’s important. I have his number, I’ll call him, I’ll say: do you really think I’m very beautiful? Be careful what you say: my face has already changed, and because of my father I turned ugly; don’t you, too, play with changing me, making me become beautiful. I’m tired of being exposed to other people’s words. I need to know what I really am and what sort of person I can be, help me. There, that’s the sort of speech he should like. But what’s the purpose of it? What do I really want from him, just now, while this girl is showering me with her suffering? Do I want him to assure me that I’m pretty, prettier than anyone, even his fiancée? Do I want that? Or more, still more?

Giuliana was grateful for my patient listening. She took my hand, she was moved, she praised me—oh how smart you were, you gave Michela a punch in the face with half a sentence, Giannì, you have to help me, you have to help me always, if I have a daughter I’ll name her for you, she has to be intelligent like you—and she wanted me to swear to support her in every way. I swore, but it wasn’t enough, she imposed a real pact: at least until she was married and had gone to live in Milan, I had to make sure that she didn’t lose her head and convince herself of things that weren’t true.