Элена Ферранте - The Lying Life of Adults

I agreed, and she seemed calmer; we decided to stretch out in the berths. I fell asleep right away, but a few kilometers from Naples, when it was day, I felt someone shaking me. I came out of my half sleep and saw her holding out her wrist with frightened eyes:

“My God, Giannì, I don’t have the bracelet.”

19.

I got out of the berth:

“How is that possible?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know where I put it.”

She dug in her purse, in her suitcase, and couldn’t find it. I tried to calm her:

“You must have left it at Roberto’s house.”

“No, I had it here, in the pocket of my purse.”

“Sure?”

“I’m not sure of anything.”

“Did you have it in the pizzeria?”

“I remember that I wanted to put it on but maybe I didn’t.”

“I think you had it.”

We went on like that until the train entered the station. Her nervousness infected me. I began to be afraid that the clasp had broken and she had lost it, or that it had been stolen in the metro or even that it had been taken off her while she was sleeping by one of the other passengers in the compartment. We both knew Vittoria’s fury and took it for granted that if we returned without the bracelet she would give us a bad time.

Once we got off the train, Giuliana went to a telephone, dialed Roberto’s number. While the phone rang she combed her hair with her fingers, muttering under her breath: he’s not answering. She stared at me, she repeated: he’s not answering. After a few seconds, she said in dialect, with her frenzy of self-destruction breaking down the wall between suitable and unsuitable words: he must be fucking Michela and doesn’t want to interrupt. But finally Roberto answered, and she switched right away to an affectionate tone of voice, muffling her anguish but continuing to twirl her hair. She told him about the bracelet, she was silent for a moment, murmured docilely: O.K., I’ll call you in five minutes. She hung up, she said in a rage: he has to finish fucking. Stop it, I said, irritated, calm down. She nodded, ashamed of herself, she apologized, saying Roberto didn’t know anything about the bracelet, now he was going to look. I stayed with the bags, she began walking back and forth, still nervous, aggressive with the men who looked at her or made obscene remarks.

“Is it five minutes?” she almost yelled at me.

“It’s ten.”

“Couldn’t you have told me?”

She hurried to put the token in the phone. Roberto answered right away, she listened, exclaimed: thank goodness. Roberto’s voice even reached me, but indistinct. While he talked, Giuliana whispered to me in relief: he found it, I left it in the kitchen. She turned her back to say some words of love, but I heard them just the same. She hung up, seemed pleased, but it didn’t last, she muttered: how can I know for sure that as soon as I leave Michela doesn’t jump in his bed? She stopped beside the stairs that led to the metro, we would say goodbye there, we were going in opposite directions, but she said:

“Wait a minute, I don’t want to go home, I don’t want to hear Vittoria’s interrogation.”

“Don’t answer.”

“She’ll torment me anyway because I don’t have that fucking bracelet.”

“You’re too anxious, you can’t live like that.”

“I’m always anxious about something. You want to know what occurred to me now, just while I’m talking to you?”

“Tell me.”

“If Michela goes to Roberto’s house? If she sees the bracelet? If she takes it?”

“Apart from the fact that Roberto wouldn’t let her, you know how many bracelets Michela can afford? What do you think she cares about yours, you don’t even like it.”

She stared at me, twisted a lock of hair around her fingers, and said:

“But Roberto likes it, and everything Roberto likes she likes.”

She was about to let go of the hair with that mechanical gesture she’d been performing for hours, but there was no need, the hair was still around her fingers. She looked at it with an expression of horror. She murmured:

“What’s happening?”

“You’re so agitated you tore your hair out.”

She looked at the lock, she had turned all red.

“I didn’t tear it out, it came out by itself.”

She grabbed another lock, she said:

“Look.”

“Don’t pull.”

She pulled and another lock of long hair remained between her fingers, the blood that had rushed to her face drained and she became extremely pale.

“Am I dying, Giannì, am I dying?”

“You don’t die if some hair falls out.”

I tried to soothe her, but she was as if overwhelmed by all the anguish she’d felt from childhood till now: father, mother, Vittoria, the incomprehensible shouting of the adults around her, and now Roberto and that anguish of not deserving him and losing him. She wanted to show me her head, she said: move my hair aside, look. I did, there was a small patch of white scalp, an insignificant empty spot in the middle of her head. I went down with her, to her track.

“Don’t say anything to Vittoria about the bracelet,” I advised her, “just tell her about our tour of Milan.”

“And if she asks me?”

“Stall for time.”

“And if she wants to see it right away?”

“Tell her you lent it to me. Meanwhile get some rest.”

I managed to persuade her to get on the train for Gianturco.

20.

I’m still fascinated by how our brain elaborates strategies and carries them out without revealing them. To say that it’s a matter of the unconscious seems to me approximate, maybe even hypocritical. I knew clearly that I wanted to go back to Milan immediately, at all costs, I knew it with my whole self, but I didn’t say it to myself. And without ever confessing the purpose of my new, tiring journey I feigned its necessity, its urgency, I claimed noble reasons for departing an hour after I arrived: to relieve Giuliana’s state of anguish by recovering the bracelet; to say to her fiancé what she was silent about, which was that right away, before it was too late, he had to marry her and take her away from Pascone, without bothering about moral or social debts or other nonsense; to protect my adult friend, deflecting my aunt’s angers onto me, still a girl.

So it was that I bought a new ticket and called my mother, informing her, without acknowledging her complaint in response, that I would be staying another day in Milan. The train was about to leave when I realized that I hadn’t told Roberto. I called him as if what, with another convenient expression, we call fate were being fulfilled. He answered right away, and frankly I don’t know what we said, but I’d like to report that it went like this:

“Giuliana urgently needs the bracelet, I’m about to leave.”

“I’m sorry, you must be tired.”

“It doesn’t matter, I’m glad to come back.”

“What time do you arrive?”

“At 22:08.”

“I’ll come to meet you.”

“I’ll wait for you.”

But it’s a pretend dialogue, meant to crudely outline a sort of tacit accord between Roberto and me: you told me I’m very beautiful, and so, as soon as I got off one train, look, though I’m dead tired, I’m returning on another, with the excuse of that magic bracelet, which—you know better than I do—is magic only because of the chance it offers us to sleep together tonight, in the same bed I saw you in yesterday morning with Giuliana. I suspect, however, that there was no real dialogue, but only a blunt statement of the sort I was in the habit of making at the time.

“Giuliana needs the bracelet urgently. I’m about to get on the train, I’ll be arriving in Milan tonight.”

Maybe he said something, maybe not.