And I went on like that and lived for days and days in a state of pleasurable intellectual overexcitement. My only pressure was to have a readable text in time. Every so often I was surprised at myself: I had the impression that striving for Nino’s approval made the writing easier, freed me.
But the month passed and he didn’t appear. At first it helped me: I had more time and managed to complete my work. Then I was alarmed, I asked Pietro. I discovered that they often talked in the office, but that he hadn’t heard from him for several days.
“You often talk?” I said annoyed.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What?”
“That you often talked.”
“They were calls about work.”
“Well, since you’ve become so friendly, call and see if he’ll deign to tell us when he’s coming.”
“Is that necessary?”
“Not for you, but the effort is mine: I’m the one who has to take care of everything and I’d like to be warned in time.”
He didn’t call him. I responded by saying to myself: All right, let’s wait, Nino promised the girls he’d be back, I don’t think he’ll disappoint them. And it was true. He called a week late, in the evening. I answered, he seemed embarrassed. He uttered a few generalities, then he asked: Is Pietro not there? I was embarrassed in turn, I gave the phone to Pietro. They talked for a long time, I felt with increasing uneasiness that my husband was using unfamiliar tones: exclamations, laughter, his voice too loud. I understood only then that the relationship with Nino reassured him, made him feel less isolated, he forgot his troubles and worked more eagerly. I went into my study, where Dede was reading and Elsa playing, both waiting for dinner. But even there his voice reached me, he seemed drunk. Then he was silent, I heard his steps in the house. He peeked in, and said gaily to his daughters:
“Girls, tomorrow night we’re going to eat
frittelle
with uncle Nino.”
Dede and Elsa shouted with excitement, I asked:
“What’s he doing, is he coming to stay here?”
“No,” he answered, “he’s with his wife and son, they’re at the hotel.”
It took me a long time to absorb the meaning of those words. I burst out:
“He could have warned us.”
“They decided at the last minute.”
“He’s a boor.”
“Elena, what is the problem?”
So Nino had come with his wife; I was terrified by the comparison. I knew what I was like, I knew the crude physicality of my body, but for a good part of my life I had given it little importance. I had grown up with one pair of shoes at a time, ugly dresses sewed by my mother, makeup only on rare occasions. In recent years I had begun to be interested in fashion, to educate my taste under Adele’s guidance, and now I enjoyed dressing up. But sometimes—especially when I had dressed not only to make a good impression in general but for a man—preparing myself (this was the word) seemed to me to have something ridiculous about it. All that struggle, all that time spent camouflaging myself when I could be doing something else. The colors that suited me, the ones that didn’t, the styles that made me look thinner, those that made me fatter, the cut that flattered me, the one that didn’t. A lengthy, costly preparation. Reducing myself to a table set for the sexual appetite of the male, to a well-cooked dish to make his mouth water. And then the anguish of not succeeding, of not
seeming
pretty, of not managing to conceal with skill the vulgarity of the flesh with its moods and odors and imperfections. But I had done it. I had done it also for Nino, recently. I had wanted to show him that I was different, that I had achieved a refinement of my own, that I was no longer the girl at Lila’s wedding, the student at the party of Professor Galiani’s children, and not even the inexperienced author of a single book, as I must have appeared in Milan. But now, enough. He had brought his wife and I was angry, it seemed to me a mean thing. I hated competing in looks with another woman, especially under the gaze of a man, and I suffered at the thought of finding myself in the same place with the beautiful girl I had seen in the photograph, it made me sick to my stomach. She would size me up, study every detail with the pride of a woman of Via Tasso taught since birth to attend to her body; then, at the end of the evening, alone with her husband, she would criticize me with cruel lucidity.
I hesitated for hours and finally decided that I would invent an excuse, my husband would go alone with the children. But the next day I couldn’t resist. I dressed, I undressed, I combed my hair, I uncombed it, I nagged Pietro. I went to his room constantly, now with one dress, now another, now with one hairdo, now another, and I asked him, tensely: How do I look? He gave me a distracted glance, he said: You look nice. I answered: And if I put on the blue dress? He agreed. But I put on the blue dress and I didn’t like it, it was tight across the hips. I went back to him, I said, It’s too tight. Pietro replied patiently Yes, the green one with the flowers looks better. But I didn’t want the green one with the flowers to simply look better, I wanted it to look great, and my earrings to look great, and my hair to look great, and my shoes to look great. In other words I couldn’t rely on Pietro, he looked at me without seeing me. And I felt more and more ungainly, too much bosom, too much ass, wide hips, and that dirty-blond hair, that big nose. I had the body of my mother, a graceless body, all I needed was for the sciatica to return and start limping. Nino’s wife, instead, was very young, beautiful, rich, and surely knew how to be in the world, as I would never manage to learn. So I returned a thousand times to my first decision: I won’t go, I’ll send Pietro with the children, I’ll have him say I don’t feel well. I did go. I put on a white shirt over a cheerful flowered skirt, the only jewel I wore was my mother’s old bracelet, in my purse I put the text I had written. I said who gives a damn about her, him, all of them.
Because of all my hesitations we arrived late at the restaurant. The Sarratore family was already at the table. Nino introduced his wife, Eleonora, and my mood changed. Oh yes, she had a pretty face and beautiful black hair, just as in the photograph. But she was shorter than I, and I wasn’t very tall. She had no bosom, though she was plump. And she wore a bright-red dress that didn’t suit her at all. And she was wearing too much jewelry. And from the first words she spoke she revealed a shrill voice with the accent of a Neapolitan brought up by canasta players in a house with a picture window on the gulf. But mainly, in the course of the evening, she proved to be uneducated, even though she was studying law, and inclined to speak ill of everything and everyone with the air of one who feels she is swimming against the tide and is proud of it. Wealthy, in other words, capricious, vulgar. Even her pleasing features were constantly spoiled by an expression of irritation followed by a nervous laugh,
ih ih ih
, which broke up her conversation, even the individual sentences. She was irritated by Florence—
What does it have that Naples doesn’t
—by the restaurant—
terrible
—by the owner—
rude
—by whatever Pietro said—
What nonsense
—by the girls—
My goodness, you talk so much, let’s have a little quiet, please
—and naturally me—
You studied in Pisa, but why, literature in Naples is much better, I’ve never heard of that novel of yours, when did it come out, eight years ago I was fourteen
. She was sweet only with her son and with Nino. Albertino was sweet, round, with a happy expression, and Eleonora did nothing but praise him. The same happened with her husband: no one was better than he, she agreed with everything he said, and she touched him, hugged him, kissed him. What did that girl have in common with Lila, even with Silvia? Nothing. Why then had Nino married her?
I observed her all evening. He was nice to her, he let himself be hugged and kissed, he smiled at her affectionately when she said rude and foolish things, he played distractedly with the child. But he didn’t change his attitude toward my daughters, giving them a lot of attention; he continued to talk pleasantly to Pietro, and even spoke a few words to me. His wife—I wished to think—did not absorb him. Eleonora was one of the many pieces of his busy life, but had no influence on him, Nino went forward on his own path without attaching any importance to her. And so I felt increasingly at ease, especially when he held my wrist for a few seconds, and almost caressed it, showing that he recognized my bracelet; especially when he kidded my husband, asking him if he had left me a little more time for myself; especially when, right afterward, he asked if I had made progress with my work.
“I finished a first draft,” I said.
Nino turned to Pietro seriously: “Have you read it?”
“Elena never lets me read anything.”
“It’s you who don’t want to,” I replied, but without bitterness, as if it were a game between us.
Eleonora at that point interrupted, she didn’t want to be left out.
“What sort of thing is it?” she asked. But just as I was about to answer, her flighty mind carried her away and she asked me blithely: “Tomorrow will you take me to see the shops, while Nino works?”
I smiled with false cordiality and she began with a detailed list of things that she meant to buy. Only when we left the restaurant I managed to approach Nino and whisper:
“Do you feel like looking at what I’ve written?”
He looked at me with genuine amazement: “Would you really let me read it?”
“If it wouldn’t bore you, yes.”
I handed him my pages furtively, my heart pounding, as if I didn’t want Pietro, Eleonora, or the children to notice.
I didn’t close my eyes. In the morning I resigned myself to the date with Eleonora; we were to meet at ten at the hotel. Don’t do the stupid thing—I ordered myself—of asking her if her husband began to read it: Nino is busy, it will take time; you mustn’t think about it, at least a week will go by.
But at precisely nine, when I was about to leave, the phone rang and it was him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’m on my way to the library and I can’t telephone until tonight. Sure I’m not bothering you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“I read it.”
“Already?”
“Yes, and it’s really excellent. You have a great capacity for research, an admirable rigor, and astonishing imagination. But what I envy most is your ability as a narrator. You’ve written something hard to define, I don’t know if it’s an essay or a story. But it’s extraordinary.”
“Is that a flaw?”
“What?”
“That it’s not classifiable.”
“Of course not, that’s one of its merits.”
“You think I should publish it as it is?”
“Absolutely yes.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you, now I have to go. Be patient with Eleonora, she seems aggressive but it’s only timidity. Tomorrow morning we return to Naples, but I’ll be back after the elections and if you want we can talk.”
“It would be a pleasure. Will you come and stay with us?”
“You’re sure I won’t bother you?”
“Not at all.”
“All right.”
He didn’t hang up, I heard him breathing.
“Elena.”
“Yes.”
“Lina, when we were children, dazzled us both.”
I felt an intense uneasiness.
“In what sense?”
“You ended up attributing to her capacities that are only yours.”
“And you?”
“I did worse. What I had seen in you, I then stupidly seemed to find in her.”
I was silent for several seconds. Why had he felt the need to bring up Lila, like that, on the telephone? And what was he saying to me? Was it merely compliments? Or was he trying to communicate to me that as a boy he would have loved me but that on Ischia he had attributed to one what belonged to the other?
“Come back soon,” I said.
I went out with Eleonora and the three children in a state of such well-being that even if she had stuck a knife in me I would not have felt bad. Nino’s wife, besides, in the face of my euphoria and the many kindnesses I showed her, stopped being hostile, praised Dede and Elsa’s good behavior, confessed that she admired me. Her husband had told her everything about me, my studies, my success as a writer. But I’m a little jealous, she admitted, and not because you’re clever but because you’ve known him forever and I haven’t. She, too, would like to have met him as a girl, and know what he was like at ten, at fourteen, his voice before it changed, his laughter as a boy. Luckily I have Albertino, she said, he’s just like his father.
I observed the child, but it didn’t seem to me that I saw signs of Nino, maybe they would appear later. I look like Papa, Dede exclaimed suddenly, proudly, and Elsa added: I’m more like my mamma. I thought of Silvia’s son, Mirko, who had seemed identical to Nino. What pleasure I had felt holding him in my arms, soothing his cries in Mariarosa’s house. What had I been looking for at that time, in that child, when I was still far from the experience of motherhood? What had I sought in Gennaro, before I knew that his father was Stefano. What was I looking for in Albertino, now that I was the mother of Dede and Elsa, and why did I examine him so closely? I dismissed the idea that Nino remembered Mirko from time to time. Nor did I think he had ever demonstrated any interest in Gennaro. Men, dazed by pleasure, absent-mindedly sow their seed. Overcome by their orgasm, they fertilize us. They show up inside us and withdraw, leaving, concealed in our flesh, their ghost, like a lost object. Was Albertino the child of will, of attention? Or did he, too, exist in the arms of this woman-mother without Nino’s feeling that he had had anything to do with it? I roused myself, I said to Eleonora that her son was the image of his father and was content with that lie. Then I told her in detail, with affection, with tenderness, about Nino at the time of elementary school, at the time of the contests organized by Maestra Oliviero and the principal to see who was smartest, Nino at the time of high school, about Professor Galiani and the vacation we had had on Ischia, with other friends. I stopped there, even though she kept childishly asking: And then?