The Story of a New Name (The Neapolitan Novels) (26 page)

I defended Nino warily. I said in the tone of an expert that when a person studies, when he becomes interested in things, he feels the need to communicate those interests to others, and for Nino it was like that. Lila didn’t seem convinced, she made a remark that sounded offensive to me: “If you removed from Nino’s head the things he’s read, you wouldn’t find anything there.”

I snapped, “It’s not true. I know him and he has a lot of good qualities.”

Pinuccia, on the other hand, agreed enthusiastically. But Lila, maybe because she didn’t like that approval, said she hadn’t explained well and reversed the meaning of the remark, as if she had formulated it only as a trial and now, hearing it, regretted it, and was grasping at straws to make up for it. He, she clarified, is habituating himself to the idea that only the big questions are important, and if he succeeds he will live his whole life only for those, without being disturbed by anything else: not like us, who think only of our own affairs—money, house, husband, children.

I didn’t like that version, either. What was she saying? That for Nino feelings for individual persons would not count, that his fate was to live without love, without children, without marriage? I forced myself to say:

“You know he has a girlfriend he’s very attached to? They write once a week.”

Pinuccia interrupted: “Bruno doesn’t have a girlfriend, but he’s looking for his ideal woman and as soon as he finds her he’ll get married and he wants to have a lot of children.” Then, without obvious connection, she sighed: “This week has really flown by.”

“Aren’t you glad? Now your husband will be back,” I replied.

She seemed almost offended by the possibility that I could imagine her feeling any annoyance at Rino’s return.

She exclaimed, “Of course I’m glad.”

Lila then asked me, “And are you glad?”

“That your husbands are returning?”

“No, you know what I meant.”

I did know but I wouldn’t admit it. She meant that the next day, Sunday, while they were involved with Stefano and Rino, I would be able to see the boys by myself, and in fact, almost certainly, Bruno, as he had the week before, would be minding his own business, and I would spend the afternoon with Nino. And she was right, that was what I was hoping. For days, before going to sleep, I had been thinking of the weekend. Lila and Pinuccia would have their conjugal pleasures, I would have the small happinesses of the unmarried girl in glasses who spends her life studying: a walk, being taken by the hand. Or who knows, maybe even more. I said, laughing, “What should I understand, Lila? You’re the lucky ones, who are married.”

The day slid by slowly. While Lila and I sat calmly in the sun waiting until the time when Nino and Bruno would arrive with cool drinks, Pinuccia’s mood began, for no reason, to darken. She kept uttering nervous remarks. Now she was afraid that they wouldn’t come, now she exclaimed that we couldn’t waste our time waiting for them to show up. When, punctually, the boys appeared with the drinks, she was surly, and said she felt tired. But a few minutes later, though still in a bad mood, she changed her mind and agreed, grumbling, to go get the coconut.

As for Lila, she did something I didn’t like. For the whole week she had never said anything about the book I had lent her, and so I had forgotten about it. But as soon as Pinuccia and Bruno left, she didn’t wait for Nino to start talking, and immediately asked him, “Have you ever been to the theater?”

“A few times.”

“Did you like it?”

“It was all right.”

“I’ve never been, but I’ve seen it on television.”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“I know, but better than nothing.”

And at that point she took out of her bag the book I had given her, the volume of Beckett’s plays, and showed it to him.

“Have you read this?”

Nino took the book, examined it, admitted uneasily, “No.”

“So there
is
something you haven’t read.”

“Yes.”

“You should read it.”

Lila began to talk to us about the book. To my surprise she was very deliberate, she talked the way she used to, choosing the words so as to make us see people and things, and also the emotion she gave them, portraying them anew, keeping them there, present, alive. She said that we didn’t have to wait for nuclear war, in the book it was as if it had already happened. She told us at length about a woman named Winnie who at a certain point announced,
another happy day
, and she herself declaimed the phrase, becoming so upset that, in uttering it, her voice trembled slightly:
another happy day
, words that were insupportable, because nothing, nothing, she explained, in Winnie’s life, nothing in her gestures, nothing in her head, was
happy
, not that day or the preceding days. But, she added, the biggest impression had been made on her by a Dan Rooney. Dan Rooney, she said, is blind but he’s not bitter about it, because he believes that life is better without sight, and in fact he wonders whether, if one became deaf and mute, life would not be still more life, life without anything but life.

“Why did you like it?” Nino asked.

“I don’t know yet if I liked it.”

“But it made you curious.”

“It made me think. What does it mean that life is more life without sight, without hearing, even without words?”

“Maybe it’s just a gimmick.”

“No, what gimmick. There’s a thing here that suggests a thousand others, it’s not a gimmick.”

Nino didn’t reply. He said only, staring at the cover of the book as if that, too, needed to be deciphered, “Have you finished it?”

“Yes.”

“Will you lend it to me?”

That request disturbed me, I felt pained. Nino had said, I remembered it clearly, that he had little interest in literature, what he read was different. I had given that Beckett to Lila just because I knew that I couldn’t use it in conversation with him. And now that she was talking about it he was not only listening but asked to borrow it.

I said, “It’s Professor Galiani’s, she gave it to me.”

“Have you read it?” he asked me.

I had to admit that I hadn’t, but I added right away, “I was thinking of starting tonight.”

“When you’re finished will you give it to me?”

“If it interests you so much,” I said quickly, “you read it first.”

Nino thanked me, scratched away with his nail the trace of a mosquito from the cover, said to Lila, “I’ll read it overnight and tomorrow we can talk about it.”

“Not tomorrow, we won’t see each other.”

“Why?”

“I’ll be with my husband.”

“Oh.”

He seemed annoyed. I waited fearfully for him to ask me if the two of us would see each other. But he had a burst of impatience, he said, “I can’t tomorrow, either. Bruno’s parents arrive tonight and I have to go sleep in Barano. I’ll be back on Monday.”

Barano? Monday? I hoped that he would ask me to join him at the Maronti. But he was distracted, maybe his mind was still on Dan Rooney, who, not content with being blind, wished to become deaf and mute, too. He didn’t ask me anything.

On the way home I said to Lila, “If I lend you a book, which, besides, isn’t mine, please don’t take it to the beach. I can’t give it back to Professor Galiani with sand in it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, and cheerfully gave me a kiss on the cheek. She wanted to carry both my bag and Pinuccia’s, maybe to ask forgiveness.

Slowly my mood cleared. I thought that Nino hadn’t randomly alluded to the fact that he was going to Barano: he wanted me to know, and I decided independently to go and see him there. He’s like that, I said to myself, with growing relief, he needs to be pursued: tomorrow I’ll get up early and go. Pinuccia’s ill humor, on the other hand, continued. Usually she was quick to get angry but quick to get over it, too, especially now that pregnancy had softened not only her body but also the rough edges of her character. Instead she became increasingly fretful.

“Did Bruno say something unpleasant?” I asked her.

“No.”

“Then what happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you not feel well?”

“I’m fine, I don’t even know what’s wrong with me.”

“Go and get ready, Rino will be here.”

“Yes.”

But she continued to sit in her damp bathing suit, leafing distractedly through a photonovel. Lila and I got dressed up, Lila especially decked herself out as if she were going to a party, and still Pinuccia did nothing. Then even Nunzia, who was laboring silently over the dinner preparations, said softly, “Pinù, what’s the matter, sweetie, aren’t you going to get dressed?” No answer. Only when we heard the roar of the Lambrettas and the voices of the two young men calling did Pina jump up and run to her room, crying, “Don’t let them come in, please.”

The evening was bewildering, for the husbands, too. Stefano, by now used to permanent conflict with Lila, found himself unexpectedly in the company of a girl who was very affectionate, yielding to caresses and kisses without her usual irritation; while Rino, accustomed to Pinuccia’s clingy coquettishness, intensified by her pregnancy, was disappointed that his wife didn’t come down the stairs to greet him, that he had to look for her in the bedroom, and when finally he embraced her, he immediately noticed the effort she made to act as if she were pleased. Not only that. While Lila laughed heartily when, after a few glasses of wine, the two men started in with the lively sexual allusions that indicated desire, Pinuccia, at a whispered remark from Rino, laughing, jerked away and hissed, in a half Italian, “Stop it, you’re a boor.” He got angry: “You call me a boor? Boor?” She resisted for a few minutes, then her lower lip trembled and she took refuge in her room.

“It’s the pregnancy,” Nunzia said, “you have to be patient.”

Silence. Rino finished eating, then, fuming, went to his wife. He didn’t come back.

Lila and Stefano decided to go out on the Lambretta to see the beach at night. They left laughing together, kissing. I cleared the table, as usual struggling with Nunzia, who didn’t want me to lift a finger. We talked about when she had met Fernando and they fell in love, and she said something that made a deep impression. She said, “For your whole life you love people and you never really know who they are.” Fernando was both good and bad, and she had loved him very much but she had also hated him. “So,” she emphasized, “there’s nothing to worry about: Pinuccia is in a bad mood but she’ll get over it; and you remember how Lina came back from her honeymoon? Well, look at them now. Life is like that: one day you’re getting hit, the next kissed.”

I went to my room, I tried to finish Chabod, but I recalled how Nino had been charmed by the way Lila talked about that Rooney, and the desire to waste time with the idea of nationhood vanished. Even Nino is evasive, I thought, even with Nino it’s hard to understand who he is. He seemed not to care about literature and yet Lila randomly picks up a book of plays, says two foolish things, and he becomes ardent about it. I rummaged among the books in search of other literary things, but I had none. I realized that a book was missing. Was that possible? Professor Galiani had given me six. Nino now had one, one I was reading, on the marble windowsill there were three. Where was the sixth?

I looked everywhere, even under the bed, and while I was looking I remembered that it was a book about Hiroshima. I was upset—surely Lila must have taken it while I was in the bathroom. What was happening to her? After years of shoes, engagement, love, grocery store, dealings with the Solaras, had she decided to revert to the person she had been in elementary school? Certainly there had already been a sign: she had wanted to make that bet, which, whatever its outcome, had surely been a way of demonstrating to me her wish to study. But had she followed up on that desire, had she actually done it? No. Yet had Nino’s conversation been enough—six afternoons of sun on the sand—to revive in her the desire to learn, maybe compete again to be the best? Was that why she had sung the praises of Maestra Oliviero? Why had she found it wonderful that someone should become passionate for his whole life only about important things and not those of daily life? I left my room on tiptoe, opening the door carefully, so that it wouldn’t squeak.

The house was silent, Nunzia had gone to sleep, Stefano and Lila weren’t back yet. I went into their room: a chaos of clothes, shoes, suitcases. On a chair I found the volume, it was titled
Hiroshima the Day After
. She had taken it without asking my permission, as if my things were hers, as if what I was I owed to her, as if even Professor Galiani’s attention to my education resulted from the fact that she, with a distracted gesture, with a tentative phrase, had put me in the position of gaining that privilege for myself. I thought of taking the book. But I was ashamed, I changed my mind, and left it there.

It was a dull Sunday. I suffered from the heat all night, I didn’t dare open the window for fear of the mosquitoes. I fell asleep, woke up, fell asleep again. Go to Barano? With what result? Spend the day playing with Ciro, Pino, and Clelia, while Nino took long swims or sat in the sun without saying a word, in mute conflict with his father. I woke up late, at ten, and as soon as I opened my eyes a sensation of loss, as if from a great distance, came over me and pained me.

I learned from Nunzia that Pinuccia and Rino had already gone to the beach, while Stefano and Lila were still sleeping. I soaked my bread in the caffelatte without wanting it, I conclusively gave up going to Barano. I went to the beach, anxious and sad.

I found Rino sleeping in the sun, his hair wet, his heavy body lying, stomach down, on the sand, and Pinuccia walking back and forth on the shore. I invited her to go toward the fumaroles, she refused rudely. I walked for a long time alone in the direction of Forio to calm myself.

The morning passed slowly. When I came back I went swimming, then lay in the sun. I had to listen to Rino and Pinuccia, who, as if I weren’t there, were murmuring to each other phrases such as:

“Don’t go.”