Toward the end of the summer there was increasing pressure on Rino to take his sister on the group excursions outside the neighborhood for a pizza, for a walk. Rino, however, wanted his own space. He, too, seemed to me to be changing, Lila had kindled his imagination and his hopes. But, to see him, to hear him — the effect hadn’t been the best. He had become more of a braggart, he never missed a chance to allude to how good he was at his work and how rich he was going to be, and he often repeated a remark he was fond of: It won’t take much, just a little luck, and I’ll piss in the Solaras’ face. When he was boasting like this, however, it was crucial that his sister not be present. In her presence he was confused, he made a few allusions, then let it go. He realized that Lila was giving him a distrustful look, as if he were betraying a secret pact of behavior, of detachment, and so he preferred not to have her around; they were working together all day anyway in the shoemaker’s shop. He escaped and swaggered like a peacock with his friends. But sometimes he had to give in.
One Sunday, after many discussions with our parents, we went out (Rino had generously come to my house and, before my parents, assumed responsibility for my person), in the evening no less. We saw the city lighted up by signs, the crowded streets, we smelled the stench of fish gone bad in the heat but also the fragrance of restaurants, of the fried food stalls, of bar-pastry shops much more lavish than the Solaras’. I don’t remember if Lila had already had a chance to go to the center, with her brother or others. Certainly if she had she hadn’t told me about it. I remember instead that that night she was absolutely mute. We crossed Piazza Garibaldi, but she stayed behind, lingering to watch a shoeshine, a large painted woman, the dark men, the boys. She stared at people attentively, she looked them right in the face, so that some laughed and others made a gesture meaning “What do you want?” Every so often I gave her a tug, dragging her with me out of fear that we would lose Rino, Pasquale, Antonio, Carmela, Ada.
That night we went to a pizzeria on the Rettifilo. We ate happily. To me it seemed that Antonio wooed me a little, making an effort to overcome his timidity, and I was pleased because at least Pasquale’s attentions to Lila were counterbalanced. But at some point the pizza maker, a man in his thirties, began to spin the dough in the air, while he was working it, with extreme virtuosity, and he exchanged smiles with Lila, who looked at him in admiration.
“Stop it,” Rino said to her.
“I’m not doing anything,” she said and tried to look in another direction.
But things got worse. Pasquale, smiling, said that the man, the pizza maker — who to us girls seemed old, he was wearing a wedding ring, was surely the father of children — had secretly blown a kiss to Lila on the tips of his fingers. We turned suddenly to look at him: he was doing his job, that was all. But Pasquale, still smiling, asked Lila, “Is it true or am I wrong?”
Lila, with a nervous laugh in contrast to Pasquale’s broad smile, said, “I didn’t see anything.”
“Forget it, Pascà,” said Rino, giving his sister a cutting look.
But Peluso got up, went to the counter in front of the oven, walked around it, and, a candid smile on his lips, slapped the pizza maker in the face, so that he fell against the mouth of the oven.
The owner of the place, a small, pale man in his sixties, hurried over, and Pasquale explained to him calmly not to worry, he had just made clear to his employee a thing that wasn’t clear to him, there would be no more problems. We ended up eating the pizza in silence, eyes lowered, in slow bites, as if it were poisoned. And when we left Rino gave Lila a good lecture that ended with a threat: Go on like that and I’m not taking you anywhere.
What had happened? On the street the men looked at all of us, pretty, less pretty, ugly, and not so much the youths as the grown men. It was like that in the neighborhood and outside of it, and Ada, Carmela, I myself — especially after the incident with the Solaras — had learned instinctively to lower our eyes, pretend not to hear the obscenities they directed at us, and keep going. Lila no. To go out with her on Sunday became a permanent point of tension. If someone looked at her she returned the look. If someone said something to her, she stopped, bewildered, as if she couldn’t believe he was talking to her, and sometimes she responded, curious. Especially since — something very unusual — men almost never addressed to her the obscenities that they almost always had for us.
One afternoon at the end of August we went as far as the Villa Comunale park, and sat down in a café there, because Pasquale, acting the grandee, wanted to buy everyone a spumone. At a table across from us was a family eating ice cream, like us: father, mother, and three boys between twelve and seven. They seemed respectable people: the father, a large man, in his fifties, had a professorial look. And I can swear that Lila wasn’t showing off in any way: she wasn’t wearing lipstick, she had on the usual shabby dress that her mother had made — the rest of us were showing off more, Carmela especially. But that man — this time we all realized it — couldn’t take his eyes off her, and Lila, although she tried to control herself, responded to his gaze as if she couldn’t get over being so admired. Finally, while at our table the discomfort of Rino, of Pasquale, of Antonio increased, the man, evidently unaware of the risk he ran, rose, stood in front of Lila, and, addressing the boys politely, said:
“You are fortunate: you have here a girl who will become more beautiful than a Botticelli Venus. I beg your pardon, but I said it to my wife and sons, and I felt the need to tell you as well.”
Lila burst out laughing because of the strain. The man smiled in turn, and, with a small bow, was about to return to his table when Rino grabbed him by the collar, forced him to retrace his steps quickly, sat him down hard, and, in front of his wife and children, unloaded a series of insults of the sort we said in the neighborhood. Then the man got angry, the wife, yelling, intervened, Antonio pulled Rino away. Another Sunday ruined.
But the worst was a time when Rino wasn’t there. What struck me was not the fact in itself but the consolidation around Lila of hostilities from different places. Gigliola’s mother gave a party for her name day (her name was Rosa, if I remember right), and invited people of all ages. Since her husband was the baker at the Solara pastry shop, things were done on a grand scale: there was an abundance of cream puffs, pastries with cassata filling, sfogliatelle, almond pastries, liqueurs, soft drinks, and dance records, from the most ordinary to the latest fashion. People came who would never come to our kids’ parties. For example the pharmacist and his wife and their oldest son, Gino, who was going to high school, like me. For example Maestro Ferraro and his whole large family. For example Maria, the widow of Don Achille, and her son Alfonso and daughter Pinuccia, in a bright-colored dress, and even Stefano.
That family at first caused some unease: Pasquale and Carmela Peluso, the children of the murderer of Don Achille, were also at the party. But then everything arranged itself for the best. Alfonso was a nice boy (he, too, was going to high school, the same one as me), and he even exchanged a few words with Carmela; Pinuccia was just pleased to be at a party, working, as she did, in the store every day; Stefano, having precociously understood that good business is based on the absence of exclusiveness, considered all the residents of the neighborhood potential clients who would spend their money in his store; he produced his lovely, gentle smile for everyone, and so was able to avoid, even for an instant, meeting Pasquale’s gaze; and, finally, Maria, who usually turned the other way if she saw Signora Peluso, completely ignored the two children and talked for a long time to Gigliola’s mother. And then, as some people started dancing, and the din increased, there was a release of tension, and no one paid attention to anything.