The island was almost noiseless, the sea still, only the smells were intense. Using the money that my mother had left me more than a month before, I took the first departing ferry. As soon as the boat moved and the island, with its tender early-morning colors, was distant enough, I thought that I finally had a story to tell that Lila could not match. But I knew immediately that the disgust I felt for Sarratore and the revulsion that I had toward myself would keep me from saying anything. In fact this is the first time I’ve sought words for that unexpected end to my vacation.
36
I found Naples submerged in a stinking, devastating heat. My mother, without saying a word about how I had changed — the acne gone, my skin sun-darkened — reproached me because I had returned before the appointed time.
“What have you done,” she said, “you���ve behaved rudely, did the teacher’s friend throw you out?”
It was different with my father, whose eyes shone and who showered me with compliments, the most conspicuous of which, repeated a hundred times, was: “Christ, what a pretty daughter I have.” As for my siblings, they said with a certain contempt, “You look like a negro.”
I looked at myself in the mirror and I also marveled: the sun had made me a shining blonde, but my face, my arms, my legs were as if painted with dark gold. As long as I had been immersed in the colors of Ischia, amid sunburned faces, my transformation had seemed suitable; now, restored to the context of the neighborhood, where every face, every street had a sick pallor, it seemed to me excessive, anomalous. The people, the buildings, the dusty, busy stradone had the appearance of a poorly printed photograph, like the ones in the newspapers.
As soon as I could I hurried to find Lila. I called her from the courtyard, she looked out, emerged from the doorway. She hugged me, kissed me, gave me compliments, so that I was overwhelmed by all that explicit affection. She was the same and yet, in little more than a month, she had changed further. She seemed no longer a girl but a woman, a woman of at least eighteen, an age that then seemed to me advanced. Her old clothes were short and tight, as if she had grown inside them in the space of a few minutes, and they hugged her body more than they should. She was even taller, more developed, her back was straight. And the pale face above her slender neck seemed to me to have a delicate, unusual beauty.
She seemed nervous, she kept looking around on the street, behind her, but she didn’t explain. She said only, “Come with me,” and wanted me to go with her to Stefano’s grocery. She added, taking my arm, “It’s something I can only do with you, thank goodness you’ve come back. I thought I’d have to wait till September.”
We had never walked those streets toward the public gardens so close to one another, so together, so happy to see each other. She told me that things were getting worse every day. Just the night before Marcello had arrived with sweets and spumante and had given her a ring studded with diamonds. She had accepted it, had put it on her finger to avoid trouble in the presence of her parents, but just before he left, at the door, she had given it back to him rudely. Marcello had protested, he had threatened her, as he now did more and more often, then had burst into tears. Fernando and Nunzia had immediately realized that something was wrong. Her mother had grown very fond of Marcello, she liked the good things he brought to the house every night, she was proud of being the owner of a television; and Fernando felt as if he had stopped suffering, because, thanks to a close relationship with the Solaras, he could look to the future without anxieties. Thus, as soon as Marcello left, both had harassed her more than usual to find out what was happening. Result: for the first time in a long, long time, Rino had defended her, had insisted that if his sister didn’t want a halfwit like Marcello, it was her sacrosanct right to refuse him and that, if they insisted on giving him to her, he, in person, would burn down everything, the house and the shoemaker’s shop and himself and the entire family. Father and son had started fighting, Nunzia had got involved, all the neighbors had woken up. Not only: Rino had thrown himself on the bed in distress, had abruptly fallen asleep, and an hour later had had another episode of sleepwalking. They had found him in the kitchen lighting matches, and passing them in front of the gas valve as if to check for leaks. Nunzia, terrified, had wakened Lila, saying, “Rino really does want to burn us all alive,” and Lila had hurried in and reassured her mother: Rino was sleeping, and in sleep, unlike when he was awake, he wanted to make sure that there was no gas escaping. She had taken him back to bed.
“I can’t bear it anymore,” she concluded, “you don’t know what torture this is, I have to get out of this situation.”
She clung to me as if I could give her the energy.
“You’re well,” she said, “everything’s going well for you: you have to help me.”
I answered that she could count on me for everything and she seemed relieved, she squeezed my arm, whispered, “Look.”
I saw in the distance a sort of red spot that radiated light.
“What is it?”
“Don’t you see?”
I couldn’t see clearly.
“It’s Stefano’s new car.”
We walked to where the car was parked, in front of the grocery store, which had been enlarged, had two entrances now, and was extremely crowded. The customers, waiting to be served, threw admiring glances at that symbol of well-being and prestige: a car like that had never been seen in the neighborhood, all glass and metal, with a roof that opened. A car for wealthy people, nothing like the Solaras’ 1100.
I wandered around it while Lila stood in the shadows and surveyed the street as if she expected violence to erupt at any moment. Stefano looked out from the doorway of the grocery, in his greasy apron, his large head and his high forehead giving a not unpleasant sense of disproportion. He crossed the street, greeted me cordially, said, “How well you look, like an actress.”
He, too, looked welclass="underline" he had been in the sun as I had, maybe we were the only ones in the whole neighborhood who appeared so healthy. I said to him:
“You’re very dark.”
“I took a week’s vacation.”
“Where?”
“In Ischia.”
“I was in Ischia, too.”
“I know, Lina told me: I looked for you but didn’t see you.”
I pointed to the car. “It’s beautiful.”
Stefano’s face wore an expression of moderate agreement. He said, indicating Lila, with laughing eyes: “I bought it for your friend, but she won’t believe it.” I looked at Lila, who was standing in the shadows, her expression serious, tense. Stefano said to her, vaguely ironic, “Now Lenuccia’s back, what are you doing?”
Lila said, as if the thing annoyed her, “Let’s go. But remember, you invited her, not me: I only came along with the two of you.”
He smiled and went back into the shop.
“What’s happening?” I asked her, confused.
“I don’t know,” she said, and meant that she didn’t know exactly what she was getting into. She looked the way she did when she had to do a difficult calculation in her head, but without her usual impudent expression; she was visibly preoccupied, as if she were attempting an experiment with an uncertain result. “It all began,” she said, “with the arrival of that car.” Stefano, first as if joking, then with increasing seriousness, had sworn to her that he had bought the car for her, for the pleasure of opening the door and having her get in at least once. “It was made just for you,” he had said. And since it had been delivered, at the end of July, he had been asking her constantly, not in an aggressive way, but politely, first to take a drive with him and Alfonso, then with him and Pinuccia, then even with him and his mother. But she had always said no. Finally she had promised him, “I’ll go when Lenuccia comes back from Ischia.” And now we were there, and what was to happen would happen.