“But he knows about Marcello?”
“Of course he knows.”
“And so?”
“So he insists.”
“I’m scared, Lila.”
“Do you remember how many things we’ve done that scared you? I waited for you on purpose.”
Stefano returned without his apron, dark eyes, dark face, shining black eyes, white shirt and dark pants. He opened the car door, sat behind the wheel, put the top down. I was about to get into the narrow back space but Lila stopped me, she settled herself in the back. I sat uneasily next to Stefano, he started off immediately, heading toward the new buildings.
The heat dissipated in the wind. I felt good, intoxicated by the speed and by the tranquil certainties released by Carracci’s body. It seemed to me that Lila had explained everything without explaining anything. There was, yes, this brand-new sports car that had been bought solely to take her for a ride that had just begun. There was, yes, that young man who, though he knew about Marcello Solara, was violating men’s rules of masculinity without any visible anxiety. There was me, yes, dragged furiously into that business to hide by my presence secret words between them, maybe even a friendship. But what type of friendship? Certainly, with that drive, something significant was happening, and yet Lila had been unable or unwilling to provide me with the elements necessary for understanding. What did she have in mind? She had to know that she was setting in motion an earthquake worse than when she threw the ink-soaked bits of paper. And yet it might be that she wasn’t aiming at anything precise. She was like that, she threw things off balance just to see if she could put them back in some other way. So here we were racing along, hair blowing in the wind, Stefano driving with satisfied skill, I sitting beside him as if I were his girlfriend. I thought of how he had looked at me, when he said I looked like an actress. I thought of the possibility of him liking me more than he now liked my friend. I thought with horror of the idea that Marcello Solara might shoot him. His beautiful person with its confident gestures would lose substance like the copper of the pot that Lila had written about.
We were driving among the new buildings in order to avoid passing the Bar Solara.
“I don’t care if Marcello sees us,” Stefano said without emphasis, “but if it matters to you it’s fine like this.”’
We went through the tunnel, we turned toward the Marina. It was the road that Lila and I had taken many years earlier, when we had gotten caught in the rain. I mentioned that episode, she smiled, Stefano wanted us to tell him about it. We told him everything, it was fun, and meanwhile we arrived at the Granili.
“What do you think, fast, isn’t it?”
“Incredibly fast,” I said, enthusiastically.
Lila made no comment. She looked around, at times she touched my shoulder to point out the houses, the ragged poverty along the street, as if she saw a confirmation of something and I was supposed to understand it right away. Then she asked Stefano, seriously, without preamble, “Are you really different?”
He looked at her in the rearview mirror. “From whom?”
“You know.”
He didn’t answer immediately. Then he said in dialect, “Do you want me to tell you the truth?”
“Yes.”
“The intention is there, but I don’t know how it will end up.”
At that point I was sure that Lila must not have told me quite a few things. That allusive tone was evidence that they were close, that they had talked other times and not in jest but seriously. What had I missed in the period of Ischia? I turned to look at her, she delayed replying, I thought that Stefano’s answer had made her nervous because of its vagueness. I saw her flooded by sunlight, eyes half closed, her shirt swelled by her breast and by the wind.
“The poverty here is worse than among us,” she said. And then, without connection, laughing, “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about when you wanted to prick my tongue.”
Stefano nodded.
“That was another era,” he said.
“Once a coward, always a coward — you were twice as big as me.”
He gave a small, embarrassed smile and, without answering, accelerated in the direction of the port. The drive lasted less than half an hour, we went back on the Rettifilo and Piazza Garibaldi.
“Your brother isn’t well,” Stefano said when we had returned to the outskirts of the neighborhood. He looked at her again in the mirror and asked, “Are those shoes displayed in the window the ones you made?”
“What do you know about the shoes?”
“It’s all Rino talks about.”
“And so?”
“They’re very beautiful.”
She narrowed her eyes, squeezed them almost until they were closed.
“Buy them,” she said in her provocative tone.
“How much will you sell them for?”
“Talk to my father.”
Stefano made a decisive U turn that threw me against the door, we turned onto the street where the shoe repair shop was.
“What are you doing?” Lila asked, alarmed now.
“You said to buy them and I’m going to buy them.”
37
He stopped the car in front of the shoemaker’s shop, came around and opened the door for me, gave me his hand to help me out. He didn’t concern himself with Lila, who got out herself and stayed behind. He and I stopped in front of the window, under the eyes of Fernando and Rino, who looked at us from inside the shop with sullen curiosity.
When Lila joined us Stefano opened the door of the shop, let me go first, went in without making way for her. He was very courteous with father and son, and asked if he could see the shoes. Rino rushed to get them, and Stefano examined them, praised them: “They’re light and yet strong, they really have a nice line.” He asked me, “What do you think, Lenù?”
I said, with great embarrassment, “They’re very handsome.”
He turned to Fernando: “Your daughter said that all three of you worked on them and that you have a plan to make others, for women as well.”
“Yes,” said Rino, looking in wonder at his sister.
“Yes,” said Fernando, puzzled, “but not right away.”
Rino said to his sister, a little worked up, because he was afraid she would refuse, “Show him the designs.”
Lila, continuing to surprise him, didn’t resist. She went to the back of the shop and returned, handing the sheets of paper to her brother, who gave them to Stefano. They were the models that she had designed almost two years earlier.
Stefano showed me a drawing of a pair of women’s shoes with a very high heel.
“Would you buy them?”
“Yes.”
He went back to examining the designs. Then he sat down on a stool, took off his right shoe.
“What size is it?”
“43, but it could be a 44,” Rino lied.
Lila, surprising us again, knelt in front of Stefano and using the shoehorn helped him slip his foot into the new shoe. Then she took off the other shoe and did the same.