Galiani was full of praise. “But now,” she said, as if she were giving me and Nino a lesson, “after the full attack, it’s time to mediate.” She knocked on the door of the classroom, closed it behind her, and five minutes later looked out happily. I could go back provided I apologized to the professor for the aggressive tone I had used. I apologized, wavering between anxiety about probable reprisals and pride in the support I had received from Nino and from Professor Galiani.
I was careful not to say anything to my parents, but I told Antonio everything, and he proudly reported the incident to Pasquale, who ran into Lila one morning and, so overcome by his love for her that he could barely speak, seized on my adventure like a life vest, and told her about it. Thus I became, in the blink of an eye, the heroine both of my old friends and of the small but seasoned group of teachers and students who challenged the lectures of the teacher of religion. Meanwhile, aware that my apologies to the priest were not enough, I made an effort to regain credit with him and with his like-minded colleagues. I easily separated my words from myself: toward all the teachers who had become hostile to me I was respectful, helpful, cooperative, so that they went back to thinking of me as a person who came out with odd, but forgivable, assertions. I thus discovered that I was able to behave like Professor Galiani: present my opinions firmly and, at the same time, soften them, and regain respect, through my irreproachable behavior. Within a few days it seemed to me that I had returned, along with Nino Sarratore, who was in his fifth year and would graduate, to the top of the list of the most promising students in our shabby high school.
It didn’t end there. A few weeks later, unexpectedly, Nino, with his shadowy look, asked me if I could quickly write half a page recounting the conflict with the priest.
“To do what with?”
He told me that he wrote for a little journal called Naples, Home of the Poor. He had described the incident to the editors and they had said that if I could write an account in time they would try to put it in the next issue. He showed me the journal. It was a pamphlet of fifty pages, of a dirty gray. In the contents he appeared, first name and last name, with an article entitled “The Numbers of Poverty.” I thought of his father, and the satisfaction, the vanity with which he had read to me at the Maronti the article he’d published in Roma.
“Do you also write poetry?” I asked.
He denied it with such disgusted energy that I immediately promised: “All right, I’ll try.”
I went home in great agitation. My head was already churning with the sentences I would write, and on the way I talked about it in great detail to Alfonso. He became anxious for me, he begged me not to write anything.
“Will they sign it with your name?”
“Yes.”
“Lenù, the priest will get angry again and fail you: he’ll get chemistry and mathematics on his side.”
He transmitted his anxiety to me and I lost confidence. But, as soon as we separated, the idea of being able to show the journal, with my little article, my name in print, to Lila, to my parents, to Maestra Oliviero, to Maestro Ferraro, got the upper hand. I would mend things later. It had been very energizing to win praise from those who seemed to me better (Professor Galiani, Nino) taking sides against those who seemed to me worse (the priest, the chemistry teacher, the mathematics teacher), and yet to behave toward the adversaries in such a way as not to lose their friendship and respect. I would make an effort to repeat this when the article was published.
I spent the afternoon writing and rewriting. I found concise, dense sentences. I tried to give my position the maximum theoretical weight by finding difficult words. I wrote, “If God is present everywhere, what need does he have to disseminate himself by way of the Holy Spirit?” But the half page was soon used up, merely in the premise. And the rest? I started again. And since I had been trained since elementary school to try and stubbornly keep trying, in the end I got a creditable result and turned to my lessons for the next day.
But half an hour later my doubts returned, I felt the need for confirmation. Who could I ask to read my text and give an opinion? My mother? My brothers? Antonio? Naturally not, the only one was Lila. But to turn to her meant to continue to recognize in her an authority, when in fact I, by now, knew more than she did. So I resisted. I was afraid that she would dismiss my half page with a disparaging remark. I was even more afraid that that remark would nevertheless work in my mind, pushing me to extreme thoughts that I would end up transcribing onto my half page, throwing off its equilibrium. And yet finally I gave in and went to look for her. She was at her parents’ house. I told her about Nino’s proposal and gave her the notebook.
She looked at the page unwillingly, as if the writing wounded her eyes. Exactly like Alfonso, she asked, “Will they put your name on it?”
I nodded yes.
“Elena Greco?”
“Yes.”
She held out the notebook: “I’m not capable of telling you if it’s good or not.”
“Please.”
“No, I’m not capable.”
I had to insist. I said, though I knew it wasn’t true, that if she didn’t like it, if in fact she refused to read it, I wouldn’t give it to Nino to print.
In the end she read it. It seemed to me that she shrank, as if I had unloaded a weight on her. And I had the impression that she was making a painful effort to free from some corner of herself the old Lila, the one who read, wrote, drew, made plans spontaneously — the naturalness of an instinctive reaction. When she succeeded, everything seemed pleasantly light.
“Can I erase?”
“Yes.”
She erased quite a few words and an entire sentence.
“Can I move something?”
“Yes.”
She circled a sentence and moved it with a wavy line to the top of the page.
“Can I recopy it for you onto another page?”
“I’ll do it.”
“No, let me do it.”
It took a while to recopy. When she gave me back the notebook, she said, “You’re very clever, of course they always give you ten.”
I felt that there was no irony, it was a real compliment. Then she added with sudden harshness:
“I don’t want to read anything else that you write.”
“Why?”
She thought about it.
“Because it hurts me,” and she struck her forehead with her hand and burst out laughing.
54
I went home happy. I shut myself in the toilet so that I wouldn’t disturb the rest of the family and studied until three in the morning, when finally I went to sleep. I dragged myself up at six-thirty to recopy the text. But first I read it over in Lila’s beautiful round handwriting, a handwriting that had remained the same as in elementary school, very different now from mine, which had become smaller and plainer. On the page was exactly what I had written, but it was clearer, more immediate. The erasures, the transpositions, the small additions, and, in some way, her handwriting itself gave me the impression that I had escaped from myself and now was running a hundred paces ahead with an energy and also a harmony that the person left behind didn’t know she had.