I learned to avoid myself. It was enough for Nino to knock on the door and the bitterness vanished. I said to myself: Life now is this and can’t be other. Meanwhile I tried to give myself some discipline, I didn’t resign myself, I tried to be assertive, sometimes I even managed to feel happy. The house shone with light. From my balcony I saw Naples stretching to the edges of the yellow-blue reflection of the sea. I had taken my daughters away from the temporariness of Genoa and Milan, and the air, the colors, the sounds of the dialect in the streets, the cultured people Nino brought to see me even late into the night gave me confidence, made me cheerful. I took the girls to see Pietro in Florence and was pleased when he came to see them in Naples. Over Nino’s protests I let him stay in my house. I made him a bed in the girls’ room; their affection for him was a performance, as if they wanted to keep him with them through a display of how much they loved him. We tried to have a casual relationship, I inquired about Doriana, I asked about his book, which was always about to be published when further details emerged that had to be examined. When the children held tight to their father, ignoring me, I took a little break. I went down through the Arco Mirelli and walked along Via Caracciolo, beside the sea. Or I went up to Via Aniello Falcone and came to the Floridiana. I chose a bench, I read.
31
From Via Tasso the old neighborhood was a dim, distant rockpile, indistinguishable urban debris at the foot of Vesuvius. I wanted it to stay that way: I was another person now, I would make sure that it did not recapture me. But in that case, too, the purpose I tended to attribute to myself was fragile. A mere three or four days after the first harried arrangement of the apartment I gave in. I dressed the children carefully, dressed up myself, and said: Now let’s go see Grandmother Immacolata and Grandfather Vittorio and the uncles.
We left early in the morning and at Piazza Amedeo took the metro; the children were excited by the violent wind produced by the train’s arrival, which ruffled their hair, pasted their dresses to their bodies, took away their breath. I hadn’t seen or talked to my mother since the scene in Florence. I was afraid she would refuse to see me and maybe for that reason I didn’t telephone to announce my visit. But I have to be honest, there was another, more obscure reason. I was reluctant to say to myself: I am here for this or that other reason, I want to go here or I want to go there. The neighborhood for me, even more than my family, was Lila: to plan that visit would also mean asking myself how I wanted to arrange things with her. And I still didn’t have definite answers, and so leaving it to chance was better. In any case, since it was possible that I would run into her, I had devoted the greatest attention to the children’s appearance and to my own. If it happened, I wanted her to realize that I was a lady of refinement and that my daughters weren’t suffering, weren’t falling apart, were doing very well.
It turned out to be an emotionally charged day. I went through the tunnel, I avoided the gas pump where Carmen worked with her husband, Roberto, and crossed the courtyard. My heart pounding, I climbed the crumbling stairs of the old building where I was born. Dede and Elsa were very excited, as if they were heading into some unknown adventure; I arrayed them in front of me and rang the bell. I heard the limping gait of my mother, she opened the door, she widened her eyes as if we were ghosts. I, too, in spite of myself, showed astonishment. The person I expected to see had come unglued from the one who was in fact before me. My mother was very changed. For a fraction of a second she seemed to be a cousin of hers whom I had seen a few times as a child, and who resembled her, although she was six or seven years older. She was much thinner, the bones of her face, her nose, her ears seemed enormous.
I tried to hug her, she drew back. My father wasn’t there, nor were Peppe and Gianni. To find out anything about them was impossible, for a good hour she barely spoke a word to me. With the children she was affectionate. She praised them mightily and then, enveloping them in large aprons, she began making sugar candies with them. For me it was very awkward; the whole time she acted as if I weren’t there. When I tried to say to the children that they were eating too many candies, Dede quickly turned to her grandmother:
“Can we have some more?”
“Eat as many as you want,” my mother said, without looking at me.
The same scene was repeated when she told her grandchildren that they could go play in the courtyard. In Florence, in Genoa, in Milan I had never let them go out alone. I said:
“No, girls, you can’t, stay here.”
“Grandma, can we go?” my daughters asked, almost in unison.
“I told you yes.”
We remained alone. I said to her anxiously, as if I were still a child: “I moved. I’ve taken an apartment on Via Tasso.”
“Good.”
“Three days ago.”
“Good.”
“I’ve written another book.”
“What do I care?”
I was silent. With an expression of disgust, she cut a lemon in two and squeezed the juice into a glass.
“Why are you having a lemonade?” I asked.
“Because seeing you turns my stomach.”
She added water to the lemon, put in some bicarbonate of soda, drank the foamy effervescence in one gulp.
“Are you not well?”
“I’m very well.”
“It’s not true. Have you been to the doctor?”
“Imagine if I’ll throw away money on doctors and medicine.”
“Elisa knows you don’t feel well?”
“Elisa is pregnant.”
“Why didn’t you or she tell me anything?”
She didn’t answer. She placed the glass on the sink with a long, tired sigh, wiped her lips with the back of her hand. I said:
“I’ll take you to the doctor. What else do you feel?”
“Everything that you brought on. Because of you a vein in my stomach ruptured.”
“What do you mean?”