Then out of the blue came a conversation that surprised me. Dede, in front of Elsa, who listened in some alarm, said in the tone she took when she wanted to explain a problem full of perils:
“You know that Aunt Lina sleeps with Enzo, but they’re not married?”
“Who told you?”
“Rino. Enzo isn’t his father.”
“Rino told you that, too?”
“Yes. So I asked Aunt Lina and she explained to me.”
“What did she explain?”
She was tense. She observed me to see if she was making me angry.
“Shall I tell you?”
“Yes.”
“Aunt Lina has a husband just as you do, and that husband is Rino’s father, his name is Stefano Carracci. Then she has Enzo, Enzo Scanno, who sleeps with her. And the exact same thing happens with you: you have Papa, whose name is Airota, but you sleep with Nino, whose name is Sarratore.”
I smiled to reassure her.
“How did you ever learn all those surnames?”
“Aunt Lina talked to us about it, she said that they’re stupid. Rino came out of her stomach, he lives with her, but he’s called Carracci like his father. We came out of your stomach, we live much more with you than with Papa, but we’re called Airota.”
“So?”
“Mamma, if someone talks about Aunt Lina’s stomach he doesn’t say this is Stefano Carracci’s stomach, he says this is Lina Cerullo’s stomach. The same goes for you: your stomach is Elena Greco’s stomach, not Pietro Airota’s.”
“And what does that mean?”
“That it would be more correct for Rino to be called Rino Cerullo and us Dede and Elsa Greco.”
“Is that your idea?”
“No, Aunt Lina’s.”
“What do you think?”
“I think the same thing.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
But Elsa, since the atmosphere seemed favorable, tugged at me and intervened:
“It’s not true, Mamma. She said that when she gets married she’ll be called Dede Carracci.”
Dede exclaimed furiously: “Shut up, you’re a liar.”
I turned to Elsa:
“Why Dede Carracci?”
“Because she wants to marry Rino.”
I asked Dede:
“You like Rino?”
“Yes,” she said in an argumentative tone, “and even if we don’t get married I’ll sleep with him just the same.”
“With Rino?”
“Yes. Like Aunt Lina with Enzo. And also like you with Nino.”
“Can she do that, Mamma?” Elsa asked, dubiously.
I didn’t answer, I was evasive. But that exchange improved my mood and initiated a new phase. It didn’t take much, in fact, to recognize that with this and other conversations about real and pretend fathers, about old and new last names, Lila had managed to make the living situation into which I had cast Dede and Elsa not only acceptable in their eyes but even interesting. In fact almost miraculously my daughters stopped talking about how they missed Adele and Mariarosa; they stopped saying, when they returned from Florence, that they wanted to go and stay forever with their father and Doriana; they stopped making trouble for Mirella, the babysitter, as if she were their worst enemy; they stopped rejecting Naples, the school, the teachers, their classmates, and, above all, the fact that Nino slept in my bed. In short, they seemed more serene. And I noted those changes with relief. However vexing it might be that Lila had entered the lives of my daughters, binding them to her, the last thing I could accuse her of was not having given them the utmost affection, the utmost care, assistance in reducing their anxieties. That was the Lila I loved. She could emerge unexpectedly from within her very meanness, surprising me. Suddenly every offense faded—she’s malicious, she always has been, but she’s also much more, you have to put up with her—and I acknowledged that she was helping me do less harm to my daughters.
One morning I woke up and thought of her without hostility for the first time in a long while. I remembered when she got married, her first pregnancy: she was sixteen, only seven or eight years older than Dede. My daughter would soon be the age of the ghosts of our girlhood. I found it inconceivable that in a relatively small amount of time, my daughter could wear a wedding dress, as Lila had, end up brutalized in a man’s bed, lock herself into the role of Signora Carracci; I found it equally inconceivable that, as had happened to me, she could lie under the heavy body of a grown man, at night, on the Maronti, smeared with dark sand, damp air, and bodily fluids, just for revenge. I remembered the thousands of odious things we had gone through and I let the solidarity regain force. What a waste it would be, I said to myself, to ruin our story by leaving too much space for ill feelings: ill feelings are inevitable, but the essential thing is to keep them in check. I grew close to Lila again with the excuse that the children liked seeing her. Our pregnancies did the rest.
39
But we were two very different pregnant women. My body reacted with eager acceptance, hers with reluctance. And yet from the beginning Lila emphasized that she had wanted that pregnancy, she said, laughing: I planned it. Yet there was something in her body that, as usual, put up resistance. Thus while I immediately felt as if a sort of rose-colored light flickered inside me, she became greenish, the whites of her eyes turned yellow, she detested certain smells, she threw up continuously. What should I do, she said, I’m happy, but that thing in my belly isn’t, it’s mad at me. Enzo denied it, he said: Come on, he’s happier than anyone. And according to Lila, who made fun of him, he meant: I put it in there, trust me, I saw that it’s good and you mustn’t worry.
When I ran into Enzo I felt more liking for him than usual, more admiration. It was as if to his old pride a new one had been added, which was manifested in a vastly increased desire to work and, at the same time, in a vigilance at home, in the office, on the street, all aimed at defending his companion from physical and metaphysical dangers and anticipating her every desire. He took on the task of giving Stefano the news; he didn’t blink, he half grimaced and withdrew, maybe because by now the old grocery made almost nothing and the subsidies he got from his ex-wife were essential, maybe because every connection between him and Lila must have seemed to him a very old story, what did it matter to him if she was pregnant, he had other problems, other desires.
But, mainly, Enzo took on the job of telling Gennaro. Lila in fact had reasons to feel embarrassment with her son that were no different from mine — but certainly more justified — for feeling embarrassed with Dede and Elsa. Gennaro wasn’t a child and childish tones and words couldn’t be used with him. He was a boy in the full crisis of puberty who couldn’t find an equilibrium. Failed twice in a row in high school, he had become hypersensitive, unable to hold back tears, or emerge from his humiliation. He spent days wandering the streets or in his father’s grocery, sitting in a corner, picking at the pimples on his broad face and studying Stefano in every gesture and expression, without saying a word.
He’ll take it really badly, Lila worried, but meanwhile she was afraid that someone else would tell him, Stefano for example. So one evening Enzo took him aside and told him about the pregnancy. Gennaro was impassive, Enzo urged him: Go hug your mother, let her know that you love her. The boy obeyed. But a few days later Elsa asked me in secret: