There was another ring at the door, Elisa went to open it. Who else was still to arrive? A few seconds passed and Gennaro rushed into the room. He saw Dede, Dede saw him, incredulous. She immediately stopped whining, and they stared at each other, overwhelmed by that unexpected reunion. Right afterward Enzo appeared, the only blond among so many dark-haired people and bright colors, and yet he was grim. Finally Lila entered.
92
A long period of words without body, of voice alone that ran in waves over an electric sea, suddenly shattered. Lila wore a knee-length blue dress. She was thin, all sinews, which made her seem taller than usual in spite of her low heels. She had deep wrinkles at the sides of her mouth and her eyes, otherwise the pale skin of her face was stretched over the forehead, the cheekbones. Her hair, combed into a ponytail, showed threads of white over her ears, which were almost without lobes. As soon as she saw me she smiled, she narrowed her eyes. I didn’t smile and was so surprised I said nothing, not even hello. Although we were both thirty years old, she seemed older, more worn than I imagined I was. Gigliola shouted: Finally the other little queen is here, the children are hungry, I can’t control them anymore.
We ate. I felt as if I were being squeezed in an uncomfortable device; I couldn’t swallow. I thought angrily of the suitcases, which I had unpacked in the hotel and which had been arbitrarily repacked by one or more strangers, people who had touched my things, Pietro’s, the children’s, making a mess. I couldn’t accept the evidence — that I would sleep in the house of Marcello Solara to please my sister, who shared his bed. I watched, with a hostility that grieved me, Elisa and my mother, the first, overwhelmed by an anxious happiness, talking on and on as she played the part of mistress of the house, the second appearing content, so content that she even filled Lila’s plate politely. I observed Enzo, who ate with his head down, annoyed by Gigliola, who pressed her enormous bosom against his arm and talked in loud, flirtatious tones. I looked with irritation at Pietro, who, although assailed by my father, by Marcello, by Signora Solara, paid attention only to Lila, who sat opposite him and was indifferent to everyone, even to me — maybe especially to me — but not to him. And the children got on my nerves, the five new lives who had arranged themselves into two groups: Gennaro and Dede, well-behaved and devious, against Gigliola’s children, who, drinking wine from their distracted mother’s glass, were becoming intolerable, and now appealing to Elsa, who had joined them, even if they took no notice of her.
Who had put on this show? Who had mixed together different reasons to celebrate? Elisa obviously, but pushed by whom? Maybe by Marcello. But Marcello had surely been directed by Michele, who was sitting next to me, and who, at his ease, ate, drank, pretended to ignore the behavior of his wife and children, but stared ironically at my husband, who seemed fascinated by Lila. What did he want to prove? That this was the territory of the Solaras? That even if I had escaped I belonged to that place and therefore to them? That they could force on me anything by mobilizing affections, vocabulary, rituals, but also by destroying them, by making at their convenience the ugly beautiful and the beautiful ugly? He spoke to me for the first time since he had arrived. Did you see Mamma, he said, imagine, she’s sixty, but who would ever say so, look how pretty she is, she carries it well, no? He raised his voice on purpose, so that everyone could hear not so much his question as the answer that I was now obliged to give. I had to speak in praise of Mamma. Here she was, sitting next to Pietro, an old woman who was a little vague, polite, apparently innocuous, with a long bony face, a massive nose, that crazy flower in her thinning hair. And yet she was the loan shark who had founded the family fortunes; the caretaker and guardian of the red book in which were the names of so many in the neighborhood, the city, and the province; the woman of the crime without punishment, a ruthless and dangerous woman, according to the telephonic fantasy I had indulged in, along with Lila, and according to the pages of my aborted noveclass="underline" Mamma who had killed Don Achille, to replace him and gain a monopoly on loan-sharking, and who had brought up her two sons to seize everything, trampling on everyone. And now I had the obligation to say to Michele: Yes, it’s true, how pretty your mother looks, how well she carries her years, congratulations. And I saw out of the corner of my eye that Lila had stopped talking to Pietro and expected nothing else, already she was turning to look at me, her full lips parted, her eyes cracks, her brow furrowed. I read the sarcasm in her face, it occurred to me that maybe she had suggested to Michele that he put me in that cage: Mamma’s just turned sixty, Lenù, the mamma of your brother-in-law, your sister’s mother-in-law, let’s see what you say now, let’s see if you continue to play the schoolmistress. I responded, turning to Manuela, Happy Birthday, nothing else. And immediately Marcello broke in, as if to help me, he exclaimed, with emotion: Thank you, thank you, Lenù. Then he turned to his mother; her face was pained, sweaty, and red blotches had appeared on her skinny neck: Lenuccia has congratulated you, Mamma. And immediately Pietro said to the woman who was sitting next to him: Happy Birthday also from me, Signora. And so everyone — everyone except Gigliola and Lila — paid respects to Signora Solara, even the children, in chorus: Many happy returns, Manuela, many happy returns, Grandma. And she shied away, saying, I’m old, and, taking out of her purse a blue fan with the image of the gulf and a smoking Vesuvio, she began to fan herself, slowly at first, then more energetically.
Michele, although he had turned to me, seemed to give my husband’s good wishes more importance. He spoke to him politely: too kind, Prof, you aren’t from here and you can’t know the good qualities of our mother. He assumed a confidential tone: We’re good folk, my late grandfather, rest his soul, started out with the bar here at the corner, started from nothing, and my father expanded it, he made a pastry shop that’s famous in all Naples, thanks also to the skill of Spagnuolo, my wife’s father, an extraordinary artisan — right, Gigliò? But, he added, it’s to my mother, to our mother, that we owe everything. In recent times envious people, people who wish us harm, have spread odious rumors about her. But we are tolerant people, life has taught us to stay in business and to be patient. So the truth always prevails. And the truth is that this woman is extremely intelligent, she has a strong character; there has never been a moment when it would even cross your mind that she has the desire to do nothing. She has always worked, always, and she has done it only for the family, she never enjoyed anything for herself. What we have today is what she built for us children, what we do today is only the continuation of what she did.