95
The next day I got up very early and packed the suitcases, I wanted to return to Florence right away. But I couldn’t. Marcello said he had promised his brother to take us to Acerra and since Pietro, although I let him know in every possible way that I wanted to leave, was willing, we left the children with Elisa and agreed to let that big man drive us to a long, low yellow building, a large shoe warehouse. The whole way I was silent, while Pietro asked questions about the Solaras’ business in Germany and Marcello equivocated, with disjointed phrases like: Italy, Germany, the world, Professò, I’m more Communist than the Communists, more revolutionary than the revolutionaries, for me if you could flatten everything and build it all again from the beginning I’d be in the first row. Anyway, he added, looking at me in the rear-view mirror in search of agreement, love for me comes before everything.
When we got there, he led us into a low-ceilinged room, illuminated by neon lights. There was a strong odor of ink, of dust, of overheated insulators, mixed with that of uppers and shoe polish. Look, Marcello said, here’s the contraption Michele rented. I looked around, there was no one at the machine. The System 3 was completely unremarkable, an uninteresting piece of furniture backed up to a walclass="underline" metal panels, control knobs, a red switch, a wooden shelf, keyboards. I don’t understand anything about it, said Marcello, this is stuff that Lina knows, but she doesn’t have a schedule, she’s always in and out. Pietro carefully examined the panels, the control knobs, everything, but it was clear that modernity was disappointing him, all the more since Marcello answered every question with: This is my brother’s business, I have other problems on my mind.
Lila showed up when we were about to leave. She was with two young women who were carrying metal containers. She seemed irritated, and ordered them around. As soon as she noticed us she changed her tone, she became polite but in a forced way, as if a part of her brain had broken free and were reaching toward urgent things to do with the job. She ignored Marcello, and addressed Pietro but as if she were also speaking to me. What do you care about this stuff, she said, teasing, if you’re really interested in it let’s make a deaclass="underline" You work here and I’ll take up your things, novels, paintings, antiquities. Again I had the impression that she had aged before me, not only in her appearance but in her movements, her voice, her choice of a dull, vaguely bored manner in which to explain to us not only how the System 3 and the various machines worked but also the magnetic cards, the tapes, the five-inch disks, and other innovations that were on the way, like desktop computers that one could have at home for one’s personal use. She was no longer the Lila who on the telephone talked about the new job in childish tones, and she seemed far removed from Enzo’s enthusiasm. She acted like a super-competent employee on whom the boss has dumped one of the many headaches, the tourist visit. She wasn’t friendly toward me, she never joked with Pietro. Finally she ordered the girls to show my husband how the punch-card machine worked, then she pushed me into the hall, and said:
“So? Did you congratulate Elisa? Does one sleep well in Marcello’s house? Are you glad the old witch is sixty?”
I replied nervously: “If my sister wants it, what can I do, beat her over the head?”
“You see? In the fairy tales one does as one wants, and in reality one does what one can.”
“That’s not true. Who forced you to be used by Michele?”
“I’m using him, not him me.”
“You’re deceiving yourself.”
“Wait and you’ll see.”
“What do you want me to see, Lila, forget it.”
“I repeat, I don’t like it when you act like that. You don’t know anything about us anymore, so it’s better if you say nothing.”
“You mean I can criticize you only if I live in Naples?”
“Naples, Florence: you aren’t doing anything anywhere, Lenù.”
“Who says so?”
“The facts.”
“I know my facts, not you.”
I was tense, she realized it. She gave me a conciliatory look.
“You make me mad and I say things I don’t think. You did well to leave Naples, you did very well. But you know who’s back?”
“Who?”
“Nino.”
The news burned my chest.
“How do you know?”
“Marisa told me. He got a professorship at the university.”
“He didn’t like Milan?”
Lila narrowed her eyes.
“He married someone from Via Tasso who is related to half the Banco di Napoli. They have a child a year old.”
I don’t know if I suffered, certainly I had trouble believing it.
“He’s really married?”
“Yes.”
I looked at her to see what she had in mind.
“Do you intend to see him?”
“No. But if I happen to run into him, I want to tell him that Gennaro isn’t his.”
96
She said to me this and some other fragmented things: Congratulations, you have an intelligent and handsome husband, he speaks as if he were religious even if he’s not a believer, he knows ancient and modern facts, in particular he knows a lot of things about Naples, I’m ashamed, I’m Neapolitan but I don’t know anything. Gennaro is growing up, my mother takes care of him more than I do, he’s smart in school. With Enzo things are good, we work a lot, we rarely see each other. Stefano has ruined himself with his own hands: the carabinieri found stolen goods in the back of the shop, I don’t know what, he was arrested; now he’s out but he has to be careful, he has nothing anymore, I give him money, not the other way around. You see how things change: if I had remained Signora Carracci I would be ruined, I would have ended up with my ass on the ground like all the Carraccis; instead I am Raffaella Cerullo and I’m the technical director for Michele Solara at four hundred and twenty thousand lire a month. The result is that my mother treats me like a queen, my father has forgiven me for everything, my brother sucks money out of me, Pinuccia says she loves me so much, their children call me Auntie. But it’s a boring job, completely the opposite of what it seemed at first: still too slow, you waste a lot of time, let’s hope that the new machines get here soon — they’re a lot faster. Or no. Speed consumes everything, as when photographs come out blurry. Alfonso used that expression, he used it in fun, he said that he came out blurry, without clear outlines. Lately he’s been talking to me constantly about friendship. He wants to be my friend, he would like to copy me on copying paper, he swears that he would like to be a girl like me. What sort of girl, I said to him, you’re a male, Alfò, you don’t know anything about what I’m like, and even if we’re friends and you study me and spy on me and copy me, you’ll never know anything. So — he was having a good time — what do I do, I suffer being the way I am. And he confessed to me that he has always loved Michele — yes, Michele Solara — and he wishes Michele would like him the way he thinks Michele likes me. You understand, Lenù, what happens to people: we have too much stuff inside and it swells us, breaks us. All right, I said, we’re friends, but get out of your mind that you can be a woman like me, all you’d succeed in being is what a woman is according to you men. You can copy me, make a portrait as precise as an artist, but my shit will always remain mine, and yours will be yours. Ah, Lenù, what happens to us all, we’re like pipes when the water freezes, what a terrible thing a dissatisfied mind is. You remember what we did with my wedding picture? I want to continue on that path. The day will come when I reduce myself to diagrams, I’ll become a perforated tape and you won’t find me anymore.