I hoped that those rumors wouldn’t reach Stefano. Every day when I came home from school I said to myself: maybe I should warn Lila, before something bad happens. But I was afraid she would be furious and that, because of how she had grown up, because of how she was made, she would go directly to Marcello Solara with the shoemaker’s knife. But in the end I decided: it was better to report to her what I had learned, so she would be prepared to confront the situation. But I discovered that she already knew about it. Not only that: she was better informed than me about what a blow job was. I realized it from the fact that she used a clearer formulation to tell me it was so disgusting to her that she would never do it to any man, let alone Marcello Solara. Then she told me that Stefano had heard the rumor and he had asked her what type of relations she had had with Marcello during the period when he went to the Cerullo house. She had said angrily, “None, are you crazy?” And Stefano had said immediately that he believed her, that he had never had doubts, that he had asked the question only to let her know that Marcello was saying obscene things about her. Yet he seemed distracted, like someone who, even against his will, is following scenes of disaster that are forming in his mind. Lila had realized it and they had discussed it for a long time, she had confessed that she, too, felt a need for revenge. But what was the use? After talk and more talk, they had decided by mutual consent to rise a step above the Solaras, above the logic of the neighborhood.
“A step above?” I asked, marveling.
“Yes, to ignore them: Marcello, his brother, the father, the grandfather, all of them. Act as if they didn’t exist.”
So Stefano had continued to go to work, without defending the honor of his fiancée, Lila had continued her life as a fiancée without resorting to the knife or anything else, the Solaras had continued to spread obscenities. I was astonished. What was happening? I didn’t understand. The Solaras’ behavior seemed more comprehensible, it seemed to me consistent with the world that we had known since we were children. What, instead, did she and Stefano have in mind, where did they think they were living? They were behaving in a way that wasn’t familiar even in the poems that I studied in school, in the novels I read. I was puzzled. They weren’t reacting to the insults, even to that truly intolerable insult that the Solaras were making. They displayed kindness and politeness toward everyone, as if they were John and Jacqueline Kennedy visiting a neighborhood of indigents. When they went out walking together, and he put an arm around her shoulders, it seemed that none of the old rules were valid for them: they laughed, they joked, they embraced, they kissed each other on the lips. I saw them speeding around in the convertible, alone even in the evening, always dressed like movie stars, and I thought, They go wherever they want, without a chaperone, and not secretly but with the consent of their parents, with the consent of Rino, and do whatever they like, without caring what people say. Was it Lila who had persuaded Stefano to behave in a way that was making them the most admired and most talked about couple in the neighborhood? Was this her latest invention? Did she want to leave the neighborhood by staying in the neighborhood? Did she want to drag us out of ourselves, tear off the old skin and put on a new one, suitable for what she was inventing?
47.
Everything returned abruptly to the usual track when the rumors about Lila reached Pasquale. It happened one Sunday, when Carmela, Enzo, Pasquale, Antonio, and I were walking along the
Enzo didn’t blink. Pasquale immediately flared up: “Was how?”
Antonio was embarrassed by my and Carmela’s presence and said, “You understand.”
They moved away, to talk among themselves. I saw and heard that Pasquale was increasingly enraged, that Enzo was becoming physically more compact, as if he no longer had arms, legs, neck, as if he were a block of hard material. Why is it, I wondered, that they are so angry? Lila isn’t a sister of theirs or even a cousin. And yet they feel it’s their duty to be indignant, all three of them, more than Stefano, much more than Stefano, as if they were the true fiancés. Pasquale especially seemed ridiculous. He who only a short time before had said what he had said shouted, at one point, and we heard him clearly, with our own ears: “I’ll smash the face of that shit, calling her a whore. Even if Stefano allows it, I’m not going to allow it.” Then silence, they rejoined us, and we wandered aimlessly, I talking to Antonio, Carmela between her brother and Enzo. After a while they took us home. I saw them going off, Enzo, who was the shortest, in the middle, flanked by Antonio and Pasquale.
