I had never heard her say a rude word since I had known her. That day she said “ass,” and then muttered, “Excuse me.” But that wasn’t what struck me. It was the regret, as if the teacher were realizing that something of Lila had been ruined because she, as a teacher, hadn’t protected and nurtured it well. I felt that I was her most successful student and went away relieved.
The only one who congratulated me without reserve was Alfonso, who had also been promoted, with all sevens. I felt that his admiration was genuine, and this gave me pleasure. In front of the posted grades, in the presence of our schoolmates and their parents, he, in his excitement, did something inappropriate, as if he had forgotten that I was a girl and he wasn’t supposed to touch me: he hugged me tight, and kissed me on the cheek, a noisy kiss. Then he became confused, apologized, and yet he couldn’t contain himself, he cried, “All tens, impossible, all tens.” On the way home we talked a lot about the wedding of his brother, of Lila. Since I felt especially at ease, I asked him for the first time what he thought of his future sister-in-law. He took some time before he answered. Then he said:
“You remember the competitions they made us do at school?”
“Who could forget them?”
“I was sure I would win, you were all afraid of my father.”
“Lina, too: in fact for a while she tried not to beat you.”
“Yes, but then she decided to win and she humiliated me. I went home crying.”
“It’s not nice to lose.”
“Not because of that: it seemed to me intolerable that everyone was terrified of my father, me first of all, and that girl wasn’t.”
“Were you in love with her?”
“Are you kidding? She always made me uncomfortable.”
“In what sense?”
“In the sense that my brother really shows some courage in marrying her.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that you are better, and that if it were me choosing I would marry you.”
This, too, pleased me. We burst out laughing, we said goodbye, still laughing. He was condemned to spend the summer in the grocery store, I, thanks to a decision of my mother more than my father, had to find a job for the summer. We promised to meet, to go at least once to the beach together. We didn’t.
In the following days I reluctantly made the rounds of the neighborhood. I asked Don Paolo, the pharmacist on the
I was really happy when I left the shop. The stationer would pay me—and pay well—if I took her three little girls to the beach for the month of July and the first ten days of August. Sea, sun, and money. I was to go every day to a place between Mergellina and Posillipo that I knew nothing about, it had a foreign name: Sea Garden. I went home in great excitement, as if my life had taken a decisive turn. I would earn money for my parents, I would go swimming, I would become smooth and golden in the sun as I had during the summer in Ischia. How sweet everything is, I thought, when the day is fine and every good thing seems to be waiting for you alone.
I had gone a short distance when that impression of privileged hours was solidified. Antonio joined me, in his grease-stained overalls. I was pleased, whoever I had met at that moment of happiness would have been greeted warmly. He had seen me passing and had run after me. I told him about the stationer, he must have read in my face that it was a happy moment. For months I had been grinding away, feeling alone, ugly. Although I was sure I loved Nino Sarratore, I had always avoided him and hadn’t even gone to see if he had been promoted, and with what grades. Lila was about to complete a definitive leap beyond my life, I would no longer be able to follow her. But now I felt good and I wanted to feel even better. When Antonio, guessing that I was in the right mood, asked if I wanted to be his girlfriend, I said yes right away, even though I loved someone else, even if I felt for him nothing but some friendliness. To have him as a boyfriend, he who was an adult, the same age as Stefano, a worker, seemed to me a thing not different from being promoted with all tens, from the job of taking, with pay, the daughters of the stationer to the Sea Garden.
49.
