“More than your parents, more than Rino?”
“More than everyone, but not more than you.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
But meanwhile I thought: even if she’s kidding, it’s nice to talk like this, in the sun, sitting on the warm concrete, with our feet in the water; never mind if she didn’t ask what book I’m reading; never mind if she didn’t find out how the exams went. Maybe it’s not all over: even after she’s married, something between us will endure. I said to her:
“I come here every day. Why don’t you come, too?”
She was enthusiastic about the idea, she spoke to Stefano about it and he agreed. It was a beautiful day on which all of us, miraculously, felt at our ease. Then the sun began to go down, it was time to take the children home. Stefano went to pay and discovered that Antonio had taken care of everything. He was really sorry, he thanked him wholeheartedly. On the street, as soon as Stefano and Lila went off in the convertible, I reproached him. Melina and Ada washed the stairs of the buildings, he earned practically nothing in the garage.
“Why did you pay?” I almost yelled at him, in dialect, angrily.
“Because you and I are better-looking and more refined,” he answered.
50.
I grew fond of Antonio almost without realizing it. Our sexual games became a little bolder, a little more pleasurable. I thought that if Lila came again to the Sea Garden I would ask her what happened between her and Stefano when they went off in the car alone. Did they do the same things that Antonio and I did or more, for example the things that the rumors started by the two Solaras said she did? I had no one to compare myself with except her. But there was no chance to ask her those questions, she didn’t come back to the Sea Garden.
In mid-August my job was over and, with it, the joy of sun and sea. The stationer was extremely satisfied with the way I had taken care of the children and although they, in spite of my instructions, had told their mother that sometimes a young man who was my friend came to the beach, with whom they did some lovely dives, instead of reproaching me embraced me, saying, “Thank goodness, let go a little, please, you’re too sensible for your age. And she added maliciously, “Think of Lina Cerullo, all she gets up to.”
At the ponds that evening I said to Antonio, “It’s always been like that, since we were little: everyone thinks she’s bad and I’m good.”
He kissed me, murmuring ironically, “Why, isn’t that true?”
That response touched me and kept me from telling him that we had to part. It was a decision that seemed to me urgent, the affection wasn’t love, I loved Nino, I knew I would love him forever. I had a gentle speech prepared for Antonio, I wanted to say to him: It’s been wonderful, you helped me a lot at a time when I was sad, but now school is starting and this year is going to be difficult, I have new subjects, I’ll have to study a lot; I’m sorry but we have to stop. I felt it was necessary and every afternoon I went to our meeting at the ponds with my little speech ready. But he was so affectionate, so passionate, that my courage failed and I put it off. In the middle of August. By the end of the month. I said: you can’t kiss, touch a person and be touched, and be only a little fond of him; Lila loves Stefano very much, I did not love Antonio.
The time passed and I could never find the right moment to speak to him. He was worried. In the heat Melina generally got worse, but in the second half of August the deterioration became very noticeable. Sarratore returned to her mind, whom she called Donato. She said she had seen him, she said he had come to get her; her children didn’t know how to soothe her. I became anxious that Sarratore really had appeared on the streets of the neighborhood and that he was looking not for Melina but for me. At night I woke with a start, under the impression that he had come in through the window and was in the room. Then I calmed down, I thought: he must be on vacation in Barano, at the Maronti, not here, in this heat, with the flies, the dust.
