At Christmas the shoes appeared in the window, a window with the comet star made of cotton wool. I went by to see them: they were elegant objects, carefully finished: just to look at them gave an impression of wealth that did not accord with the humble shop window, with the desolate landscape outside, with the shop’s interior, all pieces of hide and leather and benches and awls and wooden forms and boxes of shoes piled up to the ceiling, waiting for customers. Even with Fernando’s modifications, they were the shoes of our childish dreams, not invented for the reality of the neighborhood.
In fact at Christmas not a single pair sold. Only Antonio appeared, asked Rino for a 44, tried it. Later he told me the pleasure he had had in feeling so well shod, imagining himself with me at the wedding, in his new suit, with those shoes on his feet. But when he asked the price and Rino told him, he was dumbstruck: “Are you crazy?” and when Rino said, “I’ll sell them to you on a monthly installment,” he responded, laughing, “Then I’ll buy a Lambretta.”
56.
At the moment Lila, taken up by the wedding, didn’t realize that her brother, until then cheerful, playful, even though he was exhausted by work, was becoming depressed again, sleeping badly, flying into a rage for no reason. “He’s like a child,” she said to Pinuccia, as if to apologize for some of his outbursts, “his mood changes according to whether his whims are satisfied immediately or not, he doesn’t know how to wait.” She, like Fernando, did not feel in the least that the failure of the shoes to sell at Christmas was a fiasco. After all, the production of the shoes had not followed any plan: they had originated in Stefano’s wish to see Lila’s purest caprice made concrete, there were heavy ones, light ones, spanning most of the seasons. And this was an advantage. In the white boxes piled up in the Cerullos’ shop was a considerable assortment. They had only to wait, and in winter, in spring, in autumn the shoes would sell.
But Rino was increasingly agitated. After Christmas, on his own initiative, he went to the owner of the dusty shoe store at the end of the
“Excuse me, Rino, do you think I put so much money in the shoe store like that, without any security, just for love of your sister? We have the shoes, they’re beautiful, we have to sell them. The problem is to find the right place.”
That “just for love of your sister” didn’t please her. But she let it go, because the words had a good effect on Rino, who calmed down and began to talk, in particular to Pinuccia, about strategies for selling the shoes. He said they had to think on a grand scale. Why did so many good initiatives fail? Why had the Gorresio auto repair shop given up motorbikes? Why had the dressmaker in the dry goods store lasted only six months? Because they were undertakings that lacked breadth. The Cerullo shoes, instead, would as soon as possible leave the local market and become popular in the wealthier neighborhoods.
Meanwhile the date of the wedding approached. Lila hurried to fittings for her wedding dress, gave the final touches to her future home, fought with Pinuccia and Maria, who, among many things, were intolerant of Nunzia’s intrusions. The situation was increasingly tense. But the damaging attacks came from elsewhere. There were two events in particular, one after the other, that wounded Lila deeply.
One cold afternoon in February she asked me out of the blue if I could come with her to see Maestra Oliviero. She had never displayed any interest in her, no affection, no gratitude. Now, though, she felt the need to bring her the invitation in person. Since in the past I had never reported to her the hostile tones that the teacher had often used about her, it didn’t seem to me right to tell her then, especially since the teacher had recently seemed less aggressive, more melancholy: maybe she would welcome her kindly.
