In a short while I wished I could talk every day to a boy on that level: how many mistakes I had made with him; what foolishness it had been to want him, love him, and yet always avoid him. His father’s fault. But also my fault: I—I who was so upset by my mother—I had let the father throw his ugly shadow over the son? I repented, I reveled in my repentance, in the novel I felt myself immersed in. Meanwhile I often raised my voice to be heard over the clamor of the room, the music, and so did he. From time to time I looked at Lila’s table: she laughed, she ate, she talked, she didn’t realize where I was, the person I was talking to. Rarely, however, did I look toward Antonio’s table, I was afraid he would make me a sign to join him. But I felt that he kept his eyes on me, that he was nervous, getting angry. Never mind, I thought, I’ve already decided, I’ll break up tomorrow: I can’t go on with him, we’re too different. Of course, he adored me, he was entirely devoted to me, but like a dog. I was dazzled instead by the way Nino talked to me: without any subservience. He set out his future, the ideas on the basis of which he would build it. To listen to him lighted up my mind almost the way Lila once had. His devotion to me made me grow. He, yes, he would take me away from my mother, he who wanted only to leave his father.
I felt someone touch my shoulder, it was Antonio again. He said, “Let’s dance.”
“My mother doesn’t want me to,” I whispered.
He replied, tensely, “Everyone’s dancing, what’s the problem?”
I half-smiled at Nino, embarrassed, he knew that Antonio was my boyfriend. He looked at me seriously, he turned to Alfonso. I left.
“Don’t hold me close.”
“I’m not holding you close.”
There was a loud din, a drunken gaiety. Young people, adults, children were dancing. But I could feel the reality behind the appearance of festivity. The distorted faces of the bride’s relatives signaled a quarrelsome discontent. Especially the women. They had spent their last cent for the gift, for what they were wearing, had gone into debt, and now they were treated like poor relations, with bad wine, intolerable delays in service? Why didn’t Lila intervene, why didn’t she protest to Stefano? I knew them. They would restrain their rage for love of Lila but at the end of the reception, when she went to change, when she came back, dressed in her beautiful traveling clothes, when she handed out the wedding favors, when she had left, with her husband, then a huge fight would erupt, and it would be the start of hatreds lasting months, years, and offenses and insults that would involve husbands, sons, all with an obligation to prove to mothers and sisters and grandmothers that they knew how to be men. I knew all the women, the men. I saw the gazes of the young men turned fiercely to the singer, to the musicians who looked insultingly at their girlfriends or made allusive remarks to one another. I saw how Enzo and Carmela talked while they danced, I saw also Pasquale and Ada sitting at the table: it was clear that before the end of the party they would be together and then they would be engaged and in all probability in a year, in ten, they would marry. I saw Rino and Pinuccia. In their case everything would happen more quickly: if the Cerullo shoe factory seriously got going, in a year at most they would have a wedding celebration no less ostentatious than this. They danced, they looked into each other’s eyes, they held each other closely. Love and interest. Grocery plus shoes. Old houses plus new houses. Was I like them? Was I still?
“Who’s that?” Antonio asked.
“Who do you think? You don’t recognize him?”
“No.”
“It’s Nino, Sarratore’s oldest son. And that’s Marisa, you remember her?”
He didn’t care at all about Marisa, about Nino he did. He said nervously, “So first you bring me to Sarratore to threaten him, and then you sit talking to his son for hours? I have a new suit made so I can sit watching you amuse yourself with that kid, who doesn’t even get a haircut, doesn’t even wear a tie?”
He left me in the middle of the room and headed quickly toward the glass door that opened onto the terrace.
For a few seconds I was uncertain what to do. Join Antonio. Return to Nino. I had on me my mother’s gaze, even if her wandering eye seemed to be looking elsewhere. I had on me my father’s gaze, and it was an ugly gaze. I thought: if I go back to Nino, if I don’t join Antonio on the terrace, it will be he who leaves me and for me it will be better like that. I crossed the room while the band kept playing, couples continued to dance. I sat down.
