I didn’t want to exchange even a hello with Nino’s sister, any sign that evoked him made me anxious. But Alfonso’s obscure words did me good, I turned them over in my mind as I walked. He had said that because he knew me, we talked to each other, we sat at the same desk, he would never impose his authority on a possible wife by beating her. He had expressed himself with a frank sincerity, he wasn’t afraid of attributing to me, even if in a confused way, the capacity to influence him, a male, to change his behavior. I was grateful to him for that tangled message, which consoled me and set in motion a reconciliation between me and myself. It doesn’t take much for a conviction that has become fragile to weaken to the point of giving way. The next day I forged my mother’s signature and returned to school. That evening, at the ponds, clinging to Antonio to escape the cold, I promised him: I’ll finish the school year and we’ll get married.
10.
But I had a hard time making up the ground I had lost, especially in science, and I tried to reduce my meetings with Antonio so that I could concentrate on my books. When I missed a date because I had to study, he became gloomy, he asked me, in alarm, “Is something wrong?”
“I’ve got a lot of homework.”
“How is it that all of a sudden you’ve got more homework?”
“I’ve always had a lot.”
“Before you didn’t have any.”
“It was a coincidence.”
“What are you hiding from me, Lenù?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you still love me?”
I reassured him, but meanwhile the time moved quickly by us and I went home angry at myself because I still had so much studying to do.
Antonio’s fixation was always the same: Sarratore’s son. He was afraid that I would talk to him, even that I would see him. Naturally, to prevent him from suffering, I concealed the fact that I ran into Nino entering school, coming out, in the corridors. Nothing particular happened, at most we exchanged a nod of greeting and went on our way: I could have talked to my boyfriend about it without any problems if he had been a reasonable person. But Antonio was not reasonable and in truth I wasn’t, either. Although Nino gave me no encouragement, a mere glimpse of him left me distracted during class. His presence a few classrooms away—real, alive, better educated than the professors, and courageous, and disobedient—drained meaning from the teachers’ lectures, the pages of books, the plans for marriage, the gas pump on the
Even at home I couldn’t study. Added to my confusing thoughts about Antonio, about Nino, about the future was my mother’s irritability, as she yelled at me to do this or that, and my siblings, who came one by one to have me look at their homework. That permanent turmoil wasn’t new, I had always studied in disorder. But the old determination that had allowed me to do my best even in those conditions seemed to be used up, I couldn’t or didn’t want to reconcile school with everyone’s needs anymore. So I would let the afternoon go by helping my mother, correcting my sister’s and brothers’ exercises, and studying little or not at all for myself. And if once I had sacrificed sleep to books, now, since I was still exhausted and sleep seemed to me a respite, at night I forgot about homework and went to bed.
And so I began to show up in class not only inattentive but unprepared, and I lived in fear that the teachers would call on me. Which soon happened. Once, in the same day, I got low marks in chemistry, art history, and philosophy, and my nerves were so frayed that right after the last bad grade I burst into tears in front of everyone. It was a terrible moment: I felt the horror and the pleasure of losing myself, the fear and the pride in going off the rails.
As we were leaving school Alfonso told me that his sister-in-law had asked him to tell me to go and see her. Go on, he urged me anxiously, surely you’ll study better there than at your house. So that afternoon I made up my mind and walked to the new neighborhood. But I didn’t go to Lila’s house to find a solution to my problems with school, I took it for granted that we would talk the whole time and that my situation as a former model student would get even worse. I said to myself, rather: better to go off the rails talking to Lila than in the midst of my mother’s yelling, the petulant demands of my siblings, the yearnings for Nino, Antonio’s recriminations; at least I would learn something about married life, a life that soon—I now assumed—would be mine.
