“Forget him, Lenù, Antonio is better.”
“You think?”
“Yes. He’s skinny, ugly, and most of all really arrogant.”
I heard the three adjectives like an insult and was on the point of saying: it’s not true, he’s handsome, his eyes sparkle, and I’m sorry you don’t realize it, because a boy like that doesn’t exist in the movies or on television or even in novels, and I’m happy that I’ve loved him since I was little, and even if he’s out of my reach, even if I’m going to marry Antonio and spend my life pumping gas, I will love him more than myself, I’ll love him forever.
Instead, unhappy again, I said, “I used to like him, in elementary school: I don’t anymore.”
12.
The months that followed were packed with small events that tormented me a great deal, and even today I find it difficult to put them in order. Although I imposed on myself an appearance of self-assurance and an iron discipline, I gave in continuously, with painful pleasure, to waves of unhappiness. Everything seemed to be against me. At school I couldn’t get the grades I used to, even though I had begun to study again. The days passed without even a moment during which I felt alive. The road to school, the one to Lila’s house, the one to the ponds were colorless backdrops. Tense, discouraged, I ended up, almost without realizing it, blaming Antonio for a good part of my troubles.
He, too, was very upset. He wanted to see me continuously, sometimes he left work and I found him waiting for me, self-conscious, on the sidewalk across from the school entrance. He was worried about the crazy behavior of his mother, Melina, and was frightened by the possibility that he wouldn’t be exempted from military service. He had submitted, in time, application after application to the recruiting office documenting the death of his father, the condition of his mother’s health, his role as the sole support of his family, and it seemed that the Army, overwhelmed by the papers, had decided to forget about him. But now he had learned that Enzo Scanno was to leave in the autumn and he was afraid that his turn would come, too. “I can’t leave my mother and Ada and the other children with no money and no protection,” he said in despair.
One day he appeared at school out of breath: he had learned that the carabinieri had come to get information about him.
“Ask Lina,” he said anxiously, “ask her if Stefano had an exemption because his mother is widowed or for some other reason.”
I soothed him, tried to distract him. I organized an evening for him at the pizzeria with Pasquale and Enzo and their girlfriends, Ada and Carmela. I hoped that, seeing his friends, he would calm down, but it didn’t help. Enzo, as usual, showed not the least emotion about his departure, he was sorry only because, while he was in the Army, his father would have to go back to walking the streets with the cart, and his health wasn’t good. As for Pasquale, he revealed somewhat morosely that he had been rejected for military service because of an old tubercular infection. But he said that he regretted it, one ought to be a soldier, though not to serve the country. People like us, he muttered, have a duty to learn to use weapons, because soon the time will come when those who should pay will pay. From there we went on to discuss politics, or, to be exact, Pasquale did, and in a very intolerant way. He said that the Fascists wanted to return to power with the help of the Christian Democrats. He said that the police and the Army were on their side. He said that we had to be prepared, and he spoke in particular to Enzo, who nodded assent and, though he was generally silent, said, with a little laugh, don’t worry, when I get back I’ll show you how to shoot.
Ada and Carmela appeared very impressed by that conversation, and pleased to be the girlfriends of such dangerous men. I would have liked to speak, but I knew little or nothing of alliances between Fascists, Christian Democrats, and police, in my head I had not even a thought. Every so often I looked at Antonio, hoping that he would get excited about the subject, but he didn’t, he just kept trying to go back to what was torturing him. He asked over and over what it was like in the Army, and Pasquale, even though he hadn’t been there, answered: a real shithole, if you don’t knuckle under they break you. Enzo was silent, as if the question didn’t concern him. Antonio, on the other hand, stopped eating, and, playing with the pizza on his plate, kept saying things like: They don’t know who they’re dealing with, let them just try, I’ll break them.
When we were alone he said to me, all of a sudden, in a depressed tone of voice, “I know if I leave you won’t wait for me, you’ll go with someone else.”
