The Neapolitan Novels полностью

I was suddenly sure that, without being aware of it, I had intercepted Lila’s feelings and was adding them to mine. Why did she have that expression, that ill humor? Had she caressed her leg, her hip, as a sort of farewell? Had she touched herself, speaking, as if she felt the edges of her body besieged by Melina, by Giuseppina, and was frightened, disgusted by it? Had she turned to our friends out of a need to react?

I remembered how, as a child, she had looked at Maestra Oliviero when she fell off the platform like a broken puppet. I remembered how she had looked at Melina on the stradone, eating the soft soap she had just bought. I remembered when she told the rest of us about the murder, and the blood on the copper pot, and claimed that the killer of Don Achille was not a man but a woman, as if, in the story she was telling us, she had heard and seen the form of a female body break, from the need for hatred, the urgency for revenge or justice, and lose its substance.

23.

Starting in the last week of July, I went with the stationer’s daughters to the Sea Garden every day, including Sunday. Along with the thousand things that the children might need, I brought in a canvas bag the books that Professor Galiani had lent me. They were small volumes that examined the past, the present, the world as it was and as it ought to become. The writing resembled that of textbooks, but was more difficult and more interesting. I wasn’t used to that sort of reading, and got tired quickly. Besides, the girls required a lot of attention. And then there was the lazy sea, the leaden sun that bore down on the gulf and the city, stray fantasies, desires, the ever-present wish to undo the order of the lines—and, with it, every order that required an effort, a wait for fulfillment yet to come—and yield, instead, to what was within reach, immediately gained, the crude life of the creatures of the sky, the earth, and the sea. I approached my seventeenth birthday with one eye on the daughters of the stationer and one on Discourse on the Origins of Inequality.

One Sunday I felt someone putting fingers over my eyes and a female voice asked, “Guess who?”

I recognized Marisa’s voice and hoped that she was with Nino. How I would have liked him to see me made beautiful by the sun, the salt water, and intent on reading a difficult book. I exclaimed happily, “Marisa!” and immediately turned around. But Nino wasn’t there; it was Alfonso, with a blue towel over his shoulder, cigarette, wallet, and lighter in his hand, a black bathing suit with a white stripe, he himself pale as one who has never had a ray of sun in his entire life.

I marveled at seeing them together. Alfonso had to retake exams in two subjects in October, and, since he was busy in the grocery, I imagined that on Sundays he studied. As for Marisa, I was sure that she would be at Barano with her family. Instead she told me that her parents had quarreled with Nella the year before and, with some friends from Roma, had taken a small villa at Castelvolturno. She had returned to Naples just for a few days: she needed some school books—three subjects to do again—and, then, she had to see a person. She smiled flirtatiously at Alfonso. The person was him.

I couldn’t contain myself, I asked right away how Nino had done on his graduation exams. She made a face of disgust.

“All A’s and A-minuses. As soon as he found out the results he went off on his own to England, without a lira. He says he’ll find a job there and stay until he learns English.”

“Then?”

“Then I don’t know, maybe he’ll enroll in economy and business.”

I had a thousand other questions, I even looked for a way to ask who the girl was who waited outside school, and if he had really gone alone or in fact with her, when Alfonso said, embarrassed, “Lina’s here, too.” Then he added, “Antonio brought us in the car.”

Antonio?

Alfonso must have noticed how my expression changed, the flush that was spreading over my face, the jealous amazement in my eyes. He smiled, and said quickly, “Stefano had some work to do about the counters in the new grocery and couldn’t come. But Lina was extremely eager to see you, she has something to tell you, and so she asked Antonio if he would take us.”

“Yes, she has something urgent to tell you,” Marisa said emphatically, clapping her hands gleefully to let me know that she already knew the thing.