She became at that point so pleased that I didn’t dare try to make her change her mind. But already on the way home I felt that my situation had become worse. None of the obstacles that prevented me from going to the party had been removed, and that offer of Lila’s confused me even more. The reasons were tangled and I had no intention of enumerating them, but if I had I would have been confronted by contradictory statements. I was afraid that Stefano wouldn’t let her come. I was afraid that Stefano would let her. I was afraid that she would dress in an ostentatious fashion, the way she had when she went to the Solaras. I was afraid that, whatever she wore, her beauty would explode like a star and everyone would be eager to grab a fragment of it. I was afraid that she would express herself in dialect, that she would say something vulgar, that it would become obvious that school for her had ended with an elementary-school diploma. I was afraid that, if she merely opened her mouth, everyone would be hypnotized by her intelligence and Professor Galiani herself would be entranced. I was afraid that the professor would find her both presumptuous and naïve and would say to me: Who is this friend of yours, stop seeing her. I was afraid she would understand that I was only Lila’s pale shadow and would be interested not in me any longer but in her, she would want to see her again, she would undertake to make her go back to school.
For a while I avoided the grocery. I hoped that Lila would forget about the party, that the day would come and I would go almost secretly, and then I would tell her: you didn’t let me know. Instead she soon came to see me, which she hadn’t done for a long time. She had persuaded Stefano not only to take us but also to come and get us, and she wanted to know what time we were to be at the professor’s house.
“What are you going to wear?” I asked anxiously.
“Whatever you wear.”
“I’m going to wear a blouse and skirt.”
“Then I will, too.”
“And Stefano is sure that he’ll take us and then come and get us?”
“Yes.”
“How did you persuade him?”
She made a face, cheerfully, saying that by now she knew how to handle him. “If I want something,” she whispered, as if she herself didn’t want to hear, “I just have to act a little like a whore.”
She said it like that, in dialect, and added other crude, self-mocking expressions, to make me understand the revulsion her husband provoked in her, the disgust she felt at herself. My anxiety increased. I should tell her, I thought, that I’m not going to the party, I should tell her that I changed my mind. I knew, naturally, that behind the appearance of the disciplined Lila, at work from morning to night, there was a Lila who was anything but submissive; yet, in particular now that I was assuming the responsibility of introducing her into the house of Professor Galiani, the recalcitrant Lila frightened me, seemed to me increasingly spoiled by her very refusal to surrender. What would happen if, in the presence of the professor, something made her rebel? What would happen if she decided to use the language she had just used with me? I said cautiously:
“There, please, don’t talk like that.”
She looked at me in bewilderment. “Like what?”
“Like now.”
She was silent for a moment, then she asked, “Are you ashamed of me?”
34.
I wasn’t ashamed of her, I swore it, but I hid from her the fact that I was afraid of having to be ashamed of myself for it.
Stefano took us in the convertible to the professor’s house. I sat in the back, the two of them in front, and for the first time I was struck by the massive wedding rings on their hands, his and hers. While Lila wore a skirt and blouse, as she had promised, nothing excessive, and no makeup except some lipstick, he was dressed up, with a lot of gold, and a strong odor of shaving soap, as if he expected that at the last moment we would say to him: You come, too. We didn’t. I confined myself to thanking him warmly several times, Lila got out of the car without saying goodbye. Stefano drove off with a painful screeching of tires.
We were tempted by the elevator, but then decided against it. We had never taken an elevator, not even Lila’s new building had one, we were afraid of getting in trouble. Professor Galiani had said that her apartment was on the fourth floor, that on the door it said “Dott. Prof. Frigerio,” but just the same we checked the name plates on every floor. I went ahead, Lila behind, in silence, flight after flight. How clean the building was, the doorknobs and the brass nameplates gleamed. My heart was pounding.
