Nino thanked me, scratched away with his nail the trace of a mosquito from the cover, said to Lila, “I’ll read it overnight and tomorrow we can talk about it.”
“Not tomorrow, we won’t see each other.”
“Why?”
“I’ll be with my husband.”
“Oh.”
He seemed annoyed. I waited fearfully for him to ask me if the two of us would see each other. But he had a burst of impatience, he said, “I can’t tomorrow, either. Bruno’s parents arrive tonight and I have to go sleep in Barano. I’ll be back on Monday.”
Barano? Monday? I hoped that he would ask me to join him at the Maronti. But he was distracted, maybe his mind was still on Dan Rooney, who, not content with being blind, wished to become deaf and mute, too. He didn’t ask me anything.
49.
On the way home I said to Lila, “If I lend you a book, which, besides, isn’t mine, please don’t take it to the beach. I can’t give it back to Professor Galiani with sand in it.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and cheerfully gave me a kiss on the cheek. She wanted to carry both my bag and Pinuccia’s, maybe to ask forgiveness.
Slowly my mood cleared. I thought that Nino hadn’t randomly alluded to the fact that he was going to Barano: he wanted me to know, and I decided independently to go and see him there. He’s like that, I said to myself, with growing relief, he needs to be pursued: tomorrow I’ll get up early and go. Pinuccia’s ill humor, on the other hand, continued. Usually she was quick to get angry but quick to get over it, too, especially now that pregnancy had softened not only her body but also the rough edges of her character. Instead she became increasingly fretful.
“Did Bruno say something unpleasant?” I asked her.
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you not feel well?”
“I’m fine, I don’t even know what’s wrong with me.”
“Go and get ready, Rino will be here.”
“Yes.”
But she continued to sit in her damp bathing suit, leafing distractedly through a photonovel. Lila and I got dressed up, Lila especially decked herself out as if she were going to a party, and still Pinuccia did nothing. Then even Nunzia, who was laboring silently over the dinner preparations, said softly, “Pinù, what’s the matter, sweetie, aren’t you going to get dressed?” No answer. Only when we heard the roar of the Lambrettas and the voices of the two young men calling did Pina jump up and run to her room, crying, “Don’t let them come in, please.”
The evening was bewildering, for the husbands, too. Stefano, by now used to permanent conflict with Lila, found himself unexpectedly in the company of a girl who was very affectionate, yielding to caresses and kisses without her usual irritation; while Rino, accustomed to Pinuccia’s clingy coquettishness, intensified by her pregnancy, was disappointed that his wife didn’t come down the stairs to greet him, that he had to look for her in the bedroom, and when finally he embraced her, he immediately noticed the effort she made to act as if she were pleased. Not only that. While Lila laughed heartily when, after a few glasses of wine, the two men started in with the lively sexual allusions that indicated desire, Pinuccia, at a whispered remark from Rino, laughing, jerked away and hissed, in a half Italian, “Stop it, you’re a boor.” He got angry: “You call me a boor? Boor?” She resisted for a few minutes, then her lower lip trembled and she took refuge in her room.
“It’s the pregnancy,” Nunzia said, “you have to be patient.”
Silence. Rino finished eating, then, fuming, went to his wife. He didn’t come back.
Lila and Stefano decided to go out on the Lambretta to see the beach at night. They left laughing together, kissing. I cleared the table, as usual struggling with Nunzia, who didn’t want me to lift a finger. We talked about when she had met Fernando and they fell in love, and she said something that made a deep impression. She said, “For your whole life you love people and you never really know who they are.” Fernando was both good and bad, and she had loved him very much but she had also hated him. “So,” she emphasized, “there’s nothing to worry about: Pinuccia is in a bad mood but she’ll get over it; and you remember how Lina came back from her honeymoon? Well, look at them now. Life is like that: one day you’re getting hit, the next kissed.”
I went to my room, I tried to finish Chabod, but I recalled how Nino had been charmed by the way Lila talked about that Rooney, and the desire to waste time with the idea of nationhood vanished. Even Nino is evasive, I thought, even with Nino it’s hard to understand who he is. He seemed not to care about literature and yet Lila randomly picks up a book of plays, says two foolish things, and he becomes ardent about it. I rummaged among the books in search of other literary things, but I had none. I realized that a book was missing. Was that possible? Professor Galiani had given me six. Nino now had one, one I was reading, on the marble windowsill there were three. Where was the sixth?
