The result was a muddled day and a modest waste of money. I hired a boat, to take me to the Maronti. I went to the place where the Sarratores usually camped and found only the umbrella. I looked around, and saw Donato, who was swimming, and he saw me. He waved in greeting, hurried out of the water, told me that his wife and children had gone to spend the day in Forio, with Nino. I was extremely disappointed, the situation was not only ironic, it was contemptuous; it had taken away the son and delivered me to the sickening patter of the father.
When I tried to get away to go and see Nella, Sarratore wouldn’t let me go, he gathered up his things and insisted on coming with me. On the road he assumed a sentimental tone and without any embarrassment began to speak of what had happened between us years earlier. He asked me to forgive him, he murmured that one cannot command one’s heart, he spoke in a melancholy tone of my beauty then and above all of my present beauty.
“What an exaggeration,” I said, and, while I knew I should be serious and aloof, I began to laugh out of nervousness.
And though he was encumbered by the umbrella and his things, he would not relinquish a somewhat breathless, rambling discourse. He said that in substance the problem of youth was the lack of eyes to see oneself and feelings to feel about oneself with objectivity.
“There’s the mirror,” I replied, “and that is objective.”
“The mirror? The mirror is the last thing you can trust. I’ll bet that you feel less pretty than your two friends.”
“Yes.”
“And yet you are much, much more beautiful than they are. Trust me. Look what lovely blond hair you have. And what a bearing. You need to confront and resolve two problems only: the first is your bathing suit, it’s not adequate to your potential; the second is the style of your glasses. This is really wrong, Elena: too heavy. You have such a delicate face, so remarkably shaped by the things you study. What you need is daintier glasses.”
As I listened my irritation diminished; he was like a scientist of female beauty. Mainly he spoke with such detached expertise that at a certain point he led me to think: and if it’s true? Maybe I don’t know how to value myself. On the other hand where is the money to buy suitable clothes, a suitable bathing suit, suitable glasses? I was about to yield to a complaint about poverty and wealth when he said to me with a smile, “Besides, if you don’t trust my judgment, you’ll be aware, I hope, of how my son looked at you the time you came to see us.”
Only then did I realize that he was lying to me. His words were intended to appeal to my vanity, to make me feel good and drive me toward him in the need for gratification. I felt stupid, wounded not by him, with his lies, but by my own stupidity. I cut him short with an increasing rudeness that froze him.
At the house I talked to Nella for a while, I told her that we might all be returning to Naples that night and I wanted to say goodbye.
“A pity that you’re going.”
“Ah yes.”
“Eat with me.”
“I can’t, I have to go.”
“But if you don’t go, swear that you’ll come again and not so short next time. Stay with me for a day, or even overnight, since you know there’s the bed. I have so many things to tell you.”
“Thanks.”
Sarratore interrupted, he said, “We count on it, you know how much we love you.”
I fled, also because there was a relative of Nella’s who was going to the Port in a car and I didn’t want to miss the ride.
Along the way Sarratore’s words, surprisingly, even if I only rejected them, began to dig into me. No, maybe he hadn’t lied. He knew how to see beyond appearances. He had really had a means of observing his son’s gaze on me. And if I was pretty, if Nino seriously found me attractive—and I knew it was so: in the end he had kissed me, he had held my hand—it was time I looked at the facts for what they were: Lila had taken him from me; Lila had separated him from me to win him for herself. Maybe she hadn’t done it on purpose, but still she had done it.
I decided suddenly that I had to find him, see him at all costs. Now that our departure was imminent, now that the force of seduction that Lila had exercised over him would no longer have a chance to fascinate him, now that she herself had decided to return to the life that was hers, the relationship between him and me could begin again. In Naples. In the form of friendship. At least we could meet to talk about her. And then we would return to our conversations, to our reading. I would demonstrate that I could get interested in his interests better than Lila, certainly, maybe even better than Nadia. Yes, I had to speak to him right away, tell him I’m leaving, tell him: let’s see each other in the neighborhood, in Piazza Nazionale, in Mezzocannone, wherever you want, but as soon as possible.
