She had it all painted. In the bathroom, which had no windows, she reopened a walled-up door that had once led to an interior courtyard and installed a half window of frosted glass that could let in some light. She bought two paintings that she had seen in a gallery in Chiatamone and had liked. She hired a salesgirl, not from the neighborhood but a girl from Materdei who had studied to be a secretary. She arranged that the afternoon closing hours, from one until four, should be for her and for the assistant a period of absolute repose, for which the girl was always grateful. She held off Michele, who, although he supported every innovation sight unseen, nonetheless insisted on knowing the details of what she was doing, what she spent.
In the neighborhood, meanwhile, the decision to go to work in Piazza dei Martiri isolated her more than she already had been. A girl who had made a good marriage and had gained, out of nowhere, a comfortable life, a pretty girl who could be mistress of her own house, a house owned by her husband—why did she jump out of bed in the morning and remain far from home all day, in the city, employed by others, complicating Stefano’s life, and her mother-in-law’s, who because of her had to go back to work in the new grocery? Pinuccia and Gigliola especially, each in her way, threw on Lila all the mud they were capable of, and this was predictable. Less predictable was Carmen, who adored Lila for all she had done for her, but who, as soon as Lila left the grocery, withdrew her affection as if she were pulling back a hand grazed by an animal’s claws. She didn’t like the abrupt change from friend-colleague to servant in the clutches of Stefano’s mother. She felt betrayed, abandoned to fate, and couldn’t control her resentment. She even began to argue with her fiancé, Enzo, who didn’t approve of her bitterness, he shook his head and, in his laconic way, rather than defend Lila, assigned her, in a few words, a sort of inviolability, the privilege of having reasons that were always just and indisputable.
“Everything I do is no good, everything she does is good,” Carmen hissed bitterly.
“Who said so?”
“You: Lina thinks, Lina does, Lina knows. And I? I whom she went off and left there? But naturally she was right to leave and I am wrong to complain. Is it true? Is that what you think?”
“No.”
But in spite of that pure and simple monosyllable, Carmen wasn’t convinced, she suffered. She sensed that Enzo was tired of everything, even of her, and this enraged her even more: ever since his father died, since he had returned from the Army, he did what he had to do, led his usual life, but meanwhile he was studying at night—he had started during his military service—to get some sort of diploma. Now he was shut up in his head, roaring like a beast—roaring inside, outside silent—and Carmen couldn’t bear it, she especially couldn’t stand that he became a little animated only when he talked about that bitch, and she shouted at him, and began to cry, screaming:
“Lina makes me sick, because she doesn’t give a damn about anyone, but you like that, I know. While if I acted the way she acts, you’d smash my face.”
Ada, on the other hand, had long since aligned herself with her employer, Stefano, against the wife who harassed him, and when Lila went to the center of town to be the luxury saleswoman she simply became more treacherous. She said bad things about her to anyone, openly, straight out, but she was angry mainly with Antonio and Pasquale. “She has always taken you in, you men,” she said, “because she knows how to get you, she’s a whore.” She said it just like that, irately, as if Antonio and Pasquale were the representatives of all the insufficiency of the male sex. She insulted her brother, who didn’t side with her, she screamed at him: “You’re silent because you take money from the Solaras, too, you’re both employees of the company, and I know you’re ordered around by a woman, you help her put the shop in order, she says move this and move that and you obey.” And she was even worse with her fiancé, Pasquale, with whom she was increasingly at odds, constantly criticizing him, saying, “You’re dirty, you stink.” He apologized, he had just finished work, but Ada continued to attack him, every chance she got, so that Pasquale, to live in peace, gave in on the subject of Lila; the alternative was to break the engagement, although—it should be said—that was not the only reason. He had often been angry with both his fiancée and his sister for having forgotten all the benefits they had gained from Lila’s rise, but when, one morning, he saw our friend in the Giulietta with Michele Solara, who was driving her to Piazza dei Martiri, dressed like a high-class prostitute, all made up, he admitted that he couldn’t understand how, without a real economic need, she could sell herself to a man like that.
