“No, it repulses me, but I’m pleased to carry it.”
“Was Stefano angry?”
“He wants to believe what’s convenient for him.”
“That is?”
“That for a while I was a little crazy and ran away to you in Pisa.”
I pretended not to know anything, feigning amazement: “In Pisa? You and me?”
“Yes.”
“And if he asks, should I say that’s what happened?”
“Do as you like.”
We said goodbye, promising to write. But we never wrote and I did nothing to find out about the birth. Sometimes a feeling stirred in me that I immediately repressed to keep it from becoming conscious: I wanted something to happen to her, so the baby wouldn’t be born.
97.
In that period I often dreamed of Lila. Once she was in bed in a lacy green nightgown, her hair was braided, which was something she had never done, she held in her arms a little girl dressed in pink, and she kept saying, in a sorrowful voice, “Take a picture but only of me, not of the child.” Another time she greeted me happily and then called her daughter, who had my name. “Lenù,” she said, “come and say hello to your aunt.” But a fat old giantess appeared, and Lila ordered me to undress her and wash her and change her diaper and swaddling. On waking I was tempted to look for a telephone and try to call Alfonso to find out if the baby had been born without any problems, if she was happy. But I had to study or maybe I had exams, and I forgot about it. When, in August, I was free of both obligations, it happened that I didn’t go home. I wrote some lies to my parents and went with Franco to Versilia, to an apartment belonging to his family. For the first time I wore a two-piece bathing suit: it fit in one fist and I felt very bold.
It was at Christmas that I heard from Carmen how difficult Lila’s delivery had been.
“She almost died,” she said, “so in the end the doctor had to cut open her stomach, otherwise the baby couldn’t be born.”
“She had a boy?”
“Yes.”
“Is he well?”
“He’s lovely.”
“And she?”
“She’s lost her figure.”
I learned that Stefano wanted to give his son the name of his father, Achille, but Lila was opposed to it, and the yelling of husband and wife, which hadn’t been heard for a long time, echoed throughout the clinic, so that the nurses had reprimanded them. In the end the child was called Gennaro, that is, Rino, like Lila’s brother.
I listened, I didn’t say anything. I felt unhappy, and to cope with my unhappiness I imposed on myself an attitude of reserve. Carmen noticed:
“I’m talking and talking, but you don’t say a word, you make me feel like the TV news. Don’t you give a damn about us anymore?”
“Of course I do.”
“You’ve gotten pretty, even your voice has changed.”
“Did I have an ugly voice?”
“You had the voice that we have.”
“And now?”
“You have it less.”
I stayed in the neighborhood for ten days, from December 24, 1964, to January 3, 1965, but I never went to see Lila. I didn’t want to see her son, I was afraid of recognizing in his mouth, in his nose, in the shape of his eyes or ears something of Nino.
At my house now I was treated like an important person who had deigned to stop by for a quick hello. My father observed me with pleasure. I felt his satisfied gaze on me, but if I spoke to him he became embarrassed. He didn’t ask what I was studying, what was the use of it, what job I would have afterward, and not because he didn’t want to know but out of fear that he wouldn’t understand my answers. My mother instead moved angrily through the house, and, hearing her unmistakable footsteps, I thought of how I had been afraid of becoming like her. But, luckily, I had outdistanced her, and she felt it, she resented me for it. Even now, when she spoke to me, it was as if I were guilty of terrible things: in every situation I perceived in her voice a shadow of disapproval, but, unlike in the past, she never wanted me to do the dishes, clean up, wash the floors. There was some uneasiness also with my sister and brothers. They tried to speak to me in Italian and often corrected their own mistakes, ashamed. But I tried to show them that I was the same as ever, and gradually they were persuaded.
