So it was that one afternoon Michele called Antonio and sent him to do a long-term job in Germany. He didn’t object, in fact he obeyed willingly, he left without saying goodbye to his sister or even to Melina. He took it for granted that in a foreign country, among people who spoke like the Nazis at the church cinema, he would be stabbed, or shot, and he was content. He considered it more tolerable to be murdered than to continue to observe the suffering of his mother and Ada without being able to do anything.
The only person he wanted to see before setting off on the train was Enzo. He found him busy: at the time he was trying to sell everything, the mule, the cart, his mother’s little shop, a garden near the railroad. He wanted to give part of the proceeds to a maiden aunt who had offered to take care of his siblings.
“And you?” Antonio asked.
“I’m looking for a job.”
“You want to change your life?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a good thing.”
“It’s a necessity.”
“I, on the other hand, am what I am.”
“Nonsense.”
“It’s true, but it’s all right. Now I have to leave and I don’t know when I’ll be back. Every so often, please, could you cast an eye on my mother, my sister, and the children?”
“If I stay in the neighborhood, yes.”
“We were wrong, Enzù, we shouldn’t have taken Lina home.”
“Maybe.”
“It’s all a mess, you never know what to do.”
“Yes.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
They didn’t even shake hands. Antonio went to Piazza Garibaldi and got the train. He had a long, difficult journey, night and day, with many angry voices running through his veins. He felt extremely tired after just a few hours, his feet were tingling; he hadn’t traveled since he returned from military service. Every so often he got out to get a drink of water from a fountain, but he was afraid the train would leave. Later he told me that at the station in Florence he felt so depressed that he thought: I’ll stop here and go to Lenuccia.
111.
With the departure of Antonio the bond between Gigliola and Ada became very tight. Gigliola suggested to her what the daughter of Melina had had in mind for some time, that is, that she shouldn’t wait any longer, the matrimonial situation of Stefano should be resolved. “Lina has to get out of that house,” she said, “and you have to go in: if you wait too long, the enchantment will be broken and you’ll lose everything, even the job in the grocery, because she’ll regain ground and force Stefano to get rid of you.” Gigliola went so far as to confide to her that she was speaking from experience, she had the same problem with Michele. “If I wait for him to make up his mind to marry me,” she whispered, “I’ll get old; so I’m tormenting him: either we marry by the spring of 1968 or I’m leaving and fuck him.”
Thus Ada went on to envelop Stefano in a net of true, sticky desire that made him feel special, and meanwhile she murmured between kisses, “You have to decide, Ste’, either me or her; I’m not saying you have to throw her out in the street with the child, that’s your son, you have responsibilities; but do what lots of actors and important people do today: give her some money and that’s it. Everybody in the neighborhood knows that I’m your real wife, so I want to stay with you, always.”
Stefano said yes and hugged her tight in the uncomfortable narrow bed on the Rettifilo, but then he didn’t do much, except return home to Lila and yell, because there were no clean socks, or because he had seen her talking to Pasquale or someone else.
