Lila closed the book, took the baby without saying anything and withdrew into the room where, a long time earlier, I had studied, and where Rinuccio now slept. Stefano whispered to his lover, “You’ll ruin me, like this. It’s not true that you love me, Ada, you want me to lose all my customers, you want to reduce me to a pauper, and you know that circumstances are already not good. Please, tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you.”
“I want to be with you always.”
“Yes, but not here.”
“Here.”
“This is my house, there’s Lina, there’s Rinuccio.”
“From now on I’m here, too: I’m pregnant.”
Stefano sat down. In silence he gazed at Ada’s stomach as she stood before him, as if he were seeing through her dress, her underpants, her skin, as if he were seeing the baby already formed, a living being, all ready, about to jump out. Then there was a knock at the door.
It was a waiter from the Bar Solara, a boy of sixteen who had just been hired. He told Stefano that Michele and Marcello wanted to see him right away. Stefano roused himself, at that moment he considered the demand a salvation, given the storm he had in the house. He said to Ada, “Don’t move.” She smiled, she nodded yes. He went out, got in the Solaras’ car. What a mess I’ve got myself into, he thought. What should I do? If my father were alive he would break my legs with an iron bar. Women, debts, Signora Solara’s red book. Something hadn’t worked. Lina. She had ruined him. What the fuck do Marcello and Michele want, at this hour, so urgently?
They wanted, he discovered, the old grocery. They didn’t say it but they let him understand it. Marcello spoke merely of another loan that they were willing to give him. But, he said, the Cerullo shoes have to come definitively to us, we’re finished with that lazy brother-in-law of yours, he’s not reliable. And we need a guarantee, an activity, a property, you think about it. That said, he left, he said he had things to do. At that point Stefano was alone with Michele. They talked for a long time to see if Rino and Fernando’s factory could be saved, if he could do without what Marcello had called the guarantee.
But Michele shook his head, he said, “We need guarantees, scandals aren’t good for business.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“
“It’s none of your business.”
“No, Ste’, when it’s a question of money your business is my business.”
“What can I tell you: we’re men, you know how it works. Lina is my wife, Ada is another thing.”
“So you love Ada more?”
“Yes.”
“Resolve the situation and then we’ll talk.”
Many very dark days passed before Stefano found a way of getting out of that chokehold. Quarrels with Ada, quarrels with Lila, work gone to hell, the old grocery often closed, the neighborhood that watched and committed to memory and still remembers. The handsome engaged couple. The convertible. Soraya is going by with the Shah of Persia, Jack and Jackie are going by. Finally Stefano resigned himself and said to Lila, “I’ve found you a nice place, suitable for you and Rinuccio.”
“How generous you are.”
“I’ll come twice a week to see the baby.”
“As far as I’m concerned you don’t have to come see him, since he’s not your son.”
“You’re a bitch, you’re going to make me smash your face.”
“Smash my face when you want, I’ve got a callus there. But you take care of your child and I’ll take care of mine.”
He fumed, he got angry, he really tried to hit her. Finally he said, “The place is on the Vomero.”
“Where?”
“I’ll take you tomorrow and show it to you, in Piazza degli Artisti.”
Lila remembered in a flash the proposal Michele Solara had made long ago: “
She shook her head in disbelief, she said to her husband, “You really are a piece of shit.”
113.
