I knew nothing about San Giovanni a Teduccio. When they told me that Lila had gone to live in that place with Enzo, the only thing that came to mind was the factory owned by the family of Bruno Soccavo, Nino’s friend, which produced sausages, and was in that area. The association of ideas annoyed me. I hadn’t thought of the summer on Ischia for a long time: and it made me realize that the happy phase of that vacation had faded, while its unpleasant side had expanded. I discovered that every sound from that time, every scent was repugnant to me, but what in memory, surprisingly, seemed most insupportable, and caused me long crying spells, was the night at the Maronti with Donato Sarratore. Only my suffering for what was happening between Lila and Nino could have driven me to consider it pleasurable. At this distance I understood that that first experience of penetration, in the dark, on the cold sand, with that banal man who was the father of the person I loved had been degrading. I was ashamed of it and that shame was added to other shames, of a different nature, that I was experiencing.
I was working night and day on my thesis, I harassed Pietro, reading aloud to him what I had written. He was kind, he shook his head, he fished in his memory of Virgil and other authors for passages that might be useful to me. I noted down every word he uttered, I worked hard, but in a bad mood. I went back and forth between two feelings. I sought help and it humiliated me to ask for it, I was grateful and at the same time hostile, in particular I hated that he did his best not to let his generosity weigh on me. What caused me the greatest anxiety was to find myself—together with him, before him, after him—submitting my research to the assistant professor who was following the progress of both of us, a man of around forty, earnest, attentive, sometimes even sociable. I saw that Pietro was treated as if he already had a professorship, I as a normal brilliant student. Often I decided not to talk to the teacher, out of rage, out of pride, out of fear of having to be aware of my constitutional inferiority. I have to do better than Pietro, I thought, he knows so many more things than I do, but he’s gray, he has no imagination. His way of proceeding, the way that he gently tried to suggest to me, was too cautious. So I undid my work, I started again, I pursued an idea that seemed to me original. When I returned to the professor I was listened to, yes, I was praised, but without seriousness, as if my struggle were only a game well played. I soon grasped that Pietro Airota had a future and I didn’t.
Then, there was my naiveté. The assistant professor treated me in a friendly way, one day he said, “You’re a student of great sensitivity. Do you think you’ll teach, after your degree?”
I thought he meant teach at the university and my heart jumped for joy, my cheeks turned red. I said that I loved both teaching and research, I said that I would like to continue to work on the fourth book of the Aeneid. He immediately realized that I had misunderstood and was embarrassed. He strung together some trite phrases on the pleasure of studying for one’s whole life and suggested a civil-service exam that would take place in the fall, for a few positions to be won in the teaching institutes.
“We need,” he urged me, his tone rising, “excellent professors who will train excellent teachers.”
That was it. Shame, shame, shame. This overconfidence that had grown in me, this ambition to be like Pietro. The only thing I had in common with him was the small sexual exchanges in the dark. He panted, he rubbed against me, he asked nothing that I wouldn’t give him spontaneously.
