I hadn’t told her what the story of my book was or when it would be in bookstores. I hadn’t even told her about Pietro, of the plan to get married in a couple of years. Her life had overwhelmed me and it took days for me to restore clear outlines and depth to mine. What finally restored me to myself—but what myself?—was the proofs of the book: a hundred and thirty-nine pages, thick paper, the words of the notebook, fixed by my handwriting, which had become pleasantly alien thanks to the printed characters.
I spent happy hours reading, rereading, correcting. Outside it was cold, a frigid wind slipped in through the loose window frames. I sat at the kitchen table with Gianni and Elisa, who were studying. My mother was busily working around us, but with surprising care, in order not to disturb me.
Soon I went to Milan again. This time I allowed myself, for the first time in my life, to take a taxi. The bald editor, at the end of a day spent evaluating the final corrections, said to me, “I’ll call you a taxi,” and I didn’t know how to say no. So it happened that when I went from Milan to Pisa, at the station I looked around and thought: why not, let’s play the great lady again. And the temptation resurfaced when I returned to Naples, in the chaos of Piazza Garibaldi. I would have liked to arrive in the neighborhood in a taxi, sitting comfortably in the back seat, a driver at my service, who, when we reached the gate, would open the door for me. I took the bus instead, I didn’t feel up to it. But something about me must have been different, because when I greeted Ada, who was taking her baby out for a walk, she looked at me distractedly, and walked by. Then she stopped, turned back, said, “How well you look, I didn’t recognize you, you’re different.”
At the moment I was pleased, but soon I became unhappy. What advantage could I have gained from becoming different? I wanted to remain myself, chained to Lila, to the courtyard, to the lost dolls, to Don Achille, to everything. It was the only way to feel intensely what was happening to me. Yet change is hard to oppose: in that period, in spite of myself, I changed more than in the years in Pisa. In the spring the book came out, which, much more than my degree, gave me a new identity. When I showed a copy to my mother, to my father, to my sister and brothers, they passed it around in silence, but without looking through it. They stared at the cover with uncertain smiles, they were like police agents confronted with a fake document. My father said, “It’s my surname,” but he spoke without satisfaction, as if suddenly, instead of being proud of me, he had discovered that I had stolen money from his pocket.
Days passed, the first reviews came out. I scanned them anxiously, wounded by even the slightest hint of criticism. I read the best ones aloud to the whole family, my father brightened. Elisa said teasingly, “You should have signed Lenuccia, Elena’s disgusting.”
In those frenzied days, my mother bought a photograph album and began to paste in it everything good that was written about me. One morning she asked, “What’s the name of your fiancé?”
She knew, but she had something in mind and to communicate it she wished to start there.
“Pietro Airota.”
“Then you’ll be called Airota.”
“Yes.”
“And if you write another book, on the cover will it say Airota?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I like Elena Greco.”
“So do I,” she said.
But she never read it. My father didn’t read it, Peppe, Gianni, Elisa didn’t read it, and at first the neighborhood didn’t read it. One morning a photographer came and kept me for two hours, first in the gardens, then along the
I encountered readers for the first time in a bookstore in Milan. The event, I soon discovered, had been urgently planned by Adele Airota, who was following the book’s journey at a distance and traveled purposely from Genoa for the occasion. She came to the hotel, kept me company all afternoon, tried tactfully to calm me. I had a tremor in my hands that wouldn’t go away, I struggled with words, I had a bitter taste in my mouth. I was angry with Pietro, who had stayed in Pisa, he was busy. Mariarosa, who lived in Milan, made a quick congratulatory visit before the reading, then she had to go.
