Dario, the boy from Via dei Tribunali, was the first to move, he rushed to protest the torn-down posters. He was holding the ream of leaflets, and Lila thought: Throw them away, you idiot, but he didn’t. She heard him saying in Italian useless things like Stop it, you have no right, and at the same time saw him turn to his friends for help. He doesn’t know anything about fighting: never lose sight of your adversary, in the neighborhood there’d be no talk, at most there’d be some yelling, wide-eyed, to inspire fear, and meanwhile you were the first to strike, causing as much injury as possible, without stopping—it was up to others to stop you if they could. One of the youths who were tearing down the posters acted just like that: he punched Dario in the face, with no warning, knocking him to the ground amid the leaflets he had dropped, and then he was on him, hitting him, while the pages flew around as if there were a fierce excitement in the things themselves. At that point the obese student saw that the boy was on the ground and hurried to help him, bare-handed, but he was blocked halfway by someone armed with a chain, who hit him on the arm. The youth grabbed the chain furiously, and started pulling on it, to tear it away from his attacker, and for several seconds they fought for it, screaming insults at one another. Until Gino came up behind the fat student and hit him with the stick, knocking him down.
Lila forgot her fever and her exhaustion, and ran to the gate, but without a precise purpose. She didn’t know if she wanted to have a better view, if she wanted to help the students, if she was simply moved by an instinct she had always had, by virtue of which fighting didn’t frighten her but, rather, kindled her fury. She wasn’t in time to return to the street, she had to jump aside in order not to be run over by a group of workers who were rushing through the gate. A few had tried to stop the attackers, including Edo, certainly, but they hadn’t been able to, and now they were escaping. Men and women were running, pursued by two youths holding iron bars. A woman named Isa, an office worker, ran toward Filippo yelling: Help, do something, call the police, and Edo, one of whose hands was bleeding, said aloud to himself: I’m going to get the hatchet and then we’ll see. So by the time Lila reached the unpaved road, the blue car had already left and Gino was getting into the gray one, but he recognized her and paused, astonished, saying: Lina, you’ve ended up here? Then, pulled in by his comrades, he started the engine and drove off, but he shouted out window: You acted the lady, bitch, and look what the fuck you’ve become.
35.
The workday passed in an anxiety that, as usual, Lila contained behind an attitude that at one moment was contemptuous, the next threatening. They all made it clear that they blamed her for the tensions that had emerged suddenly in a place that had always been peaceful. But soon two parties formed: one, a small group, wanted to meet somewhere during the lunch break and take advantage of the situation to urge Lila to go to the owner with some cautious wage demands; the other, the majority, wouldn’t even speak to Lila and was opposed to any undertaking that would complicate a work life that was already complicated. Between the two groups there was no way to reach agreement. In fact Edo, who belonged to the first party and was worried about the injury to his hand, went so far as to say to someone who belonged to the second: If my hand gets infected, if they cut it off, I’m coming to your house, I’ll pour a can of gasoline on it, and set you and your family on fire. Lila ignored both factions. She kept to herself and worked, head down, with her usual efficiency, driving away the conversation, the insults, and the cold. But she reflected on what awaited her, a whirl of different thoughts passed through her feverish head: what had happened to the injured students, where had they gone, what trouble had they got her into; Gino would talk about her in the neighborhood, he would tell Michele Solara everything; it was humiliating to ask Bruno for favors, and yet there was no other way, she was afraid of being fired, she was afraid of losing a salary that, even though it was miserable, allowed her to love Enzo without considering him fundamental to her survival and that of Gennaro.
