“Mamma, Lina has to go.”
For the first time Lila noticed some nervousness in the child’s voice, and it pleased her.
“Will you let me have two words?” Professor Galiani snapped, in a tone no less nervous. Then she repeated to Lila, but kindly: “What did you study?”
“Nothing.”
“To hear you speak—and shout—it doesn’t seem so.”
“It’s true, I stopped after fifth grade.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t have the ability.”
“How did you know?”
“Greco had it, I didn’t.”
Professor Galiani shook her head in a sign of disagreement, and said:
“If you had studied you would have been as successful as Greco.”
“How can you say that?”
“It’s my job.”
“You professors insist so much on education because that’s how you earn a living, but studying is of no use, it doesn’t even improve you—in fact it makes you even more wicked.”
“Has Elena become more wicked?”
“No, not her.”
“Why not?”
Lila stuck the wool cap on her son’s head. “We made a pact when we were children: I’m the wicked one.”
38.
In the car she got mad at Pasquale (
Lila was exhausted; fortunately Gennaro was sleeping on the back seat with the little car clutched in his right hand. Pasquale’s speech came to her in waves. Every so often the beautiful apartment on Corso Vittorio Emanuele came into her mind, along with the professor and Armando and Isabella and Nino, who had gone off to find a wife somewhere of Nadia’s type, and Marco, who was three and could read much better than her son. What a useless struggle to make Gennaro become smart. The child was already losing, he was being pulled back and she couldn’t hold on to him. When they reached the house and she saw that she had to invite Pasquale in she said: I don’t know what Enzo’s made, he’s a terrible cook, maybe you don’t feel like it, and hoped he would leave. But he answered: I’ll stay ten minutes, then go, so she touched his arm with her fingertips and murmured:
“Don’t tell him anything.”
“Anything about what?”
“About the fascists. If he knows, he’ll go and beat up Gino tonight.”
“Do you love him?”
“I don’t want to hurt him.”
“Ah.”
“That’s the way it is.”
“Remember that Enzo knows better than you and me what needs to be done.”
“Yes, but don’t say anything to him just the same.”
Pasquale agreed with a scowl. He picked up Gennaro, who wouldn’t wake up, and carried him up the stairs, followed by Lila, who was mumbling unhappily: What a day, I’m dead tired, you and your friends have got me in huge trouble. They told Enzo that they had gone to Nadia’s house for a meeting, and Pasquale gave him no chance to ask questions, he talked without stopping until midnight. He said that Naples, like the whole world, was churning with new life, he praised Armando, who, good doctor that he was, instead of thinking of his career treated the poor for nothing, he took care of the children in the Quartieri and with Nadia and Isabella was involved in countless projects that served the people—a nursery school, a clinic. He said that no one was alone any longer, comrades helped comrades, the city was going through a wonderful time. You two, he said, shouldn’t stay shut up here in the house, you should go out, we should be together more. And finally he announced that he was finished with the Communist Party: too many ugly things, too many compromises, national and international, he couldn’t stand that dreariness anymore. Enzo was deeply disturbed by his decision, they argued about it for a long time: the party is the party, no, yes, no, enough with the politics of stabilization, we need to attack the institutional structures of the system. Lila quickly became bored, and she went to put Gennaro to bed—he was sleepy, whining as he ate his supper—and didn’t return.
