“Your mother’s cousin isn’t a lady?”
“No.”
“And you?”
“Even less so.”
“Do you feel unhappy?”
“I’m very well.”
The doctor turned to me again, irritably: “Absolute rest. Have her do this treatment, regularly. If you have some way of taking her to the country, it would be better.”
Lila burst out laughing, she returned to dialect: “The last time I went to a doctor he sent me to the beach and it brought me a lot of grief.”
The professor pretended not to hear, he smiled at me as if to elicit a conspiratorial smile, gave me the name of a friend who was a neurologist, and telephoned himself so that the man would see us as soon as possible. It wasn’t easy to drag Lila to the new doctor’s office. She said she didn’t have time to waste, she was already bored enough by the cardiologist, she had to get back to Gennaro, and above all she didn’t have money to throw away nor did she want me to throw away mine. I assured her that the examination would be free and in the end, reluctantly, she gave in.
The neurologist was a small lively man, completely bald, who had an office in an old building in Toledo and displayed in his waiting room an orderly collection of philosophy books. He liked to hear himself talk, and he talked so much that, it seemed to me, he paid more attention to the thread of his own discourse than to the patient. He examined her and addressed me, he asked her questions and propounded to me his observations, taking no notice of the responses she gave. In the end, he concluded abstractedly that Lila’s nervous system was in order, just like her cardiac muscle. But—he said, continuing to address me—my colleague is right, dear Dottoressa Greco, the body is weakened, and as a result both the irascible and the concupiscible passions have taken advantage of it to get the upper hand over reason: let’s restore well-being to the body and we’ll restore health to the mind. Then he wrote out a prescription, in indecipherable marks, but pronouncing aloud the names of the medicines, the doses. Then he moved on to advice. He advised, for relaxation, long walks, but avoiding the sea: better, he said, the woods of Capodimonte or Camaldoli. He advised reading, but only during the day, never at night. He advised keeping the hands employed, even though a careful glance at Lila’s would have been enough to realize that they had been too much employed. When he began to insist on the neurological benefits of crochet work, Lila became restless in her chair, and without waiting for the doctor to finish speaking, she asked him, following the course of her own secret thoughts:
“As long as we’re here, could you give me the pills that prevent you from having children?”
The doctor frowned, and so, I think, did I. The request seemed out of place.
“Are you married?”
“I was, not now.”
“In what sense not now?”
“I’m separated.”
“You’re still married.”
“Well.”
“Have you had children?”
“I have one.”
“One isn’t much.”
“It’s enough for me.”
“In your condition pregnancy would help, there is no better medicine for a woman.”
“I know women who were destroyed by pregnancy. Better to have the pills.”
“For that problem of yours you’ll have to consult a gynecologist.”
“You only know about nerves, you don’t know about pills?”
The doctor was irritated. He chatted a little more and then, in the doorway, gave me the address and telephone number of a doctor who worked in a clinic in Ponte di Tappia. Go to her, he said, as if it were I who had asked for the contraceptives, and he said goodbye. On the way out the secretary asked us to pay. The neurologist, I gathered, was outside the chain of favors that Adele had set in motion. I paid.
Once we were in the street Lila almost shouted, irately: I will not take a single one of the medicines that shit gave me, since my head is falling off just the same, I already know it. I answered: I disagree, but do as you like. Then she was confused, she said quietly: I’m not angry with you, I’m angry with the doctors, and we walked in the direction of Ponte di Tappia, but without saying so, as if we were strolling aimlessly, just to stretch our legs. First she was silent, then she imitated in annoyance the neurologist’s tone and his babble. It seemed to me that her impatience signaled a return of vitality. I asked her:
“Is it going a little better with Enzo?”
“It’s the same as always.”
“Then what do you want with the pills?”
“Do you know about them?”
“Yes.”
“Do you take them?”
“No, but I will as soon as I’m married.”
“You don’t want children?”
“I do, but I have to write another book first.”
“Does your husband know you don’t want them right away?”
“I’ll tell him.”
“Shall we go see this woman and have her give both of us pills?”
“Lila, it’s not candy you can take whenever you like. If you’re not doing anything with Enzo forget it.”
She looked at me with narrowed eyes, cracks in which her pupils were scarcely visible: “I’m not doing anything now but later who knows.”
“Seriously?”
“I shouldn’t, in your opinion?”
“Yes, of course.”
