The Neapolitan Novels полностью

“Look, have you ever seen the sea like that? And Naples? And Vesuvius? And the sky? In the neighborhood was there ever all that sky?”

Never. The sea was of lead and the gulf clasped it like the rim of a crucible. A dense churning mass of black clouds was rolling toward us. But in the distance, between sea and clouds, there was a long gash that collided with the violet shadow of Vesuvius, a wound from which a dazzling whiteness dripped. We stood looking at it for a long time, our clothes pasted to us by the wind. I was as if hypnotized by the beauty of Naples; not even from the terrace of the Galianis, years before, had I seen it like this. The defacement of the city provided high-cost observatories of concrete from which to view an extraordinary landscape; Michele had acquired a memorable one.

“Don’t you like it?”

“Marvelous.”

“There’s no comparison with Lina’s house in the neighborhood, is there?”

“No, no comparison.”

“I said Lina, but now Ada’s there.”

“Yes.”

“Here it’s much more upper-class.”

“Yes.”

“But you made a face.”

“No, I’m happy for you.”

“To each his own. You’re educated, you write books, and I have this.”

“Yes.”

“You’re not sure.”

“I’m very sure.”

“If you look at the nameplates in this building, you’ll see, only professionals, lawyers, big professors. The view and the luxuries are expensive. If you and your husband save, in my opinion you could buy a house like this.”

“I don’t think so.”

“He doesn’t want to come and live in Naples?”

“I doubt it.”

“You never know. You’re lucky: I’ve heard Pietro’s voice on the telephone quite a few times, and I saw him from the window—it’s obvious that he’s a clever man. He’s not like Michele, he’ll do what you want.”

At that point she dragged me inside, she wanted us to eat something. She unwrapped prosciutto and provolone, she cut slices of bread. It’s still camping, she apologized, but sometime when you’re in Naples with your husband come and see me, I’ll show you how I’ve arranged everything. Her eyes were big and shining, she was excited by the effort of leaving no doubts about her prosperity. But that improbable future—Pietro and I coming to Naples and visiting her and Michele—must have appeared perilous. For a moment she was distracted, she had bad thoughts, and when she resumed her boasting she had lost faith in what she was saying, she began to change. I’ve been lucky, too, she repeated, yet she spoke without satisfaction—rather, with a kind of sarcasm addressed to herself. Carmen, she enumerated, ended up with the gas pump attendant on the stradone, Pinuccia is poisoned by that idiot Rino, Ada is Stefano’s whore. Instead, I have Michele, lucky me, who is handsome, intelligent, bosses everybody, is finally making up his mind to marry me and you see where he’s put me, you don’t know what a celebration he’s prepared—not even the Shah of Persia when he married Soraya had a wedding like ours. Yes, lucky I grabbed him as a child, I was the sly one. And she went on, but taking a self-mocking turn. She wove the praises of her own cleverness, slipping slowly from the luxuries that she had acquired by winning Solara to the solitude of her duties as a bride. Michele, she said, is never here, it’s as if I were getting married by myself. And she suddenly asked me, as if she really wanted an opinion: Do you think I exist? Look at me, in your view do I exist? She hit her full breasts with her open hand, but she did it as if to demonstrate physically that the hand went right through her, that her body, because of Michele, wasn’t there. He had taken everything of her, immediately, when she was almost a child. He had consumed her, crumpled her, and now that she was twenty-five he was used to her, he didn’t even look at her anymore. He fucks here and there as he likes. The revulsion I feel, when someone asks how many children do you want and he brags, he says: Ask Gigliola, I already have children, I don’t even know how many. Does your husband say such things? Does your husband say: With Lenuccia I want three, with the others I don’t know? In front of everyone he treats me like a rag for wiping the floor. And I know why. He’s never loved me. He’s marrying me to have a faithful servant, that’s the reason all men get married. And he keeps saying to me: What the fuck am I doing with you, you don’t know anything, you have no intelligence, you have no taste, this beautiful house is wasted, with you everything becomes disgusting. She began to cry, saying between her sobs:

“I’m sorry, I’m talking like this because you wrote that book I liked, and I know you’ve suffered.”

“Why do you let him say those things to you?”

“Because otherwise he won’t marry me.”

“But after the wedding make him pay for it.”

“How? He doesn’t give a damn about me: even now I never see him, imagine afterward.”

“Then I don’t understand you.”

“You don’t understand me because you’re not me. Would you take someone if you knew very well that he was in love with someone else?”

I looked at her in bewilderment: “Michele has a lover?”