I immediately realized, from the small crowd of parents and elementary- and middle-school children flowing toward the main entrance, that something wasn’t normal. I went in. There were rows of chairs already occupied, colored festoons, the priest, Maestro Ferraro, even the principal of the elementary school and Maestra Oliviero. Ferraro, I discovered, had had the idea of awarding a book to the readers who, according to his records, had been most assiduous. Since the ceremony was about to begin and lending was suspended for the moment, I sat at the back of the room. I looked for Lila, but saw only Gigliola Spagnuolo with Gino and Alfonso. I moved restlessly in my chair, uneasy. After a while Carmela Peluso and her brother Pasquale sat down next to me. Hi, hi. I covered my blotchy cheeks better with my hair.
The small ceremony began. The winners were: first Raffaella Cerullo, second Fernando Cerullo, third Nunzia Cerullo, fourth Rino Cerullo, fifth Elena Greco, that is, me.
I wanted to laugh, and so did Pasquale. We looked at each other, suffocating our laughter, while Carmela whispered insistently, “Why are you laughing?” We didn’t answer: we looked at each other again and laughed with our hands over our mouths. Thus, still feeling that laughter in my eyes, and with an unexpected sense of well-being, after the teacher had asked repeatedly and in vain if anyone from the Cerullo family was in the room, he called me, fifth on the list, to receive my prize. Praising me generously, Ferraro gave me
The teacher gave me the prize books for all the Cerullos. As we went out, while Carmela resentfully joined Gigliola, who was happily chatting with Alfonso and Gino, Pasquale said to me, in dialect, things that made me laugh even more, about Rino losing his eyesight over his books, Fernando the shoemaker who didn’t sleep at night because he was reading, Signora Nunzia who read standing up, next to the stove, while she was cooking pasta with potatoes, in one hand a novel and in the other the spoon. He had been in elementary school with Rino, in the same class, at the same desk—he said, tears of amusement in his eyes—and both of them, he and his friend, even though they took turns helping each other, after six or seven years of school, including repeats, managed to read at most: Tobacconist, Grocery, Post Office. Then he asked me what the prize for his former schoolmate was.
“
“Are there ghosts?”
“I don’t know.”
“May I come along when you give it to him? Rather, may I give it to him, with my own hands?”
We burst out laughing again.
“Yes.”
“They’ve given Rinuccio a prize. Crazy. It’s Lina who reads everything, good Lord, that girl is clever.”
The attentions of Pasquale Peluso consoled me greatly, I liked that he made me laugh. Maybe I’m not so ugly, I thought, maybe I can’t see myself.
At that moment I heard someone calling me. It was Maestra Oliviero.
I went over and she looked at me, as always evaluating, and said, as if confirming the legitimacy of a more generous judgment about my looks:
“How pretty you are, how big you’ve gotten.”
“It’s not true, Maestra.”
“It’s true, you’re a star, healthy, nice, and plump. And also clever. I heard that you were the top student in the school.”
“Yes.”
“Now what will you do?”
“I’ll go to work.”
She darkened.
“Don’t even mention it, you have to go on studying.”
I looked at her in surprise. What was there left to study? I didn’t know anything about the order of schools, I didn’t have a clear idea what there was after the middle school diploma. Words like high school, university were for me without substance, like many of the words I came across in novels.
“I can’t, my parents won’t let me.”
“What did the literature teacher give you in Latin?”
“Nine.”
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll talk to your parents.”
I started to leave, a little scared, I have to admit. If Maestra Oliviero really went to my father and mother to tell them to let me continue in school, it would again unleash quarrels that I didn’t want to face. I preferred things as they were: help my mother, work in the stationery store, accept the ugliness and the pimples, be healthy, nice, and plump, as Maestra Oliviero said, and toil in poverty. Hadn’t Lila been doing it for at least three years already, apart from her crazy dreams as the sister and daughter of shoemakers?
“Thank you, Maestra,” I said. “Goodbye.”
But Oliviero held me by one arm.
“Don’t waste time with him,” she said, indicating Pasquale, who was waiting for me. “He’s a construction worker, he’ll never go farther than that. And then he comes from a bad family, his father is a Communist, and murdered Don Achille. I absolutely don’t want to see you with him—he’s surely a Communist like his father.”
