The Neapolitan Novels полностью

Pietro treated me cautiously, sensing that I might explode at any moment. At first, a few hours after the break with Nino, I had thought of telling him everything, as if he were not only a husband to whom I had to explain myself but also a confessor. I felt the need of it; and especially when he approached me in bed and I put him off, whispering: No, the children will wake up, I was on the point of pouring out to him every detail. But I always managed to stop myself in time, it wasn’t necessary to tell him about Nino. Now that I no longer called the person I loved, now that I felt truly lost, it seemed to me useless to be cruel to Pietro. It was better to close the subject with a few clear words: I can’t live with you anymore. And yet I was unable to do even that. Just when, in the shadowy light of the bedroom, I felt ready to take that step, I pitied him, I feared for the future of the children, I caressed his shoulder, his cheek, I whispered: Sleep.

On the last day of the vacation, things changed. It was almost midnight, Dede and Elsa were sleeping. For at least ten days I hadn’t called Nino. I had packed the bags, I was worn out by sadness, by effort, by the heat, and I was sitting with Pietro on the balcony, each in our own lounge chair, in silence. There humidity was debilitating, soaking our hair and clothes, and our smell of the sea and of resin. Pietro suddenly said:

“How’s your mother?”

“My mother?”

“Fine.”

“Dede told me she’s ill.”

“She recovered.”

“I called her this afternoon. Your mother has always been in good health.”

I said nothing.

How inopportune that man was. Here, already, the tears were returning. Oh good God, I was fed up, fed up. I heard him say calmly:

“You think I’m blind and deaf. You think I didn’t realize it when you flirted with those imbeciles who came to the house before Elsa was born.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You know perfectly well.”

“No, I don’t know. Who are you talking about? People who came to dinner a few times years ago? And I flirted with them? Are you crazy?”

Pietro shook his head, smiling to himself. He waited a few seconds, then he asked me, staring at the railing: “You didn’t even flirt with the one who played the drums?”

I was alarmed. He wasn’t retreating, he wasn’t giving in. I snorted.

“Mario?”

“See, you remember?”

“Of course I remember, why shouldn’t I? He’s one of the few interesting people you brought home in seven years of marriage.”

“Did you find him interesting?”

“Yes, and so what? What’s got into you tonight?”

“I want to know. Can’t I know?”

“What do you want to know? All that I know, you do, too. It must be at least four years since we saw that man, and you come out now with this foolishness?”

He stopped staring at the railing, he turned to look at me, serious.

“Then let’s talk about more recent events. What is there between you and Nino?”

117.

It was a blow as violent as it was unexpected. He wanted to know what there was between Nino and me. That question, that name were enough to make the fountain flow again in my head. I was blinded by tears, I shouted at him, beside myself, forgetting we were outside, that people tired out by a day of sun and sea were sleeping: Why did you ask that question, you should have kept it to yourself, now you’ve spoiled everything and there’s nothing to do, it would have been enough for you to keep silent, instead you couldn’t, and now I have to go, now I have no choice but to go.

I don’t know what happened to him. Maybe he was convinced he had made a mistake that now, for obscure reasons, risked ruining our relationship forever. Or he saw me suddenly as a crude organism that cracked the fragile surface of discourse and appeared in a pre-logical way, a woman in her most alarming manifestation. Certainly I must have seemed to him an intolerable spectacle: he jumped up, and went inside. But I ran after him and continued shouting all manner of things: my love for Nino since I was a child, the new possibilities of life that he revealed to me, the unused energy I felt inside me, and the dreariness in which he, Pietro, had plunged me for years, his responsibility for having kept me from living fully.

When I had exhausted my strength and collapsed in a corner, I found him in front of me with hollow cheeks, his eyes sunk into violet stains, his tan a crust of mud. I understood only then that I had shocked him. The questions he had asked didn’t admit even hypothetical affirmative answers like: Yes, I flirted with the drummer and even more; Yes, Nino and I have been lovers. Pietro had formulated them only to be denied, to silence the doubts that had come to him, to go to bed more serene. Instead I had imprisoned him in a nightmare from which, now, he no longer knew how to escape. He asked, almost whispering, in search of safety:

“Have you made love?”