The Neapolitan Novels полностью

“You’re throwing away everything you are for Nino? You’re ruining your family for him? You know what will happen to you? He’ll use you, he’ll suck your blood, he’ll take away your will to live and abandon you. Why did you study so much? What fucking use has it been for me to imagine that you would enjoy a wonderful life for me, too? I was wrong, you’re a fool.”

123.

I put down the receiver as if it were burning hot. She’s jealous, I said to myself, she’s envious, she hates me. Yes, that was the truth. A long procession of seconds passed; the mother of the Solaras didn’t return to my mind, her body marked by death vanished. Instead I wondered anxiously: Why doesn’t Nino call, is it possible that now that I’ve told everything to Lila, he’ll retreat and make me ridiculous? For an instant I saw myself exposed to her in all my possible pettiness as a person who had ruined herself for nothing. Then the telephone rang again. When I grabbed the receiver, I had words on my tongue ready for Lila: Don’t ever concern yourself with me again, you have no right to Nino, let me make my own mistakes. But it wasn’t her. It was Nino and I overwhelmed him with broken phrases, happy to hear him. I told him how things had been arranged with Pietro and the children, I told him that it was impossible to reach an agreement with calm and reason, I told him that I had packed my suitcase and couldn’t wait to hold him. He told me of furious quarrels with his wife, the last hours had been intolerable. He whispered: Even though I’m very frightened, I can’t think of my life without you.

The next day, while Pietro was at the university, I asked the neighbor if she would keep Dede and Elsa for a few hours. I put on the kitchen table the letters I had written and I left. I thought: Something great is happening that will dissolve the old way of living entirely and I’m part of that dissolution. I joined Nino in Rome, we met in a hotel near the station. Holding him tight, I said to myself: I’ll never get used to that nervous body, it’s a constant surprise, long bones, skin with an exciting smell, a mass, a force, a mobility completely different from what Pietro is, the habits we had.

The next morning, for the first time in my life, I boarded an airplane. I didn’t know how to fasten my seat belt, Nino helped me. How thrilling it was to squeeze his hand while the sound of the engines grew louder, louder, and louder, and the plane began its takeoff. How exciting it was to lift off from the ground with a jerk and see the houses that became parallelopipeds and the streets that changed into strips and the countryside that was reduced to a green patch, and the sea that inclined like a compact paving stone, and the clouds that fell below in a landslide of soft rocks, and the anguish, the pain, the very happiness that became part of a unique, luminous motion. It seemed to me that flying subjected everything to a process of simplification, and I sighed, I tried to lose myself. Every so often I asked Nino: Are you happy? And he nodded yes, kissed me. At times I had the impression that the floor under my feet—the only surface I could count on—was trembling.

T

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HARACTERS

The Cerullo family (the shoemaker’s family):

Fernando Cerullo, shoemaker, Lila’s father.

Nunzia Cerullo, Lila’s mother.

Raffaella Cerullo, called Lina, or Lila. She was born in August, 1944, and is sixty-six when she disappears from Naples without a trace. At the age of sixteen, she marries Stefano Carracci, but during a vacation on Ischia she falls in love with Nino Sarratore, for whom she leaves her husband. After the disastrous end of her relationship with Nino, the birth of her son Gennaro (also called Rino), and the discovery that Stefano is expecting a child with Ada Cappuccio, Lila leaves him definitively. She moves with Enzo Scanno to San Giovanni a Teduccio, but several years later she returns to the neighborhood with Enzo and Gennaro.

Rino Cerullo, Lila’s older brother. He is married to Stefano’s sister, Pinuccia Carracci, with whom he has two sons.

Other children.

The Greco family (the porter’s family):

Elena Greco, called Lenuccia or Lenù. Born in August, 1944, she is the author of the long story that we are reading. After elementary school, Elena continues to study, with increasing success, obtaining a degree from the Scuola Normale, in Pisa, where she meets Pietro Airota. She marries him, and they move to Florence. They have two children, Adele, called Dede, and Elsa, but Elena, disappointed by marriage, begins an affair with Nino Sarratore, with whom she has been in love since childhood, and eventually leaves Pietro and the children.

Peppe, Gianni, and Elisa, Elena’s younger siblings. Despite Elena’s disapproval, Elisa goes to live with Marcello Solara.