The Neapolitan Novels полностью

I was not a good companion? Lila was not supposed to see me anymore? When my friend reported that request of Marcello’s I went over conclusively to Stefano’s side and began to praise his tactful ways, his calm determination. “He’s rich,” I said to her finally. But even as I said that I realized how the idea of the riches girls dreamed of was changing further. The treasure chests full of gold pieces that a procession of servants in livery would deposit in our castle when we published a book like Little Women—riches and fame—had truly faded. Perhaps the idea of money as a cement to solidify our existence and prevent it from dissolving, together with the people who were dear to us, endured. But the fundamental feature that now prevailed was concreteness, the daily gesture, the negotiation. This wealth of adolescence proceeded from a fantastic, still childish illumination—the designs for extraordinary shoes—but it was embodied in the petulant dissatisfaction of Rino, who wanted to spend like a big shot, in the television, in the meals, and in the ring with which Marcello wanted to buy a feeling, and, finally, from step to step, in that courteous youth Stefano, who sold groceries, had a red convertible, spent forty-five thousand lire like nothing, framed drawings, wished to do business in shoes as well as in cheese, invested in leather and a workforce, and seemed convinced that he could inaugurate a new era of peace and well-being for the neighborhood: it was, in short, wealth that existed in the facts of every day, and so was without splendor and without glory.

“He’s rich,” I heard Lila repeat, and we started laughing. But then she added, “Also nice, also good,” and I agreed, these last were qualities that Marcello didn’t have, a further reason for being on Stefano’s side. Yet those two adjectives confused me, I felt that they gave the final blow to the shine of childish fantasies. No castle, no treasure chest—I seemed to understand—would concern Lila and me alone, intent on writing our Little Women. Wealth, incarnated in Stefano, was taking the form of a young man in a greasy apron, was gaining features, smell, voice, was expressing kindness and goodness, was a male we had known forever, the oldest son of Don Achille.

I was disturbed.

“But he wanted to prick your tongue,” I said.

“He was a child,” she answered, with emotion, sweet as I had never heard her before, so that only at that moment did I realize that she was much farther along than what she had said to me in words.

In the following days everything became clearer. I saw how she talked to Stefano and how he seemed shaped by her voice. I adapted to the pact they were making, I didn’t want to be cut out. And we plotted for hours—the two of us, the three of us—to act in a way that would quickly silence people, feelings, the arrangement of things. A worker arrived in the space next to the shoe shop and took down the dividing wall. The shoemaker’s shop was reorganized. Three nearly silent apprentices appeared, country boys, from Melito. In one corner they continued to do resoling, in the rest of the space Fernando arranged benches, shelves, his tools, his wooden forms according to the various sizes, and began, with sudden energy, unsuspected in a man so thin, consumed by a bitter discontent, to talk about a course of action.

Just that day, when the new work was about to begin, Stefano showed up. He carried a package done up in brown paper. They all jumped to their feet, even Fernando, as if he had come for an inspection. He opened the package, and inside were a number of small pictures, all the same size, in narrow brown frames. They were Lila’s notebook pages, under glass, like precious relics. He asked permission from Fernando to hang them on the walls, Fernando grumbled something, and Stefano had Rino and the apprentices help him put in the nails. When the pictures were hung, Stefano asked the three helpers to go get a coffee and handed them some lire. As soon as he was alone with the shoemaker and his son, he announced quietly that he wanted to marry Lila.

An unbearable silence fell. Rino confined himself to a knowing little smile and Fernando said finally, weakly, “Stefano, Lina is engaged to Marcello Solara.”

“Your daughter doesn’t know it.”

“What do you mean?”

Rino interrupted, cheerfully: “He’s telling the truth: you and Mamma let that shit come to our house, but Lina never wanted him and doesn’t want him.”

Fernando gave his son a stern look. The grocer said gently, looking around: “We’ve started out on a job now, let’s not get worked up. I ask of you a single thing, Don Fernà: let your daughter decide. If she wants Marcello Solara, I will resign myself. I love her so much that if she’s happy with someone else I will withdraw and between us everything will remain as it is now. But if she wants me—if she wants me—there’s no help for it, you must give her to me.”