The Neapolitan Novels

It was impossible to communicate to her my disapproval and my anguish, every critical sentence of mine was blunted against her good humor. The article, six dense pages, was given great prominence, and naturally it had a single byline, mine.

When I saw that, we quarreled. I said to her angrily:

“I don’t understand why you behave like that.”

“I understand,” she said.

Her face still bore the marks of Michele’s fist, but certainly it hadn’t been fear that kept her from putting her name to it. She was terrified by something else and I knew it, she didn’t give a damn about the Solaras. But I felt so resentful that I threw it in her face just the same—You removed your name because you like to stay hidden, because it’s convenient to throw stones and hide your hand, I’m tired of your plots—and she began to laugh, it seemed to her a senseless accusation. I don’t like that you think that, she said. She became sullen, she muttered that she had sent the article to L’Espresso with only my name on it because hers didn’t count, because I was the one who had studied, because I was famous, because now I could give anyone a beating without fear. In those words I found the confirmation that she ingenuously overestimated my role, and I told her so. But she was annoyed, she answered that it was I who underrated myself, so she wanted me to take on more and better, to have even greater success, all she wanted was for my merits to be recognized. You’ll see, she exclaimed, what will happen to the Solaras.

I went home depressed. I couldn’t drive out the suspicion that she was using me, just as Marcello had said. She had sent me out to risk everything and counted on that bit of fame I had to win her war, to complete her revenge, to silence all her feelings of guilt.

103.

In reality, having my name on that article was a further step up for me. As a result of its wide circulation, many of my fragments were connected. I proved that not only did I have a vocation as a fiction writer but, as in the past I had been involved in the union struggles, as I had engaged in criticizing the condition of women, so I fought against the degradation of my city. The small audience I had won in the late sixties merged with the one that, amid ups and downs, I had cultivated in the seventies and the new, larger one of now. That helped the first two books, which were reprinted, and the third, which continued to sell well, while the idea of making a film from it became more concrete.

Naturally the article caused a lot of bother. I was summoned by the carabinieri. I was bugged by the financial police. I was vilified by local papers on the right with labels like divorcée, feminist, Communist, supporter of terrorists. I received anonymous phone calls that threatened me and my daughters in a dialect full of obscenities. But, although I lived in anxiety—a state of anxiety now seemed to me inherent to writing—I was in the end not as agitated as at the time of the article in Panorama and Carmen’s lawsuit. It was my job, I was learning to do it better and better. And then I felt protected by the legal support of the publisher, by the success I had in newspapers on the left, by the increasingly well attended public appearances, and by the idea that I was right.

But, if I have to be honest, it wasn’t only that. I calmed down mainly when it became evident that the Solaras would do absolutely nothing to me. My visibility drove them to be as invisible as possible. Marcello and Michele not only didn’t bring a second lawsuit but were completely silent, the whole time, and even when I encountered them before law-enforcement officers, both confined themselves to cold but respectful greetings. Thus the waters subsided. The only concrete thing that happened was that various investigations were opened, along with an equal number of files. But, as the lawyers of the publishing house had predicted, the first soon came to a halt, the second ended—I imagine—under thousands of other files, and the Solaras remained free. The only harm the article caused was of an emotional nature: my sister, my nephew Silvio, even my father—not in words but in deeds—cut me out of their lives. Only Marcello continued to be polite. One afternoon I met him along the stradone, and I looked away. But he stopped in front of me, he said: Lenù, I know that if you could you wouldn’t have done it, I’m not angry with you, it’s not your fault. So remember that my house is always open. I replied: Elisa hung up on me just yesterday. He smiled: Your sister is the boss, what can I do?

104.