The Neapolitan Novels

After that episode the neighborhood began to settle down, people slowly slipped back into the life of every day. Since no trace of Tina was found, the rumor of the truck hitting her became increasingly plausible. Those who were tired of searching took it seriously, both police and journalists. Attention shifted to the construction sites in the area and remained there for a long time. It was at that point that I saw Armando Galiani, the son of my high-school teacher. He had stopped practicing medicine, had lost in the parliamentary elections of 1983, and now, thanks to a scruffy local television station, he was attempting an aggressive type of journalism. I knew that his father had died a little over a year earlier and that his mother lived in France but wasn’t in good health, either. He asked me to take him to Lila’s, I said Lila wasn’t at all well. He insisted, I telephoned. Lila struggled to remember Armando, but when she did she—who until that moment hadn’t spoken to journalists—agreed to see him. Armando explained that he had been investigating the aftermath of the earthquake and that traveling around to the construction sites he had heard of a truck that was scrapped in a hurry because of a terrible thing it had been involved in. Lila let him speak, then said:

“You’re making it all up.”

“I’m saying what I know.”

“You don’t care a thing about the truck, the construction sites, or my daughter.”

“You’re insulting me.”

“No, I’ll insult you now. You were disgusting as a doctor, disgusting as a revolutionary, and now you’re disgusting as a journalist. Get out of my house.”

Armando scowled, nodded goodbye to Enzo, and left. Out on the street he looked annoyed. He said: Not even that great sorrow has changed her, tell her I wanted to help. Then he did a long interview with me and we said goodbye. I was struck by his kind manners, by his attentiveness to words. He must have been through some bad times both when Nadia made her decisions and when he separated from his wife. Now, though, he seemed in good shape. His old attitude, of a know-it-all who follows a strict anticapitalist line, had turned into a painful cynicism.

“Italy has become a cesspool,” he said in an aggrieved tone, “and we’ve all ended up in it. If you travel around, you see that the respectable people have understood. What a pity, Elena, what a pity. The workers’ parties are full of honest people who have been left without hope.”

“Why did you start doing this job?”

“For the same reason you do yours.”

“What’s that?”

“Once I was unable to hide behind anything, I discovered I was vain.”

“Who says I’m vain?”

“The comparison: your friend isn’t. But I’m sorry for her, vanity is a resource. If you’re vain you pay attention to yourself and your affairs. Lina is without vanity, so she lost her daughter.”

I followed his work for a while, he seemed good at it. He tracked down the burned-out wreck of an old vehicle in the neighborhood of the Ponti Rossi, and connected it to Tina’s disappearance. The news caused a certain sensation, it reverberated in the national dailies, and remained in the news for several days. Then it was ascertained that there was no possible connection between the burned vehicle and the child’s disappearance. Lila said to me:

“Tina is alive, I never want to see that piece of shit again.”

4.

I don’t know how long she believed that her daughter was still alive. The more Enzo despaired, worn out by tears and rage, the more Lila said: You’ll see, they’ll give her back. Certainly she never believed in the hit-and-run truck, she said that she would have noticed right away, that before anyone else she would have heard the collision, or at least a cry. And it didn’t seem to me that she gave credence to Enzo’s thesis, either, she never alluded to involvement on the part of the Solaras. Instead for a long period she thought that one of her clients had taken Tina, someone who knew what Basic Sight earned and wanted money in exchange for the child. That was also Antonio’s thesis, but it’s hard to say what concrete facts inspired it. Of course the police were interested in that possibility, but since there were never any telephone calls asking for ransom they finally let it go.

The neighborhood was soon divided into a majority that believed Tina was dead and a minority that thought she was alive and a prisoner somewhere. We who loved Lila dearly were part of that minority. Carmen was so sure of it that she repeated it insistently to everyone, and if, as time passed, someone was persuaded that Tina was dead she became that person’s enemy. I once heard her whisper to Enzo: Tell Lina that Pasquale is with you, he thinks the child will be found. But the majority prevailed, and those who kept on looking for Tina seemed to the majority either stupid or hypocritical. People also began to think that Lila’s intelligence wasn’t helping her.