The Neapolitan Novels

For the rest of the day I tried to forget about her; I worked late into the night. The children had grown up with the idea that when I really had my back to the wall they had to look after themselves and not disturb me. In fact they left me in peace, and I worked well. As usual a half sentence of Lila’s was enough and my brain recognized her aura, became active, liberated my intelligence. By now I knew that I could do well especially when she, even just with a few disjointed words, assured the more insecure part of me that I was right. I gave to her digressive complaints a concise, elegant organization. I wrote about my hip, about my mother. Now that I was surrounded by admiration, I could admit without uneasiness that talking to her incited ideas, pushed me to make connections between distant things. In those years of being neighbors, I on the floor above, she below, it often happened. A slight push was enough and the seemingly empty mind discovered that it was full and lively. I attributed to her a sort of farsightedness, as I had all our lives, and I found nothing wrong with it. I said to myself that to be adult was to recognize that I needed her impulses. If once I had hidden, even from myself, that spark she induced in me, now I was proud of it, I had even written about it somewhere. I was I and for that very reason I could make space for her in me and give her an enduring form. She instead didn’t want to be her, so she couldn’t do the same. The tragedy of Tina, her weakened physical state, her drifting brain surely contributed to her crises. But that was the underlying cause of the illness that she called “dissolving boundaries.” I went to bed around three, I woke at nine.

Dede’s fever was gone, but in compensation Imma had a cough. I straightened the apartment, I went to see how Lila was. I knocked for a long time, she didn’t open the door. I pressed the bell until I heard her dragging footsteps and her voice grumbling insults in dialect. Her braids were half undone, her makeup was smeared, even more than the day before it was a mask with a pained expression.

“Pinuccia poisoned me,” she said with conviction. “I couldn’t sleep, my stomach is splitting.”

I went in, I had an impression of carelessness, of filth. On the floor, next to the sink, I saw toilet paper soaked with blood. I said:

“I ate the same things you ate and I’m fine.”

“Then explain to me what’s wrong with me.”

“Menstruation?”

She got mad:

“I’m always menstruating.”

“Then you should be examined.”

“I’m not going to have my stomach examined by anyone.”

“What do you think is wrong?”

“I know what it is.”

“I’ll go get you a painkiller at the pharmacy.”

“You must have something in the house?”

“I don’t need them.”

“And Dede and Elsa?”

“They don’t, either.”

“Ah, you’re perfect, you never need anything.”

I was irked, it was starting up again.

“You want to quarrel?”

“You want to quarrel, since you say I have menstrual cramps. I’m not a child like your daughters, I know if I have that pain or something else.”

It wasn’t true, she knew nothing about herself. When it came to the workings of her body she was worse than Dede and Elsa. I realized that she was suffering, she pressed her stomach with her hands. Maybe I was wrong: certainly she was overwhelmed with anguish, but not because of her old fears—she really was ill. I made her some chamomile tea, forced her to drink it. I put on a coat and went to see if the pharmacy was open. Gino’s father was a skilled pharmacist, he would surely give me good advice. But I had barely emerged onto the stradone, among the Sunday stalls, when I heard explosions—pah, pah, pah, pah—similar to the sound of the firecrackers that children set off at Christmastime. There were four close together, then came a fifth: pah.

I turned onto the street where the pharmacy was. People seemed disoriented, Christmas was still weeks away, some walked quickly, some ran.

Suddenly the litany of sirens began: the police, an ambulance. I asked someone what had happened, he shook his head, he admonished his wife because she was slow and hurried off. Then I saw Carmen with her husband and two children. They were on the other side of the street, I crossed. Before I could ask a question Carmen said in dialect: They’ve killed both Solaras.

13.