The Neapolitan Novels

Carmen hurried to my house in the grip of a panic attack, she couldn’t think, she said: Now they’ll seize Pasquale, you’ll see, he escaped the Solaras but the carabinieri will murder him. Lila answered: The carabinieri didn’t arrest Nadia, she turned herself in to bargain for a lighter sentence. That hypothesis seemed sensible to me. There were a few lines in the papers, but no talk of pursuits, shooting, capture. To soothe Carmen I again advised her: Pasquale would do well to turn himself in, you know what I think. All hell broke loose, Lila became furious, she began to shout:

“Turn himself over to whom.”

“To the state.”

“To the state?”

She made a concise list of thefts and criminal collaborations old and new by ministers, simple parliamentarians, policemen, judges, secret services from 1945 until then, showing herself as usual more informed than I could have imagined. And she yelled:

“That is the state, why the fuck do you want to give it Pasquale?” Then she pushed me: “Let’s bet that Nadia does a few months in jail and comes out, while, if they get Pasquale, they’ll lock him in a cell and throw away the key?” She was almost on top of me, repeating aggressively: “Do you want to bet?”

I didn’t answer. I was worried, this sort of conversation wasn’t good for Carmen. After the death of the Solaras she had immediately withdrawn the lawsuit against me, she had done endless nice things for me, she was always available to my daughters, even if she was burdened by obligations and worries. I was sorry that instead of soothing her we were tormenting her. She was trembling, she said, addressing me but invoking Lila’s authority: If Nadia turned herself in, Lenù, it means that she’s repented, that now she’s throwing all the blame on Pasquale and will get herself off. Isn’t it true, Lina? But then she spoke bitterly to Lila, invoking my authority: It’s no longer a matter of principle, Lina, we have to think of what’s right for Pasquale, we have to let him know that it’s better to live in prison than to be killed: isn’t it true, Lenù?

At that point Lila insulted us grossly and, although we were in her house, went out, slamming the door.

18.

For Lila, going out, wandering around, was now the solution to all the tensions and problems she struggled with. Often she left in the morning and returned in the evening, paying no attention to Enzo, who didn’t know how to deal with the clients, or to Rino, or to the commitments she made to me, when I had to travel and left her my daughters. She was now unreliable, all it took was some small setback and she dropped everything, without a thought of the consequences.

Carmen maintained that Lila took refuge in the old cemetery on the Doganella, where she chose the grave of a child to think about Tina, who had no grave, and then she walked along the shaded paths, amid plants, old niches, stopping in front of the most faded photographs. The dead—Carmen said to me—are a certainty, they have stones, the dates of birth and death, while her daughter doesn’t, her daughter will remain forever with only the date of birth, and that is terrible, that poor child will never have a conclusion, a fixed point where her mother can sit and be tranquil. But Carmen had a propensity for fantasies about death and so I took no notice. I imagined that Lila walked through the city paying no attention to anything, only to numb the grief that after years continued to poison her. Or I hypothesized that she really had decided, in her way, extreme as always, not to devote herself anymore to anything or anyone. And since I knew that her mind needed exactly the opposite, I feared that she would have a nervous breakdown, that at the first opportunity she would let loose against Enzo, against Rino, against me, against my daughters, against a passerby who annoyed her, against anyone who gave her an extra glance. At home I could quarrel, calm her down, control her. But on the street? Every time she went out I was afraid she’d get in trouble. But frequently, when I had something to do and heard the door below close and her steps on the stairs, then out in the street, I drew a sigh of relief. She wouldn’t come up to me, she wouldn’t drop in with provocative words, she wouldn’t taunt the girls, she wouldn’t disparage Imma, she wouldn’t try in every possible way to hurt me.