The Neapolitan Novels

At a certain point, while Enzo spoke in his laborious but dense sentences, I saw his tears in the glow of the headlights, I knew he wasn’t talking only about Lila but was trying to express his own suffering as well. That trip with him was important; I still find it hard to imagine a man with a finer sensibility than his. At first he told me what, every day, every night in those four years Lila had whispered or shouted. Then he urged me to talk about my work and my dissatisfactions. I told him about the girls, about books, about men, about resentments, about the need for approval. And I mentioned all my writing, which now had become obligatory, I struggled day and night to feel myself present, to not let myself be marginalized, to fight against those who considered me an upstart little woman without talent: persecutors—I muttered—whose only purpose is to make me lose my audience, and not because they’re inspired by any elevated motives but, rather, for the enjoyment of keeping me from improvement, or to carve out for themselves or for their protégés some wretched power harmful to me. He let me vent, he praised the energy I put into things. You see—he said—how excited you get. The effort has anchored you to the world you’ve chosen, it’s given you broad and detailed expertise in it, above all it has engaged your feelings. So life has dragged you along, and Tina, for you, is certainly an atrocious episode, thinking about it makes you sad, but it’s also, by now, a distant fact. For Lila, on the other hand, in all these years, the world collapsed as if it were hearsay, and slid into the void left by her daughter, like the rain that rushes down a drainpipe. She remains frozen at Tina, and feels bitter toward everything that continues to be alive, that grows and prospers. Of course, he said, she is strong, she treats me terribly, she gets angry with you, she says ugly things. But you don’t know how many times she has fainted just when she seemed tranquil, washing the dishes or staring out the window at the stradone.

29.

In Bologna we found no trace of Rino and my daughter, even though Moreno, frightened by Enzo’s fierce calm, dragged us through streets and hangouts where, according to him, if they were in the city, the two would certainly have been welcomed. Enzo telephoned Lila often, I Dede. We hoped that there would be good news, but there wasn’t. At that point I was seized by a new crisis, I no longer knew what to do. I said again:

“I’m going to the police.”

Enzo shook his head.

“Wait a little.”

“Rino has ruined Elsa.”

“You can’t say that. You have to try to look at your daughters as they really are.”

“It’s what I do continuously.”

“Yes, but you don’t do it well. Elsa would do anything to make Dede suffer and they are in agreement on a single point: tormenting Imma.”

“Don’t make me say mean things: it’s Lila who sees them like that and you’re repeating what she says.”

“Lila loves you, admires you, is fond of your daughters. It’s me who thinks these things, and I’m saying them to help you be reasonable. Calm down, you’ll see, we’ll find them.”

We didn’t find them, we decided to return to Naples. But as we were nearing Florence Enzo wanted to call Lila again to find out if there was any news. When he hung up he said, bewildered:

“Dede needs to talk to you but Lina doesn’t know why.”

“Is she at your house?”

“No, she’s at yours.”

I called immediately, I was afraid that Imma was sick. Dede didn’t even give me a chance to speak, she said:

“I’m leaving tomorrow for the United States, I’m going to study there.”

I tried not to shout:

“Now is not the moment for that conversation, as soon as possible we’ll talk about it with Papa.”

“One thing has to be clear, Mamma: Elsa will return to this house only when I am gone.”

“For now the most urgent thing is to find out where she is.”

She cried to me in dialect:

“That bitch telephoned a little while ago, she’s at Grandma’s.”

30.

The grandma was, of course, Adele; I called my in-laws. Guido answered coldly and put his wife on. Adele was cordial, she told me that Elsa was there and added, Not only her.

“The boy’s there, too?”

“Yes.”

“Would you mind if I came to you?”

“We’re expecting you.”

I had Enzo leave me at the station in Florence. The journey was complicated, with delays, waits, annoyances of every type. I thought about how Elsa, with her sly capriciousness, had ended up involving Adele. If Dede was incapable of deception, Elsa was at her best when it came to inventing strategies that could protect her and perhaps let her win. She had planned, it was clear, to impose Rino on me in the presence of her grandmother, a person who—she and her sister knew well—had been very unwilling to accept me as a daughter-in-law. For the entire journey I felt relieved because I knew she was safe and hated her for the situation she was putting me in.