19
A period began in which I racked my brains constantly over what to do. My daughters needed stability and I had to work hard to get their fathers to attend to them. Nino remained the bigger problem. Occasionally he telephoned, said some sweet thing to Imma on the telephone, she responded in monosyllables, that was it. Recently he had made a move that was, all in all, predictable, considering his ambitions: during the elections he had appeared on the socialist party lists. For the occasion he had sent me a letter in which he asked me to vote for him and get people to vote. In the letter, which ended with Tell Lina, too! he had enclosed a flyer that included an attractive photograph of him and a biographical note. Underlined in pen was a line in which he declared to the electors that he had three children: Albertino, Lidia, and Imma. Next to it he had written: Please read this to the child.
I hadn’t voted and I had done nothing to get people to vote for him, but I had shown the flyer to Imma and she had asked if she could keep it. When her father was elected I explained briefly the meaning of people, elections, representation, parliament. Now he lived permanently in Rome. After his electoral success he had been in touch only once, with a letter as hasty as it was self-satisfied, which he asked me to read to his daughter, Dede, and Elsa. No telephone number, no address, only words whose meaning was an offer of protection at a distance (Be sure that I will watch over you). But Imma also wanted to keep that testimony to her father’s existence. And when Elsa said to her things like, You’re boring, that’s why you’re called Sarratore and we’re Airota, she seemed less disoriented — perhaps less worried — by having a surname that was different from that of her sisters. One day the teacher had asked her: Are you the daughter of the Honorable Sarratore, and the next day she had brought in as proof the flyer, which she kept for any eventuality. I was pleased with that pride and planned to try to consolidate it. Nino’s life was, as usual, crowded and turbulent? All right. But his daughter wasn’t a rosette to use and then put back in the drawer until the next occasion.
With Pietro in recent years I had never had any problems. He contributed money for his daughters’ maintenance punctually (from Nino I had never received a lira) and was as far as possible a conscientious father. But not long ago he had broken up with Doriana, he was tired of Florence, he wanted to go to the United States. And, stubborn as he was, he would manage it. That alarmed me. I said to him: You’ll abandon your daughters, and he replied: it seems a desertion now but you’ll see, soon it will be an advantage for them especially. He was probably right, in that his words had something in common with Nino’s (Be sure that I will watch over you). In fact, however, Dede and Elsa, too, would remain without a father. And if Imma had always done without, Dede and Elsa clung to Pietro, they were used to having recourse to him when they wanted. His departure would sadden and limit them, that I was sure of. Of course they were old enough, Dede was eighteen, Elsa almost fifteen. They were in good schools, they both had good teachers. But was it enough? They had never become assimilated, neither of them had close schoolmates or friends, they seemed comfortable only with Rino. And what did they really have in common with that large boy who was much older and yet more childish than they?
No, I had to leave Naples. I could try to live in Rome, for example, and for Imma’s sake resume relations with Nino, only on the level of friendship, of course. Or return to Florence, so that Pietro could be closer to his daughters, and thus would not move across the ocean. The decision seemed particularly urgent when one night Lila came upstairs with a quarrelsome look, evidently in a bad mood, and asked me:
“Is it true that you told Dede to stop seeing Gennaro?”
I was embarrassed. I had only explained to my daughter that she shouldn’t be stuck to him all the time.
“See him — she can see him when she wants: I’m only afraid that Gennaro might be annoyed, he’s grown-up, she’s a girl.”
“Lenù, be clear. You think my son isn’t good for your daughter?”
I stared at her in bewilderment.
“Good how?”
“You know perfectly well she’s in love.”
I burst out laughing.
“Dede? Rino?”
“Why, don’t you think it’s possible that your child has lost her head over mine?”
20
Until that moment I had paid little attention to the fact that Dede, unlike her sister, who happily changed suitors every month, had never had a declared and ostentatious passion. I had attributed that withdrawn attitude partly to the fact that she didn’t feel pretty, partly to her rigor, and from time to time I had teased her (Are all the boys in your school unappealing?). She was a girl who didn’t forgive frivolity in anyone, above all in herself, but especially in me. The times she had seen me, I wouldn’t say flirt but even just laugh with a man — or, I don’t know, give a warm welcome to some boy who had brought her home — she made her disapproval clear and on one unpleasant occasion some months earlier had even gone so far as to use a vulgarity in dialect to me, which had made me furious.
But maybe it wasn’t a question of a war on frivolity. After Lila’s words I began to observe Dede and I realized that her protective attitude toward Lila’s son could not be reduced, as I had thought until then, to a long childhood affection or a heated adolescent defense of the humiliated and offended. I realized, rather, that her asceticism was the effect of an intense and exclusive bond with Rino that had endured since early childhood. That frightened me. I thought of the long duration of my love for Nino and I said to myself in alarm: Dede is setting off on the same path, but with the aggravating factor that if Nino was an extraordinary boy and had become a handsome, intelligent, successful man, Rino is an insecure, uneducated youth, without attractions, without any future, and, if I thought about it, more than Stefano he physically recalled his grandfather, Don Achille.
I decided to speak to her. It was a few months until her final exams, she was very busy, it would be easy for her to say to me: I’ve got a lot to do, let’s put it off. But Dede wasn’t Elsa, who was able to reject me, who could pretend. With my oldest daughter it was enough to ask and I was sure that she, at any moment, whatever she was doing, would answer with the greatest frankness. I asked:
“Are you in love with Rino?”
“Yes.”
“And he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Since when have you had that feeling?”
“Forever.”
“But if he doesn’t reciprocate?”
“My life would no longer have meaning.”
“What are you thinking of doing?”
“I’ll tell you after the exams.”
“Tell me now.”
“If he wants me we’ll go away.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know, but certainly away from here.”
“He also hates Naples?”
“Yes, he wants to go to Bologna.”
“Why?”
“It’s a place where there’s freedom.”
I looked at her with affection.
“Dede, you know that neither your father nor I will let you go.”
“There’s no need for you to let me go. I’m going and that’s it.”
“What about money?”
“I’ll work.”
“And your sisters? And me?”
“Some day or other, Mamma, we’ll have to separate anyway.”
I emerged from that conversation drained of strength. Although she had presented unreasonable things in an orderly fashion, I tried to behave as if she were saying very reasonable things.