The review that at the time wounded me most deeply appeared in Roma. Paragraph by paragraph, it retraced the one in the Corriere, but in a florid style that at the end fanatically hammered at a single concept: women are losing all restraint, one has only to read Elena Greco’s indecent novel to understand it, a novel that is a cheap version of the already vulgar Bonjour Tristesse. What hurt me, though, was not the content but the byline. The article was by Nino’s father, Donato Sarratore. I thought of how impressed I had been as a girl by the fact that that man was the author of a book of poems; I thought of the glorious halo I had enveloped him in when I discovered that he wrote for the newspapers. Why that review? Did he wish to get revenge because he recognized himself in the obscene family man who seduces the protagonist? I was tempted to call him and insult him atrociously in dialect. I gave it up only because I thought of Nino, and made what seemed an important discovery: his experience and mine were similar. We had both refused to model ourselves on our families: I had been struggling forever to get away from my mother, he had burned his bridges with his father. This similarity consoled me, and my rage slowly diminished.
But I hadn’t taken into account that, in the neighborhood, Roma was read more than any other newspaper. I found out that evening. Gino, the pharmacist’s son, who lifted weights and had become a muscular young man, looked out from the doorway of his father’s shop just as I was passing, in a white pharmacist’s smock even though he hadn’t yet taken his degree. He called to me, holding out the paper, and said, in a fairly serious tone, because he had recently moved up a little in the local section of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement party: Did you see what they’re writing about you? In order not to give him the satisfaction, I answered, they write all sorts of things, and went on with a wave. He was flustered, and stammered something, then he said, with explicit malice: I’ll have to read that book of yours, I understand it’s very interesting.
That was only the start. The next day Michele Solara came up to me on the street and insisted on buying me a coffee. We went into his bar and while Gigliola served us, without saying a word, in fact obviously annoyed by my presence and perhaps also by her boyfriend’s, he began: Lenù, Gino gave me an article to read where it says you wrote a book that’s banned for those under eighteen. Imagine that, who would have expected it. Is that what you studied in Pisa? Is that what they taught you at the university? I can’t believe it. In my opinion you and Lina made a secret agreement: she does nasty things and you write them. Is that right? Tell me the truth. I turned red, I didn’t wait for the coffee, I waved to Gigliola and left. He called after me, laughing: What’s the matter, you’re offended, come here, I was joking.
Soon afterward I had an encounter with Carmen Peluso. My mother had obliged me to go to the Carraccis’ new grocery, because oil was cheaper there. It was afternoon, there were no customers, Carmen was full of compliments. How well you look, she said, it’s an honor to be your friend, the only good luck I’ve had in my whole life. Then she said that she had read Sarratore’s article, but only because a supplier had left Roma behind in the shop. She described it as spiteful, and her indignation seemed genuine. On the other hand, her brother, Pasquale, had given her the article in l’Unità—really, really good, such a nice picture. You’re beautiful, she said, in everything you do. She had heard from my mother that I was going to marry a university professor and that I was going to live in Florence in a luxurious house. She, too, was getting married, to the owner of the gas pump on the stradone, but who could say when, they had no money. Then, without a break, she began complaining about Ada. Ever since Ada had taken Lila’s place with Stefano, things had gone from bad to worse. She acted like the boss in the grocery stores, too, and had it in for her, accused her of stealing, ordered her around, watched her closely. She couldn’t take it anymore, she wanted to quit and go to work at her future husband’s gas pump.
I listened closely, I remembered when Antonio and I wanted to get married and, similarly, have a gas pump. I told her about it, to amuse her, but she muttered, darkening: Yes, why not, just imagine it, you at a gas pump, lucky you who got yourself out of this wretchedness. Then she made some obscure comments: there’s too much injustice, Lenù, too much, it has to end, we can’t go on like this. And as she was talking she pulled out of a drawer my book, with the cover all creased and dirty. It was the first copy I’d seen in the hands of anyone in the neighborhood, and I was struck by how bulging and grimy the early pages were, how flat and white the others. I read a little at night, she said, or when there aren’t any customers. But I’m still on page 32, I don’t have time, I have to do everything, the Carraccis keep me shut up here from six in the morning to nine in the evening. Then suddenly she asked, slyly, how long does it take to get to the dirty pages? How much do I still have to read?
The dirty pages.
A little while later I ran into Ada carrying Maria, her daughter with Stefano. I struggled to be friendly, after what Carmen had told me. I praised the child, I said her dress was pretty and her earrings adorable. But Ada was aloof. She spoke of Antonio, she said they wrote to each other, it wasn’t true that he was married and had children, she said I had ruined his brain and his capacity to love. Then she started on my book. She hadn’t read it, she explained, but she had heard that it wasn’t a book to have in the house. And she was almost angry: Say the child grows up and finds it, what can I do? I’m sorry, I won’t buy it. But, she added, I’m glad you’re making money, good luck.
12
These episodes, one after the other, led me to suspect that the book was selling because both the hostile newspapers and the favorable ones had indicated that there were some risqué passages. I went so far as to think that Nino had alluded to Lila’s sexuality only because he thought that there was no problem in discussing such things with someone who had written what I had written. And via that path the desire to see my friend returned. Who knows, I said to myself, if Lila had the book, as Carmen did. I imagined her at night, after the factory — Enzo in solitude in one room, she with the baby beside her in the other — exhausted and yet intent on reading me, her mouth half open, wrinkling her forehead the way she did when she was concentrating. How would she judge it? Would she, too, reduce the novel to the dirty pages? But maybe she wasn’t reading it at all, I doubted that she had the money to buy a copy, I ought to take her one as a present. For a while it seemed to me a good idea, then I forgot about it. I still cared more about Lila than about any other person, but I couldn’t make up my mind to see her. I didn’t have time, there were too many things to study, to learn in a hurry. And then the end of our last visit — in the courtyard of the factory, she with that apron under her coat, standing in front of the bonfire where the pages of The Blue Fairy were burning — had been a decisive farewell to the remains of childhood, the confirmation that our paths by now diverged, and maybe she would say: I don’t have time to read you, you see the life I have? I went my own way.
Whatever the reason, the book really was doing better and better. Once Adele telephoned and, with her usual mixture of irony and affection, said: If it keeps going like this you’ll get rich and you won’t know what to do with poor Pietro anymore. Then she passed me on to her husband, no less. Guido, she said, wants to talk to you. I was agitated, I had had very few conversations with Professor Airota and they made me feel awkward. But Pietro’s father was very friendly, he congratulated me on my success, he spoke sarcastically about the sense of decency of my detractors, he talked about the extremely long duration of the dark ages in Italy, he praised the contribution I was making to the modernization of the country, and so on with other formulas of that sort. He didn’t say anything specific about the novel; surely he hadn’t read it, he was a very busy man. But it was nice that he wanted to give me a sign of approval and respect.