The Lying Life of Adults. Elena Ferrante
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through the glass doors of the iron cage of the elevator, I saw my mother close the door of the apartment. But as soon as I was in the hall and then in Vittoria’s car, sitting next to her as, immediately, she lighted a cigarette with trembling hands, something happened that very often occurred later in my life, sometimes bringing me relief, other times demoralizing me. The bond with known spaces, with secure affections, yielded to curiosity about what might happen. The proximity of that threatening and enveloping woman captivated me, and here I was, already observing her every move. Now she was driving a repugnant car that stank of smoke, not with my father’s firm, decisive control or my mother’s serenity but in a way that was either distracted or overanxious, made up of jerks, alarming screeches, abrupt braking, mistaken starts on account of which the engine almost always stalled and insults rained down from impatient drivers to which, with the cigarette between her fingers or her lips, she responded with obscenities that I had never heard uttered by a woman. In other words, my parents were relegated effortlessly to a corner, and the wrong I’d done them by making an arrangement with their enemy vanished from my mind. In the space of a few minutes I no longer considered myself guilty, I felt no worry even about how I would confront them in the afternoon, when all three of us returned to the house on Via San Giacomo dei Capri. Of course, anxiety continued to dig away at me. But the certainty that they would always love me no matter what, the helter-skelter motion of the little green car, the increasingly unknown city that we were crossing, and Vittoria’s jumble of words forced me to an attention, to a tension, that functioned like an anesthetic.
We went up along the Doganella, parked after a violent quarrel with an illegal parking attendant who wanted money. My aunt bought red roses and white daisies, complained about the price, and once the bouquet was made changed her mind and obliged the flower seller to undo it and make two bunches. She said to me: I’ll bring this one, you this one, he’ll be pleased. She alluded naturally to her Enzo, and, from the moment we got in the car, despite the endless interruptions, she did nothing but talk about him with a sweetness that contrasted with her fierce manner of confronting the city. She continued to talk about him even as we went in among the burial niches and monumental tombs, old and new, along paths and stairs that always went down, as if we were in the upper-class neighborhoods of the dead and to find Enzo’s tomb we had to descend. I was struck by the silence, by the gray of the rust-streaked niches, by the smell of rotting earth, by certain dark cross-shaped cracks in the marble that seemed to have been left for the breathing of those who no longer had breath.
Until that moment, I had never been in a cemetery. My father and mother had never taken me, nor did I know if they had ever been, certainly they didn’t go on All Souls’ Day. Vittoria realized this right away and took advantage of it to again fault my father. He’s afraid, she said, he’s always been like that, he’s afraid of illness and death: all proud people, Giannì, all those who think they’re something, pretend that death doesn’t exist. Your father—when your grandmother may she rest in peace died—didn’t even show up at the funeral. And he did the same with your grandfather, two minutes and he was gone, because he’s a coward, he didn’t want to see them dead so he wouldn’t have to feel that he, too, would die.
I tried to respond, but prudently, that my father was very brave, and to defend him I recalled what he had once told me, and that is that the dead are objects that have broken, a television, the radio, the mixer, and the best thing is to remember them as they were when they were working, because the only acceptable tomb is memory. But she didn’t like that answer, and since she didn’t treat me like a child with whom words must be measured, she scolded me, said I was parroting my father’s bullshit, your mother does that, too, and I, too, as a girl, did the same. But once she met Enzo, she had erased my father from her head. E-rased, she articulated and, finally stopping in front of a wall of niches, pointed to one low down that had a small fenced flower bed, a lighted lamp in the shape of a flame, and two pictures in oval frames. This is it, she said, we’re here. Enzo is the one on the left, the other is his mother. But, instead of taking a solemn or remorseful attitude as I expected, she grew angry because some paper and dead flowers had been left a few steps away. She gave a long, unhappy sigh, handed me her flowers, said: wait here, don’t move, in this shit place if you don’t get mad nothing works, and left me.
I stood with the two bunches of flowers in my hand, staring at Enzo as he appeared in a black-and-white photo. He didn’t look handsome and that disappointed me. He had a round face and was smiling, with white, wolf-like teeth. His nose was large, his eyes very lively, his forehead low and framed by wavy black hair. He must have been stupid, I thought, at my house a broad forehead—my mother, my father, I had one like that—was considered a sure sign of intelligence and noble sentiments, while a low forehead, my father said, was characteristic of imbeciles. But, I said to myself, eyes are meaningful, too (this my mother claimed): the more they sparkle, the smarter the person is. Enzo’s eyes shot arrows of happiness, and so I was confused by a gaze that was in evident contradiction with the forehead.
In the silence of the cemetery, Vittoria’s loud voice could be heard battling with someone, which worried me, I was afraid they would beat her or have her arrested, and on my own I wouldn’t have known how to get out of that place, which all seemed the same, with its rustling sounds, small birds, rotting flowers. But she returned quickly with a mopey old man who opened up a metal-framed chair with striped fabric and right away started sweeping the path. She watched him with a hostile expression and asked me:
“What do you say about Enzo? He’s handsome, isn’t he handsome?”
“He’s handsome,” I lied.
“He’s very handsome,” she corrected me. And as soon as the old man left, she took the faded flowers out of the vases, threw them to one side along with the stagnant water, ordered me to go get fresh water at a fountain that I would find just around the corner. I was afraid of getting lost, so I hesitated, and she chased me away, waving her hand: go, go.
I went, I found the fountain, which had a feeble jet. With a shudder I imagined that Enzo’s ghost was whispering affectionate words to Vittoria from the cross-shaped slits. How I liked that bond that had never been broken. The water gave a hiss, slowly lengthening its stream into the metal vases. If Enzo was an ugly man, well, his ugliness suddenly moved me, or rather the word lost meaning, dissolved in the gurgle of the water. What truly counted was the capacity to inspire love, even if one was ugly, even if spiteful, even if stupid. I felt there was some grandeur in that, and hoped that, whatever face was coming to me, I would have that capacity, as Enzo surely had, and Vittoria had. I went back to the tomb with the two vases full of water, hoping that my aunt would continue to talk to me as if I were a grownup and tell me in detail, in her brazen semi-dialect, about that supreme love.
But as soon as I turned onto the path I got scared. Vittoria was sitting, legs spread, on the folding chair the old man had brought and was bent over, her face in her hands, her elbows on her thighs. She was talking—she was talking to Enzo, it wasn’t a fantasy, I heard her voice but not what she was saying. She really maintained relations with him, even after death, and that dialogue of theirs filled me with emotion. I advanced as slowly as possible, stamping on the dirt path with the soles of my feet so she’d hear me. But she didn’t seem to notice me until I was beside her. At that point she took her hands away from her face, sliding them slowly over her skin: a painful movement that was intended to wipe away the tears and at the same time deliberately show me her grief, without embarrassment but, rather, as a medal. Eyes red and shining, wet at the corners. At my house, it was a duty to hide your feelings, not to seemed impolite. Whereas she, after seventeen years—what seemed an eternity to me—was still in despair, wept in front of the tomb, spoke to the marble, addressed bones she couldn’t even see, a man who no longer existed. She took just one of the vases and said wearily: you arrange your flowers and I will do mine. I obeyed, placing my vase on the ground, unwrapping the flowers, while she, sniffling, unwrapped hers and grumbled:
“Did you tell your father I told you about Enzo? And did he talk to you about him? Did he tell you the truth? Did he tell you that first he acted like his friend—he wanted to know everything about Enzo, tell me, he would say to him—and then he made him suffer, ruined him? Did he tell you how we fought over the house, our parents’ house, that pit of a house where I live now?”
I