The Lying Life of Adults. Elena Ferrante
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and said, moving back and forth between Italian and dialect:
“What’s the matter, you’re sick, you have to pee?”
“No.”
“So why’d you ring twice?”
I murmured:
“I’m Giovanna, aunt.”
“I know you’re Giovanna, but if you call me aunt again, you’d better turn right around and get out of here.”
I nodded yes, I was frightened. I looked for a few seconds at her face, without makeup, then stared at the floor. Vittoria seemed to me to have a beauty so unbearable that to consider her ugly became a necessity.
1.
I learned to lie to my parents more and more. At first I didn’t tell real lies, but since I wasn’t strong enough to oppose their always well-ordered world, I pretended to accept it while at the same time I cut out for myself a narrow path that I could abandon in a hurry if they merely darkened. I behaved like that especially with my father, even though his every word had in my eyes a dazzling authority, and it was exhausting and painful to try to deceive him.
It was he who, even more than my mother, hammered into my head that you shouldn’t ever lie. But after that visit to Vittoria lying seemed unavoidable. As soon as I came out of the entrance door I decided to pretend that I was relieved, and I ran to the car as if I had escaped a danger. When I got in, my father started the car, glancing bitterly at the building of his childhood, and pulled away too suddenly, which caused him instinctively to extend an arm to keep me from hitting my forehead against the windshield. He waited for me to say something soothing, and a part of me wanted nothing more, I suffered seeing him upset; yet I was obliged to be silent, I was afraid that even a wrong word would make him angry. After a few minutes, keeping one eye on the street, one on me, he asked how it had gone. I said that my aunt had questioned me about school, had offered me a glass of water, had wanted to know if I had friends, had had me tell her about Angela and Ida.
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“Did she ask about me?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“About your mother?”
“Not her, either.”
“For a whole hour you talked only about your friends?”
“Also about school.”
“What was that music?”
“What music?”
“Music at a very high volume.”
“I didn’t hear any music.”
“Was she nice?”
“A little rude.”
“Did she say nasty things?”
“No, but she’s not very nice.”
“I warned you.”
“Yes.”
“Is your curiosity satisfied now? Do you realize she doesn’t look like you at all?”
“Yes.”
“Come here, give me a kiss, you’re beautiful. Do you forgive me for the stupid thing I said?”
I said I had never been mad at him and let him give me a kiss on the cheek even though he was driving. But immediately afterward I pushed him away laughing, I protested: you scratched me with your beard. Although I had no desire for our games, I hoped we would start joking around and he would forget about Vittoria. Instead he replied: think of how your aunt scratches with her mustache, and what immediately came to mind was not the faint dark down on Vittoria’s lip but the down on mine. I said softly:
“She doesn’t have a mustache.”
“She does.”
“No.”
“All right, she doesn’t. The last thing we need is for you to get an urge to go back and see if she has a mustache.”
I said seriously:
“I don’t want to see her again.”
2.
That wasn’t a lie, either, I was scared to see Vittoria again. But already as I uttered that sentence I knew on what day, at what hour, in what place I would see her again. In fact, I hadn’t parted from her, I had her every word in my head, every gesture, every expression of her face, and they didn’t seem things that had just happened, it all seemed to be still happening. My father kept talking, to show me how much he loved me, while I saw and heard his sister, I hear and see her even now. I see her when she appeared before me dressed in sky blue, I see her when she said to me in that rough dialect: close the door, and had already turned her back, as if all I could do was follow her. In Vittoria’s voice, or perhaps in her whole body, there was an impatience without filters that hit me in a flash, as when, holding a match, I turned on the gas and felt on my hand the flame shooting out of the burner. I closed the door behind me, I followed her as if she had me on a leash.
We took a few steps into a place that smelled of smoke, without windows, the only light coming from an open door. Her figure moved out of sight beyond the door, I followed her into a small kitchen whose extreme orderliness struck me immediately, along with the smell of cigarette butts and filth.
“You want some orange juice?”
“I don’t want to be a bother.”
“You want it or not?”
“Yes, thank you.”
She ordered me to a chair, changed her mind, saying it was broken, ordered me to another. Then, to my surprise, she didn’t take out of the refrigerator—a yellowish-white refrigerator—an orange drink in a can or a bottle, as I expected, but picked out from a basket a couple of oranges, cut them, and began to squeeze them into a glass, without a squeezer, by hand, with the help of a fork. Without looking at me she said:
“You didn’t wear the bracelet.”
I got nervous:
“What bracelet?”
“The one I gave you when you were born.”
As far as I could remember, I had never had a bracelet. But I sensed that for her it was an important object and my not having worn it could be an affront. I said:
“Maybe my mother had me wear it when I was little, until I was one or two, then I grew up and it didn’t fit anymore.”
She turned to look at me, I showed her my wrist to prove that it was too big for a newborn’s bracelet, and to my surprise she burst out laughing. She had a big mouth with big teeth, and when she laughed her gums showed. She said:
“You’re smart.”
“I told the truth.”
“Do I scare you?”
“A little.”
“It’s good to be afraid. You need to be afraid even when there’s no need, it keeps you alert.”
She put the glass down in front of me; juice had dripped down the outside, while bits of pulp and white seeds floated on the bright orange surface. I looked at her hair, which was carefully combed, I had seen hairdos of the type in old films on television and in photos of my mother as a girl, a friend of hers wore her hair like that. Vittoria had very thick eyebrows, licorice sticks, black lines under her large forehead and above the deep cavities where she hid her eyes. Drink up, she said. I immediately took the glass in order not to upset her, but drinking repulsed me, I had seen the juice run across her palm, and, besides, with my mother I would have insisted that she take out pulp and