I began working on the article right away. I had to squeeze out of Lila’s pages my sixty lines, and for love of her I wanted to do a good job. But I had no experience of newspaper writing, apart from when, at the age of fifteen, I had tried to write about the conflict with the religion teacher for Nino’s journal: with terrible results. I don’t know, maybe it was that memory that complicated things. Or maybe it was the editor’s sarcastic tone that rang in my ears, especially when, at the end of the call, he asked me to give his best to my mother-in-law. Certainly I took a lot of time, I wrote and rewrote stubbornly. But even when the article seemed to be finished I wasn’t satisfied and I didn’t take it to the newspaper. I have to talk to Lila first, I said to myself, it’s a thing that should be decided together; I’ll turn it in tomorrow.
The next day I went to see Lila; she seemed particularly unwell. She complained that when I wasn’t there certain presences took advantage of my absence and emerged from objects to bother her and Gennaro. Then she realized that I was alarmed and, in a tone of amusement, said it was all nonsense, she just wanted me to be with her more. We talked a lot, I soothed her, but I didn’t give her the article to read. What held me back was the idea that if
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rejected the piece I would be forced to tell her that they hadn’t found it good, and I would feel humiliated. It took a phone call from Adele that night to give me a solid dose of optimism and make up my mind. She had consulted her husband and also Mariarosa. She had moved half the world in a few hours: luminaries of medicine, socialist professors who knew about the union, a Christian Democrat whom she called a bit foolish but a good person and an expert in workers’ rights. The result was that I had an appointment the next day with the best cardiologist in Naples—a friend of friends, I wouldn’t have to pay—and that the labor inspector would immediately pay a visit to the Soccavo factory, and that to get Lila’s money I could go to that friend of Mariarosa’s whom Pietro had mentioned, a young socialist lawyer who had an office in Piazza Nicola Amore and had already been informed.
“Happy?”
“Yes.”
“Did you write your article?”
“Yes.”
“You see? I was sure you wouldn’t do it.”
“In fact it’s ready, I’ll take it to
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’
Unità
tomorrow.”
“Good. I run the risk of underestimating you.”
“It’s a risk?”
“Underestimating always is. How’s it going with that poor little creature my son?”
From then on everything became fluid, almost as if I possessed the art of making events flow like water from a spring. Even Pietro had worked for Lila. His colleague the Greek scholar turned out to be extremely talkative but useful just the same: he knew someone in Bologna who really was a computer expert—the reliable source of his philological fantasies—and he had given him the number of an acquaintance in Naples, judged to be equally reliable. He gave me the name, address, and telephone number of the Neapolitan, and I thanked him warmly, commenting with affectionate irony on his forced entrepreneurship—I even sent him a kiss over the phone.
I went to see Lila immediately. She had a cavernous cough, her face was strained and pale, her gaze excessively watchful. But I was bringing good news and was happy. I shook her, hugged her, held both her hands tight, and meanwhile told her about the phone call I had made to Bruno, read her the article I had written, enumerated the results of the painstaking efforts of Pietro, of my mother-in-law, of my sister-in-law. She listened as if I were speaking from far away—from another world into which I had ventured—and could hear clearly only half the things I was saying. Besides, Gennaro was constantly tugging on her to play with him, and, as I spoke, she was attending to him, but without warmth. I felt content just the same. In the past Lila had opened the miraculous drawer of the grocery store and had bought me everything, especially books. Now I opened my drawers and paid her back, hoping that she would feel safe, as I now did.
“So,” I asked her finally, “tomorrow morning you’ll go to the cardiologist?”
She reacted to my question in an incongruous way, saying with a small laugh: “Nadia won’t like this way of doing things. And her brother won’t, either.”
“What way, I don’t understand.”
“Nothing.”
“Lila,” I said, “please, what does Nadia have to do with it, don’t give her more importance than she already gives herself. And forget Armando, he’s always been superficial.”
I surprised myself with those judgments, after all I knew very little about Professor Galiani’s children. And for a few seconds I had the impression that Lila didn’t recognize me but saw before her a spirit who was exploiting her weakness. In fact, rather than criticizing Nadia and Armando, I only wanted her to understand that the hierarchies of power were different, that compared to the Airotas the Galianis didn’t count, that people like Bruno Soccavo or that thug Michele counted even less, that in other words she should do as I said and not worry. But as I was speaking I realized I was in danger of boasting and I caressed her cheek, saying that, of course, I admired Armando and Nadia’s political engagement, and then I added, laughing: but trust me. She muttered:
“O.K., we’ll go to the cardiologist.”
I persisted:
“And for Enzo what appointment should I make, what time, what day?”
“Whenever you want, but after five.”
As soon as I got home I went back to the telephone. I called the lawyer, I explained Lila’s situation in detail. I called the cardiologist, I confirmed the appointment. I telephoned the computer expert, he worked at the Department of Public Works: he said that the Zurich courses were useless, but that I could send Enzo to see him on such and such a day at such an address. I called
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Unità
, the editor said: You’re certainly taking your sweet time—are you bringing me this article, or are we waiting for Christmas? I called Soccavo’s secretary and asked her to tell her boss that, since I hadn’t heard from him, my article would be out soon in
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.
That last phone call provoked an immediate, violent reaction. Soccavo called me two minutes later and this time he wasn’t friendly; he threatened me. I answered that, momentarily, he would have the inspector on his back and a lawyer who would take care of Lila’s interests. Then, that evening, pleasantly overexcited—I was proud of fighting against injustice, out of affection and conviction, in spite of Pasquale and Franco, who thought they could still give me lessons—I hurried to
l’Unità
to deliver my article.
The man I had talked to was middle-aged, short, and fat, with small, lively eyes that permanently sparkled with a benevolent irony. He invited me to sit down on a dilapidated chair and he read the article carefully.
“And this is sixty lines? To me it seems like a hundred and fifty.”
I reddened, I said softly: “I counted several times, it’s sixty.”
“Yes, but written by hand and in a script that couldn’t be read with a magnifying glass. But the piece is very good, Comrade. Find a typewriter somewhere and cut what you can.”
“Now?”
“And when? For once I’ve got something people will actually look at if I put it on the page, and you want to make me wait for doomsday?”
What energy I had in those days. We went to the cardiologist, a big-name professor who had a house and office in Via Crispi. I took great care with my appearance for the occasion. Although the doctor was from Naples, he was connected with Adele’s world and I didn’t want to make a bad impression. I brushed my hair, wore a dress that she had given me, used a subtle perfume that resembled hers, put on light makeup. I wanted the professor, if he spoke to my mother-in-law on the telephone, or if by chance they met, to speak well of me. Lila instead looked as she did every day at home, careless of her appearance. We sat in a grand waiting room, with nineteenth-century paintings on the walls: a noblewoman in an armchair with a Negro servant in the background, a portrait of an old lady, and a large, lively hunting scene. There were two other people waiting, a man and a woman, both old, both with the tidy, elegant look of prosperity. We waited in silence. Lila, who on the way had repeatedly praised my appearance, said only, in a low voice: You look like you came out of one of these paintings—you’re the lady and I’m the maid.
We didn’t wait long. A nurse called us; for no obvious reason, we went ahead of the patients who were waiting. Now Lila became agitated, she wanted me to be present at the examination, she swore that alone she would never go in, and she pushed me forward as if I were the one being examined. The doctor was a bony man in his sixties, with thick gray hair. He greeted me politely, he knew everything about me, and chatted for ten minutes as if Lila weren’t there. He said that his son had also graduated from the Normale, but six years before me. He noted that his brother was a writer and had a certain reputation, but only in Naples. He was full of praise for the Airotas, he knew a cousin of Adele’s very well, a famous physicist. He asked me:
“When is the wedding?”
“May 17th.”
“The seventeenth? That’s bad luck, please change the date.”
“It’s not possible.”
Lila was silent the whole time. She paid no attention to the professor, I felt her curiosity on me, she seemed amazed by my every gesture and word. When, finally, the doctor turned to her, questioning her at length, she answered unwillingly, in dialect or in an ugly Italian that imitated dialect patterns. Often I had to interrupt to remind her of symptoms that she had reported to me or to stress those which she minimized. Finally she submitted to a thorough examination and exhaustive tests, with a sullen expression, as if the cardiologist and I were doing her a wrong. I looked at her thin body in a threadbare pale blue slip that was too big for her. Her long neck seemed to be struggling to hold up her head, the skin was stretched over her bones like tissue paper that might tear at any moment. I realized that the thumb of her left hand every so often had a small, reflexive twitch. It was a good half hour before the professor told her to get dressed. She kept her eyes on him as she did so; now she seemed frightened. The cardiologist went to the desk, sat down, and finally announced that everything was in order, he hadn’t found a murmur. Signora, he said, you have a perfect heart. But the effect of the verdict on Lila was apparently dubious, she didn’t seem pleased, in fact she seemed irritated. It was I who felt relieved, as if it were my heart, and it was I who showed signs of worry when the professor, again addressing me and not Lila, as if her lack of reaction had offended him, added, with a frown, that, however, given the general state of my friend, urgent measures were necessary. The problem, he said, isn’t the cough: the signora has a cold, has had a slight flu, and I’ll give her some cough syrup. The problem, according to him, was that she was exhausted, run down. Lila had to take better care of herself, eat regularly, have a tonic treatment, get at least eight hours of sleep a night. The majority of your friend’s symptoms, he said, will vanish when she regains her strength. In any case, he concluded, I would advise a neurological examination.
It was the penultimate word that roused Lila. She scowled, leaned forward, said in Italian: “Are you saying that I have a nervous illness?”
The doctor looked at her in surprise, as if the patient he had just finished examining had been magically replaced by another person.
“Not at all: I’m only advising an examination.”
“Did I say or do something I shouldn’t have?”
“No, madam, there’s no need to worry. The examination serves only to get a clear picture of your situation.”
“A relative of mine,” said Lila, “a cousin of my mother’s, was unhappy, she’d been unhappy her whole life. In the summer, when I was little, I would hear her through the open window, shouting, laughing. Or I would see her on the street doing slightly crazy things. But it was unhappiness, and so she never went to a neurologist, in fact she never went to any doctor.”
“It would have been useful to go.”
“Nervous illnesses are for ladies.”
“Your mother’s cousin isn’t a lady?”
“No.”
“And you?”
“Even less so.”
“Do you feel unhappy?”
“I’m very well.”
The doctor turned to me again, irritably: “Absolute rest. Have her do this treatment, regularly. If you have some way of taking her to the country, it would be better.”
Lila burst out laughing, she returned to dialect: “The last time I went to a doctor he sent me to the beach and it brought me a lot of grief.”
The professor pretended not to hear, he smiled at me as if to elicit a conspiratorial smile, gave me the name of a friend who was a neurologist, and telephoned himself so that the man would see us as soon as possible. It wasn’t easy to drag Lila to the new doctor’s office. She said she didn’t have time to waste, she was already bored enough by the cardiologist, she had to get back to Gennaro, and above all she didn’t have money to throw away nor did she want me to throw away mine. I assured her that the examination would be free and in the end, reluctantly, she gave in.
The neurologist was a small lively man, completely bald, who had an office in an old building in Toledo and displayed in his waiting room an orderly collection of philosophy books. He liked to hear himself talk, and he talked so much that, it seemed to me, he paid more attention to the thread of his own discourse than to the patient. He examined her and addressed me, he asked her questions and propounded to me his observations, taking no notice of the responses she gave. In the end, he concluded abstractedly that Lila’s nervous system was in order, just like her cardiac muscle. But—he said, continuing to address me—my colleague is right, dear Dottoressa Greco, the body is weakened, and as a result both the irascible and the concupiscible passions have taken advantage of it to get the upper hand over reason: let’s restore well-being to the body and we’ll restore health to the mind. Then he wrote out a prescription, in indecipherable marks, but pronouncing aloud the names of the medicines, the doses. Then he moved on to advice. He advised, for relaxation, long walks, but avoiding the sea: better, he said, the woods of Capodimonte or Camaldoli. He advised reading, but only during the day, never at night. He advised keeping the hands employed, even though a careful glance at Lila’s would have been enough to realize that they had been too much employed. When he began to insist on the neurological benefits of crochet work, Lila became restless in her chair, and without waiting for the doctor to finish speaking, she asked him, following the course of her own secret thoughts: