Read Online The Story of a New Name (The Neapolitan Novels) by Elena Ferrante - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Elena Ferrante
Ads: Link
way you do when you’re happy.”
The second time we watched (I said to her, Play it again, she didn’t have to be asked twice), what struck me instead was the Solaras’ entrance into the restaurant. The cameraman had caught the moment that had registered most profoundly in me: the moment Nino left the room and Marcello and Michele burst in. The two brothers entered side by side, in their dress clothes; they were tall and muscular, thanks to the time they spent in the gym lifting weights; meanwhile Nino, slipping out, head lowered, just bumped Marcello’s arm, and as Marcello abruptly turned, with a mean, bullying look, he vanished, indifferent, without looking back.
The contrast seemed violent. It wasn’t so much the poverty of Nino’s clothes, which clashed with the opulence of the Solaras’, with the gold they wore on their necks and their wrists and their fingers. It wasn’t even his extreme thinness, which was accentuated by his height—he was at least three inches taller than the brothers, who were tall, too—and which suggested a fragility opposed to the virile strength that Marcello and Michele displayed with smug satisfaction. Rather, it was the indifference. While the Solaras’ arrogance could be considered normal, the haughty carelessness with which Nino had bumped into Marcello and kept going was not at all normal. Even those who detested the Solaras, like Pasquale, Enzo, or Antonio, had, one way or another, to reckon with them. Nino, on the other hand, not only didn’t apologize but didn’t so much as glance at Marcello.
The scene provided documentary proof of what I had intuited as I was experiencing it in reality. In that sequence Sarratore’s son—who had grown up in the run-down buildings of the old neighborhood just like us, and who had seemed so frightened when it came to defeating Alfonso in the school competitions—now appeared completely outside the scale of values at whose peak stood the Solaras. It was a hierarchy that visibly did not interest him, that perhaps he no longer understood.
Looking at him, I was seduced. He seemed to me an ascetic prince who could intimidate Michele and Marcello merely by means of a gaze that didn’t see them. And for an instant I hoped that now, in the image, he would do what he had not done in reality: take me away.
Lila noticed Nino only then, and said, curious, “Is that the same person you sat with at the table with Alfonso?”
“Yes. Didn’t you recognize him? It’s Nino, the oldest son of Sarratore.”
“He’s the one who kissed you when you were on Ischia?”
“It was nothing.”
“Just as well.”
“Why just as well?”
“He’s a person who thinks he’s somebody.”
As if to excuse that impression I said, “This year he graduates and he’s the best in the whole school.”
“You like him because of that?”
“No.”
“Forget him, Lenù, Antonio is better.”
“You think?”
“Yes. He’s skinny, ugly, and most of all really arrogant.”
I heard the three adjectives like an insult and was on the point of saying: it’s not true, he’s handsome, his eyes sparkle, and I’m sorry you don’t realize it, because a boy like that doesn’t exist in the movies or on television or even in novels, and I’m happy that I’ve loved him since I was little, and even if he’s out of my reach, even if I’m going to marry Antonio and spend my life pumping gas, I will love him more than myself, I’ll love him forever.
Instead, unhappy again, I said, “I used to like him, in elementary school: I don’t anymore.”
12.
The months that followed were packed with small events that tormented me a great deal, and even today I find it difficult to put them in order. Although I imposed on myself an appearance of self-assurance and an iron discipline, I gave in continuously, with painful pleasure, to waves of unhappiness. Everything seemed to be against me. At school I couldn’t get the grades I used to, even though I had begun
The second time we watched (I said to her, Play it again, she didn’t have to be asked twice), what struck me instead was the Solaras’ entrance into the restaurant. The cameraman had caught the moment that had registered most profoundly in me: the moment Nino left the room and Marcello and Michele burst in. The two brothers entered side by side, in their dress clothes; they were tall and muscular, thanks to the time they spent in the gym lifting weights; meanwhile Nino, slipping out, head lowered, just bumped Marcello’s arm, and as Marcello abruptly turned, with a mean, bullying look, he vanished, indifferent, without looking back.
The contrast seemed violent. It wasn’t so much the poverty of Nino’s clothes, which clashed with the opulence of the Solaras’, with the gold they wore on their necks and their wrists and their fingers. It wasn’t even his extreme thinness, which was accentuated by his height—he was at least three inches taller than the brothers, who were tall, too—and which suggested a fragility opposed to the virile strength that Marcello and Michele displayed with smug satisfaction. Rather, it was the indifference. While the Solaras’ arrogance could be considered normal, the haughty carelessness with which Nino had bumped into Marcello and kept going was not at all normal. Even those who detested the Solaras, like Pasquale, Enzo, or Antonio, had, one way or another, to reckon with them. Nino, on the other hand, not only didn’t apologize but didn’t so much as glance at Marcello.
The scene provided documentary proof of what I had intuited as I was experiencing it in reality. In that sequence Sarratore’s son—who had grown up in the run-down buildings of the old neighborhood just like us, and who had seemed so frightened when it came to defeating Alfonso in the school competitions—now appeared completely outside the scale of values at whose peak stood the Solaras. It was a hierarchy that visibly did not interest him, that perhaps he no longer understood.
Looking at him, I was seduced. He seemed to me an ascetic prince who could intimidate Michele and Marcello merely by means of a gaze that didn’t see them. And for an instant I hoped that now, in the image, he would do what he had not done in reality: take me away.
Lila noticed Nino only then, and said, curious, “Is that the same person you sat with at the table with Alfonso?”
“Yes. Didn’t you recognize him? It’s Nino, the oldest son of Sarratore.”
“He’s the one who kissed you when you were on Ischia?”
“It was nothing.”
“Just as well.”
“Why just as well?”
“He’s a person who thinks he’s somebody.”
As if to excuse that impression I said, “This year he graduates and he’s the best in the whole school.”
“You like him because of that?”
“No.”
“Forget him, Lenù, Antonio is better.”
“You think?”
“Yes. He’s skinny, ugly, and most of all really arrogant.”
I heard the three adjectives like an insult and was on the point of saying: it’s not true, he’s handsome, his eyes sparkle, and I’m sorry you don’t realize it, because a boy like that doesn’t exist in the movies or on television or even in novels, and I’m happy that I’ve loved him since I was little, and even if he’s out of my reach, even if I’m going to marry Antonio and spend my life pumping gas, I will love him more than myself, I’ll love him forever.
Instead, unhappy again, I said, “I used to like him, in elementary school: I don’t anymore.”
12.
The months that followed were packed with small events that tormented me a great deal, and even today I find it difficult to put them in order. Although I imposed on myself an appearance of self-assurance and an iron discipline, I gave in continuously, with painful pleasure, to waves of unhappiness. Everything seemed to be against me. At school I couldn’t get the grades I used to, even though I had begun
Similar Books
