weakness

excerpts from the story of a new name by elena ferrante

but he promptly shifted onto the only terrain that seemed to justify our meeting. he said that he was glad to see me, all he could talk about with his friend was soccer and exam subjects. he praised me. professor galiani perceived it, he said, you're the only girl in the school who has any curiosity about things that aren't useful for exams and grades. he started to speak about serious subjects, we resorted immediately to a fine, impassioned italian in which we knew we excelled. he started off with the problem of violence. he mentioned a peace demonstration in cortona and related it skillfully to the beating that had taken place in a piazza in turin. he said he wanted to understand more about the link between immigration and industry. i agreed, but what did i know about those things? nothing. nino realized it, and he told me in great detail about an uprising of young southerners and the harshness with which the police had repressed them. "they call them napoli, they call them moroccans, they call them fascists, provocateurs, anarcho-syndicalists. but really they are boys whom no institution cares about, so neglected that when they get angry they destroy everything." searching for something to say that would please him, i ventured, "if you don't have a solid knowledge of the problems and if you don't find lasting solutions, then naturally violence breaks out. but the people who rebel aren't to blame. it's the ones who don't know how to govern." he gave me an admiring look, and said, "that's exactly what i think."

i was really pleased. i felt encouraged and cautiously went on to some reflections on how to reconcile individuality and universality, drawing on rousseau and other memories of the readings imposed by professor galiani. then i asked, "have you read federico chabod?"

i mentioned that name because he was the author of the book on the idea of nationhood that i had read a few pages of. i didn't know anything else, but at school i had learned to give the impression that i knew a lot. have you read federico chabod? it was the only moment when nino seemed to be annoyed. i realized that he didn't know who chabod was and from that i got an electrifying sensation of fullness. i began to summarize the little i had learned, but i quickly realized that to know, to compulsively display what he knew, was his point of strength and at the same time his weakness. he felt strong if he took the lead and weak if he lacked words. he darkened, in fact he stopped me almost immediately. he sidetracked the conversation, he started talking about the regions, about how urgent it was to get them approved, about autonomy and decentralization, about economic planning on a regional basis, all things i had never heard a word about. no chabod, then: i left him the field. and i liked to hear him talk, read the passion in his face. his eyes brightened when he was excited.

            *                         *                               *

who knows if michele solara had kept to himself what he had seen. who knows if everything was going smoothly. who knows if nunzia was already asleep in the house on the road in cuotto or was trying to calm her son-in-law who had arrived unexpectedly on the last boat, hadn't found his wife and was furious. who knows if lila had telephoned her husband and, reassured that he was in naples, far away, in the apartment in the new neighborhood, was now in bed with nino, without fear, a secret couple, a couple intent on enjoying the night. everything in the world was in precarious balance, pure risk, and those who didn't agree to take the risk wasted away in a corner, without getting to know life. i understood suddenly why i hadn't had nino, why lila had had him. i wasn't capable of entrusting myself to true feelings. i didn't know how to be drawn beyond the limits. i didn't possess that emotional power that had driven lila to do all she could to enjoy that day and that night. i stayed behind, waiting. she, on the other hand, seized things, truly wanted them, was passionate about them, played for all or nothing, and wasn't afraid of contempt, mockery, spitting, beatings. she deserved nino, in other words, because she thought that to love him meant to try to have him, not to hope that he would want her.

          *                        *                    *

unlike pietro, his father, mother, and sister conversed on a wide variety of subjects. at lunch, in the restaurant of the hotel where they were staying, professor airota and his daughter had, for example, affectionate skirmishes on political subjects that i had heard about from pasquale, from nino, and from franco but of whose substance i knew almost nothing. arguments like: you've been trapped by inter-class collaboration; you call it a trap, i call it mediation; mediation in which the christian democrats always and only win; the politics of the center left is difficult; if it's difficult, go back to being socialists; you're not reforming a thing; in our place what would you do; revolution, revolution, and revolution; revolution is taking italy out of the middle ages, without us socialists in the government, the students who talk about sex at school would be in jail and so would those who distribute pacifist leaflets; i want to see how you'd manage with the atlantic pact; we were always against the war and against all imperialism; you govern with the christian democrats, but will you stay anti-american?

like that, a swift back and forth: a polemical exercise that they both obviously enjoyed, maybe a friendly habit of long standing. i recognized in them, father and daughter, what i had never had and, i now knew, would always lack. what was it? i wasn't able to say precisely: the training, perhaps, to feel that the questions of the world were deeply connected to me; the capacity to feel them as crucial and not purely as information to display at an exam, in view of a good grade; a mental conformation that didn't reduce everything to my own individual battle, to the effort to be successful. mariarosa was kind, and so was her father; their tones were controlled, without a trace of the verbal excesses of armando, professor galiani's son, or of nino; and yet they injected warmth into political formulas that on other occasions had seemed to me cold, remote, to be used only in an attempt not to make a bad impression. following each other in rapid succession, they moved on, without interruption, to the bombing of north vietnam, to the student revolts on various campuses, to the many breeding grounds of anti-imperialist struggle in latin america and africa. and the daughter now seemed to be more up to date than the father. how many things mariarosa knew, she talked as if she had first-hand information, so that airota at a certain point looked at his wife ironically, and adele said to her, "you're the only one who hasn't chosen a dessert yet."

"i'll have chocolate cake," she said, breaking off with a graceful frown.

i looked at her in admiration. she drove a car, lived in milan, taught at the university, stood up to her father without resentment. i, instead: i was frightened by the idea of opening my mouth, and, at the same time, humiliated by staying silent. i couldn't contain myself, i said hyperbolically, "the americans, after hiroshima and nagasaki, should be brought to trial for crimes against humanity."

silence. the whole family looked at me. mariarosa exclaimed bravo!, she took my hand, shook it. i felt encouraged and immediately bubbled over with words, scraps of old phrases memorized at various times. i talked about planning and rationalization, the socialist-christian democratic precipice, about neocapitalism, about organizational structures, about africa, asia, primary school, piaget, collusion of the police and the courts, fascist rot in every manifestation of the state. i was muddled, breathless. my heart was pounding, i forgot who i was with and where i was. yet i felt around me an atmosphere of increasing approval, and i was happy to have expressed myself, i seemed to have made a good impression. i was also glad that no one in that nice little family had asked me, as happened frequently, where i came from, what my father did, and my mother. i was i, i , i.

          *                       *                        *

i was working night and day on my thesis, i harassed pietro, reading aloud to him what i had written. he was kind, he shook his head, he fished in his memory of virgil and other authors for passages that might be useful to me. i noted down every word he uttered, i worked hard, but in a bad mood. i went back and forth between two feelings. i sought help and it humiliated me to ask for it, i was grateful and at the same time hostile, in particular i hated that he did his best not to let his generosity weigh on me. what caused me the greatest anxiety was to find myself -- together with him, before him, after him -- submitting my research to the assistant professor who was following the progress of both of us, a man of around forty, earnest, attentive, sometimes even sociable. i saw that pietro was treated as if he already had a professorship, i as a normal brilliant student. often i decided not to talk to the teacher, out of rage, out of pride, out of fear of having to be aware of my constitutional inferiority. i have to do better than pietro, i thought, he knows so many more things than i do, but he's gray, he has no imagination. his way of proceeding, the way that he gently tried to suggest to me, was too cautious. so i undid my work, i started again, i pursued an idea that seemed to me original. when i returned to the professor i was listened to, yes, i was praised, but without seriousness, as if my struggle were only a game well played. i soon grasped that pietro airota had a future and i didn't.