“Excellent. You mean that in all the factories, at all the construction sites, in every corner of Italy and the world, as soon as the owner kicks up a fuss and the workers are in danger, we’ll call Elena Greco: she telephones her friends, the labor authority, her connections in high places, and resolves the situation.”

He had never spoken to me like that, not even when I was a girl and he seemed to me already adult, and acted like a political expert. I was offended, and was about to answer, but Nadia interrupted, ignoring me. She spoke to Lila, in her slow little voice, as if it were not worth the trouble to speak to me.

“The labor inspectors don’t count for anything, Lina. They went to Soccavo, they filled out their forms, but then? In the factory everything is the same as before. And meanwhile those who spoke out are in trouble, those who were silent got a few lire under the counter, the police charged us, and the fascists came right here and beat up Armando.”

She hadn’t finished speaking when Pasquale started talking to me more harshly than before, this time raising his voice:

“Explain to us what the fuck you thought you resolved,” he said, with genuine pain and disappointment. “You know what the situation is in Italy? Do you have any idea what the class struggle is?

As soon as we got to our apartment and closed the door we began to make love. At first it was very pleasurable, but the day reserved for me yet another surprising fact. Antonio, my first boyfriend, when he rubbed against me was quick and intense; Franco made great efforts to contain himself but at a certain point he pulled away with a gasp, or when he had a condom stopped suddenly and seemed to become heavier, crushing me under his weight and laughing in my ear. Pietro, on the other hand, strained for a time that seemed endless. His thrusting was deliberate, violent, so that the initial pleasure slowly diminished, overwhelmed by the monotonous insistence and the hurt I felt in my stomach. He was covered with sweat from his long exertions, maybe from suffering, and when I saw his damp face and neck, touched his wet back, desire disappeared completely. But he didn’t realize it, he continued to withdraw and then sink into me forcefully, rhythmically, without stopping. I didn’t know what to do. I caressed him, I whispered words of love, and yet I hoped that he would stop. When he exploded with a roar and collapsed, finally exhausted, I was content, even though I was hurting and unsatisfied.

I felt offended, and dictated it just the same. It wasn’t published. And from then on, with a certain embarrassment, both the local and the national editorial offices began to reject my texts, citing problems of space. I suffered, I felt that everything that up to a short time earlier I had taken as an unquestioned condition of life and work was rapidly collapsing around me, as if violently jolted from inaccessible depths. I read just to keep my eyes on a book or a newspaper, but it was as if I had stopped at the signs and no longer had access to the meanings. Two or three times I came across articles by Nino, but reading them didn’t give me the usual pleasure of imagining him, of hearing his voice, of enjoying his thoughts. I was happy for him, certainly: if he was writing it meant that he was well, he was living his life who knows where, with who knows whom. But I stared at the signature, I read a few lines, I retreated, as if every one of his sentences, black on white, made my situation even more unbearable. I lost interest in things, I couldn’t even bother with my appearance. And besides, for whom would I bother? I saw no one, only Pietro, who treated me courteously, but I perceived that for him I was a shadow. At times I seemed to think with his mind and I imagined I felt his unhappiness. Marrying me had only complicated his existence as a scholar, and just when his fame was growing, especially in England and the United States. I admired him, and yet he irritated me. I always spoke to him with a mixture of resentment and inferiority.

As for Pietro, the condoms dulled his sensitivity even more, and it took him even longer to reach orgasm, which made him suffer, and made me suffer. Sometimes I made him take me from behind, I had the impression that it was less painful, and while he dealt those violent blows I grabbed his hand and brought it to my sex hoping he would understand that I wanted to be caressed. But he seemed incapable of doing both things, and since he preferred the first he almost immediately forgot the second, nor, once satisfied, did he seem to understand that I wanted some part of his body to consummate, in turn, my desire. After he had had his pleasure he caressed my hair, and whispered, I’ll work a little. When he left, the solitude seemed to me a consolation prize.

At those moments I felt good, I forgot the existence of Pietro and Dede, the wake of boring obligations they trailed. I feared only the moment when the guest would leave and I would fall back into the dreariness of my house: pointless days, idleness, rage concealed behind meekness. So I went overboard: excitement goaded me to talk too much and too loudly, I crossed my legs, hiking up my skirt as far as possible, with a careless gesture I unfastened a button on my shirt. It was I who shortened the distances, as if a part of me were convinced that, if in some way I clung to that stranger, some of the well-being I felt at that moment would remain in my body, and when he had left the apartment, along with his wife or companion, I would feel the depression, the emptiness behind the display of feelings and ideas, the anguish of failure.

In reality, afterward, alone in bed while Pietro studied, I felt simply stupid and despised myself. But however I tried I couldn’t change myself. Especially because those men were convinced they had made an impression and generally called the next day, invented excuses to see me again. I accepted. But as soon as I arrived at the appointment I was frightened. The simple fact that they were excited, although they were, let’s say, thirty years older or were married, canceled their authority, canceled the savior role I had assigned them, and the very pleasure I had felt during the game of seduction was a shameful mistake. I asked myself in bewilderment: Why did I behave like that, what’s happening to me? I paid more attention to Dede and Pietro.

“As a girl I would have liked to be like you.”

“Why? You think it’s nice to be born with everything all ready-made for you?”

“Well, you don’t have to work so hard.”

“You’re wrong—the truth is that it seems like everything’s been done already and you’ve got no good reason to do anything. All you feel is the guilt of what you are and that you don’t deserve it.”

“Better that than to feel the guilt of failure.”

And she told me things that disturbed me profoundly. She told me that not long before, in that very house, Michele had gotten drunk one night and told her how many women he had been with, the precise number: a hundred and twenty-two, paying and free. You’re on that list, he said emphatically, but you’re certainly not among those who gave me the most pleasure. You know why? Because you’re an idiot, and even to fuck well it takes a little intelligence. For example you don’t know how to give a blow job, you’re hopeless, and it’s pointless to explain it to you, you can’t do it, it’s too obvious that it disgusts you. And he went on like that for a while, making speeches that became increasingly crude; with him vulgarity was normal. Then he wanted to explain clearly how things stood: he was marrying her because of the respect he felt for her father, a skilled pastry maker he was fond of; he was marrying her because one had to have a wife and even children and even an official house. But there should be no mistake: she was nothing to him, he hadn’t put her on a pedestal, she wasn’t the one he loved best, so she had better not be a pain in the ass, believing she had some rights. Brutal words. At a certain point Michele himself must have realized it, and he became gripped by a kind of melancholy. He had murmured that women for him were all games with a few holes for playing in. All. All except one. Lina was the only woman in the world he loved—love, yes, as in the films—and respected. He told me, Gigliola sobbed, that she would have known how to furnish this house. He told me that giving her money to spend, yes, that would be a pleasure. He told me that with her he could have become truly important, in Naples. He said to me: You remember what she did with the wedding photo, you remember how she fixed up the shop? And you, and Pinuccia, and all the others, what the fuck are you, what the fuck do you know how to do? He had said those things to her and not only those. He had told her that he thought about Lila night and day, but not with normal desire, his desire for her didn’t resemble what he knew. In reality he didn’t want her. That is, he didn’t want her the way he generally wanted women, to feel them under him, to turn them over, turn them again, open them up, break them, step on them, and crush them. He didn’t want her in order to have sex and then forget her. He wanted the subtlety of her mind with all its ideas. He wanted her imagination. And he wanted her without ruining her, to make her last. He wanted her not to screw her—that word applied to Lila disturbed him. He wanted to kiss her and caress her. He wanted to be caressed, helped, guided, commanded. He wanted to see how she changed with the passage of time, how she aged. He wanted to talk with her and be helped to talk. You understand? He spoke of her in way that to me, to me—when we are about to get married—he has never spoken. [...]

“It’s certainly exciting, but if it’s as you say, these machines will take the place of men, and skills will disappear; at Fiat robots already do the welding. A lot of jobs will be lost.”

Enzo at first agreed, then he seemed to have second thoughts, and finally he resorted to the only person whose authority he credited:

“Lina says it’s all a good thing: humiliating and stultifying jobs should disappear.”

Lina, Lina, Lina. I asked teasingly: if Lina is so good, why do they give you three hundred and fifty thousand lire and her a hundred thousand, why are you the boss and she’s the assistant? Enzo hesitated again, he seemed on the point of saying something pressing, which he then decided to abandon. He mumbled: What do you want from me, private ownership of the means of production should be abolished. In the kitchen the hum of the refrigerator could be heard for a few seconds. Pietro stood up and said: Let’s go to bed.

At night every imagining seemed a thing that had happened or was still happening, and I was afraid for her, I saw her captured, wounded, like so many women and men in the chaos of the world, and I felt pity for her, but I also envied her. The childish conviction that she had always been destined for extraordinary things was magnified. And I regretted that I had left Naples, detached myself from her, the need to be near her returned. But I was also angry that she had set out on that road without consulting me, as if she hadn’t considered me up to it. And yet I knew a lot about capital, exploitation, class struggle, the inevitability of the proletarian revolution. I could have been useful, participated. And I was unhappy. I lay in bed, discontent with my situation as a mother, a married woman, the whole future debased by the repetition of domestic rituals in the kitchen, in the marriage bed.

“You should leave your wife more time.”

“She has all day available.”

“I’m not kidding. If you don’t, you’re guilty not only on a human level but also on a political one.”

“What’s the crime?”

“The waste of intelligence. A community that finds it natural to suffocate with the care of home and children so many women’s intellectual energies is its own enemy and doesn’t realize it.”

I waited in silence for Pietro to respond. My husband reacted with sarcasm.

“Elena can cultivate her intelligence when and how she likes, the essential thing is that she not take time from me.”

“If she doesn’t take it from you, then who can she take it from?”

Pietro frowned.