My Brilliant Friend

Elena prefers to go to dances and get pizza with the young people from the neighborhood rather than to entertain Stefano and Lila’s fancy lifestyle. Elena becomes interested in Antonio, who is now courting her. Lila’s engagement is a chief topic of conversation, and Pasquale Peluso, who has never moved on from Lila’s rejection, says that despite her intelligence Lila has allowed herself to be bought by the corrupt Carraccis. At one gathering, Pasquale claims the money that pays for Lila’s fine clothes “comes from the gold objects taken from mothers and hidden by Don Achille in the mattress” (268-69). When Pasquale and Antonio Cappuccio, Melina’s son, imply that Lila has become like a whore, Enzo invites the two of them outside for a fight.

Marcello has been spreading the rumor that Lila gave him a blow job every time he went to her family home for dinner. Unsure of what this sexual favor is, Elena decides to tell Lila of the rumor. Lila responds that the act is so disgusting that she would never do it to any man. Then she declares that she and Stefano have decided to rise above the Solaras by ignoring them. Elena marvels that Lila’s latest invention is to “leave the neighborhood by staying in the neighborhood,” to behave like a visiting Jacqueline Kennedy while she still lives there (273).

When Pasquale, Antonio, and Enzo Scanno hear Marcello’s rumor about Lila, they “feel it’s their duty to be indignant, all three of them […] much more than Stefano, as if they were the true fiancés” (274). The next day, the Solaras’ car is smashed up and the two brothers have been savagely beaten. The brothers swear the crime belonged to ten people from another neighborhood, but Elena knows who the real culprits are. When she sees the Solaras recover and buy themselves a green Giulietta, Elena knows that Lila is right about making people envious by doing better than them.

Elena feels inadequate and believes her schooling is pointless compared with Lila’s precocious young adulthood. She knows that, with her writing, she has to free herself “from artificial tones” and instead write more in the style of Lila’s letter to her when she was in Ischia (276). Elena scores all 10s on her report card, and Maestra Oliviero praises her and says that it is a shame Lila never found an outlet for her “beauty of mind” (277). Elena asks around the neighborhood for a job, and the stationer obliges, offering to pay her for taking her three daughters to the beach. Antonio asks Elena to be his girlfriend and she says yes, delighted that, though she does not love him, he is the same age as Stefano.

Elena spends her days looking after the stationer’s girls at the beach and her evenings at the ponds with Antonio, kissing and touching intimately. “Antonio was ultimately only a useful phantom to evoke on the one hand, the love between Lila and Stefano, on the other, the strong emotion, difficult to categorize, that Nino’s father had inspired in me” (280). Lila turns up at the beach one day with Stefano. She says that while she loves Stefano very deeply, she loves Elena more.

Elena gets bolder in her sexual games with Antonio. Although she is fond of him, she does not love him; she vows to leave him, but cannot decide when. Donato resurfaces in the neighborhood, appearing, at first, only to the crazy widow Melina. Antonio worries that if his mother continues to harbor the delusion that she has seen Donato, she will be sent to the asylum. When Elena sees Donato for herself, she is terrified. She tells him that she is with Antonio and never wants to see him again. Donato tries to kiss her and says he will be waiting for her anyway. Without revealing her own interactions with Donato, Elena implores Antonio to confront Donato. Antonio does so reluctantly, threatening to beat Donato violently if he ever does anything to deprive Melina of the little sanity she has.

As the neighborhood awaits Lila and Stefano’s wedding, the Cerullos are under pressure to not seem like poor relations and provide Lila with a small dowry. Stefano and Lila remain largely unruffled; however, there are small moments of friction between them. Lila wants to live in the neighborhood, but Stefano prefers the light-filled apartments outside of it. Lila acquiesces on this matter. But when Stefano complains about Rino and Fernando, saying that Rino lacks work ethic, Lila is offended, and Stefano “immediately retreated” (289).

When Lila shows Elena the new apartment, Elena asks what she and Stefano do there when they go there alone. Lila says that they do no more than kiss and have agreed to wait until they are married before they engage with each other sexually. Elena lies about what she has done with Antonio. 

The tension mounts between Lila and her future in-laws. Stefano’s sister Pinuccia contends that Lila ought to work in the Carraccis’ grocery rather than just spend their money. Lila agrees, but instead Stefano recruits Ada Cappuccio to do Pinuccia’s job, so that his sister and mother are free to help Lila with the wedding preparations. Lila is annoyed with this development and asks Elena to accompany the party in the choosing of a wedding dress. When there is a clash between Lila and the Carracci women about dress styles, Elena chooses one completely at random, arguing that it caters to all of their tastes. Lila is impressed by how Elena can “con” people with words and concludes that Elena has a talent she lacks, being able to make herself liked (294). 

Elena is recruited to assist with the remaining wedding preparations and ends up directing every aspect of the ceremony. She has the impression that Lila “was struggling to find, from inside the cage in which she was enclosed, a way of being all her own” (295).

In school, Elena gets herself into trouble for an outburst in religion class, when she says “that to trust in a God, a Jesus, the Holy Spirit […] was the same thing as collecting trading cards while the city burns in the fires of hell” (296). This sacrilegious remark gets Elena thrown out of class and earns her a demerit, but she remains confident because Lila had once said something similar.

Nino asks why Elena has been sent out of class and reappears a few minutes later accompanied by Professor Galiani who praises Elena. Elena learns to negotiate, apologizing to the priest while she stands her ground. Nino asks her if she wants to write an article for Naples, Home of the Poor, about her argument with the priest. Elena does so and asks Lila to look at it. Lila edits and recopies the text onto another page, improving the writing style as she goes. Afterwards, she says that she no longer wants to read anything Elena writes because it hurts her.

Elena hands Nino the article just as Lila has recopied it “clearer, more immediate” in style (301). Nino sulks because Professor Galiani is right about Elena being a better writer than he. He does not tell her when the article will come out. As Nino walks away, Elena is disturbed that she recognizes “for a few moments his father’s gait” and wonders whether he also shares Donato’s vanity (301). She asks Antonio to pick her up from school and makes a show of holding his hand, aware that Nino is watching. She claims she will no longer “run after [Nino] like a faithful beast” (303).

Elena asks Antonio to Lila’s wedding, mainly to stop herself feeling inferior to Lila. Antonio, who truly loves Elena, goes into debt spending money on clothes not just for himself but also for Melina and Ada. He gets the idea of completing his look with shoes made by the Cerullos.

Meanwhile, the shoes that Lila designed as a child are made to her specification. Everyone approves, apart from Stefano, who criticizes the modifications to the original designs. Lila defends her father, who refuses to make any further modifications to the shoes. When the shoes appear at Christmas, they are “elegant objects, carefully finished: just to look at them gave an impression of wealth that did not accord with the humble shop window” or the impoverished neighborhood (305). Not a single pair sold, but Antonio tries them on and agrees to buy them. When he learns the price, Rino says he will sell them to Antonio on a monthly instalment.

The Cerullos are increasingly anxious that no one is buying their shoes and Stefano says that they need to find the right place, perhaps a wealthier neighborhood.

Two incidents upset Lila before the wedding. The first is Maestra Oliviero’s slight, which occurs when Lila and Elena turn up to her house to invite her to the wedding. The teacher pretends not to know Lila, saying “I know Cerullo, I don’t know who this girl is” (308).

Secondly, the speech master at the wedding will be Silvio Solara, a choice, Stefano argues, that will help Rino and Fernando sell their shoes. Lila wonders to Elena whether Stefano only loves her “when I don’t put real money at risk” (311).

Lila retreats to her house and waits for Stefano to apologize to her. Then she makes him promise to ensure that Marcello will not be present at her wedding. 

March 12, the day of Lila’s wedding, arrives. Elena is called to get the bride ready. Lila asks Elena if she’s making a mistake by getting married and implores her “brilliant friend” to keep on studying (312). Elena feels remorseful, washing Lila “from her hair to the soles of her feet, early in the morning, just so that Stefano could sully her in the course of the night” (313). She vows to find a corner secluded enough so that Antonio can deflower her at the same time as Lila is being deflowered. 

Elena notices that all the guests are immaculately turned out for the wedding. Antonio sits next to her, but she does not speak to him so as to avoid gossip. At the altar, Lila is staring straight ahead at the priest. Elena thinks Lila and Stefano make an odd couple because “Lila gave off an energy that couldn’t be ignored, he seemed like a faded little man” (316). Amongst the guests, Elena sees Nino “in the rumpled jacket and pants he wore to school” (317).

Elena cannot help comparing the refinement of her classmate, Alfonso Carracci, to the vulgarity of her companions from the neighborhood. It strikes her, as they make their way to the wedding reception, that with the neighborhood kids, “I couldn’t use any of what I learned every day, I had to suppress myself” (319). She wonders what she is doing with those neighborhood kids and why she is not with Alfonso, Nino, and Marisa.

Elena’s mother notices Antonio hovering around Elena and insists that Elena is not to leave her sight. Her mother thinks that, given all of Elena’s schooling, a neighborhood boy with a crazy mother is not good enough for her. Elena thinks, on the other hand, that if she stays by her mother, the only boy who will be good enough for her will be Antonio. She realizes that however admired and envied Lila may be, she has remained “chained” to the neighborhood (322). Elena, who vows to get out, escapes her mother and moves to where Nino is standing with Alfonso and Marisa. 

Elena shoos Antonio away when he approaches her, saying that her mother has misunderstood everything between them. She goes to find Nino, Alfonso, and Marisa and talks with Nino at length about the reasons for poverty in Naples. Elena is impressed with how Nino speaks of the subject “concretely, impersonally, citing precise facts” (323). She wants Nino to think that she is his equal, but he breaks the news that the magazine has been published without her article in it. Meanwhile, Antonio is jealous and there is “a noise of discontent” in the room because the bride’s friends and relatives have been served worse food and wine than the groom’s (323). 

Elena is depressed that her article has not been published, and when Nino leaves, she feels that “the only person in the whole room who had the energy to take me away had vanished” (330). However, when the cake is being cut, the Solara brothers appear and Lila is horrified to see Marcello wearing the shoes that Stefano bought. “It was the pair she had made with Rino, making and unmaking them for months, ruining her hands” (331).