21.

The whole way home we laughed till our sides ached, saying things like:

“He’s doing it for you.”

“No, for you.”

“He’s in love and to have you at his house he’ll invite even the Communists, even the murderers of his father.”

“What are you talking about? He didn’t even look at me.”

Rino listened to Stefano’s proposal and immediately said no. But the wish to vanquish the Solaras kept him uncertain and he talked about it with Pasquale, who got very angry. Enzo on the other hand mumbled, “All right, I’ll come if I can.” As for our parents, they were very pleased with that invitation because for them Don Achille no longer existed and his children and his wife were good, well-to-do people whom it was an honor to have as friends.

Lila at first seemed in a daze, as if she had forgotten where she was, the streets, the neighborhood, the shoemaker’s shop. Then she appeared at my house late one afternoon with a look as if she had understood everything and said to me: “We were wrong: Stefano doesn’t want me or you.”

We discussed it in our usual fashion, mixing facts with fantasies. If he didn’t want us, what did he want? We thought that Stefano, too, intended to teach the Solaras a lesson. We recalled when Michele had expelled Pasquale from Gigliola’s mother’s party, thus interfering in the affairs of the Carraccis and giving Stefano the appearance of a man unable to defend the memory of his father. On that occasion, if you thought about it, the brothers had insulted not only Pasquale but also him. And so now he was raising the stakes, as if to spite them: he was making a conclusive peace with the Pelusos, even inviting them to his house for New Year’s Eve.

“And who benefits?” I asked Lila.

“I don’t know. He wants to make a gesture that no one would make here in the neighborhood.”

“Forgive?”

Lila shook her head skeptically. She was trying to understand, we were both trying to understand, and understanding was something that we loved to do. Stefano didn’t seem the type capable of forgiveness. According to Lila he had something else in mind. And slowly, proceeding from one of the ideas she hadn’t been able to get out of her head since the moment she started talking to Pasquale, she seemed to find a solution.

“You remember when I said to Carmela that she could be Alfonso’s girlfriend?”

“Yes.”

“Stefano has in mind something like that.”

“Marry Carmela?”

“More.”

Stefano, according to Lila, wanted to clear away everything. He wanted to try to get out of the before. He didn’t want to pretend it was nothing, as our parents did, but rather to set in motion a phrase like: I know, my father was what he was, but now I’m here, we are us, and so, enough. In other words, he wanted to make the whole neighborhood understand that he was not Don Achille and that the Pelusos were not the former carpenter who had killed him. That hypothesis pleased us, it immediately became a certainty, and we had an impulse of great fondness for the young Carracci. We decided to take his part.

We went to explain to Rino, to Pasquale, to Antonio that Stefano’s invitation was more than an invitation, that behind it were important meanings, that it was as if he were saying: before us some ugly things happened; our fathers, some in one way, some in another, didn’t behave well; from this moment, we take note of that and show that we children are better than they were.

“Better?” Rino asked, with interest.

“Better,” I said. “The complete opposite of the Solaras, who are worse than their grandfather and their father.”

I spoke with great excitement, in Italian, as if I were in school. Lila herself glanced at me in amazement, and Rino, Pasquale, and Antonio muttered, embarrassed. Pasquale even tried to answer in Italian but he gave up. He said somberly:

“His father made money on the black market, and now Stefano is using it to make more money. His shop is in the place where my father’s carpenter shop was.”

Lila narrowed her eyes, so you almost couldn’t see them.

“It’s true. But do you prefer to be on the side of someone who wants to change or on the side of the Solaras?”

Pasquale said proudly, partly out of conviction, partly because he was visibly jealous of Stefano’s unexpected central role in Lila’s words, “I’m on my own side and that’s it.”

But he was an honest soul, he thought it over again and again. He talked to his mother, he discussed it with the whole family. Giuseppina, who had been a tireless, good-natured worker, relaxed and exuberant, had become after her husband’s imprisonment a slovenly woman, depressed by her bad luck, and she turned to the priest. The priest went to Stefano’s shop, talked for a long time with Maria, then went back to talk to Giuseppina Peluso. In the end everyone was persuaded that life was already very difficult, and that if it was possible, on the occasion of the new year, to reduce its tensions, it would be better for everyone. So at 11:30 P.M. on December 31st, after the New Year’s Eve dinner, various families—the family of the former carpenter, the family of the porter, that of the shoemaker, that of the fruit and vegetable seller, the family of Melina, who that night had made an effort with her appearance—climbed up to the fifth floor, to the old, hated home of Don Achille, to celebrate the new year together.