I went to the newsstand more anxious than ever. There again was the photograph of me with Tina, this time in black-and-white. The lawsuit was announced in the headline; it was considered an attempt to muzzle one of the very few courageous writers et cetera, et cetera. The article didn’t name the neighborhood, it didn’t allude to the Solaras. Skillfully, it set the episode within a conflict that was taking place everywhere, “between the medieval remnants that are keeping this country from modernizing and the unstoppable advance, even in the South, of political and cultural renewal.” It was a short piece, but it defended effectively, especially in the conclusion, the rights of literature, separating them from what were called “very sad local disputes.”
I was relieved, I had the impression of being well protected. I telephoned, I praised the article, then I went to show the paper to Lila. I expected her to be be excited. That was what it seemed to me she wanted: a deployment of the power that she ascribed to me. Instead she said coolly:
“Why did you let this man write the article?”
“What’s wrong? The publisher is standing behind me, they’re attending to this mess, it seems a good thing.”
“It’s just talk, Lenù, this guy is only interested in selling the book.”
“And isn’t that good?”
“It’s good, but you should have written the article.”
I became nervous, I couldn’t understand what she had in mind.
“Why?”
“Because you’re smart and you know the situation well. You remember when you wrote the article against Bruno Soccavo?”
That reference, instead of pleasing me, upset me. Bruno was dead and I didn’t like to remember what I had written. He wasn’t very bright, ending up in the clutches of the Solaras and who knows how many others, given that they had killed him. I wasn’t happy that I had been angry with him.
“Lila,” I said, “the article wasn’t against Bruno, it was an article about factory work.”
“I know, and with this? You made them pay, and now that you’re an even more important person you can do better. The Solaras shouldn’t hide behind Carmen. You have to drag the Solaras out into the open, and they should no longer command.”
I understood why she had disparaged the editor’s article. She didn’t care in the least about freedom of expression and the battle between backwardness and modernization. She was interested only in the sad local disputes. She wanted me, here, now, to contribute to the clash with real people, people we had known since childhood, and what they were made of. I said:
“Lila, the Corriere doesn’t give a damn about Carmen, who sold herself, and the Solaras, who bought her. To be in a big newspaper, an article has to have a broad meaning, otherwise they won’t publish it.”
Her face fell.
“Carmen didn’t sell herself,” she said. “She’s still your friend and she has brought the suit against you for one reason alone: they forced her.”
“I don’t understand, explain it.”
She smiled at me, sneering, she was really angry.
“I’m not explaining anything to you: you write the books, you’re the one who has to explain. I know only that here we don’t have any publisher in Milan to protect us, no one who puts big articles in the newspaper for us. We are only a local matter and we fix things however we can: if you want to help us, good, and if not we’ll do it alone.”