The next day, and then in ways that were increasingly evident in the weeks that followed, I found my wife in good spirits, indeed, affectionate in a way she hadn’t been in a long time. At first I worried, afraid that she wanted to have another baby. But it was soon clear to me that she’d put an end to an entire phase of her life, and that she now wanted to stop to enjoy, to the fullest, what she had. In fact, she started describing the university as a remote place filled with seething serpents and scorpions, and talking about the high school as her true place of work. She said this without outward signs of frustration, to the contrary, with each passing day, she grew increasingly adept at managing, without any apparent effort, her teaching alongside her responsibilities to the children. And so, I was forced to realize that the young Nadia was extinct, and that now, in my house and in my bed, there was a stable woman who considered herself an excellent math teacher, a mother who saw after the needs of three children, and a wife who, after a long period of decline, had gone back to looking after herself so as not to look bad next to a husband who’d gained some discreet success.
That about-face reassured me. If Nadia was in a good place, then so were Emma, Sergio, and scrawny little Ernesto. But I, above all, felt great. I could teach, study, talk in public about my book, collaborate with magazines and newspapers, and not fret about creating or exacerbating wounds in the family structure, at the very moment when I was trying to render my public image coherent and possibly invulnerable. Nadia was there, she saw to everything, especially to me, and she was happy to do it.
I didn’t ask myself what had so pleasantly altered her, not for lack of interest, but out of caution. Now she kindly kept up with all of my activities as a minor intellectual who, whenever given the chance, had things to say about the importance of the school system, and she relayed to me, frequently with pride, that some colleague of hers, or the friends back in Pratola Peligna, or her parents’ friends, had spoken well of one of my books or, who knows, of a recently published article. But I’d noticed that if I overdid it with bragging, even in a joking way, that kindness, and that pride, could reverse course and turn into forced smiles, into a form of withdrawal with the excuse of having something pressing to do. And I even ended up suspecting that certain melancholy spells, certain temporary depressions, might have been an appendix to the moodiness that tales of my success provoked in her. One Saturday morning, I was reading aloud the letter of an academic quite famous at the time, who’d praised a brief piece of mine in the newspaper. Nadia gave half a smile and said:
—He’s probably one of Itrò’s friends.
—Could be.
—I’m sure he is. Sometimes you forget how much you owe Itrò.
I said, cautiously:
—I’m the one who wrote the article. Not him.
—True, but there are plenty of smart people out there.
—Are you saying that if you read me in a newspaper without Itrò’s backing, you wouldn’t care about what I said?
—Of course I’d care. But can you say for certain that without Itrò’s support, the newspapers would have invited you to write for them?
I admitted that I wasn’t certain. But I did that for peace and quiet; I didn’t want any friction with her, my days were busy. Our house was becoming a stomping ground: students and teachers would come to visit, even from other cities, and they’d talk to me about their experiences in pedagogy. But people who worked for tiny magazines and publishers would also turn up, people who wanted to have conversations, who wanted to float their ideas, use me for this or that. When it came to female visitors in particular, Nadia turned surly, and afterward she’d say: maybe we really should move, this place is too small, the kids have nowhere to play and I need a space to myself, I don’t want to live with all these comings and goings, it’s like some seaport. Needless to say, I couldn’t turn people away by saying things like: please don’t come, my wife starts to sulk, especially if you happen to be chatty young girls or learned female professors speaking with thoughtful cadences. I told her: you’re right, as soon as some money comes in, we’ll take stock of our finances and move.
Money, to be honest, was coming in, and I was taking serious stock, I often flaunted the figures to show off, eagerly, how our bank account was growing. But that was the very subject that sparked another risky period of high tension. One evening, after dinner, I told her proudly about a bit of money that I’d just received for my books. I said, “I’ve earned,” using the perfect tense, first person singular. She, who had just cleared the table and was now ironing one of my shirts—I was leaving for somewhere the following day, all I did was leave—corrected me without even raising her eyes from the ironing board.
—We’ve earned. You’d never have written three words without me.
I quickly added:
—Yes, you’ve been by my side, your presence was crucial.
—Not my presence, what presence are you talking about? I’m talking about my time. The things you write, the places you go off to, your success, your looking so handsome and getting compliments and being celebrated, takes up a boatload of my time.
—Of course, Bertolt Brecht: On every page a victory. / Who cooked the victory banquet?
—Cooking’s the least of it, a cook’s salary would suffice. You owe me a lot more.
I looked at her, perplexed. She was standing in the kitchen, moving the iron back and forth with her eyes lowered. More than anything, she seemed to want to avoid making false folds.
—You’re right, I said, cutting it short. I’m sorry. We’ve earned.