The Story of a New Name

Antonio is Nino’s attacker. Michele Solara has sent Antonio to track down Nino and through him, summon Lila. Antonio attacks Nino to satisfy his own rancor that both Lila and Elena “liked the skinny, ugly bastard” (363). He then drags a dazed Nino to a pharmacy and asks Pasquale and Enzo to go and retrieve Lila. Enzo, who retains his childhood fondness for Lila, takes the address. 

Enzo goes the next day, through some hidden motivation of his own. Elena notes that “he was reserved by nature … it was difficult to get an idea of what kind of person he was” (365).

Lila feels “not abandoned but humiliated” when Nino does not return to her (367). She throws away his things and sullenly resolves to face the nightmarish squalor of the apartment, which takes her back to her “childhood of cruel privations” (367). In contrast to when she was a girl, she is not comforted by dreams of riches.

Enzo visits Lila and tells her that he has loved her since they were children. He packs her things for her and tells her he is taking her back to her husband. Lila, who trusts Enzo, follows him.

When Lila returns to Stefano pregnant, telling him the baby is not his, he goes into denial, fabricating a convenient story that Lila went a “‘little crazy”’ and decided to visit Elena in Pisa (375).

Lila meanwhile, willingly confines herself in the home and grows to love the baby inside her. There is no word of Nino until Elena learns from Alfonso that Nino has gone to study in Milan.

Elena bumps into pregnant Lila on the stradone (main road) and feels that Lila has met her comeuppance now that Nino, whom she stole from Elena, has now left her. She has the unconscious sensation that she wants something to happen so that Lila’s baby will not be born.

On a visit home the following Christmas, Elena avoids visiting Lila and her new baby Gennaro because she is afraid of “recognizing in his mouth, in his nose, in the shape of his eyes or ears something of Nino” (377).

Elena learns from Carmen that Lila had a difficult, Caesarean delivery and is devoted to her little boy. Carmen notes that Elena has changed, both in her appearance and accent. 

One day, when Lila takes baby Gennaro for a walk to the gardens, she bumps into an old woman who is Maestra Oliviero. Oliviero shows no interest in the baby and regrets Lila’s current situation, saying “‘you were destined for great things”’ (381). Lila regrets that Oliviero thinks she is “wasted” (381). Upset that she’s been subjected to another examination and found inadequate, she leaves.

Lila becomes obsessed with stimulating Gennaro’s intelligence and devises little games for him. Rino begins to bring his son, little Fernando (Dino) over, despite Pinuccia’s reluctance. Meanwhile, Lila and Stefano’s marriage, “after a long period of mutual tolerance” begins to deteriorate (383). He begins to regret his marriage, saying he has married too young. Lila, too, threatens to leave.

When Rino is over, watching admiringly how Lila plays with the children, Stefano intrudes on the scene. He is furious with Rino for the failure of the Cerullo shoe factory. The two men struggle and in a bitter fight, he throws Rino down the stairs. He is tempted to do the same with Dino, but Lila reminds him that Dino is just a child.

Pinuccia is the one who reveals that Stefano has been cheating on Lila. Lila is almost relieved, because she thinks it may mean an end to Stefano’s odious sexual advances. However, she worries that Stefano may throw her and Gennaro out without providing for them. When Lila confronts Stefano, he tells her that money is the problem and that every time Michele Solara mentions her, he “‘screws”’ Stefano over (388). Lila feels that Stefano is rehashing old problems and not telling her the truth.

Lila finds out the truth from Michele Solara, who comes to the store on Piazza dei Martiri the next day to tell her he loves her and wants to take her away from her husband. When Lila refuses him, Michele tells her that her husband has been cheating on her with Ada since before Lila went to Ischia.

That night, Lila confronts Stefano about his affair with Ada. She says she does not care and the “‘essential thing”’ is that Stefano should never touch her again (392). Contrary to her expectations, Stefano denies the accusation and tells Lila that he loves her. He then proceeds to kiss Lila, tear off her clothes, and “entered her forcibly,” despite the fact that she is “repressing sobs” (392).

Stefano has become bolder in his love affair with Ada, even going on holiday with her in August. Even so, he is still possessive towards his wife. “A sick form of jealousy exploded in him” and he is reluctant to allow Lila to leave the house (393). He is convinced that Michele Solara will seduce Lila away. Pasquale, who is the last to know about Ada and Stefano’s affair, breaks off the engagement. Though Pasquale is very hurt, he goes to Stefano and challenges him to leave Lila for Ada. When Stefano offers to pay Pasquale, in exchange for the latter not bothering him, Ada, or Lila, Pasquale calls him the fascist son of his father and a fight ensues.

Then, Rino, angry about how Stefano’s open infidelity is humiliating Lila, beats up Pinuccia and tells her that she needs to procure money from Stefano. Instead, Pinuccia tells her brother to kill Rino.

Elena arrives home for Easter and into this situation. She is invited to Lila’s on Holy Friday for lunch. She finds that Gennaro is “a handsome dark boy” who resembles Lila, a little of Stefano, but not yet Nino (398). Meanwhile, Lila is very fragile, confessing that in his jealous madness, Stefano has ruined her books, as though “he doesn’t want me to have a thought of my own” (399). This is when she hands Elena the notebooks, fearing that Stefano will find and destroy them.

At lunch, Elena sees how well educated little Gennaro is, how he speaks to her in Italian. Lila confesses that she is worried that Stefano will kill both her and Gennaro. She tells Elena to tell Enzo that Lila says she “tried but I couldn’t make it” (401).

Elena gives the message to Enzo. On the train, she reads Lila’s notebooks. Lila’s brilliance with words “diminished me,” even as “every page ignited my thoughts, my ideas, my pages as if until that moment I had lived in a studious but ineffectual stupor” (401). Elena begins to feel that her existence in Pisa is petty and begins to do badly at school, risking expulsion. This is why she drops the notebooks into the Arno.

During her last year in Pisa, Elena feels that the city is alien and that she does not belong. She realizes that her relationship with Franco Mari, before he was thrown out of the Normale, gave her prestige. Now that Franco has gone, she realizes that his presence “masked my true condition but hadn’t changed it” (404). Elena considers that while she works hard and gets excellent results, she will never have the confidence and intellectual swagger of her well-born peers from good families.

Elena attracts the attention of a shy, solitary man, Pietro Airota. Pietro invites Elena to lunch with his family, who are all intellectual—especially his father, who is a renowned professor of Greek literature. Their conversation impresses Elena.

Elena feels inadequate because she does not have the “armour to advance serenely” in the intellectual world like Pietro and his family do (411). Although she does not love Pietro, she fears that if she loses him, her old insecurities about not belonging will set in.

When Elena has a fever and cannot come home for Christmas, her mother surprises her by turning up to nurse her. While she administers her brusque treatment, Elena’s mother boasts that Elena is doing far better than her contemporaries, especially Lila.

Gigliola makes friends with Ada, who is open about her love affair with Stefano. They go out often with Michele Solara, who hears about Stefano’s affair with interest.

Antonio is scathing about his sister’s affair with Stefano and so decides to accept Michele’s offer to do a long-term job in Germany.

When Ada implores Stefano to choose between her and Lila, he avoids her question. Later, thrilled to be pregnant with Stefano’s child, Ada goes over to Stefano’s house where Lila is with Gennaro. (Stefano is away from the house.) Ada tells Lila that she must go because if not, she, Ada, will kill Lila’s child. Lila recalls Ada’s mother, Melina, who threw an iron at Nino and almost killed him. 

When Ada returns to work and tells Stefano where she has been, he hits her for having the audacity to visit his wife and son.

On another occasion, Stefano comes home to find pregnant Ada with Lila and Gennaro. Then, a knock at the door summons him to meet the Solaras. They tell him “scandals aren’t good for business” and that he must choose between Lila and Ada (426).

Stefano returns to tell Lila that he has found a place for her and Gennaro. It is the same place on Piazza dei Artisti where Michele Solara intended to keep her as a mistress. 

Lila thinks of her son’s future and hopes that Enzo will get them out of the neighborhood. She fears that if she refuses to submit to Michele Solara’s demands, then he will “make me pay, and he’ll make anyone who’s helped me pay” (428).

When Stefano is out, Enzo comes to collect Lila and Gennaro. He has found work in a factory in San Giovanni a Teduccio and has taken an apartment there. 

Elena begins to write about what happened that summer on Ischia. In particular, she writes about the loss of her virginity on the Barano to Donato Sarratore, an incident that she now considers “degrading” (431).

Elena graduates with a literature degree and with the highest grade. Afterwards, Pietro proposes to her. She accepts and in exchange, gives him her novel to read. The date for the wedding is set for September 1969.

Elena returns to Naples after graduation, engaged to Pietro. The community refers to her now as the “Pisan,” indicating how much she’s changed during her time in Pisa (437). Elena learns that Ada, who has just given birth to a daughter named Maria, has taken Lila’s place—not only in Stefano’s house, but also as the owner of all her former possessions. Ada claims that Lila and Enzo have behaved recklessly.

Enzo rents a place in San Giovanni a Teduccio for the three of them. Lila tells him that she is “like this wall or that table” and therefore devoid of sexual feelings (441). He assures her that he will not lay a hand on her, although he is open to her changing her mind.

At the new apartment, Lila worries that little Gennaro is regressing, as he is clingy, refusing to walk because he would rather be carried. Stefano comes to visit four or five times, showing little interest in Gennaro and full of insults for Lila. He decides he wants to see neither of them again in order to have a peaceful life.

zo provides for Gennaro’s urgent needs and is absent at his job between six in the morning and seven at night. He lives to: study mathematics, return to Lila, and hear her talk.

One day, Lila sees Bruno Soccavo, Nino’s friend. He takes her out to a cafe and she asks him for a job in his mortadella factory.

Elena receives a letter from Pietro in which he tells her that his mother, Adele, had read her novel and thought it so good, she had sent it to a publisher. She heads to the Bar Solara, to talk to Pietro and then his mother about the book. Adele is astonished that Elena “‘wrote a single draft, all at once”’ and assures her that the book is ready for publication (449).

Elena visits her old neighbourhood library, marveling that soon she will be a published writer.

Elena receives an advance of two hundred thousand lire from the publishers and goes to meet them on an expenses-paid trip to Milan. They praise how on every page “‘there is something powerful whose origin I can’t figure out”’ (452).

Pietro, when she sees him, advises Elena to “revise with care” the parts where the heroine loses her virginity on the beach because they are risqué (453). For Elena, these parts are important and she says so. On the train, she revises her manuscript, keeping Pietro’s and the editor’s comments in mind. 

At home, Elena receives the news that Maestra Oliviero has died. She is distressed and opens a packet filled with her own childhood notebooks and Lila’s story, The Blue Fairy. While Maestra Oliviero said that Lila had wasted her time writing The Blue Fairy, she in truth had annotated it with words of praise. Elena is angered, wondering what drove Oliviero to fight for her education and not Lila’s. Elena begins to read The Blue Fairy and feels sick, because “Lila’s childish pages were the secret heart of my book” (455). 

Elena has a fierce desire to see Lila, realizing that “what I had taken from her”—the right to education—“seemed to me much more than what she had ever been able to take from me,” that is, Nino (455).

So the next day, Elena sets out to San Giovanni a Teduccio. After an exhausting ride, she is told that Lila has gone to make mortadella in Bruno Soccavo’s factory. 

Elena finds Lila working in Soccavo’s stinking mortadella factory, a place of “nauseating” odors and disfiguring hard work (461). The two women embrace. Elena tells Lila that her novel will soon be published and hands her The Blue Fairy. Lila, meanwhile, tells Elena of Enzo’s studies in advanced mathematics and her own passion for the “languages” that describe technology (465). Elena feels that Lila has shown her that “there is nothing to win, that her life was full of varied and foolish adventures as much as mine” (467). On the way out, Elena sees Lila burning The Blue Fairy.

Elena is warmly congratulated for the publication of her book by people in the neighborhood, but none of them reads it. She first meets some of her readers in Milan bookstore. Excessively nervous, Elena pretends “self-assurance” (470). When an older man criticizes Elena’s book for its lack of literary quality, he is interrupted by a “tall young man, with long, unruly hair and a thick black beard” who praises the “modernizing force” of Elena’s novel (471). The man is Nino Sarratore.