Free Troubling Love by Elena Ferrante Page B

passersby had crowded into doorways, into the fronts of shops, or under cornices and balconies. I saw Caserta hop to avoid plants and vases of flowers displayed on the sidewalk by a florist. He didn’t make it, stumbled, ended up against the trunk of a tree. He stopped for a second as if he were pasted to the bark, then tore himself off and began running again. I don’t know what he was afraid of. I imagined that he had seen my uncle and had taken off. Maybe the two old men were reproducing as if in a game a scene already played when they were young: one pursued, the other fled. I imagined them coming to blows on the wet pavement, tumbling in one direction, then the other. I didn’t know how I would react, what I would do.
    At the intersection of Via Scarlatti and Via Luca Giordano I realized that I had lost him. I looked around for Uncle Filippo but didn’t see him, either. So I crossed Via Scarlatti, which had become a long question mark of stopped vehicles, to Piazza Vanvitelli, and began to hurry back along the opposite sidewalk to the first cross street. There was thunder but no visible lightning, and the thunderclaps were like dry rips in a piece of fabric. I saw Caserta at the end of Via Merliani, whipped by the rain under the metallic blue and red of a big sign, against the white wall of the Villa Floridiana park. I ran after him but a young man came suddenly out from the shelter of a doorway, grabbed me by one arm, laughing, and said to me in dialect, “What’s the rush? Let me dry you off!” The tug was so strong that I felt the pain in my collarbone and slipped on my left leg. I didn’t fall, only because I hit a garbage can. I regained my balance and pulled myself free, shouting, to my own amazement, insults in dialect. By the time I, too, had reached the boundary wall of the park, Caserta was almost at the top of the street, a few meters from the funicular station that was being renovated.
    I stopped with my heart in my throat. He now advanced, without running, along the row of plane trees, between the cars parked on the right. Still bent double, he was struggling, with an endurance in his legs one would not have suspected in a man of that age. When it seemed that he couldn’t take another step, he leaned panting against the barrier surrounding a construction site. I saw his body contort, ending up in a position in which a bar of the scaffolding appeared to be emerging from his white hair. On it hung a sign: “Demolition and reconstruction of the Piazza Vanvitelli station—Funicular of Chiaia.” I was certain that he wouldn’t have the strength to move, when again something alarmed him. With his shoulder he struck the wall of the enclosure as if he wanted to break it and escape through the breach. I looked to the left, to see who was frightening him: I hoped it was my uncle. It wasn’t. Coming from Via Bernini, in the rain, was Polledro, the man from the Vossi shop. He was shouting at him and now he gestured at him to stop, now pointed threateningly with his palm outspread.
    Caserta hopped from one foot to the other, looking around for a way out. He seemed to have decided to go back down along Via Cimarosa, but he saw me. Then he stood still, smoothed his hair, and seemed suddenly ready to confront both Polledro and me. He walked with his back to the enclosure of the construction site, then against a parked car. I, too, began to run, just in time to see Polledro move, as if he were skating on the metallic gray of the pavement, a massive yet agile figure against the scaffold of yellow-painted iron bars placed at the entrance of Piazza Vanvitelli. But it was at that point that my uncle reappeared. He emerged from a pizzeria where he had taken shelter. He had seen me arrive and now was running after me stiffly, with quick little steps in the rain. The man from the Vossi sisters’ appeared in front of him, and they ended up, inevitably, colliding. After the collision they held each other by the arms,