Chapter 3

Lila came into my life when I was in first grade, and she soon made a very strong impression on me: she was bad. All the girls in that class were kind of bad, but we didn't get naughty in front of Ms. Oliviero, and she was the same in front of everyone. Once she tore toilet paper into pieces, stuffed it into an ink bottle, then fished it out with the tip of a pen and flung it at us. I got hit by her twice, once with my hair and once with my white collar. The teacher screamed, as usual, sounding like a pinprick, and we were all terrified. The teacher told Lila to stand behind the blackboard, but Lila didn't listen, she didn't look scared at all and continued to fling ink-stained paper at people.

Ms. Oliviero was a rather fat, awkward woman who had just turned forty at the time, but we all thought she was very old. She was getting off the podium and scolding Lila when she tripped over something, lost her balance, and fell, hitting her face on the corner of the table. She fell to the floor and looked like she was dead.

I don't remember much about what happened after that. I only remember that the teacher didn't move, her body was thrown on the floor like a black bundle, and Leila looked at her with a serious face.

I remember many accidents like this one. We live in a world where adults and children are easily injured, where wounds bleed, become septic and infected, and sometimes die. Mrs. Assunta, a woman who sold vegetables and fruits, had a daughter who was once injured by a nail and died of tetanus. The youngest son of Mrs. Spagnuolo died of asthma. One of my cousins, who was twenty years old, went to clear the rubble in the morning and was crushed to death at night. My maternal grandfather died while building a building because it collapsed. Mr. Peluso was missing an arm because there was an accident and that arm was cut off by a lathe. Mr. Peluso's wife, Giuseppina, had a sister who died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-two. Don Achille's oldest son - I never met him, but I always felt some impression - went to war and died twice, the first time drowned in the Pacific Ocean and the second time eaten by a shark. The whole Mel Cole family died hugging each other, all screaming in terror during the bombing. The old girl, Crawling, died of gas poisoning. When we were in the first grade, chapter Nino was in the fourth grade and one day he died because he found a bomb and it detonated. Luigina, we had played together in the yard before - or maybe I'm misremembering - and typhoid fever killed her. Such was our world, full of deadly words: asthma, tetanus, poison gas, war, machine tools, ruins, work, bombing, bombs, tuberculosis, and contagion. Those words I heard all those years have been with me all my life and are the source of many of my fears and worries.

Those seemingly ordinary things can also kill people. For example, if a person sweats and drinks directly from the tap without first wetting his wrists, he may grow red spots all over his body, start coughing and die without being able to breathe. One may also die from eating black cherries without spitting out the pits. Sometimes you may eat American chewing gum and swallow it without paying attention and get stuck and die. In particular, if you get a punch in the temple, you will also die, because the temple is a very critical part, we are very careful, if a stone hit the temple, it will kill you, dodge the stone is the principle of survival. There was a group of country boys in front of the school, led by Enzo, known as "mongrel Enzo", he was the son of a woman selling vegetables, Asunta, he skewered us first, he was angry because we were better than him in studies. When the stones came, we all ran away, but not Leila, who walked as usual, sometimes even stopping. She was very good at anticipating the trajectory of the stones thrown at her and dodged them without slowing down, and according to my current description, she dodged them with great grace. She has an older brother, which may have been taught to her by her brother. I have several brothers, but I learned nothing from them. I realized she was falling behind, and although I was scared, I stopped and waited for her. By that time I already had some kind of emotion for her that made me leave her behind.

In and out of class, although we were always battling, I didn't know her very well yet and we never spoke. At that time, I had a vague feeling that if I ran away with the other girls, I would lose something irrevocable.

At first, I hid in a corner and poked my body out to see if Leila was following me. I saw that she hadn't moved, so I had to run to her and hand her a few rocks, and I threw a few myself. I wasn't very sure when I threw the rocks; I've done a lot of things in my life that I wasn't very sure of, and I felt that what I was doing was sometimes blind and lacked coherence. When Leila was growing up - I can't say now, she was six or seven, I think, or the time we went to Don Achille's house together, when we were eight or nine - she always had a lot of determination. Whether she was holding a tricolor pencil in her hand, or a rock, or putting her hand on the stair railing, the impression was that she was determined. In one fell swoop, she sticks the tip of her pen on the wooden tabletop, flings ink-stained toilet paper out, hits the country boys with a rock, and walks to Don Achille's doorstep without hesitation.

This group of boys was at the train station platform and attacked us with rocks from the tracks there. Enzo was their leader and he was a very dangerous boy, at least three years older than us. He was a repeater, with very short, blond hair and light blue eyes. The rocks he threw were small but sharp on the edges, and Leila waited for his rocks to skim over and dodge them lightly, which irritated him even more and then threw them even more dangerously. Once we hit his right ankle, I say "we" hit, because I handed Leila a flat stone with a sharp edge, which grazed Enzo's skin like a razor, leaving a wound, and blood soon sprang up. Enzo looked at the injured leg in front of him, he still had a stone pinched between his thumb and forefinger, he had raised his arm when he stopped in amazement, and his minions looked at the blood on his ankle with incredulous eyes. The stone hit her opponent, and Leela, without any sign of satisfaction, lowered her head to pick up another stone. I took one of her arms, and it was our first physical contact, very hurried and full of panic. I felt that the group of boys would be more aggressive, and I tried to pull Lila away, but it was too late. Despite his broken ankle, Enzo came back and threw the rock in his hand, which hit Lila in the forehead. By this time I was still holding her tightly and she was lying on the sidewalk with her head broken in one fell swoop.