Vittoria introduces Giovanna to her paternal relatives

Vittoria introduces Giovanna to her paternal relatives through a series of unannounced visits that transform the family branch she barely knows into a vivid, complicated community. The journey offers Giovanna affection and a new sense of herself, but it also carries Vittoria’s challenge to her parents’ authority and reveals the tensions surrounding Enzo’s family and its continuing bond with Vittoria.

From an Unknown City to “Your Blood”

For Giovanna, her father’s relatives had long belonged to a distant, almost uncharted part of Naples. Her mother’s family was associated with Museo, a clearly named place she knew through frequent, happy visits; the paternal relatives lived somewhere unnamed, reached by going down through the city. Giovanna’s family lived high above them, and her parents were reluctant to make the descent. The places familiar to her—streets around the Vomero and Villa Floridiana, where she had spent time with Angela and Ida—gave way to districts that felt increasingly unknown. Her parents’ fatigue and tension on these trips had made the journey seem like a passage between separate cities.

That distance began to change when Vittoria took Giovanna, without warning, to meet her father’s siblings. They visited Uncle Nicola, who worked on the railroad, and Aunt Anna and Aunt Rosetta, both housewives. As they traveled in Vittoria’s green Fiat 500, stopping in Cavone, the Campi Flegrei, and Pozzuoli, Vittoria described the excursion as a meeting with Giovanna’s blood. Her way of naming the relatives made kinship immediate, but it also exposed how little Giovanna knew: she could barely remember them and was unsure she had ever learned their names.

The Welcome and the Name Giannina

Vittoria rebuked Giovanna’s father for having kept her from relatives she described as warm-hearted, though not polished or educated. She pressed Giovanna to look closely at the difference between this family and her parents, repeating the demand to look rather than merely glance past what might disturb her. The instruction was both an invitation to observe and an attempt to shape what Giovanna would conclude about her parents.

The relatives’ welcome complicated any simple account of estrangement. Their homes were small and plainly furnished, with few books; Aunt Anna’s was the only one where Giovanna noticed mystery novels. The family spoke in a cordial mixture of dialect and Italian, and Giovanna tried to meet them partway by allowing Neapolitan rhythms into her careful Italian. They did not ask after her father or send greetings to him, signs of their hostility toward him, but they made a point of showing that they were not angry with her.

They called her Giannina, the name Vittoria used and her parents did not. Among these relatives Giovanna felt unusually relaxed, affectionate, and funny. She began to imagine that the name had brought forth another self from the same body: someone different from the Giovanna known at home, at school, and to Angela and Ida. The visits therefore gave her more than access to relatives. They made belonging feel like a change in how she could inhabit herself.

The family’s care for Vittoria also altered Giovanna’s understanding of her aunt. Rather than displaying only the aggressive side Giovanna knew, Vittoria was good-natured during the visits, and the relatives treated her with tenderness, as someone they loved and considered unfortunate. Uncle Nicola was especially kind: when he learned that both Giovanna and Vittoria liked strawberry gelato, he sent one of his children to buy some for everyone. As they parted, he kissed Giovanna’s forehead and remarked that she had nothing of her father in her.

Margherita’s Home and Enzo’s Memory

Vittoria soon took Giovanna, again without warning, to visit Margherita, who lived nearby. The surroundings recalled the distress of Giovanna’s childhood: worn buildings, fierce dogs, and the smell of gas. Vittoria parked beside a courtyard of pale-blue buildings, went inside, and only as they started upstairs told Giovanna that Enzo’s wife and children lived there. At the third-floor door, Vittoria used her own key; Margherita welcomed them enthusiastically.

Margherita introduced Giovanna to her three adult children: Tonino, Corrado, and Giuliana. A photograph of Enzo in police uniform occupied a prominent place in the kitchen, with a red light burning before it. It was larger and more ornate than the photograph Giovanna had seen at the cemetery. Corrado’s resemblance to his father made him seem, to Giovanna, like Enzo’s living ghost. Corrado charmed and teased his guest, while Margherita repeatedly checked his familiarity; Giuliana praised Giovanna, and Tonino offered quiet courtesies.

The photograph held the visit in the shadow of Enzo’s absence. Vittoria and Margherita repeatedly invoked what he would have found amusing, angering, or pleasing. Giovanna imagined the two women’s shared past with him and considered how affection, anger, and old hurt might have persisted alongside the calm of their present conversation. These were her conjectures, not a history the visit confirmed. What she could see directly was that the women remembered the same man and that his place in the household remained active through their words and the framed image.

A Family Bound by Unequal Loyalties

Giovanna noticed that kinship did not make the household uncomplicated. Corrado seemed to be Vittoria’s favorite, a preference that appeared to irritate Tonino and Giuliana. Margherita often looked to Vittoria for approval and would withdraw a comment if Vittoria disagreed. The children loved their mother and sometimes seemed to protect her, yet they also regarded Vittoria with wary devotion, respecting her as a powerful presence in their lives.

A disagreement over Tonino’s friend Roberto brought those relationships into view. Roberto, who had grown up in Pascone and moved to Milan with his family at about fifteen, was due to arrive that evening and had been invited to sleep at Margherita’s home. Margherita objected that there was no room. Corrado suggested that Roberto should not show his face in the neighborhood, while Tonino and Giuliana looked to Vittoria to settle the matter. Margherita, too, deferred to her. Vittoria agreed that there was no space and proposed that Corrado sleep at her own house instead. Margherita, Tonino, and Giuliana visibly welcomed the solution; Corrado objected to the guest but fell silent when Vittoria rebuked him, then showed her affection by kissing her repeatedly. The episode showed Vittoria’s authority in the family and the mixture of resentment, dependence, and tenderness that accompanied it.

For Giovanna, the visits made paternal kinship both more intimate and more difficult to claim. She liked Tonino, Giuliana, Corrado, and Margherita, and wished she had arrived earlier, spoke their language, and shared genuine intimacy with them. Her welcome as Giannina had briefly made that intimacy feel possible; her awareness of what she had missed made its limits equally clear. By carrying Giovanna into these homes, Vittoria opened a route toward family belonging while directing her to see the divisions, loyalties, and inherited judgments that belonging entailed.