Элена Ферранте - The Beach at Night

But here comes a Hook.

The Hook is as tiny as a raindrop and it’s attached to a shiny thread of saliva.

It drops into my mouth, which is always open. I’m so full of water I can’t pull my words away in time to hide them in my chest and my stomach.

The Hook grabs one and tugs. The other words, terrorized, cling to one another, forming a chain.

I pull from one end, the Hook pulls from the other, and in the middle are the words holding tight to one another.

I’m furious. I’ve lost my Name, but I don’t want to lose anything else.

With these words Mati and I were happy.

With these words she talked and had me talk, had the animals talk, had the stars talk, the clouds, the grains of sand, the sea water, the lightning and thunder, the beach umbrellas and the chaises, everything.

If the Hook attached to the disgusting thread of saliva takes them away from me, I won’t remember anything, I won’t know how to say anything, not even the dear name of Mati.

The Mean Beach Attendant of Sunset and the Big Rake will sell them in the market and I bet that cat Minù will buy them all.

The Hook gives a sharp jerk.

The words, holding one another by the hand, move rapidly toward the surface of the Sea.

I’ve barely got time to clamp my mouth around the last remaining word: mamma.

With my teeth clenched tight around mamma I go up, up, up. While I rise toward the surface, hanging from my own words, I hear the spiteful voice of the Mean Beach Attendant of Sunset singing at the top of his lungs:

The disgusting thread of saliva stretches thinner and thinner, until there’s a last tug that spits me out of the water along with the screaming chain of Words.

The night is ending.

I fly through the orange air of Dawn, my teeth clenched around the “MA” of mamma. And I’m about to drop onto the sand when a Dark Animal runs by. He grabs me in his teeth and keeps on running.

The Hook shoots off, the thread of saliva breaks. The words return to my mouth with a snap, like an elastic band.

The Mean Beach Attendant of Sunset loses his balance and falls on the sharp iron teeth of the Big Rake.

The Mean Beach Attendant of Sunset cries “ Ow-ow-ow ,” and he is still crying.

But the teeth of the Dark Animal are gentle.

The Dark Animal hardly bites at all, he warms me with his breath.

We run over the beach, which is all wet because of the Rough Sea and the Night Storm.

Luckily the sun is rising and everything will dry off.

The Dark Animal has long whiskers that tickle me.

We are running through the pinewoods.

I hear the birds singing, the faint thump of the pinecones falling on the dry needles. I also hear the desperate crying of a little girl.

I know that cry.

The Dark Animal’s breath gets warmer and warmer. He leaves the path, climbs up the trunk of a big cluster pine, flies along a branch, and jumps right through an open window.

Here’s the little girl who’s crying.

She cried all night, her face is red and bathed in tears. Neither her mother nor her father nor her brother could console her.

The little girl is Mati, my Mati.

She calms down only when the Dark Animal lays me carefully on her bed.

“Celina!” she cries, and hugs and kisses me.

Oh joy!

Mati’s parents go back to sleep.

Even her brother, who is always so grouchy, lies down on his bed and falls asleep. Now he’s snoring.

“I’m so glad you came back,” Mati says to me.

“Me, too,” I say, and right away I tell her: “Do you know I was almost killed by the Big Rake and the Mean Beach Attendant of Sunset?”

“I know,” says Mati, who always knows everything, like a perfect mamma.

Then she turns to the Dark Animal with whiskers and, full of emotion, says:

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he says. He smiles at me, and holds out a paw.

“A pleasure: Minù the cat.”

“I’m Celina,” I say.

“What a pretty name!” says the cat.

“Minù isn’t bad, either,” I say.

I’m so happy to have found my name again I can even be happy about his.

Elena Ferrante is the author of The Days of Abandonment (Europa, 2005), Troubling Love (Europa, 2006), The Lost Daughter (Europa, 2008) and the four installments of My Brilliant Friend , known in English as the Neapolitan Quartet (Europa, 2012-2015).