Elena Ferrante - The Days of Abandonment

But I didn’t know where to find him. Lea Farraco eventually denied that she had ever mentioned to me Largo Brescia as the probable place of his new abode, she said I hadn’t understood, it wasn’t possible, Mario would never live in that neighborhood. This annoyed me, I felt mocked. I quarreled with her again. I heard rumors of my husband: he was again abroad, perhaps traveling with his whore. I couldn’t believe it, it seemed impossible that he could so easily have forgotten me and his children, disappearing for months, not giving a damn about Gianni and Ilaria’s vacation, placing his own well-being ahead of theirs. What sort of man was he? With what sort of individual had I lived for fifteen years?

It was summer by now, the schools were closed, I didn’t know what to do with the children. I dragged them around through the city, in the heat, petulant, willful, ready to blame me for everything, for the heat, for staying in the city, for no beach, no mountains. Ilaria, assuming a look of suffering, repeated, in singsong:

“I don’t know what to do.”

“That’s enough!” I often shouted, at home, on the street. “I said that’s enough!” I made a gesture of wanting to slap them, I lifted my arm, I seriously felt like it and restrained myself with an effort.

But they wouldn’t calm down. Ilaria wanted to taste all hundred and ten flavors promised by a gelato maker under the portico of Via Cernaia. I tugged at her and she dug in her heels, pulling me toward the entrance of the shop. Suddenly Gianni left me and ran across the street by himself, amid honking horns, followed by my cries of apprehension; he wanted to see, yet again, the monument to Pietro Micca, whose story Mario had told him in every detail. I couldn’t contain them in the city that was emptying, and raising hot foggy breezes or oppressive humidity from the hills, the river, the pavement.

Once we quarreled right there, in the gardens in front of the Artillery Museum, under the dirty-green statue of Pietro Micca, with the big sword and the fuse. I knew almost nothing about those murdered heroes, fire, and blood.

“You don’t know how to tell a story,” the child said to me, “you don’t remember anything.”

I retorted:

“Then ask your father.”

And I began to shout that, if in their opinion I was no good, they should go to him, there was a new mother, beautiful and smart, certainly from Turin, I would bet she knew everything about Pietro Micca and that city of kings and princesses, of haughty people, cold people, metal automatons. I screamed and screamed, out of control. Gianni and Ilaria loved the city, the boy knew its streets and its legends, his father often let him play near the monument at the end of Via Meucci, there was a statue that they both liked: what nonsense, memorials of kings and generals on the streets, Gianni dreamed of being like Ferdinand of Savoy at the battle of Novara, when he jumps down from his dying horse, saber in hand, ready to fight. Ah yes, I wished to wound them, my children, I wished to wound above all the boy, who already had a Piedmontese accent, Mario, too, spoke like a Turinese now, he had eliminated the Neapolitan cadences utterly. Gianni acted like an impudent young bull, I detested it, he was growing up foolish and presumptuous and aggressive, eager to shed his own blood or that of others in some uncivilized conflict, I couldn’t bear it anymore.

I left them in the gardens, beside the fountain, and set out quickly along Via Galileo Ferraris, toward the suspended figure of Victor Emmanuel II, a shadow at the end of parallel lines of buildings, high up against a slice of warm cloudy sky. Maybe I really wanted to abandon them forever, forget about them, so that when Mario finally showed up again I could strike my forehead and exclaim: your children? I don’t know. I seem to have lost them: the last time I saw them was a month ago, in the gardens of the Cittadella.

After a little I slowed down, turned back. What was happening to me. I was losing touch with those blameless creatures, they were growing distant, as if balanced on a log floating away upon the flow of the current. Get them back, take hold of them again, hug them close: they were mine. I called:

“Gianni! Ilaria!”

I didn’t see them, they were no longer beside the fountain.

Anguish parched my throat as I looked around. I ran through the gardens as if, by means of rapid, chaotic movements, I could bind together flower beds and trees, keep them from splintering into a thousand fragments. I stopped in front of the big sixteenth-century gun from the Turkish artillery, a powerful bronze cylinder behind the flower bed. Again I shouted the children’s names. They answered me from inside the cannon. They were lying there, on a piece of cardboard that had made a bed for some immigrant. The blood rushed back to my veins, I grabbed them by the feet, yanked them out.

“It was him,” Ilaria said, denouncing her brother, “he said we should hide here.”

I grabbed Gianni by the arm, shook him hard, threatened him, consumed by rage:

“Don’t you know you could catch some disease in there? You could get sick and die! Look at me, you little fool: do that again and I’ll kill you!”

The child stared at me in disbelief. With the same disbelief I looked at myself. I saw a woman standing beside a flower garden, a few steps from an old instrument of destruction that now hosted for the night human beings from distant worlds, without hope. At that moment I didn’t recognize her. I was frightened because she had taken my heart, which was now beating in her chest.

During that period I also had trouble with the bills. I received letters saying that by such and such date the water or light or gas would be cut off because the bills hadn’t been paid. Then I would insist on saying that I had paid, I spent hours searching for the receipts, I wasted a lot of time protesting, arguing, writing, and then giving up in the face of the evidence that I had not in fact paid.

It happened like that with the telephone. Not only were there constant disturbances in the line, as Mario had pointed out to me, but suddenly I couldn’t even make a phone call: a voice said to me that I wasn’t qualified for that type of service or something like that.

Since I had broken the cell phone, I went to a public phone and called the telephone company to resolve the problem. I was assured that it would be taken care of as soon as possible. But the days passed, the telephone continued silent. I called again, I became furious, my voice trembled with rage. I explained my situation in a voice so aggressive that the employee was silent for a long time, then after consulting the computer told me that telephone service had been suspended because of unpaid bills.

I was enraged, I swore on my children that I had paid, I insulted them all, from the lowest workers to the chief executives, I spoke of Levantine laziness (I said just that), I emphasized the chronic inefficiency, the small and large corruptions of Italy, I shouted: you make me sick. Then I hung up and checked the receipts, and discovered that it really was true, I had forgotten to pay.

I paid, in fact, the next day, but the situation didn’t improve. A permanent disturbance of communication, like a breath of storm in the microphone, returned to the line, the signal was barely perceptible. I went again to the bar downstairs to telephone, I was told that maybe I would have to get a new instrument. Maybe. I looked at the time, very soon the offices would be closed. I rushed out, I couldn’t contain myself.

I drove through the city, empty in August, in the suffocating heat. I parked, bumping the fenders of the other cars. I walked to Via Meucci, threw a spiteful glance at the headquarters of the telephone company, its grand façade of streaked marble blocks, took the steps two by two. There was a nice man at the entrance, who was not inclined to argue. I told him that I wanted to go to an office for complaints, right away, to protest a lack of service that had been going on for months.