Elena Ferrante - The Days of Abandonment

Maybe I should have started there, at the point when Mario told me that he wanted to leave me. I should have moved from the fact that the captivating figure of a man who was practically a stranger, a random man — a “perhaps” that had to be untangled but would in the end be rewarding — was capable of giving meaning, let’s say, to a fleeting odor of gasoline, the gray trunk of a city plane tree, and to fix forever in that chance place of meeting an intense feeling of joy, an expectation; while nothing, nothing of Mario possessed the same earthquake-like movement anymore, and every gesture had only the power to be put in the right place, in the same secure net, without deviations, without excesses. If I were to start from there, from those secret emotions, perhaps I would understand better why he had gone and why I, who had always set against the occasional emotional confusion the stable order of our affections, now felt so violently the bitterness of loss, an intolerable grief, the anxiety of falling out of the web of certainties and having to relearn life without the security of knowing how to do it.

Relearning how to turn a key, for example. Was it possible that Mario, leaving, had taken from my hands that ability? Was it possible that he had begun already, that morning in the country, when his happy abandonment of himself to two strangers had lacerated me inside, to rip from my fingers their ability to grip? Was it possible that the imbalance and the pain had begun then, while he tested, right before my eyes, the happiness of seduction, and I recognized in his face a pleasure that I had often touched but had always suspended for fear of destroying the guarantees of our relationship?

Punctually Ilaria pricked me, several times, I think, painfully, for I reacted with a start and she drew back exclaiming:

“You told me to do it!”

I nodded yes, I reassured her with a gesture, with the other hand I rubbed the ankle where she had struck me. I tried again to open the door, I couldn’t do it. I leaned over, I examined the key closely. Finding the imprint of the old gestures was a mistake. I had to disengage them. Under the stupefied gaze of Ilaria, I brought my mouth to the key, tasted it with my lips, smelled its odor of plastic and metal. Then I grabbed it solidly between my teeth and tried to make it turn. I did it with a sudden jerk, as if I wished to surprise the object, impose a new statute, a different dispensation. Now we’ll see who wins, I thought, while a pasty, salty taste invaded my mouth. But I produced no effect, except the impression that, because the rotating movement of my teeth on the key wasn’t working, it was finding an outlet in my face, tearing it like a can opener, and my teeth were moving, were being unhinged from the foundation of my face, taking with them the nasal septum, an eyebrow, an eye, and revealing the viscid interior of head and throat.

I immediately pulled my mouth away from the key, it seemed to me that my face was hanging to one side like the coiled skin of an orange after the knife has begun to peel it. What is there still to try. Lie on my back, feel the cold floor against it. Stretch my bare legs against the panels of the door, clasp the soles of my feet around the key, fit its hostile beak between my heels to try again to capture the necessary movement. Yes, no, yes. For a while I let myself sink into desperation, which would mold me thoroughly, make me metal, door panel, mechanism, like an artist who works directly on his body. Then I noticed on my left thigh, above the knee, a painful gash. A cry escaped me, I realized that Ilaria had made a deep wound.

I saw her back off in fear with the paper cutter in her right hand.

“Are you crazy?” I said, turning on her fiercely.

“You aren’t listening to me,” Ilaria cried. “I’m calling you and you can’t hear me, you’re doing terrible things, your eyes are all twisted, I’m going to tell daddy.”

I looked at the cut above my knee, the strip of blood. I tore the paper cutter away from her. I threw it toward the open door of the storage closet.

“That’s enough of that game,” I said to her. “You don’t know how to play. Now stay here and be good, don’t move. We’re locked in, we’re prisoners, and your father will never come to save us. Look what you’ve done to me.”

“You deserve worse,” she retorted, her eyes bright with tears.

I tried to calm myself, I took a deep breath.

“Now don’t start crying, don’t you dare start crying…”

I didn’t know what to say, what else to do, at that point. It seemed to me that I had tried everything, there was nothing left to do but restore clear outlines to the situation and accept it.

Displaying a false capacity to give orders, I said:

“We have two patients, Gianni and Otto. Now you, without crying, go and see how your brother is, I will go and see how Otto is.”

“I have to stay with you and prick you, you told me to.”

“I was wrong, Gianni is alone, he needs someone to feel his forehead, and put the refreshing coins on it, I can’t do everything.”

I pushed her toward the living room, she rebelled:

“Who’s going to prick you if you get distracted?”

I looked at the long cut on my leg, from which a thick stripe of blood continued to well up.

“Call me every so often, and don’t forget. That will be enough to keep me from being distracted.”

She thought for a moment, then said:

“But hurry up, I get bored with Gianni, he doesn’t know how to play.”

That last phrase pained me. With that explicit reminder of the game I realized that Ilaria didn’t want to play anymore, that she was beginning to be seriously worried about me. If I had the responsibility for two sick creatures, she was starting to perceive that the sick who burdened her were three. Poor, poor little thing. She felt alone, she was secretly waiting for a father who wasn’t showing up, she could no longer hold the confusion of that day within the limits of a game. I was now aware of her anguish, I added it to mine. How changeable it all is, nothing has fixed points. With every step I took toward Gianni’s room, toward Otto’s, I was afraid of feeling ill, of presenting to her I don’t know what spectacle of collapse. I had to maintain judgment and the clarity of memory, they always go together, a binomial of health.

I pushed the little girl into the room, I glanced at the boy who was still sleeping and I went out, locking the door with a clear gesture, entirely natural. Although Ilaria protested, called me, beat her hands against the door, I ignored her and went to the room where Otto was lying. I didn’t know what was happening to the dog. Ilaria loved him deeply, I didn’t want her to be present at horrifying scenes. Protect her, yes, the truth of this preoccupation did me good. That the cold plan of guarding my children should slowly be transformed into an inescapable need, the principal preoccupation, seemed to me a positive sign.

In the dog’s room, under Mario’s desk, there was now the evil odor of death. I went in cautiously, Otto was still, he hadn’t moved an inch. I crouched beside him, then sat on the floor.

First of all I saw the ants, they had arrived, they were exploring the muddy territory that lapped the dog’s back. Otto, however, didn’t care. It was as if he had turned gray, an island drained of color breathing its last. His muzzle, with the greenish saliva from the jaws, seemed to have corroded the material of the tiles and to be sinking into them. His eyes were closed.

“Forgive me,” I said.

I ran the palm of my hand over the fur on his neck, he gave a jolt, his jaws unlocked, he emitted a threatening growl. I wanted to be forgiven for what I had perhaps done to him, for what I had been unable to do. I pulled him toward me, I rested his head on my legs. He gave off a sick heat that entered my blood. He barely moved his ears, his tail. I thought it was a sign of well-being, even his breath seemed less labored. The big spots of shining drool that were spreading like an enamel around the black edge of his mouth appeared to freeze, as if he had no longer any need to produce those humors of suffering.