Elena Ferrante: The Days of Abandonment

Gianni looked at me from his bed, in apprehension. I answered yes.

In the silent house at night, as I tried to write, it occurred to me that the two children would, over the weeks, between them reinforce the presence of their father. They would better assimilate the gestures, the tones, mixing them with mine. Our dissolved couple would in the two of them be further inflected, intertwined, entangled, continuing to exist when now there was no longer any basis or reason for it. Slowly they will make way for Carla, I thought, I wrote. Ilaria would study her secretly to learn the style of her makeup, her walk, her way of laughing, her choice of colors, and, subtracting and adding, would mix her with my features, my tastes, my gestures whether controlled or careless. Gianni would conceive hidden desires for her, dreaming of her from the depths of the amniotic liquid in which he had swum. Into my children Carla’s parents would be introduced, the horde of her forebears would camp with my ancestors, with Mario’s. A half-caste din would swell within them. In this reasoning I seemed to capture all the absurdity of the adjective “my,” “my children.” I stopped writing only when I heard a licking sound, the living shovel of Otto’s tongue against the plastic of the bowl. I got up, I went to see if it was empty, dry. The dog had a faithful and vigilant soul. I went to bed and fell asleep.

The next day I began to look for a job. I didn’t know how to do much, but thanks to Mario’s transfers I had lived abroad for a long time, I knew at least three languages well. With the help of some friends of Lea’s husband I was soon hired by a car-rental agency to take care of international correspondence.

My days became more harried: work, shopping, cooking, cleaning, the children, the wish to start writing again, the list of urgent things to do that I compiled in the evening: get new pots; call the plumber, the sink is leaking; have the blind in the living room fixed; Gianni needs a gym uniform; buy new shoes for Ilaria, her feet have grown.

Now began a continuous frantic rush from Monday to Friday, but without the obsessions of the previous months. I stretched a taut wire that pierced the days and I slid swiftly along it, unthinking, in a false equilibrium with increasing bravura, until I delivered the children to Lea, who in turn delivered them to Mario. Then the void of the weekend opened and I felt as if I were standing, precariously balanced on the rim of a well.

As for the children’s return, on Sunday evening, it became a habitual list of complaints. They got used to that oscillation between my house and Mario’s and soon stopped being vigilant about what might wound me. Gianni began to praise Carla’s cooking, to detest mine. Ilaria told how she took a shower with her father’s new wife, she revealed that her breasts were prettier than mine, she marveled at her blond pubic hair, she described her underwear minutely, she made me swear that as soon as her breasts grew I would buy her the same kind of bras, in the same color. Both children took up a new expression that was certainly not mine: they kept saying “practically.” Ilaria reproached me because I didn’t want to get an expensive cosmetics case that Carla, on the other hand, had made a big show of. One day, during an argument about a jacket that I had bought her and that she didn’t like, she cried: “You’re mean, Carla is nicer than you.”

The moment arrived when I no longer knew if it was better when they were there or when they weren’t. For example, I realized that, although they didn’t care about hurting me when they talked about Carla, they were jealously watchful to make sure that I devoted myself to them and no one else. Once when they didn’t have school, I brought them with me to work. They were unexpectedly well-behaved. When a colleague invited the three of us to lunch, they sat at the table silent, attentive, composed, without quarreling, without exchanging allusive smiles, without throwing around code words, without spilling food on the tablecloth. I later discovered that they had spent the time studying how the man treated me, the attentions he addressed to me, the tone in which I responded, grasping, as children are well able to do, the sexual tension; minimal, a pure lunchtime game, manifested between us.

“Did you notice how he smacked his lips at the end of every sentence?” Gianni asked me with rancorous amusement.

I shook my head, I hadn’t noticed it. To illustrate, he smacked his lips comically, making them stick out so that they were big and red, and produced a plop every two words. Ilaria laughed until she cried, after every demonstration she said breathlessly: Again. After a little I began to laugh, too, even though their malicious humor disoriented me.

That night Gianni, coming to my room for his usual good night kiss, embraced me suddenly and kissed me on one cheek, going plop and spraying me with saliva; then he and his sister went into their room to laugh. And from that moment they both began to criticize everything I did. In tandem they began to praise Carla openly. They made me listen to riddles that she had taught them to prove that I didn’t know the answers, they emphasized how comfortable Mario’s new house was, while ours was ugly and untidy. Gianni especially soon became unbearable. He shouted for no reason, he broke things, he got into fights with his schoolmates, he hit Ilaria, sometimes he got angry with himself and wanted to bite his own arm, or hand.

One day in November he was coming home from school with his sister, both had bought enormous ice cream cones. I don’t know exactly what happened. Maybe Gianni, having finished his cone, insisted that Ilaria give him hers, he was a glutton, always hungry. The fact was that he pushed her so hard that she ended up almost on top of a boy of sixteen, staining his shirt with vanilla and chocolate.

At first the boy seemed to be worried only about the spots, then suddenly he got mad and started fighting with Ilaria. Gianni hit him right in the face with his backpack, bit his hand, and let go his grip only because the other boy began punching him with his free hand.

When I came home from work, I opened the door with the key and heard the voice of Carrano in my house. He was talking to the children in the living room. At first I was rather cold, I didn’t understand why he was there in my house, as if he had permission to enter. Then, when I saw the state Gianni was in, with a black eye, his lower lip split, I forgot him and full of anxiety threw myself on the child.

Only slowly did I understand that Carrano, on his way home, had seen my children in trouble, had got Gianni away from the fury of the offended boy, had soothed hysterical Ilaria, and had brought them home. Not only that: he had restored their good mood with stories of punches he had given and received as a boy. The children in fact now pushed me aside and urged him to continue his stories.

I thanked him for that and for all his other kindnesses. He seemed content, his only mistake was yet again to say the wrong thing. He took his leave saying:

“Maybe they’re too young to come home alone.”

I retorted:

“Young or not, I can’t do anything else.”

“I could take care of it sometimes,” he ventured.

I thanked him again, more coldly. I said that I could manage on my own, and closed the door.

Gianni and Ilaria did not improve after that adventure, in fact they continued to make me pay for murky, imagined sins that I had not committed, that were only the black dreams of childhood. Meanwhile, with a twist that was unexpected and difficult to explain, they stopped considering Carrano an enemy — Otto’s murderer, they had called him — and, when we met him on the stairs, greeted him with a sort of camaraderie, as if he were a playmate. He tended to respond with rather pathetic winks or restrained gestures of his hand. It was as if he were afraid to be excessive, obviously he didn’t want to annoy me, but the children claimed more, they weren’t satisfied.