Elena Ferrante - The Days of Abandonment

“He told me to tell you,” she called to me as I was entering my building, “that he’s thought about it some more, he’s not sure that Otto’s death was caused by strychnine, the facts you gave him weren’t sufficient, you need to speak to him again in greater detail.”

She laughed maliciously from the window of the taxi, as it started off:

“I feel it’s an excuse, Olga. He wants to see you again.”

Naturally I never went back to the vet, even though he was a pleasant man, with a trustworthy air. I was afraid of rash sexual encounters, they repelled me. But above all I no longer wanted to know if it was strychnine or something else that had killed Otto. The dog had fallen through a hole in the net of events. We leave so many of them, lacerations of negligence, when we put together cause and effect. The essential thing was that the string, the weave that now supported me, should hold.

For days after that evening I had to contend with a sharpening of Gianni and Ilaria’s complaints. They reproached me for leaving them with strangers, they reproached me for spending time with strangers. Their accusing voices were hard, without affection, without tenderness.

“You didn’t put my toothbrush in my bag,” Ilaria said.

“I got a cold because they had the radiators turned off,” Gianni protested to me.

“They forced me to eat tuna fish and I threw up,” the girl whined.

Until the weekend arrived, I was the cause of every misadventure. While Gianni stared at me ironically — did that look belong to me? was that why I hated it? was it Mario’s? had he perhaps even copied it from Carla? — practicing grim silences, Ilaria burst into long, piercing cries for no reason, she threw herself on the floor, she bit me, she kicked, taking advantage of small frustrations, a pencil she couldn’t find, a comic book with a slightly torn page, her hair was wavy and she wanted it straight, it was my fault because I had wavy hair, her father had nice hair.

I let them go on, I had experienced worse. Besides, it seemed to me suddenly that ironies, silences, and tantrums were their way, perhaps silently agreed on, for holding off distress and coming up with explanations that might diminish it. I was only afraid that the neighbors would call the police.

One morning we were about to go out, they were late for school, I for work. Ilaria was irritable, unhappy with everything, she was mad at her shoes, the shoes she had been wearing for at least a month and that now suddenly hurt her. In tears she threw herself on the floor of the landing and began kicking the door, which I had just closed. She cried and screamed, she said her feet hurt, she couldn’t go to school in that state. I asked her where they hurt, without interest but patiently; Gianni kept repeating, laughing: cut off your feet, make them smaller, so the shoes will fit; I whispered that’s enough, come on, quiet, let’s go, we’re late.

At a certain point there was the click of a lock on the floor below and the voice of Carrano, smudged with sleep, said:

“Can I do anything?”

I flared with shame as if I had been caught doing something disgusting. I put a hand over Ilaria’s mouth and held it there forcefully. With the other I energetically made her get up. She was immediately quiet, amazed by my no longer compliant behavior. Gianni stared at me questioningly, I searched for my voice in my throat, a tone that might sound normal.

“No,” I said, “thanks, excuse us.”

“If there’s something…”

“Everything’s fine, don’t worry, thanks again, for everything.”

Gianni tried to cry:

“Hey, Aldo,” but I hugged his nose, his mouth hard against my coat.

The door closed discreetly, with regret I noticed that Carrano now intimidated me. Although I knew well all that could come to me from him, I no longer believed what I knew. In my eyes the man on the floor below had become the custodian of a mysterious power that he kept hidden, out of modesty, out of courtesy, out of good manners.

In the office that morning I couldn’t concentrate. The cleaning woman must have used an excess of some perfumed cleaning fluid because there was an intense odor of soap and cherries made acidic by the hot radiators. I worked on some German correspondence for hours, but I had no fluency, I was continually consulting the dictionary. Suddenly I heard a male voice coming from the room where clients were received. The voice arrived with perfect clarity, a voice that was coldly acrimonious because certain services, which were costly, had, once the client was abroad, turned out to be inadequate. Yet I heard it from far away, as if it were coming not from a distance of a few feet but from a place in my brain. It was Mario’s voice.

I half-opened the door of my room, I looked out. I saw him sitting in front of a desk, in the background a bright-colored poster advertising Barcelona. Carla was with him, sitting beside him, she seemed more graceful, more adult, just slightly plumper, not beautiful. Both appeared to me as if on a television screen, well known actors who were acting out a piece of my life in some soap opera. Mario especially seemed a stranger who by chance had the transient features of a person who had been very familiar to me. He had combed his hair in a way that revealed his broad forehead, framed by thick hair and eyebrows. His face had become thinner, and the prominent lines of the nose, the mouth, the cheekbones formed a design more pleasing than I remembered. He looked ten years younger, the heaviness of his hips, of his chest, of his stomach had disappeared, he even seemed taller.

I felt a sort of light but decisive tap in the middle of my forehead and my hands grew sweaty. But the emotion was surprisingly pleasant, as when a book or a film makes us suffer, not life. I said calmly to the woman behind the desk, who was a friend:

“Is there some trouble?”

Both Carla and Mario turned instantly. Carla leaped to her feet, visibly frightened. Mario stayed seated but he rubbed his nose with thumb and index finger for a few seconds, as he always did when something disturbed him. I said with exaggerated cheerfulness:

“I’m happy to see you.”

I moved toward him, and Carla mechanically reached out a hand to pull him close to her, protect him. My husband rose uncertainly, it was clear that he didn’t know what to expect. I offered him my hand, we kissed on the cheeks.

“You both seem well,” I continued, and shook Carla’s hand, too, though she didn’t return the clasp, but gave me fingers and palm that felt wet, like meat that has just been defrosted.

“You seem well, too,” said Mario, in a tone of perplexity.

“Yes,” I answered proudly. “I’m not upset anymore.”

“I wanted to call you to talk about the children.”

“The number hasn’t changed.”

“We also have to discuss the separation.”

“When you like.”

Not knowing what else to say, he stuck his hands nervously in the pockets of his coat and asked in a casual way if anything was new. I answered:

“Not really. The children must have told you: I was sick, Otto died.”

“Died?” He was startled.

How mysterious children are. They had been silent about it, perhaps in order not to give displeasure, perhaps in the conviction that nothing that belonged to the old life could interest him.

“Poisoned,” I said, and he asked angrily:

“Who did it?”

“You,” I said calmly.

“Me?”

“Yes. I discovered that you’re a rude man. People respond to rudeness with spite.”

He looked at me to see if the friendly atmosphere was about to change, if I intended to start making scenes again. I tried to reassure him, with a tone of detachment: