Elena Ferrante: The Days of Abandonment

I let Otto go free, finally, and sat on a bench trembling with cold. Of that book from my adolescence the few sentences I had memorized at the time came to mind: I am clean I am true I am playing with my cards on the table. No, I said to myself, those were affirmations of derailment. To begin with, I had better remember, always put in the commas. A person who utters such words has already crossed the line, feels the need for self-exaltation and therefore approaches confusion. And also: the women are all wet he with his stiff prick makes them feel who knows what. As a girl I had liked obscene language, it gave me a sense of masculine freedom. Now I knew that obscenity could raise sparks of madness if it came from a mouth as controlled as mine. So I closed my eyes, I held my head in my hands and squeezed my eyelids. Mario’s woman. I imagined her ripe, in a toilet, her skirt hiked up, he was on her, working her sweaty cheeks, and sinking his fingers in her ass, the floor slippery with sperm. No, stop. I pulled myself up suddenly, whistled to Otto, a whistle that Mario had taught me. Get rid of those images, that language. Get rid of the women destroyed. While Otto ran here and there, carefully choosing places to urinate, I felt over every inch of my body the scratches of sexual abandonment, the danger of drowning in scorn for myself and nostalgia for him. I got up and went back along the path; I whistled again, and waited for Otto to return.

I don’t know how much time passed, I forgot about the dog, forgot where I was. Without realizing it, I slipped into memories of love that I had shared with Mario, and I did it gently, slightly excited, resentful. Shaking me back to myself was the sound of my own voice, I was saying to myself, in a singsong, “I am beautiful, I am beautiful.” Then I saw Carrano, the musician who was our neighbor, crossing the street and heading toward the little square, toward the street door.

Hunched, with long legs, his black figure burdened by the instrument, he passed a hundred yards away and I hoped he wouldn’t see me. He was one of those timid men who are insecure in their relations with others. If they lose their composure they lose it uncontrollably; if they are nice they are nice to the point of becoming sticky, like honey. With Mario he had often had words, once for a leak from our bathroom that had stained his ceiling, once because Otto annoyed him with his barking. With me, too, his relations were not the best, but for more subtle reasons. When I encountered him I read in his eyes an interest that embarrassed me. Not that he had been vulgar, he was incapable of vulgarity. But women, I think all women agitated him, and so he mistook glances, he mistook gestures, he mistook words, involuntarily bringing desire into the open. He knew it, he was ashamed of it, and perhaps without wanting to, he involved me in his own shame. For this reason I always tried not to have anything to do with him; it disturbed me even to say to him good morning or good evening.

I observed him as he crossed the square, tall, made even taller by the outline of the instrument case, with graying hair, thin, and yet with a heavy step. Suddenly his unhurried gait had a kind of jolt, and he floundered in order not to slip. He stopped, looked at the sole of his right shoe, cursed. Then he became aware of me and said resentfully:

“Did you see, I’ve ruined my shoe.”

There was nothing that proved it was my fault, yet, embarrassed, I immediately asked his pardon and began calling furiously “Otto, Otto,” as if the dog would excuse himself directly and relieve me of any guilt. But Otto, of a brownish-yellow color, moved quickly through the patches of light from the street lamps and disappeared into the darkness.

The musician nervously wiped his shoe on the grass at the edge of the path, then examined it with meticulous attention.

“There’s no need to apologize, only take your dog somewhere else. People have complained…”

“I’m sorry, my husband is usually careful…”

“Your husband, excuse me, is an ill-mannered…”

“Now you are the ill-mannered one,” I retorted, forcefully, “and in any case we’re not the only ones who have a dog.”

He shook his head, made a broad gesture to signify that he didn’t want to argue, and muttered:

“Tell your husband not to exaggerate. I know people who wouldn’t hesitate to litter this area with poisoned dog biscuits.”

“I’m not going to tell my husband anything,” I exclaimed angrily. And I added, incongruously, just to remind myself:

“I don’t have a husband anymore.”

At that point I left him there in the middle of the path and began running across the grass, in the dark region of bushes and trees, calling Otto at the top of my lungs as if that man were following me and I needed the dog for protection. When I turned, out of breath, I saw that the musician was examining for the last time the soles of his shoes, and then, with his tired walk, he disappeared in the direction of the door.

In the following days Mario didn’t show up. Although I had imposed on myself a code of behavior and had decided first of all not to telephone the friends we had in common, I couldn’t resist and telephoned just the same.

I discovered that no one knew anything about my husband, it seemed that they hadn’t seen him for days. So I announced, with rancor, that he had left me for another woman. I thought I would astonish them, but I had the impression that they weren’t at all surprised. When I asked, pretending nonchalance, if they knew who his lover was, how old she was, what she did, if he was already living at her house, I got only evasive replies. A colleague of his at the Polytechnic called Farraco tried to console me by saying:

“It’s that age. Mario is forty — it happens.”

I couldn’t bear it, and I hissed treacherously:

“Yes? So did it happen to you, too? Does it happen to all men of your age, without exception? Why are you still living with your wife? Let me talk to Lea, I want to tell her it’s happened to you, too!”

I didn’t want to react like that. Another rule was not to become hateful. But I couldn’t contain myself, I immediately felt a rush of blood that deafened me, burned my eyes. The reasonableness of others and my own desire for tranquility got on my nerves. The breath built up in my throat, ready to vibrate with words of rage. I felt the need to quarrel, and in fact I quarreled first with our male friends, then with their wives or girlfriends, and finally I went on to clash with anyone, male or female, who tried to help me accept what was happening to my life.

Lea, Farraco’s wife, especially, tried patiently; she was a woman with an inclination to mediate and look for a way out, so wise, so understanding, that to get angry with her seemed an affront to the small band of well-disposed people. But I couldn’t restrain myself, I soon began to distrust even her. I was convinced that immediately after talking to me she hurried to my husband and his lover to tell them in minute detail how I was reacting, how I was managing with the children and the dog, how much longer it would take me to accept the situation. So I abruptly stopped seeing her, and was left without a friend to turn to.

I began to change. In the course of a month I lost the habit of putting on makeup carefully, I went from using a refined language, attentive to the feelings of others, to a sarcastic way of expressing myself, punctuated by coarse laughter. Slowly, in spite of my resistance, I also gave in to obscenity.

Obscenity came to my lips naturally; it seemed to me that it served to communicate to the few acquaintances who still tried coldly to console me that I was not one to be taken in by fine words. As soon as I opened my mouth I felt the wish to mock, smear, defile Mario and his slut. I hated the idea that he knew everything about me while I knew little or nothing of him. I felt like someone who is blind and knows that he is being observed by the very people he would like to spy on in every detail. Is it possible — I wondered with growing resentment — that faithless people like Lea could report everything about me to my husband and I, on the other hand, couldn’t even find out what type of woman he had decided to fuck, for whom he had left me, what she had that I didn’t? All the fault of spies, I thought, false friends, people who always side with those who enjoy themselves, happy and free, never with the unhappy. I knew it very well. They preferred new, lighthearted couples, who are out and about long into the night, the satisfied faces of those who do nothing but fuck. They kissed, they bit, they licked and sucked, tasting the flavors of the cock, the cunt. Of Mario and his new woman I now imagined only that: how they fucked, and how much. I thought about it night and day and meanwhile, a prisoner of my thoughts, I neglected myself, I didn’t comb my hair, or wash. How often did they fuck — I wondered, with unbearable pain — how, where. And so even the very few people who still tried to help me withdrew in the end: it was difficult to put up with me. I found myself alone and frightened by my own desperation.