Elena Ferrante - Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

On the orders of the publisher, Tarratano, Adele’s old friend, had accompanied me to Turin. He said that he was proud of having been the first to understand the potential of my novel and introduced me to the audience with the same enthusiastic words he had used before in Milan. At the end of the evening he congratulated me on the great progress I had made in a short time. Then he asked me, in his usual good-humored way: why are you so willing to let your erotic pages be called “risqué,” why do you yourself describe them that way in public? And he explained to me that I shouldn’t: my novel wasn’t simply the episode on the beach, there were more interesting and finer passages; and then, if here and there something sounded daring, that was mainly because it had been written by a girl; obscenity, he said, is not alien to good literature, and the true art of the story, even if it goes beyond the bounds of decency, is never risqué.

I was confused. That very cultured man was tactfully explaining to me that the sins of my book were venial, and that I was wrong to speak of them every time as if they were mortal. I was overdoing it, then. I was submitting to the public’s myopia, its superficiality. I said to myself: Enough, I have to be less subservient, I have to learn to disagree with my readers, I shouldn’t descend to their level. And I decided that at the first opportunity I would be more severe with anyone who wanted to talk about those pages.

At dinner, in the hotel restaurant where the press office had reserved a table for us, I listened, half embarrassed, half amused, as Tarratano quoted, as proof that I was essentially a chaste writer, Henry Miller, and explained, calling me dear child, that not a few very gifted writers of the twenties and thirties could and did write about sex in a way that I at the moment couldn’t even imagine. I wrote down their names in my notebook, but meanwhile I began to think: This man, in spite of his compliments, doesn’t consider that I have much talent; in his eyes I’m a girl who’s had an undeserved success; even the pages that most attract readers he doesn’t consider outstanding, they may scandalize those who don’t know much but not people like him.

I said that I was a little tired and helped my companion, who had drunk too much, to get up. He was a small man but had the prominent belly of a gourmand. Tufts of white hair bristled over large ears, he had a red face interrupted by a narrow mouth, a big nose, and very bright eyes; he smoked a lot, and his fingers were yellowed. In the elevator he tried to kiss me. Although I wriggled out of his embrace I had a hard time keeping him away; he wouldn’t give up. The touch of his stomach and his winey breath stayed with me. At the time, it would never have occurred to me that an old man, so respectable, so cultured, that man who was such a good friend of my future mother-in-law, could behave in an unseemly way. Once we were in the corridor he hastened to apologize, he blamed the wine, and went straight to his room.

The next day, at breakfast and during the entire drive to Milan, he talked passionately about what he considered the most exciting period of his life, the years between 1945 and 1948. I heard in his voice a genuine melancholy, which vanished, however, when he went on to describe with an equally genuine enthusiasm the new climate of revolution, the energy — he said — that was infusing young and old. I kept nodding yes, struck by how important it was for him to convince me that my present was in fact the return of his thrilling past. I felt a little sorry for him. A random biographical hint led me, at a certain point, to make a quick calculation: the person with me was fifty-eight years old.

Once in Milan I had the driver drop me near the publishing house, and I said goodbye to my companion. I had slept badly and was in something of a daze. On the street I tried to eradicate my disgust at that physical contact with Tarratano, but I still felt the stain of it and a confusing continuity with a kind of vulgarity I recognized from the neighborhood. At the publisher’s I was greeted warmly. It wasn’t the courtesy of a few months earlier but a sort of generalized satisfaction that meant: how clever we were to guess that you were clever. Even the switchboard operator, the only one there who had treated me condescendingly, came out of her booth and embraced me. And for the first time the editor who had done that punctilious editing invited me to lunch.

As soon as we sat down in a half-empty restaurant near the office, he returned to his emphasis on the fact that my writing guarded a fascinating secret, and between courses he suggested that I would do well to plan a new novel, taking my time but not resting too long on my laurels. Then he reminded me that I had an appointment at the state university at three. Mariarosa had nothing to do with it; the publishing house itself, through its own channels, had organized something with a group of students. Whom should I look for when I get there? I asked. My authoritative lunch companion said proudly: My son will be waiting for you at the entrance.

I retrieved my bag from the office, and went to the hotel. I stayed a few minutes and left for the university. The heat was unbearable. I found myself against a background of posters dense with writing, red flags, and struggling people, placards announcing activities, noisy voices, laughter, and a widespread sense of apprehension. I wandered around, looking for signs that had to do with me. I recall a dark-haired young man who, running, rudely bumped into me, lost his balance, picked himself up, and ran out into the street as if he were being pursued, even though no one was behind him. I recall the pure, solitary sound of a trumpet that pierced the suffocating air. I recall a tiny blond girl, who was dragging a clanking chain with a large lock at the end, and zealously shouting, I don’t know to whom: I’m coming! I remember it because in order to seem purposeful, as I waited for someone to recognize me and come over, I took out my notebook and wrote down this and that. But half an hour passed, and no one arrived. Then I examined the placards and posters more carefully, hoping to find my name, or the title of the book. It was useless. I felt a little nervous, and decided not to stop one of the students: I was ashamed to cite my book as a subject of discussion in an environment where the posters pasted to the walls proclaimed far more significant themes. I found to my annoyance that I was poised between opposing feelings: on the one hand, a strong sympathy for all those young men and women who in that place were flaunting, gestures and voices, with an absolute lack of discipline, and, on the other, the fear that the disorder I had been fleeing since I was a child might, now, right here, seize me and fling me into the middle of the commotion, where an incontrovertible power — a Janitor, a Professor, the Rector, the Police — would quickly find me at fault, me, me who had always been good, and punish me.

I thought of sneaking away, what did I care about a handful of kids scarcely younger than me, to whom I would say the usual foolish things? I wanted to go back to the hotel, enjoy my situation as a successful author who was traveling all over, eating in restaurants and sleeping in hotels. But five or six busy-looking girls passed by, carrying bags, and almost against my will I followed them, the voices, the shouts, even the sound of the trumpet. Like that, walking and walking, I ended up outside a crowded classroom from which, just then, an angry clamor arose. And since the girls I was following went in, I, too, cautiously entered.

A sharp conflict involving various factions was under way, both in the packed classroom and in a small crowd that besieged the lectern. I stayed near the door, ready to leave, already repelled by a burning cloud of smoke and breath, by a strong odor of excitement.