Elena Ferrante - Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

There were other tense moments. I said nothing, I couldn’t get Nadia’s insults out of my mind, the way she spoke, as if it were nothing, in my house. Finally they left, almost without warning, as they had arrived. They picked up their things and disappeared. Pasquale said only, in the doorway, in a voice that was unexpectedly sorrowful:

“Goodbye, Signora Airota.”

Signora Airota . Even my friend from the neighborhood was judging me in a negative way? Did it mean that for him I was no longer Lenù, Elena, Elena Greco? For him and for how many others? Even for me? Did I myself not almost always use my husband’s surname, now that mine had lost that small luster it had acquired? I tidied the house, especially the bathroom, which they had left a mess. Pietro said: I never want those two in my house; someone who talks like that about intellectual work is a Fascist, even if he doesn’t know it; as for her, she’s a type I’m very familiar with, there’s not a thought in her head.

As if to prove Pietro right, the disorder began to take concrete form, touching people who had been close to me. I learned from Mariarosa that Franco had been attacked in Milan by the fascists, he was in bad shape, and had lost an eye. I left immediately, with Dede and little Elsa. I took the train, playing with the girls and feeding them, but saddened by another me — the poor, uneducated girlfriend of the wealthy and hyperpoliticized student Franco Mari: how many me’s were there by now? — who had been lost somewhere and was now re-emerging.

At the station I met my sister-in-law, who was pale and worried. She took us to her house, which this time was deserted, yet even more untidy than when I had stayed there after the meeting at the university. While Dede played and Elsa slept, she told me more than she had on the telephone. The episode had happened five days earlier. Franco had spoken at a demonstration of Avanguardia Operaia, in a packed theater. Afterward he had gone off with Silvia, who now lived with an editor at Giorno in a beautiful apartment near the theater: he was to sleep there and leave the next day for Piacenza. They were almost at the door, Silvia had just taken the keys out of her purse, when a white van pulled up and the fascists had jumped out. He had been severely beaten, Silvia had been beaten and raped.

We drank a lot of wine, Mariarosa took out the drug: that’s what she called it, in other situations she used the plural. This time I decided to try it, but only because, in spite of the wine, I felt I hadn’t a single solid thing to hold on to. My sister-in-law became furious, then stopped talking and burst into tears. I couldn’t find a single word of comfort. I felt her tears, it seemed to me that they made a sound sliding from her eyes down her cheeks. Suddenly I couldn’t see her, I couldn’t even see the room, everything turned black. I fainted.

When I came to, I apologized, hugely embarrassed, I said it was tiredness. I didn’t sleep much that night: my body weighed heavily because of an excess of discipline, and the lexicon of books and journals dripped anguish as if suddenly the signs of the alphabet could no longer be combined. I held the two little girls close as if they were the ones who had to comfort and protect me.

The next day I left Dede and Elsa with my sister-in-law and went to the hospital. I found Franco in a sickly-green ward that had an intense odor of breath, urine, and medicine. He was as if shortened and distended, I can still see him in my mind’s eye, because of the white bandages, the violet color of part of his face and neck. He didn’t seem glad to see me, he seemed ashamed of his condition. I talked, I told him about my children. After a few minutes he said: Go away, I don’t want you here. When I insisted on staying, he was irritated, and whispered: I’m not myself, go away. He was very ill; I learned from a small group of his companions that he might have to have another operation. When I came back from the hospital Mariarosa saw that I was upset. She helped with the children, and as soon as Dede fell asleep she sent me to bed, too. The next day, however, she wanted me to come with her to see Silvia. I tried to avoid it, I had found it unbearable to see Franco and feel not only that I couldn’t help him but that I made him feel more fragile. I said I preferred to remember her as I had seen her during the meeting at the university. No, Mariarosa insisted, she wants us to see her as she is now, it’s important to her. We went.

A very well-groomed woman, with blond hair that fell in waves over her shoulders, opened the door. It was Silvia’s mother, and she had Mirko with her; he, too, was blond, a child of five or six by now, whom Dede, in her sulky yet bossy way, immediately insisted play a game with Tes, the old doll she carried everywhere. Silvia was sleeping but had left word that she wanted to be awakened when we got there. We waited awhile before she appeared. She was heavily made up, and had put on a pretty long green dress. I wasn’t struck so much by the bruises, the cuts, the hesitant walk — Lila had seemed in even worse shape when she returned from her honeymoon — as by her expressionless gaze. Her eyes were blank, and completely at odds with the frenetic talking, broken by little laughs, with which she began to recount to me , only to me, who still didn’t know, what the fascists had done to her. She spoke as if she were reciting a horrendous nursery rhyme that was for now the way in which she deposited the horror, repeating it to anyone who came to see her. Her mother kept trying to make her stop, but each time she pushed her away with a gesture of irritation, raising her voice, uttering obscenities and predicting a time soon, very soon, of violent revenge. When I burst into tears she stopped abruptly. But other people arrived, mostly family friends and comrades. Then Silvia began again, and I quickly retreated to a corner, hugging Elsa, kissing her lightly. I remembered details of what Stefano had done to Lila, details that I imagined while Silvia was narrating, and it seemed to me that the words of both stories were animal cries of terror.

At a certain point I went to look for Dede. I found her in the hall with Mirko and her doll. They were pretending to be a mother and father with their baby, but it wasn’t peaceful: they were pretending to have a fight. I stopped. Dede instructed Mirko: You have to hit me, understand ? The new living flesh was replicating the old in a game, we were a chain of shadows who had always been on the stage with the same burden of love, hatred, desire, and violence. I observed Dede carefully; she seemed to resemble Pietro. Mirko, on the other hand, was just like Nino.

Not long afterward, the underground war that occasionally erupted into the newspapers and on television — plans for coups, police repression, armed bands, firefights, woundings, killings, bombs and slaughters I was struck again by in the cities large and small. Carmen telephoned, she was extremely worried, she hadn’t heard from Pasquale in weeks.

“Did he by any chance visit you?”

“Yes, but at least two months ago.”

“Ah. He asked for your phone number and address: he wanted to get your advice, did he?”

“Advice about what?”

“I don’t know.”

“He didn’t ask me for advice.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing, he was fine, he was happy.”

Carmen had asked everywhere, even Lila, even Enzo, even the people in the collective on Via dei Tribunali. Finally she had called Nadia’s house, but the mother had been rude and Armando had told her only that Nadia had moved without leaving any address.

“They must have gone to live together.”