Elena Ferrante - Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

I climbed up toward the railroad, passing what we used to call the new grocery. The lowered shutter, partly off its tracks, was rusty and defaced by obscene words and drawings. That whole part of the neighborhood appeared abandoned, the shiny white of long ago had turned gray, the plaster had flaked off in places, revealing the bricks. I walked by the building where Lila had lived. Few of the stunted trees had survived. Packing tape held together the crack in the glass of the front door. Elisa lived farther on, in a better maintained area, more pretentious. The porter, a small bald man with a thin mustache, appeared, and stopped me, asking with hostility who I was looking for. I didn’t know what to say. I muttered, Solara. He became deferential and let me go.

Only in the elevator did I realize that my entire self had in a sense slid backward. What would have seemed to me acceptable in Milan or Florence — a woman’s freedom to dispose of her own body and her own desires, living with someone outside of marriage — there in the neighborhood seemed inconceivable: at stake was my sister’s future, I couldn’t control myself. Elisa had set up house with a dangerous person like Marcello? And my mother was pleased? She who had been enraged because I was married in a civil and not a religious ceremony; she who considered Lila a whore because she lived with Enzo, and Ada a prostitute because she had become Stefano’s lover: she allowed her young daughter to sleep with Marcello Solara — a bad person — outside of marriage? I had thoughts of that sort as I went up to Elisa’s, and a rage that I felt was justified. But my mind — my disciplined mind — was confused, I didn’t know what arguments I would resort to. Those my mother would have asserted until a few years before, if I had made such a choice? Would I therefore regress to a level that she had left behind? Or should I say: Go and live with whoever you like but not with Marcello Solara? Should I say that? But what girl, today, in Florence, in Milan, would I ever force to leave a man, whoever he was, if she was in love with him?

When Elisa opened the door, I hugged her so hard that she said, laughing: You’re hurting me. I felt her alarm as she invited me to sit down in the living room — a showy room full of flowered sofas and chairs with gilded backs — and began to speak quickly, but of other things: how well I looked, what pretty earrings I was wearing, what a nice necklace, how chic I was, she was so eager to meet Dede and Elsa. I described her nieces in detail, I took off my earrings, made her try them at the mirror, gave them to her. I saw her brighten; she laughed and said:

“I was afraid you’d come to scold me, to say you were opposed to my relationship with Marcello.”

I stared at her for a long moment, I said:

“Elisa, I am opposed to it. And I made this trip purposely to tell you, Mamma, Papa, and our brothers.”

Her expression changed; her eyes filled with tears.

“Now you’re upsetting me: why are you against it?”

“The Solaras are terrible people.”

“Not Marcello.”

She began to tell me about him. She said it had started when I was pregnant with Elsa. Our mother had left to stay with me and she had found all the weight of the family on her. Once when she had gone to do the shopping at the Solaras’ supermarket, Rino, Lila’s brother, had said that if she left the list of what she needed he would have it delivered. And while Rino was talking, she noticed that Marcello gave her a nod of greeting as if to let her know that that order had been given by him. From then on he had begun to hang around, doing kind things for her. Elisa had said to herself: He’s old, I don’t like him. But he had become increasingly present in her life, always courteous, there hadn’t been a word or a gesture that recalled the hateful side of the Solaras. Marcello was really a respectable person, with him she felt safe, he had a strength, an authority, that made him seem ten meters tall. Not only that. From the moment it became clear that he was interested in her, Elisa’s life had changed. Everyone, in the neighborhood and outside it, had begun to treat her like a queen, everyone had begun to consider her important. It was a wonderful feeling, she wasn’t yet used to it. Before, she said, you’re nobody, and right afterward even the mice in the sewer grates know you: of course, you’ve written a book, you’re famous, you’re used to it, but I’m not, I was astonished. It had been thrilling to discover that she didn’t have to worry about anything. Marcello took care of it all, every desire of hers was a command for him. So as time passed she fell in love. In the end she had said yes. And now if a day went by and she didn’t see or hear from him, she was awake all night crying.

Elisa was convinced that she had had an unimaginable stroke of luck and I knew that I wouldn’t have the strength to spoil all that happiness. Especially since she didn’t offer me any opportunity: Marcello was capable, Marcello was responsible, Marcello was handsome, Marcello was perfect. With every word she uttered she was careful either to keep him separate from the Solara family or to speak with cautious liking for his mother, or his father, who had a stomach disease, and almost never left the house, or of the deceased grandfather, sometimes even of Michele, who, if you spent time with him, also seemed different from the way people judged him; he was very affectionate. So believe me, she said, I’ve never been so happy since I was born, and even Mamma, and you know what she’s like, is on my side, even Papa, and Gianni and Peppe, who until a short time ago spent their days doing nothing, now Marcello employs them, paying them really well.

“If that’s really the way things are, get married,” I said.

“We will. But now isn’t a good time, Marcello says he has to settle some complicated business affairs. And then there’s the mourning for his grandfather, poor man, he lost his mind, he couldn’t remember how to walk, or even how to speak, by taking him God set him free. But as soon as things calm down we’ll get married, don’t worry. And then, before you get married, it’s better to see if you get along, isn’t it?”

She began to speak in words that weren’t hers, the words of a modern girl picked up from the comic books she read. I compared them with the ones I would have uttered on those same subjects and I realized that they weren’t very different, Elisa’s words only seemed a little coarser. How to respond? I didn’t know at the start of that visit, and I don’t know now. I could have said: There’s not much to say, Elisa, it’s all clear: Marcello will consume you, he’ll get used to your body, he’ll leave you. But they were words that sounded old, not even my mother had dared to say them. So I resigned myself. I had gone away, Elisa had stayed. What would I have been if I, too, had stayed, what choices would I have made? Hadn’t I, too, liked the Solara boys when I was a girl? And besides, what had I gained by leaving? Not even the capacity to find words of wisdom to persuade my sister not to ruin herself. Elisa had a pretty face with delicate features, an unremarkable body, a caressing voice. Marcello I remembered as tall, handsome, muscular, he had a square face with a healthy complexion, and was capable of intense feelings of love: he had demonstrated that when he was in love with Lila, it didn’t seem that he’d had other loves since. What to say, then? In the end she went to get a box and showed me all the jewelry Marcello had given her, objects compared to which the earrings I had given her were what they were, small things.

“Be careful,” I said. “Don’t lose yourself. And if you need to, call me.”

I was about to get up, but she stopped me, laughing.