Elena Ferrante - The Story of the Lost Child

“It’s not reasoning, it’s feeling.”

I assumed a playful tone.

“Let me be consistent,” I said. “I didn’t baptize Dede and Elsa, I won’t baptize Immacolata. They’ll decide themselves when they grow up.”

He thought about it for a moment and burst out laughing: “Well, yes, who cares, it was an excuse for a celebration.”

“Let’s do it anyway.”

I promised that I would organize something for all his friends. In those first hours of our daughter’s life I observed him in every gesture, in the expressions of disappointment and those of approval. I felt happy and yet disoriented. Was it him? Was he the man I had always loved? Or a stranger I was forcing to assume a clear and definite character?

None of my relatives, none of my friends from the neighborhood came to the clinic. Maybe — I thought, once I got home — I should have a little party for them, too. I had kept my origins so far from myself that, although I spent quite a bit of time in the neighborhood, I had never invited a single person who had to do with my childhood and adolescence to the apartment on Via Tasso. I regretted it, I felt that sharp separation as a residue of more fragile periods of my life, almost a sign of immaturity. I still had that thought in mind when the telephone rang. It was Lila.

“We’re about to arrive.”

“Who.”

“Your mother and I.”

It was a cold afternoon, Vesuvius had a dusting of snow on top, that visit seemed ill-timed.

“In this cold? Going out will make her ill.”

“I told her but she won’t listen.”

“In a few days I’ll have a party, I’ll invite everyone, tell her she’ll see the baby then.”

“You tell her.”

I gave up the discussion, but every idea of celebration left me, I felt that visit as an intrusion. I had only been home for a short time. With feeding, bathing, some sutures that bothered me, I was tired. And at that moment Nino was in the house. I didn’t want my mother to be unhappy, and it made me uneasy that he and Lila should meet at a moment when I wasn’t yet in shape. I tried to get rid of Nino, but he didn’t seem to understand, in fact he seemed happy that my mother was coming, and stayed.

I went into the bathroom to fix myself up. When they knocked I rushed to open the door. I hadn’t seen my mother for ten days. The contrast was violent between Lila, still carrying two lives, beautiful and energetic, and my mother, gripping her arm like a life preserver in a storm, more bent over than ever, at the end of her strength, close to sinking. I had her lean on me, I led her to a chair at the window. She murmured: how beautiful the bay is. And she stared past the balcony, maybe so as not to look at Nino. But he came over to her and in his winning way began to point out to her the foggy outlines between sea and sky: That’s Ischia, there is Capri, come, you can see better here, lean on me. He never spoke to Lila, he didn’t even greet her. I talked to her.

“You’ve recovered quickly,” she said.

“I’m a little tired but I’m well.”

“You insist on staying up here, it’s hard to get here.”

“But it’s beautiful.”

“Well.”

“Come, let’s go get the baby.”

I took her into Immacolata’s room.

“You already have your looks back,” she praised me. “Your hair is so nice. And that necklace?”

“Nino gave it to me.”

I picked the baby up from the cradle. Lila sniffed her, put her nose in her neck, said she smelled her scent as soon as she came into the house.

“What scent?”

“Of talcum powder, milk, disinfectant, newness.”

“You like it?”

“Yes.”

“I expected her to weigh more. Evidently only I was fat.”

“Who knows what mine is like.”

She spoke of him always in the masculine now.

“He’ll be wonderful.”

She nodded yes, but as if she hadn’t heard, she was looking at the baby carefully. She ran a finger over her forehead, one ear. She repeated the pact we had jokingly made:

“If necessary we’ll make an exchange.”

I laughed, I brought the baby to my mother, who was leaning on Nino’s arm, near the window. She was staring up at him with pleasure, she was smiling, it was as if she had forgotten herself and imagined that she was young.

“Here’s Immacolata,” I said.

She looked at Nino. He exclaimed quickly:

“It’s a beautiful name.”

My mother murmured:

“It’s not true. But you can call her Imma, which is more modern.”

She left Nino’s arm, she gestured to me to give her her granddaughter. I did, but fearful that she didn’t have the strength to hold her.

“ Madonna , how beautiful you are,” she whispered, and turned to Lila: “Do you like her?”

Lila was distracted, she was staring at my mother’s feet.

“Yes,” she said without taking her eyes off them. “But sit down.”

I also looked where she was looking. Blood was dripping from under my mother’s black dress.

I snatched the infant with an instinctive jerk. My mother realized what was happening and I saw in her face disgust and shame. Nino grabbed her a moment before she fainted. Mamma, mamma, I called while he struck her lightly on one cheek with his fingertips. I was alarmed, she didn’t regain consciousness, and meanwhile the baby began to wail. She’ll die, I thought, terrified, she held out until the moment she saw Immacolata and then she let go. I kept repeating Mamma in a louder and louder voice.

“Call an ambulance,” Lila said.

I went to the telephone, I stopped, confused, I wanted to give the baby to Nino. But he avoided me, he turned to Lila instead, he said that it would be quicker to take her to the hospital in the car. I felt my heart in my throat, the baby was crying, my mother regained consciousness and began to moan. She whispered, weeping, that she didn’t want to set foot in the hospital, she reminded me, pulling on my skirt, that she had been admitted once and didn’t want to die in that abandonment. Trembling, she said: I want to see the baby grow up.

Nino at that point assumed the firm tone he had had even as a student when he had to confront difficult situations. Let’s go, he said and picked up my mother in his arms. Since she protested weakly he reassured her, he told her that he would take care of arranging everything. Lila looked at me perplexed, I thought: the professor who attends to my mother at the hospital is a friend of Eleonora’s family, Nino at this moment is indispensable, lucky he’s here. Lila said, leave me the baby, you go. I agreed, I was about to hand her Immacolata but with a hesitant gesture, I was connected to her as if she were still inside me. And, anyway, I couldn’t separate myself now, I had to feed her, bathe her. But to my mother, too, I felt bound as never before, I was shaking, what was that blood, what did it mean.

“Come on,” Nino said impatiently to Lila, “hurry up.”

“Yes,” I said, “go and let me know.”

Only when the door closed did I feel the wound of that situation: Lila and Nino together were taking my mother away, they were taking care of her when it should have been me.

I felt weak and confused. I sat on the couch, giving my breast to Immacolata to soothe her. I couldn’t take my eyes off the blood on the floor as I imagined the car speeding over the frozen streets of the city, the handkerchief outside the window signaling an emergency, the finger on the horn, my mother dying in the back seat. The car was Lila’s, was she driving or had he gotten behind the wheel? I have to stay calm, I said to myself.

I placed the baby in the cradle, and decided to call Elisa. I minimized what had happened, I was silent about Nino, I mentioned Lila. My sister immediately lost her temper, burst out crying, insulted me. She shouted that I had sent our mother who knows where with a stranger, that I should have called an ambulance, that I thought only of my own affairs and convenience, that if our mother died I was responsible. Then I heard her calling Marcello repeatedly in a commanding tone unfamiliar to me, petulant yet anguished cries. I said to her: What does “who knows where” mean, Lina took her to the hospital, why must you speak like that. She slammed down the telephone.