Elena Ferrante - The Story of the Lost Child

Occasionally the days were simpler. Carmen, for example, sometimes came to get me in her car. And Alfonso did the same. Naturally it was a sign of affection for me. They spoke respectfully to my mother, at most they gave her some satisfaction by praising her granddaughter and the comfort of the room. The rest of the time they spent either talking in the corridor with me or waiting outside, in the car, to be in time to take me to pick up the girls at school. The mornings with them were always intense and created a curious effect: they brought together the neighborhood of my mother, now near its end, and the one being constructed under Lila’s influence.

I told Carmen what our friend had done for my mother. She said with satisfaction: You know no one can stop Lina, and she spoke of her as if she attributed to her magical powers. But I learned more from a quarter of an hour spent with Alfonso in the spotless corridor of the clinic, while the doctor was with my mother. He, too, usually, was inflamed with gratitude toward Lila, but what struck me was that for the first time he talked explicitly about himself. He said: Lina taught me a job with a great future. He exclaimed: Without her what would I have been, nothing, a piece of living flesh, without fulfillment. He compared Lila with his wife’s behavior: I left Marisa free to betray me as much as she wanted, I gave my name to her children, but just the same she’s angry at me, she tormented me and torments me, she has spit in my face countless times, she says I cheated her. He defended himself: How did I cheat, Lenù, you’re an intellectual and you can understand me, the one who was cheated was me, cheated by myself, and if Lina hadn’t helped me I would have died cheated. His eyes were shining. The most beautiful thing she did for me was to impose clarity on me, teach me to say: If I touch the bare foot of this woman I feel nothing, while I die of desire if I touch the foot of that man, there, and caress his hands, cut his nails with scissors, squeeze his blackheads, be with him on a dance floor and say to him, If you know how to waltz lead me, let me feel how well you lead. He recalled faraway events: Do you remember when you and Lina came to my house to ask my father to give you back the dolls and he called me, he asked, teasing, Alfò, did you take them — because I was the shame of the family, I played with my sister’s dolls and I tried on Mamma’s necklaces? He explained to me, but as if I already knew everything and was useful only in enabling him to express his true nature. Even as a child, he said, I knew I wasn’t what the others thought but not what I thought, either. I said to myself: I’m another thing, a thing that is hidden in the veins, it has no name and waits. But I didn’t know what that thing was and especially I didn’t know how it could be me, until Lila forced me — I don’t know how to say it — to take a little of her. You know what she’s like, she said: start here and see what happens; so we were mixed up — it was a lot of fun — and now I’m not what I was and I’m not Lila, either, but another person who is slowly defining himself.

He was happy to share these confidences and I was happy, too, that he made them. A new intimacy arose between us, different from when we used to walk home from school. And with Carmen, too, I had the impression that our relationship was becoming more trusting. Then I realized that both, if in different ways, were asking something more of me. It happened twice, both times connected to Marcello’s presence in the clinic.

My sister Elisa and her baby were usually driven to the clinic by an old man named Domenico. Domenico left them there and drove our father back to the neighborhood. But sometimes it was Marcello himself who brought Elisa and Silvio. One morning when he appeared in person Carmen was there with me. I was sure there would be tensions between them, but they exchanged a greeting that wasn’t warm but not confrontational, either, and she hovered around him like an animal ready to approach at the first hint of favor. Once we were alone she confided to me nervously, in a low voice, that even if the Solaras hated her she was trying to be friendly and she did it for love of Pasquale. But — she exclaimed — I can’t do it, Lenù, I hate them, I want to strangle them, it’s only out of necessity. Then she asked: How would you act in my place?

Something similar happened with Alfonso. One morning when he took me to see my mother, Marcello appeared and Alfonso panicked just at the sight of him. And yet Solara behaved just as he usually did: he greeted me with awkward politeness, and gave Alfonso a nod, pretending not to see the hand that he had mechanically extended. To avoid friction I pushed my friend into the hall with the excuse that I had to nurse Imma. Once outside the room Alfonso muttered: If they murder me, remember it was Marcello. I said: Don’t exaggerate. But he was tense, he began sarcastically to make a list of the people in the neighborhood who would gladly kill him, people I didn’t know and people I knew. On the list he put his brother Stefano (he laughed; he fucks my wife only to demonstrate that we’re not all fags in the family ) and also Rino (he laughed; ever since he realized I’m able to look like his sister, he would do to me what he can’t do to her ). But at the top he always left Marcello, according to him it was Marcello who hated him most. He said it with satisfaction and yet anguish: he thinks Michele went mad because of me. And he added, sneering: Lila encouraged me to be like her, she likes the effort I make, she likes to see how I distort her, she’s pleased with the effect that this distortion has on Michele, and I’m pleased, too. Then he stopped, he asked me: What do you think?

I listened, nursing the baby. He and Carmen were not satisfied that I lived in Naples, that every so often we met: they wanted me to be fully reintegrated into the neighborhood, they asked me to stand beside Lila as a guardian deity, they urged that we act as divinities at times in agreement, at times in competition, but in any case attentive to their problems. That request for greater involvement in their affairs, which in her way Lila, too, often made and which in general seemed an inappropriate pressure, in that situation moved me, I felt that it reinforced the tired voice of my mother when she proudly pointed me out to her friends of the neighborhood as an important part of herself. I hugged Imma to my breast and adjusted the blanket to protect her from the drafts.

Only Nino and Lila never came to the clinic. Nino was explicit: I have no desire to meet that Camorrist, I’m sorry for your mother, give her my best, but I can’t go with you. Sometimes I convinced myself that it was a way of justifying his disappearances, but more often he seemed truly hurt, because he had gone to a lot of trouble for my mother and then I and my whole family had ended up going along with the Solaras. I explained to him that it was a difficult system. I said: It doesn’t have to do with Marcello, we only agreed to what made our mother happy. But he grumbled: that’s why Naples will never change.

As for Lila, she said nothing about the move to the clinic. She continued to help me out even though she was about to give birth herself at any moment. I felt guilty. I said: Don’t worry about me, you should look after yourself. But no — she answered pointing to her stomach with an expression between sarcasm and alarm — he’s late, I don’t want to and he doesn’t want to. And as soon as I needed something she hurried over. Naturally, she never offered to drive me to Capodimonte, as Carmen and Alfonso did. But if the children had a fever and I couldn’t send them to school — as happened several times in Immacolata’s first three weeks of life, which were cold and rainy — she was available, she left the job to Enzo and Alfonso, she came up to Via Tasso to take all three of them.