Elena Ferrante - The Story of the Lost Child

His serious tone immediately worried me. In almost fifteen years he had never insisted on his authority, he had sided with me against Adele, he had always treated me kindly. With forced warmth I invited him to dinner on Via Tasso, which cost me anxiety and hard work, but I did it partly because Nino wanted to propose a new collection of essays.

The editor was polite but not affectionate. He expressed his condolences for my mother, he praised Imma, he gave Dede and Elsa some colorful books, he waited patiently for me to maneuver between dinner and daughters, leaving Nino to talk to him about his possible book. When we got to dessert he brought up the true reason for the meeting: he wanted to know if he could plan to bring out my novel the following fall. I turned red.

“Fall of 1982?”

“Fall of 1982.”

“Maybe, but I’ll know better in a little while.”

“You have to know now.”

“I’m still nowhere near the end.”

“You could let me read something.”

“I don’t feel ready.”

Silence. He took a sip of wine, then said in a serious tone:

“Up to now you’ve been very lucky, Elena. The last book went particularly well, you’re respected, you’ve gained a good number of readers. But readers have to be cultivated. If you lose them, you lose the chance to publish other books.”

I was displeased. I understood that Adele, by force of repetition, had gotten through even to that very civilized and polite man. I imagined the words of Pietro’s mother, her choice of terms— She’s an untrustworthy southerner who behind a charming appearance weaves crafty tissues of lies —and I hated myself because I was proving to that man that those words were true. At dessert, the editor, in a few curt phrases, liquidated Nino’s proposal, saying that it was a difficult moment for essays. The awkwardness increased, no one knew what to say, I talked about Imma until finally the guest looked at his watch and said that he had to go. At that point I couldn’t take it and I said:

“All right, I’ll deliver the book in time for it to come out in the fall.”

My promise soothed the editor. He stayed another hour, he chatted about this and that, he made an effort to be more well disposed to Nino. He embraced me as he left, whispering, I’m sure you’re writing a wonderful story.

As soon as I closed the door I exclaimed: Adele is still plotting against me, I’m in trouble. But Nino didn’t agree. Even the slim possibility that his book would be published had cheered him. Besides, he had been in Palermo recently for the Socialist Party Congress, where he had seen both Guido and Adele, and the professor had indicated that he admired some of his recent work. So he said, conciliatory:

“Don’t exaggerate the intrigues of the Airotas. All you had to do was promise you’d get to work and you saw how things changed?”

We quarreled. I had just promised a book, yes, but how, when would I be able to write it with the necessary concentration and continuity? Did he realize what my life had been, and still was? I listed randomly the illness and death of my mother, the care of Dede and Elsa, the household tasks, the pregnancy, the birth of Imma, his lack of interest in her, the rushing from this conference to that congress, more and more often without me, and the disgust, yes, the disgust at having to share him with Eleonora. I , I shouted at him, I am now nearly divorced from Pietro, and you wouldn’t even separate. Could I work among so many tensions, by myself, without any help from him?

The fight was pointless, Nino reacted as he always did. He looked depressed, he whispered: You don’t understand, you can’t understand, you’re unfair, and he swore fiercely that he loved me and couldn’t do without Imma, the children, me. Finally he offered to pay for a housekeeper.

He had encouraged me on other occasions to find someone who could take care of the house, the shopping, the cooking, the children, but, in order not to seem excessively demanding, I had always responded that I didn’t want to be a bigger economic burden than necessary. Generally I tended to give more importance not to what would be helpful to me but to what he would appreciate. And then I didn’t want to admit that the same problems I had already experienced with Pietro were surfacing in our relationship. But this time, surprising him, I said immediately: Yes, all right, find this woman as soon as possible. And it seemed to me that I was speaking in the voice of my mother, not in the feeble voice of recent times but in strident tones. Who gave a damn about the shopping, I had to take care of my future. And my future was to write a novel in the next few months. And that novel had to be very good. And nothing, not even Nino, would prevent me from doing my work well.

I examined the situation. The two previous books, which for years had produced a little money, partly thanks to translations, had stopped selling. The advance I had received for my new book and hadn’t yet earned was nearly gone. The articles I wrote, working late into the night, either brought in little or were not paid at all. I lived, in other words, on the money that Pietro contributed punctually every month and that Nino supplemented by taking on the rent for the house, the bills, and, I have to admit, often giving me money for clothes for myself and the children. But as long as I had had to confront all the upheavals and inconveniences and sufferings that followed my return to Naples, it had seemed fair. Now instead — after that evening — I decided that it was urgent to become as autonomous as possible. I had to write and publish regularly, I had to reinforce my profile as an author, I had to earn money. And the reason was not any literary vocation, the reason had to do with the future: Did I really think that Nino would take care of me and my daughters forever?

It was then that a part of me — only a part — began to emerge that consciously, without particular suffering, admitted that it couldn’t really count on him. It wasn’t just the old fear that he would leave me; rather it seemed to me an abrupt contraction of perspective. I stopped looking into the distance, I began to think that in the immediate future I couldn’t expect from Nino more than what he was giving me, and that I had to decide if it was enough.

I continued to love him, of course. I liked his long slender body, his methodical intelligence. And I had a great admiration for his work. His old ability to assemble facts and interpret them was a skill that was much in demand. Recently he had published a highly regarded work — maybe that was the one Guido had liked so much — on the economic crisis and on the karstic movement of capital that was being shifted from sources to be investigated toward construction, finance, private television. Yet something about him had begun to bother me. For example, I was wounded by his delight in finding favor with my former father-in-law. Nor did I like the way he had begun again to differentiate Pietro— a petty professor with no imagination, highly praised only because of his surname and his obtuse activity in the Communist Party —from his father, the real Professor Airota, whom he praised unrestrainedly as the author of fundamental volumes on Hellenism and as an outstanding and combative figure of the socialist left. His renewed liking for Adele further wounded me; he was constantly calling her a great lady, extraordinary at public relations. He seemed to me, in other words, sensitive to the approval of those who had authority and ready to catch out, or even, at times, humiliate, out of envy, those who did not yet have enough of it and those who did not have it at all but could have it. Something that marred the image that I had always had of him and that he generally had of himself.