Elena Ferrante - The Story of the Lost Child

“Can I come to lunch at your house with the children?”

“Of course.”

“Enzo won’t be annoyed?”

“You know he’ll be pleased.”

I heard Tina’s happy little voice, Lila said to her: Quiet. Then she asked me with a wariness that she normally didn’t have:

“Is something wrong?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“What you predicted.”

“Did you fight with Nino?”

“I’ll tell you later, I have to go now.”

I arrived early at school. Imma had by now lost any interest in me, the steering wheel, the horn, and was howling. I forced her yet again to stay wrapped in the jacket and we went to find some cookies. I thought I was acting calmly — inside I felt tranquil: not fury but disgust still prevailed, a revulsion not different from what I would have felt if I had seen two lizards coupling — but I realized that the passersby were looking at me with curiosity, with alarm, as I hurried along the street in my wet pants, talking aloud to the baby, who, squeezed tight in the coat, was wriggling and wailing.

At the first cookie Imma quieted down, but her calm freed my anxiety. Nino must have put off his appointment, he was probably looking for me, I was in danger of finding him at school. Since Elsa came out before Dede, who was in her second year of middle school, I went and stood in a corner from which I could watch the entrance of the elementary school without being seen. My teeth were chattering with cold, Imma was smearing my coat with saliva-soaked cookie crumbs. I surveyed the area, nervously, but Nino didn’t appear. And he didn’t appear at the entrance of the middle school, from which Dede soon emerged in a flood of pushing and shoving, shouts, and insults in dialect.

The children paid little attention to me; they were very interested in the novelty of my coming to get them with Imma.

“Why are you holding her in the coat?” Dede asked.

“Because she’s cold.”

“Did you see she’s ruining it?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Once when I got you dirty you slapped me,” Elsa complained.

“It’s not true.”

“It’s very true.”

Dede investigated:

“Why is it that she has only a shirt and diaper on?”

“She’s fine like that.”

“Did something happen?”

“No. Now we’re going to have lunch at Aunt Lina’s.”

They greeted the news with their usual enthusiasm, then they settled in the car, and while the baby talked to her sisters in her obscure language, happy to be the center of their attention, they began to fight over who got to hold her. I insisted that they hold her together, without pulling her this way and that: She’s not made of rubber, I cried. Elsa wasn’t pleased with that solution and swore at Dede in dialect. I tried to slap her, I said, staring at her in the rearview mirror: What did you say, repeat it, what did you say? She didn’t cry, she abandoned Imma to Dede, muttering that taking care of her sister bored her. Then, when the baby reached out her hands to play, she pushed her away roughly. She shouted, assaulting my nerves: Imma, that’s enough, you’re bothering me, you’re getting me dirty. And to me: Mamma, make her stop. I couldn’t bear it anymore, I let out a scream that frightened all three of them. We crossed the city in a state of tension broken only by the whispering of Dede and Elsa, who were trying to understand if, again, something irreparable was about to happen in their lives.

I couldn’t even tolerate that consultation. I couldn’t bear anything anymore: their childhood, my role as mother, Imma’s babbling. And then the presence of my daughters in the car clashed with the images of coitus that were constantly before me, with the odor of sex that was still in my nostrils, with the rage that was beginning to advance, along with the most vulgar dialect. Nino had fucked the servant and then gone to his appointment, not giving a shit about me or even about his daughter. Ah, what a piece of shit, all I did was make mistakes. Was he like his father? No, too simple. Nino was very intelligent, Nino was extraordinarily cultured. His propensity for fucking did not come from a crude, naïve display of virility based on half-fascistic, half-southern clichés. What he had done to me, what he was doing to me, was filtered by a very refined knowledge. He dealt in complex concepts, he knew that this way he would offend me to the point of destroying me. But he had done it just the same. He had thought: I can’t give up my pleasure just because that shit can be a pain in the ass. Like that, just like that. And surely he judged as philistine — that adjective was still very widespread in our world — my possible reaction. Philistine, philistine. I even knew the line he would resort to in sophisticated justification: What’s the harm, the flesh is weak and I’ve read all the books. Exactly those words, nasty son of a bitch. Rage had opened up a pathway in the horror. I shouted at Imma— even at Imma —to be quiet. When I reached Lila’s house I hated Nino as until that moment I had never hated anyone.

Lila had made lunch. She knew that Dede and Elsa adored orecchiette with tomato sauce and she announced this, creating a rowdy scene of enthusiasm. That wasn’t all. She took Imma from my arms and cared for her and Tina as if suddenly her daughter had doubled. She changed them both, washed them, dressed them identically, cuddled them with an extraordinary display of maternal care. Then, since the two little girls had recognized each other at once and were playing, she put them down on an old carpet, to crawl around, babble. How different they were. Bitterly I compared the daughter of Nino and me to the daughter of Lila and Enzo. Tina seemed prettier, healthier than Imma: she was the sweet fruit of a solid relationship.

Meanwhile Enzo came home from work, cordially laconic as usual. At the table neither he nor Lila asked me why I wasn’t eating. Only Dede intervened, as if to take me away from her own bad thoughts and those of the others. She said: my Mamma always eats just a little because she doesn’t want to get fat, and I’m doing that, too. I exclaimed, threatening: You have to clean your plate down to the last bite. And Enzo, perhaps to protect my daughters from me, started a comical contest to see who could eat the most and finish first. He patiently answered Dede’s many questions about Rino — my daughter had hoped to see him at least for lunch — and explained that he had started a job in a workshop and was out all day. Then, at the end of the meal, in great secrecy, he took the two sisters into Gennaro’s room to show them all the treasures there. After a few minutes there was a burst of furious music, and they didn’t come back.

I was alone with Lila, and I told her every detail, in a tone between sarcasm and suffering. She listened without interrupting. I realized, the more I put into words what had happened, the more ridiculous the scene of sex between that fat woman and skinny Nino seemed. He woke up — at a certain point the words emerged in dialect — he found Silvana in the bathroom, and even before peeing he pulled up her skirt and stuck it in. Then I burst out laughing in a vulgar fashion and Lila looked at me uneasily. She used such tones, she didn’t expect them from me. You have to calm down, she said, and since Imma was crying we went into the other room.

My daughter, fair-haired, red in the face, was shedding large tears, her mouth open, and as soon as she saw me she raised her arms to be picked up. Tina, dark, pale, stared at her, disconcerted, and when her mother appeared she didn’t move, she called to her as if she wanted her to help her understand, saying “Mamma” clearly. Lila picked up both babies, settled one on each arm, kissed mine, drying her tears with her lips, spoke to her, soothed her.