Elena Ferrante - The Story of the Lost Child

The next day I began to ask about what I had to do to get a job, even as a substitute, in the middle schools. I quickly realized that it wouldn’t be simple, and that in any case I would have to wait for the new school year. Since I took for granted the break with the publisher, which was followed in my imagination by the devastating collapse of my identity as a writer, I was frightened. From birth, the children had been used to a comfortable life, I myself — ever since my marriage to Pietro — couldn’t imagine being without books, magazines, newspapers, records, movies, theater. I had to think immediately of some provisional job, and I put advertisements in the local shops offering private lessons.

Then one morning in June the editor called. He had received the manuscript, he had read it.

“Already?” I said with feigned indifference.

“Yes. And it’s a book that I would never have expected from you, but that you, surprisingly, wrote.”

“You’re saying it’s bad?”

“It is, from the first line to the last, pure pleasure of narration.”

My heart was going crazy in my chest.

“Is it good or not?”

“It’s extraordinary.”

I was proud. In a few seconds I not only regained faith in myself, I relaxed, I began to speak of my work with a childish enthusiasm, I laughed too much, I questioned the editor closely to get a more articulated approval. I quickly understood that he had read my pages as a sort of autobiography, an arrangement in novel form of my experience of the poorest and most violent Naples. He said he had feared the negative effects of a return to my city, but now he had to admit that that return had helped me. I didn’t say that the book had been written several years earlier in Florence. It’s a harsh novel, he emphasized, I would say masculine, but paradoxically also delicate, in other words a big step forward. Then he discussed organizational questions. He wanted to move the publication to the spring of 1983 to devote himself to careful editing and to prepare the launch. He concluded, with some sarcasm:

“I talked about it with your ex-mother-in-law. She said that she had read an old version and hadn’t liked it; but evidently either her taste has aged or your personal problems kept her from giving a dispassionate evaluation.”

I quickly admitted that long ago I had let Adele read a first draft. He said: It’s clear that the air of Naples has given free rein to your talent. When he hung up I felt hugely relieved. I changed, I became particularly affectionate toward my daughters. The publisher paid the rest of the advance and my economic situation improved. Suddenly I began to look at the city and especially at the neighborhood as an important part of my life; not only should I not dismiss it but it was essential to the success of my work. It was a sudden leap, going from distrust to a joyful sense of myself. What I had felt as a precipice not only acquired literary nobility but seemed to me a determined choice of a cultural and political arena. The editor himself had sanctioned it authoritatively, saying: For you, returning to the point of departure has been a step forward. Of course, I hadn’t said that the book was written in Florence, that the return to Naples had had no influence on the text. But the narrative material, the human depth of the characters came from the neighborhood, and surely the turning point was there. Adele hadn’t had the sensitivity to understand, so she had lost. All the Airotas had lost. Nino had lost, too, as in essence he had considered me one of the women on his list, without distinguishing me from the others. And — what for me was even more significant — Lila had lost. She hadn’t liked my book, she had been severe, it was one of the few times in her life she had cried, when she had had to wound me with her negative judgment. But I didn’t want it from her, rather I was pleased that she was wrong. From childhood I had given her too much importance, and now I felt as if unburdened. Finally it was clear that what I was wasn’t her, and vice versa. Her authority was no longer necessary to me, I had my own. I felt strong, no longer a victim of my origins but capable of dominating them, of giving them a shape, of taking revenge on them for myself, for Lila, for whomever. What before was dragging me down was now the material for climbing higher. One morning in July of 1982 I called her and said:

“All right, I’ll take the apartment above you, I’m coming back to the neighborhood.”

I moved in midsummer, Antonio took care of the logistics. He assembled some brawny men who emptied the apartment on Via Tasso and arranged everything in the apartment in the neighborhood. The new house was dark and repainting the rooms didn’t help brighten it. But, contrary to what I had thought since I returned to Naples, this didn’t bother me; in fact the dusty light that had always struggled to penetrate the windows had the effect on me of an evocative childhood memory. Dede and Elsa, on the other hand, protested at length. They had grown up in Florence, Genoa, in the bright light of Via Tasso, and they immediately hated the floors of uneven tiles, the small dark bathroom, the din of the stradone . They resigned themselves only because now they could enjoy some not insignificant advantages: see Aunt Lina every day, get up later because the school was nearby, go there by themselves, spend time on the street and in the courtyard.

I was immediately seized by a yearning to regain possession of the neighborhood. I enrolled Elsa in the elementary school where I had gone and Dede in my middle school. I resumed contact with anyone, old or young, who remembered me. I celebrated my decision with Carmen and her family, with Alfonso, with Ada, with Pinuccia. Naturally I had misgivings, and Pietro, who was very unhappy with the decision, made them worse. He said on the telephone:

“On the basis of what criteria do you want to bring up our daughters in a place that you fled?”

“I won’t bring them up here.”

“But you’ve taken a house and enrolled them in school without considering that they deserve something else.”

“I have a book to finish and I can only do it well here.”

“I could have taken them.”

“You would also take Imma? All three are my daughters and I don’t want the third to be separated from the other two.”

He calmed down. He was happy that I had left Nino and he soon forgave the move. Keep at your work, he said, I have confidence in you, you know what you’re doing. I hoped it was true. I watched the trucks that passed noisily along the stradone , raising dust. I walked in the gardens that were full of syringes. I went into the neglected, empty church. I felt sad in front of the parish cinema, which had closed, in front of the party offices, which were like abandoned dens. I listened to the shouting of men, women, children in the apartments, especially at night. The feuds between families, the hostilities between neighbors, the ease with which things came to blows, the wars between gangs of boys. When I went to the pharmacy I remembered Gino; I felt revulsion at the sight of the place where he had been killed, and went cautiously around it. I spoke compassionately to his parents, who were still behind the old dark-wood counter, more bent over, white-haired in their white smocks, and as kind as ever. As a child I endured all this, I thought, let’s see if now I can control it.

“How is it that you decided to do it?” Lila asked some time after the move. Maybe she wanted an affectionate answer, or maybe a sort of recognition of the validity of her choices, words like: You were right to stay, going out into the world was of no use, now I understand. Instead I answered: