Elena Ferrante - The Story of the Lost Child

I didn’t confine myself to that strategy, I telephoned Pietro. He was about to move to Boston; now he seemed determined. He was mad at Doriana, who — he said with disgust — had turned out to be an untrustworthy person, completely without ethics. Then he listened to me attentively. He knew Rino, he remembered him as a child and knew what he had become as an adult. He asked a couple of times, to be sure of not making a mistake: He has no drug problems? And once only: Does he work? Finally he said: It’s preposterous. We agreed that between the two of them, taking account of our daughter’s sensitivity, even a flirtation had to be ruled out.

I was glad that we saw things the same way, I asked him to come to Naples and talk to Dede. He promised he would, but he had endless commitments and appeared only near Dede’s exams, in essence to say goodbye to his daughters before leaving for America. We hadn’t seen each other for a long time. He had his usual distracted expression. His hair was by now grizzled, his body had become heavier. He hadn’t seen Lila and Enzo since Tina’s disappearance — when he came to see the girls he would stay only a few hours or take them off on a trip — and he devoted himself to them. Pietro was a kind man, careful not to cause embarrassment with his role as a prestigious professor. He talked to them at length, assuming that serious and sympathetic expression that I knew well and that in the past had irritated me, but that today I appreciated because it wasn’t feigned, and was natural also to Dede. I don’t know what he said about Tina, but while Enzo remained impassive Lila cheered up, she thanked him for his wonderful letter of years earlier, said it had helped her a lot. Only then did I learn that Pietro had written to her about the loss of her daughter, and Lila’s genuine gratitude surprised me. He was modest; she excluded Enzo from the conversation completely and began to speak to my ex-husband about Neapolitan things. She dwelt at length on the Palazzo Cellamare, about which I knew nothing except that it was above Chiaia, while she — I discovered then — knew in minute detail the structure, the history, the treasures. Pietro listened with interest. I fumed, I wanted him to stay with his daughters and, especially, deal with Dede.

When Lila finally left him free and Pietro, after spending some time with Elsa and Imma, found a way of going off with Dede, father and daughter talked a lot, peacefully. I observed them from the window as they walked back and forth along the stradone . It struck me, I think for the first time, how similar they were physically. Dede didn’t have her father’s bushy hair but she had his large frame and also something of his clumsy walk. She was a girl of eighteen, she had a feminine softness, but at every gesture, every step, she seemed to enter and exit Pietro’s body as if it were her ideal dwelling. I stayed at the window hypnotized by the sight. The time extended, they talked so long that Elsa and Imma began to get restless. I also have things to tell Papa, said Elsa, and if he leaves when will I tell him? Imma murmured: He said he’d talk to me, too.

Finally Pietro and Dede returned, they seemed in a good mood. In the evening all three girls gathered around to listen to him. He said he was going to work in a very big, very beautiful redbrick building that had a statue at the entrance. The statue represented a man whose face and clothes were dark, except for one shoe, which the students touched every day for good luck and so it had become highly polished, and sparkled in the sun like gold. They had a good time together, leaving me out. I thought, as always on those occasions: now that he doesn’t have to be a father every day he’s a very good father, even Imma adores him; maybe with men things can’t go otherwise: live with them for a while, have children, and then they’re gone. The superficial ones, like Nino, would go without feeling any type of obligation; the serious ones, like Pietro, wouldn’t fail in any of their duties and would if necessary give the best of themselves. Anyway, the time of faithfulness and permanent relationships was over for men and for women. But then why did we look at poor Gennaro, called Rino, as a threat? Dede would live her passion, would use it up, would go on her way. Every so often she would see him again, they would exchange some affectionate words. The process was that: why did I want something different for my daughter?

The question embarrassed me, I announced in my best authoritarian tone that it was time to go to bed. Elsa had just finished vowing that in a few years, once she got her high school diploma, she would go and live in the United States with her father, and Imma was tugging on Pietro’s arm, she wanted attention, she was no doubt about to ask if she could join him, too. Dede sat in uncertain silence. Maybe, I thought, things are already resolved, Rino has been put aside, now she’ll say to Elsa: You have to wait four years, I’m finishing high school now and in a month at most I’m going to Papa’s.

But as soon as Pietro and I were alone I had only to look at his face to understand that he was very worried. He said:

“There’s nothing to do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dede functions by theorems.”

“What did she tell you?”

“It’s not important what she said but what she will certainly do.”

“She’ll go to bed with him?”

“Yes. She has a very firm plan, with the stages precisely marked out. Right after her exams she’ll make a declaration to Rino, lose her virginity, they’ll leave together and live by begging, putting the work ethic in crisis.”

“Don’t joke.”

“I’m not joking, I’m reporting her plan to you word for word.”

“Easy for you to be sarcastic, since you can avoid it, leaving the role of the bad mother to me.”

“She’s counting on me. She said that as soon as that boy wants, she’ll come to Boston, with him.”

“I’ll break her legs.”

“Or maybe he and she will break yours.”

We talked into the night, at first about Dede, then also about Elsa and Imma, finally everything: politics, literature, the books I was writing, the newspaper articles, a new essay he was working on. We hadn’t talked so much for a long time. He teased me good-humoredly for always taking, in his view, a middle position. He made fun of my halfway feminism, my halfway Marxism, my halfway Freudianism, my halfway Foucault-ism, my halfway subversiveness. Only with me, he said in a slightly harsher tone, you never used half measures. He sighed: Nothing was right for you, I was inadequate in everything. That other man was perfect. But now? He acted like the rigorous person and he ended up in the socialist gang. Elena, Elena, how you have tormented me. You were angry with me even when those kids pointed a gun at me. And you brought to our house your childhood friends who were murderers. You remember? But so what, you’re Elena, I loved you so much, we have two children, and of course I still love you.

I let him talk. Then I admitted that I had often held senseless positions. I even admitted that he was right about Nino, he had been a great disappointment. And I tried to return to Dede and Rino. I was worried, I didn’t know how to manage the issue. I said that to keep the boy away from our daughter would cause, among other things, trouble with Lila and that I felt guilty, I knew she would consider it an insult. He nodded.

“You have to help her.”

“I don’t know how to.”

“She’s trying everything possible to engage her mind and emerge from her grief, but she’s unable to.”

“It’s not true, she did before, now she’s not even working, she’s not doing anything.”