Elena Ferrante - The Story of the Lost Child

I was preoccupied with Dede’s departure. Occasionally I said to her: Stay, you’re making me very unhappy. She answered: You have so many things to do, you won’t even notice I’m gone. I insisted: Imma adores you and so does Elsa, you’ll clear things up, it will pass. But Dede didn’t want to hear her sister’s name, as soon as I mentioned it she assumed an expression of disgust and went out, slamming the door.

A few nights before her departure she suddenly grew very pale — we were having dinner — and began to tremble. She muttered: I can’t breathe. Imma quickly poured her a glass of water. Dede took a sip, then left her place and came to sit on my lap. It was something she had never done. She was big, taller than me, she had long since cut off even the slightest contact between our bodies; if by chance we touched she sprang back as if by a force of repulsion. Her weight surprised me, her warmth, her full hips. I held her around the waist, she put her arms around my neck, she wept with deep sobs. Imma left her place at the table, came over and tried to be included in the embrace. She must have thought that her sister wouldn’t leave, and for the next days she was happy, she behaved as if everything had been put right. But Dede did leave; rather, after that breakdown she seemed tougher and more determined. With Imma she was affectionate, she kissed her hundreds of times, she said: I want at least one letter a week. She let me hug and kiss her, but without returning it. I hovered around her, I struggled to predict her every desire, it was useless. When I complained of her coldness she said: It’s impossible to have a real relationship with you, the only things that count are work and Aunt Lina; there’s nothing that’s not swallowed up inside them, the real punishment, for Elsa, is to stay here. Bye, Mamma.

On the positive side there was only the fact that she had gone back to calling her sister by name.

When, in early September of 1988, Elsa returned home, I hoped that her liveliness would drive out the impression that Lila really had managed to pull me down into her void. But it wasn’t so. Rino’s presence in the house, instead of giving new life to the rooms, made them bleak. He was an affectionate youth, completely submissive to Elsa and Imma, who treated him like their servant. I myself, I have to say, got into the habit of entrusting to him endless boring tasks — mainly the long lines at the post office — which left me more time to work. But it depressed me to see that big slow body around, available at the slightest nod and yet moping, always obedient except when it came to basic rules like remembering to raise the toilet seat when he peed, leaving the bathtub clean, not leaving his dirty socks and underwear on the floor.

Elsa didn’t lift a finger to improve the situation, rather she purposely complicated it. I didn’t like her coy ways with Rino in front of Imma, I hated her performance as an uninhibited woman when in fact she was a girl of fifteen. Above all I couldn’t bear the state in which she left the room where once she had slept with Dede and which now she occupied with Rino. She got out of bed, sleepily, to go to school, had breakfast quickly, slipped away. After a while Rino appeared, ate for an hour, shut himself in the bathroom for at least another half hour, got dressed, hung around, went out, picked up Elsa at school. When they got back they ate cheerfully and immediately shut themselves in the room.

That room was like a crime scene, Elsa didn’t want me to touch anything. But neither of them bothered to open the windows or tidy up a little. I did it before Pinuccia arrived; it annoyed me that she would smell the odor of sex, that she would find traces of their relations.

Pinuccia didn’t like the situation. When it came to dresses, shoes, makeup, hairstyles, she admired what she called my modernity, but in this case she let me understand quickly and in every possible way that I had made a decision that was too modern, an opinion that must have been widespread in the neighborhood. It was very unpleasant, one morning, to find her there, as I was trying to work, with a newspaper on which lay a condom, knotted so that the semen wouldn’t spill. I found it at the foot of the bed, she said disgusted. I pretended it was nothing. There’s no need to show it to me, I remarked, continuing to type on the computer, there’s the wastebasket for that.

In reality I didn’t know how to behave. At first I thought that over time everything would improve. Every day there were clashes with Elsa, but I tried not to overdo it; I still felt wounded by Dede’s departure and didn’t want to lose her as well. So I went more and more often to Lila to say to her: Tell Rino, he’s a good boy, try to explain that he has to be a little neater. But she seemed just to be waiting for my complaints to pick a quarrel.

“Send him back here,” she raged one morning, “enough of that nonsense of staying at your house. Rather, let’s do this: there’s room, when your daughter wants to see him she comes down, knocks, and sleeps here if she wants.”

I was annoyed. My child had to knock and ask if she could sleep with hers? I muttered:

“No, it’s fine like this.”

“If it’s fine like this, what are we talking about?”

I fumed.

“Lila, I’m just asking you to talk to Rino: he’s twenty-four years old, tell him to behave like an adult. I don’t want to be quarreling with Elsa continuously, I’m in danger of losing my temper and driving her out of the house.”

“Then the problem is your child, not mine.”

On those occasions the tension rose rapidly but had no outlet; she was sarcastic, I went home frustrated. One evening we were having dinner when, from the stairs, her intransigent cry reached us, she wanted Rino to come to her immediately. He got agitated, Elsa offered to go with him. But as soon as Lila saw her she said: This is our business, go home. My daughter returned sullenly and meanwhile downstairs a violent quarrel erupted. Lila shouted, Enzo shouted, Rino shouted. I suffered for Elsa, who was anxiously wringing her hands, she said: Mamma, do something, what’s happening, why do they treat him like that?

I said nothing, I did nothing. The quarrel stopped, some time passed, Rino didn’t return. Elsa then insisted that I go see what had happened. I went down and Enzo, not Lila, opened the door. He was tired, depressed, he didn’t invite me to come in. He said:

“Lila told me that the boy doesn’t behave well, so from now on he’s staying here.”

“Let me talk to her.”

I discussed it with Lila until late into the night; Enzo, gloomy, shut himself in another room. I understood almost immediately that she wanted to be thanked. She had intervened, she had taken back her son, had humiliated him. Now she wanted me to say to her: Your son is like a son of mine, it’s fine with me that he’s at my house, that he sleeps with Elsa, I won’t come and complain anymore. I resisted for a long time, then I gave in and brought Rino back to my house. As soon as we left the apartment I heard her and Enzo start fighting again.

Rino was grateful.

“I owe you everything, Aunt Lenù, you’re the best person I know and I’ll always love you.”

“Rino, I’m not good at all. All you owe me is the favor of remembering that we have a single bathroom and, besides Elsa, Imma and I also use that bathroom.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry, sometimes I get distracted, I won’t do it anymore.”

He constantly apologized, he was constantly distracted. He was, in his way, in good faith. He declared endlessly that he wanted to find a job, that he wanted to contribute to the household expenses, that he would be very careful not to cause me trouble in any way, that he had an unbounded respect for me. But he didn’t find a job, and life, in all the most dispiriting aspects of dailiness, continued as before, and perhaps worse. At any rate, I stopped going to Lila. I told her: Everything’s fine.