The Story of the Lost Child (27 page)

That day, I don’t know why, I had put on the bracelet she had given me more than twenty years before. I hadn’t worn it for a long time; I usually wore the finer jewelry that Adele had recommended. From then on I wore it often.

I struggled to accept my mother’s death. Even though I didn’t shed a tear, the pain lasted for a long time and perhaps has never really gone away. I had considered her an insensitive and vulgar woman, I had feared her and fled. Right after her funeral I felt the way you feel when it suddenly starts raining hard, and you look around and find no place to take shelter. For weeks I saw and heard her everywhere, night and day. She was a vapor that in my imagination continued to burn without a wick. I missed the different way of being together we had discovered during her illness, I prolonged it by retrieving positive memories of when I was a child and she was young. My sense of guilt wanted to compel her to endure. In a drawer I put a hairpin of hers, a handkerchief, a pair of scissors, but they all seemed inadequate objects, even the bracelet was worthless. My pregnancy had brought back the pain in my hip and Imma’s birth hadn’t relieved it, but maybe that was why I decided not to go to the doctor. I nurtured that pain like a bequest preserved in my body.

The words she had said to me at the end (
You’re you, I have confidence
) also stayed with me for a long time. She died convinced that because of how I was made, because of the resources I had accumulated, I would not be overwhelmed by anything. That idea worked inside me and in the end helped me. I decided to prove to her that she had been right. I began again in a disciplined way to take care of myself. I returned to using every bit of empty time for reading and writing. I lost what little interest I’d had in petty politics—I couldn’t get excited at the intrigues of the five governing parties and their quarrels with the Communists, as Nino now was actively doing—but I continued to follow closely the corrupt and violent drift of the country. I collected feminist readings and, still fortified by the small success of my last book, proposed articles to the new journals directed at women. But, I have to admit, a great part of my energy was focused on convincing my publisher that I was moving along with the new novel.

A few years earlier half of a substantial advance had been paid, but in the meantime I had done very little, I was stumbling along, still looking for a story. The editor in chief, who was responsible for that generous sum, had never pressured me, he inquired discreetly, and if I was elusive, because to admit the truth seemed to me shameful, he let me be elusive. Then a small unpleasant event occurred. A semi-sarcastic article appeared in the
Corriere della Sera
that, after praising a first novel that had had a modest success, alluded to the failed promise of the new Italian literature, and included my name. A few days later the editor passed through Naples—he was to take part in a prestigious conference—and asked if we could meet.

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.

It wasn’t only that. The political and cultural climate was changing, other readings were emerging. We had all stopped making extreme speeches, and I was surprised to find myself agreeing with positions that years earlier I had opposed in Pietro, out of a wish to contradict him, out of the need to quarrel. But Nino went too far, he now found ridiculous not only every subversive statement but also every ethical declaration, every display of purity. He said, making fun of me:

“There are too many sensitive souls around.”

“Meaning?”

“People who are outraged, as if they didn’t know that either the parties do their job or you get armed gangs and Masonic lodges.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that a party can’t be anything other than a distributor of favors in exchange for support, ideals are part of the furniture.”

“Well, then I’m a sensitive soul.”

“I know that.”

I began to find his craving to be politically surprising unpleasant. When he organized dinners at my house he embarrassed his own guests by defending from the left positions of the right. The fascists—he maintained—aren’t always wrong and we should learn to talk to each other. Or: You can’t simply condemn, you have to get your hands dirty if you want to change things. Or even: Justice should as soon as possible be subordinated to the rights of those who have the task of governing, otherwise the judges become loose cannons, dangerous for the preservation of the democratic system. Or again: Wages have to be frozen, the mechanism of the wage index scale is ruinous for Italy. If someone disagreed with him he became contemptuous, he sneered, he let it be understood that it wasn’t worth the trouble to argue with people wearing blinders, whose heads were full of old slogans.

I retreated into an uneasy silence, in order not to take sides against him. He loved the shifting sands of the present, the future for him was decided there. He knew about everything that happened in the parties and in parliament, about the internal movements of capital and of the organization of labor. I, on the other hand, persisted in reading only what had to do with the dark conspiracies, the kidnappings and bloody last-ditch efforts of the armed red gangs, the debate on the decline of the centrality of workers, the identification of new opposition subjects. As a result I felt more comfortable with the language of the other diners than with his. One evening he quarreled with a friend who taught in the school of architecture. He became inflamed by passion, disheveled, handsome.

“You can’t distinguish between a step forward, a step back, and standing still.”

“What’s a step forward?” the friend asked.

“A prime minister who isn’t the same old Christian Demo-crat.”

“And standing still?”

“A demonstration by steelworkers.”

“And a step back?”

“Asking who’s cleaner, the socialists or the Communists.”

“You’re turning cynical.”

“You, on the other hand, have always been a shit.”

No, Nino no longer persuaded me the way he used to. He expressed himself, I don’t know how to say it, in a provocative and yet opaque way, as if precisely he, who extolled the long view, were able to follow only the daily moves and counter-moves of a system that to me, to his own friends, seemed rotten to the core. Enough, he would insist, let’s end the childish aversion to power: one has to be on the inside in the places where things are born and die: the parties, the banks, television. And I listened, but when he turned to me I lowered my gaze. I no longer concealed from myself that his conversation partly bored me, and partly seemed to point to a brittleness that dragged him down.