The Story of the Lost Child (31 page)

Sometimes he moved me, more often he irritated me, in general I responded with sarcasm. And he was silent, he nervously ruffled his hair, then he started again. But when I said to him coldly one morning that perhaps all that need for women was the symptom of a labile heterosexuality that in order to endure needed constant confirmation, he was offended, he harassed me for days, he wanted to know if I had been better with Antonio than with him. Since I was now tired of all that distraught talk, I shouted yes. And since in that phase of excruciating quarrels some of his friends had tried to get into my bed, and I, out of boredom, out of spite, had sometimes consented, I mentioned names of people he was fond of, and to wound him I said they had been better than him.

He disappeared. He had said that he couldn’t do without Dede and Elsa, he had said that he loved Imma more than his other children, he had said that he would take care of the three children even if I hadn’t wanted to go back to him. In reality not only did he forget about us immediately but he stopped paying the rent in Via Tasso, along with the bills for the electricity, the gas, the telephone.

I looked in vain for a cheaper apartment in the area: often, apartments that were uglier and smaller commanded even higher rents. Then Lila said to me that there were three rooms and a kitchen available just above her. The rent was almost nothing, from the windows you could see both the
stradone
and the courtyard. She said it in her way, in the tone of someone who signals: I’m only giving you the information, do as you like. I was depressed, I was frightened. Elisa had recently yelled at me during a quarrel: Papa is alone, go live with him, I’m tired of having to take care of him myself. And naturally I had refused, in my situation I couldn’t take care of my father, too. I was already the slave of my daughters. Imma was constantly sick, as soon as Dede got over the flu Elsa had it, she wouldn’t do her homework unless I sat with her, Dede got mad and said: Then you have to help me, too. I was exhausted, a nervous wreck. And then, in the great chaos I had fallen into, I didn’t have even that bit of active life that until then I had guaranteed myself. I turned down invitations and articles and trips, I didn’t dare answer the telephone for fear it was the publisher asking for the book. I had ended up in a vortex that was pulling me down, and a hypothetical return to the neighborhood would be the proof that I had touched bottom. To immerse myself again, and my daughters, in that mentality, let myself be absorbed by Lila, by Carmen, by Alfonso, by everyone, just as in fact they wanted. No, no, I swore to myself that I would go and live in Tribunali, in Duchesca, in Lavinaio, in Forcella, amid the scaffolding that marked the earthquake damage, rather than return to the neighborhood. In that atmosphere the editor called.

“How far along are you?”

It was an instant, a flame kindled in my head illuminating it like day. I knew what I had to say and what I had to do.

“I finished just yesterday.”

“Seriously? Send it today.”

“Tomorrow morning I’ll go to the post office.”

“Thank you. As soon as the book arrives, I’ll read it and let you know.”

“Take your time.”

I hung up. I went to a big box I kept in the bedroom closet, I pulled out the typescript that years before neither Adele nor Lila had liked, I didn’t even attempt to reread it. The next morning I took the children to school and went with Imma to send the package. I knew that it was a risky move, but it seemed to me the only one possible to save my reputation. I had promised to deliver a novel and here it was. Was it an unsuccessful novel, irrefutably bad? Well, it wouldn’t be published. But I had worked hard, I hadn’t deceived anyone, I would soon do better.

The line at the post office was exhausting, I had to protest continually against people who didn’t respect it. In that situation my disaster became obvious to me.
Why am I here, why am I wasting time like this. The girls and Naples have eaten me alive. I don’t study, I don’t write, I’ve lost all discipline
. I had gained a life very far from what might have been expected for me, and look how I had ended up. I felt exasperated, guilty toward myself and especially toward my mother. Furthermore, Imma had been making me anxious: when I compared her with Tina I was sure she was suffering from some developmental problem. Lila’s daughter, although she was three weeks younger, was very lively, seemed more than a year old, whereas Imma seemed unresponsive and had a vacant look. I observed her obsessively, I harassed her with tests that I invented on the spot. I thought: it would be terrible if Nino not only had ruined my life but had given me a daughter with problems. And yet people stopped me on the street because she was so plump, so fair. Here, even at the post office, the women in line complimented her, how chubby she was. But she didn’t even smile. A man offered her a candy and Imma stretched out her hand reluctantly, took it, dropped it. Ah, I was constantly anxious, every day a new worry was added to the others. When I came out of the post office and the package had been sent and there was no way to stop it, I jumped, I remembered my mother-in-law. Good Lord, what had I done. Was it possible that I hadn’t considered that the publisher would give the manuscript to Adele? It was she, after all, who had wanted the publication of both my first book and the second, they owed it to her if only out of courtesy. And she would say: Greco is cheating you, this isn’t a new text, I read it years ago and it’s terrible. I broke out in a cold sweat, I felt weak. To plug one leak I had created another. I was no longer able to keep under control, even within the limits of the possible, the chain of my actions.

Just then, to complicate things, Nino showed up again. He had never given me back the keys, even though I had insisted on having them, and so he reappeared without calling, without knocking. I told him to go, the house was mine, he wasn’t paying the rent and wasn’t giving me a cent for Imma. He swore that, annihilated by grief at our separation, he had forgotten. He seemed sincere; he had a feverish look, and was very thin. He promised with an involuntarily comical solemnity to start paying the next month, he spoke in a sorrowful voice of his love for Imma. Then, apparently in a good-humored way, he began to ask again about my encounter with Antonio, about how it had gone, first in general and then sexually. From Antonio he moved on to his friends. He tried to make me admit that I had yielded (“yield” seemed to him the right verb) to this one or that one not out of genuine attraction but only out of spite. I was alarmed when he began to caress my shoulder, my knee, my cheek. I soon saw—in his eyes and in his words—that what made him desperate was not that he had lost my love but that I had been with those other men, and that sooner or later I would be with others and would prefer them to him. He had showed up, that morning, only to reenter my bed. He demanded that I vilify those recent lovers by showing him that my only desire was to be penetrated again by him. He wanted, in other words, to reassert his primacy, then surely he would again disappear. I managed to get the keys back and I threw him out. I realized then, and to my surprise, that I no longer felt anything for him. The long time that I had loved him dissolved conclusively that morning.

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.