The Story of the Lost Child (39 page)

“What’s wrong,” I asked her.

“She has a tic in her eye.”

“Not very often.”

“I’ve seen it a lot.”

“What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know. I only know that she feels fatherless and isn’t even sure she has a mother.”

I tried to ignore her but it was difficult. Imma, as I’ve said, had always worried me a little, and even when she stood up well to Tina’s vivacity she still seemed to lack something. Also, some time earlier I had recognized in her features of mine that I didn’t like. She was submissive, she gave in immediately out of fear of not being liked, it depressed her that she had given in. I would have preferred her to inherit Nino’s bold capacity for seduction, his thoughtless vitality, but she wasn’t like that. Imma was unhappily compliant, she wanted everything and pretended to want nothing. Children, I said, are the product of chance, she’s got nothing of her father. Lila didn’t agree; she was always finding ways of alluding to the child’s resemblance to Nino, but she didn’t see it as positive, she spoke as if it were a congenital defect. And then she kept repeating: I’m telling you these things because I love them and I’m worried.

I tried to explain to myself her sudden persecution of my daughters. I thought that, since I had disappointed her, she was withdrawing from me by separating first of all from them. I thought that since my book was increasingly successful, which sanctioned my autonomy from her and from her judgment, she was trying to belittle me by belittling my children and my capacity to be a good mother. But neither of those hypotheses soothed me and a third advanced: Lila saw what I, as a mother, didn’t know how or didn’t want to see, and since she appeared critical of Imma in particular, I had better find out if her comments had any foundation.

So I began to observe the child and was soon convinced that she really suffered. She was the slave of Tina’s joyful expansiveness, of her elevated capacity for verbalization, of the way she aroused tenderness, admiration, affection in everyone, especially me. Although my daughter was pretty, and intelligent, beside Tina she turned dull, her virtues vanished, and she felt this deeply. One day I witnessed an exchange between them, in a good Italian, Tina’s pronunciation very precise, Imma’s still missing some syllables. They were coloring in the outlines of animals and Tina had decided to use green for a rhinoceros, while Imma added colors randomly for a cat. Tina said:

“Make it gray or black.”

“You mustn’t give me orders about the color.”

“It’s not an order, it’s a suggestion.”

Imma looked at her in alarm. She didn’t know the difference between an order and a suggestion. She said:

“I don’t want to follow the suggestion, either.”

“Then don’t.”

Imma’s lower lip trembled.

“All right,” she said, “I’ll do it but I don’t like it.”

I tried to be more attentive to her. To begin with, I stopped getting excited about everything Tina did, I reinforced Imma’s skills, I praised her for every little thing. But I soon realized it wasn’t enough. The two little girls loved each other. Dealing with each other helped them grow, some extra artificial praise was of no help in keeping Imma, looking at her reflection in Tina, from seeing something that wounded her and that her friend was certainly not the cause of.

At that point I began to turn over Lila’s words:
she’s fatherless and isn’t even sure she has a mother.
I remembered the mistake in the
Panorama
caption. That caption, buttressed by Dede and Elsa’s mean jokes (
You don’t belong to this family: your name is Sarratore, not Airota
), must have done its damage. But was that really the core of the problem? I ruled it out. Her father’s absence seemed to me something more serious and I was sure that her suffering came from that.

Once I had started down this road I began to notice how Imma sought Pietro’s attention. When he called his daughters, she sat in a corner and listened to the conversation. If the sisters had a good time she pretended to be having fun, too, and when the conversation ended and they said goodbye to their father in turn, Imma shouted: Bye. Often Pietro heard her and said to Dede: Give me Imma so I can say hello. But in those cases either she became shy and ran away or took the receiver and remained mute. She behaved the same way when he came to Naples. Pietro never forgot to bring her a little present, and Imma hovered near him, played at being his daughter, was happy if he said something nice or picked her up. Once when my ex-husband came to get Dede and Elsa, the child’s sadness must have seemed especially obvious, and as he left he said: Cuddle her, she’s sorry that her sisters are leaving and she has to stay behind.

That observation increased my anxieties, I said to myself that I had to do something, I thought of talking to Enzo and asking him to be more present in Imma’s life. But he was already very attentive. If he carried his daughter on his shoulders, after a while he put her down, picked up my daughter, and put her up there; if he got Tina a toy, he got an identical one for her; if he was pleased almost to the point of being moved at the intelligent questions his child asked, he managed to remember to show enthusiasm for the somewhat more prosaic questions of my child. But I spoke to him anyway, and sometimes Enzo admonished Tina, if she occupied the stage and didn’t leave room for Imma. I didn’t like that, it wasn’t the child’s fault. In those cases Tina was as if stunned, the lid that was suddenly lowered on her vivacity seemed an undeserved punishment. She didn’t understand why the spell was broken, she struggled to regain her father’s favor. At that point I would pull her to me, play with her.

In other words things were not going well. One morning I was in the office with Lila, I wanted her to teach me to write on the computer. Imma was playing with Tina under the desk and Tina was sketching in words imaginary places and characters with her usual brilliance. Monstrous creatures were pursuing their dolls, courageous princes were about to rescue them. But I heard my daughter exclaim with sudden rage:

“Not me.”

“Not you?”

“I won’t rescue myself.”

“You don’t have to rescue yourself, the prince rescues you.”

“I don’t have one.”

“Then mine will rescue you.”

“I said no.”

The sudden leap with which Imma had gone from her doll to herself wounded me, even though Tina tried to keep her in the game. Because I was distracted, Lila became irritated, she said:

“Girls, either talk quietly or go outside and play.”

That day I wrote a long letter to Nino. I enumerated the problems that I thought were complicating our daughter’s life: her sisters had a father who was attentive to them, she didn’t; her playmate, Lila’s daughter, had a very devoted father and she didn’t; because of my work I was always traveling and often had to leave her. In other words, Imma was in danger of growing up feeling that she was continually at a disadvantage. I sent the letter and waited for him to respond. He didn’t and so I decided to call his house. Eleonora answered.

“He’s not here,” she said listlessly. “He’s in Rome.”

“Would you please tell him that my daughter needs him?”

Her voice caught in her throat. Then she composed herself:

“Mine haven’t seen their father, either, for at least six months.”

“Has he left you?”

“No, he never leaves anyone. Either you have the strength to leave him yourself—and in this you were smart, I admire you—or he goes, comes, disappears, reappears, as it suits him.”

“Will you tell him I called, and if he won’t see the child I’ll track him down, and take her to him wherever he is?”

I hung up.

It was a while before Nino made up his mind to call, but in the end he did. As usual he acted as if we had seen each other a few hours earlier. He was energetic, cheerful, full of compliments. I cut him off, I asked:

“Did you get my letter?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t you answer?”

“I’ve got no time.”

“Find the time, as soon as possible, Imma’s not well.”

He said reluctantly that he would return to Naples for the weekend, I insisted that he come to lunch on Sunday. I insisted that he was not to talk to me, not joke with Dede or Elsa, but focus the whole day on Imma. That visit, I said, has to become a habit: it would be wonderful if you would come once a week, but I won’t ask that, I don’t expect that from you; once a month, however, is essential. He said in a serious tone that he would come every week, he promised, and at that moment he was surely sincere.

I don’t remember the day of the phone call, but the day when, at ten in the morning, Nino appeared in the neighborhood, elegantly dressed and driving a brand-new luxury car, I will never forget. It was September 16, 1984. Lila and I had just turned forty, Tina and Imma were almost four.

I told Lila that Nino was coming to lunch at my house. I said to her: I forced him, I want him to spend the whole day with Imma. I hoped she would understand that for at least that one day she shouldn’t send Tina to my house, but she didn’t understand or didn’t want to. Instead she acted helpful, she said: I’ll tell my mother to cook for everyone and maybe we’ll eat here at my house where there’s more room. I was surprised, and annoyed. She hated Nino; what was that intrusion all about? I refused, I said: I’ll cook, and I repeated that the day was dedicated to Imma, there would be no way and no time for anything else. But exactly at nine the next day Tina climbed the stairs with her toys and knocked at my door. She was tidy and neat, her black braids shiny, her eyes sparkling with affection.

I told her to come in, but I immediately had to fight with Imma, who was still in her pajamas, sleepy, she hadn’t had breakfast, and yet she wanted to start playing immediately. Since she refused to obey me and kept making faces and laughing with her friend, I got mad and closed Tina—frightened by my tone—in a room to play by herself, then I made Imma wash. I don’t want to, she screamed. I told her: You have to get dressed, Papa is coming. I had been announcing it for days, but she, hearing that word, became even more rebellious. I myself, in using it to signal to her the imminence of his arrival, became more anxious. The child writhed, screamed: I don’t want Papa, as if Papa were a repellent medicine. I ruled out that she remembered Nino, she wasn’t expressing a rejection of a definite person. I thought: Maybe I was wrong to make him come; when Imma says she doesn’t want Papa, she means that she doesn’t want just anyone, she wants Enzo, she wants Pietro, she wants what Tina and her sisters have.

At that point I remembered the other child. She hadn’t protested, she hadn’t poked her head out. I was ashamed of my behavior. Tina was not responsible for the day’s tensions. I called her affectionately, she reappeared and sat happily on a stool in a corner of the bathroom giving me advice on how to braid Imma’s hair. My daughter brightened, she let me dress her up without protesting. Finally they ran away to play and I went to get Dede and Elsa out of bed. Elsa jumped up very happily, she was glad to see Nino again and was ready in a short time. But Dede spent an infinite amount of time washing and came out of the bathroom only because I started yelling. She couldn’t accept her transformation. I’m disgusting, she said, with tears in her eyes. She shut herself in the bedroom crying that she didn’t want to see anyone.

I got myself ready in a hurry. I didn’t care about Nino, but I didn’t want him to find me neglected and aged. And I was afraid that Lila would show up and I was well aware that, if she wanted, she could focus a man’s gaze totally on her. I was agitated and at the same time lethargic.

Nino was exceedingly punctual, and he came up the stairs loaded with presents. Elsa ran to wait for him on the landing, immediately followed by Tina and then, cautiously, Imma. I saw the tic appear in her right eye. Here’s Papa, I told her, and she feebly shook her head no.

But Nino behaved well. Already on the stairs he began to sing: Where’s my little Imma, I have to give her three kisses and a little bite. When he reached the landing he said hi to Elsa, pulled one of Tina’s braids absentmindedly, and grabbed his daughter, covered her with kisses, told her he had never seen such pretty hair, complimented her dress, her shoes, everything. He came in without even a greeting for me. Instead he sat down on the floor, lifted Imma onto his crossed legs, and only then gave some encouragement to Elsa, and warmly greeted Dede (
Good Lord, how you’ve grown, you’re magnificent
), who had approached with a timid smile.

I saw that Tina was puzzled. Strangers, without exception, were dazzled by her and cuddled her as soon as they saw her, whereas Nino had begun to distribute the gifts and was ignoring her. She turned to him with her caressing little voice and tried to take a place on his knees next to Imma, but she couldn’t and leaned against his arm, put her head with a languid expression on one shoulder. No, Nino gave Dede and Elsa each a book, then he focused on his daughter. He had bought her all kinds of things. He waited for her to unwrap one gift and immediately gave her another. Imma seemed charmed, moved. She looked at that man as if he were a wizard who had come to cast spells for her alone and when Tina tried to take a gift she cried: It’s mine. Tina quickly drew back with her lower lip trembling, I picked her up, I said: Come with aunt. Only then did Nino seem to realize that he was overdoing it and he dug in his pocket, took out an expensive-looking pen, said: This is for you. I put the child down on the floor, she took the pen whispering thank you and he seemed to really see her for the first time. I heard him mutter in amazement:

“You look exactly like your mother.”

“Shall I write my name for you?” Tina asked, serious.

“You already know how to write?”

“Yes.”

Nino pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket, she put it on the floor and wrote: “Tina.” Very good! he praised her. But a moment afterward he sought my gaze, afraid of being reprimanded, and to remedy the situation he turned to his daughter: I bet you’re very good, too. Imma wanted to show him, and, snatching the pen away from her friend, scribbled on the page with intense concentration. He complimented her profusely, even as Elsa tormented her little sister (
No one can understand that, you don’t know how to write
) and Tina tried in vain to get her pen back, saying: I know how to write other words, too. Finally, Nino, to cut it off, stood up with his daughter and said: Now let’s go see the most beautiful car in the world, and he carried them all off, Imma in his arms, Tina trying to get him to take her hand, Dede pulling her away and keeping her close, Elsa taking possession of the expensive pen with a greedy gesture.