Letter to a Child Never Born

by Oriana Fallaci

  Once upon a time there was a woman who dreamed of a little piece of moon. Although a little bit of dust would have been enough for her. It wasn’t an impossible dream, not even bizarre. She knew the men who went to the moon, for at that time it was the fashion to go there. The men departed from a point on the earth not too far from here, in little iron ships hooked to the top of a very high rocket, and every time the rocket shot into the sky, roaring and scattering flowers of fire like a comet, the woman was happy, She cried to the rocket: ‘Go, go, go!’ Then anxiously and jealously she followed the voyage of the men who flew for three days and three nights in the darkness. The men who went to the moon were stupid men. They had stupid faces of stone and they didn’t know how to laugh, they didn’t know how to cry. For them going to the moon was a scientific feat and nothing else, an achievement of technology. During the trip they never said anything poetic, only numbers and formulas and boring information; when they showed a bit of humanity it was only to ask for the latest football scores. Once they landed on the moon, they had even less to say. At most they uttered two or three prepared statements, then they planted a tin flag, and with robot-like movements they performed a ceremony of mundane gestures. They departed for earth, having fouled the moon with their excrements, which thus remained to testify to the passage of Man. The excrements were enclosed in boxes, the boxes were left there with the flag, and, if you knew it, you were never able to look at the moon again without saying: ‘Their excrements are up there, too.’ Finally they came back, with a load of rocks and dust. Moon rocks, moon dust – the dust that the woman was dreaming of. And when she saw them again, she begged ( I begged): ‘Will you give me a little moon? You have so much of it!’ But they always answered: We-cannot-it-is-forbidden. All their moon ended up in the laboratories, on the desks of the people for whom going there was a scientific feat and nothing else, an achievement of technology. They were stupid men, because they were men without soul. And yet there was one who seemed to me a little better. Because he knew how to laugh and cry. He was an ugly little man with gaps between his teeth and a great fear in his heart. To conceal his fear, he laughed and wore ridiculous hats that gave him something like a soul, you see. This was why I was a friend of his, and because he knew he didn’t deserve the moon. Each time we met, he grumbled, ‘What shall I say up there? I’m not a poet, I don’t know how to say profound and beautiful things.’ A few days before going to the moon, he came to say good-bye to me and ask me what to say on the moon. I told him he should say something true, something honest – for instance, that he was a little man brimming with fear because he was a little man. He liked that and swore, ‘If I come back, I’ll bring you a little moon. Moon dust.’ He left and came back. But he came back changed. If I telephoned him to remind him of his promise, he answered evasively. Then one night he invited me to dinner at his home and I rushed there thinking he was finally going to give me some moon. I was restless at the table; the dinner seemed endless. Finally, he said, ‘Now I’ll show you the moon.’ He didn’t say, ‘Now I’ll give you the moon,’ but I didn’t notice the difference. He still wore those ridiculous hats, he still laughed those ridiculous laughs. I didn’t suspect that while in the sky, he had lost even the drop of soul I had attributed to him.

  Winking, he took me into his office and opened a locked closet. Inside were a number of objects: a kind of spade, a hoe, a tube, all covered with a strange silver-grey dust. Moon dust. My heart began to beat wildly, I reached out a hand and gently grasped the spade, which was light, almost weightless. The dust on it was like face powder, a veil of silver that remained on the skin like a second skin. It is difficult to describe what I felt at seeing the moon on my skin. Perhaps it was the sensation of expanding in time and space or, by reaching the unreachable, the very idea of the infinite. This is what I think now – at that moment I could not think. Even now, as I scrupulously search my mind, I can only tell you that I stood there dazed, holding the spade in my hand; and I wasn’t aware that he was becoming impatient. When I realized it, I gave the spade back to him and murmured, ‘Thanks. Now may Have the dust?’ He immediately turned cold. ‘What dust?’ ‘The moon dust you promised me.’ He answered, ‘You had it. I let you touch it.’ I thought he was joking. It took minutes that seemed longer than years for me to realize he wasn’t joking, that he thought he had fulfilled his promise by the act of letting me touch the spade. This is what you do with the poor when you let them admire a jewel in a shop window or watch a feast from afar where they’re not allowed to participate. In my surprise, my sorrow, I wasn’t even able to throw it back in his face, to reproach him for his meanness. I only thought: how could I convince him that this is too cruel? And in this hope I began to beg him, explaining that I wasn’t asking for a piece of moon, all I was asking for was the moon dust he had promised me, only a pinch, he had so much in the closet, every object was covered with it, all he had to do was let me collect a little of it on a sheet of paper, on something that wasn’t my skin, so that I could look at it again and again in the years to come. It had always been a dream of mine; he knew it wasn’t a whim. But the more I grovelled, the more hostile he became, staring at me coldly, without speaking. Finally, in silence, he locked the closet and left the room. From the living room his wife asked if we wanted coffee.

  I didn’t answer. I stood there looking at my hand covered with the moon. I had the moon in my hand, and I didn’t know where to lay it down, how to keep it. At the slightest contact it would disappear. Vainly my brain sought a solution, some way of saving what might be saved, but all I found was a fog, and inside the fog a sentence: ‘It would be like removing face powder. Wherever I smear it, it’s lost.’ And this was the greatest torment, a torture that Tantalus had never known. Tantalus saw the fruit disappear the moment he was about to grasp it; he didn’t see it disappear once having grasped it. So I gave a last look at my silvery hand, still open in a gesture of absurd supplication, swallowed my wish to cry, and smiled bitterly. Over infinite distances the moon had come to me and alighted on my skin, and now I was about to throw it away. Forever. Even if I had wanted to, I wouldn’t have been able to stay like this, with my fingers outstretched, and without touching other things. Sooner or later I would have put my fingers on something, you understand; everything would vanish like smoke in the air. And all for the cruel joke of a cruel imbecile. I clenched my fist with anger. I opened it again. Now all I could see on the palm was a faint arabesque of dirty, twisted lines, disgusting to look at. Had I dreamed and waited so long only to arrive at disgust? I wiped my palm on the closet door. It left an oily print, like the slime of a snail, like the trace of a long tear.

  When I left the house, the moon was shining and illuminating the night with its whiteness. I gazed at it with misted eyes and thought: as soon as something white and clean exists, there’s always someone to soil it with his excrements. Then I wondered: Why? But why? In the hotel I opened the tap and and put my hand under it. A dark liquid drained away and soon disappeared in a dark whirlpool. Child, you’re like my moon, my moon dust. The cramps have increased, I can’t drive any more. If only I can find a motel, someplace to stop and rest. Maybe when my mind is clearer, I’ll find a way of saving what can be saved: of not throwing away my moon. I don’t want to lose the moon again, to see it vanish again at the bottom of a washbasin. But it’s hopeless. With the same certainty that paralyzed me the night I knew you existed, I now know that you’re dying.

  * * *

  interrupted my trip, went back to the city, and phoned the doctor. She didn’t believe it. She kept telling me to keep calm; two weeks ago everything was going well; it was surely my imagination. I answered that blood is not imagination, that for a week I’d been holed up in a motel, and the only result had been blood, I went to see her right away. At the door she smiled, with her usual optimism. I undressed quickly, before she had a chance to speak. I lay down on the table and she put her hand on my heart. ‘How your heart is beating! It’s as loud as a drum.’
I didn’t respond either to her kindness or her smile. The sympathy of others was no good to me now. I felt the certainty of participating in the needless ceremony, one secretly expected and perhaps desired. I was ready, resigned, convinced I would not react, since everything there was to say had already been said, everything there was to suffer had already been suffered. But when the ceremony began, I understood that I would never be ready. Even listening to her questions hurt me, even answering them. ‘Haven’t you felt it move recently?’ ‘No.’ ‘Have you felt heavier, more awkward, these past days?’ ‘No.’ ‘And when did you get the idea that …?’ ‘On that bumpy road, before getting to the motel.’ ‘That’s not enough to go by. And it’s up to me to decide, isn’t it?’ Then she uncovered my stomach, noting that actually it looked flatter than before. She palpated my breasts, observing that actually they seemed less swollen than before. She put on the rubber glove, she tried to feel you. And her forehead wrinkled, her eyes darkened, as she said, ‘The uterus has lost its resiliency. It seems shrunken. There’s a possibility that the child is not growing properly or not growing any more. We’ll have to make a biological examination to make sure; wait another few days.’ Then she took off the glove and threw it aside. She leaned forward with both hands on the table. She gazed at me sadly. ‘No, I might as well tell you at once. You’re right. It’s stopped growing – at least two weeks ago and perhaps three. Try to be brave. It’s over. It’s dead.’

  I gave no answer. I made no sign. I didn’t even blink. I lay there with a body that was all stone and silence. My brain too was stone and silence. Not a thought, not a word, could take root. The only sensation was an unbearable weight on the stomach, an invisible leaden weight as crushing as though the sky had fallen on me without making any sound. In this absolute immobility, this absolute lack of sound, her words exploded like a roar of gunshot: ‘Come on, get up. Get dressed.’ I got up and my legs were stone within stone. I had to make an inhuman effort to make them obey. I got dressed and heard my own voice asking what I would have to do. ‘Nothing. It will stay there for a while. Then it will go spontaneously.’ I nodded. Then her distant voice started piling sentence on sentence, an incessant droning that urged me not to be disheartened, many children are lost because they’re not perfect, not properly formed, no one likes to bring a child into the world who’s not perfect, not properly formed. I shouldn’t condemn myself, I shouldn’t reproach myself for things I wasn’t guilty of, pregnancy is like that when it’s allowed to develop naturally, she was opposed to the system that confines a woman to bed for months and keeps nature from taking its course. I paid the bill. I said good-bye to her with a nod of my head. I went out between two rows of swollen bellies, which seemed to accuse my flat stomach that enclosed a corpse. Finally I thought: What has happened is as it was meant to be; I must stay coherent. And the word coherent accompanied me to the hotel, hammering obsessively: coherent, coherent, coherent. But when I entered my room and saw the cradle, saw the carillon, saw the little shirts of your wardrobe, a moan escaped me. And I fell on the bed, while another moan followed the first, then another, and still another, until from the depths of my body, where you lie like a little useless piece of meat, there emerged a great cry, which cracked the stone, breaking it into a thousand pieces, crumbling it to dust. I screamed – and fainted.

  * * *

  Perhaps it was while I slept, or perhaps it was during the delirium … Anyway it happened, and I remember it clearly. There was a spotless white room, with seven benches and a cage. I was inside the cage and they were on the benches, distant and unreachable. On the central bench sat the male doctor who had taken care of me before my trip. To his right sat the woman doctor, to his left my boss. Next to my boss was my friend and next to her your father. Next to the woman doctor sat my parents. No one else. And there were no objects anywhere, on neither walls nor floor. But I immediately understood that a trial was taking place in which I was the accused and that these people were the jury. I felt neither panic nor dismay. With infinite resignation, I began to study them, one by one. Your father sobbed softly, covering his face as on the day he came to visit me. My parents kept their heads bowed, almost as though weighed down by a deadly weariness or a deadly sorrow. My friend seemed sad, the three others unfathomable. The doctor got up and began reading a sheet of paper: ‘The defendant being present, this jury has come together to judge her for the crime of premeditated homicide in having desired and provoked the death of her child through indifference, selfishness, a lack of the most elementary respect for its right to life.’ Then he put down the paper and explained how the trial would be conducted. Each was to speak as witness and judge, then state aloud his or her vote: guilty or not guilty. The majority votes would determine the verdict and, in case of conviction, choose the penalty. So now the trial could begin. It was up to him to speak first. His words rose like an icy wind.

  ‘A child is not a decayed tooth. One cannot simply extract it and throw it in the garbage along with the dirty cotton and gauze. A child is a person, and the life of a person is a continuum from the moment it is conceived to the moment it dies. Some of you will contest the very concept of the continuum. You will say that at the moment of conception, one does not exist as a person. We exist only as a cell that can multiply but not represent life. Or no more, say, than it is represented by a tree that it’s no crime to cut down, a gnat that it’s no crime to crush. As a scientist, let me say at once that a tree does not become a man, and neither does a gnat. All the elements that go to make up a man, from his body to his personality, all the quotients that constitute an individual, from his blood to his mind, are concentrated in that cell. They represent much more than a plan or a promise. If we were able to examine them with a microscope capable of seeing beyond the visible, we would go down on our knees and all believe in God. Therefore, paradoxical as it may seem, I feel entitled to use the word murder. And let me add: if humanity depended on volume, murder on quantity, we would have to conclude that to kill a man weighing two hundred pounds is more serious than to kill one weighing a hundred. I ask the colleague sitting to my right not to look so amused. On her arguments I reserve judgment, but on her way of exercising the medical profession I do not reserve comment: in that cage there should be not one woman, but two.’ He looked at the woman doctor with scorn and severity. Smoking a cigarette, she calmly met his gaze, and that consoled me and brought me a little warmth. But the icy voice resumed at once.

  ‘Nevertheless we are not here to judge the death of a cell. We are here to judge the death of a child who had attained at least three months of its prenatal existence. Who or what provoked its death? Natural circumstances unknown to us? Someone who has gone scot-free? Or the woman you see there in the cage? I can prove to you that it was the woman you see in the cage who provoked its death. Not by chance did I suspect her from the beginning. I have had enough experience to recognize infanticide, even behind the mask she wore when she said that she wanted the child. It was a lie addressed to herself before being addressed to others. I was struck, for instance, by her hardness, like steel. The day I congratulated her on the positive results of her test, she answered curtly that she already knew. I was also struck by her reactions of hostility when ordered to stay in bed after experiencing cramps due to uterine contraction. She couldn’t afford the luxury, she answered, and two weeks was the most time she would allow. I had to insist, to get angry, to plead with her to accept my recommendations. And this convinced me that she had no wish to accept the duties of a mother, that her maternal state was not a responsible one. Moreover, she phoned me repeatedly to say she was well and that there was no reason to keep her in bed, protesting that she had a job and had to get up. The morning I saw her again she was the picture of unhappiness. And it was during that examination that my suspicions became stronger, and I saw that this woman was contemplating a crime. There was no anatomical or physiological reason why her pregnancy should be so painful: the cramps could only have a psychological, that is t
o say deliberate, origin. I questioned her. She admitted, laconically, that she had a number of anxieties. She also alluded to some sorrow, which I made no effort to uncover, since it seemed obvious that her sorrow lay in being pregnant. Finally I asked her if she really wanted the child, explaining to her that sometimes thoughts can kill: she would have to convert her anxiety into placidity. She flared up angrily and said it would be like asking her to change the colour of her eyes. A few days later she came back. She had resumed her normal life and matters had worsened. I put her in the hospital, where I kept her immobilized for a week and was able to keep her psyche under control by the use of drugs.

  ‘And now we come to the crime, ladies and gentlemen. But before I go into that, let me say: Suppose that one of you is gravely ill and needs a particular medicine. The medicine is within reach. Salvation consists in the simple gesture of someone’s handing it to you. What do you call someone who, instead of giving you the medicine, pours it out and replaces it with a poison? Insane? Malicious? Guilty of withholding assistance? No, that’s not enough. I call him a murderer. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, there is no doubt that the child was ill and that the medicine within reach was immobility. But this woman not only withheld its use, she administered the poison of a journey that would have damaged even an easier pregnancy. Hours and hours by aeroplane, by car, along bumpy, disconnected roads, all by herself. I implored her. I explained to her that at that point her child was no longer a proliferation of cells but an actual baby. I warned her she would kill it. She objected with unrelenting harshness. She signed a paper whereby she assumed all responsibility. She left. She killed it. Of course, if we were before a court of written laws, I would be hard put to maintain her guilt. There were no probes or drugs or surgical incisions. According to written law, this woman would have to be absolved, since that fact does not exist. But we are a jury of life, ladies and gentlemen, and in the name of life I tell you that her behaviour was worse than probes and drugs and surgical incisions. Because she was hypocritical, cowardly, and ran no legal risks.