The Days of Abandonment

by Elena Ferrante

  I brought them some beers and was greeted with ill-contained enthusiasm. The older one in particular started up again with his vulgarly allusive language, maybe he just wanted to be witty, and that was the only form of wit he knew. Almost unconsciously—it was the throat blowing air against the vocal cords—I answered him laughing, with even heavier allusions, and, realizing that I had surprised them both, I didn’t wait for them to reply but piled it on, so foul-mouthed that the two looked at one another, perplexed, gave a slight smile, left the beer half drunk, and began to work more quickly.

  Soon only a persistent hammering could be heard. Uneasiness returned, and this time it was unbearable. I felt all the shame of standing there as if waiting for further vulgarities that didn’t come. There was a long interval of embarrassment, perhaps they asked me to hand them some object, a tool, but with exaggerated courtesy, and not even a smile. After a while I picked up bottles and glasses, and went back to the kitchen. What was happening to me. Was I following, literally, the process of self-degradation, had I surrendered, was I no longer trying to find a new measure of myself?

  Eventually the men called me. They had finished. They showed me how the lock worked, they gave me the keys. The older one said that if I had trouble I had only to call, and with large dirty fingers handed me his card. It seemed to me that he was looking at me insistently, but I didn’t react. I gave him my attention really only when he slipped the keys into the two keyholes, as bright as suns above the dark panels of the door, and kept insisting on their positions.

  “This goes in vertically,” he said, “this horizontally.”

  I looked at him in puzzlement and he added:

  “Be careful, you can ruin the mechanism.”

  With renewed impudence he philosophized:

  “Locks become habituated. They have to recognize the hand of their master.”

  He tried first one key, then the other, and it seemed to me that even he had to force them a little. I asked to try myself. I locked and then unlocked both locks with a firm motion, easily. The younger man said with exaggerated languor:

  “The signora has a nice sure hand.”

  I paid them and they left. I closed the door behind them and leaned against it, feeling the long, living vibrations of the panels until they died away and everything was calm again.

  14.

  In the beginning there were no difficulties with the keys. They slid into the locks, they turned with decisive clicks, I got into the habit of locking myself in when I came home, day or night, I didn’t want any more surprises. But soon the door became the least of my worries; I had so many things to take care of, I put reminders everywhere: remember to do this, remember to do that. So I was distracted, and began to get confused: I used the key for the top lock in the bottom and vice versa. I forced, I persisted, I got angry. I arrived loaded with shopping bags, I took out the keys and got them wrong, again and again. Then I forced myself to concentrate. I stopped, I took deep breaths.

  Pay attention, I said to myself. And very slowly and carefully I chose the key, carefully chose the lock, held both in my mind until the clicks of the mechanism announced that I had succeeded, it was the correct operation.

  But I felt that things were taking a turn for the worse, and I was frightened. Having to stay alert in order to avoid mistakes and confront dangers had exhausted me to the point where sometimes simply the urgency of doing something made me think that I really had done it. The gas, for example, was an old anxiety. I was certain that I had turned off the flame under a pot—remember, remember to turn off the gas!—and yet no, I had cooked the meal, set the table, cleared the table, put the dishes in the dishwasher, and the blue flame had remained discreetly lighted, shining all night like a crown of fire on the metal of the stove, a sign of lunacy; I found it in the morning when I went into the kitchen to make breakfast.

  Ah the head: I could no longer trust it. Mario expanded, he cancelled out everything that was not his figure, a boy, a man, as he had grown before my eyes over the years, in my arms, in the warmth of my kisses. I thought only of him, of how it happened that he had stopped loving me, of the necessity that he should give me back that love, he couldn’t leave me like this. I made a list for myself of everything he owed me. I had helped him prepare for his university exams, I had gone with him when he didn’t have the courage to appear, urging him through the noisy streets of Fuorigrotta, his heart splitting his chest, I could hear it beating, amid the din of students from city and province, his face going pale as I encouraged him along the corridors of the university. I had stayed awake night after night making him repeat the abstruse material of his studies. I had taken away my own time and added it to his to make him more powerful. I had put aside my own aspirations to go along with his. At every crisis of despair I had set aside my own crises to comfort him. I had disappeared into his minutes, into his hours, so that he could concentrate. I had taken care of the house, I had taken care of the meals, I had taken care of the children, I had taken care of all the boring details of everyday life, while he stubbornly climbed the ladder up from our unprivileged beginnings. And now, now he had left me, carrying off, abruptly, all that time, all that energy, all that effort I had given him, to enjoy its fruits with someone else, a stranger who had not lifted a finger to bear him and rear him and make him become what he had become. It seemed to me an action so unjust, a behavior so offensive, that I couldn’t believe it, and sometimes I thought his mind had been obscured, he had lost the memory of us, was helpless and at risk, and it seemed to me that I loved him as I had never loved him, with anxiety rather than with passion, and I thought he had a pressing need for me.

  But I didn’t know where to find him. Lea Farraco eventually denied that she had ever mentioned to me Largo Brescia as the probable place of his new abode, she said I hadn’t understood, it wasn’t possible, Mario would never live in that neighborhood. This annoyed me, I felt mocked. I quarreled with her again. I heard rumors of my husband: he was again abroad, perhaps traveling with his whore. I couldn’t believe it, it seemed impossible that he could so easily have forgotten me and his children, disappearing for months, not giving a damn about Gianni and Ilaria’s vacation, placing his own well-being ahead of theirs. What sort of man was he? With what sort of individual had I lived for fifteen years?

  It was summer by now, the schools were closed, I didn’t know what to do with the children. I dragged them around through the city, in the heat, petulant, willful, ready to blame me for everything, for the heat, for staying in the city, for no beach, no mountains. Ilaria, assuming a look of suffering, repeated, in singsong:

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “That’s enough!” I often shouted, at home, on the street. “I said that’s enough!” I made a gesture of wanting to slap them, I lifted my arm, I seriously felt like it and restrained myself with an effort.

  But they wouldn’t calm down. Ilaria wanted to taste all hundred and ten flavors promised by a gelato maker under the portico of Via Cernaia. I tugged at her and she dug in her heels, pulling me toward the entrance of the shop. Suddenly Gianni left me and ran across the street by himself, amid honking horns, followed by my cries of apprehension; he wanted to see, yet again, the monument to Pietro Micca, whose story Mario had told him in every detail. I couldn’t contain them in the city that was emptying, and raising hot foggy breezes or oppressive humidity from the hills, the river, the pavement.

  Once we quarreled right there, in the gardens in front of the Artillery Museum, under the dirty-green statue of Pietro Micca, with the big sword and the fuse. I knew almost nothing about those murdered heroes, fire, and blood.

  “You don’t know how to tell a story,” the child said to me, “you don’t remember anything.”

  I retorted:

  “Then ask your father.”

  And I began to shout that, if in their opinion I was no good, they should go to him, there was a new mother, beautiful and smart, certainly from Turin, I would bet she knew everyt
hing about Pietro Micca and that city of kings and princesses, of haughty people, cold people, metal automatons. I screamed and screamed, out of control. Gianni and Ilaria loved the city, the boy knew its streets and its legends, his father often let him play near the monument at the end of Via Meucci, there was a statue that they both liked: what nonsense, memorials of kings and generals on the streets, Gianni dreamed of being like Ferdinand of Savoy at the battle of Novara, when he jumps down from his dying horse, saber in hand, ready to fight. Ah yes, I wished to wound them, my children, I wished to wound above all the boy, who already had a Piedmontese accent, Mario, too, spoke like a Turinese now, he had eliminated the Neapolitan cadences utterly. Gianni acted like an impudent young bull, I detested it, he was growing up foolish and presumptuous and aggressive, eager to shed his own blood or that of others in some uncivilized conflict, I couldn’t bear it anymore.

  I left them in the gardens, beside the fountain, and set out quickly along Via Galileo Ferraris, toward the suspended figure of Victor Emmanuel II, a shadow at the end of parallel lines of buildings, high up against a slice of warm cloudy sky. Maybe I really wanted to abandon them forever, forget about them, so that when Mario finally showed up again I could strike my forehead and exclaim: your children? I don’t know. I seem to have lost them: the last time I saw them was a month ago, in the gardens of the Cittadella.

  After a little I slowed down, turned back. What was happening to me. I was losing touch with those blameless creatures, they were growing distant, as if balanced on a log floating away upon the flow of the current. Get them back, take hold of them again, hug them close: they were mine. I called:

  “Gianni! Ilaria!”

  I didn’t see them, they were no longer beside the fountain.

  Anguish parched my throat as I looked around. I ran through the gardens as if, by means of rapid, chaotic movements, I could bind together flower beds and trees, keep them from splintering into a thousand fragments. I stopped in front of the big sixteenth-century gun from the Turkish artillery, a powerful bronze cylinder behind the flower bed. Again I shouted the children’s names. They answered me from inside the cannon. They were lying there, on a piece of cardboard that had made a bed for some immigrant. The blood rushed back to my veins, I grabbed them by the feet, yanked them out.

  “It was him,” Ilaria said, denouncing her brother, “he said we should hide here.”

  I grabbed Gianni by the arm, shook him hard, threatened him, consumed by rage:

  “Don’t you know you could catch some disease in there? You could get sick and die! Look at me, you little fool: do that again and I’ll kill you!”

  The child stared at me in disbelief. With the same disbelief I looked at myself. I saw a woman standing beside a flower garden, a few steps from an old instrument of destruction that now hosted for the night human beings from distant worlds, without hope. At that moment I didn’t recognize her. I was frightened because she had taken my heart, which was now beating in her chest.

  15.

  During that period I also had trouble with the bills. I received letters saying that by such and such date the water or light or gas would be cut off because the bills hadn’t been paid. Then I would insist on saying that I had paid, I spent hours searching for the receipts, I wasted a lot of time protesting, arguing, writing, and then giving up in the face of the evidence that I had not in fact paid.

  It happened like that with the telephone. Not only were there constant disturbances in the line, as Mario had pointed out to me, but suddenly I couldn’t even make a phone call: a voice said to me that I wasn’t qualified for that type of service or something like that.

  Since I had broken the cell phone, I went to a public phone and called the telephone company to resolve the problem. I was assured that it would be taken care of as soon as possible. But the days passed, the telephone continued silent. I called again, I became furious, my voice trembled with rage. I explained my situation in a voice so aggressive that the employee was silent for a long time, then after consulting the computer told me that telephone service had been suspended because of unpaid bills.

  I was enraged, I swore on my children that I had paid, I insulted them all, from the lowest workers to the chief executives, I spoke of Levantine laziness (I said just that), I emphasized the chronic inefficiency, the small and large corruptions of Italy, I shouted: you make me sick. Then I hung up and checked the receipts, and discovered that it really was true, I had forgotten to pay.

  I paid, in fact, the next day, but the situation didn’t improve. A permanent disturbance of communication, like a breath of storm in the microphone, returned to the line, the signal was barely perceptible. I went again to the bar downstairs to telephone, I was told that maybe I would have to get a new instrument. Maybe. I looked at the time, very soon the offices would be closed. I rushed out, I couldn’t contain myself.

  I drove through the city, empty in August, in the suffocating heat. I parked, bumping the fenders of the other cars. I walked to Via Meucci, threw a spiteful glance at the headquarters of the telephone company, its grand façade of streaked marble blocks, took the steps two by two. There was a nice man at the entrance, who was not inclined to argue. I told him that I wanted to go to an office for complaints, right away, to protest a lack of service that had been going on for months.

  “We haven’t had an office open to the public for at least ten years,” he answered.

  “And if I want to complain?”

  “You do it by telephone.”

  “And if I want to spit in someone’s face?”

  He advised me politely to try the office in Via Confienza, a hundred yards farther on. I ran breathlessly, as if reaching Via Confienza were a matter of life and death; the last time I had run like that I was Gianni’s age. But I had no way of letting off steam there, either. I found a glass door, closed and locked. I shook it hard, although it had written on it: “This door is alarmed.” Alarmed, yes, that ridiculous expression, let the alarm sound, let the city be alarmed, the world. From a small window in the wall to my left a man stuck his head out; he was not disposed to chat, and he got rid of me with a few words and disappeared again: there were no offices, let alone open to the public; everything was reduced to aseptic voice, computer screen, e-mail, bank operations; if a person—he said to me coldly—has anger to vent, sorry, there’s no one here to tangle with.

  Frustration gave me a stomachache, I went back along the street, I felt as if I were about to lose my breath and sink to the ground. As if it were prehensile, my eye grasped the letters of a plaque on the building opposite. Words so that I wouldn’t fall. From this house entered into life like the shadow of a dream a poet named Guido Gozzano, who from the sadness of nothingness—why is nothingness sad, what’s sad about nothingness—reached God. Words with a claim of art for the art of linking words. I went on with my head lowered, I was afraid I was talking to myself, a man was staring at me, I walked faster. I no longer remembered where I had left the car, it wasn’t important to remember.

  I wandered at random, past the Alfieri theatre, ending up in Via Pietro Micca. I looked around disoriented, certainly the car wasn’t there. But in front of a shop window, the window of a jewelry store, I saw Mario and his new woman.

  I don’t know if I recognized her right away. All I felt was a fist in the middle of my chest. Maybe I realized first that she was very young, so young that Mario seemed an old man beside her. Or maybe I noticed on her, above all, the blue dress of a light material, in a style out of fashion, the sort of dress that can be bought in stores for expensive second-hand clothes, a style at odds with her youth but soft on her body that was rich in gentle curves, the curve of her long neck, of her breasts, her hips, her ankles. Or maybe what struck me was the blond hair gathered at the nape, rolled and held in place by a comb, a hypnotic stain.

  I don’t know exactly.

  Certainly I had to make swift eraser strokes over the rounded features of the twenty-year-old before retrieving the sha
rp, angular, still childish face of Carla, the adolescent who had been at the center of our marital crisis years earlier. And, certainly, only when I had recognized her was I struck by the earrings, the earrings of Mario’s grandmother, my earrings.

  They hung from her lobes, elegantly setting off her neck, they made her smile even brighter; while my husband, in front of the window, encircled her waist with the proprietary joy of the gesture, while she rested a bare arm on his shoulder.

  Time expanded. I crossed the street with long, determined strides, I felt no desire to cry or scream or ask for explanations, only a black mania for destruction.

  Now I knew that he had deceived me for almost five years.

  For almost five years he had secretly enjoyed that body, had cultivated that passion, had transformed it into love, had slept patiently with me abandoning himself to the memory of her, had waited until she became of age, more than of age, to tell me that he was taking her definitively, that he was leaving me. Vile, cowardly man. To the point of being unable to tell me what had really happened to him. He had added family fiction to marital fiction to sexual fiction to give his cowardice time, to get it under control, to find, slowly, the strength to leave me.

  I came up behind them. I struck him like a battering ram with all my weight, I shoved him against the glass, he hit it with his face. Perhaps Carla cried out, but I saw only her open mouth, a black hole in the enclosure of her even, white teeth. Meanwhile I grabbed Mario, who was turning around with frightened eyes, his nose bleeding, and he looked at me full of terror and astonishment at once. Hold the commas, hold the periods. It’s not easy to go from the happy serenity of a romantic stroll to the chaos, to the incoherence of the world. Poor man, poor man. I grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him so violently that I tore it off the right shoulder, found it in my hands. He stood bare-chested, he wasn’t wearing an undershirt, he no longer worried about catching cold, about pneumonia, with me he had been consumed by hypochondria. His health had evidently been revitalized, he had a good tan, he was thinner, only a little ridiculous now, because one arm was covered by a whole, nicely ironed sleeve, with part of the shoulder still attached, and the collar, too, at an angle; while otherwise his torso was bare, shreds of the shirt hung from his pants, blood dripped amid the grizzled hairs of his chest.