The Story of the Lost Child

by Elena Ferrante

  Two hours later, as I was wandering around the house, with no desire to sleep, I felt small contractions, as if I had menstrual cramps. I called Pietro, I knew that he still spent the nights studying. I said: I’m about to give birth, come and get Dede and Elsa tomorrow. I had barely hung up when I felt a warm liquid drip down my legs. I grabbed a bag that I had long since packed with what I needed, then I kept my finger on the neighbors’ doorbell until they answered. I had already made an arrangement with Antonella, and though she was half asleep she wasn’t surprised. I said:

  “The time has come, I’m leaving you the girls.”

  Suddenly my rage and all my anxieties disappeared.

  60.

  It was January 22, 1981, the day my third child was delivered. Of the first two experiences I didn’t have a particularly painful memory, but this one was absolutely the easiest, so much so that I considered it a happy liberation. The gynecologist praised my self-control, she was happy that I hadn’t caused her any problems. If only they were all like you, she said: You’re made for bringing children into the world. She whispered: Nino is waiting outside, I’ve let him know.

  The news pleased me, but I was even happier to discover that my resentments were gone. Delivering the child relieved me of the bitterness of the past month and I was glad, I felt capable again of a good nature that could take things less seriously. I welcomed the new arrival lovingly, she was a girl of seven pounds, purple, bald. I said to Nino, when I let him come in, after neatening myself to hide the evidence of the exertion: now we’re four females, I’ll understand if you leave me. I made no allusion to the quarrel we had had. He embraced me, kissed me, swore he couldn’t do without me. He gave me a gold necklace with a pendant. I thought it was beautiful.

  As soon as I felt better I called the neighbor. I learned that Pietro, diligent as usual, had arrived. I talked to him, he wanted to come to the clinic with the children. I had him put them on the phone, but they were distracted by the pleasure of being with their father, and answered in monosyllables. I told my ex-husband I would prefer that he take them to Florence for a few days. He was very affectionate, I would have liked to thank him for his care, tell him that I loved him. But I felt Nino’s inquiring gaze and I gave up on the idea.

  Right afterward I called my parents. My father was cold, maybe out of timidity, maybe because my life seemed to him a disaster, maybe because he shared my brothers’ resentment at my recent tendency to stick my nose in their business, when I had never let them meddle in mine. My mother wanted to see the child immediately, and I struggled to calm her down. Afterward I called Lila, she commented, amused: Things always go smoothly for you, for me nothing’s moving yet. Maybe because she was busy with work she was brusque, she didn’t mention a visit to the clinic. Everything normal, I thought, good-humoredly, and fell asleep.

  When I woke I took it for granted that Nino had disappeared, but he was there. He talked for a long time with his friend the gynecologist, he asked about acknowledgment of paternity, he showed no anxiety about Eleonora’s possible reaction. When I said I wanted to give the baby my mother’s name he was pleased. And as soon as I recovered we went to a city clerk to officially register the child I had just delivered as Immacolata Sarratore.

  Nino didn’t appear uncomfortable on that occasion, either. I was the confused one, I said that I was married to Giovanni Sarratore, I corrected myself, I said separated from Pietro Airota, I came out with a disorderly pile of names, surnames, imprecise information. But the moment seemed lovely to me and I went back to believing that, to put my life in order, I needed only a little patience.

  In those early days Nino neglected his endless duties and demonstrated in every possible way how important I was to him. He darkened only when he discovered that I didn’t want to baptize the child.

  “Children are baptized,” he said.

  “Are Albertino and Lidia baptized?”

  “Of course.”

  Thus I learned that, in spite of the anti-religiousness that he often flaunted, baptism seemed necessary to him. There were moments of embarrassment. I had thought, ever since we were in high school, that he wasn’t a believer, and he, on the other hand, said to me that, precisely because of the argument with the religion teacher in middle school, he was sure that I was a believer.

  “Anyway,” he said, bewildered, “believer or not, children are baptized.”

  “What sort of reasoning is that.”

  “It’s not reasoning, it’s feeling.”

  I assumed a playful tone.

  “Let me be consistent,” I said. “I didn’t baptize Dede and Elsa, I won’t baptize Immacolata. They’ll decide themselves when they grow up.”

  He thought about it for a moment and burst out laughing: “Well, yes, who cares, it was an excuse for a celebration.”

  “Let’s do it anyway.”

  I promised that I would organize something for all his friends. In those first hours of our daughter’s life I observed him in every gesture, in the expressions of disappointment and those of approval. I felt happy and yet disoriented. Was it him? Was he the man I had always loved? Or a stranger I was forcing to assume a clear and definite character?

  61.

  None of my relatives, none of my friends from the neighborhood came to the clinic. Maybe—I thought, once I got home—I should have a little party for them, too. I had kept my origins so far from myself that, although I spent quite a bit of time in the neighborhood, I had never invited a single person who had to do with my childhood and adolescence to the apartment on Via Tasso. I regretted it, I felt that sharp separation as a residue of more fragile periods of my life, almost a sign of immaturity. I still had that thought in mind when the telephone rang. It was Lila.

  “We’re about to arrive.”

  “Who.”

  “Your mother and I.”

  It was a cold afternoon, Vesuvius had a dusting of snow on top, that visit seemed ill-timed.

  “In this cold? Going out will make her ill.”

  “I told her but she won’t listen.”

  “In a few days I’ll have a party, I’ll invite everyone, tell her she’ll see the baby then.”

  “You tell her.”

  I gave up the discussion, but every idea of celebration left me, I felt that visit as an intrusion. I had only been home for a short time. With feeding, bathing, some sutures that bothered me, I was tired. And at that moment Nino was in the house. I didn’t want my mother to be unhappy, and it made me uneasy that he and Lila should meet at a moment when I wasn’t yet in shape. I tried to get rid of Nino, but he didn’t seem to understand, in fact he seemed happy that my mother was coming, and stayed.

  I went into the bathroom to fix myself up. When they knocked I rushed to open the door. I hadn’t seen my mother for ten days. The contrast was violent between Lila, still carrying two lives, beautiful and energetic, and my mother, gripping her arm like a life preserver in a storm, more bent over than ever, at the end of her strength, close to sinking. I had her lean on me, I led her to a chair at the window. She murmured: how beautiful the bay is. And she stared past the balcony, maybe so as not to look at Nino. But he came over to her and in his winning way began to point out to her the foggy outlines between sea and sky: That’s Ischia, there is Capri, come, you can see better here, lean on me. He never spoke to Lila, he didn’t even greet her. I talked to her.

  “You’ve recovered quickly,” she said.

  “I’m a little tired but I’m well.”

  “You insist on staying up here, it’s hard to get here.”

  “But it’s beautiful.”

  “Well.”

  “Come, let’s go get the baby.”

  I took her into Immacolata’s room.

  “You already have your looks back,” she praised me. “Your hair is so nice. And that necklace?”

  “Nino gave it to me.”r />
  I picked the baby up from the cradle. Lila sniffed her, put her nose in her neck, said she smelled her scent as soon as she came into the house.

  “What scent?”

  “Of talcum powder, milk, disinfectant, newness.”

  “You like it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I expected her to weigh more. Evidently only I was fat.”

  “Who knows what mine is like.”

  She spoke of him always in the masculine now.

  “He’ll be wonderful.”

  She nodded yes, but as if she hadn’t heard, she was looking at the baby carefully. She ran a finger over her forehead, one ear. She repeated the pact we had jokingly made:

  “If necessary we’ll make an exchange.”

  I laughed, I brought the baby to my mother, who was leaning on Nino’s arm, near the window. She was staring up at him with pleasure, she was smiling, it was as if she had forgotten herself and imagined that she was young.

  “Here’s Immacolata,” I said.

  She looked at Nino. He exclaimed quickly:

  “It’s a beautiful name.”

  My mother murmured:

  “It’s not true. But you can call her Imma, which is more modern.”

  She left Nino’s arm, she gestured to me to give her her granddaughter. I did, but fearful that she didn’t have the strength to hold her.

  “Madonna, how beautiful you are,” she whispered, and turned to Lila: “Do you like her?”

  Lila was distracted, she was staring at my mother’s feet.

  “Yes,” she said without taking her eyes off them. “But sit down.”

  I also looked where she was looking. Blood was dripping from under my mother’s black dress.

  62.

  I snatched the infant with an instinctive jerk. My mother realized what was happening and I saw in her face disgust and shame. Nino grabbed her a moment before she fainted. Mamma, mamma, I called while he struck her lightly on one cheek with his fingertips. I was alarmed, she didn’t regain consciousness, and meanwhile the baby began to wail. She’ll die, I thought, terrified, she held out until the moment she saw Immacolata and then she let go. I kept repeating Mamma in a louder and louder voice.

  “Call an ambulance,” Lila said.

  I went to the telephone, I stopped, confused, I wanted to give the baby to Nino. But he avoided me, he turned to Lila instead, he said that it would be quicker to take her to the hospital in the car. I felt my heart in my throat, the baby was crying, my mother regained consciousness and began to moan. She whispered, weeping, that she didn’t want to set foot in the hospital, she reminded me, pulling on my skirt, that she had been admitted once and didn’t want to die in that abandonment. Trembling, she said: I want to see the baby grow up.

  Nino at that point assumed the firm tone he had had even as a student when he had to confront difficult situations. Let’s go, he said and picked up my mother in his arms. Since she protested weakly he reassured her, he told her that he would take care of arranging everything. Lila looked at me perplexed, I thought: the professor who attends to my mother at the hospital is a friend of Eleonora’s family, Nino at this moment is indispensable, lucky he’s here. Lila said, leave me the baby, you go. I agreed, I was about to hand her Immacolata but with a hesitant gesture, I was connected to her as if she were still inside me. And, anyway, I couldn’t separate myself now, I had to feed her, bathe her. But to my mother, too, I felt bound as never before, I was shaking, what was that blood, what did it mean.

  “Come on,” Nino said impatiently to Lila, “hurry up.”

  “Yes,” I said, “go and let me know.”

  Only when the door closed did I feel the wound of that situation: Lila and Nino together were taking my mother away, they were taking care of her when it should have been me.

  I felt weak and confused. I sat on the couch, giving my breast to Immacolata to soothe her. I couldn’t take my eyes off the blood on the floor as I imagined the car speeding over the frozen streets of the city, the handkerchief outside the window signaling an emergency, the finger on the horn, my mother dying in the back seat. The car was Lila’s, was she driving or had he gotten behind the wheel? I have to stay calm, I said to myself.

  I placed the baby in the cradle, and decided to call Elisa. I minimized what had happened, I was silent about Nino, I mentioned Lila. My sister immediately lost her temper, burst out crying, insulted me. She shouted that I had sent our mother who knows where with a stranger, that I should have called an ambulance, that I thought only of my own affairs and convenience, that if our mother died I was responsible. Then I heard her calling Marcello repeatedly in a commanding tone unfamiliar to me, petulant yet anguished cries. I said to her: What does “who knows where” mean, Lina took her to the hospital, why must you speak like that. She slammed down the telephone.

  But Elisa was right. I had lost my head. I really should have called an ambulance. Or torn the baby away and given her to Lila. I was subject to Nino’s authority, to that craving of men to make a good impression by appearing determined, saviors. I waited by the telephone for them to call me.

  An hour passed, an hour and a half, finally the phone rang. Lila said calmly:

  “They admitted her. Nino knows the doctors, they told him it’s all under control. Be calm.”

  “Is she alone?”

  “Yes, they won’t let anyone in.”

  “She doesn’t want to die alone.”

  “She won’t die.”

  “She’s frightened, Lila, do something, she’s not what she used to be.”

  “That’s how the hospital works.”

  “Did she ask about me?”

  “She said you should bring her the baby.”

  “What are you doing now?”

  “Nino is still with the doctors, I’m going.”

  “Go, yes, thank you, don’t get tired.”

  “He’ll phone as soon as he can.”

  “O.K.”

  “And stay calm, otherwise your milk won’t come.”

  That allusion to the milk helped me. I sat next to Immaco­lata’s cradle as if her nearness could preserve my swollen breasts. What was the body of a woman: I had nourished my daughter in the womb, now that she was out she was nourished by my breast. I thought, there was a moment when I, too, had been in my mother’s womb, had sucked at her breast. A breast as big as mine, or maybe even bigger. Until shortly before my mother got sick my father had often alluded obscenely to that bosom. I had never seen her without a bra, in any stage of her life. She had always concealed herself, she didn’t trust her body because of the leg. Yet at the first glass of wine she would counter my father’s obscenities with words just as coarse in which she boasted of her attractions, an exhibition of shamelessness that was pure show. The telephone rang again and I hurried to answer. It was Lila again, now she had a curt tone.

  “There’s trouble here, Lenù.”

  “Is she worse?”

  “No, the doctors are confident. But Marcello showed up and he’s acting crazy.”

  “Marcello? What does Marcello have to do with it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let me talk to him.”

  “Wait, he’s arguing with Nino.”

  I recognized in the background Marcello’s thick voice, loaded with dialect, and Nino’s, in good Italian, but strident, which happened when he lost his temper.

  “Tell Nino to forget it, in fact send him away.”

  Lila didn’t answer, I heard her join a discussion that I was ignorant of and then suddenly shout in dialect: What the fuck are you saying, Marcè, go fuck yourself, get out. Then she shouted at me: Talk to this shit, please, you two come to an agreement, I don’t want to get involved. Distant voices. After a few seconds Marcello came to the phone. He said, trying to assume a polite tone, that Elisa had i
nsisted that we not leave our mother in the hospital and that he had come to get her and take her to a nice clinic in Capodimonte. He asked as if he seriously sought my permission:

  “Am I right? Tell me if I’m right.”

  “Calm down.”

  “I’m calm, Lenù. But you gave birth in a clinic, Elisa gave birth in a clinic: why should your mother die here?”

  I said uneasily:

  “The doctors who are taking care of her work there.”

  He became aggressive as he had never been toward me:

  “The doctors are where the money is. Who’s in charge here, you, Lina, or that shit?”

  “It’s not a question of being in charge.”

  “Yes, it is. Either tell your friends that I can take her to Capodimonte or I’ll break someone’s face and take her all the same.”

  “Give me Lina,” I said.

  I had trouble standing up, my temples were pounding. I said: Ask Nino if my mother can be moved, make him talk to the doctors, then call me back. I hung up wringing my hands, I didn’t know what to do.

  A few minutes went by and the phone rang again. It was Nino.

  “Lenù, control that beast, otherwise I’ll call the police.”

  “Did you ask the doctors if my mother can be moved?”

  “No, she can’t be moved.”

  “Nino, did you ask or not? She doesn’t want to stay in the hospital.”

  “Private clinics are even more disgusting.”

  “I know, but calm down.”

  “I’m perfectly calm.”

  “All right, but come home now.”

  “And here?”

  “Lina will take care of it.”

  “I can’t leave Lina with that guy.”

  I raised my voice:

  “Lina can take care of herself. I can’t stand up, the baby’s crying, I have to bathe her. I told you, come home right now.”

  I hung up.