The Story of the Lost Child

by Elena Ferrante

  107.

  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.

  108.

  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.

  109.

  The door closed behind them. I heard Nino’s thick voice on the stairs—he was promising to buy sweets, to take them for a ride in the car—and Dede, Elsa, and the two little girls shouting their excitement. I imagined Lila on the floor below, shut in her apartment, in silence, while the same voices that reached me reached her, too. Separating us was only a layer of floor, and yet she could shorten the distance further or expand it according to her mood and convenience and the movements of her mind, which shifted like the sea when the moon seizes it whole and pulls it upward. I tidied, cooked, I thought Lila—below—was doing the same. We were both waiting to hear again the voices of our daughters, the steps of the man we had loved. It occurred to me that she must have recognized Nino’s features in Imma countless times, as he had just now recognized hers in Tina. Had she always felt an aversion, all these years, or was her loving concern for the child a result of that resemblance? Did she still, in secret, like Nino? Was she observing him from the window? Had Tina managed to get him to take her hand and was she looking at her daughter beside that tall thin man, thinking: If things had gone differently she could be his. What was she planning? Would she come up to my house, in a moment, to wound me with a malicious comment? Or would she open the door of her house just as he was passing by, returning with the four girls, and would she invite him to come in and then call up from below, so that I would be compelled to invite her and Enzo to lunch, too?

  The apartment was very silent, but outside there was a mixture of Sunday sounds: the pealing bells of midday, the cries of vendors in the stalls, the trains passing on the siding, the traffic of the trucks heading to work sites busy every day of the week. Nino would no doubt let the girls fill up on sweets, without thinking that they would not eat their lunch later. I knew him well: he granted every request, he bought everything without batting an eye, he overdid it. As soon as lunch was ready and the table set, I looked out the window onto the stradone. I wanted to call them to say it was time to come home. But the stalls impeded my view, all I could see was Marcello walking with my sister on one side and Silvio on the other. The image of the stradone from above gave me a sense of anguish. Sundays had always seemed to me a paint concealing the decay, but that day th
e impression was stronger. What was I doing in that place, why did I continue to live there, when I had enough money and could go anywhere. I had given Lila too much rope, I had let her retie too many knots, I myself had believed that, reassigning myself publicly to my origins, I would be able to write better. Everything struck me as ugly, I felt a strong repulsion for the food I had prepared. Then I pulled myself together, brushed my hair, made sure that I looked all right, and went out. I passed Lila’s door almost on tiptoe; I didn’t want her to hear me and decide to come with me.

  Outside there was a strong odor of toasted almonds, I looked around. First I saw Dede and Elsa, eating cotton candy and examining a stall selling junk: bracelets, earrings, necklaces, hairpins. Not far away I could make out Nino, standing at the corner. Only after a fraction of a second did I discover that he was talking to Lila, beautiful the way she was when she wanted to be, and Enzo, serious, frowning.

  She was holding Imma, who was tormenting one of her ears, as she usually did with mine when she felt neglected. Lila let the child twist it roughly, without stopping her, she was apparently so absorbed by Nino, who was talking in his pleasing way, smiling, gesturing with his long arms, his long hands.

  I was enraged. That’s why Nino had gone out and hadn’t been seen again. Here was how he cared for his daughter. I called him, he didn’t hear me. Dede turned, she laughed with Elsa at my faint voice, they always did when I shouted. I called again. I wanted Nino to come back right away, return home, alone, alone with my daughters. But there was the deafening whistle of the peanut seller and the din of a truck passing, every one of its parts rattling, raising clouds of dust. I grumbled, I joined them. Why was Lila holding my daughter in her arms, what need was there? And why was Imma not playing with Tina? I didn’t say hello, I said to Imma: What are you doing being held, you’re a big girl, come down, and I pulled her away from Lila. Then I turned to Nino: The children have to eat, it’s ready. Meanwhile I realized that my daughter was attached to my skirt, she hadn’t left me to run to her friend. I looked around, I asked Lila: Where is Tina?

  She still had on her face the expression of cordial assent with which until a minute earlier she had been listening to Nino’s conversation. She must be with Dede and Elsa, she said. I answered: She’s not. And I wanted her to see about her daughter, together with Enzo, instead of inserting herself between mine and her father on the only day he had made himself available. But while Enzo looked around for Tina, Lila continued talking to Nino. She told him about the times Gennaro had disappeared. She laughed, saying: One morning he couldn’t be found, everyone had gone to school and he wasn’t there. I was terrified, I imagined the worst things, and instead he was sitting quietly in the gardens. But it was precisely as she remembered that episode that she lost color. Her eyes emptied, in a changed voice she asked Enzo:

  “Did you find her, where is she?”

  110.

  We looked for Tina along the stradone, then throughout the whole neighborhood, then again along the stradone. Many people joined us. Antonio came, Carmen came, Roberto, Carmen’s husband, came, and even Marcello Solara mobilized some of his people, walking the streets himself, until late into the night. Lila now seemed like Melina, she ran here and there with no reason. But Enzo seemed even crazier than she was. He screamed, he got angry at the peddlers, he threatened terrible things, he wanted to look in their cars and vans and carts. The carabinieri had to intervene to calm him.

  At every moment it seemed that Tina had been found and there was a sigh of relief. Everyone knew the child, there was no one who wouldn’t swear to have seen her a moment before standing at this stall or that corner or in the courtyard or in the gardens over by the tunnel with a tall man, a short one. But every sighting turned out to be illusory, people lost faith and goodwill.

  In the evening a rumor took hold that later prevailed. The child had left the sidewalk to chase a blue ball. But just at that moment a truck was passing. The truck was a mud-colored hulk, traveling at high speed, clattering and bouncing because of the holes in the stradone. No one had seen anything else, but the collision was heard, the collision that passed directly from the story into the memory of whoever was listening. The truck hadn’t braked, or even tried to, and had disappeared at the end of the stradone along with Tina’s body, her braids. On the asphalt not a drop of blood remained, nothing, nothing at all. In that nothing the vehicle was lost, the child was lost forever.

  OLD AGE

  THE STORY OF BAD BLOOD

  1.

  I left Naples definitively in 1995, when everyone said that the city was reviving. But I no longer believed in its resurrections. Over the years I had seen the advent of the new railway station, the dull tower of the skyscraper on Via Novara, the soaring structures of Scampia, the proliferation of tall, shining buildings above the gray stone of Arenaccia, of Via Taddeo da Sessa, of Piazza Nazionale. Those buildings, conceived in France or Japan and rising between Ponticelli and Poggioreale with the usual breakdowns and delays, had immediately, at high speed, lost all their luster and become dens for the desperate. So what resurrection? It was only cosmetic, a powder of modernity applied randomly, and boastfully, to the corrupt face of the city.

  It happened like that every time. The scam of rebirth raised hopes and then shattered them, became crust upon ancient crusts. Thus, just as the obligation arose to stay in the city and support the revival under the leadership of the former Communist party, I decided to leave for Turin, drawn by the possibility of running a publishing house that at the time was full of ambition. Once I turned forty, time had begun to race, I couldn’t keep up. The real calendar had been replaced by one of contract deadlines, the years leaped from one publication to the next; giving dates to the events that concerned me, and my daughters, cost me a lot, and I forced them into the writing, which took me more and more time. When had this or that happened? In an almost heedless way I oriented myself by the publication dates of my books.

  I now had quite a few books behind me, and they had won me some authority, a good reputation, a comfortable life. Over time the weight of my daughters had greatly diminished. Dede and Elsa—first one, then the other—had gone to study in Boston, encouraged by Pietro, who for seven or eight years had had a professorship at Harvard. They were at ease with their father. Apart from the letters in which they complained about the cruel climate and the pedantry of the Bostonians, they were satisfied, with themselves and with escaping the choices that, in the past, I had compelled them to confront. At that point, since Imma was desperate to do what her sisters had, what was I doing in the neighborhood? If at first the image of the writer who, although able to live elsewhere, had stayed in a dangerous outlying neighborhood to continue to nourish herself on reality, had been useful to me, now there were many intellectuals who prided themselves on the same cliché. And my books had taken other paths, the material of the neighborhood had been set aside. Wasn’t it therefore hypocritical to have a certain fame, and many advantages, and yet to limit myself, to live in a place where I could only record uneasily the deterioration of the lives of my siblings, my friends, their children and grandchildren, maybe even of my last daughter?

  Imma was then fourteen; I didn’t deprive her of anything, and she studied hard. But if necessary she spoke in a harsh dialect, she had schoolmates I didn’t like, I was so worried if she went out after dinner that often she decided to stay home. I, too, when I was in the city, had a limited life. I saw my friends from cultured Naples, I let myself be courted and embarked on relationships, but they never lasted. Even the most brilliant men sooner or later turned out to be disillusioned, raging at a cruel fate, witty and yet subtly malicious. At times I had the impression that they wanted me mainly so that they could give me their manuscripts to read, ask me about television or the movies, in some cases borrow money that they never paid back. I made the best of it, exerting myself to have a social and emotional life. But going out at night, dressed up, wasn’t a pleasure
, it was a cause of anxiety. On one occasion I didn’t have time to close the street door behind me before I was beaten and robbed by two kids who were no more than thirteen. The taxi driver, who was waiting right out front, didn’t even look out the window. So in the summer of 1995 I left Naples with Imma.

  I rented an apartment on the Po, near the Isabella Bridge, and my life and that of my third daughter immediately improved. From there it became simpler to reflect on Naples, to write about it and let myself write about it with lucidity. I loved my city, but I uprooted from myself any dutiful defense of it. I was convinced, rather, that the anguish in which that love sooner or later ended was a lens through which to look at the entire West. Naples was the great European metropolis where faith in technology, in science, in economic development, in the kindness of nature, in history that leads of necessity to improvement, in democracy, was revealed, most clearly and far in advance, to be completely without foundation. To be born in that city—I went so far as to write once, thinking not of myself but of Lila’s pessimism—is useful for only one thing: to have always known, almost instinctively, what today, with endless fine distinctions, everyone is beginning to claim: that the dream of unlimited progress is in reality a nightmare of savagery and death.

  In 2000 I was left alone; Imma went to study in Paris. I tried to convince her that there was no need, but since many of her friends had decided to go, she didn’t want to be left out. At first it didn’t bother me, I had a busy life. But within a few years I began to feel old age, it was as if I were fading along with the world in which I had established myself. Although I had won, at various times and with various works, some prestigious prizes, my books were now hardly selling at all: in 2003, for example, the thirteen novels and two volumes of essays I had published earned altogether twenty-three hundred and twenty-three euros before taxes. I had to acknowledge, at that point, that my audience expected nothing more from me and that younger readers—it would be more accurate to say younger women readers; from the start it was mainly women who read my books—had other tastes, other interests. The newspapers were no longer a source of income, either. They weren’t interested in me; they rarely asked for articles, and paid nothing or next to nothing. As for television, after some successful experiences in the nineties, I had tried to do an afternoon show devoted to classics of Greek and Latin literature, an idea that was accepted only thanks to the regard of some friends, including Armando Galiani, who had a show on Channel 5 but good relations with public television. It was an unquestionable fiasco and I had not had other opportunities. Things also deteriorated at the publishing house I had run for many years. In the fall of 2004 I was pushed out by a clever young man, scarcely over thirty, and reduced to an external consultant. I was sixty, I felt my journey was ending. In Turin the winters were too cold, the summers too hot, the cultured classes unwelcoming. I was anxious, I didn’t sleep much. Men no longer noticed me. I looked out at the Po from my balcony, at the rowers, the hill, and I was bored.