Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

by Elena Ferrante

  I looked at the door in alarm, luckily the volume of the television was still loud.

  “I love him,” I answered. And since he insisted on helping me wash the dishes I added: “Go, please, otherwise you’re in the way.”

  The other episode was even uglier, but decisive. I no longer knew what I truly wanted: now I hoped that this period would be over quickly, I wished to return to familiar habits, watch over my little book. Yet I liked going into Nino’s room in the morning, tidying up the mess he left, making the bed, thinking as I cooked that he would have dinner with us that evening. And it distressed me that it was all about to end. At certain hours of the afternoon I felt mad. I had the impression that the house was empty in spite of the girls, I myself was emptied, I felt no interest in what I had written, I perceived its superficiality, I lost faith in the enthusiasm of Mariarosa, of Adele, of the French publisher, the Italian. I thought: As soon as he goes, nothing will make sense.

  I was in that state—life was slipping away with an unbearable sensation of loss—when Pietro returned from the university with a grim look. We were waiting for him for dinner, Nino had been back for half an hour but had immediately been kidnapped by the children. I asked him kindly:

  “Did something happen?”

  He muttered:

  “Don’t ever again bring to this house people from your home.”

  I froze, I thought he was referring to Nino. And Nino, too, who had come in trailed by Dede and Elsa, must have thought the same thing, because he looked at him with a provocative smile, as if he expected a scene. But Pietro had something else in mind. He said in his contemptuous tone, the tone he used well when he was convinced that basic principles were at stake and he was called to defend them:

  “Today the police returned and they named some names, they showed me some photographs.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. I knew that, after he refused to withdraw the charges against the student who had pointed a gun at him, the visits of the police—even more than the scorn of many militant youths and not a few professors—weighed on him, as they treated him as an informer. I was sure that was why he was angry and I interrupted him, bitterly:

  “Your fault. You shouldn’t have acted like that, I told you. Now you’ll never get rid of them.”

  Nino intervened, he asked Pietro, mockingly:

  “Who did you report?”

  Pietro didn’t even turn to look at him. He was angry with me, it was with me he wanted to quarrel. He said:

  “I did what was necessary then and I should have done what was necessary today. But I was silent because you were in the middle of it.”

  At that point I realized that the problem was not the police but what he had learned from them. I said:

  “What do I have to do with it?”

  His voice changed:

  “Aren’t Pasquale and Nadia your friends?”

  I repeated obtusely:

  “Pasquale and Nadia?”

  “The police showed me photographs of terrorists and they were among them.”

  I didn’t react, words failed. What I had imagined was true, then; Pietro in fact was confirming it. For a few seconds the images returned, of Pasquale firing the gun at Gino, kneecapping Filippo, while Nadia—Nadia, not Lila—went up the stairs, knocked on Bruno’s door, went in and shot him in the face. Terrible. And yet at that moment Pietro’s tone seemed out of place, as if he were using the information to make trouble for me in Nino’s eyes, to start a discussion that I had no wish to have. In fact Nino immediately interrupted again, continuing to make fun of him:

  “So are you an informer for the police? What are you doing? Informing on comrades? Does your father know? Your mother? Your sister?”

  I said weakly: Let’s go and eat. But right afterward I said to Nino, politely making light of it, and to get him to stop goading Pietro by bringing up his family: Stop it, what do you mean, informer. Then I alluded vaguely to the fact that some time ago Pasquale Peluso, maybe he remembered him, from the neighborhood, a good kid who had ended up getting together with Nadia, he remembered her, naturally, Professor Galiani’s daughter. And there I stopped because Nino was already laughing. He exclaimed: Nadia, oh good Lord, Nadia, and he turned again to Pietro, even more mockingly: only you and a couple of idiot police could think that Nadia Galiani is part of the armed struggle, it’s madness. Nadia, the best and nicest person I’ve ever known, what have we come to in Italy, let’s go and eat, come on, the defense of the established order can do without you for now. And he went to the table, calling Dede and Elsa, as I began to serve, sure that Pietro was about to join us.

  But he didn’t. I thought he had gone to wash his hands, that he was delaying in order to calm down, and I sat in my place. I was agitated, I would have liked a nice calm evening, a quiet ending to that shared life. But he didn’t come, the children were already eating. Now even Nino seemed bewildered.

  “Start,” I said, “it’s getting cold.”

  “Only if you eat, too.”

  I hesitated. Maybe I should go and see how my husband was, what he was doing, if he had calmed down. But I didn’t want to, I was annoyed by his behavior. Why hadn’t he kept to himself that visit from the police, usually he did with everything of his, he never told me anything. Why had he spoken like that in Nino’s presence: Don’t ever again bring to this house people from your home. What urgency was there to make that subject public, he could wait, he could have an outburst later, once we were in the bedroom. He was angry with me, that was the point. He wanted to ruin the evening for me, he didn’t care what I did or what I wanted.

  I began to eat. The four of us ate, first course, second, and even the dessert I had made. Pietro didn’t appear. At that point I became furious. Pietro didn’t want to eat? All right, he didn’t have to eat, evidently he wasn’t hungry. He wanted to mind his own business? Very well, the house was big, without him there would be no tension. Anyway, now it was clear that the problem was not simply that two people who had once showed up at our house were suspected of being part of an armed gang. The problem was that he didn’t have a sufficiently quick intelligence, that he didn’t know how to sustain the skirmishes of men, that he suffered from it and was angry with me. But what do I care about you and your pettiness. I’ll clean up later, I said aloud, as if I were issuing an order to myself, to my confusion. Then I turned on the television and sat on the sofa with Nino and the girls.

  A long time passed, filled with tension. I felt that Nino was uneasy and yet amused. I’m going to call Papa, said Dede, who, with her stomach full, was now worried about Pietro. Go, I said. She came back almost on tiptoe, she whispered in my ear: He went to bed, he’s sleeping. Nino heard her anyway, he said:

  “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  “Did you finish your work?”

  “No.”

  “Stay a little longer.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Pietro is a good person.”

  “You defend him?”

  Defend him from what, from whom? I didn’t understand, I was on the point of getting mad at him, too.

  110.

  The children fell asleep in front of the television, I put them to bed. When I came back Nino wasn’t there, he had gone to his room. Depressed, I cleaned up, washed the dishes. How foolish to ask him to stay longer, it would be better if he left. On the other hand, how to endure the dreariness of life without him. I would have liked him at least to leave with the promise that sooner or later he would return. I wished that he would sleep again in my house, have breakfast with me in the morning and eat at the same table in the evening, that he would talk about this and that in his playful tone, that he would listen to me when I wanted to give shape to an idea, that he would be respectful of my every sentence, that with me he would never resort to irony, to sarcasm. Yet I had to admit that if the situation had so quickly deteriorated, ma
king our living together impossible, it was his fault. Pietro was attached to him. It gave him pleasure to see him around, the friendship that had arisen was important to him. Why had Nino felt the need to hurt him, to humiliate him, to take away his authority? I took off my makeup, I washed, I put on my nightgown. I locked the house door, I turned off the gas, I lowered all the blinds. I checked on the children. I hoped that Pietro wasn’t pretending to sleep, that he wasn’t waiting for me in order to quarrel. I looked at his night table, he had taken a sleeping pill, he had collapsed. It made me feel tender toward him, I kissed him on the cheek. What an unpredictable person: extremely intelligent and stupid, sensitive and dull, courageous and cowardly, highly educated and ignorant, well brought up and rude. A failed Airota, he had stumbled on the path. Could Nino, so sure of himself, so determined, have gotten him going again, helped him improve? Again I asked myself why that nascent friendship had changed to hostility in one direction. And this time it seemed to me that I understood. Nino wanted to help me see my husband for what he really was. He was convinced that I had an idealized image that I had submitted to on both the emotional and the intellectual level. He had wanted to reveal to me the lack of substance behind this very young professor, the author of a thesis that had become a highly regarded book, the scholar who had been working for a long time on a new publication that was to secure his reputation. It was as if in these last days he had done nothing but scold me: You live with a dull man, you’ve had two children with a nobody. His project was to liberate me by disparaging him, restore me to myself by demolishing him. But in doing so did he realize that he had proposed himself, like it or not, as an alternative model of virility?

  That question made me angry. Nino had been reckless. He had thrown confusion into a situation that for me constituted the only possible equilibrium. Why sow disorder without even consulting me? Who had asked him to open my eyes, to save me? From what had he deduced that I needed it? Did he think he could do what he wanted with my life as a couple, with my responsibility as a mother? To what end? What did he think he was driving at? It’s he—I said to myself—who ought to clarify his ideas. Doesn’t our friendship interest him? The holidays are close. I’ll go to Viareggio, he said he’s going to Capri to his in-laws’ house. Must we wait until the end of the vacations to see each other again? And why? Now, during the summer, it would be possible to consolidate the relation between our families. I could telephone Eleonora, invite her, her husband, the child to spend a few days with us in Viareggio. And I would like to be invited, in turn, to Capri, where I’ve never been, with Dede, Elsa, and Pietro. But if that doesn’t happen, why not write each other, exchange ideas, titles of books, talk about our work?

  I couldn’t quiet myself. Nino was wrong. If he really was attached to me, he had to take everything back to the starting point. He had to regain the liking and friendship of Pietro, my husband asked nothing else. Did he really think he was doing me good by causing those tensions? No, no, I had to talk to him, tell him it was foolish to treat Pietro that way. I got out of bed cautiously, I left the room. I went down the hall barefoot, knocked on Nino’s door. I waited a moment, I went in. The room was dark.

  “You’ve decided,” I heard him say.

  I was startled, I didn’t ask decided what. I knew only that he was right, I had decided. I quickly took off my nightgown, I lay down beside him in spite of the heat.

  111.

  I returned to my bed around four in the morning. My husband started, he murmured in his sleep: What’s happening? I said in a peremptory way: Sleep, and he became quiet. I was stunned. I was happy about what had happened, but no matter how great an effort I made I couldn’t comprehend it inside of my situation, inside of what I was in that house, in Florence. It seemed to me that everything between Nino and me had been sealed in the neighborhood, when his parents were moving and Melina was throwing things out the window and yelling, racked by suffering; or on Ischia, when we went for a walk and held hands; or the night in Milan, after the meeting in the bookstore, when he had defended me against the fierce critic. That for a while gave me a sense of irresponsibility, maybe even of innocence, as if the friend of Lila, the wife of Pietro, the mother of Dede and Elsa had nothing to do with the child-girl-woman who loved Nino and finally had made love with him. I felt the trace of his hands and his kisses in every part of my body. The craving for pleasure wouldn’t be soothed, the thoughts were: the day is far off, what am I doing here, I’ll go back to him, again.

  Then I fell asleep. I opened my eyes suddenly, the room was light. What had I done? Here, in my own house, how foolish. Now Pietro would wake up. Now the children would wake up. I had to make breakfast. Nino would say goodbye, he would return to Naples to his wife and child. I would become myself again.

  I got up, took a long shower, dried my hair, carefully put on my makeup, chose a nice dress, as if I were going out. Oh, of course, Nino and I had sworn in the middle of the night that we would never lose each other, that we would find a way to continue to love each other. But how, and when? Why should he have to look for me again? Everything that could happen between us had happened, the rest was only complications. Enough, I set the table carefully for breakfast. I wanted to leave him with a beautiful image of that permanence, the house, the customary objects, me.

  Pietro appeared disheveled, in his pajamas.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Nowhere.”

  He looked at me in bewilderment—I never dressed that carefully as soon as I got up.

  “You look nice.”

  “No thanks to you.”

  He went to the window, looked out, then muttered:

  “I was very tired, last night.”

  “Also very rude.”

  “I’ll apologize to him.”

  “You should apologize to me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He’s leaving today.”

  Dede appeared, barefoot. I went to get her slippers and woke Elsa, who, as usual, her eyes still closed, covered me with kisses. What a good smell she had, how soft she was. Yes, I said to myself, it happened. Fortunately, it could never happen. But now I had to discipline myself. Telephone Mariarosa to find out about France, talk to Adele, go in person to the publishers to find out what they intend to do with my book, if they are thinking about it seriously or just want to please my mother-in-law. Then I heard noises in the hall. It was Nino, I was overwhelmed by the signs of his presence, he was here, for a short time still. I disentangled myself from the child’s hug, I said: sorry, Elsa, Mamma will be right back, and I hurried out.

  Nino was coming sleepily out of his room, I pushed him into the bathroom, I closed the door. We kissed each other, again I lost awareness of place and time. I was amazed at how much I wanted him: I was good at hiding things from myself. We embraced with a fury that I had never known, as if our bodies were crashing against each other with the intention of breaking. So pleasure was this: breaking, mixing, no longer knowing what was mine and what was his. Even if Pietro had appeared, if the children had looked in, they would have been unable to recognize us. I whispered in his mouth:

  “Stay longer.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Then come back, swear you’ll come back.”

  “Yes.”

  “And call me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me you won’t forget me, tell me you won’t leave me, tell me you love me.”

  “I love you.”

  “Say it again.”

  “I love you.”

  “Swear that it’s not a lie.”

  “I swear.”

  112.

  He left an hour later, even though Pietro sullenly insisted that he stay, even though Dede burst into tears. My husband went to wash, and reappeared soon afterward ready to go out. Looking down he said: I didn’t tell the police that Pasquale and Nadia were in our house; and I did it no
t to protect you but because I think dissent now is being confused with crime. I didn’t understand right away what he was talking about. Pasquale and Nadia had completely vanished from my mind, and they had a hard time re-entering. Pietro waited for a few seconds in silence. Maybe he wanted me to show that I agreed with his observation, and wished to face this day of heat and exams knowing that we were close again, that for once, at least, we thought in the same way. But I merely gave him a distracted nod. What did I care anymore about his political opinions, about Pasquale and Nadia, about the death of Ulrike Meinhof, the birth of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the electoral advances of the Communist Party? The world had retreated. I felt sunk inside myself, inside my flesh, which seemed to me not only the sole dwelling possible but also the only material for which it was worthwhile to struggle. It was a relief when he, the witness to order and disorder, closed the door behind him. I couldn’t bear to be under his gaze, I feared that lips raw from kissing, the night’s weariness, the body hypersensitive, as if burned, all would suddenly become visible.

  As soon as I was alone, the certainty returned that I would never again see or hear from Nino. And along with it was another certainty: I could no longer live with Pietro, it seemed intolerable that we should continue to sleep in the same bed. What to do? I’ll leave him, I thought. I’ll go away with the children. But what procedure should I follow, do I simply leave? I knew nothing about separations and divorces, what was the practical part, how much time did it take to be free again. And I knew no couple who had taken that path. What happened to the children? How did one agree about their maintenance? Could I take the children to another city, for example Naples? And then why Naples, why not Milan? If I leave Pietro, I said to myself, I’ll sooner or later need a job. Times are hard, the economy is bad, and Milan is the right place, there’s the publisher. But Dede and Elsa? Their relations with their father? Must I stay in Florence, then? Never, ever. Better Milan, Pietro could come and see his daughters whenever he could and wanted to. Yes. And yet my head led me to Naples. Not to the neighborhood, I would not return there. I imagined going to live in the dazzling Naples where I had never lived, near Nino’s house, on Via Tasso. See him from the window when he was going to and from the university, meet him on the street, speak to him every day. Without disturbing him. Without causing trouble to his family, rather, intensifying my friendship with Eleonora. That nearness would be enough. In Naples, then, not Milan. Besides, Milan, if I were separated from Pietro, would no longer be so hospitable. My relations with Mariarosa would cool, and also with Adele. Not cut off, no, they were civilized people, but, still, they were Pietro’s mother and sister, even if they didn’t have much respect for him. Not to mention Guido, the father. No, certainly I would no longer be able to count on the Airotas in the same way, maybe not even on the publishing house. Help could come only from Nino. He had strong friendships everywhere, certainly he would find a way to support me. Unless my being close made his wife nervous, made him nervous. For him I was a married woman who lived in Florence with her family. Far from Naples, therefore, and not free. To break up my marriage in a rush, run after him, go and live right near him—really. He would think me mad; I would look like a silly woman, out of her mind, the type of woman, dependent on a man, who horrified Mariarosa’s friends. And, above all, not suitable for him. He had loved many women, he went from one bed to the next, he sowed children carelessly, he considered marriage a necessary convention but one that couldn’t keep desires in a cage. I would make myself ridiculous. I had done without so many things in my life, I could do without Nino as well. I would go my own way with my daughters.