The Lost Daughter (9 page)

I parked, went through the pinewood, dripping with rain. I came to the dunes. The bath house was deserted, Gino wasn’t there, nor was the manager. The beach, in the rain, had become a dark craggy crust against which the whitish slab of the sea gently bumped. I went over to the Neapolitans’ umbrellas and stopped at Nina and Elena’s, where, piled up under the beach chair and the lounger or stuck in an enormous plastic bag, were the child’s many toys. Chance, I thought, or a silent call, should send Nina here, by herself. Forget the child, forget everything. Greet each other without surprise. Unfold two beach chairs, look at the sea together, describe in tranquility my experience, our hands touching every so often.

My daughters make a constant effort to be the reverse of me. They are clever, they are competent, their father is starting them out on his path. Determined and terrified, they advance like whirlwinds through the world, they will manage better than us, their parents. Two years ago, when I had a presentiment that they would be gone a long time, I wrote a letter for them in which I recounted in detail how it happened that I had abandoned them. I wanted to explain not my reasons—what were they?—but the impulses that more than fifteen years earlier had sent me away. I made two copies of the letter, one for each, and left them in their rooms. But nothing happened, they never answered, they never said: let’s talk about it. Only once, at a slightly bitter allusion on my part, Bianca retorted as she went out the door: lucky you, you have time to write letters. 

How foolish to think you can tell your children about yourself before they’re at least fifty. To ask to be seen by them as a person and not as a function. To say: I am your history, you begin from me, listen to me, it could be useful to you. Nina, on the other hand—I am not Nina’s history, Nina could even see me as a future. Choose for your companion an alien daughter. Look for her, approach her.

I stood there for a while, digging with one foot until I found dry sand. If I had brought the doll, I thought, but without regret, I could have buried her here, under the crust of the wet sand. It would have been perfect, someone would have found her the next day. Elena no, I would have wanted Nina to find her, I would have gone up to her, said: are you happy? But I hadn’t brought the doll, hadn’t done it, hadn’t even thought of it. Instead I had bought Nani a new dress, shoes, another action without meaning. Or, in any case, as for so many little things in my life, a meaning that I can’t find. I reached the water’s edge, I wanted to walk and tire myself out.

And I did walk for a long time, my purse over my shoulder, sandals in one hand, feet in the water. I met almost no one, only a few pairs of lovers. In the first year of Marta’s life I discovered that I no longer loved my husband. A hard year, the baby barely slept and wouldn’t let me sleep. Physical tiredness is a magnifying glass. I was too tired to study, to think, to laugh, to cry, to love that man who was too intelligent, too stubbornly involved in his wager with life, too absent. Love requires energy, I had none left. When he began with caresses and kisses, I became anxious, I felt that I was a stimulus abused for his solitary pleasures.

Once I had a very closeup view of what it means to be in love, the powerful and joyous irresponsibility that it unleashes. Gianni is Calabrese; he was born in a small town in the mountains where he still has an old family house. Nothing grand, but the air is pure and the landscape beautiful. We would go there, years ago, with the children, at Christmas and Easter. It was an arduous journey in the car, during which he drove in an absent silence and I had to deal with the whims of Bianca and Marta (they wanted to eat continuously, they demanded toys that were in the trunk, they wanted to pee when they had just done so) or try to distract them with songs. It was spring but winter persisted. Sleet was falling, and it was almost dark. We came upon two cold hitchhikers standing at a rest stop.

Gianni approached them almost by instinct, he’s a generous man. I said there’s no room, we have the children, how are we going to fit. The two got in, they were English, he graying, in his forties, she surely less than thirty. At first I was hostile, taciturn, it complicated the trip for me, I would have to work even harder to make the children behave. It was mainly my husband who talked, he liked to establish relationships, especially with foreigners. He was cordial, he asked questions without paying much heed to conventions. It came out that the two had abruptly left their jobs (I don’t remember what they did) and, along with their jobs, their families: she a young husband, he a wife and three small children. They had been traveling for several months through Europe with very little money. The man said seriously: the important thing is to be together. She agreed, and at a certain point said something to this effect: we are obliged to do so many stupid things from childhood on, thinking they’re essential; what happened to us is the only thing that has happened to me since I was born that makes sense.

After that I liked them. When it came to dropping them off, that night, on the side of the highway or at a half-deserted gas pump, because it was time for us to turn toward the interior, I said to my husband: let’s take them to our house, it’s dark, it’s cold, tomorrow we’ll drive them to the nearest toll plaza. They had dinner under the intimidated gaze of the children, and I opened an old sofa bed for them. Now I had the impression that together, but also separately, they unleashed a power that expanded visibly and struck me, entering into my veins, lighting up my brain. I began to speak overexcitedly, it seemed to me I had a mass of things to say to them alone. They praised my mastery of the language, my husband introduced me ironically as an extraordinary scholar of contemporary English literature. I defended myself, explained what I was studying specifically; they were both interested in my work, the girl especially—something that never happened.

I was captivated by her, her name was Brenda. I talked to her all evening, imagined myself in her place, free, traveling with an unknown man whom I desired at every moment and by whom at every moment I was desired. Everything starting from zero. No habit, no sensations dulled by predictability. I was I, I produced thoughts not distracted by any concern other than the tangled thread of dreams and desires. No one was wrapped around me anymore despite the cutting of the umbilical cord. In the morning, when they said goodbye, Brenda, who knew a little Italian, asked if I had something of mine I could let her read. Of mine: I savored the formulation—
something of mine
. I gave her a wretched extract of a few pages, a small article published two years earlier. Finally they left; my husband drove them back to the highway. 

I tidied the house, sadly, slowly, unmade their bed and, as I imagined Brenda naked, felt a liquid excitement between her legs that was mine. I dreamed, for the first time since I was married—for the first time since the birth of Bianca, of Marta—of saying to the man I had loved, to my daughters: I have to go away. I imagined being taken to the highway by them, by all three, and waving goodbye while they went off, leaving me there.

The image persisted. How long did I sit on the guardrail like Brenda, pretending I was her. One or two years, I think, before I actually left. It was a heavy time. I don’t think I ever thought of leaving my daughters. It seemed to me terrible, stupidly egotistical. But I did think of leaving my husband, I was looking for the right moment. You wait, you get tired, you start waiting again. Something will happen and in the meantime you become more and more fed up, perhaps dangerous. I couldn’t calm down, not even tiredness calmed me.

God knows how long I had been walking. I looked at my watch, turned back toward the bath house, my ankles aching. The sky was clear, the sun was burning, people were lazily appearing on the beach, some dressed, some in bathing suits. The umbrellas reopened, those strolling along the shore became an interminable procession in celebration of vacation’s return.

At a certain point I saw a group of children distributing something to the bathers. When I came up to them I recognized them—they were the Neapolitan kids, Nina’s relatives. They were giving out flyers, as though it were a game they were playing; each had a sizable packet of them. One, recognizing me, said: why give it to her. I took the flyer anyway, kept walking, then glanced at it. Nina and Rosaria had done what people do when they lose a cat or dog. At the center of the piece of paper was an ugly photograph of Elena with her doll. In big print there was a cell phone number. A few lines, in a tone meant to be moving, said that the child was very grieved by the loss of her doll. A generous reward was promised to whoever found her. I folded the flyer carefully, and put it in my purse beside Nani’s new dress.

I went home after dinner, dazed by some bad wine I’d drunk. I passed the bar where Giovanni was sitting outside with his friends. Seeing me, he rose, made a gesture of greeting, held out a glass of wine in invitation. I didn’t respond and had no remorse for my discourtesy.

I felt very unhappy. I had a sense of dissolving, as if I, an orderly pile of dust, had been blown about by the wind all day and now was suspended in the air without a shape. I threw my purse on the sofa, didn’t open the door to the terrace, didn’t open the windows in the bedroom. I went into the kitchen to get some water, in which I mixed a few drops of a sleeping drug that I took only on the rarest occasions. As I drank I noticed the doll sitting on the table and remembered the dress I had in my bag. I felt ashamed. I grabbed the doll by the head, carried her into the living room, and dropped down on the sofa, holding her on my lap with her stomach down.

She was comical with her big buttocks, her straight back. Let’s see if this stuff fits, I said aloud, angrily. I pulled out the dress, the underpants, the socks, the shoes. I tried the dress, measuring it against her body upside-down, the size was right. Tomorrow I would go straight to Nina, I would say to her: look, I found her in the pinewood yesterday evening, and this morning I bought her a dress so you can play with her, you and your daughter. I sighed with dissatisfaction; I left everything on the sofa and was about to get up, but realized that more dark liquid had come out of the doll’s mouth and stained my skirt.

I examined her lips, pursed around a small opening. They were of a plastic softer than the rest of the body, and yielded under my fingers. I parted them delicately. The opening widened and the doll smiled, showing me gums and baby teeth. I closed the mouth immediately in revulsion, shook her hard. I could hear the water in her belly, and imagined a stomach filth, a stale, stagnant liquid mixed with sand. This is yours, mother and daughter, I thought, why did I interfere.

I slept deeply. In the morning I put my beach clothes in my bag, with books, notebooks, the dress, the doll, and retraced the road to the sea. In the car I put on an old David Bowie album, and listened the whole way to the same song, “The Man Who Sold the World”; it was a part of my youth. I crossed the pinewood, which was cool and damp from the previous day’s rain. Every so often, I noticed the leaflet with the picture of Elena on a tree trunk. I wanted to laugh. Maybe the surly Corrado would give me a generous reward.

Gino was very kind, I was happy to see him. He had already set the lounge chair out to dry in the sun, and he led me to my umbrella, insisting on carrying my bag, but not once did he use a tone that was too familiar. An intelligent, discreet boy, who should be helped, pushed to finish his studies. I began to read, but distractedly. Gino, too, on the beach chair, took out his book and gave me a half smile, as if to emphasize some kinship.

Nina wasn’t there yet, nor was Elena. There were the children who had distributed the flyers the day before, and in no order, late and wearily, cousins, brothers, in-laws—all the relatives appeared. Last—it was almost midday—came Rosaria and Corrado, she in front, in her bathing suit, displaying the enormous stomach of a pregnant woman who does not bow to any diet but carries her belly with confidence, no fuss, followed by him, in undershirt, shorts, sandals, at a careless pace.

My agitation returned; my heart was racing. Nina, it was clear, wasn’t coming to the beach, maybe the child was sick. I stared insistently at Rosaria. She had a grim look, and never glanced in my direction. I tried to catch Gino’s eye, perhaps he knew something, but I realized that his place was empty, the book abandoned, open on the chair.

As soon as I saw Rosaria leave the umbrella and move off alone, legs wide, toward the shore, I joined her. She wasn’t happy to see me and did nothing to hide it. She responded to my questions in monosyllables, coldly.

“How’s Elena?”

“She has a cold.”

“Does she have a fever?”

“Slight.”

“And Nina?”

“Nina is with her daughter, as she should be.”

“I saw the flyer.”

She frowned with disapproval.

“I told my brother it was pointless, fucking waste of time.”

She was translating directly from dialect as she spoke. I was on the point of telling her yes, it’s pointless, fucking waste of time: I have the doll, now I’ll take it to Elena. But her hostile tone dissuaded me, I didn’t feel like telling her, I didn’t feel like telling anyone in the clan. Today I saw them not as a spectacle to be contemplated, compared painfully to what I remembered of my childhood in Naples; I felt them as my time, my own swampy life, which occasionally I still slipped into. They were just like the relations from whom I had fled as a girl. I couldn’t bear them and yet they held me tight, I had them all inside me.

Life can have an ironic geometry. Starting from the age of thirteen or fourteen I had aspired to a bourgeois decorum, proper Italian, a good life, cultured and reflective. Naples had seemed a wave that would drown me. I didn’t think the city could contain life forms different from those I had known as a child, violent or sensually lazy, tinged with sentimental vulgarity or obtusely fortified in defense of their own wretched degradation. I didn’t even look for them, those forms, in the past or in a possible future. I had run away like a burn victim who, screaming, tears off the burned skin, believing that she is tearing off the burning itself.