The Story of the Lost Child (46 page)

“Why should I have one?”

“Aren’t you fond of Enzo anymore?”

“Yes, but I have no desire for him or anyone. I’m old and no one should disturb me when I sleep.”

“Go to a doctor.”

“Enough with doctors.”

“I’ll go with you, those are problems that can be solved.”

She became serious.

“No, I’m fine like this.”

“No one is fine like this.”

“I am. Fucking is very overrated.”

“I’m talking about love.”

“I have other things on my mind. You’ve already forgotten Tina, not me.”

I heard Enzo and her arguing more frequently. Rather, in the case of Enzo, only his heavy voice reached me, slightly more emphatic than usual, while Lila did nothing but scream. Only a few phrases of his reached me upstairs, filtered through the floor. He wasn’t angry—he was never angry with Lila—he was desperate. In essence he said that everything had gotten worse—Tina, the work, their relationship—but she wasn’t doing anything to redefine the situation; rather she wanted everything to continue getting worse. You talk to us, he said to me once. I answered that it was no use, she just needed more time to find an equilibrium. Enzo, for the first time, replied roughly: Lina has never had any equilibrium.

It wasn’t true. Lila, when she wanted, could be calm, thoughtful, even in that phase of great tension. She had good days, when she was serene and very affectionate. She took care of me and my daughters, she asked about my trips, about what I was writing, about the people I met. She followed—often with amusement, sometimes with indignation—the stories Dede, Elsa, even Imma told about school failures, crazy teachers, quarrels, loves. And she was generous. One afternoon, with Gennaro’s help, she brought me up an old computer. She taught me how it worked and said: I’m giving it to you.

The next day I began writing on it. I got used to it quickly, even though I was obsessed by the fear that a power outage would sweep away hours of work. Otherwise I was excited about the machine. I told my daughters, in Lila’s presence: Imagine, I learned to write with a fountain pen, then moved on to a ballpoint pen, then the typewriter—and also an electric typewriter—and finally here I am, I tap on the keys and this miraculous writing appears. It’s absolutely beautiful, I’ll never go back, I’m finished with the pen, I’ll always write on the computer, come, touch the callus I have here on my index finger, feel how hard it is: I’ve always had it but now it will disappear.

Lila enjoyed my satisfaction, she had the expression of someone who is happy to have made a welcome gift. Your mother, however, she said, has the enthusiasm of someone who understands nothing, and she drew them away to let me work. Although she knew she had lost their confidence, when she was in a good mood she often took them to the office to teach them what the newest machines could do, and how and why. She said, to win them back: Signora Elena Greco, I don’t know if you know her, has the attention of a hippopotamus sleeping in a swamp, whereas you girls are very quick. But she couldn’t regain their affection, in particular Dede and Elsa’s. The girls said to me: It’s impossible to understand what she has in mind, Mamma, first she urges us to learn and then she says that these machines are useful for making a lot of money by destroying all the old ways of making money. Yet, while I knew how to use the computer only for writing, my daughters, and even Imma to a small extent, soon acquired knowledge and skills that made me proud. Whenever I had a problem I began to depend especially on Elsa, who always knew what to do and then boasted to Aunt Lina: I fixed it like this and like that, what do you say, was I clever?

Things went even better when Dede began to involve Rino. He, who had never even wanted to touch one of those objects of Enzo and Lila’s, began to show some interest, if only not to be admonished by the girls. One morning Lila said to me, laughing:

“Dede is changing Gennaro.”

I answered:

“Rino just needs some confidence.”

She replied with ostentatious vulgarity:

“I know what kind of confidence he needs.”

Those were the good days. But soon the bad ones arrived: she was hot, she was cold, she turned yellow, then she flared up, she yelled, she demanded, she broke out in a sweat, then she quarreled with Carmen, whom she called stupid and whiny. After the operation her body seemed even more confused. Suddenly she put an end to the kindnesses; she found Elsa unbearable, reprimanded Dede, treated Imma harshly; while I was speaking to her she abruptly turned her back and went off. In those dark periods she couldn’t stand to be in the house and had even less tolerance for the office. She took a bus or the subway and off she went.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m traveling around Naples.”

“Yes, but where?”

“Do I have to account for myself to you?”

Any occasion could provide a pretext for a fight; it took nothing. She quarreled mainly with her son but ascribed the cause of their disagreements to Dede and Elsa. In fact she was right. My oldest daughter happily spent time with Rino, and now her sister, in order not to feel excluded, made an effort to accept him, and was often with them. The result was that both were inoculating him with a sort of permanent insubordination, an attitude that, while in their case was only a passionate verbal exercise, for Rino became confused and self-indulgent chatter that Lila couldn’t bear. Those two girls, she scolded her son, put intelligence into it, you repeat nonsense like a parrot. In those days she was intolerant, she wouldn’t accept clichéd phrases, maudlin expressions, any form of sentimentality, or, especially, the spirit of rebellion fed by old slogans. And yet at the opportune moment she herself displayed an affected anarchism that to me seemed out of place now. We confronted each other harshly when, at the approach of the electoral campaign of ’87, we read that Nadia Galiani had been arrested in Chiasso.

Carmen hurried to my house in the grip of a panic attack, she couldn’t think, she said: Now they’ll seize Pasquale, you’ll see, he escaped the Solaras but the carabinieri will murder him. Lila answered: The carabinieri didn’t arrest Nadia, she turned herself in to bargain for a lighter sentence. That hypothesis seemed sensible to me. There were a few lines in the papers, but no talk of pursuits, shooting, capture. To soothe Carmen I again advised her: Pasquale would do well to turn himself in, you know what I think. All hell broke loose, Lila became furious, she began to shout:

“Turn himself over to whom.”

“To the state.”

“To the state?”

She made a concise list of thefts and criminal collaborations old and new by ministers, simple parliamentarians, policemen, judges, secret services from 1945 until then, showing herself as usual more informed than I could have imagined. And she yelled:

“
That
is the state, why the fuck do you want to give it Pasquale?” Then she pushed me: “Let’s bet that Nadia does a few months in jail and comes out, while, if they get Pasquale, they’ll lock him in a cell and throw away the key?” She was almost on top of me, repeating aggressively: “Do you want to bet?”

I didn’t answer. I was worried, this sort of conversation wasn’t good for Carmen. After the death of the Solaras she had immediately withdrawn the lawsuit against me, she had done endless nice things for me, she was always available to my daughters, even if she was burdened by obligations and worries. I was sorry that instead of soothing her we were tormenting her. She was trembling, she said, addressing me but invoking Lila’s authority: If Nadia turned herself in, Lenù, it means that she’s repented, that now she’s throwing all the blame on Pasquale and will get herself off. Isn’t it true, Lina? But then she spoke bitterly to Lila, invoking my authority: It’s no longer a matter of principle, Lina, we have to think of what’s right for Pasquale, we have to let him know that it’s better to live in prison than to be killed: isn’t it true, Lenù?

At that point Lila insulted us grossly and, although we were in her house, went out, slamming the door.

For Lila, going out, wandering around, was now the solution to all the tensions and problems she struggled with. Often she left in the morning and returned in the evening, paying no attention to Enzo, who didn’t know how to deal with the clients, or to Rino, or to the commitments she made to me, when I had to travel and left her my daughters. She was now unreliable, all it took was some small setback and she dropped everything, without a thought of the consequences.

Carmen maintained that Lila took refuge in the old cemetery on the Doganella, where she chose the grave of a child to think about Tina, who had no grave, and then she walked along the shaded paths, amid plants, old niches, stopping in front of the most faded photographs. The dead—Carmen said to me—are a certainty, they have stones, the dates of birth and death, while her daughter doesn’t, her daughter will remain forever with only the date of birth, and that is terrible, that poor child will never have a conclusion, a fixed point where her mother can sit and be tranquil. But Carmen had a propensity for fantasies about death and so I took no notice. I imagined that Lila walked through the city paying no attention to anything, only to numb the grief that after years continued to poison her. Or I hypothesized that she really had decided, in her way, extreme as always, not to devote herself anymore to anything or anyone. And since I knew that her mind needed exactly the opposite, I feared that she would have a nervous breakdown, that at the first opportunity she would let loose against Enzo, against Rino, against me, against my daughters, against a passerby who annoyed her, against anyone who gave her an extra glance. At home I could quarrel, calm her down, control her. But on the street? Every time she went out I was afraid she’d get in trouble. But frequently, when I had something to do and heard the door below close and her steps on the stairs, then out in the street, I drew a sigh of relief. She wouldn’t come up to me, she wouldn’t drop in with provocative words, she wouldn’t taunt the girls, she wouldn’t disparage Imma, she wouldn’t try in every possible way to hurt me.

I went back to thinking insistently that it was time to leave. Now it was senseless for me, for Dede, for Elsa, for Imma to remain in the neighborhood. Lila herself, besides, after her stay in the hospital, after the operation, after the imbalances of her body, had begun to say more often what she first said sporadically: Go away, Lenù, what are you doing here, look at you, it’s as if you’re staying only because you made a vow to the Madonna. She wanted to remind me that I hadn’t met her expectations, that my living in the neighborhood was only an intellectual pretense, that in fact for her, for the place where we were born—with all my studies, with all my books—I had been useless, I was useless. I was irritated and I thought: she treats me as if she wanted to fire me for poor performance.

A period began in which I racked my brains constantly over what to do. My daughters needed stability and I had to work hard to get their fathers to attend to them. Nino remained the bigger problem. Occasionally he telephoned, said some sweet thing to Imma on the telephone, she responded in monosyllables, that was it. Recently he had made a move that was, all in all, predictable, considering his ambitions: during the elections he had appeared on the socialist party lists. For the occasion he had sent me a letter in which he asked me to vote for him and get people to vote. In the letter, which ended with
Tell Lina, too!
he had enclosed a flyer that included an attractive photograph of him and a biographical note. Underlined in pen was a line in which he declared to the electors that he had three children: Albertino, Lidia, and Imma. Next to it he had written:
Please read this to the child
.

I hadn’t voted and I had done nothing to get people to vote for him, but I had shown the flyer to Imma and she had asked if she could keep it. When her father was elected I explained briefly the meaning of people, elections, representation, parliament. Now he lived permanently in Rome. After his electoral success he had been in touch only once, with a letter as hasty as it was self-satisfied, which he asked me to read to his daughter, Dede, and Elsa. No telephone number, no address, only words whose meaning was an offer of protection at a distance
(Be sure that I will watch over you
). But Imma also wanted to keep that testimony to her father’s existence. And when Elsa said to her things like, You’re boring, that’s why you’re called Sarratore and we’re Airota, she seemed less disoriented—perhaps less worried—by having a surname that was different from that of her sisters. One day the teacher had asked her: Are you the daughter of the Honorable Sarratore, and the next day she had brought in as proof the flyer, which she kept for any eventuality. I was pleased with that pride and planned to try to consolidate it. Nino’s life was, as usual, crowded and turbulent? All right. But his daughter wasn’t a rosette to use and then put back in the drawer until the next occasion.

With Pietro in recent years I had never had any problems. He contributed money for his daughters’ maintenance punctually (from Nino I had never received a lira) and was as far as possible a conscientious father. But not long ago he had broken up with Doriana, he was tired of Florence, he wanted to go to the United States. And, stubborn as he was, he would manage it. That alarmed me. I said to him: You’ll abandon your daughters, and he replied: it seems a desertion now but you’ll see, soon it will be an advantage for them especially. He was probably right, in that his words had something in common with Nino’s
(Be sure that I will watch over you)
. In fact, however, Dede and Elsa, too, would remain without a father. And if Imma had always done without, Dede and Elsa clung to Pietro, they were used to having recourse to him when they wanted. His departure would sadden and limit them, that I was sure of. Of course they were old enough, Dede was eighteen, Elsa almost fifteen. They were in good schools, they both had good teachers. But was it enough? They had never become assimilated, neither of them had close schoolmates or friends, they seemed comfortable only with Rino. And what did they really have in common with that large boy who was much older and yet more childish than they?