The Story of the Lost Child (16 page)

I could have found out more, and maybe I would have liked to, all I had to do was call her, stop by. But I never did. Once only I met her on the street and stopped reluctantly. She must have been offended that I had told her the wrong phone number, that I had offered to give lessons to her son and instead had disappeared, that she had done everything to reconcile with me and I had withdrawn. She said she was in a hurry, she asked in dialect:

“Are you still living on Via Tasso?”

“Yes.”

“It’s out of the way.”

“It has a view of the sea.”

“What’s the sea, from up there? A bit of color. Better if you’re closer, that way you notice that there’s filth, mud, piss, polluted water. But you who read and write books like to tell lies, not the truth.”

I cut her short, I said:

“For now I’m there.”

She cut me even shorter:

“One can always change. How many times do we say one thing and then do another? Take a place here.”

I shook my head, I said goodbye. Was that what she wanted? To bring me back to the neighborhood?

Then in my already complicated life two completely unexpected things happened at the same time. Nino’s research institute was invited to New York for some important job and a tiny publishing house in Boston published my book. Those two events turned into a possible trip to the United States.

After endless hesitations, endless discussions, some quarrels, we decided to take that vacation. But I would have to leave Dede and Elsa for two weeks. Even under normal conditions I had a hard time making arrangements: I wrote for some journals, I did translations, I took part in debates in places large and small, I compiled notes for a new book, and to arrange for the children with all that hectic activity was always extremely difficult. In general I turned to Mirella, a student of Nino’s, who was very reliable and didn’t ask much, but if she wasn’t available I left them with Antonella, a neighbor of around fifty, the competent mother of grown children. This time I tried to get Pietro to take them, but he said it was impossible just then to have them for so long. I examined the situation (I had no relationship with Adele, Mariarosa had left and no one knew where she was, my mother was weakened by her elusive illness, Elisa was increasingly hostile), and there didn’t seem to be an acceptable solution. It was Pietro who finally said to me: Ask Lina, she left her son with you for months, she’s in your debt. I had a hard time making up my mind. The more superficial part of me imagined that, although she had showed that in spite of her work obligations she was available, she would treat my daughters like fussy, demanding little dolls, she would torment them, or leave them to Gennaro; while a more hidden part, which perhaps upset me more than the first, considered her the only person I knew who would devote herself entirely to making them comfortable. It was the urgency of finding a solution that drove me to call her. To my tentative and evasive request she responded without hesitation, as usual surprising me:

“Your daughters are more than my daughters, bring them to me whenever you like and go do your things as long as you want.”

Even though I had told her that I was going with Nino, she never mentioned him, not even when, with all kinds of cautions, I brought her the children. And so in May of 1980, consumed by misgivings and yet excited, I left for the United States. It was an extraordinary experience. I felt again that I had no limits, I was capable of flying over oceans, expanding over the entire world: an exhilarating delirium. Naturally the two weeks were very exhausting and very expensive. The women who had published my book had no money and even though they were generous I still spent a lot. As for Nino, he had trouble getting reimbursed even for his airplane ticket. Yet we were happy. I, at least, have never been so happy as in those days.

When we got back I was sure I was pregnant. Already before leaving for America I had had some suspicions, but I hadn’t said anything to Nino and for the entire vacation I had savored the possibility in secret, with a heedless pleasure. But when I went to get my daughters I had no more doubts and, feeling so literally full of life, I was tempted to confide in Lila. As usual, however, I gave up on the idea, I thought: She’ll say something unpleasant, she’ll remind me that I claimed I didn’t want another child. I was radiant and Lila, as if my happiness had infected her, greeted me with an air that was no less content, she exclaimed: How beautiful you look. I gave her the gifts I had brought for her, for Enzo, and for Gennaro. I told her in detail about the cities I had seen, the encounters I’d had. From the plane, I said, I saw a piece of the Atlantic Ocean through a hole in the clouds. The people are very friendly, they’re not reserved the way they are in Germany, or arrogant, as in France. Even if you speak English badly they listen to you with attention and make an effort to understand. In the restaurants everybody shouts, more than in Naples. If you compare the skyscraper on Corso Novara with the ones in Boston or New York, you realize it’s not a skyscraper. The streets are numbered, they don’t have the names of people everyone’s forgotten by now. I never mentioned Nino, I didn’t say anything about him and his work, I acted as if I had gone by myself. She listened attentively, she asked questions I wasn’t able to answer, and then she praised my daughters sincerely, she said she had got on very well with them. I was pleased, and again I was on the point of telling her that I was expecting a child. But Lila didn’t give me time, she whispered seriously: Lucky you’re back, Lenù, I’ve just had some good news and it makes me happy to tell you first of all. She, too, was pregnant.

Lila had dedicated herself to the children body and soul. And it could not have been easy to wake them in time in the morning, get them washed and dressed, give them a solid but quick breakfast, take them to school in the Via Tasso neighborhood amid the morning chaos of the city, pick them up punctually in that same turmoil, bring them back to the neighborhood, feed them, supervise their homework, and keep up with her job, her domestic tasks. But, when I questioned Dede and Elsa closely, it became clear that she had managed very well. And now for them I was a more inadequate mother than ever. I didn’t know how to make pasta with tomato sauce the way Aunt Lina did, I didn’t know how to dry their hair and comb it with the skill and gentleness she had, I didn’t know how to perform any task that Aunt Lina didn’t approach with a superior sensitivity, except maybe singing certain songs that they loved and that she had admitted she didn’t know. To this it should be added that, especially in Dede’s eyes, that marvelous woman whom I didn’t visit often enough (
Mamma, why don’t we go see Aunt Lina, why don’t you let us sleep at her house more, don’t you have to go away anymore?
) had a specific quality that made her unequalled: she was the mother of Gennaro, whom my older daughter usually called Rino, and who seemed to her the most wonderful person of the male sex in the world.

At the moment I was hurt. My relations with the children were not wonderful and their idealization of Lila made things worse. Once, at yet another criticism of me, I lost my patience, I yelled: O.K., go to the market of mothers and buy another one. That market was a game of ours that generally served to alleviate conflicts and reconcile us. I would say: Sell me at the market of mothers if I’m no good for you; and they would answer, no, Mamma, we don’t want to sell you, we like you the way you are. On that occasion, however, maybe because of my harsh tone, Dede answered: Yes, let’s go right now, we can sell you and buy Aunt Lina.

That was the atmosphere for a while. And certainly it wasn’t the best one for telling the children that I had lied to them. My emotional state was complicated: shameless, shy, happy, anxious, innocent, guilty. And I didn’t know where to begin, the conversation was difficult: children, I thought I didn’t want another child, but I did, and in fact I’m pregnant, you’ll have a little brother or maybe another sister, but the father isn’t your father, the father is Nino, who already has a wife and two children, and I don’t know how he’ll take it. I thought about it, thought about it again, and put it off.

Then out of the blue came a conversation that surprised me. Dede, in front of Elsa, who listened in some alarm, said in the tone she took when she wanted to explain a problem full of perils:

“You know that Aunt Lina sleeps with Enzo, but they’re not married?”

“Who told you?”

“Rino. Enzo isn’t his father.”

“Rino told you that, too?”

“Yes. So I asked Aunt Lina and she explained to me.”

“What did she explain?”

She was tense. She observed me to see if she was making me angry.

“Shall I tell you?”

“Yes.”

“Aunt Lina has a husband just as you do, and that husband is Rino’s father, his name is Stefano Carracci. Then she has Enzo, Enzo Scanno, who sleeps with her. And the exact same thing happens with you: you have Papa, whose name is Airota, but you sleep with Nino, whose name is Sarratore.”

I smiled to reassure her.

“How did you ever learn all those surnames?”

“Aunt Lina talked to us about it, she said that they’re stupid. Rino came out of her stomach, he lives with her, but he’s called Carracci like his father. We came out of your stomach, we live much more with you than with Papa, but we’re called Airota.”

“So?”

“Mamma, if someone talks about Aunt Lina’s stomach he doesn’t say this is Stefano Carracci’s stomach, he says this is Lina Cerullo’s stomach. The same goes for you: your stomach is Elena Greco’s stomach, not Pietro Airota’s.”

“And what does that mean?”

“That it would be more correct for Rino to be called Rino Cerullo and us Dede and Elsa Greco.”

“Is that your idea?”

“No, Aunt Lina’s.”

“What do you think?”

“I think the same thing.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

But Elsa, since the atmosphere seemed favorable, tugged at me and intervened:

“It’s not true, Mamma. She said that when she gets married she’ll be called Dede Carracci.”

Dede exclaimed furiously: “Shut up, you’re a liar.”

I turned to Elsa:

“Why Dede Carracci?”

“Because she wants to marry Rino.”

I asked Dede:

“You like Rino?”

“Yes,” she said in an argumentative tone, “and even if we don’t get married I’ll sleep with him just the same.”

“With Rino?”

“Yes. Like Aunt Lina with Enzo. And also like you with Nino.”

“Can she do that, Mamma?” Elsa asked, dubiously.

I didn’t answer, I was evasive. But that exchange improved my mood and initiated a new phase. It didn’t take much, in fact, to recognize that with this and other conversations about real and pretend fathers, about old and new last names, Lila had managed to make the living situation into which I had cast Dede and Elsa not only acceptable in their eyes but even interesting. In fact almost miraculously my daughters stopped talking about how they missed Adele and Mariarosa; they stopped saying, when they returned from Florence, that they wanted to go and stay forever with their father and Doriana; they stopped making trouble for Mirella, the babysitter, as if she were their worst enemy; they stopped rejecting Naples, the school, the teachers, their classmates, and, above all, the fact that Nino slept in my bed. In short, they seemed more serene. And I noted those changes with relief. However vexing it might be that Lila had entered the lives of my daughters, binding them to her, the last thing I could accuse her of was not having given them the utmost affection, the utmost care, assistance in reducing their anxieties. That was the Lila I loved. She could emerge unexpectedly from within her very meanness, surprising me. Suddenly every offense faded—
she’s malicious, she always has been, but she’s also much more, you have to put up with her
—and I acknowledged that she was helping me do less harm to my daughters.

One morning I woke up and thought of her without hostility for the first time in a long while. I remembered when she got married, her first pregnancy: she was sixteen, only seven or eight years older than Dede. My daughter would soon be the age of the ghosts of our girlhood. I found it inconceivable that in a relatively small amount of time, my daughter could wear a wedding dress, as Lila had, end up brutalized in a man’s bed, lock herself into the role of Signora Carracci; I found it equally inconceivable that, as had happened to me, she could lie under the heavy body of a grown man, at night, on the Maronti, smeared with dark sand, damp air, and bodily fluids, just for revenge. I remembered the thousands of odious things we had gone through and I let the solidarity regain force. What a waste it would be, I said to myself, to ruin our story by leaving too much space for ill feelings: ill feelings are inevitable, but the essential thing is to keep them in check. I grew close to Lila again with the excuse that the children liked seeing her. Our pregnancies did the rest.

But we were two very different pregnant women. My body reacted with eager acceptance, hers with reluctance. And yet from the beginning Lila emphasized that she had
wanted
that pregnancy, she said, laughing: I planned it. Yet there was something in her body that, as usual, put up resistance. Thus while I immediately felt as if a sort of rose-colored light flickered inside me, she became greenish, the whites of her eyes turned yellow, she detested certain smells, she threw up continuously. What should I do, she said, I’m happy, but that thing in my belly isn’t, it’s mad at me. Enzo denied it, he said: Come on, he’s happier than anyone. And according to Lila, who made fun of him, he meant: I put it in there, trust me, I saw that it’s good and you mustn’t worry.

When I ran into Enzo I felt more liking for him than usual, more admiration. It was as if to his old pride a new one had been added, which was manifested in a vastly increased desire to work and, at the same time, in a vigilance at home, in the office, on the street, all aimed at defending his companion from physical and metaphysical dangers and anticipating her every desire. He took on the task of giving Stefano the news; he didn’t blink, he half grimaced and withdrew, maybe because by now the old grocery made almost nothing and the subsidies he got from his ex-wife were essential, maybe because every connection between him and Lila must have seemed to him a very old story, what did it matter to him if she was pregnant, he had other problems, other desires.