The Story of the Lost Child (2 page)

Fernando Cerullo,
shoemaker, Lila’s father.

Nunzia Cerullo,
Lila’s mother.

Raffaella Cerullo,
called Lina, or Lila. She was born in August, 1944, and is sixty-six when she disappears from Naples without a trace. At the age of sixteen, she marries Stefano Carracci, but during a vacation on Ischia she falls in love with Nino Sarratore, for whom she leaves her husband. After the disastrous end of her relationship with Nino, the birth of her son Gennaro (also called Rino), and the discovery that Stefano is expecting a child with Ada Cappuccio, Lila leaves him definitively. She moves with Enzo Scanno to San Giovanni a Teduccio, but several years later she returns to the neighborhood with Enzo and Gennaro.

Rino Cerullo,
Lila’s older brother. He is married to Stefano’s sister, Pinuccia Carracci, with whom he has two sons.

Other children.

The Greco family (the porter’s family):

Elena Greco,
called Lenuccia or Lenù. Born in August, 1944, she is the author of the long story that we are reading. After elementary school, Elena continues to study, with increasing success, obtaining a degree from the Scuola Normale, in Pisa, where she meets Pietro Airota. She marries him, and they move to Florence. They have two children, Adele, called Dede, and Elsa, but Elena, disappointed by marriage, begins an affair with Nino Sarratore, with whom she has been in love since childhood, and eventually leaves Pietro and the children.

Peppe, Gianni,
and
Elisa,
Elena’s younger siblings. Despite Elena’s disapproval, Elisa goes to live with Marcello Solara.

The
father,
a porter at the city hall.

The
mother,
a housewife.

The Carracci family (Don Achille’s family):

Don Achille Carracci,
dealer in the black market, loan shark. He was murdered.

Maria Carracci,
wife of Don Achille, mother of Stefano, Pinuccia, and Alfonso. The daughter of Stefano and Ada Cappuccio bears her name.

Stefano Carracci,
son of Don Achille, shopkeeper and Lila’s first husband. Dissatisfied by his stormy marriage to Lila, he initiates a relationship with Ada Cappuccio, and they start living together. He is the father of Gennaro, with Lila, and of Maria, with Ada.

Pinuccia,
daughter of Don Achille. She is married to Lila’s brother, Rino, and has two sons with him.

Alfonso,
son of Don Achille. He resigns himself to marrying Marisa Sarratore after a long engagement.

The Peluso family (the carpenter’s family):

Alfredo Peluso,
carpenter and Communist, dies in prison.

Giuseppina Peluso,
devoted wife of Alfredo, commits suicide after his death.

Pasquale Peluso,
older son of Alfredo and Giuseppina, construction worker, militant Communist.

Carmela Peluso,
called
Carmen.
Pasquale’s sister, she was the girlfriend of Enzo Scanno for a long time. She subsequently marries Roberto, the owner of the gas pump on the
stradone,
with whom she has two children.

Other children.

The Cappuccio family (the mad widow’s family):

Melina,
a widow, a relative of Nunzia Cerullo. She nearly lost her mind after her relationship with Donato Sarratore ended.

Melina’s
husband,
who died in mysterious circumstances.

Ada Cappuccio,
Melina’s daughter. For a long time the girlfriend of Pasquale Peluso, she becomes the lover of Stefano Carracci, and goes to live with him. From their relationship a girl, Maria, is born.

Antonio Cappuccio,
her brother, a mechanic. He was Elena’s boyfriend.

Other children.

The Sarratore family (the railway-worker poet’s family):

Donato Sarratore,
a great womanizer, who was the lover of Melina Cappuccio. Elena, too, at a very young age, gives herself to him on the beach in Ischia, driven by the suffering that the relationship between Nino and Lila has caused her.

Lidia Sarratore,
wife of Donato.


Nino Sarratore,
the oldest of the five children of Donato and Lidia, has a long secret affair with Lila. Married to Eleonora, with whom he has Albertino and Lidia, he begins an affair with Elena, who is also married and has children.

Marisa Sarratore,
sister of Nino. Married to Alfonso Carracci. She becomes the lover of Michele Solara, with whom she has two children.

Pino, Clelia,
and
Ciro Sarratore,
younger children of Donato and Lidia.

The Scanno family (the fruit-and-vegetable seller’s family):

Nicola Scanno,
fruit-and-vegetable seller, dies of pneumonia.

Assunta Scanno,
wife of Nicola, dies of cancer.


Enzo Scanno,
son of Nicola and Assunta, also a fruit-and-vegetable seller. He was for a long time the boyfriend of Carmen Peluso. He takes on responsibility for Lila and her son, Gennaro, when she leaves Stefano Carracci, and takes them to live in San Giovanni a Teduccio.

Other children.

The Solara family (the family of the owner of the Solara bar-pastry shop):

Silvio Solara,
owner of the bar-pastry shop.

Manuela Solara,
wife of Silvio, moneylender. As an old woman, she is killed in the doorway of her house.

Marcello and Michele Solara,
sons of Silvio and Manuela. Rejected by Lila,
Marcello
, after many years, goes to live with Elisa, Elena’s younger sister.
Michele
, married to Gigliola, the daughter of the pastry maker, takes Marisa Sarratore as his lover, and has two more children with her. Yet he continues to be obsessed with Lila.

The Spagnuolo family (the baker’s family):

Signor Spagnuolo,
pastry maker at the Solaras’ bar-pastry shop.

Rosa Spagnuolo,
wife of the pastry maker.

Gigliola Spagnuolo,
daughter of the pastry maker, wife of Michele Solara and mother of two of his children.

Other children.

The Airota family:

Guido Airota,
professor of Greek literature.


Adele Airota,
his wife.

Mariarosa Airota,
their daughter, professor of art history in Milan.


Pietro Airota,
a very young university professor, Elena’s husband and the father of Dede and Elsa.

The teachers:

Ferraro,
teacher and librarian.

Maestra Oliviero,
teacher.

Professor Gerace,
high-school teacher. 


Professor Galiani,
high-school teacher.

Other characters:

Gino,
son of the pharmacist; Elena’s first boyfriend.


Nella Incardo,
the cousin of Maestra Oliviero.

Armando,
doctor, son of Professor Galiani. Married to Isabella, with whom he has a son named Marco.

Nadia,
student, daughter of Professor Galiani, was Nino’s girlfriend. During a period of militant political activity, she becomes attached to Pasquale Peluso.

Bruno Soccavo,
friend of Nino Sarratore and the heir to a sausage factory. He is killed in his factory.

Franco Mari,
Elena’s boyfriend during her first years at the university, has devoted himself to political activism. He loses an eye in a Fascist attack.

Silvia
, a university student and political activist. She has a son, Mirko, from a brief relationship with Nino Sarratore.

F
rom October 1976 until 1979, when I returned to Naples to live, I avoided resuming a steady relationship with Lila. But it wasn’t easy. She almost immediately tried to reenter my life by force, and I ignored her, tolerated her, endured her. Even if she acted as if there were nothing she wanted more than to be close to me at a difficult moment, I couldn’t forget the contempt with which she had treated me.

Today I think that if it had been only the insult that wounded me—You’re an idiot, she had shouted on the telephone when I told her about Nino, and she had never,
ever
spoken to me like that before—I would have soon calmed down. In reality, what mattered more than that offense was the mention of Dede and Elsa. Think of the harm you’re doing to your daughters, she had warned me, and at the moment I had paid no attention. But over time those words acquired greater weight, and I returned to them often. Lila had never displayed the slightest interest in Dede and Elsa; almost certainly she didn’t even remember their names. If, on the phone, I mentioned some intelligent remark they had made, she cut me off, changed the subject. And when she met them for the first time, at the house of Marcello Solara, she had confined herself to an absentminded glance and a few pat phrases—she hadn’t paid the least attention to how nicely they were dressed, how neatly their hair was combed, how well both were able to express themselves, although they were still small. And yet
I
had given birth to them,
I
had brought them up, they were part of me, who had been her friend forever: she should have taken this into account—I won’t say out of affection but at least out of politeness—for my maternal pride. Yet she hadn’t even attempted a little good-natured sarcasm; she had displayed indifference and nothing more. Only now—out of jealousy, surely, because I had taken Nino—did she remember the girls, and wanted to emphasize that I was a terrible mother, that although I was happy, I was causing them unhappiness. The minute I thought about it I became anxious. Had Lila worried about Gennaro when she left Stefano, when she abandoned the child to the neighbor because of her work in the factory, when she sent him to me as if to get him out of the way? Ah, I had my faults, but I was certainly more a mother than she was.

Such thoughts became a habit in those years. It was as if Lila, who, after all, had uttered only that one malicious remark about Dede and Elsa, had become the defense lawyer for their needs as daughters, and, every time I neglected them to devote myself to myself, I felt obliged to prove to her that she was wrong. But it was a voice invented by ill feeling; what she really thought of my behavior as a mother I don’t know. Only she can say if, in fact, she has managed to insert herself into this extremely long chain of words to modify my text, to purposely supply the missing links, to unhook others without letting it show, to say of me more than I want, more than I’m able to say. I wish for this intrusion, I’ve hoped for it ever since I began to write our story, but I have to get to the end in order to check all the pages. If I tried now, I would certainly get stuck. I’ve been writing for too long, and I’m tired; it’s more and more difficult to keep the thread of the story taut within the chaos of the years, of events large and small, of moods. So either I tend to pass over my own affairs to recapture Lila and all the complications she brings with her or, worse, I let myself be carried away by the events of my life, only because it’s easier to write them. But I have to avoid this choice. I mustn’t take the first path, on which, if I set myself aside, I would end up finding ever fewer traces of Lila—since the very nature of our relationship dictates that I can reach her only by passing through myself. But I shouldn’t take the second, either. That, in fact, I speak of my experience in increasingly greater detail is just what she would certainly favor. Come on—she would say—tell us what turn your life took, who cares about mine, admit that it doesn’t even interest you. And she would conclude: I’m a scribble on a scribble, completely unsuitable for one of your books; forget it, Lenù, one doesn’t tell the story of an erasure.

What to do, then? Admit yet again that she’s right? Accept that to be adult is to disappear, is to learn to hide to the point of vanishing? Admit that, as the years pass, the less I know of Lila?

This morning I keep weariness at bay and sit down again at the desk. Now that I’m close to the most painful part of our story, I want to seek on the page a balance between her and me that in life I couldn’t find even between myself and me.

Of the days in Montpellier I remember everything except the city; it’s as if I’d never been there. Outside the hotel, outside the vast assembly hall where the academic conference that Nino was attending took place, today I see only a windy autumn and a blue sky resting on white clouds. And yet in my memory that place-name, Montpellier, has for many reasons remained a symbol of escape. I had been out of Italy once, in Paris, with Franco, and I had felt exhilarated by my own audacity. But then it seemed to me that my world was and would forever remain the neighborhood, Naples, while the rest was like a brief outing in whose special climate I could imagine myself as I would never in fact be. Montpellier, on the other hand, although it was far less exciting than Paris, gave me the impression that my boundaries had burst and I was expanding. The pure and simple fact of being in that place constituted in my eyes the proof that the neighborhood, Naples, Pisa, Florence, Milan, Italy itself were only tiny fragments of the world and that I would do well not to be satisfied with those fragments any longer. In Montpellier I felt the limitations of my outlook, of the language in which I expressed myself and in which I had written. In Montpellier it seemed to me evident how restrictive, at thirty-two, being a wife and mother might be. And in all those days charged with love I felt, for the first time, freed from the chains I had accumulated over the years—those of my origins, those I had acquired through academic success, those derived from the choices I had made in life, especially marriage. There I also understood the reasons for the pleasure I had felt, in the past, on seeing my first book translated into other languages and, at the same time, the reasons for my disappointment at finding few readers outside Italy. It was marvelous to cross borders, to let oneself go within other cultures, discover the provisional nature of what I had taken for absolute. The fact that Lila had never been out of Naples, that she was afraid even of San Giovanni a Teduccio—if in the past I had judged it an arguable choice that she was nevertheless able, as usual, to turn into an advantage—now seemed to me simply a sign of mental limitation. I reacted the way you do to someone who insults you by using the same formulations that offended you.
You were wrong about me? No, my dear, it’s I, I who was wrong about you: you will spend the rest of your life looking out at the trucks passing on the
stradone.