The Story of the Lost Child (38 page)

We worked for days. The text descended from Heaven to earth through the noise of the printer, materialized in black dots laid on paper. Lila found it inadequate, we returned to pens, we labored to correct it. She was irritable: from me she expected more, she thought I could respond to all her questions, she got angry because she was convinced that I was a well of knowledge, while at every line she discovered that I didn’t know the local geography, the tiny details of bureaucracies, how the communal councils functioned, the hierarchies of a bank, the crimes and the punishments. And yet, contradictorily, I hadn’t felt her to be so proud of me and of our friendship in a long time.
We have to destroy them, Lenù, and if this isn’t enough I’ll murder them
. Our heads collided—for the last time, now that I think of it—one against the other, and merged until they were one. Finally we had to resign ourselves and admit that it was finished, and the dull period of what’s done is done began. She printed it yet again, I put our pages in an envelope, and sent it to the publishing house and asked the editor to show it to the lawyers. I need to know—I explained on the telephone—if this stuff was sufficient to send the Solaras to jail.

A week passed, two weeks. The editor telephoned one morning and was lavish in his praise.

“You’re in a splendid period,” he said.

“I worked with a friend of mine.”

“It shows your hand at its best, it’s an extraordinary text. Do me a favor: show these pages to Professor Sarratore, so he sees how anything can be transformed into passionate reading.”

“I don’t see Nino anymore.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re in such good shape.”

I didn’t laugh, I needed to know urgently what the lawyers had said. The answer disappointed me. There’s not enough material, the editor said, for even a day in jail. You can take some satisfaction, but these Solaras of yours aren’t going to prison, especially if, as you recount, they’re rooted in local politics and have money to buy whoever they want. I felt weak, my legs went limp, I lost conviction, I thought: Lila will be furious. I said, depressed: They’re much worse than I’ve described. The editor perceived my disappointment, he tried to encourage me, he went back to praising the passion I had put into the pages. But the conclusion remained the same: with this you won’t ruin them. Then, to my surprise, he insisted that I not put aside the text but publish it. I’ll call
L’Espresso
, he suggested, if you come out with a piece like this right now, it’ll be an important move for yourself, for your audience, for everyone, you’ll show that the Italy we live in is much worse than the one we talk about. And he asked permission to submit the pages to the lawyers again to find out what legal risks I would run, what I would have to take out and what I could keep. I thought of how easy everything had been when it was a matter of scaring Bruno Soccavo, and I refused firmly. I said, I’ll end up being sued again, I’d find myself in trouble for no reason, and I would be forced—something I don’t want to do, for the sake of my children—to think that the laws work for those who fear them, not for those who violate them.

I waited a while, then I gathered my strength and told Lila everything, word for word. She stayed calm, she turned on the computer, she scanned the text, but I don’t think she reread it, she stared at the screen and meanwhile reflected. Then she asked me in a hostile tone:

“Do you trust this editor?”

“Yes, he’s a smart person.”

“Then why don’t you want to publish the article?”

“What would be the point?”

“To clarify.”

“It’s already clear.”

“To whom? To you, to me, to the editor?”

She shook her head, displeased, and said coldly that she had to work.

I said: “Wait.”

“I’m in a hurry. Without Alfonso work’s gotten complicated. Go on, please, go.”

“Why are you angry at me?”

“Go.”

We didn’t see each other for a while. In the morning she sent Tina up to me, in the evening either Enzo came to get her or she shouted from the landing: Tina, come to Mamma. A couple of weeks passed, I think, then the editor telephoned me in a very cheerful mood.

“Good for you, I’m glad you made up your mind.”

I didn’t understand and he explained to me that his friend at
L’Espresso
had called, he urgently needed my address. From him he had learned that the text on the Solaras would come out in that week’s issue, with some cuts. You could have told me, he said, that you changed your mind.

I was in a cold sweat, I didn’t know what to say, I pretended nothing was wrong. But it took me a moment to realize that Lila had sent our pages to the weekly. I hurried to her to protest, I was indignant, but I found her especially affectionate and above all happy.

“Since you couldn’t make up your mind, I did.”

“I had decided not to publish it.”

“Not me.”

“You sign it alone, then.”

“What do you mean? You’re the writer.”

It was impossible to communicate to her my disapproval and my anguish, every critical sentence of mine was blunted against her good humor. The article, six dense pages, was given great prominence, and naturally it had a single byline, mine.

When I saw that, we quarreled. I said to her angrily:

“I don’t understand why you behave like that.”

“I understand,” she said.

Her face still bore the marks of Michele’s fist, but certainly it hadn’t been fear that kept her from putting her name to it. She was terrified by something else and I knew it, she didn’t give a damn about the Solaras. But I felt so resentful that I threw it in her face just the same—
You removed your name because you like to stay hidden, because it’s convenient to throw stones and hide your hand, I’m tired of your plots
—and she began to laugh, it seemed to her a senseless accusation. I don’t like that you think that, she said. She became sullen, she muttered that she had sent the article to
L
’
Espresso
with only my name on it because hers didn’t count, because I was the one who had studied, because I was famous, because now I could give anyone a beating without fear. In those words I found the confirmation that she ingenuously overestimated my role, and I told her so. But she was annoyed, she answered that it was I who underrated myself, so she wanted me to take on more and better, to have even greater success, all she wanted was for my merits to be recognized. You’ll see, she exclaimed, what will happen to the Solaras.

I went home depressed. I couldn’t drive out the suspicion that she was using me, just as Marcello had said. She had sent me out to risk everything and counted on that bit of fame I had to win her war, to complete her revenge, to silence all her feelings of guilt.

In reality, having my name on that article was a further step up for me. As a result of its wide circulation, many of my fragments were connected. I proved that not only did I have a vocation as a fiction writer but, as in the past I had been involved in the union struggles, as I had engaged in criticizing the condition of women, so I fought against the degradation of my city. The small audience I had won in the late sixties merged with the one that, amid ups and downs, I had cultivated in the seventies and the new, larger one of now. That helped the first two books, which were reprinted, and the third, which continued to sell well, while the idea of making a film from it became more concrete.

Naturally the article caused a lot of bother. I was summoned by the carabinieri. I was bugged by the financial police. I was vilified by local papers on the right with labels like
divorcée, feminist, Communist, supporter of terrorists
. I received anonymous phone calls that threatened me and my daughters in a dialect full of obscenities. But, although I lived in anxiety—a state of anxiety now seemed to me inherent to writing—I was in the end not as agitated as at the time of the article in
Panorama
and Carmen’s lawsuit. It was my job, I was learning to do it better and better. And then I felt protected by the legal support of the publisher, by the success I had in newspapers on the left, by the increasingly well attended public appearances, and by the idea that I was right.

But, if I have to be honest, it wasn’t only that. I calmed down mainly when it became evident that the Solaras would do absolutely nothing to me. My visibility drove them to be as invisible as possible. Marcello and Michele not only didn’t bring a second lawsuit but were completely silent, the whole time, and even when I encountered them before law-enforcement officers, both confined themselves to cold but respectful greetings. Thus the waters subsided. The only concrete thing that happened was that various investigations were opened, along with an equal number of files. But, as the lawyers of the publishing house had predicted, the first soon came to a halt, the second ended—I imagine—under thousands of other files, and the Solaras remained free. The only harm the article caused was of an emotional nature: my sister, my nephew Silvio, even my father—not in words but in deeds—cut me out of their lives. Only Marcello continued to be polite. One afternoon I met him along the
stradone
, and I looked away. But he stopped in front of me, he said: Lenù, I know that if you could you wouldn’t have done it, I’m not angry with you, it’s not your fault. So remember that my house is always open. I replied: Elisa hung up on me just yesterday. He smiled: Your sister is the boss, what can I do?

But the outcome, which was in essence conciliatory, depressed Lila. She didn’t hide her disappointment and yet she didn’t put it into words. She carried on, pretending that nothing was wrong: she dropped off Tina at my house and shut herself in the office. But sometimes she stayed in bed all day; she said her head was bursting, and she dozed.

I was careful not to remind her that the decision to publish our pages had been hers. I didn’t say: I warned you that the Solaras would come out of it unharmed, the publisher told me, now it’s pointless for you to suffer over it. But stamped on her face was also regret that she had been wrong in her assessment. In those weeks she felt humiliated at having always ascribed a power to things that in the current hierarchies were insignificant: the alphabet, writing, books. Only then—I think today—did she, who seemed so disillusioned, so adult, come to the end of her childhood.

She stopped helping me. More and more often she gave me charge of her daughter and sometimes, though rarely, even of Gennaro, who was forced to hang around my house. Yet my life had become increasingly busy and I didn’t know how to manage. One morning when I asked her about the children she answered in annoyance: Call my mother, get her to help you. It was a novelty, I withdrew in embarrassment, I obeyed. So it was that Nunzia arrived at my house, much aged, submissive, uneasy, but efficient as in the days when she took care of the house in Ischia.

My older daughters immediately treated her with disdain, especially Dede, who was going through puberty and had lost any sense of tact. Her face was inflamed, her body was swelling, becoming shapeless, driving out, day by day, the image she was used to, and she felt ugly, she became mean. We began to bicker:

“Why do we have to stay with that old lady? It’s disgusting what she cooks, you should cook.”

“Stop it.”

“She spits when she talks, did you see she doesn’t have any teeth?”

“I don’t want to hear another word, that’s enough.”

“We already have to live in this toilet, now we have to have that person in the house? I don’t want her to sleep here when you’re not here.”

“Dede, I said that’s enough.”

Elsa was no better, but in her own way: she remained serious, assuming a tone that seemed to support me and yet was duplicitous.

“I like her, Mamma, you were right to have her come. She smells nice, just like a corpse.”

“Now I’ll slap you. You know she can hear you?”

The only one who was immediately fond of Lila’s mother was Imma: she was Tina’s slave and so she imitated her in everything, even in her attachments. The two of them followed Nunzia around as she worked in the apartment; they called her grandma. But Grandma was brusque, especially with Imma. She caressed her real grandchild, occasionally softening at her chatter and her affection, while she worked in silence when her pretend grandchild looked for attention. Meanwhile—I discovered—something was bothering her. At the end of the first week she said, looking down: Lenù, we haven’t talked about how much you’ll give me. I felt hurt: I had stupidly thought that she came because her daughter had asked her to; if I had known I had to pay I would have chosen a young person, whom my daughters would like and from whom I could have demanded what I needed. But I contained myself, we talked about money and fixed on an amount. Only then Nunzia cheered up a little. At the end of the negotiation she felt the need to justify herself: My husband is sick, she said, he no longer works, and Lina is crazy, she fired Rino, we don’t have a cent. I muttered that I understood, I told her to be nicer to Imma. She obeyed. From then on, although she always favored Tina, she made an effort to be kind to my daughter.

Toward Lila, however, her attitude didn’t change. Neither when she arrived nor when she left did Nunzia ever feel the need to stop by at her daughter’s, although Lila had gotten the job for her. If they met on the stairs they didn’t even greet each other. She was an old woman who had lost her former wary friendliness. But Lila, too, it must be said, was intractable, and visibly worsening.

With me she was always spiteful, for no reason. It especially irritated me that she acted as if everything that happened to my daughters escaped me.

“Dede got the curse.”

“Did she tell you?”

“Yes, you weren’t here.”

“Did you use that expression with her?”

“What word should I have used?”

“Something less vulgar.”

“You know how your daughters speak to each other? And have you ever heard the things they say about my mother?”

I didn’t like that tone. She, who in the past had appeared so fond of Dede, Elsa, and Imma, seemed determined to disparage them to me, and she took every opportunity to show me that, because I was always traveling around Italy, I neglected them, with serious consequences for their upbringing. I was especially upset when she began accusing me of not seeing Imma’s problems.