The Story of the Lost Child (49 page)

I was upset. As I drove toward Naples I thought of Dede. I felt she was close to making a mistake similar to Nadia’s, similar to all mistakes that take you away from yourself. It was the end of July. The day before Dede had got the highest grades on her graduation exam. She was an Airota, she was my daughter, her brilliant intelligence could only produce the best results. Soon she would be able to do much better than I had and even than her father. What I had gained by hard work and much luck, she had taken, and would continue to take, with ease, as if by birthright. Instead, what was her plan? To declare her love for Rino. To sink with him, to rid herself of every advantage, lose herself out of a spirit of solidarity and justice, out of fascination with what doesn’t resemble us, because in the muttering of that boy she saw some sort of extraordinary mind. I asked Imma suddenly, looking at her in the rearview mirror:

“Do you like Rino?”

“No, but Dede likes him.”

“How do you know?”

“Elsa told me.”

“And who told Elsa?”

“Dede.”

“Why don’t you like Rino?”

“Because he’s very ugly.”

“And who do you like?”

“Papa.”

I saw in her eyes the flame that in that moment she saw blazing around her father. A light—I thought—that Nino would never have had if he had sunk with Lila; the same light that Nadia had lost forever, sinking with Pasquale; and that would abandon Dede if she were lost following Rino. Suddenly I felt with shame that I could understand, and excuse, the irritation of Professor Galiani when she saw her daughter on Pasquale’s knees, I understood and excused Nino when, one way or another, he withdrew from Lila, and, why not, I understood and excused Adele when she had had to make the best of things and accept that I would marry her son.

As soon as I was back in the neighborhood I rang Lila’s bell. I found her listless, absent, but now it was typical of her and I wasn’t worried. I told her in detail what Nino had said and only at the end did I report that threatening phrase that concerned her. I asked:

“Seriously, can Nadia hurt you?”

She assumed a look of nonchalance.

“You can be hurt only if you love someone. But I don’t love anyone.”

“And Rino?”

“Rino’s gone.”

I immediately thought of Dede and her intentions. I was frightened.

“Where?”

She took a piece of paper from the table, she handed it to me, muttering:

“He wrote so well as a child and now look, he’s illiterate.”

I read the note. Rino, very laboriously, said he was tired of everything, insulted Enzo heavily, announced that he had gone to Bologna to a friend he had met during his military service. Six lines in all. No mention of Dede. My heart was pounding in my chest. That writing, that spelling, that syntax, what did they have to do with my daughter? Even his mother considered him a failed promise, a defeat, perhaps even a prophecy: look what would have happened to Tina if they hadn’t taken her.

“He left by himself?” I asked.

“Who would he have left with?”

I shook my head uncertainly. She read in my eyes the reason for my concern, she smiled:

“You’re afraid he left with Dede?”

I hurried home, trailed by Imma. I went in, I called Dede, I called Elsa. No answer. I rushed into the room where my older daughters slept and studied. I found Dede lying on the bed, her eyes burning with tears. I felt relieved. I thought that she had told Rino of her love and that he had rejected her.

I didn’t have time to speak: Imma, maybe because she hadn’t realized her sister’s state, began talking enthusiastically about her father, but Dede rebuffed her with an insult in dialect, then sat up and burst into tears. I nodded to Imma not to get mad, I said to my oldest daughter gently: I know it’s terrible, I know very well, but it will pass. The reaction was violent. As I was caressing her hair she pulled away with an abrupt movement of her head, crying: What are you talking about, you don’t know anything, you don’t understand anything, all you think about is yourself and the crap you write. Then she handed me a piece of graph paper—rather—she threw it in my face and ran away.

Once Imma realized that her sister was desperate, her eyes began to tear up in turn. I whispered, to keep her occupied: Call Elsa, see where she is, and I picked up the piece of paper. It was a day of notes. I immediately recognized the fine handwriting of my second daughter. Elsa had written at length to Dede. She explained to her that one can’t control feelings, that Rino had loved her for a long time and that little by little she, too, had fallen in love. She knew, of course, that she was causing her pain and she was sorry, but she also knew that a possible renunciation of the loved person would not fix things. Then she addressed me in an almost amused tone. She wrote that she had decided to give up school, that my cult of study had always seemed to her foolish, that it wasn’t books that made people good but good people who made some good books. She emphasized that Rino was good, and yet he had never read a book; she emphasized that her father was good and had made very good books. The connection between books, people, and goodness ended there: I wasn’t cited. She said goodbye with affection and told me not to be too angry: Dede and Imma would give me the satisfactions that she no longer felt able to give me. To her younger sister she dedicated a little heart with wings.

I turned into a fury. I was angry with Dede, who hadn’t realized how her sister, as usual, intended to steal what she valued. You should have known, I scolded her, you should have stopped her, you’re so intelligent and you let yourself be tricked by a vain sly girl. Then I ran downstairs, I said to Lila:

“Your son didn’t go alone, your son took Elsa with him.”

She looked at me, disoriented:

“Elsa?”

“Yes. And Elsa is a minor. Rino is nine years older, I swear to God I’ll go to the police and report him.”

She burst out laughing. It wasn’t a mean laugh but incredulous. She laughed and said, alluding to her son:

“But look how much damage he was able to do, I underrated him. He made both young ladies lose their heads, I can’t believe it. Lenù, come here, calm down, sit down. If you think about it, there’s more to laugh at than cry about.”

I said in dialect that I found nothing to laugh at, that what Rino had done was very serious, that I really was about to go to the police. Then she changed her tone, she pointed to the door, she said:

“Go to the cops, go on, what are you waiting for?”

I left, but for the moment I gave up the idea of the police. I went home, taking the steps two at a time. I shouted at Dede: I want to know where the fuck they went, tell me immediately. She was frightened, Imma put her hands over her ears, but I wouldn’t calm down until Dede admitted that Elsa had met Rino’s Bolognese friend once when he came to the neighborhood.

“Do you know his name?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have the address, the phone number?”

She trembled, she was on the point of giving me the information I wanted. Then, although by now she hated her sister even more than Rino, she must have thought it would be shameful to collaborate and was silent. I’ll find it myself, I cried, and began to turn her things upside down. I rummaged through the whole house. Then I stopped. While I was looking for yet another piece of paper, a note in a school diary, I realized that a lot else was missing. All the money was gone from the drawer where I normally kept it, and all my jewelry was gone, even my mother’s bracelet. Elsa had always been very fond of that bracelet. She said, partly joking and partly serious, that her grandmother, if she had made a will, would have left it to her and not to me.

That discovery made me even more determined, and Dede finally gave me the address and telephone number I was looking for. When she made up her mind, despising herself for giving in, she shouted at me that I was just like Elsa, we didn’t respect anything or anyone. I silenced her and went to the telephone. Rino’s friend was called Moreno, I threatened him. I told him that I knew he sold heroin, that I would get him in such deep trouble that he would never get out of jail. I got nothing. He swore that he didn’t know anything about Rino, that he remembered Dede, but that this daughter I was talking about, Elsa, he had never met.

I went back to Lila. She opened the door, but now Enzo was there, who made me sit down, and treated me kindly. I said I wanted to go to Bologna right away, I ordered Lila to go with me.

“There’s no need,” she said, “you’ll see that when they run out of money they’ll be back.”

“How much money did Rino take?”

“Nothing. He knows that if he touches even ten lire I’ll break his bones.”

I felt humiliated. I muttered:

“Elsa took my money and my jewelry.”

“Because you didn’t know how to bring her up.”

Enzo said to her:

“Stop it.”

She turned against him sharply:

“I say what I like. My son is a drug addict, my son didn’t study, my son speaks and writes poorly, my son is a good-for-nothing, my son has all the sins. But the one who steals is her daughter, the one who betrays her sister is Elsa.”

Enzo said to me:

“Let’s go, I’ll go with you to Bologna.”

We left in the car, we traveled at night. I had scarcely returned from Rome, the trip in the car had tired me. The sorrow and the fury that had arisen had absorbed all my remaining forces and now that the tension was easing I felt exhausted. Sitting next to Enzo, as we left Naples and got on the highway, what took hold was anxiety for the state in which I had left Dede, fear for what could happen to Elsa, some shame for the way I had frightened Imma, the way I had spoken to Lila, forgetting that Rino was her only child. I didn’t know whether to telephone Pietro in America and tell him to come back right away, I didn’t know if I really should go to the police. “We’ll solve it ourselves,” Enzo said, feigning confidence. “Don’t worry, it’s pointless to hurt the boy.”

“I don’t want to report Rino,” I said. “I just want them to find Elsa.”

It was true. I muttered that I wanted to recover my daughter, go home, pack my bags, not remain a minute longer in that house, in the neighborhood, in Naples. It makes no sense, I said, that now Lila and I start fighting about who brought up her children better, and if what happened is her fault or mine—I can’t bear it.

Enzo listened to me at length, in silence, then, although I felt he had been angry at Lila for a long time, he began to make excuses for her. He didn’t speak about Rino, about the problems he caused his mother, but about Tina. He said: If a being a few years old dies, she’s dead, it’s over, sooner or later you resign yourself. But if she disappears, if you no longer know anything about her, there’s not a thing that remains in her place, in your life. Will Tina never return or will she return? And when she returns, will she be alive or dead? Every moment—he murmured—you’re asking where she is. Is she a Gypsy on the street? Is she at home with rich people who have no children? Are people making her do horrible things and selling the photographs and films? Did they cut her up and sell her heart for a high price so it could be transplanted to another child’s chest? Are the other pieces underground, or were they burned? Or is she under the ground intact, because she died accidentally after she was abducted? And if earth and fire didn’t take her, and she is growing up who knows where, what does she look like now, what will she become later, if we meet her on the street will we recognize her? And if we recognize her who will give us back everything we lost of her, everything that happened when we weren’t there and little Tina felt abandoned?

At a certain point, while Enzo spoke in his laborious but dense sentences, I saw his tears in the glow of the headlights, I knew he wasn’t talking only about Lila but was trying to express his own suffering as well. That trip with him was important; I still find it hard to imagine a man with a finer sensibility than his. At first he told me what, every day, every night in those four years Lila had whispered or shouted. Then he urged me to talk about my work and my dissatisfactions. I told him about the girls, about books, about men, about resentments, about the need for approval. And I mentioned all my writing, which now had become obligatory, I struggled day and night to feel myself present, to not let myself be marginalized, to fight against those who considered me an upstart little woman without talent: persecutors—I muttered—whose only purpose is to make me lose my audience, and not because they’re inspired by any elevated motives but, rather, for the enjoyment of keeping me from improvement, or to carve out for themselves or for their protégés some wretched power harmful to me. He let me vent, he praised the energy I put into things. You see—he said—how excited you get. The effort has anchored you to the world you’ve chosen, it’s given you broad and detailed expertise in it, above all it has engaged your feelings. So life has dragged you along, and Tina, for you, is certainly an atrocious episode, thinking about it makes you sad, but it’s also, by now, a distant fact. For Lila, on the other hand, in all these years, the world collapsed as if it were hearsay, and slid into the void left by her daughter, like the rain that rushes down a drainpipe. She remains frozen at Tina, and feels bitter toward everything that continues to be alive, that grows and prospers. Of course, he said, she is strong, she treats me terribly, she gets angry with you, she says ugly things. But you don’t know how many times she has fainted just when she seemed tranquil, washing the dishes or staring out the window at the
stradone
.

In Bologna we found no trace of Rino and my daughter, even though Moreno, frightened by Enzo’s fierce calm, dragged us through streets and hangouts where, according to him, if they were in the city, the two would certainly have been welcomed. Enzo telephoned Lila often, I Dede. We hoped that there would be good news, but there wasn’t. At that point I was seized by a new crisis, I no longer knew what to do. I said again:

“I’m going to the police.”

Enzo shook his head.