Letter to a Child Never Born
Oriana Fallaci
Translated from the Italian
by John Shepley
Contents
Letter to a Child Never Born
Copyright
Letter to a Child Never Born is a powerful novel about a woman expecting a child. Believing that motherhood is a personal and responsible choice, not a duty, Oriana Fallaci shares with the reader the conflict of emotions and desires at the core of every woman’s existence.
‘Honesty that scalds while it illuminates. No one will read it unmoved’ — COSMOPOLITAN
‘Fallaci strips truth down to its naked bone’ — NEW YORK TIMES
‘With her customary brilliance Fallaci has probed into the psyche, the conscience and the heart of women to reveal the anguishing doubts, problems and hopes of maternity — draws the reader like magic’ — NEW YORKER
‘The articulated questions truly belong to all of us — men and women alike’ — LOS ANGELES TIMES
To those who do not fear doubt —
To those who wonder why
without growing tired and at the cost
of suffering and dying —
To those who pose themselves the dilemma
of giving life or denying it —
this book is dedicated
by a woman
for all women.
Last night I knew you existed: a drop of life escaped from nothingness. I was lying, my eyes wide open in the darkness, and all at once I was certain you were there. You existed. It was as if a bullet had struck me. My heart stopped. And when it began to pound again, in gun bursts of wonder, I had the feeling I had been flung into a well so deep that everything was unsure and terrifying. Now I am locked in fear that soaks my face, my hair, my thoughts. I am lost in it. It is not fear of others. I don’t care about others. It’s not fear of God. I don’t believe in God. It’s not fear of pain. I have no fear of pain. It is fear of you, of the circumstance that has wrenched you out of nothingness to attach yourself to my body. I was never eager to welcome you, even though I’ve known for some time that you might exist someday. In that sense I have long awaited you. But still I’ve always asked myself the terrible question: What if you don’t want to be born? What if some day you were to cry out to reproach me: ‘Who asked you to bring me into the world, why did you bring me into it, why?’ Life is such an effort, Child. It’s a war that is renewed each day, and its moments of joy are brief parentheses for which you pay a cruel price. How can I know that it wouldn’t be better to throw you away? How can I tell that you wouldn’t rather be returned to the silence? You cannot speak to me; your drop of life is only a cluster of cells that has scarcely begun. Perhaps it’s not even life, only mere possibility of life, I wish that you could help me with even a nod, a slight sign. My mother claims that I gave her such a sign, and that was the reason she brought me into the world.
You see, my mother didn’t want me. I was begun in a moment of other people’s carelessness. And hoping I wouldn’t be born, she dissolved some medicine in a glass of water each night. Then, weeping, she drank it. She drank it faithfully until the night I moved inside her belly and gave her a kick to tell her not to throw me away, She was lifting the glass to her lips when I signalled. She turned it upside down immediately and spilled the fluid out. Some months later I was lolling victoriously in the sun. Whether that was good or bad I don’t know; when I’m happy I think it was good, when I’m unhappy I think it was bad. But even when I’m miserable, I think I would have regretted not being born, since nothing is worse than nothingness. Let me say again: I’m not afraid of pain. We are born with pain; it grows with us, and we get used to it just as to the fact we have two arms and legs, Actually, I’m not even afraid of dying, dying means you at least were born, you escaped from nothingness. What I’m truly afraid of is nothingness, not being, never having existed, even by chance, by mistake, by the carelessness of others. A lot of women ask themselves why they should bring a child into the world? So that it will be hungry, so that it will be cold, so that it will be betrayed and humiliated, so that it will be slaughtered by war or disease? They reject the hope that its hunger will be satisfied, its cold warmed, that loyalty and respect will accompany it through life, that it will devote a life to the effort to eliminate war and disease. Maybe they’re right. But is nothingness preferable to suffering? Even when I weep over my failures, my disillusions, my torments, I am sure that suffering is preferable to nothingness. And if I extend this to life, to the dilemma of being born or not, every nerve in my body cries out that it is better to be born than not to be. But can I impose such reasoning on you? Doesn’t that mean that I am bringing you into the world for myself alone and no one else? I’m not interested in bringing you into the world only for myself and no one else. I don’t need you at all.
* * *
You’ve sent me no answers, you’ve given no signs. And how could you? It’s been too short a time: if I were to ask the doctor for confirmation of your existence he’d only smile. But I’ve decided for you: you will be born, I did so after seeing you in a photograph, a photograph of a three-week-old embryo, published in a magazine along with an article on the development of life. And while I was looking at it my fear went away as quickly as it had come. You looked like a mysterious flower, a transparent orchid. At the top one could make out a kind of head with the two protuberances that will become the brain. Lower down, a kind of cavity that will become the mouth. At three weeks you’re almost invisible, the captions explain – about an eighth of an inch. Still, you’re growing a suggestion of eyes, something resembling a spinal column, a nervous system, a stomach, a liver, intestines, lungs. Your heart is already present, and it’s big: in proportion, nine times bigger than mine. It pumps blood and beats regularly from the eighteenth day on: how could I throw you away? What do I care if you only started out by chance or mistake? Didn’t the world where we find ourselves also begin by chance and perhaps by mistake? Some people maintain that in the beginning there was nothing except a great calm, a great motionless silence; then came a spark, a split, and what had not been there before now was. The split was soon followed by others: unforeseen, insensate, forever unmindful of the consequences. And among the consequences bloomed a cell, it too by chance and perhaps by mistake, that was immediately multiplied by millions, by billions, until trees and fish and men were born. Do you think someone considered the dilemma before the spark? Do you think someone wondered whether that cell would like it or not? Do you think someone wondered about its hunger, its cold, its unhappiness? I doubt it. Even if that someone had existed – a God perhaps comparable to the beginning of the beginning, beyond time and space – he wouldn’t have been concerned with good and evil. It all happened because it could happen, therefore had to happen, in accordance with the only arrogance that is legitimate. And the same thing goes for you. I take the responsibility of choice.
I take it without egoism, Child. I swear it gives me no pleasure to bring you into the world. I don’t see myself walking in the street with a swollen belly, I don’t see myself nursing you and bathing you and teaching you to talk. I’m a working woman and I have many other tasks and interests: I’ve already told you I don’t need you. But I’ll carry on with you, whether you like it or not. I’ll impose upon you the same arrogance that was imposed on me, and on my mother, my grandmother, my grandmother’s mother: all the way back to the first human born of another human being, whether he liked it or not. Probably, if he or she had been allowed to choose, he would have been frightened and answered: No, I don’t want to be born. But no one asked their opinion, and so they were born and lived and died after giving birth to another human being who was not
asked to choose, and that one did likewise, for millions of years, right down to us. And each time it was an arrogance without which we could not exist. Courage, Child. Don’t you think the seed of a tree needs courage to break through the surface of the soil and sprout? A puff of wind is enough to break it, a rat’s paw to crush it. Still it sprouts and stands firm and grows to scatter other seeds. And becomes part of a forest. If some day you cry, ‘Why did you bring me into the world, why?’ I’ll answer: ‘I did what the trees do and have done, for millions and millions of years before me. I thought it was the right thing.’
I must not change my mind by remembering that human beings are not trees, that the suffering of a human being, since he’s conscious, is a thousand times greater than that of a tree, that it does none of us any good to become a forest, that not all a tree’s seeds generate new trees: the great majority are lost. Such an about-face is possible, Child: our logic is full of contradictions. The minute you state something, you see its opposite. And you even realize that the opposite is just as valid as what you’d stated. My reasoning today could be turned around with a snap of the fingers. In truth, I am already confused, disoriented. Maybe it’s because I can’t confide in anyone but you. I’m a woman who has chosen to live alone. Your father isn’t with me. And I’m not sorry, even though my eyes so often stare at the door where he went out, with his determined step, without my trying to stop him, almost as though we had nothing to say to each other any more.
* * *
I’ve taken you to the doctor. It wasn’t so much confirmation I wanted as some advice. His answer was to shake his head and tell me I’m impatient, he still can’t say, and I should come back in two weeks prepared to discover that you’re a product of my imagination. I’ll go back just to show him he’s an ignoramus. All his science is not worth my intuition; how can a man understand a woman who is expecting a child. He can’t get pregnant … Is that an advantage or a limitation? Up until yesterday it seemed to me an advantage, even a privilege. Today it seems to me a limitation, even an impoverishment. There’s something glorious about enclosing another life in your own body, in knowing yourself to be two instead of one. At moments you’re even invaded by a sense of triumph, and in the serenity accompanying that triumph nothing bothers you: neither the physical pain you’ll have to face, nor the work you’ll have to sacrifice, nor the freedom you’ll have to give up. Will you be a man or a woman? I’d like you to be a woman. I’d like for you one day to go through what I’m going through. I don’t at all agree with my mother, who thinks it’s a misfortune to be born a woman. My mother, when she’s very unhappy, sighs: ‘Oh, if only I’d been born a man!’ I know ours is a world made by men for men, their dictatorship is so ancient it even extends to language. Man means man and woman; mankind means all people; one says homicide whether it’s the murder of a man or a woman. In the legends that males have invented to explain life,, the first human creature is a man named Adam. Eve arrives later, to give him pleasure and cause trouble. In the paintings that adorn churches, God is an old man with a beard, never an old woman with white hair. And all heroes are males: from Prometheus who discovered fire to Icarus who tried to fly, on down to Jesus whom they call the Son of God and of the Holy Spirit, almost as though the woman giving birth to him were an incubator or a wetnurse. And yet, or just for this reason, it’s so fascinating to be a woman. It’s an adventure that takes such courage, a challenge that’s never boring. You’ll have so many things to engage you if you’re born a woman. To begin with, you’ll have to struggle to maintain that if God exists he might even be an old woman with white hair or a beautiful girl. Then you’ll have to struggle to explain that it wasn’t sin that was born on the day when Eve picked an apple: what was born that day was a splendid virtue called disobedience. Finally, you’ll have to struggle to demonstrate that inside your smooth shapely body there’s an intelligence crying out to be heard. To be a mother is not a trade. It’s not even a duty. It’s only one right among many. What an effort it will be for you to convince others of this fact. You’ll rarely be able to. And often, almost always, you’ll lose. But you mustn’t get discouraged. To fight is much better than to win, to travel much more beautiful than to arrive: once you’ve won or arrived, all you feel is a great emptiness. And to overcome that emptiness you have to set out on your travels again, create new goals. Yes, I hope you’re a woman. And I hope you’ll never say what my mother says. I’ve never said it.
* * *
But I’ll be just as glad if you’re born a man. Maybe more so, since you’ll be spared many humiliations, much servitude and abuse. If you’re born a man, you won’t have to worry about being raped on a dark street. You won’t have to make use of a pretty face to be accepted at first glance, of a shapely body to hide your intelligence. You won’t have to listen to nasty remarks when you sleep with someone you like; people won’t tell you that sin was born on the day you picked an apple. You’ll have to struggle much less. And you’ll be able to struggle more comfortably to maintain that if God exists he could even be an old woman with white hair or a beautiful girl. You’ll be able to disobey without being derided, to love without fear of pregnancy, to take pride in yourself without being laughed at. But you’ll run into other forms of slavery and injustice: life isn’t easy even for a man, you know. You’ll have firmer muscles, and so they’ll ask you to carry heavier loads, they’ll impose arbitrary responsibilities on you. You’ll have a beard, and so they’ll laugh at you if you cry and even if you need tenderness. You’ll have a tail in front, and so they’ll order you to kill or be killed in war and demand your complicity in perpetuating the tyranny that was set up in the caves. And yet, or just for this reason, to be a man will be an equally wonderful adventure, a task that will never disappoint you. If you’re born a man, I hope you’ll be the sort of man I’ve always dreamed of: kind to the weak, fierce to the arrogant, generous to those who love you, ruthless to those who would order you around. Finally, the enemy of anyone who tells you that the Jesuses are sons of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, not of the women who gave birth to them.
Child, I’m trying to tell you that to be a man doesn’t mean to have a tail in front: it means to be a person. And to me, it’s important above all that you be a person. Person is a marvellous word, because it sets no limits to a man or a woman, it draws no frontier between those who have that tail and those who don’t. Besides, the thread dividing those who don’t have it from those who do is such a thin one: in practice it’s reduced to being able to grow another Creature inside one’s body or not. The heart and the brain have no sex. Nor does behaviour. Remember that. And if you should be a person with heart and brains, I certainly won’t be among those who will insist that you behave one way or another – as a male or female. I’ll only ask you to take full advantage of the miracle of being born and never to give in to cowardice. Cowardice is a beast that is forever lurking. It attacks us all, every day, and there are very few people who don’t let themselves be torn to pieces by it. In the name of prudence, in the name of expedience, sometimes in the name of wisdom. Cowardly as long as some risk is threatening them, humans become bold once the risk has passed. You must never avoid risk: even when fear is holding you back. To come into the world is already a risk. The risk of regretting later that you were born.
Maybe it’s too soon to talk to you like this. Maybe I should keep silent for a minute about sad and ugly things and tell you about a world of innocence and gaiety. But that would be like drawing you into a trap, Child. It would be like encouraging you to believe that life is a soft carpet on which you can walk barefoot and not a road full of stones, stones on which you stumble, fall, injure yourself. Stones against which we must protect ourselves with iron shoes. And even that’s not enough because, while you’re protecting your feet, someone’s always picking up a stone to throw at your head. I wonder what other people would say if they could hear me. Would they accuse me of being crazy or just cruel? I’ve looked at your last picture and, at five
weeks, you’re not quite half an inch long. You’re changing a lot. Instead of a mysterious flower you now look like a very pretty larva, or rather a little fish that’s rapidly putting out fins. Four fins that will turn into arms and legs. Your eyes are already two tiny black specks enclosed in a circle, and at the end of your body you have a little tail! The captions say that at this period it’s almost impossible to distinguish you from the embryo of any other mammal: if you were a cat, you’d look more or less the way you do now. In fact you have no face. Not even a brain. I’m talking to you, Child, and you don’t know it. In the darkness that enfolds you, you don’t even know you exist: I could throw you away and you wouldn’t even know I’d done so. You’d have no way of knowing whether I’d done you a wrong or a favour.
* * *
Yesterday I gave in to a bad mood. You must excuse my talk about throwing you away. It was just talk, nothing more. My choice is still the same, though all around me it’s cause for surprise. Last night I spoke with your father. I told him about you. I told him on the telephone because he’s far away and, judging by what I heard, it wasn’t exactly good news. First of all, I heard a deep silence, and we hadn’t even been cut off. Then I heard a hoarse, stammering voice: ‘What will it take?’ I didn’t follow his meaning and answered, ‘Nine months, I guess. Or rather less than eight, now.’ And then the voice stopped being hoarse and became strident: ‘I’m talking about money.’ ‘What money?’ I asked. ‘The money to get rid of it, of course.’ Yes, he actually said ‘get rid of it.’ As though you were a parcel. And when I explained to him, as calmly as possible, that I had quite other intentions, he went into a long argument in which pleading alternated with advice, advice with threats, and threats with flattery. ‘Think of your career, consider the responsibilities, one day you’ll be sorry, what will other people say.’ He must have spent a fortune on that phone call. Every so often the operator came on in a bewildered tone to ask: ‘Are you still talking?’ I was smiling, almost amused. But I was much less amused when he, encouraged by the fact that I was listening to him in silence, ended by saying that we could each pay half the expense: after all we were ‘both guilty’. I suddenly felt nauseated. I was ashamed for him. And I hung up thinking that once I had loved him.
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