The Neapolitan Novels

by Elena Ferrante

  I was angry with myself, more than with her. Then I was seized by a self-destructive frenzy and a few hours later I fired Clelia. Pietro was amazed, alarmed. I said to him rancorously that I was tired of fighting with Dede’s Maremman accent, with my mother’s Neapolitan one. I wanted to go back to being mistress of my house and my children. In reality I felt guilty and had a great need to punish myself. With desperate pleasure I surrendered to the idea of being overwhelmed by the two children, by my domestic duties, by my painful leg.

  I had no doubt that Elsa would compel me to a year no less terrible than the one I’d had with Dede. But maybe because I was more experienced with newborns, maybe because I was resigned to being a bad mother and wasn’t anxious about perfection, the infant attached herself to my breast with no trouble and devoted herself to feeding and sleeping. As a result I, too, slept a lot, those first days at home, and Pietro surprisingly cleaned the house, did the shopping and cooking, bathed Elsa, played with Dede, who was as if dazed by the arrival of a sister and the departure of her grandmother. The pain in my leg suddenly disappeared. And I was in a generally peaceful state when, one late afternoon, as I was napping, my husband came to wake me: Your friend from Naples is on the phone, he said. I hurried to answer.

  Lila had talked to Pietro for a long time, she said she couldn’t wait to meet him in person. I listened reluctantly—Pietro was always amiable with people who didn’t belong to the world of his parents—and since she dragged it out in a tone that seemed to me nervously cheerful, I was ready to shout at her: I’ve given you the chance to hurt me as much as possible, hurry up, speak, you’ve had the book for thirteen days, let me know what you think. But I confined myself to breaking in abruptly:

  “Did you read it or not?”

  She became serious.

  “I read it.”

  “And so?”

  “It’s good.”

  “Good how? Did it interest you, amuse you, bore you?”

  “It interested me.”

  “How much? A little? A lot?”

  “A lot.”

  “And why?”

  “Because of the story: it makes you want to read.”

  “And then?”

  “Then what?”

  I stiffened, and said:

  “Lila, I absolutely have to know how this thing that I wrote is and I have no one else who can tell me, only you.”

  “I’m doing that.”

  “No, it’s not true, you’re cheating me: you’ve never talked about anything in such a superficial way.”

  There was a long silence. I imagined her sitting, legs crossed, next to an ugly little table on which the telephone stood. Maybe she and Enzo had just returned from work, maybe Gennaro was playing nearby. She said:

  “I told you I don’t know how to read anymore.”

  “That’s not the point: it’s that I need you and you don’t give a damn.”

  Another silence. Then she muttered something I didn’t understand, maybe an insult. She said harshly, resentful: I do one job, you do another, what do you expect from me, you’re the one who had an education, you’re the one who knows what books should be like. Then her voice broke, she almost cried: You mustn’t write those things, Lenù, you aren’t that, none of what I read resembles you, it’s an ugly, ugly book, and the one before it was, too.

  Like that. Rapid and yet strangled phrases, as if her breath, light, a whisper, had suddenly become solid and couldn’t move in and out of her throat. I felt sick to my stomach, a sharp pain above my belly, which grew sharper, but not because of what she said but rather because of how she said it. Was she sobbing? I exclaimed anxiously: Lila, what’s wrong, calm down, come on, breathe. She didn’t calm down. They were really sobs, I heard them in my ear, burdened with such suffering that I couldn’t feel the wound of that ugly, Lenù, ugly, ugly, nor was I offended that she reduced my first book, too—the book that had sold so well, the book of my success, but of which she had never told me what she thought—to a failure. What hurt me was her weeping. I wasn’t prepared, I hadn’t expected it. I would have preferred the mean Lila, I would have preferred her treacherous tone. But no, she was sobbing, and she couldn’t control herself.

  I felt bewildered. All right, I thought, I’ve written two bad books, but what does it matter, this unhappiness is much more serious. And I said softly: Lila, why are you crying, I should be crying, stop it. But she shrieked: Why did you make me read it, why did you force me to tell you what I think, I should have kept it to myself. And I: No, I’m glad you told me, I swear. I wanted her to quiet down but she couldn’t, she poured out on me a confusion of words: Don’t make me read anything else, I’m not fit for it, I expect the best from you, I’m too certain that you can do better, I want you to do better, it’s what I want most, because who am I if you aren’t great, who am I? I whispered: Don’t worry, always tell me what you think, that’s the only way you can help me, you’ve helped me since we were children, without you I’m not capable of anything. And finally she smothered her sobs, she said, sniffling: Why did I start crying, I’m an idiot. She laughed: I didn’t want to upset you, I had prepared a positive speech, imagine, I wrote it, I wanted to make a good impression. I urged her to send it, I said, it could be that you know better than I do what I should write. And at that point we forgot the book, I told her that Elsa was born, we talked about Florence, Naples, the cholera. What cholera, she said sarcastically, there’s no cholera, there’s only the usual mess and the fear of dying in shit, more fear than facts, we eat a bag of lemons and no one shits anymore.

  Now she talked continuously, without a break, almost cheerful, a weight had been lifted. As a result I began again to feel the bind I was in—two small daughters, a husband generally absent, the disaster of the writing—and yet I didn’t feel anxious; rather, I felt light, and I brought the conversation back to my failure. I had in mind phrases like: the thread is broken, that fluency of yours that had a positive effect on me is gone, now I’m truly alone. But I didn’t say it. I confessed instead in a self-satirizing tone that behind the labor of that book was the desire to settle accounts with the neighborhood, that it seemed to me to represent the great changes that surrounded me, that what had in some way suggested it, encouraging me, was the story of Don Achille and the mother of the Solaras. She burst out laughing. She said that the disgusting face of things alone was not enough for writing a novel: without imagination it would seem not a true face but a mask.

  76.

  I don’t really know what happened to me afterward. Even now, as I sort out that phone call, it’s hard to relate the effects of Lila’s sobs. If I look closely, I have the impression of seeing mainly a sort of incongruous gratification, as if that crying spell, in confirming her affection and the faith she had in my abilities, had ultimately cancelled out the negative judgment of both books. Only much later did it occur to me that the sobs had allowed her to destroy my work without appeal, to escape my resentment, to impose on me a purpose so high—don’t disappoint her—that it paralyzed every other attempt to write. But I repeat: however much I try to decipher that phone call, I can’t say that it was at the origin of this or that, that it was an exalted moment of our friendship or one of the most wretched. Certainly Lila reinforced her role as a mirror of my inabilities. Certainly I was more willing to accept failure, as if Lila’s opinion were much more authoritative—but also more persuasive and more affectionate—than that of my mother-in-law.

  In fact a few days later I called Adele and said to her: Thank you for being so frank, I realized that you’re right, and it strikes me now that my first book, too, had a lot of flaws. Maybe I ought to think about it, maybe I’m not a good writer, or I simply need more time. My mother-in-law hastily drowned me in compliments, praised my capacity for self-criticism, reminded me that I had an audience and that that audience was waiting. I said yes, of course. And right afterward I put the last copy of th
e novel in a drawer, I also put away the notebooks full of notes, I let myself be absorbed by daily life. The irritation at that useless labor extended to my first book, too, perhaps even to the literary purposes of writing. If an image or an evocative phrase came to mind, I felt a sense of uneasiness, and moved on to something else.

  I devoted myself to the house, to the children, to Pietro. Not once did I think of having Clelia back or of replacing her with someone else. Again I took on everything, and certainly I did it to put myself in a stupor. But it happened without effort, without bitterness, as if I had suddenly discovered that this was the right way of spending one’s life, and a part of me whispered: Enough of those silly notions in your head. I organized the household tasks rigidly, and I took care of Elsa and Dede with an unexpected pleasure, as if besides the weight of the womb, besides the weight of the manuscript, I had rid myself of another, more hidden weight, which I myself was unable to name. Elsa proved to be a placid creature—she took long happy baths, she nursed, she slept, she smiled even in her sleep—but I had to be very attentive to Dede, who hated her sister. She woke in the morning with a wild expression, recounting how she had saved the baby from fire, from a flood, from a wolf, but mostly she pretended to be a newborn herself, and asked to suck on my nipples, imitated infant wails, refused to act as what she now was, a child of almost four with highly developed language, perfectly independent in her primary functions. I was careful to give her a lot of affection, to praise her intelligence and her ability, to persuade her that I needed her help with everything, the shopping, the cooking, keeping her sister out of trouble.

  Meanwhile, since I was terrified by the possibility of getting pregnant again, I began to take the Pill. I gained weight, I felt as if I’d swelled up, yet I didn’t dare stop: a new pregnancy frightened me more than any other thing. And then my body didn’t matter to me the way it used to. The two children seemed to have confirmed that I was no longer young, that the signs of my labors—washing them, dressing them, the stroller, the shopping, cooking, one in my arms and one by the hand, both in my arms, wiping the nose of one, cleaning the mouth of the other—testified to my maturity as a woman, that to become like the mammas of the neighborhood wasn’t a threat but the order of things. It’s fine this way, I told myself.

  Pietro, who had given in on the Pill after resisting for a long time, examined me, preoccupied. You’re getting fat. What are those spots on your skin? He was afraid that the children, and he, and I were getting sick, but he hated doctors. I tried to reassure him. He had gotten very thin lately: he always had circles under his eyes and white strands had appeared in his hair; he complained of pain in his knee, in his right side, in his shoulder, and yet he wouldn’t have an examination. I forced him to go, I went with him, along with the children, and, apart from the need for some sleeping pills, he turned out to be very healthy. That made him euphoric for a few hours, and all his symptoms vanished. But in a short time, in spite of the sedatives, he felt ill again. Once Dede wouldn’t let him watch the news—it was right after the coup in Chile—and he spanked her much too hard. And as soon as I began to take the Pill he developed a desire to make love even more frequently than before, but only in the morning or the afternoon, because—he said—it was the evening orgasm that made him sleepless; then he was compelled to study for a good part of the night, which made him feel chronically tired and consequently ill.

  Nonsensical talk: working at night had always been for him a habit and a necessity. Yet I said: Let’s not do it at night anymore, anything was fine with me. Of course, sometimes I was exasperated. It was hard to get help from him even in small things: the shopping when he was free, washing the dishes after dinner. One evening I lost my temper: I didn’t say anything terrible, I just raised my voice. And I made an important discovery: if I merely shouted, his stubbornness disappeared and he obeyed me. It was possible, by speaking harshly, to make even his unpredictable pains go away, even his neurotic wish to make love constantly. But I didn’t like doing it. When I behaved like that, I was sorry, it seemed to cause a painful tremor in his brain. Besides, the results weren’t lasting. He gave in, he adjusted, he took on tasks with a certain gravity, but then he really was tired, he forgot agreements, he went back to thinking only about himself. In the end I let it go, I tried to make him laugh, I kissed him. What did I gain from a few washed dishes, poorly washed at that? Better to leave him tranquil, I was glad when I could avoid tension.

  In order not to upset him I also learned not to say what I thought. He didn’t seem to care, anyway. If he talked, I don’t know, about the government measure in response to the oil crisis, if he praised the rapprochement of the Communist Party to the Christian Democrats, he preferred me to be only an approving listener. And when I appeared to disagree he assumed an absent-minded expression, or said in a tone that he obviously used with his students: you were badly brought up, you don’t know the value of democracy, of the state, of the law, of mediation between established interests, balance between nations—you like apocalypse. I was his wife, an educated wife, and he expected me to pay close attention when he spoke to me about politics, about his studies, about the new book he was working on, filled with anxiety, wearing himself out, but the attention had to be affectionate; he didn’t want opinions, especially if they caused doubts. It was as if he were thinking out loud, explaining to himself. And yet his mother was a completely different type of woman. And so was his sister. Evidently he didn’t want me to be like them. During that period of weakness, I understood from certain vague remarks that he wasn’t happy about not only the success of my first book but its very publication. As for the second, he never asked me what had happened to the manuscript and what future projects I had. The fact that I no longer mentioned writing seemed to be a relief to him.

  That Pietro every day revealed himself to be worse than I had expected did not, however, drive me again toward others. At times I ran into Mario, the engineer, but I quickly discovered that the desire to seduce and be seduced had disappeared and in fact that former agitation seemed to me a rather ridiculous phase; luckily it had passed. The craving to get out of the house, participate in the public life of the city also diminished. If I decided to go to a debate or a demonstration, I always took the children, and I was proud of the bags I toted, stuffed with everything they might need, of the cautious disapproval of those who said: They’re so little, it might be dangerous.

  But I went out every day, in whatever weather, so that my daughters could have air and sun. I never went without taking a book. Out of a habit that I had never lost, I continued to read wherever I was, even if the ambition of making a world for myself had vanished. I generally took a short walk and then sat on a bench not far from home. I paged through complicated essays, I read the newspaper, I yelled: Dede, don’t go far, stay close to Mamma. I was that, I had to accept it. Lila, whatever turn her life might take, was different.

  77.

  It happened that around that time Mariarosa came to Florence to present the book of a university colleague of hers on the Madonna del Parto. Pietro swore he wouldn’t miss it, but at the last minute he made an excuse and hid somewhere. My sister-in-law arrived by car, alone this time, a bit tired but affectionate as always and loaded with presents for Dede and Elsa. She never mentioned my aborted novel, even though Adele had surely told her about it. She talked volubly about trips she’d taken, about books, with her usual enthusiasm. She pursued energetically the many novelties of the planet. She would assert one thing, get tired of it, go on to another that a little earlier, out of distraction, blindness, she had rejected. When she spoke about her colleague’s book, she immediately gained the admiration of the art historians in the audience. And the evening would have run smoothly along the usual academic tracks if at a certain point, with an abrupt swerve, she hadn’t uttered remarks, occasionally vulgar, of this type: children shouldn’t be given to any father, least of all God the Father, children should be given to themselves; the
moment has arrived to study as women and not as men; behind every discipline is the penis and when the penis feels impotent it resorts to the iron bar, the police, the prisons, the army, the concentration camps; and if you don’t submit, if, rather, you continue to turn everything upside down, then comes slaughter. Shouts of discontent, of agreement: at the end she was surrounded by a dense crowd of women. She called me over with welcoming gestures, proudly showed off Dede and Elsa to her Florentine friends, said nice things about me. Some remembered my book, but I avoided it, as if I hadn’t written it. The evening was nice, and brought an invitation, from a small, varied group of girls and adult women, to go to the house of one of them, once a week, to talk—they said—about us.

  Mariarosa’s provocative remarks and the invitation of her friends led me to fish out from under a pile of books those pamphlets Adele had given me long before. I carried them around in my purse, I read them outside, under the gray sky of late winter. First, intrigued by the title, I read an essay entitled We Spit on Hegel. I read it while Elsa slept in her carriage and Dede, in coat, scarf, and woolen hat, talked to her doll in a low voice. Every sentence struck me, every word, and above all the bold freedom of thought. I forcefully underlined many of the sentences, I made exclamation points, vertical strokes. Spit on Hegel. Spit on the culture of men, spit on Marx, on Engels, on Lenin. And on historical materialism. And on Freud. And on psychoanalysis and penis envy. And on marriage, on family. And on Nazism, on Stalinism, on terrorism. And on war. And on the class struggle. And on the dictatorship of the proletariat. And on socialism. And on Communism. And on the trap of equality. And on all the manifestations of patriarchal culture. And on all its institutional forms. Resist the waste of female intelligence. Deculturate. Disacculturate, starting with maternity, don’t give children to anyone. Get rid of the master-slave dialectic. Rip inferiority from our brains. Restore women to themselves. Don’t create antitheses. Move on another plane in the name of one’s own difference. The university doesn’t free women but completes their repression. Against wisdom. While men devote themselves to undertakings in space, life for women on this planet has yet to begin. Woman is the other face of the earth. Woman is the Unpredictable Subject. Free oneself from subjection here, now, in this present. The author of those pages was called Carla Lonzi. How is it possible, I wondered, that a woman knows how to think like that. I worked so hard on books, but I endured them, I never actually used them, I never turned them against themselves. This is thinking. This is thinking against. I—after so much exertion—don’t know how to think. Nor does Mariarosa: she’s read pages and pages, and she rearranges them with flair, putting on a show. That’s it. Lila, on the other hand, knows. It’s her nature. If she had studied, she would know how to think like this.