A Place to Live

by Natalia Ginzburg

  In a number of scornful and mocking newspaper articles, people who said what I am now saying were labeled Big Mama Italy. I fail to grasp why the maternal instinct should be scorned or mocked. It is a natural instinct, with nothing comical about it. It is shared by men as well as women. Even men have a mother inside them. There is nothing comical about mothers, nothing contemptible or base or irrational. We were also labeled Heart and Tears Italy, and mocked and derided on that score. But I would like to know how human destiny can possibly be regarded without a heart, and without tears.

  Raving Mad Italy was another name for us. While the other Italy was called Rational Italy—the only one that had a legitimate right to speak.

  Dura lex sed lex. But if we read the law again, we find that the words dura lex do not truly apply. Remember that the law says, “the absence of notification may lead to unfitness to obtain the adoption.” The judges acted as if it said must. So the harshness does not derive from the law. The law permitted the judges to act otherwise.

  Let us also recall the words of Attorney General Vassalli: “The judges were not bound by law to separate Serena from the Giubergia family.”

  Last spring, the judges of the Turin Juvenile Court received anonymous letters containing death threats: “You must restore Serena Cruz to her adoptive parents.” An anonymous letter was even sent to Attorney General Giuliano Vassalli, who struggled so hard to have the child returned to the Giubergias. On April 6, a rudimentary bomb, burnt out by the night’s rain, was found in the offices of a Dutch airline that provides direct flights to the Philippines, and a phone call warned, “If Serena is not returned to the Giubergias the streets will run with blood.” Aha, people said. Here’s what these emotional outbursts, these wild, uncontrolled feelings lead to: anonymous letters, bombs, threats of slaughter. In truth, Heart and Tears Italy, the so-called Big Mama Italy, is quite remote from anonymous letters and threats of slaughter. The anonymous letters and threats and the luckily un-detonated bomb came from a third Italy, which doesn’t heed emotional impulses in the least, but rather pursues its own dark designs, cultivating its goal of terror, discrediting everyone and polluting the atmosphere.

  I wrote three newspaper articles on the Serena Cruz case. Many others like myself also wrote about it, people who had no legal background but were expressing their personal views. We were seen as educated people, but lacking any legal training. That is certainly true in my case. I have no legal background whatsoever. Since we were venturing into unfamiliar territory, we were said to be creating confusion and disorder. And yet any casual passerby, without legal training, shouts out loud if he sees something patently unjust taking place. He is not creating confusion, simply shouting in protest. He hopes help will arrive from somewhere. That is why he shouts.

  Each time one of my three articles appeared, I received severely disapproving letters, letters that referred to the Giubergias with keen hostility, indeed with harsh acrimony. They spoke of their great selfishness. “They already have a boy, and they wanted a little girl too, eh?” Many people see adoption as an act of selfishness, of greedy, predatory appropriation. As if bringing up a child is a lark. It may be a wonderful thing but it is not a lark. It is wonderful and can bring happiness. But it is no lark. It exacts a price of sleep, worries, fears, labor and self-sacrifice. It is far more convenient to live without children. Anyone who sees people who wish to adopt a child as rapacious and voracious birds of prey has evidently never known or has forgotten all the labor and anguish it takes to raise a child.

  Because I wrote articles on the Serena Cruz affair, I happened to be invited to participate in conferences on this case and on adoption in general. I participated several times. To tell the truth, Serena Cruz was very seldom discussed at these conferences, if at all. I always had the sense that the speakers were using a totally unreal language. Not only the Serena Cruz case, but the idea of children in general, living, breathing children with real and individual destinies, seemed very far from these gatherings. They were conferences of speechifiers, each one focused on his own speech and how long it would last. For professional speakers, the length of a speech is critical: for quite a long time, they can be the center of attention, even the center of the world, in a way. Often a speaker will forget the meaning and purpose of his speech because he’s so entranced with the sound of his own voice, the fluidity of his language, and his own grandeur in the role of speaker.

  Later on I read a book by Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. The first essay, from which the title of the collection is taken, relates the case of Doctor P., a musician and music teacher who consulted the doctor because of various problems with vision and memory. He responded to the doctor’s questions in a strange way. He was shown a rose and asked what it was. He answered: “About six inches in length. A convoluted red form with a linear green attachment.” He was shown a glove and asked what it was. He answered: “A continuous surface, enfolded on itself. It appears to have five outpouchings, if this is the word.” Just as he was going out, Doctor P. “started to look around for his hat. He reached out his hand and took hold of his wife’s head, tried to lift it off, to put it on. He had apparently mistaken his wife for a hat!”

  Doctor P. was detached from the real world and dwelt in a world of visual abstractions rather than reality. There was no longer any difference, in his eyes, between his wife’s head and his hat.

  Doctor P.’s language reminded me of the language spoken at those conferences on adoption. In that language, too, there were no more roses or gloves, and in their place were wordy arguments and verbal constructs; the difference between living beings and inanimate objects, between human heads and hats, had vanished.

  During those conferences on adoption, I had the definite feeling that the ones who were raving mad—not only on the subject of Serena Cruz but on every circumstance related to adoption in general, or to family feeling, paternity and maternity—were not those labeled “heart and tears Italy,” but, on the contrary, the social workers and their colleagues in the various social work agencies, and the world of the juvenile court judges in general. Raving and unreal.

  “Don’t lynch those judges,” many people wrote, explaining that the court had acted with deep and subtle legal understanding in the Serena Cruz affair, risking public opprobrium and demonstrating great courage and dedication to duty. But in considering a judge’s decision, I think one should not dwell too much on the subtlety of his legal understanding, or better still, not examine his decision exclusively from that perspective. One should ask solely whether it did or did not serve the goal of justice. We need not even consider whether he was cowardly or brave. Certainly courage is needed to face unpopularity, disapproval, and widespread anger. No doubt in other circumstances, judicial courage can be admirable. But it is admirable when it is exercised in the cause of justice. In the quest for justice, and in its light, courage makes sense. In this particular instance, it was not important to demonstrate courage; what was required was sensitivity and understanding.

  The spectacle of courage in other judges has been admirable and splendid because it was used in the service of truth and justice, sometimes even at the risk of their lives.

  It is true that the juvenile court judges received anonymous death threats. They have had to face down unpopularity. They have had to confront public indignation. Surely that must have made them acutely uncomfortable. But their judicial pride and obstinacy were more pressing than their discomfort. They probably put little stock in the anonymous letters and threats. They felt strength in numbers. They also enjoyed the support of a large part of the country, that part they called Rational Italy. That was the Italy they felt merited their respect. The others, they saw as just so much scum.

  As far as their dedication to duty, I cannot forget that in all the fourteen months that Serena Cruz was living in Racconigi with the parents they deemed illegal, the judges never felt the need to go to see her even once. I have said it before, but I will say it again.
All they had to do was get on a train. A mere train ride. Not one of them ever thought that since her fate was at stake, he ought to take this little train ride in order to understand, to see the child in the setting of that house and family. From their faraway desks, they decreed that she must be removed. When asked why they never went to see her, they gave no answer. Others answered for them: it was not incumbent upon them to do so. Someone pointed out to me that that is correct. Such an action is not legally required of judges. In the first place, it is wrong not to require it. Furthermore, legal requirements aside, how is it possible, in this case, that not one of them felt the need to go?

  Still, no one in the world should be lynched, obviously. Besides, it is not known whether in this case, or in similar cases that have since come to light, the judges’ decision was unanimous; it may well be that some of them wanted, or still want, a different outcome.

  What is more, we have the feeling that the judges are burdened by a mentality that goes far beyond the realm of the juvenile court, even beyond the realm of government agencies altogether—a mentality that pervades all of society today. A mentality that fears emotion, that fears “heart and tears” in particular, as if they were something filthy that could soil the body. It fears them powerfully; it distrusts them. It honors and respects only what is controlled, disciplined, and lukewarm. We have become a society of the lukewarm, of those “neither cold nor hot.”

  I am by no means suggesting that all the juvenile court judges are like this. Nor are all the people who supported them in the Serena Cruz case. Some are moved by a different idea, by their faith in the law, which is not lukewarm.

  Still, a lukewarm mentality permeates our society: we can feel it in the air around us. It speaks a cunning, studied, falsely rational language, the language of pseudoscience. It cloaks itself in false scientific knowledge, false because poorly understood and poorly assimilated, lacking any firm foundation. It claims to know all sorts of things others know nothing about. It fears and rejects the coldness of true science, and fears and rejects still more the heat of emotional identification. It takes pride in itself and usually triumphs. Its language prevails. Its wordy and interminable discussions prevail. They are well-bred discussions, controlled in tone, disciplined, tepid, and amenable to all that is tepid. We find them in the press, in conversation, in debates, meetings, and panel discussions. Such a mentality, always proudly cloaked in its tepid, falsely scientific, pedagogical and sociological lore, is prone to drift off into abstraction. We watch it settle there, far above the stumbling blocks, in its own arrogant lukewarmness, seemingly safe, as if nothing could chill or threaten or stain or sully it. Its wordy arguments sound totally removed from reality. In truth, if we listen carefully, without allowing ourselves to be carried away by their well-bred, lukewarm flow, they sound quite mad. Raving mad, as mad as the words of the man who mistook his wife for his hat.

  Thus we have a marriage of the lukewarm and the delirious. A delirious lukewarmness and a lukewarm delirium. This most bizarre coupling dominates our public discourse. I cannot say for certain, but I suspect there has never been anything quite like it before.

  In the Serena Cruz case, this mentality rooted in abstractions naturally and without hesitation chose the millions of abstract children and was indifferent to the fate of a single very visible, living child; it applauded the court’s decision.

  This kind of mentality has no love for the spirit of sacrifice: it is too generous. This mentality distrusts and rejects generosity. In place of the word “generosity” it prefers to use the word “altruism,” which is more technical and hence more staid, dignified, lukewarm, and unemotional. It prefers a love that is tepid, parsimonious, controlled, and disciplined. So controlled and so disciplined that it is hardly love at all. Such a mentality cannot possibly comprehend the Giubergias: awkward, maladroit, ingenuous, generous, passionate, and quite unable to respond to those accusing them of a crime. You already adopted one child, they were told, so you must have been aware of the long and laborious process. But maybe they thought telling a lie to the authorities was not the end of the world. They were in a hurry, so they broke the law. That’s what I think might have happened. Assuming what the judges say is true, that is, and they really did lie.

  They offered the child their love and their labor; they made sacrifices for her. They taught her not to look for food in bags of garbage and to sleep in a bed. She had nightmares and phobias; they did what they could to reassure her. They were not rich; they gave all they could to bring her up well. They fostered a close relationship with their two children, one legally adopted and the other illegally, a relationship good for all four of them. Was their love “anxiety-producing?” Maybe so, but even an “anxiety-producing” love can bring happiness.

  This is what the lukewarm mentality failed to grasp. It is a repressed mentality, yet when it leaves off its wordy arguments it can be crude and cut to the quick. When it leaves off its genteel and wordy arguments, it can make things very simple. “This child will be placed in a new family. Nothing has happened. Everything’s fine.” As if love were as common and plentiful as grass….

  A long article about Serena appeared in La Stampa last fall. Over the summer, the press had dropped the matter. From the moment Rosanna Giubergia left her in the local shelter, nothing more was heard of her. She became one of the desaparecidas. It was known that they took her away, at night, to another community shelter. But where? Surely she must have been shielded from reporters and curious onlookers. Everyone knew her face—it had been all over the papers for months: her round face, snub nose, wide bewildered eyes, and black bangs. Certainly. But how can a child be shielded from prying eyes? A child has to be taken out for a walk. She can hardly be held prisoner between four walls. So? Did they take her out for a walk or not? How come no one ever happened to meet up with her in some public park, or along the street?

  Over the summer, there were conflicting rumors. She was still in that community shelter. No, she was in another one, far from Piedmont, maybe in the South. No, she was in a small group home, ten or fifteen children with caregivers. No, she was already with new parents in pre-adoption. No, no couple would take her because she posed too many problems. Too great a responsibility. Such a famous child. A child who had been all over the papers. A child who had been in the eye of a storm. Besides, she still kept the name of her first adoptive parents. She bears it even today. The Giubergias have not disclaimed her and have no intention of doing so. They still hope she will be returned to them.

  Then in the fall that long article appeared. It was all smiles. “Serena’s Smiles” was the headline. After so long a silence, the matter resurfaced decked out in its Sunday best. The article seemed written in order to demonstrate the wisdom and virtue of the court’s decision. Actually, after so long a silence, some brief notice would have sufficed, preferably skeptical, since anything is conceivable, especially in such a controversial case. “Serena is in a new family now, and seems to be doing well. Or well enough.” That might ring true. Instead, the article rang false. Its tone was triumphant. It was dripping with optimism and smugness, buzzing with endless details. Serena is in a pre-adoption phase with new parents. She was taken on vacation to the seashore, they taught her to swim, she has two sisters and a brother, she has lots of toys, red, yellow and green ninepins (the toys were described at length), she fits in perfectly with her new family. She’s thrilled to have visitors, gives everyone a big hug. She takes the reporter by the hand. “Come see the starry sky.” Does a three-year-old really talk that way? Invite reporters to see the starry sky? Possibly. Paper cutouts of the moon and stars are pasted on the ceiling of a room. In the garden are flower beds, fruit trees, a plastic swimming pool. In the distance, the country landscape. Everything is lovely, everything is calm, bathed in a blissful light. The article says the new adoptive parents are called Papa Franco and Mama Luisa. “We’ve had lots of help from the court, the social workers, the court-appointed guardian,” they say. �
��Someone comes every day and spends hours. That’s probably why it’s all gone so smoothly.” Strange that the social workers, the guardian, and the court all suddenly roused themselves. For the Giubergias, no one moved a muscle. Now all of a sudden everyone got on the train, the train they couldn’t manage to board before. They spend long hours there every day. Papa Franco: “In all these months Serena has never mentioned the past, or the family she lived with when she first arrived in Italy.… We have no objection to having Serena meet with the Giubergias and her big brother, Nazario… but this can take place only when and if the guardian and the psychologists say so.… The Giubergias know where Serena is and how she’s doing. They’ve been kept informed by the court-appointed guardian who comes every day.…” Mama Luisa: “We take her out with us every day. We go to the market, do the shopping, often to a restaurant…”

  In fact the Giubergias do not know where Serena is. No one has told them anything, they say.

  Along with the article was a drawing said to be by Serena Cruz. It could have been done by any child. The caption read: “The child’s fears are over.” Serena supposedly showed the reporter her drawing: “Look, this is the Mommy.” The drawing showed a crowd of figures, some roundish, some angular. It would be hard to single out a mother. Also hard to single out the vanished fears.