The Story of the Lost Child

by Elena Ferrante

  “Where are you going.”

  “I’m going back to Germany.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t yet know.”

  “Why are you saying goodbye now?”

  “You’re never here, we hardly see each other.”

  “It’s you who never come to see me.”

  “You don’t come to see me, either.”

  “Why are you going?”

  “My family isn’t happy here.”

  “Is it Michele who’s sending you away?”

  “He commands and I obey.”

  “So it’s he who doesn’t want you in the neighborhood anymore.”

  He looked at his hands, he examined them carefully.

  “Every so often my nervous breakdown returns,” he said, and he began to talk to me about his mother, Melina, who wasn’t right in the head.

  “You’ll leave her to Ada?”

  “I’ll take her with me,” he muttered. “Ada already has too many troubles. And I have the same constitution, I want to keep her in sight to see what I’m going to become.”

  “She’s always lived here, she’ll suffer in Germany.”

  “One suffers everywhere. You want some advice?”

  I understood from the way he looked at me that he had decided to get to the point.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “You get out of here, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Lina believes that the two of you are invincible but it’s not true. And I can’t help you any longer.”

  “Help us in what?”

  He shook his head unhappily.

  “The Solaras are furious. Did you see how people voted here in the neighborhood?”

  “No.”

  “It turned out that they no longer control the votes they used to control.”

  “So?”

  “Lina has managed to shift a lot of them to the Communists.”

  “And what do I have to do with it?”

  “Marcello and Michele see Lina behind everything, especially behind you. There is a lawsuit, and Carmen’s lawyers are their lawyers.”

  96.

  I went home, I didn’t look for Lila. I assumed that she knew all about the elections, about the votes, about the Solaras, enraged, who were waiting in ambush behind Carmen. She told me things a little at a time, for her own ends. Instead I called the publishing house, I told the editor in chief about the lawsuit and what Antonio had reported to me. For now it’s only a rumor, I said, nothing certain, but I’m worried. He tried to reassure me, he promised that he would ask the legal department to investigate and as soon as he found out anything he would telephone me. He concluded: Why are you so agitated, this is good for the book. Not for me, I thought, I’ve been wrong about everything, I shouldn’t have returned here to live.

  Days passed, I didn’t hear from the publisher, but the notification of the lawsuit arrived at my house like a stab. I read it and was speechless. Carmen demanded that the editor and I withdraw the book from circulation, plus enormous damages for having tarnished the memory of her mother, Giuseppina. I had never seen a document that summed up in itself, in the letterhead, in the quality of the writing, in the decorative stamps and notarized seals, the power of the law. I discovered that what had never made an impression on me as an adolescent, even as a young woman, now terrified me. This time I hurried to see Lila. When I told her what it was about she started teasing me:

  “You wanted the law, the law has arrived.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Make a scene.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tell the newspapers what’s happening to you.”

  “You’re crazy. Antonio said that behind Carmen are the Solaras’ lawyers, and don’t say you don’t know.”

  “Of course I know.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because you see how nervous you are? But you don’t have to worry. You’re afraid of the law and the Solaras are afraid of your book.”

  “I’m afraid that with all the money they have they can ruin me.”

  “But it’s precisely their money you have to go for. Write. The more you write about their disgusting affairs the more you ruin their business.”

  I was depressed. Lila thought this? This was her project? Only then did I understand clearly that she ascribed to me the power that as children we had ascribed to the author of Little Women. That was why she had wanted me to return to the neighborhood at all costs? I left without saying anything. I went home, I called the publisher again. I hoped that he was exerting himself in some way, I wanted news that would calm me, but I didn’t reach him. The next day he called me. He announced gaily that in the Corriere della Sera there was an article by him—yes, by his hand—in which he gave an account of the lawsuit. Go and buy it, he said, and let me know what you think.

  97.

  I went to the newsstand more anxious than ever. There again was the photograph of me with Tina, this time in black-and-white. The lawsuit was announced in the headline; it was considered an attempt to muzzle one of the very few courageous writers et cetera, et cetera. The article didn’t name the neighborhood, it didn’t allude to the Solaras. Skillfully, it set the episode within a conflict that was taking place everywhere, “between the medieval remnants that are keeping this country from modernizing and the unstoppable advance, even in the South, of political and cultural renewal.” It was a short piece, but it defended effectively, especially in the conclusion, the rights of literature, separating them from what were called “very sad local disputes.”

  I was relieved, I had the impression of being well protected. I telephoned, I praised the article, then I went to show the paper to Lila. I expected her to be be excited. That was what it seemed to me she wanted: a deployment of the power that she ascribed to me. Instead she said coolly:

  “Why did you let this man write the article?”

  “What’s wrong? The publisher is standing behind me, they’re attending to this mess, it seems a good thing.”

  “It’s just talk, Lenù, this guy is only interested in selling the book.”

  “And isn’t that good?”

  “It’s good, but you should have written the article.”

  I became nervous, I couldn’t understand what she had in mind.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re smart and you know the situation well. You remember when you wrote the article against Bruno Soccavo?”

  That reference, instead of pleasing me, upset me. Bruno was dead and I didn’t like to remember what I had written. He wasn’t very bright, ending up in the clutches of the Solaras and who knows how many others, given that they had killed him. I wasn’t happy that I had been angry with him.

  “Lila,” I said, “the article wasn’t against Bruno, it was an article about factory work.”

  “I know, and with this? You made them pay, and now that you’re an even more important person you can do better. The Solaras shouldn’t hide behind Carmen. You have to drag the Solaras out into the open, and they should no longer command.”

  I understood why she had disparaged the editor’s article. She didn’t care in the least about freedom of expression and the battle between backwardness and modernization. She was interested only in the sad local disputes. She wanted me, here, now, to contribute to the clash with real people, people we had known since childhood, and what they were made of. I said:

  “Lila, the Corriere doesn’t give a damn about Carmen, who sold herself, and the Solaras, who bought her. To be in a big newspaper, an article has to have a broad meaning, otherwise they won’t publish it.”

  Her face fell.

  “Carmen didn’t sell herself,” she said. “She’s still your friend and she has brought the suit against you for one reason alone:
they forced her.”

  “I don’t understand, explain it.”

  She smiled at me, sneering, she was really angry.

  “I’m not explaining anything to you: you write the books, you’re the one who has to explain. I know only that here we don’t have any publisher in Milan to protect us, no one who puts big articles in the newspaper for us. We are only a local matter and we fix things however we can: if you want to help us, good, and if not we’ll do it alone.”

  98.

  I went back to Roberto and harassed him until he gave me the address of the relatives in Giugliano, then I got in the car with Imma and left to look for Carmen.

  The heat was suffocating. I had trouble locating the place, the relatives lived on the outskirts. At the door, a large woman answered who told me brusquely that Carmen had returned to Naples. Hardly persuaded, I went off with Imma, who, even though we had walked only a hundred meters, protested that she was tired. But as soon as I turned the corner to go back to the car I ran into Carmen, loaded with shopping bags. It was an instant, she saw me and burst into tears. I hugged her, Imma wanted to hug her, too. Then we found a café with a table in the shade and after ordering the child to play silently with her dolls I got Carmen to explain the situation. She confirmed what Lila had told me: she had been forced to bring a suit against me. And she also told me the reason: Marcello had made her believe that he knew where Pasquale was hiding.

  “Is it possible?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “And do you know where he’s hiding?”

  She hesitated, she nodded.

  “They said that they’ll kill him whenever they want to.”

  I tried to soothe her. I told her that if the Solaras really knew where the person they believed had killed their mother was they would have seized him long ago.

  “So you think they don’t know?”

  “Not that they don’t know. But at this point for the good of your brother there’s only one thing you can do.”

  “What?”

  I told her that if she wanted to save Pasquale she should turn him in to the carabinieri.

  The effect this produced on Carmen was not good. She stiffened, I struggled to explain that it was the only way to protect him from the Solaras. But it was useless, I realized that my solution sounded to her like the worst of betrayals, something much more serious than her betrayal of me.

  “This way you remain in their hands,” I said. “They asked you to bring a suit against me, they can ask you any other thing.”

  “I’m his sister,” she exclaimed.

  “It’s not a question of a sister’s love,” I said. “A sister’s love in this case has harmed me, certainly won’t save him, and risks ruining you, too.”

  But there was no way to convince her, in fact the more we talked, the more confused I got. Soon she began crying again: one moment she felt sorry for what she had done to me and asked my pardon, the next she felt sorry for what they could do to her brother and she despaired. I remembered how she had been as a girl, at the time I would never have imagined that she was capable of such stubborn loyalty. I left her because I wasn’t able to console her, because Imma was all sweaty and I was afraid that she would get sick again, because it became increasingly less clear what I expected from Carmen. Did I want her to break off her long complicity with Pasquale? Why did I believe it was the right thing? Did I want her to choose the state over her brother? Why? To take her away from the Solaras and make her withdraw the suit? Did that count more than her anguish? I said to her:

  “Do what you think is best, and remember that anyway I’m not mad at you.”

  But Carmen at that point had an unpredictable flash of anger in her eyes:

  “And why should you be mad at me? What do you have to lose? You’re in the newspapers, you’re getting publicity, you’ll sell more books. No, Lenù, you shouldn’t say that, you advised me to give Pasquale up to the carabinieri, you were wrong.”

  I went away feeling bitter and already on the drive home I doubted that it had been a good idea to want to see her. I imagined that she would now go to the Solaras and that they would force her, after the editor’s article in the Corriere, to take other actions against me.

  99.

  For days I expected new disasters, but nothing happened. The article created a certain sensation, the Neapolitan papers took it up and amplified it, I got phone calls and letters of support. The weeks passed, and I became used to the idea of being sued; I discovered that it had happened to many who did the same work I did and had been much more at risk than I was. Daily life asserted itself. For a while I avoided Lila, and I was especially careful not to let myself be drawn into making wrong moves.

  The book never stopped selling. In August I went on vacation to Santa Maria di Castellabate; Lila and Enzo were also supposed to take a house at the sea, but work prevailed and it seemed natural for them to give Tina to me. The only pleasure, among the endless difficulties and tasks of that time (call this one, shout at that one, settle a quarrel, do the shopping, the cooking), was seeing a couple of readers sitting under their umbrella each with my book in their hands.

  In the fall things started off better. I won a fairly important prize that came with a substantial sum, and I felt smart, skilled in public relations, with increasingly satisfying financial prospects. But the joy, the astonishment of the first weeks of success never returned. I felt the days as if the light had become opaque, and I perceived around me a widespread malaise. For a while there hadn’t been a night when Enzo didn’t raise his voice with Gennaro, something that had been very rare before. When I stopped in at Basic Sight I found Lila plotting with Alfonso, and if I tried to approach she signaled me to wait a moment with a distracted gesture. She behaved the same way if she was talking to Carmen, who had returned to the neighborhood, or to Antonio, who for obscure reasons had put off his departure to some indeterminate time.

  It was clear that things around Lila were getting worse, but she kept me out of it and I preferred to stay out of it. Then there were two terrible moments, one after the other. Lila happened to discover that Gennaro’s arms were covered in needle marks. I heard her screaming as I had never heard her scream before. She incited Enzo, she drove him to give her son a beating: they were two strong men and they thrashed each other. The next day she threw her brother Rino out of Basic Sight, even though Gennaro begged her not to fire his uncle, he swore it wasn’t Rino who had started him on heroin. That tragedy struck the girls deeply, especially Dede.

  “Why does Aunt Lina treat her son like that?”

  “Because he did something that he shouldn’t do.”

  “He’s grown-up, he can do what he wants.”

  “Not what can kill him.”

  “Why? It’s his life, he has the right to do what he wants with it. You don’t know what freedom is, and neither does Aunt Lina.”

  She, Elsa, and even Imma were as if stunned by that outburst of cries and curses that came from their beloved Aunt Lina. Gennaro was a prisoner in the house and he shouted all day. His Uncle Rino disappeared from Basic Sight after breaking a very expensive machine, and his curses could be heard throughout the neighborhood. Pinuccia came one evening with her children to beg Lila to rehire her husband and brought her mother-in-law, too. Lila treated both her mother and her sister-in-law rudely; the shouts and insults reached my house clearly. You are delivering us hand and foot to the Solaras, Pinuccia cried desperately. And Lila replied: you deserve it, I’m fucking sick and tired of slaving for you without a drop of gratitude.

  But that was petty compared to what happened a few weeks later. Things had scarcely calmed down when Lila began to quarrel with Alfonso, who was now indispensable to the operations of Basic Sight and yet had become increasingly unreliable. He missed important appointments, when he did make them his attitude was an embarrassment, he was heavily made up, he spoke of himse
lf using the feminine. By now Lila had disappeared completely from his face and, in spite of his efforts, he was regaining his masculinity. In his nose, in his forehead, in his eyes something of his father, Don Achille, was appearing, and he himself was disgusted by it. As a result he seemed continuously in flight from his own body, which was putting on weight, and sometimes nothing was heard of him for days. When he reappeared he almost always showed signs of beatings. He went back to work but listlessly.

  Then one day he disappeared for good. Lila and Enzo looked for him everywhere, without success. His body was found days later on the beach at Coroglio. He had been beaten to death somewhere else and then thrown into the sea. At the time I couldn’t believe it. When I realized that it was all brutally true I was seized by a grief that wouldn’t go away. I saw him again as he had been in our school days, gentle, attentive to others, beloved by Marisa, tormented by Gino, the pharmacist’s son. Sometimes I even recalled him behind the counter at the grocery during his summer vacations, when he was obliged to do a job he detested. But I cut away the rest of his life, I knew little about it, I felt it as confused. I couldn’t think of him as what he had become, every recent encounter faded, I even forgot the period when he worked in the shoe store in Piazza dei Martiri. Lila’s fault, I thought in the heat of the moment: with her mania for forcing others by mixing everything up, she overwhelmed him. She had obscurely used him and then let him go.

  But I changed my mind almost right away. Lila had learned the news several hours earlier. She knew that Alfonso was dead, but she couldn’t get rid of the rage she had felt for days and kept insisting, rudely, on his unreliability. Then, right in the middle of a tirade like this, she collapsed on the floor of my house, evidently because her grief was unbearable. From that moment it seemed to me that she had loved him more than I did, even more than Marisa, and—as, besides, Alfonso had often told me—had helped him as no one else had. In the following hours she became listless, she stopped working, she lost interest in Gennaro, she left Tina with me. Between her and Alfonso there must have been a more complex relationship than I had imagined. She must have looked at him as at a mirror and seen herself in him and had wanted to draw out of his body a part of herself. The complete opposite, I thought uneasily, of what I had narrated in my second book. That work of Lila’s must have pleased Alfonso very much, he had offered himself to her like a living material and she had molded him. Or at least so it seemed to me in the brief time in which I tried to put what had happened in order and calm myself. But, in the end, it was nothing but a vague impression of mine. In reality she never told me anything about their bond, not then or later. She was numbed by her suffering, harboring who knows what feelings, until the day of the funeral.