Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

by Elena Ferrante

  “A male, apart from the mad moments when you love him and he enters you, always remains outside. So afterward, when you no longer love him, it bothers you just to think that you once wanted him. He liked me, I liked him, the end. It happens to me many times a day—I’m attracted to someone. That doesn’t happen to you? It lasts a short time, then it passes. Only the child remains, he’s part of you; the father, on the other hand, was a stranger and goes back to being a stranger. Even the name no longer has the sound it used to. Nino, I’d say, and I would repeat it, over and over in my head, as soon as I woke up, it was a magic word. Now, though, it’s a sound that makes me sad.”

  I didn’t say anything for a while, finally I whispered:

  “Mirko’s father is named Nino?”

  “Yes, everyone knows him, he’s very famous at the university.”

  “Nino what?”

  “Nino Sarratore.”

  20.

  I went out early, leaving Silvia sleeping with the child at her breast. Of the painter I found no trace. I managed to say goodbye only to Mariarosa, who had got up very early to take Franco to the station and had just returned. She looked sleepy, and seemed uneasy. She asked:

  “Did you sleep well?”

  “I talked to Silvia a lot.”

  “She told you about Sarratore?”

  “Yes.”

  “I know you’re friends.”

  “Did he tell you?”

  “Yes. We gossiped a little about you.”

  “Is it true that Mirko is his son?”

  “Yes.” She repressed a yawn, she smiled. “Nino is fascinating, the girls fight over him, they drag him this way and that. And these, luckily, are happy times, you take what you want, all the more since he has a power that conveys joy and the desire to act.”

  She said that the movement needed people like him. She said that it was necessary, however, to look after him, let him grow, direct him. The very capable people, she said, should be guided: in them the bourgeois democrat, the technical manager, the modernizer is always lying in wait. We both regretted that we had spent so little time together and vowed to do better on the next occasion. I picked up my bag at the hotel, and left.

  Only on the train, during the long journey to Naples, did I take in that second paternity of Nino’s. A squalid desolation extended from Silvia to Lila, from Mirko to Gennaro. It seemed to me that the passion of Ischia, the night of love in Forio, the secret relationship of Piazza dei Martiri, and the pregnancy––all faded, were reduced to a mechanical device that Nino, upon leaving Naples, had activated with Silvia and who knows how many others. The thing offended me, as if Lila were squatting in a corner of my mind and I felt her feelings. I was bitter as she would have been if she had known, I was furious as if I had suffered the same wrong. Nino had betrayed Lila and me. We were, she and I, similarly humiliated, we loved him without ever being truly loved in return. And so, in spite of his virtues, he was a frivolous, superficial man, an animal organism who dripped sweat and fluids and left behind, like the residue of a careless pleasure, living material conceived, nourished, shaped within female bellies. I remembered when he had come to see me in the neighborhood, years earlier, and we had stayed talking in the courtyard, and Melina had seen him from the window and had taken him for his father. Donato’s former lover had caught resemblances that had seemed nonexistent to me. But now it was clear, she was right and I was wrong. Nino was not fleeing his father out of fear of becoming like him: Nino already was his father and didn’t want to admit it.

  Yet I couldn’t hate him. In the burning-hot train I not only reflected on the time I had seen him in the bookstore but inserted him into events, words, remarks of those days. Sex had pursued me, clawed me, foul and attractive, obsessively present in gestures, in conversations, in books. The dividing walls were crumbling, the shackles of good manners were breaking. And Nino was living that period intensely. He was part of the rowdy gathering at the university, with its intense odor, he was fit for the disorder of Mariarosa’s house, surely he had been her lover. With his intelligence, with his desires, with his capacity for seduction, he moved confident, curious within those times. Maybe I was wrong to connect him to the obscene desires of his father; his behavior belonged to another culture, as Silvia and Mariarosa had pointed out; girls wanted him, he took them, there was no abuse of power, there was no guilt, only the rights of desire. Who knows, maybe Nino in telling me that Lila was made badly even when it comes to sex, wished to convey that the time for pretenses was over, that to load pleasure with responsibility was an error. Even if he had his father’s nature, surely his passion for women told a different story.

  With astonishment, with disappointment, I arrived in Naples at the moment when a part of me, at the thought of how much Nino was loved and how much he loved, had yielded and reached the point of admitting: what’s wrong with it, he enjoys life with those who know how to enjoy it. And as I was returning to the neighborhood, I realized that precisely because all women wanted him and he took them all, I who had wanted him forever wanted him even more. So I decided that I would at all costs avoid meeting him again. As for Lila, I didn’t know how to behave. Be silent, tell her everything? Whenever I see her, I would decide then.

  21.

  At home I didn’t have, or didn’t want to have, time to go back to the subject. Pietro telephoned, he said that he was coming to meet my parents the following week. I accepted it as an inevitable misfortune, I struggled to find a hotel, clean the house, lessen my family’s anxiety. That last task was in vain, the situation had grown worse. In the neighborhood the malicious gossip had increased: about my book, about me, about my constant traveling alone. My mother had put up a defense by boasting that I was about to get married, but, to keep my decisions against God from complicating things further, she pretended that I was getting married not in Naples but in Genoa. As a result the gossip increased, which exasperated her.

  One night she confronted me harshly, saying that people were reading my book, were outraged, and talking behind her back. My brothers—she cried—had had to beat up the butcher’s sons, who had called me a whore, and not only that: they had punched in the face a classmate of Elisa’s who had asked her to do nasty things like her older sister.

  “What did you write?” she yelled.

  “Nothing, Ma.”

  “Did you write the disgusting things that you go around doing?”

  “What disgusting things. Read it.”

  “I can’t waste time with your nonsense.”

  “Then leave me alone.”

  “If your father finds out what people are saying about you, he’ll throw you out of the house.”

  “He won’t have to, I’ll go myself.”

  It was evening, and I went for a walk so as not to reproach her with things I would later regret. On the street, in the gardens, along the stradone, I had the impression that people stared at me insistently, spiteful shadows of a world I no longer inhabited. I ran into Gigliola, who was returning from work. We lived in the same building, we walked together, but I was afraid that sooner or later she would find a way of saying something irritating. Instead, to my surprise, she spoke timidly, she who was always aggressive if not malicious:

  “I read your book, it’s wonderful, how brave you were to write those things.”

  I stiffened.

  “What things?”

  “The things you do on the beach.”

  “I don’t do them, the character does.”

  “Yes, but you wrote them really well, Lenù, just the way it happens, with the same filthiness. They are secrets that you know only if you’re a woman.” Then she took me by the arm, made me stop, said softly, “Tell Lina, if you see her, that she was right, I admit it to her. She was right not to give a shit about her husband, her mamma, her father, her brother, Marcello, Michele, all that shit. I should have escaped from here, too, f
ollowing the example of you two, who are intelligent. But I was born stupid and I can’t do anything about it.”

  We said nothing else important, she stopped on her landing, I went to my house. But those comments stayed with me. It struck me that she had arbitrarily put together Lila’s fall and my rise, as if, compared with her situation, they had the same degree of positivity. But what was most clearly impressed in my mind was how she had recognized in the filthiness of my story her own experience of filthiness. It was a new fact, I didn’t know how to evaluate it. Especially since Pietro arrived and for a while I forgot about it.

  22.

  I went to meet him at the station, and took him to Via Firenze, where there was a hotel that my father had recommended and which I had finally decided on. Pietro seemed even more anxious than my family. He got off the train, as unkempt as usual, his tired face red in the heat, dragging a large suitcase. He wanted to buy a bouquet for my mother, and contrary to his habits he was satisfied only when it seemed to him big enough, expensive enough. At the hotel he left me in the lobby with the flowers, swearing that he would return immediately, and reappeared half an hour later in a blue suit, white shirt, blue tie, and polished shoes. I burst out laughing, he asked: I don’t look good? I reassured him, he looked very good. But on the street I felt men’s gazes, their mocking laughter, maybe even more insistent than if I had been alone, as if to emphasize that my escort did not deserve respect. Pietro, with that big bunch of flowers that he wouldn’t let me carry, so respectable in every detail, was not suited to my city. Although he put his free arm around my shoulders, I had the impression that it was I who had to protect him.

  Elisa opened the door, then my father arrived, then my brothers, all in their best clothes, all too cordial. My mother appeared last, the sound of her crooked gait could be heard right after that of the toilet flushing. She had set her hair, she had put a little color on her lips and cheeks, and thought, She was once a pretty girl. She accepted the flowers with condescension, and we sat in the dining room, which for the occasion held no trace of the beds we made at night and unmade in the morning. Everything was tidy, the table had been set with care. My mother and Elisa had cooked for days, which made the dinner interminable. Pietro, amazing me, became very expansive. He questioned my father about his work at the city hall and encouraged him to the point where he forgot his labored Italian and began to tell in dialect witty stories about his fellow employees, which my fiancé, although he understood little, appeared to appreciate tremendously. Above all he ate as I had never seen him eat, and not only complimented my mother and sister on every course but asked—he, who was unable even to cook an egg—about the ingredients of every dish as if he intended to get to the stove right away. He showed such a liking for the potato gattò that my mother served him a second very generous portion and promised him, even if in her usual reluctant tone, that she would make it again before he left. In a short time the atmosphere became friendly. Even Peppe and Gianni stayed at the table, instead of running out to join their friends.

  After dinner we came to the point. Pietro turned serious and asked my father for my hand. He used just that expression, in a voice full of emotion, which brought tears to my sister’s eyes and amused my brothers. My father was embarrassed, he mumbled expressions of friendship for a professor so clever and serious who was honoring him with that question. And the evening finally seemed to be reaching its conclusion, when my mother interrupted. She said darkly:

  “Here we don’t approve of your not getting married in church: a marriage without a priest isn’t a marriage.”

  Silence. My parents must have come to a secret agreement that my mother would take on the job of making this announcement. But my father couldn’t resist, and immediately gave Pietro a half smile to indicate that, although he was included in that we invoked by his wife, he was ready to see reason. Pietro returned the smile, but this time he didn’t consider him a valid interlocutor, he addressed himself only to my mother. I had told him of my family’s hostility, and he was prepared. He began with a simple, affectionate, and, according to his usual habit, very clear speech. He said that he understood, but that he wished to be, in turn, understood. He said that he had the greatest respect for all those who sincerely believed in a god, but that he did not feel he could do so. He said that not being a believer didn’t mean believing in nothing, he had his convictions and absolute faith in his love for me. He said it was love that would consolidate our marriage, not an altar, a priest, a city official. He said that the rejection of a religious service was for him a matter of principle and that surely I would stop loving him, or certainly I would love him less, if he proved to be a man without principles. He said finally that surely my mother herself would refuse to entrust her daughter to a person ready to knock down even a single one of the pillars on which he had based his existence.

  At those words my father made broad nods of assent, my brothers were openmouthed, Elisa was moved again. But my mother remained impassive. For some moments she fiddled with her wedding ring, then she looked Pietro in the eye and instead of going back to the subject to say that she was persuaded, or to continue to argue, she began to sing my praises with cold determination. Ever since I was small I had been an unusual child. I had been capable of doing things that no girl of the neighborhood had been capable of doing. I had been and was her pride, the pride of the whole family. I had never disappointed her. I had won the right to be happy and if someone made me suffer she would make him suffer a thousand times more.

  I listened in embarrassment. All the while I tried to understand if she was speaking seriously or if, as usual, she was intending to explain to Pietro that she didn’t give a damn about the fact that he was a professor and all his talk, it wasn’t he who was doing the Grecos a favor but the Grecos who were doing him one. I couldn’t tell. My fiancé instead believed her absolutely and as my mother spoke he simply assented. When at last she was silent, he said that he knew very well how precious I was and that he was grateful to her for having brought me up as I was. Then he stuck a hand in a pocket of his jacket and took out a blue case that he gave me with a timid gesture. What is it, I thought, he’s already given me a ring, is he giving me another? Meanwhile I opened the case. There was a very beautiful ring, of red gold, and in the setting an amethyst surrounded by diamonds. Pietro murmured: it was my grandmother’s, my mother’s mother, and in my family we would all like you to have it.

  That gift was the signal that the ritual was over. We began to drink again, my father went back to telling funny stories of his private and work life, Gianni asked Pietro what team he rooted for, Peppe challenged him to arm wrestling. I helped my sister clear the table. In the kitchen I made the mistake of asking my mother:

  “How is he?”

  “The ring?”

  “Pietro.”

  “He’s ugly, he has crooked feet.”

  “Papa was no better.”

  “What do you have to say against your father?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then be quiet, you only know how to be bossy with us.”

  “It’s not true.”

  “No? Then why do you let him order you? If he has principles, you don’t have them? Make yourself respected.”

  Elisa intervened: “Ma, Pietro is a gentleman and you don’t know what a real gentleman is.”

  “And you do? Be careful, you’re small and if you don’t stay in your place I’ll hit you. Did you see that hair? A gentleman has hair like that?”

  “A gentleman doesn’t have normal handsomeness, Ma, a gentleman you can tell, he’s a type.”

  My mother pretended she was going to hit her and my sister, laughing, pulled me out of the kitchen, saying cheerfully:

  “Lucky you, Lenù. How refined Pietro is, how he loves you. He gave you his grandmother’s antique ring, will you show it to me?”

  We returned to the dining room. All the males of the hou
se now wanted to arm-wrestle with my fiancé, they were eager to show that they were superior to the professor at least in tests of strength. He didn’t back off. He removed his jacket, rolled up his sleeve, sat down at the table. He lost to Peppe, he lost to Gianni, he lost also to my father. But I was impressed by how seriously he competed. He turned red, a vein swelled on his forehead, he argued that his opponents were shamelessly violating the rules of the contest. He held out stubbornly against Peppe and Gianni, who lifted weights, and against my father, who was capable of unscrewing a screw with just his bare hand. All the while, I was afraid that, in order not to give in, he would break his arm.

  23.

  Pietro stayed for three days. My father and brothers quickly became attached to him. My brothers were pleased that he didn’t give himself airs and was interested in them even though school had judged them incompetent. My mother on the other hand continued to treat him in an unfriendly manner and not until the day before he left did she soften. It was a Sunday, and my father said he wanted to show his son-in-law how beautiful Naples was. His son-in-law agreed, and proposed that we should eat out.

  “In a restaurant?” my mother asked, scowling.

  “Yes, ma’am, we ought to celebrate.”

  “Better if I cook, we said we’d make you another gattò.”

  “No, thank you, you’ve already done too much.”

  While we were getting ready my mother drew me aside and asked: “Will he pay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure?”

  “Sure, Ma, he’s the one who invited us.”

  We went into the city center early in the morning, dressed in our best clothes. And something happened that first of all amazed me. My father had taken on the task of tour guide. He showed our guest the Maschio Angioino, the royal palace, the statues of the kings, Castel dell’Ovo, Via Caracciolo, and the sea. Pietro listened attentively. But at a certain point he, who was coming to our city for the first time, began modestly to tell us about it, to make us discover our city. It was wonderful. I had never had a particular interest in the background of my childhood and adolescence, I marveled that Pietro could talk about it with such learned admiration. He showed that he knew the history of Naples, the literature, fables, legends, anecdotes, the visible monuments and those hidden by neglect. I imagined that he knew about the city in part because he was a man who knew everything, and in part because he had studied it thoroughly, with his usual rigor, because it was mine, because my voice, my gestures, my whole body had been subjected to its influence. Naturally my father soon felt deposed, my brothers were annoyed. I realized it, I hinted to Pietro to stop. He blushed, and immediately fell silent. But my mother, with one of her unpredictable twists, hung on his arm and said: