Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

by Elena Ferrante

  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.

  That idea became insistent. Everything I read in that period ultimately drew Lila in, one way or another. I had come upon a female model of thinking that, given the obvious differences, provoked in me the same admiration, the same sense of inferiority that I felt toward her. Not only that: I read thinking of her, of fragments of her life, of the sentences she would agree with, of those she would have rejected. Afterward, impelled by that reading, I often joined the group of Mariarosa’s friends, but it wasn’t easy: Dede asked me continuously when we were leaving, Elsa would suddenly let out cries of joy. But it wasn’t just my daughters who were the problem. It was that there I found only women who, resembling me, couldn’t help me. I was bored when the discussion became a sort of inelegant summary of what I already knew. And it seemed to me I knew well enough what it meant to be born female, I wasn’t interested in the work of consciousness-raising. And I had no intention of speaking in public about my relationship with Pietro, or with men in general, to provide testimony about what men are, of every class and of every age. And no one knew better than I did what it meant to make your own head masculine so that it would be accepted by the culture of men; I had done it, I was doing it. Furthermore I remained completely outside the tensions, the explosions of jealousy, the authoritarian tones, weak, submissive voices, intellectual hierarchies, struggles for primacy in the group that ended in desperate tears. But there was one new fact, which naturally led me to Lila. I was fascinated by the way people talked, confronted each other—explicit to the point of being disagreeable. I didn’t like the amenability that yielded to gossip: I had known enough of that since childhood. What seduced me instead was an urge for authenticity that I had never felt and that perhaps was not in my nature. I never said a single word, in that circle, that was equal to that urgency. But I felt that I should do something like that with Lila, examine our connection with the same inflexibility, that we should tell each other fully what we had been silent about, starting perhaps from the unaccustomed lament for my mistaken book.

  That need was so strong that I imagined going to Naples with the children for a while, or asking her to come to me with Gennaro, or to write to each other. I talked about it with her once on the phone but it was a fiasco. I told her about the books by women I was reading, about the group I went to. She listened but then she laughed at titles like The Clitoral Woman and the Vaginal Woman, and did her best to be vulgar: What the fuck are you talking about, Lenù, pleasure, pussy, we’ve got plenty of problems here already, you’re crazy. She wanted to prove that she didn’t have the tools to put into words the things that interested me. And in the end she was scornful, she said: Work, do the nice things you have to do, don’t waste time. She got angry. Evidently it’s not the right moment, I thought, I’ll try again later on. But I never found the time or the courage to try again. I concluded that first of all I had to understand better what I was. Investigate my nature as a woman. I had been excessive, I had striven to give myself male capacities. I thought I had to know everything, be concerned with everything. What did I care about politics, about struggles. I wanted to make a good impression on men, be at their level. At the level of what, of their reason, most unreasonable. Such persistence in memorizing fashionable jargon, wasted effort. I had been conditioned by my education, which had shaped my mind, my voice. To what secret pacts with myself had I consented, just to excel. And now, after the hard work of learning, what must I unlearn. Also, I had been forced by the powerful presence of Lila to imagine myself as I was not. I was added to her, and I felt mutilated as soon as I removed myself. Not an idea, without Lila. Not a thought I trusted, without the support of her thoughts. Not an image
. I had to accept myself outside of her. The gist was that. Accept that I was an average person. What should I do. Try again to write. Maybe I didn’t have the passion, I merely limited myself to carrying out a task. So don’t write anymore. Find some job. Or act the lady, as my mother said. Shut myself up in the family. Or turn everything upside down. House. Children. Husband.

  78.

  I consolidated my relations with Mariarosa. I called her frequently, but when Pietro noticed he began to speak more and more contemptuously of his sister. She was frivolous, she was empty, she was dangerous to herself and others, she had been the cruel tormenter of his childhood and adolescence, she was the great worry of her parents. One evening he came out of his study disheveled, his face tired, while I was talking to my sister-in-law on the phone. He walked around the kitchen, ate something, joked with Dede, eavesdropping on our conversation. Then all of a sudden he shouted: Doesn’t that idiot know it’s time for dinner? I apologized to Mariarosa and hung up. It’s all ready, I said, we can eat right away, there’s no need to shout. He complained that spending money on phone calls to listen to his sister’s nonsense seemed stupid to him. I didn’t answer, I set the table. He realized I was angry, and said, in a tone of apprehension: I’m mad at Mariarosa, not you. But after that night he began to look through the books I was reading, to make sarcastic comments on the sentences I had underlined. He said, Don’t be taken in, it’s nonsense. And he tried to demonstrate the weak logic of feminist manifestos and pamphlets.

  On this very subject we ended up arguing one evening and maybe I overdid it, going so far as to say to him: You think you’re so great but everything you are you owe to your father and mother, just like Mariarosa. His reaction was completely unexpected: he slapped me, and in Dede’s presence.

  I took it well, better than he did: I had had many blows in the course of my life, Pietro had never given any and almost certainly had never received any. I saw in his face the revulsion for what he had done; he stared at his daughter for an instant, and left the house. My anger cooled. I didn’t go to bed, I waited for him, and when he didn’t return I became anxious, I didn’t know what to do. Did he have some nervous illness, from too little sleep? Or was that his true nature, buried under thousands of books and a proper upbringing? I realized yet again that I knew little about him, that I wasn’t able to predict his moves: he might have jumped into the Arno, be lying drunk somewhere, even left for Genoa to find comfort and complain in his mother’s arms. Oh enough, I was frightened. I realized that I was leaving what I was reading, and what I knew, on the edges of my personal life. I had two daughters, I didn’t want to draw conclusions too hastily.

  Pietro came home at around five in the morning and the relief of seeing him safe and sound was so great that I hugged him, I kissed him. He mumbled: You don’t love me, you’ve never loved me. And he added: Anyway, I don’t deserve you.

  79.

  The fact was that Pietro couldn’t accept the disorder that was by now spreading into every aspect of existence. He would have liked a life ruled by unquestioned habits: studying, teaching, playing with the children, making love, contributing every day, in his small way, to resolving by democratic means the vast confusion of Italian affairs. Instead he was exhausted by the conflicts at the university, his colleagues disparaged his work, and although he was gaining a reputation abroad, he felt constantly vilified and threatened, he had the impression that because of my restlessness (but what restlessness, I was an opaque woman) our very family was exposed to constant risks. One afternoon Elsa was playing on her own, I was making Dede practice reading, he was shut in his study, the house was still. Pietro, I thought anxiously, is looking for a fortress where he works on his book, I take care of the household, and the children grow up serenely. Then the doorbell rang, I went to open the door, and to my surprise Pasquale and Nadia entered.

  They carried large military knapsacks; he wore a cap over a thick mass of curly hair that fell into an equally thick and curly beard, while she looked thin and tired, her eyes enormous, like a frightened child who is pretending not to be afraid. They had asked for the address from Carmen, who in turn had asked my mother. They were both affectionate, and I was, too, as if there had never been tensions or disagreements between us. They took over the house, leaving their things everywhere. Pasquale talked a lot, in a loud voice, almost always in dialect. At first they seemed a pleasant break in my flat daily existence. But I soon realized that Pietro didn’t like them. It bothered him that they hadn’t telephoned to announce themselves, that they brazenly made themselves at home. Nadia took off her shoes and stretched out on the sofa. Pasquale kept his cap on, handled objects, leafed through books, took a beer from the refrigerator for himself and one for Nadia without asking permission, drank from the bottle and burped in a way that made Dede laugh. They said they had decided to take a trip, they said just that, a trip, without specifying. When had they left Naples? They were evasive. When would they return? They were equally evasive. Work? I asked Pasquale. He laughed: Enough, I’ve worked too much, now I’m resting. And he showed Pietro his hands, he demanded that he show him his, he rubbed their palms together saying: You feel the difference? Then he grabbed Lotta Continua and brushed his right hand over the first page, proud of the sound of the paper scraping over his rough skin, as pleased as if he had invented a new game. Then he added, in an almost threatening tone: Without these rasping hands, professor, not a chair would exist, or a building, a car, nothing, not even you; if we workers stopped working everything would stop, the sky would fall to earth and the earth would shoot up to the sky, the plants would take over the cities, the Arno would flood your fine houses, and only those who have always worked would know how to survive, and as for you two, you with all your books, the dogs would tear you to pieces.

  It was a speech in Pasquale’s style, fervent and sincere, and Pietro listened without responding. As did Nadia, who, while her companion was speaking, lay on the sofa with a serious expression, staring at the ceiling. She almost never interrupted the two men’s talk, nor did she say anything to me. But when I went to make coffee she followed me into the kitchen. She noticed that Elsa was always attached to me, and she said gravely:

  “She really loves you.”

  “She’s little.”

  “You’re saying that when she grows up she won’t love you?”

  “No, I hope she’ll love me when she’s grown up, too.”

  “My mother used to talk about you all the time. You were only her student, but it seemed as if you were her daughter more than me.”

  “Really?”

  “I hated you for that and because you had taken Nino.”

  “It wasn’t for me that he left you.”

  “Who cares, I don’t even remember what he looked like now.”

  “As a girl I would have liked to be like you.”

  “Why? You think it’s nice to be born with everything all ready-made for you?”

  “Well, you don’t have to work so hard.”

  “You’re wrong—the truth is that it seems like everything’s been done already and you’ve got no good reason to do anything. All you feel is the guilt of what you are and that you don’t deserve it.”

  “Better that than to feel the guilt of failure.”

  “Is that what your friend Lina tells you?”

  “No.”

  “I prefer her to you. You’re two pieces of shit and nothing can change you, two examples of underclass filth. But you act all friendly and Lina doesn’t.”

  She left me in the kitchen, speechless. I heard her shout to Pasquale: I’m taking a shower, and you could use one, too. They shut themselves in the bathroom. We heard them laughing, she letting out little cries that—I saw—worried Dede. When they came out their hair was wet, they were half-naked, and gay. They went on joking and laughing with each other as if we weren’t there. Pietro tried to intervene with questions like: How long have
you been together? Nadia answered coldly: We’re not together, maybe you two are together. In the finicky tone he displayed in situations where people appeared to him extremely superficial: What does that mean? You can’t understand, Nadia responded. My husband objected: When someone can’t understand, you try to explain. And at that point Pasquale broke in laughing: There’s nothing to explain, prof: you better believe you’re dead and you don’t know it—everything is dead, the way you live is dead, the way you speak, your conviction that you’re very intelligent, and democratic, and on the left. How can you explain a thing to someone who’s dead?

  There were other tense moments. I said nothing, I couldn’t get Nadia’s insults out of my mind, the way she spoke, as if it were nothing, in my house. Finally they left, almost without warning, as they had arrived. They picked up their things and disappeared. Pasquale said only, in the doorway, in a voice that was unexpectedly sorrowful:

  “Goodbye, Signora Airota.”

  Signora Airota. Even my friend from the neighborhood was judging me in a negative way? Did it mean that for him I was no longer Lenù, Elena, Elena Greco? For him and for how many others? Even for me? Did I myself not almost always use my husband’s surname, now that mine had lost that small luster it had acquired? I tidied the house, especially the bathroom, which they had left a mess. Pietro said: I never want those two in my house; someone who talks like that about intellectual work is a Fascist, even if he doesn’t know it; as for her, she’s a type I’m very familiar with, there’s not a thought in her head.