The Story of the Lost Child (3 page)

The days flew by. The organizers of the conference had reserved for Nino a single room in the hotel, and since I had decided so late to go with him, there was no way to change it to a double. So we had separate rooms, but every night I took a shower, got ready for bed, and then, with trepidation, went to his room. We slept together, clinging to each other, as if we feared that a hostile force would separate us in sleep. In the morning we had breakfast in bed, a luxury that I had seen only in movies; we laughed, we were happy. During the day I went with him to the assembly hall and, although the speakers read their endless pages in a bored tone, being with him was exciting; I sat next to him but without disturbing him. Nino followed the talks attentively, took notes, and every so often whispered in my ear ironic comments and words of love. At lunch and dinner we mixed with academics from all over the world, foreign names, foreign languages. Of course, the participants with bigger reputations were at a table of their own; we sat in a large group of younger scholars. But I was struck by Nino’s mobility, both during the events and at the restaurants. How different he was from the student of long ago, even from the youth who had defended me in the bookstore in Milan almost ten years earlier. He had abandoned polemical tones, he tactfully crossed academic barriers, established relations with a serious yet engaging demeanor. Now in English (excellent), now in French (good), he conversed brilliantly, displaying his old devotion to figures and efficiency. I was filled with pride at how well liked he was. In a few hours he had charmed everyone, and was invited here and there.

There was a single moment when he changed abruptly. The evening before he was to speak at the conference, he became aloof and rude; he seemed overwhelmed by anxiety. He began to disparage the text he had prepared, he kept repeating that writing for him wasn’t as easy as it was for me, he became angry because he hadn’t had time to work well. I felt guilty—was it our complicated affair that had distracted him?—and tried to help, hugging him, kissing him, urging him to read me the pages. He did read them, with the air of a frightened schoolboy, which touched me. To me the speech seemed as dull as the ones I had heard in the assembly hall, but I praised it and he calmed down. The next morning he performed with practiced warmth and was applauded. That evening one of the big-name academics, an American, invited him to sit with him. I was left alone, but I wasn’t sorry. When Nino was there, I didn’t talk to anyone, while in his absence I was forced to manage with my halting French, and I became friendly with a couple from Paris. I liked them because I quickly discovered that they were in a situation not very different from ours. Both considered the institution of the family suffocating, both had painfully left spouses and children, both seemed happy. He, Augustin, was around fifty, with a ruddy face, lively blue eyes, a bushy pale-blond mustache. She, Colombe, was a little over thirty, like me; she had very short black hair, eyes and lips drawn sharply on a tiny face, a charming elegance. I talked mainly to Colombe, who had a child of seven.

“In a few months,” I said, “my older daughter will turn seven, but she’s going into second grade this year—she’s very bright.”

“My son is extremely clever and imaginative.”

“How did he take the separation?”

“Fine.”

“He didn’t get even a little upset?”

“Children aren’t rigid, the way we are: they’re flexible.”

She dwelled on the flexibility she ascribed to childhood; it seemed to reassure her. She added: in our world it’s fairly common for parents to separate, and children know it’s possible. But just as I was saying that I didn’t know other separated women, apart from one friend, her tone changed abruptly and she began to complain about the child: he’s smart but slow, she exclaimed, at school they say he’s unruly. I was struck by the change; she expressed herself without tenderness, almost bitterly, as if her son were behaving like that to spite her, and this made me anxious. Her companion must have noticed, and he interrupted, boasting about
his
two boys, fourteen and eighteen, and joking about how attractive they were to women, both old and young. When Nino returned, the two men—especially Augustin—began to criticize the speakers. Colombe joined in almost immediately, with a slightly artificial gaiety. The maliciousness soon created a bond. Augustin talked and drank a lot all evening, his companion laughed whenever Nino managed to say a word. They invited us to drive to Paris with them, in their car.

The conversation about children, and that invitation that we didn’t say yes or no to, brought me back to reality. Until that moment Dede and Elsa, and also Pietro, had been on my mind constantly, but as if suspended in a parallel universe, motionless around the kitchen table in Florence, or in front of the television, or in their beds. Suddenly my world and theirs were back in communication. I realized that the days in Montpellier were about to end, that inevitably Nino and I would return to our homes, that we would have to face our respective marital crises, I in Florence, he in Naples. And the children’s bodies rejoined mine, I felt the contact violently. I had no news of them for five days, and as I became aware of that I felt an intense nausea, an unbearable longing for them. I was afraid not of the future in general, which now seemed inescapably occupied by Nino, but of the hours that were about to come, of tomorrow, of the day after. I couldn’t resist and although it was almost midnight—what’s the difference, I said to myself, Pietro is always awake—I tried to telephone.

It was fairly laborious, but finally the call went through. Hello, I said. Hello, I repeated. I knew that Pietro was at the other end of the line, I called him by name: Pietro, it’s Elena, how are the girls. The connection was cut off. I waited a few minutes, then I asked the operator to call again. I was determined to continue all night, but this time Pietro answered.

“What do you want?”

“Tell me about the children.”

“They’re sleeping.”

“I know, but how are they?”

“What is it to you.”

“They’re my children.”

“You left them, they don’t want to be your children anymore.”

“They told you?”

“They told my mother.”

“You had Adele come?”

“Yes.”

“Tell them I’ll be home in a few days.”

“No, don’t come back. Neither I, nor the children, nor my mother wants to see you again.”

I had a cry, then I calmed down and went to Nino. I wanted to tell him about that phone call, I wanted him to console me. But as I was about to knock on his door I heard him talking to someone. I hesitated. He was on the phone. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, or even what language he was speaking, but right away I thought that he was talking to his wife. So did this happen every evening? When I went to my room to get ready for the night and he was alone, he telephoned Eleonora? Were they looking for a way to separate without fighting? Or were they reconciling and, once the interlude of Montpellier was over, she would take him back?

I decided to knock. Nino broke off, silence, then he began talking again but lowered his voice. I became nervous, I knocked again, nothing happened. I had to knock a third time, hard, before he came to the door. I immediately confronted him, I accused him of hiding me from his wife, I cried that I had telephoned Pietro, that my husband didn’t want to let me see my children, that I was calling into question my entire life, while he was cooing on the telephone with Eleonora. It was a terrible night of quarreling; we struggled to make up. Nino tried everything to soothe me: he laughed nervously, he got angry at Pietro for the way he had treated me, he kissed me, I pushed him away, he said I was crazy. But no matter how I pressed him he never admitted that he was talking to his wife, in fact he swore on his son that since the day he left Naples he hadn’t talked to her.

“Then who were you calling?”

“A colleague here in the hotel.”

“At midnight?”

“At midnight.”

“Liar.”

“It’s the truth.”

I refused for a long time to make love, I couldn’t, I was afraid that he no longer loved me. Then I yielded, in order not to have to believe that it was all already over.

The next morning, for the first time in almost five days of living together, I woke in a bad mood. We had to leave, the conference was nearly over. But I didn’t want Montpellier to be merely an interlude; I was afraid to go home, afraid that Nino would go home, afraid of losing my children forever. When Augustin and Colombe again suggested that we drive to Paris with them, and even offered to put us up, I turned to Nino, hoping that he, too, wanted nothing more than the chance to extend this time, put off the return. But he shook his head sadly, he said: Impossible, we have to go back to Italy, and he talked about flights, tickets, trains, money. I was fragile, I felt disappointment and rancor. I was right, I thought, he lied to me, the break with his wife isn’t conclusive. He had talked to her every night, he had pledged to return home after the conference, he couldn’t delay even a couple of days. And me?

I remembered the publisher in Nanterre and my short, scholarly story about the male invention of woman. Until that moment I hadn’t talked about myself to anyone, even Nino. I had been the smiling but nearly mute woman who slept with the brilliant professor from Naples, the woman always pasted to him, attentive to his needs, to his thoughts. But now I said with false cheer: It’s Nino who has to return, I have an engagement in Nanterre; a work of mine is about to come out—or maybe it’s already out—a half essay, half story; I just might leave with you, and stop in at the publisher’s. The two looked at me as if only at that moment had I actually begun to exist, and they went on to ask me about my work. I told them, and it turned out that Colombe knew well the woman who was the head of the small but—as I discovered at that moment—prestigious publishing house. I let myself go, I talked with too much vivacity and maybe I exaggerated a little about my literary career. I did it not for the two French people but, rather, for Nino. I wanted to remind him that I had a rewarding life of my own, that if I had been capable of leaving my children and Pietro, then I could also do without him, and not in a week, not in ten days: immediately.

He listened, then he said seriously to Colombe and Augustin: All right, if it’s not a bother for you we’ll take advantage of the ride. But when we were alone he made me a speech anxious in tone and passionate in content, whose sense was that I should trust him, that although our situation was complicated we would surely untangle it, that to do so, however, we had to go home, we couldn’t flee from Montpellier to Paris and then to who knows what other city, we had to confront our spouses and begin our life together. Suddenly I felt that he was not only reasonable but sincere. I was confused, I embraced him, I murmured agreement. And yet we left for Paris; I wanted just a few more days.

It was a long trip. There was a strong wind, and sometimes rain. The landscape had a rust-caked pallor, but at times the sky broke and everything became brilliant, starting with the rain. I clung to Nino and, now and then, fell asleep on his shoulder; I began again to feel, with pleasure, that I was far beyond my margins. I liked the foreign language that echoed in the car, I was pleased that I was heading in the direction of a book that I had written in Italian and that, thanks to Mariarosa, was being published first in another language. What an extraordinary fact—how many amazing things were happening to me. That little volume was like a rock that I had hurled along an unpredictable trajectory and at a speed that had no comparison with that of the rocks that as girls Lila and I had thrown at the gangs of boys.

But the journey wasn’t always pleasant; sometimes I became sad. And I quickly formed the impression that Nino was talking to Colombe in a tone that he didn’t use with Augustin, not to mention that too often he touched her shoulder with his fingertips. My bad mood gradually worsened, as I saw the two of them were getting very friendly. When we arrived in Paris they were the best of friends, chatting away; she laughed often, smoothing her hair with a careless gesture.

Augustin lived in a nice apartment on Canal Saint-Martin; Colombe had recently moved in. Even after they showed us our room, they wouldn’t let us to go bed. It seemed to me that they were afraid to be alone, they wouldn’t stop talking. I was tired and nervous; I was the one who had wanted to go to Paris, and now it seemed absurd to be in that house, among strangers, far from my daughters, with Nino paying scant attention to me. Once in the room I asked him:

“Do you like Colombe?”

“She’s nice.”

“I asked if you like her.”

“Do you want to quarrel?”

“No.”

“Then think about it: how can I like Colombe if I love you?”

It scared me when his tone became even slightly harsh; I was afraid I would have to acknowledge that something between us wasn’t working. He is simply nice to anyone who has been nice to us, I said to myself, and fell asleep. But I slept badly. At one point I had the impression that I was alone in the bed; I tried to wake up, but was drawn back into sleep. I emerged again sometime later. Nino now was standing in the dark, or so it seemed to me. Sleep, he said. I fell asleep again.

The next day our hosts took us to Nanterre. The whole way Nino continued to joke with Colombe, to talk to her in an allusive way. I tried not to pay attention. How could I think of living with him if I had to spend my time watching him? When we reached our destination and he became genial and charming with Mariarosa’s friend, the owner of the publishing house, and her partner—one around forty, the other sixty—I drew a sigh of relief. It’s innocent, I concluded, he’s like that with all women. And finally I felt better.

The two women greeted me warmly, full of praise, and asked about Mariarosa. I knew that my volume had only just arrived in the bookstores, but already a couple of reviews had appeared. The older woman showed them to me; she seemed amazed herself at how positive they were, and, turning to Colombe, to Augustin, to Nino, she kept repeating it. I read the articles, two lines here, four there. They were written by women—I had never heard of them, but Colombe and the two women had—and they praised the book enthusiastically. I should have been pleased; the day before, I had been compelled to sing my own praises, and now I no longer needed to. Yet I found that I couldn’t feel excited. It was as if, since I loved Nino and he loved me, that love made everything good that happened to me and would happen to me nothing but a pleasant secondary effect. I showed my satisfaction graciously and gave a feeble assent to my publishers’ plans for promotion. You’ll have to return soon, the older woman exclaimed, or at least we hope so. The younger added: Mariarosa told us about your marital crisis; we hope you’ll come out of it without too much suffering.