The Lying Life of Adults. Elena Ferrante
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to protect your parents, good. But she explained to me that I was off track, she hadn’t given me a baby bracelet, she had given me a big girl’s bracelet, a bracelet she was very fond of. Because, she emphasized, I am not like your father, who is attached to money, attached to things; I don’t give a damn about objects, I love people, and when you were born I thought: I’ll give it to the child, she’ll wear it when she grows up, I wrote that in the card to your parents—give it to her when she’s grown up—and I left it all in your mailbox, imagine me coming up there, your father and mother are animals, they would have thrown me out.
I said:
“Maybe thieves stole it, you shouldn’t have left it in the mailbox.”
She shook her head, her black eyes sparkled:
“What thieves? What are you talking about, if you don’t know anything. Drink your orange juice. Does your mother squeeze oranges for you?”
I nodded yes, but she didn’t acknowledge it. She talked about how good orange juice is, and I noticed the extreme mobility of her face. She could smooth in a flash the folds between nose and mouth that made her grim (precisely that: grim), and the face that until a second earlier had seemed long under the high cheekbones—a gray canvas stretched tight between temples and jaw—colored, softened. My mamma, rest her soul, she said, when it was my saint’s day brought me hot chocolate in bed, she made it into a cream, it was frothy as if she had blown into it. Do they make you hot chocolate on your saint’s day? I was tempted to say yes, even though a saint’s day had never been celebrated in my house, and no one had ever brought me hot chocolate in bed. But I was afraid she would figure it out, so I made a sign to indicate no. She shook her head, unhappy:
“Your father and mother don’t respect traditions, they think they’re someone, they don’t lower themselves to make hot chocolate.”
“My father makes caffe latte.”
“Your father is a jerk, imagine him trying to make caffe latte. Your grandmother knew how to make caffe latte. And she put in two spoonfuls of a beaten egg. Did he tell you how we had coffee, milk, and zabaglione when we were children?”
“No.”
“You see? Your father is like that. He’s the only one who does good things, he can’t accept that others do, too. And if you tell him it’s not true, he erases you.”
She shook her head unhappily, she spoke in a distant tone, but without coldness. He erased my Enzo, she said, the person I was most fond of. Your father erases everything that might be better than him, he’s always done that, he was already doing it as a child. He thinks he’s smart, but he’s never been smart: I am smart, he’s only clever. He can become by instinct a person you can no longer do without. When I was a child, the sun stopped shining if he wasn’t there. I thought that if I didn’t behave the way he wanted, he would leave me all alone and I’d die. So he made me do everything he wanted, he decided what was good and what was bad, for me. Just to give you one example, I was born with music in my body, I wanted to be a dancer. I knew that was my destiny, and only he would have been able to persuade our parents to give me permission. But for your father a dancer was bad, and he wouldn’t let me do it. For him, only if you always show up with a book in your hand do you deserve to stay on the face of the earth, for him if you haven’t gone to school you’re nobody. He said to me: what do you mean dancer, Vittò, you don’t know what a dancer is, go back to studying and shut up. At that time he was making some money with private lessons, so he could have paid for dancing school for me instead of always and only buying books for himself. He didn’t do it, he liked to take significance away from everything and everybody, except himself and his things. With my Enzo—my aunt concluded suddenly—first he let him think they were friends and then he took away his soul, he tore it out and cut it into tiny pieces.
She said words like that but more vulgar, with a familiarity that disoriented me. In no time at all her face cleared then clouded, troubled by diverse feelings: remorse, aversion, rage, melancholy. She covered my father with obscenities I’d never heard. But when she mentioned that Enzo, she broke off because of the emotion, and, head down, dramatically hiding her eyes with one hand, she hurried out of the kitchen.
I didn’t move, I was in a state. I took advantage of her absence to spit into the glass the orange seeds I’d held in my mouth. A minute went by, two, I was ashamed that I hadn’t reacted when she insulted my father. I have to tell her it’s not right to talk like that about someone everybody respects, I thought. Meanwhile some music began softly and in a few seconds exploded at high volume. She shouted to me: come on, Giannì, what are you doing, sleeping? I jumped up, went from the kitchen toward the dark entrance. A few steps and I was in a small room with an old armchair, an accordion left on the floor in a corner, a table with a television, and a stool with the record player on it. Vittoria was standing in front of the window, looking out. From there she could surely see the car in which my father was waiting for me. In fact she said, without turning, alluding to the music: he’s got to hear that singer, so he’ll remember. I realized she was moving her body rhythmically, small movements of feet, hips, shoulders. I stared at her back, bewildered.
“The first time I saw Enzo was at a dance party and we danced this dance,” I heard her say.
“How long ago?”
“Seventeen years on May 23rd.”
“A long time has gone by.”
“Not even a minute has gone by.”
“Did you love him?”
She turned.
“Your father hasn’t told you anything?”
I hesitated, she was as if frozen, for the first time she seemed older than my parents, even though I knew she was a few years younger.
“I know only that he was married and had three children.”
“Nothing else? He didn’t say he was a bad person?”
I hesitated.
“A little bad.”
“And then?”
“A delinquent.”
She burst out:
“The bad person is your father, he’s the delinquent. Enzo was a police sergeant and he was even nice to the criminals, on Sunday he always went to Mass. Imagine, I didn’t believe in God, your father had convinced me that he doesn’t exist. But as soon as I saw Enzo I changed my mind. A man more good and more just and more sensitive has never existed on the face of the earth. Such a lovely voice he had, and he sang so well, he taught me to play the accordion. Before him, men made me vomit, after him anyone who came near me I drove away in disgust. Everything your parents told you is false.”
I looked uneasily at the floor, I didn’t answer. She pressed me:
“You don’t believe it, eh?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know because you believe more in lies than in the truth. Giannì, you’re not growing up well. Look how ridiculous you are, all in pink, pink shoes, pink jacket, pink barrette. I bet you don’t even know how to dance.”
“My friends and I practice whenever we see each other.”
“What are your friends’ names?”
“Angela and Ida.”
“And are they like you?”
“Yes.”
She scowled with disapproval and leaned over to start the record again.
“Do you know how to do this dance?”
“It’s an old dance.”
She made a sudden movement, grabbed me by the waist, held me tight. Her large bosom gave off an odor of pine needles in the sun.
“Climb on my feet.”
“I’ll hurt you.”