The Lying Life of Adults. Elena Ferrante
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in the mirror without anything on, only some earrings and a necklace of my mother’s, and the marvelous bracelet. Angela looked at me enchanted, Ida asked if I had at least left my underpants on. I said no, and the lie gave me such relief that I imagined if I really had done it I would have tasted a moment of absolute happiness.
So one afternoon, to prove that, I transformed the lie into reality. I undressed, put on some of my mother’s jewelry, looked in the mirror. But it was a painful sight, I saw myself as a small, faded green plant, debilitated by too much sun, sad. Even though I had made myself up carefully, what an insignificant face I had, the lipstick was an ugly red stain on a face that looked like the gray bottom of a frying pan. I tried to understand, now that I had met Vittoria, if there really were points of contact between us, but the more I persisted the more useless it was. She was an old woman—at least in the eyes of a thirteen-year-old—I a young girl: too much disproportion between the bodies, too great an interval of time between my face and hers. And where in me was that energy of hers, the warmth that lit up her eyes? If I was really starting to look like Vittoria, my face lacked the essential, her force. So on the wave of that thought, while I was comparing her eyebrows with mine, her forehead with mine, I realized that I wished she really had given me a bracelet, and I felt that if I had it now and wore it, I would feel more powerful.
That idea immediately infused me with a cheering warmth, as if my depressed body had suddenly found the right medicine. Certain words that Vittoria had said before we parted, walking me to the door, came to mind. Your father—she was angry—has deprived you of a big family, of all of us, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, because we’re not intelligent and educated like him; he cut us off with a hatchet, he forced you to grow up in isolation, for fear we’d ruin you. She spewed bitterness, and yet those words now brought me relief, I repeated them in my mind. They affirmed the existence of a strong and positive bond, they demanded it. My aunt hadn’t said: you have my face or at least you look something like me; my aunt had said: you don’t belong only to your father and mother, you’re mine, too, you belong to the whole family that he came from, and anyone who belongs to us is never alone, is charged with energy. Wasn’t it because of those words that, after some hesitation, I had promised her that on May 23rd I would skip school and go with her to the cemetery? Now at the idea that, at nine in the morning on that day, she would wait for me in Piazza Medaglie d’Oro beside her old dark-green Fiat 500—so she had told me imperatively, saying goodbye—I began to cry, to laugh, to make terrible faces in the mirror.
4.
Every morning the three of us went to school, my parents to teach, I to learn. My mother usually got up first: she needed time to make breakfast, to dress and put on her makeup. My father instead got up only when breakfast was ready, because as soon as he opened his eyes he started reading, and writing in his notebooks, and he continued even in the bathroom. I got up last, although—ever since that story began—I’d demanded to do as my mother did: wash my hair frequently, put on makeup, choose with care everything I wore. The result was that both of them were continuously rushing me: Giovanna, how far along are you; Giovanna, you’ll be late and we’ll be late. And meanwhile they rushed each other. My father pressed: Nella, hurry, I need the bathroom, my mother answered calmly, it’s been free for half an hour, you haven’t gone yet? But those were not the mornings I preferred. I loved the days when my father had to be at school for the first period and my mother for the second or third or, even better, when she had the day free. Then she simply made breakfast, from time to time called, Giovanna, hurry up, devoted herself serenely to her many domestic duties and the stories she corrected and often rewrote. On those days, everything was easier for me: my mother washed last and I had more time in the bathroom; my father was always late and, apart from the usual jokes with which he kept me laughing, left in a hurry, dropped me at school, and drove off without the watchful lingering of my mother, as if I were grown up and could face the city by myself.
I did some calculations and discovered with relief that the morning of the 23rd was of this second type: it would be my father’s turn to take me to school. The night before I got out my clothes for the next day (I eliminated pink), something that my mother always urged me to do but that I never did. And I woke up very early in the morning, in a nervous state. I ran to the bathroom, made myself up very carefully, put on, after some hesitation, the bracelet with blue leaves and pearls, appeared in the kitchen when my mother had barely got up. How in the world are you already up, she asked. I don’t want to be late, I said, I have Italian homework, and, seeing that I was agitated, she went to hurry my father.
Breakfast went smoothly, they joked with each other as if I weren’t there and they could gossip about me freely. They said that if I wasn’t sleeping well and couldn’t wait to get to school, surely I was in love, I gave them little smiles that said neither yes nor no. Then my father disappeared into the bathroom, and this time it was I who shouted to him to hurry up. He—I have to say—didn’t waste time, except when he didn’t find clean socks or forgot books he needed and ran back into his study. In short, I remember that it was exactly seven-twenty, my father was at the end of the hall with his bag loaded, I had just given the obligatory kiss to my mother, when the doorbell rang violently.
It was surprising that someone should ring at that hour. My mother quickly shut herself in the bathroom with a vexed expression, and said: open the door, see who it is. I opened it, and found myself facing Vittoria.
“Hi,” she said, “lucky you’re ready, come on, we’ll be late.”
I felt my heart burst in my breast. My mother saw her sister-in-law in the frame of the door and cried—yes, it was really a cry—Andrea, come here, it’s your sister. At the sight of Vittoria—his eyes widening in surprise, his mouth incredulous—he exclaimed: what are you doing here? Fearful of what would happen in a moment, in a minute, I felt weak, I was covered with sweat, I didn’t know what to say to my aunt, I didn’t know how to explain to my parents, I thought I was dying. But it was all over in a moment and in a way as surprising as it was clarifying.
Vittoria said in dialect:
“I’m here to get Giannina, it’s seventeen years today since I met Enzo.”
She added nothing else, as if my parents should understand immediately the good reasons for her appearance and were obliged to let me go without protesting. My mother, however, objected in Italian.
“Giovanna has to go to school.”
My father, instead, without addressing either his wife or his sister, asked me in his cold tone:
“Did you know about this?”
I stood with my head down staring at the floor and he insisted, without changing his tone:
“Did you have a date, do you want to go with your aunt?”
My mother said slowly:
“Are you serious, Andrea, of course she wants to go, of course they had a date, otherwise your sister wouldn’t be here.”
He said only: if that’s the case, go, and with his fingertips signaled to his sister to move aside. Vittoria moved aside—she was a mask of impassivity set atop the yellow patch of a light dress—and my father, looking ostentatiously at his watch, ignored the elevator and took the stairs without saying goodbye, not even to me.
“When will you bring her back,” my mother asked her sister-in-law.
“When she’s tired.”
They coldly negotiated the time and agreed on one-thirty. Vittoria held out her hand, I gave her mine as if I were a child, it was cold. She held me tight, maybe she was afraid I would escape and run home. Meanwhile, with her free hand she called the elevator under the eyes of my mother, who, standing in the doorway, couldn’t bring herself to close the door.
A word more, a word less, that’s how it went.
5.
Our second encounter left an even deeper impression than the first. Just to start with, I discovered that I had a space inside me that could swallow up every feeling in a very short time. The weight of the lie discovered, the