Read Online The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Elena Ferrante
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forced smile to put her down.
The child refused with great energy. She clung to her mother’s neck as if she were suspended over an abyss, yelling, pushing off the floor at the slightest contact, kicking. Nina remained for a moment in an uncomfortable position, bending forward, with her hands around her daughter’s hips, pulling in the attempt to detach her, but careful also to avoid her kicks. I felt that she was wavering between patience and being fed up, understanding and the wish to start crying. Where was the idyll I had witnessed at the beach. I recognized the vexation of finding oneself under the eyes of strangers in this situation. Evidently she had been trying to calm the child for hours, without success, and was exhausted. Leaving the house, she had tried to clothe her daughter’s rage in a pretty dress, pretty shoes. She herself had put on a nice dress of a wine color that became her, she had pinned up her hair, wore earrings that grazed her pronounced jaw and swung against her long neck. She wanted to resist ugliness, cheer herself up. She had tried to see herself in the mirror as she had been before bringing that organism into the world, before condemning herself forever to adding it on to hers. But to what purpose.
Soon she’ll start yelling, I thought, soon she’ll hit her, trying to break that bond. Instead, the bond will become more twisted, will strengthen in remorse, in the humiliation of having shown herself in public to be an unaffectionate mother, not the mother of church or the Sunday supplements. Elena screams, cries, and holds her legs neurotically rigid, as if the entrance to the toy store were a snake pit. A miniature, made of an illogically animate material. The child didn’t want to stand on her own feet, she wanted to stay on her mother’s. She was apprehensive, she had a presentiment that Nina had had enough, she sensed it from the way she had dressed up to come to town, from the rebellious odor of her youth, from her eager beauty. So she wrapped herself around her. The loss of the doll is an excuse, I said to myself. Elena was afraid, above all, that her mother would flee from her.
Maybe Nina realized it, too, or simply couldn’t stand it anymore. In a suddenly coarse dialect she hissed, Stop it, and resettled her daughter in her arms with a violent jerk, Stop it, I don’t want to hear you anymore, do you understand, I don’t want to hear you anymore, that’s enough of your demands, and she pulled the child’s dress down hard in front, over her knees, in a sharp gesture that she would have liked to aim at her body, not her clothes. Then, confused, she returned to Italian with an expression of self-reproach, and said to me in a forced way:
“Excuse me, I don’t know what to do, she’s torturing me. Her father’s gone and now she’s taking it out on me.”
Then, with a sigh, Rosaria took the child from her arms: come to auntie, she murmured, with emotion. This time Elena, incongruously, put up no resistance; she yielded immediately, throwing her arms around her aunt’s neck. Out of spite for her mother, or out of certainty that this other body—without a child but expecting one, children love the not yet born a lot, the newborn little, or very little—was at this moment welcoming, would hug her between large breasts, having set her on that stomach, like a seat, protecting her against the possible anger of the bad mother, who didn’t know how to take care of her doll, who in fact had lost her. She entrusted herself to Rosaria with a vehement exaggeration of affection, to imply treacherously: Auntie is better than you, Mama, Auntie is kinder; if you go on treating me this way, I’ll stay with her forever and won’t want you anymore.
“There, go on, so I can have a little rest,” Nina said with a frown of disappointment; her upper lip showed a veil of sweat. Then to me: “Sometimes you just can’t cope anymore.”
“I know,” I said, to indicate that I was on her
The child refused with great energy. She clung to her mother’s neck as if she were suspended over an abyss, yelling, pushing off the floor at the slightest contact, kicking. Nina remained for a moment in an uncomfortable position, bending forward, with her hands around her daughter’s hips, pulling in the attempt to detach her, but careful also to avoid her kicks. I felt that she was wavering between patience and being fed up, understanding and the wish to start crying. Where was the idyll I had witnessed at the beach. I recognized the vexation of finding oneself under the eyes of strangers in this situation. Evidently she had been trying to calm the child for hours, without success, and was exhausted. Leaving the house, she had tried to clothe her daughter’s rage in a pretty dress, pretty shoes. She herself had put on a nice dress of a wine color that became her, she had pinned up her hair, wore earrings that grazed her pronounced jaw and swung against her long neck. She wanted to resist ugliness, cheer herself up. She had tried to see herself in the mirror as she had been before bringing that organism into the world, before condemning herself forever to adding it on to hers. But to what purpose.
Soon she’ll start yelling, I thought, soon she’ll hit her, trying to break that bond. Instead, the bond will become more twisted, will strengthen in remorse, in the humiliation of having shown herself in public to be an unaffectionate mother, not the mother of church or the Sunday supplements. Elena screams, cries, and holds her legs neurotically rigid, as if the entrance to the toy store were a snake pit. A miniature, made of an illogically animate material. The child didn’t want to stand on her own feet, she wanted to stay on her mother’s. She was apprehensive, she had a presentiment that Nina had had enough, she sensed it from the way she had dressed up to come to town, from the rebellious odor of her youth, from her eager beauty. So she wrapped herself around her. The loss of the doll is an excuse, I said to myself. Elena was afraid, above all, that her mother would flee from her.
Maybe Nina realized it, too, or simply couldn’t stand it anymore. In a suddenly coarse dialect she hissed, Stop it, and resettled her daughter in her arms with a violent jerk, Stop it, I don’t want to hear you anymore, do you understand, I don’t want to hear you anymore, that’s enough of your demands, and she pulled the child’s dress down hard in front, over her knees, in a sharp gesture that she would have liked to aim at her body, not her clothes. Then, confused, she returned to Italian with an expression of self-reproach, and said to me in a forced way:
“Excuse me, I don’t know what to do, she’s torturing me. Her father’s gone and now she’s taking it out on me.”
Then, with a sigh, Rosaria took the child from her arms: come to auntie, she murmured, with emotion. This time Elena, incongruously, put up no resistance; she yielded immediately, throwing her arms around her aunt’s neck. Out of spite for her mother, or out of certainty that this other body—without a child but expecting one, children love the not yet born a lot, the newborn little, or very little—was at this moment welcoming, would hug her between large breasts, having set her on that stomach, like a seat, protecting her against the possible anger of the bad mother, who didn’t know how to take care of her doll, who in fact had lost her. She entrusted herself to Rosaria with a vehement exaggeration of affection, to imply treacherously: Auntie is better than you, Mama, Auntie is kinder; if you go on treating me this way, I’ll stay with her forever and won’t want you anymore.
“There, go on, so I can have a little rest,” Nina said with a frown of disappointment; her upper lip showed a veil of sweat. Then to me: “Sometimes you just can’t cope anymore.”
“I know,” I said, to indicate that I was on her
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