The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante

Author:Elena Ferrante
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Europa

20.

I arrived at the elevator as if I had walked on a wire stretched between the pine grove and the entrance to the building. I leaned against the metal wall while the car slowly rose, I stared at Otto to thank him. He stood with his legs slightly apart, he was panting and a thread of saliva dripped from his jaws, making a squiggle on the floor of the elevator. The car jolted as it came to a stop.

On the landing I found Ilaria, she seemed to me very annoyed, as if she were my mother returned from the kingdom of the dead to remind me of my duties.

“He threw up again,” she said.

She preceded me into the house, followed by Otto, whom I freed from the leash. No smell of burned milk, of coffee. I slowed down to close the door, mechanically I put the keys in the locks, gave the two turns. My hand was used by now to that movement which was to keep anyone from entering my house to search among my things. I had to protect myself from those who would do their utmost to load me with obligations, guilts, and keep me from starting to live again. I was struck by the suspicion that even my children wanted to convince me that their flesh was withering because of me, just from breathing the same air. Gianni’s illness served this purpose. He set the scene, Ilaria flung it eagerly in my face. More vomit, yes, and so? It wasn’t the first time, it wouldn’t be the last. Gianni, like his father, had a weak stomach. They both suffered from seasickness, carsickness. A sip of cold water sufficed, a slice of too rich cake, and they felt sick. Who knows what the boy had secretly eaten, to complicate my life, to make the day more arduous for me.

The room was again in disarray. Now the dirty sheets were in a corner, like a cloud, and Gianni had gone back to Ilaria’s bed. The child had replaced me. She had behaved the way I had behaved as a girl with my mother: she had tried to do what she had seen me do, she was playing at getting rid of my authority by supplanting me, she wanted to take my place. In general I was accommodating, my mother had not been. Every time I tried to do something like her, she rebuked me, she said I had been bad. Maybe it was she in person who was acting through the child to crush me with the demonstration of my inadequacy. Ilaria explained, as if inviting me to join a game in which she was the queen:

“I put the dirty sheets there and I made him lie on my bed. He didn’t throw up much, he only did like this.”

She staged some retching actions, then spit several times on the floor.

I went to Gianni, he was sweating, he looked at me with hostility.

“Where’s the thermometer?” I asked.

Ilaria took

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