The Lost Daughter

They are strong ships, I said to myself, nothing can hold them back. I, on the other hand, have only restraints. It was the fear I’d had of these people since childhood, and at times disgust, and also my presumption of having a superior destiny, an elevated sensibility, that up to now had kept me from admiring their determination. Where is the rule that makes Nina pretty and Rosaria not. Where is the rule that makes Gino handsome and this threatening husband not.

“I was resigned to living very little for myself and a great deal for the two children: gradually I succeeded.”

“So it passes,” she said.

“What.”

She made a gesture to indicate a vertigo but also a feeling of nausea.

“The turmoil.”

I remembered my mother and said:

“My mother used another word, she called it a shattering.”

She recognized the feeling in the word, and her expression was that of a frightened girl.

I feel the child’s tears under my fingertips, I’m still hitting her. I do it gently, the gesture is under my control but decisive, and the intervals are getting smaller: not a possibly educational act but real violence, contained but real.

How many damaged, lost things did I have behind me, and yet present, now, in a whirl of images. I understood clearly that I didn’t want to give Nani back, even though I felt remorse, fear in keeping her with me. I kissed her face, her mouth, I hugged her as I had seen Elena do. She emitted a gurgle that seemed to me a hostile remark and, with it, a jet of brown saliva that dirtied my lips and my shirt.

I wanted my daughters to be loved, I couldn’t bear them not to be, I was terrified of their possible unhappiness; but the gusts of sensuality they exhaled were violent, voracious, and I felt that the force of attraction of their bodies was as if subtracted from mine. So I was content when they told me, laughing, that the boys had found me a young and good-looking mother. It seemed to me for a few minutes that our three organisms had reached a pleasant accord.

I wanted to reward them, perhaps, because they had recognized the beauty, the good qualities of my daughters, and so had freed them from the anguish of being ugly, the certainty of having no power of seduction.

When she saw that my teeth were chattering she became even more furious, yanked me, covered me from head to toe with a towel, rubbed me with such an energy, such violence that I didn’t know if it was really worry for my health or a long-fostered rage, a ferocity, that chafed my skin.

Gianni is a kind man, our daughters love him. He took little or no care of them, but when it was necessary he did everything he could, even now he is doing everything he can.

The hardest things to talk about are the ones we ourselves can’t understand.

In the end what we need above all is kindness, even if it is pretended.