One morning she got a bad cut on her finger trying to show that she, too, could make a snake. She was five and was immediately in despair: the blood flowed, along with tears of disappointment. I was frightened, yelled at her: I couldn’t leave her alone for a moment, there was never time for myself. I felt that I was suffocating, it seemed to me that I was betraying myself. For long minutes I refused to kiss her wound, the kiss that makes the pain go away. I wanted to teach her that you don’t do that, it’s dangerous, only Mama does it, who is grownup. Mama.
Poor creatures who came out of my belly, all alone now on the other side of the world. I placed the doll on my knees as if for company. Why had I taken her. She guarded the love of Nina and Elena, their bond, their reciprocal passion. She was the shining testimony of perfect motherhood. I brought her to my breast. 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.
14
I slept on the sofa, with the door to the terrace open, and I woke late; my head was heavy, my bones ached. It was past ten, and raining; a strong wind was agitating the sea. I looked for the doll but didn’t see her. I felt anxious, as if it were possible that she had thrown herself off the terrace during the night. I looked around, hunted under the sofa, afraid that someone had come in and taken her. I found her in the kitchen, sitting on the table, in the shadows. I must have brought her in there when I went to wash my mouth and my shirt.
No beach, the weather was nasty. The plan to give Nani back to Elena today seemed to me not only weak but impractical. I went out to have breakfast, to buy the papers and something for lunch and dinner.
The town had the animation of a day without sun; vacationers shopped or wandered around wasting time. I came upon a toy store along the seafront and remembered the idea of buying some clothes for the doll, since for that day, at least, I would keep her with me.
I went in with no particular aim, and talked to a young salesgirl, who was very helpful. She found underpants, socks, shoes, and a blue dress that seemed to me the right size. I was about to leave, having just put the package in my bag, when I almost bumped into Corrado, the old man with the spiteful expression, the one who I had been sure was Nina’s father and who instead was Rosaria’s husband. He was fully dressed, in a blue suit, white shirt, yellow tie. He didn’t seem to recognize me, but behind him, in faded green maternity overalls, was Rosaria, who recognized me right away and exclaimed:
“Signora Leda, how are you, is everything all right, did the ointment help?”
I thanked her again, saying I felt fine now, and meanwhile I observed, with pleasure, I should say with emotion, that Nina, too, was coming.
People we are used to seeing on the beach have a surprising effect when we meet them in their city clothes. Corrado and Rosaria seemed to me contracted, rigid, as if they were cardboard. Nina gave the impression of a delicately colored shell that keeps its soft inner mass—colorless, watchful—tightly locked up. The only one who looked disheveled was Elena, who, clasped in her mother’s arms, was sucking her thumb. Although she was wearing a pretty white dress, she gave off a sense of disorder; she must have stained the dress a little while ago with chocolate ice cream—the thumb clenched between her lips had a line of sticky brown saliva on it.
I looked at the child uneasily. Her head was lolling on Nina’s shoulder, her nose was running. The doll clothes in my purse seemed to have grown heavier and I thought: this is the right moment, I’ll tell her that I have Nani. Instead something twisted violently inside me and I asked with false sympathy:
“How are you, sweetie, did you find your doll?”
She gave a kind of shudder of rage, she took her thumb out of her mouth, and tried to hit me with her fist. I swerved, and she hid her face against her mother’s neck in irritation.
“Elena, don’t behave like that, answer the lady,” Nina reproached her nervously. “Tell her we’ll find Nani tomorrow, today we’re buying a better doll.”
But the child shook her head and Rosaria whispered, whoever stole her should get brain cancer. She said it as if the being in her belly were also furious because of that affront and so she had the right to feel resentment, a resentment even stronger than Nina’s. But Corrado made a sign of disapproval. It’s kids’ stuff, he said, they like a toy, they take it, and then they tell their parents they found it by chance. When I saw him so close he seemed to me not at all old and certainly not as spiteful as he had from a distance.
“Carruno’s children aren’t like kids,” Rosaria said.
And Nina burst out, the accent of her dialect much stronger than usuaclass="underline" “They did it on purpose—they were egged on by their mother to insult me.”
“Tonino telephoned, the children didn’t take anything.”
“Carruno’s lying.”
“Even if it’s true, you are wrong to say it,” Corrado reproached her. “What would your husband say if he heard you?”
Nina looked at the pavement angrily. Rosaria shook her head, she turned to me in search of understanding.
“My husband is too kind, you don’t know the tears this poor child has shed. She has a fever—we’re furious.”
I got a confused idea that they had attributed to these Carrunos, probably the family in the motorboat, the doll’s disappearance. It was natural for them to think that they had decided to make them suffer by making the little girl suffer.
“The child is having trouble breathing, blow your nose, sweetie,” Rosaria said to Elena, and at the same time asked for Kleenex but wordlessly, with a peremptory gesture of her hand. I was opening the zipper of my purse, but stopped abruptly, halfway, afraid that they might see my purchase, ask questions. Her husband quickly gave her a handkerchief and she cleaned the child’s nose as she wriggled and kicked. I zipped up my purse, made sure it was tightly closed, and looked at the salesgirl with apprehension. Stupid fears, I was angry with myself. I asked Nina:
“Is it a high fever?”
“A few degrees,” she answered. “It’s nothing.” And, as if to show me that Elena was fine, she tried with a 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.