What had I done that was so terrible, in the end. Years earlier, I had been a girl who felt lost, this was true. All the hopes of youth seemed to have been destroyed, I seemed to be falling backward toward my mother, my grandmother, the chain of mute or angry women I came from. Missed opportunities. Ambition was still burning, fed by a young body, by an imagination full of plans, but I felt that my creative passion was cut off more and more thoroughly by the reality of dealings with the universities and the need to exploit opportunities for a possible career. I seemed to be imprisoned in my own head, without the chance to test myself, and I was frustrated.
There had been small alarming episodes, not normal impulses of depression, not a destructiveness expressed symbolically, but something more. Now these events have no before and after, they return to my mind in an order that is always different. One winter afternoon, for example, I was studying in the kitchen; I had been working for months on an essay that, although short, I couldn’t manage to finish. Nothing fit together, hypotheses were multiplying in my head, I was afraid that the professor who had encouraged me to write it wouldn’t help me publish it, would reject it.
Marta was playing under the table, at my feet. Bianca was sitting next to me, pretending to read and write, imitating my gestures, my frowns. I don’t know what happened. Maybe she had said something to me and I hadn’t responded; maybe she only wanted to start one of her games, which were always a little rough; suddenly, while I was distracted by a search for words that never seemed logical enough, or apt, I felt a slap on the ear.
It wasn’t a hard blow, Bianca was five, she couldn’t really hurt me. But I was startled, I felt a burning pain, it was as if a sharp black line had, with a clean stroke, cut off thoughts that were already hard to maintain—that were very distant from the kitchen where we were sitting, from the sauce for dinner that was bubbling on the stove, from the clock that was advancing, consuming the narrow space of time that I had to devote to my desire for research, invention, approval, position, money of my own to spend. I hit the child without thinking about it, in a flash, not hard, my fingertips barely touching her cheek.
Don’t do that, I said in a pseudo pedantic tone, and she, smiling, tried to hit me again, certain that at last a game had begun. But I was first and hit her, a little harder, don’t you dare ever again, Bianca, and she laughed, hoarsely this time, with a faint bewilderment in her eyes, and I hit her again, still with the tips of my outstretched fingers, again and again, you don’t hit Mama, you must never do that, and when, finally, she realized that I wasn’t playing, she began to cry desperately.
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. Out, I tell her without raising my voice, out, Mama has to work, and I take her solidly by the arm, drag her into the hall, she cries, screams, tries again to hit me, and I leave her there and close the door behind me with a firm shove, I don’t want to see you anymore.
The door had a big pane of frosted glass. I don’t know what happened, maybe I pushed it with too much force: it banged shut and the glass shattered. Bianca appeared, wide-eyed, small, beyond the empty rectangle, no longer screaming. I looked at her in terror, how far could I go, I frightened myself. She was motionless, unharmed, the tears continued to flow but silently. I try never to think of that moment, of Marta who was pulling me by the skirt, of the child in the hall staring at me amid the broken glass: thinking of it gives me a cold sweat, takes my breath away. I’m sweating here, too, at the entrance of the market, I’m suffocating, and I can’t control the pounding of my heart.
16
As soon as the rain slackened, I rushed out, covering my head with my purse. I didn’t know where to go, certainly I didn’t want to go home. A vacation at the beach, what does it amount to, in the rain: asphalt and puddles, clothes that are too light, wet feet in shoes that give no protection. In the end it was a gentle rain. I was about to cross the street but I stopped. On the sidewalk opposite I saw Rosaria, Corrado, Nina with the child in her arms covered by a thin scarf. They had just left the toy store and were walking quickly. Rosaria was holding by the waist, like a bundle, a new doll that looked like a real child. They didn’t see me or pretended not to. I followed Nina with my eyes, hoping she would turn.
The sun began to filter through small blue rents in the clouds. I reached my car, started the engine, drove toward the sea. Faces flashed through my mind, and actions: no words. They appeared, disappeared, there wasn’t time to fix anything into a thought. I pressed my fingers against my chest to slow the rapid beating of my heart, and as if to slow the car down as well. I seemed to be going too fast, though in reality I wasn’t even going forty. One never knows where the velocity of bad feeling comes from, how it advances. We were at the beach: Gianni, my husband, a colleague of his named Matteo, and Lucilla, his wife, a very cultured woman. I no longer remember what she did in life, I know only that she often caused trouble for me with the children. In general she was kind, understanding, she didn’t criticize me, she wasn’t mean. But she couldn’t resist the desire to seduce my daughters, to make herself loved by them in an exclusive way, to prove that she had a pure and innocent heart—so she said—that beat in unison with theirs.
Like Rosaria. Differences in culture, in class count for little in these things. Whenever Matteo and Lucilla came to our house, or we took a trip outside the city or—as happened in that case—we went on a vacation together, I lived in a state of anxiety, my unhappiness increased. The two men talked about their work or about soccer or I don’t know what, but Lucilla never spoke to me, I didn’t interest her. She played with the children instead, monopolizing their attention, inventing games just for them, and joining in as if she were their age.
I saw that she was completely intent on the goal of winning them over. She stopped devoting herself to them only when they had given in completely, eager to spend not an hour or two but their whole life with her. She acted like a child in a way that irritated me. I had brought up my daughters not to use babyish voices or coy manners, whereas Lucilla had many affectations; she was, for example, one of those women who purposely speak in the voice that adults attribute to children. She spoke in artificial tones and induced them to do likewise, drawing them into a form of regression first verbal and then, slowly, in all their behavior. Habits of autonomy, which had been imposed by me with difficulty and were necessary to carve out a little time for myself, on her arrival were swept away in a few moments. She showed up and immediately began to play the sensitive, imaginative, always cheerful, always available mother: the good mother. Damn her. I drove without avoiding the puddles, in fact I hit them on purpose, raising long wings of water.
All the rage of that time was returning to my breast. Easy, I thought. For an hour or two—taking a walk, on a vacation, on a visit—it was simple and pleasant to entertain the children. Lucilla never worried about afterward. She swept away my discipline and then, once the territory that belonged to me was devastated, retreated into hers, devoting herself to her husband, hurrying off to her work, to her successes, of which, among other things, she did nothing but boast in a tone of apparent modesty. In the end I was alone, in permanent service, the bad mother. I remained to tidy up the messy house, to reimpose on the children behavior that they now found intolerable. Aunt Lucilla said, Aunt Lucilla let us do. Damn her, damn her.