Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (The Neapolitan Novels, #3)

by Elena Ferrante

I felt that not only in my book but in novels in general there was something that truly agitated me, a bare and throbbing heart, the same that had burst out of my chest in that distant moment when Lila had proposed that we write a story together. It had fallen to me to do it seriously. But was that what I wanted? To write, to write with purpose, to write better than I had already? And to study the stories of the past and the present to understand how they worked, and to learn, learn everything about the world with the sole purpose of constructing living hearts, which no one would ever do better than me, not even Lila if she had had the opportunity?

Finally, I spoke of the necessity of recounting frankly every human experience, including—I said emphatically—what seems unsayable and what we do not speak of even to ourselves.

came from that family, Pietro from that other, each of us carried our ancestors in our body. How would our marriage go? What awaited me? Would the affinities prevail over the differences?

Lila stuck the wool cap on her son’s head. “We made a pact when we were children: I’m the wicked one.”

They helped to keep her anchored to the dull things of every day, she was afraid of the silence of the house, of sleep, of her unruly heartbeats, of the shapes that threatened to break apart at any moment.

I feel like the knight in an ancient romance as, wrapped in his shining armor, after performing a thousand astonishing feats throughout the world, he meets a ragged, starving herdsman, who, never leaving his pasture, subdues and controls horrible beasts with his bare hands, and with prodigious courage.

The next day I went to see Lila; she seemed particularly unwell. She complained that when I wasn’t there certain presences took advantage of my absence and emerged from objects to bother her and Gennaro. Then she realized that I was alarmed and, in a tone of amusement, said it was all nonsense, she just wanted me to be with her more.

propounded

irascible

ascetic

As soon as I was back on my feet I telephoned Lila, I didn’t want her to be angry that I hadn’t told her anything. “It was a wonderful experience,” I told her. “What?” “The pregnancy, the birth. Adele is beautiful, and very good.” She answered: “Each of us narrates our life as it suits us.”

Adele intended to systematically pull me out of the desperate state of an incompetent mother, she was rubbing words together to strike a spark and rekindle my frozen mind, my frozen gaze. But the truth was that she liked saving me more than listening to me.

Today it’s hard to explain why I insisted on writing that stuff or, rather, why, although I scarcely took part in the city’s political life, and in spite of my meekness, I felt increasingly drawn to extreme positions. Maybe I did it out of insecurity.

thought I had to know everything, be concerned with everything. What did I care about politics, about struggles. I wanted to make a good impression on men, be at their level. At the level of what, of their reason, most unreasonable. Such persistence in memorizing fashionable jargon, wasted effort. I had been conditioned by my education, which had shaped my mind, my voice.

contrite

Marriage by now seemed to me an institution that, contrary to what one might think, stripped coitus of all humanity.

We had maintained the bond between our two stories, but by subtraction. We had become for each other abstract entities, so that now I could invent her for myself both as an expert in computers and as a determined and implacable urban guerrilla, while she, in all likelihood, could see me both as the stereotype of the successful intellectual and as a cultured and well-off woman, all children, books, and highbrow conversation with an academic husband. We both needed new depth, body, and yet we were distant and couldn’t give it to each other.

Become. It was a verb that had always obsessed me, but I realized it for the first time only in that situation. I wanted to become, even though I had never known what. And I had become, that was certain, but without an object, without a real passion, without a determined ambition. I had wanted to become something—here was the point—only because I was afraid that Lila would become someone and I would stay behind. My becoming was a becoming in her wake. I had to start again to become, but for myself, as an adult, outside of her.