The Days of Abandonment

by Elena Ferrante

And to keep under control the anxieties of change I had, finally, taught myself to wait patiently until every emotion imploded and could come out in a tone of calm, my voice held back in my throat so that I would not make a spectacle of myself.

Usually it was Mario who took the dog out, between eleven and midnight, but since he had left that job, too, had become mine. The children, the dog, shopping, lunch and dinner, money. Everything pointed out to me the practical consequences of abandonment.

My husband had removed his thoughts and desires from me and transferred them elsewhere.

As a girl I had liked obscene language, it gave me a sense of masculine freedom.

A woman can easily kill on the street, in the middle of a crowd, she can do it more easily than a man. Her violence seems a game, a parody, an improper and slightly ridiculous use of the male intent to do harm.

We are occasions.

What a mistake it had been to entrust the sense of myself to his gratifications, his enthusiasms, to the ever more productive course of his life.

the circle of an empty day is brutal, and at night it tightens around your neck like a noose.

felt myself observed through the peephole for a long time: I imagined that he was trying to calm the pounding of his heart, that he wanted to remove from his face the emotion inspired by that unexpected visit.

Existence is this, I thought, a start of joy, a stab of pain, an intense pleasure, veins that pulse under the skin, there is no other truth to tell.

I smiled at him, I brought my lips to his, I kissed him. “Has it been very bad?” he asked me in embarrassment. “Yes.” “What happened to you that night?” “I had an excessive reaction that pierced the surface of things.” “And then?” “I fell.” “And where did you end up?” “Nowhere. There was no depth, there was no precipice. There was nothing.”