The Lying Life of Adults

by Elena Ferrante

“Why is Giovanna so grim tonight?” “I’m not grim.” “Grim isn’t an insult, it’s the manifestation of a state of mind. You know what it means?”

“No one should mind his own business if a person is in trouble.”

His true existential condition was revealed as soon as he was dealing with books, ideas, lofty questions. At that moment, it became clear that he was unhappy only when his head was empty and he couldn’t hide from himself what he had done to my mother and me. When, instead, he devoted himself to great thoughts supported by meticulously annotated books, he was happy, he lacked nothing.

I had to work hard to soothe her, and I didn’t completely succeed. As we talked I realized she wanted many things at the same time, and that kept her in a permanent state of dissatisfaction.

he was a man who liked to make a good impression on those he still didn’t know, but he didn’t hesitate to harm those whose affection he’d already won.

An ambulance siren woke me. It was four in the morning, I struggled to remember where I was, and when I did I immediately thought: I’ll be unhappy my whole life. I lay in bed awake until daylight, organizing in detail the unhappiness that awaited me.

In the bed, next to him, I wanted to enjoy his respect, I wanted to discuss compunction, God who is sated while so many of his creatures are dying of hunger and thirst; I wanted to feel that I was much more than a cute or even very beautiful small animal with whom a brilliant male can play a little and distract himself.