The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante Read Free Book Online Page B

you.
    At whom were the looks of desire directed. When Bianca was fifteen and Marta thirteen, I was not yet forty. Their childs’ bodies softened almost together. For a while I continued to think that the gazes of men on the street were directed at me, as had happened for twenty-five years; it had become habitual to receive them, to endure them. Then I realized that they slid lewdly from me to rest on the girls; I was alarmed, and gratified. Finally I said to myself with ironic wistfulness: a stage is about to end.
    Yet I began to pay more attention to myself, as if I wanted to keep the body I was accustomed to, put off its departure. When my daughters’ boyfriends came to the house, I tried to make myself more attractive to receive them. I barely saw them, when they entered, when they left, saying goodbye to me in embarrassment, and yet I was very careful about my appearance, my manners. Bianca took them into her room, Marta into hers, I was alone. I wanted my daughters to be loved, I couldn’t bear them not to be, I was terrified of their possible unhappiness; but the gusts of sensuality they exhaled were violent, voracious, and I felt that the force of attraction of their bodies was as if subtracted from mine. So I was content when they told me, laughing, that the boys had found me a young and good-looking mother. It seemed to me for a few minutes that our three organisms had reached a pleasant accord.
    Once, I was perhaps excessively flirtatious with a friend of Bianca’s, a surly fifteen-year-old, practically mute, with an unwashed and suffering appearance. When he left, I called my daughter, she came to my room: she and then, out of curiosity, Marta.
    “Did your friend like the cake?”
    “Yes.”
    “I should have put chocolate on it, but I didn’t have a chance, maybe next time.”
    “Next time, he said, if you’d give him a blow job.”
    “Bianca, what kind of language is that?”
    “That’s what he said.”
    “He didn’t.”
    “He did.”
    Gradually I yielded. I taught myself to be present only if they wanted me present and to speak only if they asked me to speak. It was what they required of me and I gave it to them. What I wanted of them I never understood, I don’t know even now.
    I looked at Gino, I thought: I’ll ask him if he’ll have dinner with me. I also thought: He’ll invent an excuse, he’ll say no, never mind. Instead he said only, but timidly:
    “I should go and take a shower, change.”
    “You’re fine like that.”
    “I don’t even have my wallet.”
    “I’m inviting you.”
    Gino made an effort at conversation during the entire meal—even attempting to make me laugh—but we had almost nothing in common. He knew that he had to entertain me between one mouthful and the next, he knew that he had to avoid silences that were too long, and he did his best, he hurled himself onto the most diverse paths, like a lost animal.
    Of himself he had little to say, he tried to make me talk about myself. But his questions were stiff, and I read in his eyes that he had no real interest in my answers. Although I tried to help him, I couldn’t escape the fact that the topics of conversation were quickly being used up.
    First he asked about what I was studying, I told him I was preparing a course for the next year.
    “On what.”
    “
Olivia
.”
    “What’s that?”
    “A story.”
    “Is it long?”
    He liked short exams, he was very annoyed by professors who pile on the books to show that their exam is important. He had big white teeth, a wide mouth. His eyes were small, almost slits. He gesticulated a lot, he laughed. He knew nothing of
Olivia
, nothing of what I was passionate about. Like my daughters, who, growing up, had stayed cautiously away from my interests, had studied science, physics, like their father.
    I spoke a little about them, saying a lot of nice things but in an ironic tone. At last, slowly, we fell back on what we did have in common: the beach, the bath house, his