Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante Read Free Book Online Page B

without values. Occasionally he cited some phrase of mine, in quotation marks, to demonstrate that I was a fitting exponent of my badly brought-up generation. In conclusion he called me “a girl concerned with hiding her lack of talent behind titillating pages of mediocre triviality.”
    I burst into tears. It was the harshest thing I had read since the book came out, and not in a daily with a small circulation but in the most widely read newspaper in Italy. Most of all, the image of my smiling face seemed to me intolerable in the middle of a text so offensive. I walked home, not before getting rid of the
Corriere
. I was afraid my mother might read the review and use it against me. I imagined that she would have liked to put it, too, in her album, to throw in my face whenever I upset her.
    I found the table set only for me. My father was at work, my mother had gone to ask a neighbor for something or other, and my siblings had already eaten. As I ate pasta and potatoes I reread at random some passages of my book. I thought desperately: Maybe it really is worthless, maybe it was published only as a favor to Adele. How could I have come up with such pallid sentences, such banal observations? And how sloppy, how many useless commas; I won’t write anymore. Between disgust with the food and disgust with the book I was depressed, when Elisa arrived with a piece of paper. It came from Signora Spagnuolo, who had kindly agreed to let her telephone number be used by anyone who urgently needed to communicate with me. The piece of paper said that there had been three phone calls, one from Gina Medotti, who ran the press office at the publisher’s, one from Adele, and one from Pietro.
    The three names, written in Signora Spagnuolo’s labored handwriting, had the effect of giving concreteness to a thought that until a moment before had remained in the background: the terrible words of the man with the thick eyeglasses were spreading rapidly, and in the course of the day they would be everywhere. They had already been read by Pietro, by his family, by the directors of the publishing house. Maybe they had reached Nino. Maybe they were before the eyes of my professors in Pisa. Certainly they had come to the attention of Professor Galiani and her children. And who knows, even Lila might have read them. I burst into tears again, frightening Elisa.
    “What’s wrong, Lenù?”
    “I don’t feel well.”
    “Shall I make you some chamomile tea?”
    “Yes.”
    But there wasn’t time. Someone was knocking at the door, it was Rosa Spagnuolo. Cheerful, slightly out of breath from hurrying up the stairs, she said that my fiancé was again looking for me, he was on the telephone, what a lovely voice, what a lovely northern accent. I ran to answer, apologizing repeatedly for bothering her. Pietro tried to console me, he said that his mother urged me not to be upset, the main thing was that it talked about the book. But, surprising Signora Spagnuolo, who knew me as a meek girl, I practically screamed, What do I care if it talks about it if it says such terrible things? He urged me again to be calm and added: Tomorrow an article is coming out in
l’Unità
. I ended the call coldly, I said: It would be better if no one worried about me anymore.
    I couldn’t close my eyes that night. In the morning I couldn’t contain myself and went out to get
l’Unità
. I leafed through it in a rush, still at the newsstand, a few steps from the elementary school. I was again confronted by a photograph of myself, the same that had been in the
Corriere
, not in the middle of the article this time but above it, next to the headline:
Young Rebels and Old Reactionaries: Concerning the Book by Elena Greco.
I had never heard of the author of the article, but it was certainly someone who wrote well, and his words acted as a balm. He praised my novel wholeheartedly and insulted the prestigious professor. I went home reassured, maybe even in a good mood. I paged