Free The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante

my own aspirations to go along with his. At every crisis of despair I had set aside my own crises to comfort him. I had disappeared into his minutes, into his hours, so that he could concentrate. I had taken care of the house, I had taken care of the meals, I had taken care of the children, I had taken care of all the boring details of everyday life, while he stubbornly climbed the ladder up from our unprivileged beginnings. And now, now he had left me, carrying off, abruptly, all that time, all that energy, all that effort I had given him, to enjoy its fruits with someone else, a stranger who had not lifted a finger to bear him and rear him and make him become what he had become. It seemed to me an action so unjust, a behavior so offensive, that I couldn’t believe it, and sometimes I thought his mind had been obscured, he had lost the memory of us, was helpless and at risk, and it seemed to me that I loved him as I had never loved him, with anxiety rather than with passion, and I thought he had a pressing need for me.
    But I didn’t know where to find him. Lea Farraco eventually denied that she had ever mentioned to me Largo Brescia as the probable place of his new abode, she said I hadn’t understood, it wasn’t possible, Mario would never live in that neighborhood. This annoyed me, I felt mocked. I quarreled with her again. I heard rumors of my husband: he was again abroad, perhaps traveling with his whore. I couldn’t believe it, it seemed impossible that he could so easily have forgotten me and his children, disappearing for months, not giving a damn about Gianni and Ilaria’s vacation, placing his own well-being ahead of theirs. What sort of man was he? With what sort of individual had I lived for fifteen years?
    It was summer by now, the schools were closed, I didn’t know what to do with the children. I dragged them around through the city, in the heat, petulant, willful, ready to blame me for everything, for the heat, for staying in the city, for no beach, no mountains. Ilaria, assuming a look of suffering, repeated, in singsong:
    “I don’t know what to do.”
    “That’s enough!” I often shouted, at home, on the street. “I said that’s enough!” I made a gesture of wanting to slap them, I lifted my arm, I seriously felt like it and restrained myself with an effort.
    But they wouldn’t calm down. Ilaria wanted to taste all hundred and ten flavors promised by a gelato maker under the portico of Via Cernaia. I tugged at her and she dug in her heels, pulling me toward the entrance of the shop. Suddenly Gianni left me and ran across the street by himself, amid honking horns, followed by my cries of apprehension; he wanted to see, yet again, the monument to Pietro Micca, whose story Mario had told him in every detail. I couldn’t contain them in the city that was emptying, and raising hot foggy breezes or oppressive humidity from the hills, the river, the pavement.
    Once we quarreled right there, in the gardens in front of the Artillery Museum, under the dirty-green statue of Pietro Micca, with the big sword and the fuse. I knew almost nothing about those murdered heroes, fire, and blood.
    “You don’t know how to tell a story,” the child said to me, “you don’t remember anything.”
    I retorted:
    “Then ask your father.”
    And I began to shout that, if in their opinion I was no good, they should go to him, there was a new mother, beautiful and smart, certainly from Turin, I would bet she knew everything about Pietro Micca and that city of kings and princesses, of haughty people, cold people, metal automatons. I screamed and screamed, out of control. Gianni and Ilaria loved the city, the boy knew its streets and its legends, his father often let him play near the monument at the end of Via Meucci, there was a statue that they both liked: what nonsense, memorials of kings and generals on the streets, Gianni dreamed of being like Ferdinand of Savoy at the battle of Novara, when he jumps down from