46
蒂娜被带走了，因为她被当成我的女儿——她的这个想法让我心神不宁，并不是因为我觉得她说得有道理，我想着她内心那些错综复杂的情感，尝试厘清这些。我甚至想到了，过去了那么长时间之后，因为一些很偶然的原因，在那些最没有意义的事情下面，隐藏着的流沙——莉拉后来给她女儿起的名字，是我小时候最爱的布娃娃的名字，就是被她扔到地窖里的那只娃娃。那是我第一次想象这个娃娃，但我没有想太久，我感觉面对的是一口深井，里面只有星星点点的亮光，我退缩了。人与人的每种强烈关系都充满了圈套，假如你希望这种关系得以延续，那你要避免这些圈套。在当时的情况下，我就是那么做的，最后我觉得我又一次证明了，我们之间的友谊有多么辉煌和黑暗，还有莉拉的痛苦有多么漫长和纠结。当我去都灵时，心里想着恩佐说的是对的：莉拉根本没法过一个很安稳的晚年。她留给我的最后印象是：一位五十一岁的女人，看起来要比实际年龄年老十岁，她有时说话会非常激动，脸会变得绯红，她的脖子也会红起来，她的目光很迷离。她用手捉住裙子扇风，我和伊玛会看到她的内裤。
The idea that Tina had been taken in the
belief that she was my daughter upset me, but not because I considered that
it had some foundation. I thought rather of the tangle of obscure feelings
that had generated it, and I tried to put them in order. I even remembered,
after so long, that for completely coincidental reasons—under the most
insignificant coincidences expanses of quicksand lie hidden—Lila had given
her daughter the name of my beloved doll, the one that, as a child, she
herself had thrown into a cellar. It was the first time, I recall, that I
fantasized about it, but I couldn’t stand it for long, I looked into a dark
well with a few glimmers of light and drew back. Every intense relationship
between human beings is full of traps, and if you want it to endure you have
to learn to avoid them. I did so then, and finally it seemed that I had only
come up against yet another proof of how splendid and shadowy our friendship
was, how long and complicated Lila’s suffering had been, how it still endured
and would endure forever. But I went to Turin conviced that Enzo was right:
Lila was very far from a quiet old age within the confines she had
established for herself. The last image she gave me of herself was that of a
woman of fifty-one who looked ten years older and who from time to time, as
she spoke, was hit by waves of heat, and turned fiery red. There were patches
on her neck, too, her gaze dimmed, she grabbed the edge of her dress with her
hands and fanned herself, showing Imma and me her underwear.
47
都灵的一切都已经安排好了：我在伊莎贝拉桥附近找了一套房子，把我和伊玛的大部分东西都搬到了那里。我记得，我们出发时，火车刚刚离开那不勒斯，我女儿坐在我对面，她看起来有些忧伤，好像第一次为离开那不勒斯感到难过。我非常疲惫，因为那几个月我一直都来来回回地忙碌，准备我们需要的东西。我很疲惫，因为那些我做的事情，也因为那些忘记做的事情。我坐在座位上，从窗口看着那不勒斯的城郊，还有渐渐远去的维苏威火山。就在那时候，我忽然想到了——那就像一个浮子忽然冒出水面，我确信莉拉在写那不勒斯时，一定会写蒂娜，正是因为包含着一种难以言说的痛苦，她写的东西一定会不同寻常。
In Turin now everything was ready: I had
found an apartment near the Isabella bridge and had worked hard to get most
of my things and Imma’s moved. We departed. The train, I remember, had just
left Naples, my daughter was sitting across from me, and for the first time
she seemed sad about what she was leaving behind. I was very tired from the
traveling back and forth of the past months, from the thousands of things I
had had to arrange, from what I had done, from what I had forgotten to do. I
collapsed against the seat back, I looked out the window at the outskirts of
the city and Vesuvius as they grew distant. Just at that moment the certainty
sprang to mind that Lila, writing about Naples, would write about Tina, and
the text—precisely because it was nourished by the effort of expressing an
inexpressible grief—would be extraordinary.
产生了这个想法之后，我就很难把它抹去。在都灵的那些年，我在那家规模很小，但很有前途的出版社做主编，我觉得自己备受青睐时，说起来我那时候要比十几年前我眼里的阿黛尔更强大，我的这种想法变成了一种希望，一种祝愿。我很希望莉拉有一天给我打电话，会对我说：“我有一部手稿，一些乱七八糟的东西，一些随想，总之有一些东西，我想让你看看，想让你帮我改改。”我肯定会马上读一遍，我会过一道手，让它读起来能被人接受，也可能我会一段一段地重写。尽管莉拉的思想非常活跃，记忆力惊人，她一辈子都在看书，有时候她会跟我说，有时候她会瞒着我，但她的根基不够，她没有任何小说家的技能。我很担心她会把那些漂亮的段落乱七八糟地堆积在一起，把那些精彩的片段放到错误的地方。那时，我从来都没有想过她会写一些乏味的故事，一些人云亦云的话，相反，我很确信她会写出一些高水准的文字。有一段时间，我很难做出一个让人满意的出版计划，我最后甚至想到去审问里诺——他经常出现在我家里，他不打电话就会来，说他来打个招呼，但一住就是几个星期。我问他：“你母亲还写东西吗？你从来都没看看她在写什么吗？”但他说：“是的，还在写，但我不记得了，那都是她的事，我不知道。”我再三问他。我想象着在出版书目里加入她写的那本书，我会极力推广它，自己也能沾点光。有时候我给莉拉打电话问她的近况，我不会直截了当而是小心翼翼地问她：“你对那不勒斯的兴趣还有吗？你还一直在记笔记吗？”她很机械地回答：“什么兴趣？什么笔记？我是一个像梅丽娜一样的老疯子，你还记得梅丽娜吗？谁知道她还活着没有。”我就只好放过这个问题，谈别的事情。
That certainty took hold forcefully and
never weakened. In the years of Turin—as long as I ran the small but
promising publishing house that had hired me, as long as I felt much more
respected, I would say in fact more powerful, than Adele had been in my eyes
decades earlier—the certainty took the form of a wish, a hope. I would have
liked Lila to call me one day and say: I have a manuscript, a notebook, a
zibaldone, in other words a text of mine that I’d like you to read and help
me arrange. I would have read it immediately. I would have worked to give it
a proper form, probably, passage by passage, I would have ended up rewriting
it. Lila, in spite of her intellectual liveliness, her extraordinary memory,
the reading she must have done all her life, at times talking to me about it,
more often hiding it from me, had an absolutely inadequate basic education
and no skill as a narrator. I was afraid it would be a disorderly
accumulation of good things badly formulated, splendid things put in the
wrong place. But it never occurred to me—never—that she might write an inane
little story, full of clichés, in fact I was absolutely sure that it would be
a worthy text. In the periods when I was struggling to put together an
editorial plan of a high standard, I even went so far as to urgently
interrogate Rino, who, for one thing, showed up frequently at my house; he
would arrive without calling, say I came to say hello, and stay at least a
couple of weeks. I asked him: Is your mother still writing? Have you ever
happened to take a look, to see what it is? But he said yes, no, I don’t
remember, it’s her business, I don’t know. I insisted. I fantasized about the
series in which I would put that phantom text, about what I would do to give
it the maximum visibility and get some prestige from it myself. Occasionally
I called Lila, I asked how she was, I questioned her discreetly, sticking to
generalities: Do you still have your passion for Naples, are you taking more
notes? She automatically responded: What passion, what notes, I’m a crazy old
woman like Melina, you remember Melina, who knows if she’s still alive. Then
I dropped the subject, we moved on to other things.
48
在我们打电话时，我们经常会谈到那些死去的人，也会提到还活着的人。
In the course of those phone calls we
spoke more and more frequently of the dead, which was an occasion to mention
the living, too.
她的父亲费尔南多去世了，过了没几个月，农齐亚也死了。这时候莉拉和里诺搬到她以前出生的那套房子里去了，那房子是之前她掏钱买的，但现在她的弟弟妹妹认为那是父母的财产，他们也想分一部分，这让她不胜其烦。
Her father, Fernando, had died, and a few
months later Nunzia died. Lila then moved with Rino to the old apartment
where she was born and that she had bought long ago with her own money. But
now the other siblings claimed that it was the property of her parents and
harassed her by claiming rights to a part of it.
斯特凡诺又一次心脏病发作，也死了。他们甚至都没来得及叫救护车，他就面朝下倒下去了。玛丽莎和几个孩子离开了城区，尼诺终于出手帮助了她，他不仅在克里斯皮街上的一家律师事务所给她找了一个秘书的职位，还给她钱让她供几个孩子念大学。
Stefano had died after another heart
attack—they hadn’t had time even to call an ambulance, he had fallen facedown
on the ground—and Marisa had left the neighborhood, with her children. Nino
had finally done something for her. Not only had he found her a job as a
secretary in a law firm on Via Crispi but he gave her money to support her
children at the university.
还有一个我从来都没机会认识的人也死了，那是我妹妹埃莉莎的情人。她离开了城区，但她、我父亲还有我的两个弟弟都没有告诉我。我从莉拉那里得知她去了卡塞尔塔，她认识了一个律师，是一个市政府顾问，她又一次结婚了，但她没邀请我参加婚礼。
A man I had never met but who was known
to be the lover of my sister, Elisa, had died. She had left the neighborhood
but neither she nor my father nor my brothers had told me. I found out from
Lila that she had gone to Caserta, had met a lawyer who was also a city
councilman, and had remarried, but hadn’t invited me to the wedding.
我们会聊到这些事情，她会跟我说城区所有的新闻。我跟她谈论我女儿、彼得罗的事，彼得罗现在和一个比他大五岁的同事结婚了。我会跟她说我正在写的东西，还有我在出版社的经历。只有一两次，我会问我最关心的问题：
We talked about things like this, she
kept me updated on all the news. I told her about my daughters, about Pietro,
who had married a colleague five years older than he, of what I was writing,
of how my publishing experience was going. Only a couple of times did I go so
far as to ask somewhat explicit questions on the subject important to me.
“假如有一天，你写点什么东西——这只是一种假设啊，你会不会给我看？”
“If you, let’s say, were to write
something—it’s a hypothesis—would you let me read it?”
“类似于什么样的东西？”
“What sort of something?”
“任何东西，里诺说你一直待在电脑前。”
“Something. Rino says you’re always at
the computer.”
“里诺是在胡说。我在上网，我想看看电子产品的新动向，这就是我做的事情，在电脑前，我不写东西。”
“Rino talks nonsense. I’m going on the
Internet. I’m finding out new information about electronics. That’s what I’m
doing when I’m at the computer.”
“你确信吗？”
“Really?”
“当然了，我有没有回过你的电子邮件？”
“Of course. Do I never respond to your
e-mails?”
“没有，你真让我生气。我一直给你写邮件，你从来都不给我回。”
“No, and you make me mad: I always write
to you and you write nothing.”
“你看到了吗？我从来都不给任何人写邮件，包括你。”
“You see? I write nothing to no one, not
even to you.”
“好吧。假如你写了什么东西，你会让我看吗，你会让我出版吗？”
“All right. but if you should write
something, you’d let me read it, you’d let me publish it?”
“你才是作家啊！”
“You’re the writer.”
“但你没回答我。”
“You didn’t answer me.”
“我回答你了，但你假装不明白，要写东西，需要渴望留给后世一些什么东西，我连活下去的欲望都没有了，我从来都没有像你那么强的生活欲望。就在我们说话的当口，假如我能把自己删除了，我会更高兴的，我怎么可能会写作呢。”
“I did answer you, but you pretend not to
understand. To write, you have to want something to survive you. I don’t even
have the desire to live, I’ve never had it strongly the way you have. If I
could eliminate myself now, while we’re speaking, I’d be more than happy.
Imagine if I’m going to start writing.”
她经常说想把自己删除掉，但从九十年代末开始，尤其是二〇〇〇年之后，这成了她的一个开玩笑的口头禅。那当然是一个比喻，她喜欢这个比喻，在不同的情况下她都使用过这个比喻。在我们这么多年的友谊里，我从来都没听她说过她想自杀，即使是蒂娜失踪后那些可怕的日子里。“自我删除是一种听起来很美的计划，”她说，“我再也受不了了，电脑看起来是那么干净，但实际上很脏，非常脏，你不得不到处留下痕迹，就像你不停在身上拉屎撒尿一样，但我不想留下任何东西，我最喜欢的键是删除键。”
She had often expressed that idea of
eliminating herself, but, starting in the late nineties—and especially from
2000 on—it became a sort of teasing chorus. It was a metaphor, of course. She
liked it, she had resorted to it in the most diverse circumstances, and it
never occurred to me, in the many years of our friendship—not even in the
most terrible moments following Tina’s disappearance—that she would think of
suicide. Eliminating herself was a sort of aesthetic project. One can’t go on
anymore, she said, electronics seems so clean and yet it dirties, dirties
tremendously, and it obliges you to leave traces of yourself everywhere as if
you were shitting and peeing on yourself continuously: I want to leave
nothing, my favorite key is the one that deletes.
这种狂热的想法在有些阶段非常真实，在其他时候没那么较真。我记得关于我的知名度，她说了一些很阴险的话。她有一次说：“唉，为了一个名字，生出多少事儿啊！出不出名，那只是用一根小绳子绑着装着血肉、语言、屎和小心事的袋子。”这时候，她一直在开我的玩笑：“解开绳子，埃莱娜·格雷科的那个袋子还在，同样管用，当然有些马马虎虎，没有成就，也没有过错，直到袋子破裂。”心情最糟糕时，她会苦笑着说：“我想把自己的名字解开，拆散，丢掉，忘记。”但其他时候，她会放松一些。比如说，我给她打电话，就是想让她跟我说说她写的东西，尽管她矢口否认她在写东西，竭力回避这个话题，但我觉得我给她打电话时，可能是她创造力最旺盛的时候。有一天晚上，我发现她有点忘乎所以，她又说了她的虚无主义思想——那些伟大的人做了这样那样的事情，但是他们是生来就有那些品质，那有什么可说的，那就像在抽签时抽到好签，那有什么可欣赏的，但她表达地绘声绘色，充满想象力。啊，假如她想的话，她对语言的运用太自如了。她好像有一种秘密意图，想抹掉所有事情的意义。可能是因为这个原因，她开始让我很伤心。
That yearning had been more true in some
periods, in others less. I remember a malicious tirade that started with my
fame. Eh, she said once, what a fuss for a name: famous or not, it’s only a
ribbon tied around a sack randomly filled with blood, flesh, words, shit, and
petty thoughts. She mocked me at length on that point: I untie the
ribbon—Elena Greco—and the sack stays there, it functions just the same,
haphazardly, of course, without virtues or vices, until it breaks. On her
darkest days she said with a bitter laugh: I want to untie my name, slip it
off me, throw it away, forget it. But on other occasions she was more
relaxed. It happened—let’s say—that I called her hoping to persuade her to
talk to me about her text and, although she forcefully denied its existence,
continuing to be evasive, it sounded as if my phone call had surprised her in
the middle of a creative moment. One evening I found her happily dazed. She
made the usual speech about annihilating all hierarchies—So much fuss about
the greatness of this one and that one, but what virtue is there in being
born with certain qualities, it’s like admiring the bingo basket when you
shake it and good numbers come out—but she expressed herself with imagination
and with precision, I perceived the pleasure of inventing images. Ah, how she
could use words when she wanted to. She seemed to safeguard a secret meaning
that took meaning away from everything else. Perhaps it was that which began
to sadden me.
49
我的危机是在二〇〇一年冬天降临的。那时候我的状态起起伏伏，但总归还是很有成就感。每年黛黛和艾尔莎都会从美国回来，有时候是独自回来，有时候带着她们各自的男朋友。黛黛继承了他父亲的衣钵，艾尔莎很快就在大学里谋得了一份教职，教授对于我来说非常神秘的代数。两个姐姐回来时，伊玛也会腾出时间和她们待在一起。全家人又重聚了，我们四个女人相聚在都灵的家里，要么一起在城市里闲逛，我们彼此关注，相互很亲密，我们很幸福能在一起待一段时间。看着她们，我想：我真是幸运啊！
The crisis arrived in the winter of 2002.
At that time, in spite of the ups and downs, I again felt fulfilled. Every
year Dede and Elsa returned from the United States, sometimes alone,
sometimes with temporary boyfriends. The first was involved in the same
things as her father, the second had precociously won a professorship in a
very mysterious area of algebra. When her sisters returned Imma freed herself
of every obligation and spent all her time with them. The family came
together again, we were four women in the house in Turin, or out in the city,
happy to be together at least for a short period, attentive to one another,
affectionate. I looked at them and said to myself: How lucky I’ve been.
但在二〇〇二年圣诞节，发生了一些让我很抑郁的事。三个女儿都回来了，而且她们待的时间很久。黛黛刚和一个看起来很严肃的伊朗籍工程师结婚了，他们生了一个儿子，叫哈米德，那时候一岁多，非常活泼。艾尔莎是带着一个波士顿的同事回来的，他也是一个数学家，比艾尔莎还孩子气，很爱说话。伊玛也从巴黎回来了，她在那里学了两年哲学，她带了一个男同学回来，是一个个子很高、有点儿丑的法国人，几乎不怎么说话。那个十二月真是太幸福了，我五十八岁，已经当了外婆，我抱着哈米德，我记得那是圣诞节晚上，我和小外孙坐在一个角落里，看着几个女儿年轻、充满活力的身体。她们都很像我，但又和我完全不同，她们的生活和我的生活相去甚远，但我觉得她们是我的延伸。我想：我吃了多少苦，经历了多少事情啊！每一步都好像要跌倒了，但我都挺住了。我离开了城区，又回到那里，又成功地摆脱了那里。没有任何东西会把我和我生的几个女儿拉下水去，我们都得救了，我没有让她们任何一个沉沦下去。噢，她们已经属于其他的地方和其他的语言。她们会认为，意大利是这个星球上很漂亮的一个地方，同时她们会觉得，这是一个微不足道、没有前途的角落，只适合度假。黛黛经常跟我说：“你来美国嘛，你可以住在我家里，在那里你同样可以做你的工作。”我嘴上答应了，说迟早都会去的。她们为我感到自豪，但她们谁也不会忍受我太长时间，就连伊玛也一样。这个世界发生了巨大的变化，世界越来越属于她们，越来越不属于我了。但这样也好——我抱着哈米德想——最重要的是这些姑娘都很出色，她们没遇到任何我之前遇到的那些障碍。她们有自己的想法、需求和希望，有着自己的声音、自我意识和展现自我的方法，那是我想都不敢想的，很多人也都没那样的运气。在那些比较富裕的国家，一般人都会掩盖世界其他地方的恐怖，当恐怖引发的暴力涉及我们的城市和生活，我们才会受到震动，才会警惕。一年之前我被吓得要死，我给黛黛、艾尔莎还有彼得罗打了很长时间的电话，我从电视上看到飞机撞上了纽约的双子塔，那就像用火柴头轻轻摩擦了一下，就点燃了火焰。下面的世界是地狱，我的几个女儿知道，但没有切身体验过，她们对发生的事感到愤恨，但同时她们都在积极享受生活的幸福，珍惜眼前的机会。她们把自己成功富裕的生活都归结于她们的父亲。但是我，我没有任何优势，我是她们优越感的根基。
But at Christmas of 2002 something
happened that depressed me. The three girls all returned for a long period.
Dede had married a serious engineer of Iranian origin, she had a very
energetic two-year-old named Hamid. Elsa came with one of her colleagues from
Boston, also a mathematician, even more youthful, and rowdy. Imma returned
from Paris, where she had been studying philosophy for two years, and brought
a classmate, a tall, not very good-looking, and almost silent Frenchman. How
pleasant that December was. I was fifty-eight, a grandmother, I cuddled
Hamid. I remember that on Christmas evening I was in a corner with the baby
and looking serenely at the young bodies of my daughters, charged with
energy. They all resembled me and none of them did, their lives were very far
from mine and yet I felt them as inseparable parts of me. I thought: how much
work I’ve done and what a long road I’ve traveled. At every step I could have
given in and yet I didn’t. I left the neighborhood, I returned, I managed to
leave again. Nothing, nothing pulled me down, along with these girls I
produced. We’re safe, I brought them all to safety. Oh, they now belong to
other places and other languages. They consider Italy a splendid corner of
the planet and, at the same time, an insignificant and ineffectual province,
habitable only for a short vacation. Dede often says to me: Leave, come and
stay in my house, you can do your work from there. I say yes, sooner or later
I will. They’re proud of me and yet I know that none of them would tolerate
me for long, not even Imma by now. The world has changed tremendously and
belongs more and more to them, less and less to me. But that’s all right—I
said to myself, caressing Hamid—in the end what counts is these very smart
girls who haven’t encountered a single one of the difficulties I faced. They
have habits, voices, requirements, entitlements, self-awareness that even
today I wouldn’t dare allow myself. Others haven’t had the same luck. In the
wealthier countries a mediocrity that hides the horrors of the rest of the
world has prevailed. When those horrors release a violence that reaches into
our cities and our habits we’re startled, we’re alarmed. Last year I was
dying of fear and I made long phone calls to Dede, to Elsa, even to Pietro,
when I saw on television the planes that set the towers in New York ablaze
the way you light a match by gently striking the head. In the world below is
the inferno. My daughters know it but only through words, and they become
indignant, all the time enjoying the pleasures of existence, while it lasts.
They attribute their well-being and their success to their father. But I—I
who did not have privileges—am the foundation of their privileges.
当我这么想时，发生了一件让我很失落的事情。三个女儿把她们的男人带到了一面书架前，书架上放着我的书。极有可能的是，她们从没读过其中任何一本，可以肯定一点，我从来都没看到过她们读，她们也没跟我提过。现在她们拿起其中一本开始翻阅，甚至大声读了其中一些句子。这些书产生于我生活的环境，源自曾经吸引我和影响了我的一些思想，我一步一步地跟随我的时代，在反思中构思了这些故事。我指出了那个时代的问题，把这些问题展示出来。我已经设想了不知道多少次，会让这个世界实现救赎的改变，但这些都没实现。我用了那些日常的语言来说明日常的东西。我集中分析了一些主题：劳动、阶级矛盾、女性主义、边缘人。现在我听着自己写的那些句子被随意念出来，感觉很尴尬。艾尔莎——黛黛要尊重我一些，伊玛很慎重——用带着讥讽的语气，朗诵我的第一本小说，她还读了关于男性捏造女性的章节，还读了那本得过很多奖的书。她的声音巧妙地突出了那些文字里的缺陷，还有过于激昂的话。我曾经作为不容置否的真理支持的那些意识形态，现在已经过时了。尤其是她读的时候突出了一些词汇，她会把那些听起来没有任何意义、已经被弃用的词汇，饶有兴趣地重复两三遍。她到底在做什么？就像在那不勒斯那样开个玩笑吗——我女儿的语气当然是从那里学到了——她一行一行地读，是不是在展示，所有那些和翻译版本整整齐齐排在一起的书，其实没什么价值呢？
While I was reasoning like this,
something depressed me. I suppose it was when the three girls led the men
playfully to the shelf that held my books. Probably none of them had ever
read one, certainly I had never seen them do so, nor had they ever said anything
to me about them. But now they were paging through them, they even read some
sentences aloud. Those books originated in the climate in which I had lived,
in what had influenced me, in the ideas that had impressed me. I had followed
my time, step by step, inventing stories, reflecting. I had pointed out
evils, I had staged them. Countless times I had anticipated redemptive
changes that had never arrived. I had used the language of every day to
indicate things of every day. I had stressed certain themes: work, class
conflicts, feminism, the marginalized. Now I was hearing my sentences chosen
at random and they seemed embarrassing. Elsa—Dede was more respectful, Imma
more cautious—was reading in an ironic tone from my first novel, she read
from the story about the invention of women by men, she read from books with
many prizes. Her voice skillfully highlighted flaws, excesses, tones that
were too exclamatory, the aged ideologies that I had supported as
indisputable truths. Above all she paused with amusement on the vocabulary,
she repeated two or three times words that had long since passed out of
fashion and sounded foolish. What was I witnessing? An affectionate mockery
in the Neapolitan manner—certainly my daughter had learned that tone there—which,
however, line by line, was becoming a demonstration of the scant value of all
those volumes, sitting there along with their translations?
我想，只有艾尔莎的同伴——那个年轻的数学家觉察到我女儿已经伤害到我了。他打断了艾尔莎，把书从她手里拿了过去，向我请教关于那不勒斯的事情，就好像那是一个想象中的城市，就像那些勇敢的探险者探索并报道的地方。节日的时光很快就过去了，但从那时候开始，我内心发生了变化。我时不时会拿起我的书看几页，我觉察到那些文字的脆弱。我一直以来的不自信越来越明显了，我越来越怀疑我的作品，还有我的能力。但同时我想象莉拉写的那本书变得越来越重要了。假如刚开始，我想着那是一个草稿，我很乐意和她一起进行修订，做出来一本书，通过我的出版社进行出版，但现在那本书成了一个完成的作品，就像是一块真理石，让我的那些书黯然失色。我惊异地想：从她的电脑文件里，迟早会冒出来一篇小说，会不会要比我的小说好得多？是不是我从来都没有写出一本值得记忆的小说，而这么多年，她一直在写一本传世之作？莉拉小时候写《蓝色仙女》时表现出的天分，让奥利维耶罗老师很震撼，现在她老了，她会不会展示出她所有的力量？在这种情况下，她的书会成为——可能仅仅对于我而言——我失败的证明。读了那本书，我会明白自己本应该怎么写作，但我却没做到。这时候我曾经的自我要求、努力不懈的学习、我出版的每行字每页纸都会黯然失色，就像暴风雨来临的大海，乌云覆盖了一切，连紫色的地平线也会消散。作为一个来自落后地区的作家，我获得了广泛的认可，最终会展示出贫瘠可怜的内涵。我几个女儿的成功，我获得的名利，甚至是我的最后一个情人——一个理工大学的教授，比我小八岁，他有一个儿子，已经离了两次婚了，我每个星期都会去他山上的房子和他约会，这些都不再让我觉得满意。我的整个生命，只是一场为了提升社会地位的低俗斗争。
Elsa’s friend the young mathematician was
the only one, I think, who realized that my daughter was hurting me and he
interrupted her, took away the book, asked me questions about Naples as if it
were a city of the imagination, similar to those which the most intrepid
explorers brought news of. The holiday slipped away. But something inside me
changed. Occasionally I took down one of my volumes, read a few pages, felt
its fragility. My old uncertainties gained strength. I increasingly doubted
the quality of my works. Lila’s hypothetical text, in parallel, assumed an
unforeseen value. If before I had thought of it as a raw material on which I
could work with her, shaping it into a good book for my publishing house, now
it was transformed into a completed work and so into a possible touchstone. I
was surprised to ask myself: and if sooner or later a story much better than
mine emerges from her files? If I have never, in fact, written a memorable
novel and she, she, on the other hand, has been writing and rewriting one for
years? If the genius that Lila had expressed as a child in The Blue Fairy,
disturbing Maestra Oliviero, is now, in old age, manifesting all its power?
In that case her book would become—even only for me—the proof of my failure,
and reading it I would understand how I should have written but had been
unable to. At that point, the stubborn self-discipline, the laborious
studies, every page or line that I had published successfully would vanish as
when a storm arriving over the sea collides with the violet line of the
horizon and blots out everything. My image as a writer who had emerged from a
blighted place and gained success, esteem, would reveal its insubstantiality.
My satisfactions would diminish: with my daughters who had turned out well,
with my fame, even with my most recent lover, a professor at the Polytechnic,
eight years younger than me, twice divorced, with a son, whom I saw once a
week in his house in the hills. My entire life would be reduced merely to a
petty battle to change my social class.
50
我很小心，不想让抑郁的情绪占上风，我给莉拉打电话的次数也少了。我已经对她不抱希望了，但我很害怕，我害怕她会对我说：你要不要看看我写的东西，我已经写了很多年了，我给你发电子邮件。假如我发现她闯入了我的工作领域，让我之前写的东西变得不值一提，我很清楚自己有什么反应。我当然会像面对《蓝色仙女》时那样，充满崇拜和欣赏，我会毫不犹豫地发表她的作品，我会想尽一切办法让所有人了解到它的价值。我已经不是那个几岁大的小女孩，发现了同桌有惊人的天分，现在我是一个成熟女人，已经有稳固的地位。莉拉自己也经常说——有时候是开玩笑，有时候很严肃：“埃莱娜·格雷科——拉法埃拉·赛鲁罗的天才女友。”那种命运和角色的忽然转化，会让我彻底毁灭。
I kept depression at bay, I called Lila
less. Now I no longer hoped, but feared, feared she would say: Do you want to
read these pages I’ve written, I’ve been working for years, I’ll send them by
e-mail. I had no doubts about how I would react if I discovered that she
really had irrupted into my professional identity, emptying it. I would
certainly remain admiring, as I had with The Blue Fairy. I would publish her
text without hesitation. I would exert myself to make it successful in every
way possible. But I was no longer that little being who had had to discover
the extraordinary qualities of her classmate. Now I was a mature woman with
an established profile. I was what Lila herself, sometimes joking, sometimes
serious, had often repeated: Elena Greco, the brilliant friend of Raffaella
Cerullo. From that unexpected reversal of destinies I would emerge
annihilated.
那个阶段一切都还不错。我的外表看起来还比较年轻，生活很充实，工作也还忙碌，在社会上有一定声誉，这让我不会想太多，我只是偶尔会感到不悦。后来的几年就非常难过，我的书卖得越来越不好，我失去了出版社的工作，我的身体在发胖变形，我感觉自己老了，而且担心后面的生活会变得贫穷黯淡。当我按照十几年前的思维模式工作时，我就应该意识到，一切都已经不一样了，包括我自己。
But in that phase things were still going
well for me. A full life, a still youthful appearance, the obligations of
work, a reassuring fame didn’t leave much room for those thoughts, reduced
them to a vague uneasiness. Then came the bad years. My books sold less. I no
longer had my position in the publishing house. I gained weight, I lost my
figure, I felt old and frightened by the possibility of an old age of
poverty, without fame. I had to acknowledge that, while I was working
according to the mental approach I had imposed decades earlier, everything
was different now, including me.
二〇〇五年我去了那不勒斯，我遇到了莉拉，那是非常艰难的一天。她身上的变化更大了，她尽量想表现得友好，有些神经质地和所有人打招呼，话很多。看到出现在城区每个角落里的非洲人和亚洲人，闻到陌生饮食的味道，她显得很兴奋。她说：“我没有像你一样去世界各地旅行，但是你看，世界自己跑到我跟前来了。”在都灵也一样，世界各地的人都涌了进来，我喜欢她轻描淡写地描述这种变化。但只有到了城区，我才意识到那里的居民发生了变化。基于一种坚实的传统，以前的方言很快被接受了，那种神秘的语言正在通过不同的发音方式、不同的句法和情感，悄悄地发生着改变。楼房灰色的石头上有一些临时的牌子，以前的那些合法不合法的交易和新买卖混合在一起，在新的文化背景下，暴力也揭开了新的篇章。
In 2005 I went to Naples, I saw Lila. It
was a difficult day. She was further changed, she tried to be sociable, she
neurotically greeted everyone, she talked too much. Seeing Africans, Asians
in every corner of the neighborhood, smelling the odors of unknown cuisines,
she became excited, she said: I haven’t traveled around the world like you,
but, look, the world has come to me. In Turin by now it was the same, and I
liked the invasion of the exotic, how it had been reduced to the everyday.
Yet only in the neighborhood did I realize how the anthropological landscape
had altered. The old dialect had immediately taken in, according to an
established tradition, mysterious languages, and meanwhile it was dealing
with different phonic abilities, with syntaxes and sentiments that had once
been very distant. The gray stone of the buildings had unexpected signs, old
trafficking, legal and illegal, was mixed with new, the practice of violence
opened up to new cultures.
也就是那次，我们听到消息说吉耀拉的尸体出现在小花园那里。那时候我们还不知道她是死于心脏病，我以为她是被杀死的。她仰卧在地，看起来非常庞大。她的变化应该曾经让她很痛苦，她以前很漂亮，她选择了英俊的米凯莱·索拉拉。我想，我现在还活着，然而我感觉自己和她一样，像一具庞大的身体了无生机地躺在那个荒凉的地方。我的心境的确是这样的，我虽然非常在意自己的身体，但我也无法接受自己，我走路时越来越不自信，我的所有表现，已经不再是我几十年来习惯的样子。从小到大，我感觉自己和吉耀拉那么不同，但现在我发现我和她那么像。
That was when the news spread of
Gigliola’s corpse in the gardens. At the time we still didn’t know that she
had died of a heart attack, I thought she had been murdered. Her body, supine
on the ground, was enormous. How she must have suffered from that transformation,
she who had been beautiful and had caught the handsome Michele Solara. I am
still alive—I thought—and yet I can’t feel any different from that big body
lying lifeless in that sordid place, in that sordid way. It was so. Although
I paid excessive attention to my appearance, I no longer recognized myself,
either: I moved more hesitantly, my physical expression was not what I had
been used to for decades. As a girl I had felt so different and now I
realized that I was like Gigliola.
莉拉好像没太关注年老的问题。她一边大声说话，一边很有力地做手势，跟来往的人打招呼。我没再问她的那本书的事，我觉得无论她对我说什么，我都不会舒心。那时候我已经不知道怎样才能走出抑郁，我不知道自己能抓住什么。问题已经不在于莉拉的作品，还有她的写作品质了，或者说，我已经不需要她对我的威胁才能感受到：从六十年代末到现在，我写的那些东西已经失去了分量，我已经不像十几年前那样可以在公众场合畅所欲言，我已经没有读者了。见证了那场悲惨的死亡之后，我意识到我焦虑的性质变了。现在让我觉得烦恼的是，我写的任何东西都没能经受得住时间的考验。那些顺利出版的书取得了小小的成功，让我几十年都生活在幻觉里，让我觉得自己在做一件非常有意义的工作。但忽然间这个幻觉淡去了，我没办法再相信那些作品的重要性。从另一个方面来说，莉拉的一切也已经过去了：她在父母留下的小房子里过着黯淡的生活，不知道在电脑上写满什么样的见闻和想法。我想象，或许有这种可能，她的名字——就像她说的小绳子或者别的什么东西，在她成为一位老女人时，或者在她死后，会和一部非常重要的、唯一的作品联系在一起。和我写的成千上万页纸不同，她只有一本书，她从来都没享受过我写那些书时享受的成功，但她的书会流传下去，在几百年后还会有人不停地读了又读。莉拉拥有这种可能，但我已经浪费了自己的机会。我的命运和吉耀拉的一样，但莉拉的命运会有所不同。
Lila, on the other hand, seemed not to
notice old age. She moved with energy, she shouted, she greeted people with
expansive gestures. I didn’t ask her, yet again, about her possible text.
Whatever she said I was certain that it wouldn’t reassure me. I didn’t know
how to get out of this depression, what to hold on to. The problem was no
longer Lila’s work, or its quality, or at least I didn’t need to be aware of
that threat to feel that everything I had written, since the end of the
sixties, had lost weight and force, no longer spoke to an audience as it
seemed to me it had done for decades, had no readers. Rather, on that
melancholy occasion of death, I realized that the very nature of my anguish
had changed. Now I was distressed that nothing of me would endure through
time. My books had come out quickly and with their minor success had for
decades given me the illusion of being engaged in meaningful work. But
suddenly the illusion faded, I could no longer believe in the importance of
my work. On the other hand, for Lila, too, everything had passed by: she led
an obscure life; shut up in her parents’ small apartment, she filled the
computer with impressions and thoughts. And yet, I imagined, there was the
possibility that her name—whether it was just a ribbon or not—now that she
was an old woman, or even after her death, would be bound to a single work of
great significance: not the thousands of pages that I had written, but a book
whose success she would never enjoy, as I instead had done with mine, yet
that nevertheless would endure through time and would be read and reread for
hundreds of years. Lila had that possibility, I had squandered it. My fate
was no different from Gigliola’s, hers might be.
51
我就这样放任自流地过了一段时间。我工作很少，从另一个方面来说，出版社和其他人也没让我做更多的事情。我不见任何人，我只是和几个女儿通电话，每次时间都很长，我坚持让她们把话筒给我的外孙和外孙女，我像小孩子一样和他们说话。艾尔莎也生了一个儿子，叫康拉德。黛黛给哈米德生了一个妹妹，叫做埃莱娜。
For a while I let myself go. I did very
little work, but then again, neither the publisher nor anyone else asked me
to work more. I saw no one, I only made long phone calls to my daughters,
insisting that they put the children on, and I spoke to them in baby talk.
Now Elsa, too, had a boy, named Conrad, and Dede had given Hamid a sister,
whom she had called Elena.
他们用幼稚的声音说出非常清楚、准确的话，这让我想起了蒂娜。在我心情最阴郁时，我确信莉拉写下了她女儿的故事，写得非常细致，我越来越确信，她把女儿的故事和那不勒斯的故事融合在一起，用一种没有受过高等教育的人具有的率真写出来，也许是因为这个缘故，会获得惊人的效果。然后我明白那只是我的一种想象，我不由自主把我的焦虑、嫉妒、敌意和情感都搅和在一起。莉拉没这方面的野心，她从来都没有过野心，要做任何扬名立万的事，都需要爱自己，但她告诉我，她一点儿也不爱自己。在最抑郁的那些夜晚，我甚至想象她故意把自己的女儿弄丢了，是因为她不想看到自己的延续：她的讨人厌、她的邪恶，还有那种漫无目的的智慧。她想把自己抹去，那是因为她受不了自己，她一直都无法容忍自己，她一辈子都是这样，这使她把自己封闭于一个小小的活动范围，当这个地球在打破所有地域的限制时，她却越来越封闭。她从来都没坐过火车，没去过罗马。她从来都没坐过飞机，她去过的地方少得可怜，当我想到这一点时，我为她感到惋惜，我会笑几声，起身来到电脑前给她写邮件。我曾无数次跟她说：“你来找我吧，我们一起待一阵子。”那时候我很肯定，莉拉并没写稿子，她永远不可能写什么稿子。我一直高估了她，她永远不会写什么流传百世的东西，这让我心情好一些了，但同时我又觉得深深的遗憾。我爱莉拉，我希望她继续存在，我希望我能使她继续存在，我觉得这是我的任务。我确信她从小就把这个任务交给了我。
Those childish voices which expressed
themselves with such precision made me think of Tina again. In the moments of
greatest darkness I was sure that Lila had written the detailed story of her
daughter, sure that she had mixed it into the history of Naples with the
arrogant naïveté of the uneducated person who, perhaps for that very reason,
obtains tremendous results. Then I understood that it was a fantasy of mine.
Without wanting to, I was adding apprehension to envy, bitterness, and
affection. Lila didn’t have that type of ambition, she had never had
ambitions. To carry out any project to which you attach your own name you
have to love yourself, and she had told me, she didn’t love herself, she
loved nothing about herself. On the evenings of greatest depression I went so
far as to imagine that she had lost her daughter in order not to see herself
reproduced, in all her antipathy, in all her malicious reactivity, in all her
intelligence without purpose. She wanted to eliminate herself, cancel all the
traces, because she couldn’t tolerate herself. She had done it continuously,
for her entire existence, ever since she had shut herself off within a
suffocating perimeter, confining herself at a time when the planet wanted to
eliminate borders. She had never gotten on a train, not even to go to Rome.
She had never taken a plane. Her experience was extremely limited, and when I
thought about it I felt sorry for her, I laughed, I got up with a groan, I
went to the computer, I wrote yet another e-mail saying: Come and see me,
we’ll be together for a while. At those moments I took it for granted that
there was not and never would be a manuscript of Lila’s. I had always
overestimated her, nothing memorable would emerge from her—something that
reassured me and yet truly upset me. I loved Lila. I wanted her to last. But
I wanted it to be I who made her last. I thought it was my task. I was
convinced that she herself, as a girl, had assigned it to me.
52
后来，那本题为《友谊》的小说，就是在那种虚弱的状况下诞生的。当时我在那不勒斯，是一个下雨天。当然了，我很清楚，我把莉拉的事情写出来，这违背了我们之间的约定，我知道她一定会受不了。但我相信，假如这本书写得很好，她最后会对我说：“我很感激你，有些话是我没勇气说的，你替我说了出来。也有这种可能，那些觉得自己注定要从事艺术事业的人，尤其是要从事文学的人，他们写作时就好像那是上天赋予他们的使命，但实际上，没有任何人赋予他们什么使命，是他们自己授权自己成为作家。我们在听别人说这些话时，会感到懊恼：你写的这些破玩意儿，我一点儿也不感兴趣，看了让人觉得很讨厌，谁让你写的。”在短短几天时间里，我写了一篇小说，有好几年我一边希望，一边又畏惧莉拉也在写这个故事，我甚至想象着她笔下的每个细节。我这么做是因为她身上的所有一切，或者说我从小归到她身上的一切，在我看来，都要比我发生在我身上的事情更有意义，更能打动人。
The story that I later called A
Friendship originated in that mildly depressive state, in Naples, during a
week of rain. Of course I knew that I was violating an unwritten agreement
between Lila and me, I also knew that she wouldn’t tolerate it. But I thought
that if the result was good, in the end she would say: I’m grateful to you,
these were things I didn’t have the courage to say even to myself, and you
said them in my name. There is this presumption, in those who feel destined
for art and above all literature: we act as if we had received an
investiture, but in fact no one has ever invested us with anything, it is we
who have authorized ourselves to be authors and yet we are resentful if
others say: This little thing you did doesn’t interest me, in fact it bores
me, who gave you the right. Within a few days I wrote a story that over the
years, hoping and fearing that Lila was writing it, I had imagined in every
detail. I did it because everything that came from her, or that I ascribed to
her, had seemed to me, since we were children, more meaningful, more
promising, than what came from me.
我在一家小宾馆的房间里完成了初稿，那个房间有一个小阳台，正好可以看到维苏威火山，也能看到半圆形的灰暗城市。我本应该通过手机打电话给莉拉，告诉她：我写了我们、蒂娜还有伊玛的故事，你要看吗？只有八十页，我可以去你家里给你大声读一遍。我没有那么做是因为担忧，她不仅明确地禁止我写她，也禁止我提到城区里的人和事。过去我提到城区时，她迟早都会找机会告诉我，我写的书很糟糕。尽管她会用很痛苦的语气，但她会说：要么你就讲述事情本来的样子，乱七八糟堆在一起，要么你就按照自己的想象虚构一个故事主线。我既不能做到第一点，也不能做到第二点。因此我没理会她，我心想：她一定会像往常一样，说她不喜欢那本小说，她会假装什么事儿也没有，过几年她会让我明白，或者对我直说，我应该有更高的追求。我想，假如由她决定的话，实际上我不应该出版任何东西。
When I finished the first draft I was in
a hotel room with a balcony that had a beautiful view of Vesuvius and the
gray semicircle of the city. I could have called Lila on the cell phone, said
to her: I’ve written about me, about you, about Tina, about Imma, do you want
to read it, it’s only eighty pages, I’ll come by your house, I’ll read it
aloud. I didn’t do that out of fear. She had explicitly forbidden me not only
to write about her but also to use persons and episodes of the neighborhood.
When I had, she always found a way of telling me—even if painfully—that the
book was bad, that either one is capable of telling things just as they
happened, in teeming chaos, or one works from imagination, inventing a
thread, and I had been able to do neither the first thing nor the second. So
I let it go, I calmed myself, saying: it will happen as it always does, she
won’t like the story, she’ll pretend it doesn’t matter, in a few years she’ll
make it known to me, or tell me clearly, that I have to try to achieve more.
In truth, I thought, if it were up to her I would never publish a line.
那本书出版了，我有很久都没有受到过那么多赞赏，得到大家的承认让我觉得很幸福。《友谊》的出版，避免让人们把我列入那些大家都认为已经过世，但实际上还活着的作家。我以前的书又继续在书店销售了，读者又对我产生了兴趣，虽然我已经很年老了，但我的生活又变得丰富起来。刚开始，我觉得那是我到那时候为止写得最好的一本，但后来我一点儿也不喜欢了，是莉拉让我开始痛恨这本书。因为书出版之后，她一直拒绝和我见面，她拒绝和我谈论，她也没有骂我或扇我耳光。我不停给她打电话，给她写了无数邮件，甚至回到城区和里诺交谈，但我一直都没有见到她。同时她儿子也从来没对我说：我母亲这么做，是因为她不想见你。他像往常一样漫不经心，嘟哝了一句：“你知道她的，她现在老是在外面，手机要么一直关机，要么就忘在家里，有时候晚上也不回来睡觉。”我不得不想到，我们的友谊已经结束了。
The book came out, I was swept up by a
success I hadn’t felt for a long time, and since I needed it I was happy. A
Friendship kept me from joining the list of writers whom everyone considers
dead even when they’re still alive. The old books began to sell again,
interest in me was rekindled, in spite of approaching old age life became
full again. But that book, which at first I considered the best I had
written, I later did not love. It’s Lila who made me hate it, by refusing in
every possible way to see me, to discuss it with me, even to insult me and
hit me. I called her constantly, I wrote endless e-mails, I went to the
neighborhood, I talked to Rino. She was never there. And on the other hand
her son never said: My mother is acting like this because she doesn’t want to
see you. As usual he was vague, he stammered: You know how she is, she’s
always out, she either turns off the cell phone or forgets it at home,
sometimes she doesn’t even come home to sleep. So I had to acknowledge that
our friendship was over.
53
事实上，我并不知道这本书什么地方得罪她了，是整个故事还是某个细节。我觉得，《友谊》好就好在它很通畅，用很简洁的方式讲述了我们俩的生活，揭示了命运的反复无常，从我们丢失两个布娃娃开始，到后来蒂娜的失踪。我到底做错了什么？我想了很长时间，她生气会不会是因为那个故事的结尾？相对于小说的其他地方，在结尾时我更多地采用了想象和虚构。在这本书里我讲述了真实发生的事：莉拉试图让尼诺关注伊玛，在尼诺面前称赞伊玛，但她在和尼诺说话时，一时疏忽把蒂娜弄丢了。但很明显，故事中虚构的部分让读者可以感同身受，但对真实经历过这些事的人来说，那是一种可耻的写法。总之，我有很长时间都相信，这本书最成功的地方也是让莉拉最受伤害的地方。
In fact I don’t know what offended her, a
detail, or the whole story. A Friendship had the quality, in my opinion, of
being linear. It told concisely, with the necessary disguises, the story of
our lives, from the loss of the dolls to the loss of Tina. Where had I gone
wrong? I thought for a long time that she was angry because, in the final
part, although resorting to imagination more than at other points of the
story, I related what in fact had happened in reality: Lila had given Imma
more importance in Nino’s eyes, in doing so had been distracted, and as a
result lost Tina. But evidently what in the fiction of the story serves in
all innocence to reach the heart of the reader becomes an abomination for one
who feels the echo of the facts she has really lived. In other words I
thought for a long time that what had assured the book’s success was also
what had hurt Lila most.
但后来我改变了想法。我确信，她躲着我是因为别的原因，就是我讲述那两个布娃娃的方式得罪了她。我通过艺术手法夸大了它们消失在地窖里的时刻，我放大了失去那两个布娃娃给我们带来的伤痛，为了达到感人的效果，我给其中一个丢失的布娃娃起的是那个失踪的孩子的名字。所有这些，都自然而然让读者把孩童时代丢失的“假女儿”和成人时期丢失的真女儿联系在一起。莉拉一定觉得，这是一种不诚实、哗众取宠的写法，就好像我利用我们童年时代一个重要的时刻、她的女儿，还有她的痛苦来赢得我的读者。
Later, however, I changed my mind. I’m
convinced that the reason for her repudiation lay elsewhere, in the way I
recounted the episode of the dolls. I had deliberately exaggerated the moment
when they disappeared into the darkness of the cellar, I had accentuated the
trauma of the loss, and to intensify the emotional effects I had used the
fact that one of the dolls and the lost child had the same name. The whole
led the reader, step by step, to connect the childhood loss of the pretend
daughters to the adult loss of the real daughter. Lila must have found it
cynical, dishonest, that I had resorted to an important moment of our
childhood, to her child, to her sorrow, to satisfy my audience.
我只是在说我的推测，我需要和她面对面，听听她给我解释让她愤恨的事。我有时候会感觉很愧疚，我理解她。有时候，我很痛恨她做出的选择，正好在我们都老了，需要相互关怀和支持的时候，她把我完全排除在她的生活之外。她一直都是这样：当我不顺着她的意思来，她就会把我排除在外，她惩罚我，破坏我写了一本好书的乐趣。我很恼怒，现在她上演的这出人间蒸发的剧情，除了让我担心，还让我很生气。这也许和小蒂娜没什么关系，也许和蒂娜的幽灵也没关系。莉拉一直都在想着蒂娜，有时候她是一个四岁的女孩——这是最无法忘记的，有时候她已经长大成人，但模样不是很清晰，就像伊玛一样，是一位三十岁的女人。也许，一切只是和我们俩有关：她希望我能做出她的环境和本性阻止她做的事情，但我没办法达到她的期望，她为我的不足感到气愤，为了报复，她把我贬低得一无是处，就像她对自己做的。我日复一日地写作就是为了赋予她形状，塑造她，让她平静下来，这样我也会平静下来。
But I am merely piecing together
hypotheses, I would have to confront her, hear her protests, explain myself.
Sometimes I feel guilty, and I understand her. Sometimes I hate her for this
decision to cut me off so sharply right now, in old age, when we are in need
of closeness and solidarity. She has always acted like that: when I don’t
submit, see how she excludes me, punishes me, ruins even my pleasure in
having written a good book. I’m exasperated. Even this staging of her own
disappearance, besides worrying me, irritates me. Maybe little Tina has
nothing to do with it, maybe not even her ghost, which continues to obsess
Lila both in the more enduring form of the child of nearly four, and in the
labile form of the woman who today, like Imma, would be thirty. It’s only and
always the two of us who are involved: she who wants me to give what her
nature and circumstances kept her from giving, I who can’t give what she
demands; she who gets angry at my inadequacy and out of spite wants to reduce
me to nothing, as she has done with herself, I who have written for months
and months and months to give her a form whose boundaries won’t dissolve, and
defeat her, and calm her, and so in turn calm myself.