I traveled a lot in those months. I was invited here and there not only because of my book but also because of the articles I was writing, which in turn forced me to travel to see close up the new kinds of strike, the reactions of the owners. I never thought of trying to become a freelance journalist. I did it because doing it I was happy. I felt disobedient, in revolt and inflated with such power that my meekness seemed a disguise. In fact it enabled me to join the pickets in front of the factories, to talk to workers, both men and women, and to union officials, to slip out among the policemen. Nothing frightened me. When the Banca di Agricoltura in Milan was bombed I was in the city, at the publisher’s, but I wasn’t alarmed, I didn’t have dark presentiments. I thought of myself as part of an unstoppable force, I thought I was invulnerable. No one could hurt me and my child. We two were the only enduring reality, I visible and he (or she: but Pietro wanted a boy) for now invisible. The rest was a flow of air, an immaterial wave of images and sounds that, whether disastrous or beneficial, constituted material for my work. It passed by or it loomed so that I could put it into magic words in a story, an article, a speech, taking care that nothing ended up outside the frame, and that every concept pleased the Airotas, the publishing house, Nino, who surely somewhere was reading me, even Pasquale, why not, and Nadia, and Lila, all of whom would finally have to think: Look, we were wrong about Lena, she’s on our side, see what she’s writing.
It was a particularly intense time, that period of the pregnancy. It surprised me that being pregnant made me more eager to make love. It was I who initiated it, embraced Pietro, kissing him, even though he had no interest in kissing and began almost immediately to make love in that prolonged, painful way of his. Afterward he got up and worked until late. I slept for an hour or two, then I woke up, found him gone, turned on the light, and read until I was tired. Then I went to his room, insisted that he come to bed. He obeyed, but he got up early: sleep seemed to frighten him. Whereas I slept until midday.
There was only one event that distressed me. I was in my seventh month and my belly was heavy. I was outside the Nuovo Pignone factory when scuffles broke out, and I hurried away. Maybe I made a wrong movement, I don’t know, I felt a painful spasm in the center of my right buttock that extended along my leg like a hot wire. I limped home, went to bed, and it passed. But every so often the pain reappeared, radiating through my thigh toward my groin. I learned to respond by finding positions that alleviated it, but when I realized that I was starting to limp all the time I was terrified, and I went to the gynecologist. He reassured me, saying that everything was in order, the weight I was carrying in my womb tired me out, causing this slight sciatica. Why are you so worried, he asked in an affectionate tone, you’re such a serene person. I lied, I said I didn’t know. In reality I knew perfectly well: I was afraid that my mother’s gait had caught up with me, that she had settled in my body, that I would limp forever, like her.
I was soothed by the reassurances of the gynecologist; the pain lasted for a while longer, then disappeared. Pietro forbade me to do other foolish things, no more running around. I admitted that he was right, and spent the last weeks of my pregnancy reading; I wrote almost nothing. Our daughter was born on February 12, 1970, at five-twenty in the morning. We called her Adele, even though my mother-in-law kept repeating, poor child, Adele is a terrible name, give her any other name, but not that. I had atrocious labor pains, but they didn’t last long. When the baby emerged and I saw her, black-haired, a violet organism that, full of energy, writhed and wailed, I felt a physical pleasure so piercing that I still know no other pleasure that compares to it. We didn’t baptize her; my mother screamed terrible things on the telephone, she swore she would never come to see her. She’ll calm down, I thought, sadly, and anyway if she doesn’t it’s her loss.
As soon as I was back on my feet I telephoned Lila, I didn’t want her to be angry that I hadn’t told her anything.
“It was a wonderful experience,” I told her.
“What?”
“The pregnancy, the birth. Adele is beautiful, and very good.”
She answered: “Each of us narrates our life as it suits us.”
64.
