Right afterward I called my parents. My father was cold, maybe out of timidity, maybe because my life seemed to him a disaster, maybe because he shared my brothers’ resentment at my recent tendency to stick my nose in their business, when I had never let them meddle in mine. My mother wanted to see the child immediately, and I struggled to calm her down. Afterward I called Lila, she commented, amused: Things always go smoothly for you, for me nothing’s moving yet. Maybe because she was busy with work she was brusque, she didn’t mention a visit to the clinic. Everything normal, I thought, good-humoredly, and fell asleep.
When I woke I took it for granted that Nino had disappeared, but he was there. He talked for a long time with his friend the gynecologist, he asked about acknowledgment of paternity, he showed no anxiety about Eleonora’s possible reaction. When I said I wanted to give the baby my mother’s name he was pleased. And as soon as I recovered we went to a city clerk to officially register the child I had just delivered as Immacolata Sarratore.
Nino didn’t appear uncomfortable on that occasion, either. I was the confused one, I said that I was married to Giovanni Sarratore, I corrected myself, I said
In those early days Nino neglected his endless duties and demonstrated in every possible way how important I was to him. He darkened only when he discovered that I didn’t want to baptize the child.
“Children are baptized,” he said.
“Are Albertino and Lidia baptized?”
“Of course.”
Thus I learned that, in spite of the anti-religiousness that he often flaunted, baptism seemed necessary to him. There were moments of embarrassment. I had thought, ever since we were in high school, that he wasn’t a believer, and he, on the other hand, said to me that, precisely because of the argument with the religion teacher in middle school, he was sure that I was a believer.
“Anyway,” he said, bewildered, “believer or not, children are baptized.”
“What sort of reasoning is that.”
“It’s not reasoning, it’s feeling.”
I assumed a playful tone.
“Let me be consistent,” I said. “I didn’t baptize Dede and Elsa, I won’t baptize Immacolata. They’ll decide themselves when they grow up.”
He thought about it for a moment and burst out laughing: “Well, yes, who cares, it was an excuse for a celebration.”
“Let’s do it anyway.”
I promised that I would organize something for all his friends. In those first hours of our daughter’s life I observed him in every gesture, in the expressions of disappointment and those of approval. I felt happy and yet disoriented. Was it him? Was he the man I had always loved? Or a stranger I was forcing to assume a clear and definite character?
61.
None of my relatives, none of my friends from the neighborhood came to the clinic. Maybe—I thought, once I got home—I should have a little party for them, too. I had kept my origins so far from myself that, although I spent quite a bit of time in the neighborhood, I had never invited a single person who had to do with my childhood and adolescence to the apartment on Via Tasso. I regretted it, I felt that sharp separation as a residue of more fragile periods of my life, almost a sign of immaturity. I still had that thought in mind when the telephone rang. It was Lila.
“We’re about to arrive.”
“Who.”
“Your mother and I.”
It was a cold afternoon, Vesuvius had a dusting of snow on top, that visit seemed ill-timed.
“In this cold? Going out will make her ill.”
“I told her but she won’t listen.”
“In a few days I’ll have a party, I’ll invite everyone, tell her she’ll see the baby then.”
“You tell her.”
I gave up the discussion, but every idea of celebration left me, I felt that visit as an intrusion. I had only been home for a short time. With feeding, bathing, some sutures that bothered me, I was tired. And at that moment Nino was in the house. I didn’t want my mother to be unhappy, and it made me uneasy that he and Lila should meet at a moment when I wasn’t yet in shape. I tried to get rid of Nino, but he didn’t seem to understand, in fact he seemed happy that my mother was coming, and stayed.
