I went into the bathroom to fix myself up. When they knocked I rushed to open the door. I hadn’t seen my mother for ten days. The contrast was violent between Lila, still carrying two lives, beautiful and energetic, and my mother, gripping her arm like a life preserver in a storm, more bent over than ever, at the end of her strength, close to sinking. I had her lean on me, I led her to a chair at the window. She murmured: how beautiful the bay is. And she stared past the balcony, maybe so as not to look at Nino. But he came over to her and in his winning way began to point out to her the foggy outlines between sea and sky: That’s Ischia, there is Capri, come, you can see better here, lean on me. He never spoke to Lila, he didn’t even greet her. I talked to her.
“You’ve recovered quickly,” she said.
“I’m a little tired but I’m well.”
“You insist on staying up here, it’s hard to get here.”
“But it’s beautiful.”
“Well.”
“Come, let’s go get the baby.”
I took her into Immacolata’s room.
“You already have your looks back,” she praised me. “Your hair is so nice. And that necklace?”
“Nino gave it to me.”
I picked the baby up from the cradle. Lila sniffed her, put her nose in her neck, said she smelled her scent as soon as she came into the house.
“What scent?”
“Of talcum powder, milk, disinfectant, newness.”
“You like it?”
“Yes.”
“I expected her to weigh more. Evidently only I was fat.”
“Who knows what mine is like.”
She spoke of him always in the masculine now.
“He’ll be wonderful.”
She nodded yes, but as if she hadn’t heard, she was looking at the baby carefully. She ran a finger over her forehead, one ear. She repeated the pact we had jokingly made:
“If necessary we’ll make an exchange.”
I laughed, I brought the baby to my mother, who was leaning on Nino’s arm, near the window. She was staring up at him with pleasure, she was smiling, it was as if she had forgotten herself and imagined that she was young.
“Here’s Immacolata,” I said.
She looked at Nino. He exclaimed quickly:
“It’s a beautiful name.”
My mother murmured:
“It’s not true. But you can call her Imma, which is more modern.”
She left Nino’s arm, she gestured to me to give her her granddaughter. I did, but fearful that she didn’t have the strength to hold her.
“
Lila was distracted, she was staring at my mother’s feet.
“Yes,” she said without taking her eyes off them. “But sit down.”
I also looked where she was looking. Blood was dripping from under my mother’s black dress.
62.
I snatched the infant with an instinctive jerk. My mother realized what was happening and I saw in her face disgust and shame. Nino grabbed her a moment before she fainted. Mamma, mamma, I called while he struck her lightly on one cheek with his fingertips. I was alarmed, she didn’t regain consciousness, and meanwhile the baby began to wail. She’ll die, I thought, terrified, she held out until the moment she saw Immacolata and then she let go. I kept repeating
“Call an ambulance,” Lila said.
I went to the telephone, I stopped, confused, I wanted to give the baby to Nino. But he avoided me, he turned to Lila instead, he said that it would be quicker to take her to the hospital in the car. I felt my heart in my throat, the baby was crying, my mother regained consciousness and began to moan. She whispered, weeping, that she didn’t want to set foot in the hospital, she reminded me, pulling on my skirt, that she had been admitted once and didn’t want to die in that abandonment. Trembling, she said: I want to see the baby grow up.
Nino at that point assumed the firm tone he had had even as a student when he had to confront difficult situations. Let’s go, he said and picked up my mother in his arms. Since she protested weakly he reassured her, he told her that he would take care of arranging everything. Lila looked at me perplexed, I thought: the professor who attends to my mother at the hospital is a friend of Eleonora’s family, Nino at this moment is indispensable, lucky he’s here. Lila said, leave me the baby, you go. I agreed, I was about to hand her Immacolata but with a hesitant gesture, I was connected to her as if she were still inside me. And, anyway, I couldn’t separate myself now, I had to feed her, bathe her. But to my mother, too, I felt bound as never before, I was shaking, what was that blood, what did it mean.
“Come on,” Nino said impatiently to Lila, “hurry up.”
“Yes,” I said, “go and let me know.”
Only when the door closed did I feel the wound of that situation: Lila and Nino together were taking my mother away, they were taking care of her when it should have been me.
