-*-
64
那个阶段，我发现我的头脑里有一团团理不清的线缠结在一起。有的是老得掉色的线，有的是新线，有时候是非常鲜艳的颜色，有时候没有颜色，非常纤细，几乎看不见。正当我庆幸自己逃过了莉拉的预言，但那种幸福自在感忽然就消失了。孩子很不乖，就好像一个不经意的动作，那些被掩盖的、最破旧的区域暴露了出来。刚开始，我们还在诊所时，她吃奶没问题，但我们一到家里，不知道出了什么问题，她就不要我了，她吃几口奶，然后像一只愤怒的小动物一样开始嚎哭。我感觉很虚弱，像中了邪。发生了什么事儿？我的乳头太小了吗，她咬不住吗？她不喜欢吃我的奶吗？或者她对我——她的母亲非常讨厌，还是因为有人诅咒了她？
What a tangle of threads with untraceable
origins I discovered in myself in that period. They were old and faded, very
new, sometimes bright-*-being ended suddenly, just when it seemed to me that
I had escaped Lila’s prophecies. The baby became troublesome, and the oldest
parts of that jumble surfaced as if stirred by a distracted gesture. At
first, when we were still in the clinic, she attached herself easily to my
breast, but once we were home something went wrong and she didn’t want me
anymore. She sucked for a few seconds, then shrieked like a furious little
animal. I felt weak, vulnerable to old superstitions. What was happening to
her? Were my nipples too small, did they slip out? Did she not like my milk?
Or was it an aversion toward me, her mother, had she been inoculated remotely
with an evil spell?
我开始找一个又一个医生，只有我们母女俩，因为彼得罗一直在忙大学的事儿。我的胸肿胀着，很疼，胸脯里火烧火燎的，我想象可能发炎化脓了。为了把奶弄出来，为了给孩子用奶瓶喂奶，也为了缓解疼痛，我用吸奶器折腾我自己。我轻声对她说：“来吧，吸吧，真乖，真听话，漂亮的小嘴儿，美丽的眼睛，有什么问题吗？”还是没有用。我先是很悲痛地决定，对她采用混合喂养，最后我放弃了，我开始用奶粉喂她，白天晚上，准备奶粉是一个很漫长的过程，需要给奶嘴和奶瓶消毒，在喂奶之前和之后要称体重，每次孩子拉肚子，都让我深感惶恐。有时候，我想起了西尔维亚在米兰学生大会的动荡气氛中给尼诺的儿子米尔科喂奶，她表现得那么自然。为什么我就不行？我经常一个人默默地哭。
An ordeal began, as we went from doctor
to doctor, she and I alone; Pietro was always busy at the university. My
bosom, swollen uselessly, hurt; I had burning stones in my breasts; I
imagined infections, amputations. To empty them, to get enough milk to nourish
the baby with a bottle, to alleviate the pain, I tortured myself with a
breast pump. I whispered, coaxing her: come on, sweetie, suck, such a good
baby, so sweet, what a dear little mouth, what dear little eyes, what’s the
matter. In vain. First I decided, regretfully, to try mixed feeding, then I
gave up on that, too. I tried artificial milk, which required lengthy
preparations night and day, a tiresome system of sterilizing nipples and
bottles, an obsessive check of her weight before and after feeding, a sense
of guilt every time she had diarrhea. Sometimes I thought of Silvia, who, in
the turbulent atmosphere of the student gathering in Milan, breast-fed Nino’s
child, Mirko, so easily. Why not me? I suffered long secret crying spells.
有几天时间，孩子的进食变得正常了，我松了一口气，我希望重新组织我的生活。但这种安宁的生活只持续了不到一个星期。在她生命的第一年，她晚上从来都不睡觉，她小小的身体一连几个小时都在抽搐啼哭，充满了力气，有着出人预料的耐力，只有我把她抱在怀里，在家里走来走去，她才会安静下来。我还要不停地对她说话：“妈妈的乖孩子，漂亮的孩子要听话，现在静静地休息，要睡觉觉……”但这个漂亮的小生物不想睡觉，就好像她父亲一样害怕睡觉。她到底怎么了？肚子疼？饿了？害怕被抛弃？因为我没给她喂母乳？中邪了？我怎么了？我的奶里有毒了吗？我的腿怎么了？这只是我的感觉，或者我的腿真的又开始疼了？这是我母亲的错吗？她想惩罚我，因为我一辈子的努力，都是为了不想像她那样？或者是别的什么原因？
For a few days the baby settled down. I
was relieved, hoping the moment had arrived to get my life back in order. But
the reprieve lasted less than a week. In her first year of life the baby
barely closed her eyes; her tiny body writhed and screamed for hours, with an
unsuspected energy and endurance. She was quiet only if I carried her around
the house, holding her tight in my arms, speaking to her: Now mamma’s
splendid creature is good, now she’s quiet, now she’s resting, now she’s
sleeping. But the splendid creature wouldn’t sleep, she seemed to fear sleep,
like her father. What was wrong: a stomach ache, hunger, fear of abandonment
because I hadn’t breast-fed her, the evil eye, a demon that had entered her
body? And what was wrong with me? What poison had polluted my milk? And the
leg? Was it imagination or was the pain returning? My mother’s fault? Did she
want to punish me because I had been trying all my life not to be like her?
Or was there something else?
有一天夜里，吉耀拉的声音又回响在我耳边，那时候她在城区里到处说，莉拉有一种可怕的力量，她能让东西中邪着火，能把肚子里的孩子排挤出去。我为自己感到羞愧，我想采取行动，我需要休息。我试着把女儿交给彼得罗照顾，因为他习惯了晚上学习，他夜里不会很困。我说：“我太累了，你过两个小时来叫我。”我躺在床上，一下子就睡了过去，简直像失去意识般。但后来我被孩子绝望的哭声吵醒了，我等了一下，哭声一直没停下来。我起来了，我发现彼得罗把孩子的摇篮搬到了他书房里，他没太关注孩子哭得撕心裂肺，还在那里埋头工作，就好像聋了一样，他在填写一些表格。我失去了控制，用方言狠狠骂了他一顿：“你他妈什么都不管，那玩意儿要比你女儿更重要吗？”我丈夫冷冰冰地，非常漠然地让我从他的房间出去，并且把孩子的摇篮带出去。他有一篇非常重要的文章要完成，是为一个英语杂志写的，交稿日很近了。从那时候开始，我再也没有请求过他的帮助。假如他自愿要帮忙，我会说：“谢谢，不用了，你去吧，我知道你有事。”吃完晚饭后，他会在我身边转悠，笨手笨脚，不知道要做什么，然后会把自己关在书房里，一直工作到深夜。
One night I seemed to hear the sound of
Gigliola’s voice, faint, repeating throughout the neighborhood that Lila had
a tremendous power, that she could cast an evil spell by fire, that she
smothered the creatures in her belly. I was ashamed of myself, I tried to
resist, I needed rest. So I tried leaving the baby to Pietro, who thanks to
his habit of studying at night wasn’t so tired. I said: I’m exhausted, call
me in a couple of hours, and I went to bed and fell asleep as if I had lost
consciousness. But once I was wakened by the baby’s desperate wailing, I
waited; it didn’t stop. I got up. I discovered that Pietro had dragged the
crib into his study and, paying no attention to his daughter’s cries, was
bent over his books, taking notes as if he were deaf. I lost all my manners,
and regressed, insulting him in my dialect. You don’t give a damn about
anything, that stuff is more important than your daughter? My husband,
distant, cool, asked me to leave the room, take away the crib. He had an
important article to finish for an English journal, the deadline was very
near. From then on I stopped asking him for help and if he offered I said: Go
on, thanks, I know you have things to do. After dinner he hung around me
uncertain, awkward, then he closed himself in his study and worked until late
at night.
-*-
65
我感觉被抛弃了，但我觉得自己活该：我没办法让我女儿安静下来。无论如何，尽管我越来越害怕了，但我都咬着牙撑着。我的身体拒绝成为一个母亲。我尽一切努力，在对抗我的腿，无视腿疼的问题，但疼痛在增长，我咬牙坚持，我拎着所有东西上楼。那栋楼里没电梯，我就把孩子放在小车里，自己把小车抬上去，抬下来，我去买东西，拎着很多包回来。我打扫家里，做饭，我想：我很快就会变得又老又丑，就像以前住的城区里的女人。自然，正当我非常绝望的时候，莉拉给我打电话了。
I felt abandoned but with the impression
that I deserved it: I wasn’t capable of providing tranquility for my
daughter. Yet I kept going, doggedly, even though I was more and more
frightened. My organism was rejecting the role of mother. And no matter how I
denied the pain in my leg by doing everything possible to ignore it, it had
returned, and was getting worse. But I persisted, I wore myself out taking
charge of everything. Since the building had no elevator, I carried the
stroller with the baby in it up and down, I did the shopping, came home
loaded down with bags, I cleaned the house, I cooked, I thought: I’m becoming
ugly and old before my time, like the women of the neighborhood. And
naturally, just when I was particularly desperate, Lila telephoned.
一听到她的声音，我就想对着她大喊大叫：“你到底对我做了什么？刚开始一切都很顺利，现在，忽然间就发生了你所说的事情，孩子不舒服，我腿也瘸了，怎么可能会这样，我已经受不了了。”但我及时克制住了自己，我低声说：“一切都好，孩子有些麻烦，但现在长大了一点儿，她很漂亮，我很幸福。”之后，我就开始问起了恩佐、詹纳罗的情况，还有她和斯特凡诺、她哥哥的关系，以及我们城区的情况。我问她和布鲁诺·索卡沃以及米凯莱还有没有问题。她用一种粗俗蛮横的方言回答我，但语气里没有愤怒。她说，索卡沃，应该让他放放血；米凯莱，假如我遇到他，我要一口啐到他脸上。至于詹纳罗，她在提到詹纳罗时，俨然已经认为，他是斯特凡诺的儿子。她说：“他跟他父亲一个样。”我说他是一个可爱的孩子，她就笑了起来，说：你是一个好妈妈，你拿去养吧。在这句话里，我听出了一丝嘲讽，那是一个通过某种神秘的能力知道我现在处境的人的语气。我感到愤恨，但我还是坚持演好这场戏——你听听黛黛的声音，多好听啊！佛罗伦萨的生活太好了！我正在看巴兰写的一本书，是一本非常有意思的书——我一直都在说类似的话，直到她逼我放下帷幕。她开始和我谈起了恩佐上的IBM课程。
As soon as I heard her voice I felt like
yelling at her: What have you done to me, everything was going smoothly and
now, suddenly, what you said is happening, the baby is sick, I’m limping,
it’s impossible, I can’t bear it anymore. But I managed to restrain myself in
time, I said quietly, everything’s fine, the baby’s a little fussy and right
now she’s not growing much, but she’s wonderful, I’m happy. Then, with
feigned interest, I asked about Enzo, Gennaro, her relations with Stefano,
her brother, the neighborhood, if she had had other problems with Bruno
Soccavo and Michele. She answered in an ugly, obscene, aggressive dialect,
but mostly without rage. Soccavo, she said, has to bleed. And when I run into
Michele I spit in his face. As for Gennaro, she now referred to him
explicitly as Stefano’s son, saying, he’s stocky like his father, and she
laughed when I said he’s such a nice little boy. She said: You’re such a good
little mamma, you take him. In those phrases I heard the sarcasm of someone
who knew, thanks to some mysterious secret power, what was really happening
to me, and I felt rancor, but I became even more insistent with my
charade—listen to what a sweet voice Dede has, it’s really pleasant here in
Florence, I’m reading an interesting book by Baran—and I kept going until she
forced me to end it by telling me about the IBM course that Enzo had started.
只有在谈到恩佐时，她是带着敬意的，她谈了很长时间，最后问起了彼得罗。
Only of him did she speak with respect,
at length, and right afterward she asked about Pietro.
“你跟你丈夫还好吗？”
“Everything’s going well with your
husband?”
“很好。”
“Very well.”
“我和恩佐也很好。”
“And for me with Enzo.”
她挂了电话，她的声音留下了长长的回音，充满了过去的影像和话语，在我的脑子里持续了好几个小时：院子、危险的游戏、被她扔到了地窖里的娃娃、去堂·阿奇勒家里要娃娃时走过的暗暗的楼梯、她的婚姻、她的慷慨和邪恶还有她得到尼诺的方式。她无法容忍我的幸运，我充满恐惧地想，她又想利用我，让我处于她的下风，来应对她在城区里那些悲惨的斗争。最后我对自己说：“我真是愚蠢啊！我上这么长时间学，到底有什么用处。”我假装一切都在我的控制之下。我妹妹埃莉莎经常给我打电话，我告诉她，当妈妈真是太美好了。卡门·佩卢索给我打电话，跟我讲她和大路上加油站的那个男人结婚了。我回答说：“啊，真是一个好消息，我祝你幸福美满，代我向帕斯卡莱问好，他现在在忙什么呢？”我跟我母亲通话——她很少给我打电话——我装出兴高采烈的样子，有一次我忍不住问她：“你的腿到底怎么了？为什么你走路会一瘸一拐的？”她回答我说：“关你屁事儿，管好你自己吧。”
When she hung up, her voice left a trail
of images and sounds of the past that stayed in my mind for hours: the
courtyard, the dangerous games, the doll she had thrown into the cellar, the
dark stairs we climbed to Don Achille’s to retrieve it, her wedding, her
generosity and her meanness, how she had taken Nino. She can’t tolerate my
good fortune, I thought fearfully, she wants me with her again, under her,
supporting her in her affairs, in her wretched neighborhood wars. Then I said
to myself: How stupid I’ve been, what use has my education been, and I
pretended everything was under control. To my sister Elisa, who called
frequently, I said that being a mother was wonderful. To Carmen Peluso, who
told me about her marriage to the gas-pump owner on the stradone, I
responded: What good news, I wish you every happiness, say hello to Pasquale,
what’s he up to. With my mother, the rare times she called, I pretended I was
ecstatic, but once I broke down and asked her: What happened to your leg, why
do you limp. She answered: What does it matter to you, mind your own
business.
有几个月，我都在一个人做斗争，我尽量掩饰自己阴暗的一面。有时候，我甚至开始向圣母祈祷，尽管我是一个无神论者，我为自己感到羞愧。更经常的是，当我一个人和孩子在家时，我会发出可怕的叫喊，只是叫喊，没有词语，只是和绝望一起呼出来的气息。那个糟糕的阶段一直都不肯过去，那是一个非常缓慢的、折磨人心的阶段。夜里，我抱着孩子，一瘸一拐在走廊里来回走动，我不再在她耳边说一些没意义的话，我完全无视她，只是想着我自己，我手里会一直拿着一本书或者一本杂志，尽管我没法专心读，或者只能看一点点。白天，阿黛睡得安稳的时候——刚开始，我叫她“阿黛”，我没有意识到，这两个音节里包含这“地狱”的意思，后来是彼得罗提醒我的，我觉得很尴尬，就开始叫她黛黛——我试着给报纸写文章。但我没时间，当然我也不能为了《团结报》四处走动，这样，我写的那些东西失去了力量，我只是在展示自己表达能力很强，形式很美，但没什么实质内容。有一次，我写了一篇文章，我在投递给编辑之前，我让彼得罗看了看。他说：
I struggled for months, trying to keep at
bay the more opaque parts of myself. Occasionally I surprised myself by
praying to the Madonna, even though I considered myself an atheist, and was
ashamed. More often, when I was alone in the house with the baby, I let out
terrible cries, not words, only breath spilling out along with despair. But
that difficult period wouldn’t end; it was a grueling, tormented time. At
night, I carried the baby up and down the hall, limping. I no longer
whispered sweet nonsense phrases, I ignored her and tried to think of myself.
I was always holding a book, a journal, even though I hardly managed to read
anything. During the day, when Adele slept peacefully—at first I called her
Ade, without realizing how it sounded like Hades, a hell summed up in two
syllables, so that when Pietro pointed it out I was embarrassed and began
calling her Dede—I tried to write for the newspaper. But I no longer had
time—and certainly not the desire—to travel around on behalf of l’Unità. So
the things I wrote had no energy, they were merely demonstrations of my
formal skill, flourishes lacking substance. Once, having written an article,
I had Pietro read it before dictating it to the editorial office. He said:
“很空洞。”
“It’s empty.”
“什么意思？”
“In what sense?”
“全是词汇的堆砌。”
“It’s just words.”
我很气愤，还是把文章发给了编辑，但他们没刊登出来。从那时候开始，无论是地方报纸还是全国报纸都借口说，因为版面的缘故，不能刊登我的文章。我觉得很痛苦，我意识到，就好像是有一阵来自深层的强烈震动，围绕着我的一切都在迅速塌陷。不久之前，我还以为那些我争取到的生活和工作条件是固不可摧的。但我现在读书时，眼睛放在书上或杂志上，但好像只停留在字面，已经没办法获得书里的意思。有两三次，我偶然看到了尼诺的文章，但我在看这些文章时，没有感到任何乐趣，没有通常我想象听到他声音，享受他的思想的乐趣。当然了，我为他感到高兴：假如他在写东西，那就意味着他状态很好，不知道他在哪里过着自己的日子，不知道他和谁在一起。但我盯着那个签名，我看了几行，有一种越来越强烈的感觉，他白纸黑字写的那些东西，让我的处境变得更加难以忍受。我已经没有好奇心了，我连自己的外表也不再关注。但话又说回来，我为谁打扮呢？除了彼得罗，我和谁都不见面，他对我一直都彬彬有礼，但我感到，对于他来说，我只是一个影子。有时候，我站在他的角度来考虑，我能感受到他的不悦，和我结婚让他作为学者的生活变得更加复杂。这个阶段，他的名声正在上升，尤其是在英国和美国，人们很欣赏他。但这依然让我恼火，我和他说话时，总是夹杂着一丝怨恨和顺从。
I felt offended, and dictated it just the
same. It wasn’t published. And from then on, with a certain embarrassment,
both the local and the national editorial offices began to reject my texts,
citing problems of space. I suffered, I felt that everything that up to a
short time earlier I had taken as an unquestioned condition of life and work
was rapidly collapsing around me, as if violently jolted from inaccessible
depths. I read just to keep my eyes on a book or a newspaper, but it was as
if I had stopped at the signs and no longer had access to the meanings. Two
or three times I came across articles by Nino, but reading them didn’t give
me the usual pleasure of imagining him, of hearing his voice, of enjoying his
thoughts. I was happy for him, certainly: if he was writing it meant that he
was well, he was living his life who knows where, with who knows whom. But I
stared at the signature, I read a few lines, I retreated, as if every one of
his sentences, black on white, made my situation even more unbearable. I lost
interest in things, I couldn’t even bother with my appearance. And besides,
for whom would I bother? I saw no one, only Pietro, who treated me
courteously, but I perceived that for him I was a shadow. At times I seemed
to think with his mind and I imagined I felt his unhappiness. Marrying me had
only complicated his existence as a scholar, and just when his fame was
growing, especially in England and the United States. I admired him, and yet
he irritated me. I always spoke to him with a mixture of resentment and
inferiority.
够了！有一天我对自己说，不要管《团结报》了，假如我能为自己的新书找一个正确的突破点，那已经不错了，这本书出来，一些都会好起来的，但我到底在说哪本书呢？我跟我婆婆还有出版社说，这本书已经写得差不多了，但我在说谎，我每次都用一种非常客气的语气在说谎。实际上，我只有一些写满笔记的本子，没有别的，而且我也没什么激情。不管是夜里还是白天——那要看黛黛的情况了——我打开这些笔记，每次我都会不由自主地睡过去。一个午后，彼得罗从大学里回来，他发现我的状况要比上次他忽然回来时更加糟糕：我在厨房里，趴在桌子上睡着了，孩子错过了吃奶时间，在很远的地方，在卧室里嘶叫，她父亲看到她在摇篮里半裸着身子，被遗忘在那里。后来黛黛终于平静下来，抱着奶瓶在拼命吃奶。这时候，彼得罗很难过地对我说：
Stop it, I ordered myself one day, forget l’Unità, it will be enough if I can find the right approach for a new book: as soon as it’s done, everything will be in order. But what book? To my mother-in law, to the publisher, I claimed that I was at a good point, but I was lying, I lied on every occasion in the friendliest tones. In fact all I had was notebooks crammed with idle notes, nothing else. And when I opened them, at night or during the day, according to the schedule that Dede imposed on me, I fell asleep without realizing it. One late afternoon Pietro returned from the university and found me in a condition worse than the one I had surprised him in some time earlier: I was in the kitchen, fast sleep, with my head resting on the table; the baby had missed her feeding and was screaming, off in the bedroom. Her father found her in the crib, half naked, forgotten. When Dede calmed down, greedily attached to the bottle, Pietro said in despair:
“你真的找不到人来帮你？”
“Is it possible that you don’t have
anyone who could help you?”
“在这个城市，我没有任何人，你也很清楚。”
“Not in this city, and you know that
perfectly well.”
“你让你母亲或者妹妹来。”
“Have your mother come, your sister.”
“我不想。”
“I don’t want to.”
“那你让那个那不勒斯的朋友来帮忙：你以前帮过她的，她会帮你的。”
“Then ask your friend in Naples: you did
so much for her, she’ll do the same for you.”
我惊得身子抖了一下。我很清楚地感觉到，那么一刹那，我身体的一部分，好像已经感到了莉拉在我家里，她已经在场了。假如之前她一直潜伏在我的身体里，现在她会溜进黛黛的身体，眼睛眯起来，眉头皱着。我非常有力地摇了摇头，那个影像一下子就消失了，那种可能也没有了。我到底在想什么？
I started. For a fraction of a second,
part of me had the clear sensation that Lila was in the house already,
present: if once she had been hiding inside me, now, with her narrow eyes,
her furrowed brow, she had slipped into Dede. I shook my head energetically.
Get rid of that image, that possibility, what was I looking onto?
彼得罗做出了让步，他打电话给他母亲，他很不情愿地问她，愿不愿意来我们这里待一阵子。
Pietro resigned himself to calling his
mother. Reluctantly he asked her if she could come and stay with us for a
little while.
-*-
66
把家里的事情交给我婆婆来处理，我马上松了一口气。当时她的表现，让我也想成为她那样的女人。在短短几天时间里，她找了一个二十多岁的姑娘，叫克莱利亚，是马雷玛人，我婆婆无微不至地给她交代了她该做的事情：收拾家里，买东西，做饭。当彼得罗发现，克莱利亚出现在家里，而他母亲并没征求他的意见时，他表现得很不耐烦。
I entrusted myself to my mother-*-law
with an immediate sense of relief, and here, too, she showed herself to be
the woman I would have liked to resemble. In the space of a few days she
found a big girl named Clelia, barely twenty, and originally from the
Maremma, to whom she gave detailed instructions about taking care of the
house, the shopping, the cooking. When Pietro found Clelia in the house
without even having been consulted he made a gesture of annoyance.
“我不想家里有奴隶。”他说。
“I don’t want slaves in my house,” he
said.
阿黛尔不紧不慢地说：“她不是奴隶，我们付工资给她。”
Adele answered calmly: “She’s not a
slave, she’s a salaried employee.”
因为有婆婆撑腰，我忍不住说了一句：“那你觉得，我应该当奴隶？”
And I, fortified by the presence of my
mother-*-law, stammered: “Do you think I should be a slave?”
“你当母亲，而不是奴隶。”
“You’re a mother, not a slave.”
“我给你洗衣服，熨衣服，打扫卫生，给你做饭，给你生了孩子，我还要千辛万苦把她养大，我要崩溃了。”
“I wash and iron your clothes, I clean
the house, I cook for you, I’ve given you a daughter, I bring her up in the
midst of endless difficulties, I’m worn out.”
“谁强迫你了，我什么时候要求过你？”
“And who makes you do that, have I ever
asked you for anything?”
我受不了这样的冲突，但阿黛尔可以，她用热嘲冷讽的语气，节节击退了她儿子。后来克莱利亚留了下来，她从我手中接过孩子，把摇篮带到了我给她安排的房间，无论是白天还是晚上，她都非常准时地给孩子准备奶粉。当我婆婆看到我走路一瘸一拐的，就带我去看了医生，那是她的一个朋友，医生给我开了一些注射的药。她每天早上和晚上，都亲自拿着煮过的针管和针头，还有药水，给我的屁股打针，又准又狠。我马上就感觉好多了，我的腿疼消失了，心情也慢慢开朗了。但阿黛尔并没有停止照顾我，她很得体地要求我收拾打扮自己，她带我去做头发，带我去看牙医。尤其是，她一直在跟我谈论剧院、电影院还有她正在翻译或正在编写的书，杂志上别人都写了什么文章，还有评论她丈夫的或者其他名人的文章，她亲昵地直呼这些人的名字。我从她嘴里，第一次听说了一份非常有斗争精神的女性主义杂志。马丽娅罗莎非常热衷于女性主义，她认识编辑这本杂志的姑娘们，也非常欣赏她们的思想，但我婆婆并不赞同这些人，她用通常那种带着讽刺的语气说，她们看待女性问题，就好像面对阶级斗争的问题一样，但问题没那么简单。你看看她们写的东西吧，她最后建议我说。她给我留下了几本杂志，最后很认真地说了一句话：“如果你要当作家的话，任何事情都不能错过。”我把那些杂志放在一边，我觉得，阿黛尔评价不好的东西，我也不用浪费时间去看。尤其是在当时的情况下，我婆婆说的那些高雅的话，并不是想和我进行思想交流，阿黛尔只是有计划地要把我从一个无能的母亲的处境中拯救出来。她是想通过她说的那些话，摩擦出火花，点燃我空洞的头脑和目光。但实际上，她更乐于拯救我，而不是倾听我。
I couldn’t bear to argue, but Adele did,
she crushed her son with a sometimes ferocious sarcasm, and Clelia remained.
Then she took the child away from me, carried the crib into the room I had
given her, managed with great precision the schedule of bottles both at night
and during the day. When she noticed that I was limping, she took me to a
doctor, a friend of hers, who prescribed various injections. She herself
appeared every morning and every evening with the syringe and the vials, to
blithely stick the needle into my buttocks. I felt better right away, the
pain in my leg disappeared, my mood improved, I was happier. But Adele didn’t
stop there. She politely insisted that I attend to myself, she sent me to the
hairdresser, made me go back to the dentist. And above all she talked to me
constantly about the theater, the cinema, a book she was translating, another
she was editing, what her husband or other famous people whom she called
familiarly by name had written in this or that journal. From her I heard for
the first time about the new radical feminist tracts. Mariarosa knew the
women who were writing them; she was infatuated with them, admired them. Not
Adele. She said with her usual ironic attitude that they went on and on about
the feminist question as if it could be dealt with separately from the class
conflict. Read them anyway, she advised me, and left me a couple of those
little volumes with a final cryptic phrase: Don’t miss anything, if you want
to be a writer. I put them aside, I didn’t want to waste time with writings
that Adele herself disparaged. But I also felt, just then, that in no way did
my mother-*-law’s cultivated conversation arise from a true need to exchange
ideas with me. Adele intended to systematically pull me out of the desperate
state of an incompetent mother, she was rubbing words together to strike a
spark and rekindle my frozen mind, my frozen gaze. But the truth was that she
liked saving me more than listening to me.
尽管一切都理顺了，黛黛还是会在夜里哭。我听见她哭，觉得很不安，她给我传递了一种不幸福的感觉，让我婆婆的善举带来的好处都化为云烟。尽管我现在有时间了，但我还是不能写作。彼得罗通常都是忍耐着，但当着他母亲的面，他变得很放肆，甚至有些不客气。一回到家里，他总是会和他母亲发生冲突，唇枪舌剑，冷嘲热讽，这使我的挫败感更加强烈了。我很快觉察到，我的丈夫理所当然地认为，阿黛尔是他最近遇到的所有麻烦的根源。无论是什么事，他都会怪到他母亲的头上，包括他在工作上的不顺心。我根本不了解当时大学里拔剑张弩的气氛，通常我问他怎么样，他总是说很好，他倾向于不让我操心。但在他母亲面前，他打破了这些限制，他会用一个被忽视了的儿子的怨恨语气和她说话，他把对我藏着掖着的那一面全部展示在阿黛尔面前，他宣泄自己，就像我不在场那样，就好像我——他的妻子，只是一个沉默的证人。
And yet. Yet Dede, in spite of
everything, continued to cry at night, I heard her and became agitated, she
gave off a sense of unhappiness that undid the beneficial action of my
mother-*-law. And though I had more time I still couldn’t write. And Pietro,
who was usually controlled, in the presence of his mother became uninhibited
to the point of rudeness; his return home was almost always followed by an
aggressive exchange of sarcastic remarks, and this only increased the sense
of breakdown I felt around me. My husband—I soon realized—found it natural to
consider Adele ultimately responsible for all his problems. He got angry with
her for everything, even what happened to him at work. I knew almost nothing
about the wearing tensions that he was experiencing at the university; in
general to my how are things he responded fine, he tended to spare me. But
with his mother the barriers broke down; he assumed the recriminatory tone of
the child who feels neglected. He poured out onto Adele everything he hid
from me, and if I was present he acted as if I weren’t, as if I, his wife,
were to act only as silent witness.
这样一来，事情越来越明朗了。他大学那些同事都要比他年长，都把他耀眼的前途，包括他在海外取得的声誉，归结于他的家世、他的姓氏，所以都开始孤立他。学生们觉得他过于严格，也没什么用处，他是一个很乏味的资产阶级，在耕耘着自己的小菜园，根本不顾及现在的形势，总之，他是个阶级敌人。他自己呢，通常既不会自我捍卫，也不会攻击别人，而是会走自己的路。他坚信——我很确信这一点——思路清晰的课程，是学生可以深入思考的一种保证，最终会开花结果。但一切都很难，有一天晚上，他用一种满是怨气的语气，对阿黛尔大声说了这些处境。然后，他马上压低了嗓门，嘟囔着说，他需要安静，工作已经让他很累了，有不少同事联合学生和他作对。一群群年轻人经常会破门而入，进到他正在上课的教室，迫使他中止上课，在墙上贴非常下流的标语。这时候，在阿黛尔开口说话之前，我有些失控地说了一句。我说，假如你没有那么反动，这些事儿就不会发生在你身上。他呢，自从我认识他以来，第一次用一种粗暴的语气对我说：“闭嘴，你总是信口开河。”
Thus many things became clear to me. His
colleagues, all older than him, attributed his dazzling career, as well as
the small reputation that he was starting to develop abroad, to the name he
bore, and had isolated him. The students considered him unnecessarily rigid,
a pedantic bourgeois who tended his own plot without making any concession to
the chaos of the present, in other words a class enemy. And he, as usual,
neither defended himself nor attacked, but kept straight on his path,
offering—of this I was sure—lectures of acute intelligence, assessing
students’ abilities with equal acuity, failing them. But it’s hard, he almost
shouted at Adele, one evening, in a tone of complaint. Then he immediately
lowered his voice, said that he needed tranquility, that the job was a
struggle, that no small number of his colleagues set the students against
him, that groups of youths often erupted into the classroom where he was
teaching and forced him to break off the classes, that despicable slogans had
appeared on the walls. At that point, even before Adele could speak, I lost
control. If you were a little less reactionary, I said, those things wouldn’t
happen to you. And he, for the first time since I’d known him, answered
rudely, hissing: Shut up, you always speak in clichés.
我把自己关在洗手间里，我忽然意识到，我太不了解他了。我了解他什么呢？他是一个平和的男人，但充满决心，到了顽固不化的地步。他是站在工人和学生这一边的，但他上课和考试的方式是最传统的。他是一个无神论者，他不想在教堂里结婚，而且要求不给黛黛洗礼，但他欣赏阿诺河流域的那些基督教团体，谈到宗教问题时，他总是无所不知。他是艾罗塔家的儿子，但他无法忍受这个家族带给他的富裕和特权。我平静下来了，我要站在他那边，让他感觉我的情感和支持。他是我丈夫，我想，我们应该多交流。但阿黛尔的存在是一个问题，他们母子之间有一种说不出来的东西，让彼得罗在说话时，一改以往的文质彬彬，阿黛尔跟他说话的语气，好像他是一个没救的低能儿。
I locked myself in the bathroom and I
suddenly realized that I scarcely knew him. What did I know about him? He was
a peaceful man but determined to the point of stubbornness. He was on the
side of the working class and the students, but he taught and gave exams in
the most traditional way. He was an atheist, he hadn’t wanted to get married
in a church, he had insisted that Dede not be baptized, but he admired the
early Christian communities of the Oltrarno and he spoke on religious matters
with great expertise. He was an Airota, but he couldn’t bear the privileges
and comforts that came from that. I calmed down, I tried to be closer to him,
more affectionate. He’s my husband, I said to myself, we ought to talk more.
But Adele’s presence became increasingly problematic. There was something
unexpressed between them that drove Pietro to set aside manners and Adele to
speak to him as if he were a fool with no hope of redemption.
我们就是那么生活的，冲突不断。他一直和母亲吵架，最后会说一些让我很气愤的话，让我也对他恶语相向。最后到了这样的地步，在吃晚饭时，我婆婆当着我的面问他为什么要睡在沙发上。他回答说：“明天你最好回去吧。”尽管我知道他为什么会睡在沙发上，我没有插话。他这么做是为了我，他在夜里三点工作完，为了避免打扰我，他会在沙发上休息一下。第二天，阿黛尔回热内亚去了，我感到彻底迷失了。
We lived now like that, amid constant battles: he quarreled with his mother, he ended up saying something that made me angry, I attacked him. Until the point came when my mother-*-law, at dinner, in my presence, asked him why he was sleeping on the sofa. He answered: It’s better if you leave tomorrow. I didn’t intervene, and yet I knew why he slept on the sofa: he did it for me, so that he wouldn’t disturb me when, around three, he stopped working and allowed himself some rest. The next day Adele returned to Genoa. I felt lost.
-*-
67
后来，我和孩子相安无事地过了几个月。黛黛在她第一个生日时，学会了走路：她父亲蹲在她前面，对她拍手，她微笑着松开我的手，摇摇晃晃向她父亲走去，她的手张开着，嘴半张着，就好像啼哭了一年之后，她终于到达了幸福的终点。从那时候开始，她晚上睡觉开始变得安稳，我也安宁下来了。我的女儿和克莱利亚在一起的时间越来越长，我的焦虑缓和下来了，我获得了一些个人的空间，但我发现，我一点儿也不想劳神工作，就好像经过了一场漫长的疾病，我迫不及待地想待在户外，享受阳光和色彩缤纷的生活，走在挤满人群的街道上，欣赏橱窗里的商品。在那个阶段，我自己有很多钱，我给自己、孩子还有彼得罗买了很多衣服，我给家里买了很多家具和摆设，我从未像那时候那样随便花钱。我想要打扮自己，要和一些有意思的人见面谈话，但我没能和任何人建立联系。从另一个方面来说，彼得罗也很少带客人来家里。
Nevertheless, the months passed and both
the baby and I made it. Dede started walking by herself the day of her first
birthday: her father squatted in front of her, encouraged her warmly, she
smiled, left me, and moved unsteadily toward him, arms outstretched, mouth
half open, as if it were the happy goal of her year of crying. From then on,
her nights became tranquil, and so did mine. She spent more time with Clelia,
her anxieties diminished, I carved out some space for myself. But I
discovered that I had no desire for demanding activities. As after a long
illness, I couldn’t wait to go outside, enjoy the sun and the colors, walk on
the crowded streets, look in the shop windows. And since I had some money of
my own, in that period I bought clothes for myself, for the baby, and for
Pietro, I crowded the house with furniture and knickknacks, I squandered
money as I never had before. I felt the need to be pretty, to meet
interesting people, have conversations, but I hadn’t made any friends, and
Pietro, for his part, rarely brought guests home.
我试着慢慢恢复以前的生活，也就是一年之前的活跃状态，但我意识到，家里的电话很少响起，而且打给我的电话也越来越少了。我的小说在褪色，人们逐渐也对我失去了兴趣。经过那个狂喜的阶段，随之而来的是担忧，有时候是抑郁。我问自己该怎么办，我又开始读近现代文学，我经常为我写的小说感到羞愧，相比其他作品，我的书显得很轻浮，也很传统。我把新小说的笔记放在一边，因为内容太类似于之前作品，我努力构思一些能反映现在动荡的社会现实的、有分量的作品。
I tried gradually to resume the
satisfying life I had had until a year before, and only then noticed that the
telephone hardly ever rang, that the calls for me were rare. The memory of my
novel was fading and, with it, interest in my name was diminishing. That
period of euphoria was followed by a phase of anxiety and, occasionally,
depression, as I wondered what to do; I began reading contemporary literature
again, and was often ashamed of my novel, which in comparison seemed
frivolous and very traditional; I put aside the notes for the new book, which
tended to repeat the old one, and made an effort to think of a story with
more political engagement, one that would contain the tumult of the present.
我非常羞怯地给《团结报》打电话，我还想着给他们写文章，但我马上就明白，我写的那些东西编辑已经不喜欢了。我失去了自己的领地，我的信息太少，没时间去参与那些正在发生事件并将它们讲述出来。我只会写一些优美、抽象的句子，我不知道要在哪份报纸，向谁展示出：我赞同对意大利左翼党派和工会组织的严厉批评。现在我很难解释当时我为什么要写那些东西，或者说得更具体一些，尽管我很少参加这个城市的政治生活，尽管我很温和，我感觉自己越来越受一些极端思想的吸引。我这么做是因为偷懒，或者因为我对于进行调和的做法失去了信心。从我小时候开始，我就很熟悉，我父亲在市政府里，利用那里的漏洞，暗中获得一些利益，或者说，我切身体会到什么是贫穷的生活，我感觉有必要铭记自己经历的一切，我想和下层人民站在一起，和他们一起斗争，推翻所有一切。或者因为我参加的那些零散的政治活动，我努力写的请求和呼吁都没有人在意，我希望发生一些大事件——我用过这种表达方式，我经常说这样的话——这些事情发生之后，我就可以看到并讲述它。或者因为——我很难承认这一点——我的思维模式还是和莉拉一样，就是坚持自己的非理性态度，根本不接受中间路线。虽然我现在从各个方面都已经远离她了，但我想象着，假如她没把自己封闭在城区的圈子里，假如她有我的这些机会的话，她可能会做的事情，可能会说的话。
I made a few timid phone calls to l’Unità
and tried again to write articles, but I soon realized that my pieces no
longer appealed to the editors. I had lost ground, I wasn’t well informed, I
didn’t have time to go and examine particular situations and report on them,
I wrote elegant sentences of an abstract rigor to announce—in that particular
newspaper, to whom I’m not sure—my support of the harshest criticisms of the
Communist Party and the unions. Today it’s hard to explain why I insisted on
writing that stuff or, rather, why, although I scarcely took part in the
city’s political life, and in spite of my meekness, I felt increasingly drawn
to extreme positions. Maybe I did it out of insecurity. Or maybe out of
distrust in every form of mediation, a skill that, from early childhood, I
associated with the intrigues of my father, who operated shrewdly in the
inefficiency of the city hall. Or out of the vivid knowledge of poverty,
which I felt an obligation not to forget; I wanted to be on the side of those
who remained downtrodden and were fighting to turn everything upside down. Or
because everyday politics, the demands that I myself had scrupulously written
about, didn’t matter to me, I wished that something great—I had used and
often did use that formulation—would break out, which I could experience, and
report on. Or because—and this was hard to admit—my model remained Lila, with
her stubborn unreasonableness that refused to accept half measures, so that
although I was now distant from her in every way, I wanted to say and do what
I imagined she would say and do if she had had my tools, if she had not
confined herself within the space of the neighborhood.
我不再购买《团结报》，我开始看《继续斗争》还有《宣言报》，我发现在《宣言报》上，有时候会出现尼诺的文章。他的文章像往常一样，有很多数据，而且逻辑非常清晰，结构也很完整。就像我小时候和他谈话给我带来的刺激一样，我感觉，我急需写一些组织严密的复句，掌握那种使自己免于迷失的技巧。我最后决定，我再也不能带着欲望，或者带着爱慕去想他。我觉得，他成了我懊悔的代表和化身，我曾经有过机会，但我永远不能成为他那样的人。我们都出生在同样的环境，都有很好的前途，为什么我现在陷入了黯淡？因为结婚的缘故？因为生了黛黛？因为我是一个女的，因为我要照顾家，要给孩子洗屁股，换尿布？每一次，我看到尼诺的文章，假如那篇文章写得很精彩，我心情就会变得很坏。彼得罗成了牺牲品，实际上，我丈夫是我唯一的对话者。我生他的气，我控诉他，我说这是我生活中最可怕的阶段，他把我扔下不管。我们的关系——我很难承认，因为这让我很害怕，但这是事实——越来越糟糕了。我明白，因为工作的缘故，他的处境也很艰难，但我还是没法原谅他。我一直在批评他，通常，我的政治立场和那些给他找茬儿的学生差不多。他非常不耐烦地听我说，基本上不回嘴。在那些时候，我怀疑，他之前吼我的话（“你闭嘴！你就知道信口开河”）不是他一时激动说的一句过分的话，而是他通常对我的看法，他觉得不能和我进行严肃的交流。这让我非常绝望和沮丧，我的怨气在一点点上升，尤其是我自己内心，充满了矛盾的情感，用一句很露骨的话，总结出来就是：正是因为社会不公正，才使学习对于有些人来说是非常艰苦的事（比如说对我），但对其他人是一种消遣（比如说对于彼得罗）；从另一个方面来说，不管社会公不公平，人们都必须学习，这是一件好事儿，非常好的事儿。我的学习经历，还有我展示出来的才能，让我非常自豪，我很难相信我是白费力气，或者从某种程度上来说，我很迟钝。有时候，在彼得罗面前，因为一些隐秘的缘由，我把不公正归于不平等。我对他说：“你现在表现得就好像你面对的学生都是一样的，但事情并不是这样，要求那些机会不同的孩子取得同样的成绩，这是一种苛求。”我批评了他，因为他告诉我，他和一个比他年长至少二十岁的同事发生了一场激烈的争吵，那人是他姐姐的一个熟人，觉得可以联合他和研究机构里的保守派进行斗争。他和这个同事产生冲突，是因为那人很客气地给他建议，让他对学生不要那么严苛。彼得罗没有闪烁其词，他用一种有礼貌的方式反驳说，他并不觉得自己严苛，他只是对学生要求很严格。好吧，那人对他说，那你就不要那么严格了，尤其是对那些正致力于改变这个烂摊子的学生。我不知道他说这些话的根据是什么，但他们的对话越来越不投机了。彼得罗在讲这些事时通常都很简洁。刚开始，他觉得有必要捍卫自己，他只是说，他对所有学生都很尊重，一视同仁。他指责同事用了两种标准、两个尺度：对那些强硬的学生态度柔和，但对那些害怕、胆怯的学生非常无情，让他们受屈辱。他同事生气了，最后对着彼得罗嚷嚷说——因为他认识彼得罗的姐姐，他一直都不想对他说的话，这时说了出来——彼得罗是个白痴，他根本就不配站在讲台上。
I stopped buying l’Unità, I began to read
Lotta Continua and Il Manifesto. In the latter, I discovered, Nino’s name
sometimes appeared. His articles were, as usual, well documented, and shaped
with cogent logic. As I had when I talked to him as a girl, I, too, felt the
need to contain myself in a network of deliberately formulated general
propositions that would keep me from breaking down. I noticed that I no
longer thought of him with desire, or even with love. He had become, it
seemed to me, a figure of regret, the synthesis of what I was at risk of not
becoming, even though I had had the opportunity. We were born in the same
environment, both had brilliantly got out of it. Why then was I sliding into
despair? Because of marriage? Because of motherhood and Dede? Because I was a
woman, because I had to take care of house and family and clean up shit and
change diapers? Every time I came upon an article by Nino, and the article
seemed well done, I was resentful. And the person who paid for it was Pietro,
in fact the only person I had to talk to. I got angry at him, I accused him
of abandoning me in the most terrible period of my life, of caring only about
his career and forgetting me. Our relations—I had trouble admitting it
because it frightened me, but that was the reality—got worse and worse. I
knew that he suffered because of his problems at work, and yet I couldn’t
forgive him, rather I criticized him, often starting from political positions
no different from those of the students who made things so hard for him. He
listened to me uneasily, scarcely responding. I suspected, in those moments,
that the words he had shouted before (shut up, you speak in clichés) hadn’t
been an accidental loss of temper but indicated that in general he didn’t
consider me capable of a serious discussion. It exasperated me, depressed me,
my rancor increased, especially because I myself knew that I wavered between
contradictory feelings whose essence could be summed up like this: it was
inequality that made school laborious for some (me, for example), and almost
a game for others (Pietro, for example); on the other hand, inequality or
not, one had to study, and do well, in fact very well—I was proud of my
journey, of the intelligence I had demonstrated, and I refused to believe
that my labor had been in vain, if in certain ways obtuse. And yet, for
obscure reasons, with Pietro I gave expression only to the injustice of
inequality. I said to him: You act as if all your students were the same, but
it’s not like that, it’s a form of sadism to insist on the same results from
kids who haven’t had the same opportunities. And I even criticized him when
he reported that he’d had a violent discussion with a colleague some twenty
years his senior, an acquaintance of his sister’s, who had thought he would
find in him an ally against the most conservative part of the faculty. It
happened that that man had in a friendly way advised him to be less severe
with the students. Pietro had replied in his polite but un-*-defense, that it
was his habit always to treat all students with the respect that they
deserved; then he admitted he had accused his colleague of using a double
standard, of accommodating the students who were more aggressive and ruthless
and even humiliating the more fearful ones. The man had taken offense, had
gone so far as to say that only the fact that he knew his sister well
prevented him from telling Pietro—and meanwhile, however, he had told
him—that he was a fool unworthy of the professorship he held.
“你不能慎重一点儿吗？”
“Couldn’t you be more cautious?”
“我很慎重。”
“I am cautious.”
“我不觉得。”
“It doesn’t seem that way to me.”
“好吧，我得说出我心里想的。”
“Well, I have to say what I think.”
“也许，你应该学会辨别谁是朋友，谁是敌人。”
“Maybe you should find out who are your
friends and who are your enemies.”
“我没有敌人。”
“I don’t have enemies.”
“也没有朋友。”
“Or friends, either.”
你一言我一语，我开始变得夸张。我一字一句地对他说：“你这么做，最后的结果是，在这个城市里，没有任何人，更不用说你父母的那些朋友，会请我们吃晚饭、听音乐会，或者一起去郊游。”
One thing leads to another—I overdid it.
The result of your behavior, I hissed at him, is that no one in this city,
least of all the friends of your parents, invites us to dinner or a concert
or for a visit to the country.
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