The Story of the Lost Child

After Tina’s loss, Lila’s grief is unbearable because there is no body to cling to. After a restless and fruitless search for her daughter, Lila returns to normal life, although she will not hear Tina’s name spoken.

The whole neighborhood, including the Solaras, are involved in the search for Tina. Armando Galiani, the son of Elena’s high school teacher, hypothesizes that Tina was killed by a truck which has since ended up in a scrapheap. This angers Lila who insists Tina is alive.

While the neighborhood is divided between those who believe that Tina is still alive and those who believe she is dead, people begin to avoid Lila, as though they fear catching her misfortune. To Elena’s surprise, Lila becomes obsessed with Imma, as the weight of the girl’s body in her arms was her last memory prior to losing Tina.

While Elena finds distraction in her writing, Lila “remained at the center of her horror, without any distraction” (348). She does, however, summon Stefano to rescue their son Gennaro from his Uncle Rino’s where he has been using heroin.

With Gennaro’s return, the atmosphere in Lila’s apartment becomes worse. Dede, now adolescent, blames Lila for Gennaro’s troubles. It turns out that Lila confides in Imma, who is only five, intimate details such as the difficulty of her childbirth and the fact that she did not want a second child. When Lila forbids the girls from playing outside, the girls complain that Lila has lost her mind.

Stefano and Gennaro find Rino dead from an overdose. Stefano warns Gennaro that he may meet the same fate.

Rino’s widow Pinuccia offers to work for Elena as a housekeeper and babysitter. Meanwhile, Lila spins stories about her deceased brother’s potential, saying that he could have become like the shoe designer Salvatore Ferragamo. She also keeps Tina alive in her memory.

Lila’s mental woes spread to her body, as she becomes sickly and anemic. She says that she is wretched because she has horrific visions of her daughter, both alive and dead, and is resentful of Elena’s poise and her healthy, competent daughters.

Elena tries, mostly in vain, to get Lila out of the house on Sundays. She is a figure of fear in the neighborhood. Occasionally, they run into the Solaras. Elena is surprised that Michele Solara goes to the local library with his sons and insists that they read. He tells his sons that Elena is a role model. However, he takes Elena aggressively by the wrist, breaking her mother’s bracelet. He says Marcello will have it fixed at the jewelers. Lila tells her that she will never see the bracelet again.

Lila tells Elena that she initially thought Gennaro was Nino’s child and that he even resembled him. However, there was a moment when he crossed over and became Stefano’s.

Elena finds that she needs Lila’s “impulses” to excel as a writer (371). She goes to the pharmacy to get painkillers for Lila who is bleeding, as though from continuous menstruation. There, she runs into Carmen who delivers the news that Marcello and Michele Solaras have been killed.

The media and the police treat Elena as the expert on the Solaras, and Elisa is always around her, fearful that the murderers will return to kill her too. Lila undergoes an operation for her blood-loss, and the doctors take her fibromatous uterus out. She hallucinates that Tina killed the Solaras.

Marcello and Michele were shot on a December Sunday in 1986, and Elena is summoned to give her report. However, in the aftermath of their murder, she sees how everyone in the neighborhood is implicated in their dealings. A package from Marcello returns her mother’s bracelet fixed and polished.

Lila emerges from the hospital extremely frail. She shows no remorse about the Solaras’ death. The Solaras’ bar and pastry shop remains closed, marking the end of their era. Lila begins to walk about the neighborhood more and announces that she no longer wishes to work.

Lila is in a deep depression and spends her life in idleness. She threatens to separate from Enzo. However, at other times she is constructive and teaches Elena and her daughters to use the computer. Elena begins to write on one. The girls encourage Gennaro to learn how to use the computer. Lila observes that Dede likes Gennaro.

Pasquale’s middle-class partner-in-crime Nadia Galiani has turned herself into the police for a lighter sentence. Elena advises Carmen that Pasquale ought to do the same for his safety. However, Lila thinks that the police would treat Pasquale far worse than Nadia.

Lila wanders about the streets of Naples from morning to night, forgetting her earthly ties and commitments. Elena imagines that “Lila walked through the city paying no attention to anything, only to numb the grief that after years continued to poison her” (385). Meanwhile, Lila maintains that Elena is wasting her life and her daughters’ lives by remaining in the neighborhood.

Elena worries about the absence of her daughters’ fathers in their lives. Nino has been elected a member of parliament for the Socialist party and lives permanently in Rome. Imma clings to ephemera such as her father’s letters and election posters with his photograph on them. Pietro has broken up with Doriana and now wishes to trade Florence for the United States, so he too will be distant. Meanwhile, Elena worries that Dede and Elsa spend too much time with Gennaro. Lila hints that Dede is in love with him.

Elena realizes that Dede’s feelings for Gennaro are no mere childish attachment; they are a devoted one-sided love, like she had for Nino. Dede admits to loving Gennaro and says that if he returns her love, they will go away together. Elena thinks this plan is disastrous, especially as Lila and Enzo have worked hard to get Gennaro off drugs.

Elena asks Pietro for his help in separating Dede and Gennaro. Pietro agrees to visit Naples before moving to America. However, Lila appears, thanks him for his consolatory letter of years earlier, and occupies his attention with her insights on Naples. Finally, Pietro manages to talk to Dede, and Elena wonders at her own desire to interfere in her daughters’ love-lives, given the transitory, impermanent nature of human relationships.

Pietro thinks nothing can be done about Dede’s passion for Gennaro. She has a fixed plan of losing her virginity to him after exams, leaving Naples together and ending up in America. They talk well into the night, and Pietro says that while Elena tormented him during their marriage, he still loved her. He implores her to help Lila and divulges that Lila told him that she has been spending her time in the Biblioteca Nazionale learning everything she can about Naples. Pietro and Elena sleep together as a form of “farewell embrace” (396). The next morning, Lila tells Elena that Pasquale has been arrested.

Lila and Elena rush to Carmen’s house on hearing the news. Carmen maintains that Pasquale is principled and hopes that he does not die in jail. Elena does everything she can for Pasquale, not wanting him to feel “like a nobody whom nobody cared about” (398).

Elena vows to speak to Nino about using his influence as a parliament member to help Pasquale. She and Imma go to visit him in Rome. While Imma is rapturous about being reunited with her father, Elena puts forth Pasquale’s case. She wants to be sure that Pasquale is being treated well in jail, especially as he does not have Nadia’s middle-class credentials.

Nino later tells Elena that Nadia has given a false confession of Pasquale’s crimes, including the murders of Manuela Solara and the Solara brothers. Nino says that Nadia has made some agreement with the police and warns Elena to tell Lila to be careful, as Nadia has always hated her and is on a mission of “ruining a lot of people who thought they were safe” (401).

Although Nino declares that both he and Elena have “climbed very high,” Elena knows that, as a member of parliament, he thinks he has climbed higher (401). She realizes that all of Nino’s interest in women, including her, went hand in hand with his ambitions. This began with Nadia Galiani, his high-school teacher’s daughter. However, only with Lila, who, he dated after leaving Nadia, did he risk his career. Elena thinks that the “gratuitousness of Lila’s intelligence” is what most beguiled Nino, as she did not commit it to any particular discipline (402).

Elena believes that Nadia hates Lila and feels vengeful towards her because she took Nino away and undermined Nadia’s revolutionary beliefs. While Nadia had potential as a promising and privileged young woman, and again as Pasquale Peluso’s revolutionary sidekick in a new world, she has now wasted her life.

Elena wishes to spare Dede from a similar mistake to Nadia’s—that of being fascinated with someone of a lower class and wasting her potential as an Airota and a brilliant student.

On returning to Naples, Elena warns Lila about Nadia’s intention to hurt her. Lila replies, “You can be hurt only if you love someone. But I don’t love anyone” (405). She mentions that Gennaro has left a note, saying that he has gone to Bologna.

After learning of Gennaro’s departure to Bologna, Elena immediately searches for Dede. Dede is beside herself, as she hands Elena a piece of paper from Elsa, stating that she has run off with Gennaro. Elena is furious, especially because Elsa is a minor and Gennaro is nine years older than her. Lila is amused. When Elena turns the house upside-down looking for clues, she finds that Elsa has stolen all her money and her gold bracelet from her mother.

When Lila points out Elena’s parenting failures in bringing up a daughter who, despite her privilege, steals and betrays her sister, Elena is furious. Enzo offers to drive Elena to Bologna. In the car, Enzo expresses the deep grief both he and Lila feel about Tina and the uncertainty over whether she will ever return. He describes how Lila “remains frozen at Tina, and feels bitter toward everything that continues to be alive, that grows and prospers” (411).

Elena finds no trace of Elsa and Gennaro in Bologna. She wants to call the police and accuse Gennaro of kidnapping a minor, but Enzo reminds her that “Elsa would do anything to make Dede suffer” (412). When they call Lila, Lila says that Dede needs to talk to Elena. She reports to Elena that she is going to study in the United States and that she never wants to see her sister again. Then she says that Elsa telephoned from Adele’s.

Elena immediately travels to Genoa and finds both Elsa and Gennaro there. They are living as a couple, and it becomes clear that Elsa masterminded the whole plan. Elena talks to Pietro on the telephone and insists that he accept Dede in the United States. Then, she chastises Elsa, forces her to give back the money and her mother’s bracelet, and proposes that in September she come home, return to school, and live with Gennaro in their apartment “until you’ve had enough of him” (415).

Elena tells Lila her plan and expresses her sorrow at losing two daughters in two days. Elena accuses Lila of pushing Gennaro into her daughters’ lives and feels that she will be stuck in the neighborhood indefinitely.

Elena is saddened by Dede’s impending departure, but Dede retorts, “It’s impossible to have a real relationship with you, the only things that count are work and Aunt Lina; there’s nothing that’s not swallowed up inside them” (418).

Elena tries to adjust to the new living situation, in which Elsa acts like a grown woman and Gennaro is always around. Lila offers to take him back when he is too untidy, but whenever he goes to Lila’s they argue, and he winds up at Elena’s again.

While Gennaro talks about getting a job and contributing to the household’s income, he never achieves this. Lila and Enzo have an increasingly tense relationship, and Elena hears fights between them in which Tina’s name is mentioned. Lila goes out and walks at all times of day. Elena feels that Lila is obsessively focused on something. However, one night the police appear and take Enzo away in handcuffs. Enzo tells Elena to tell Lila not to worry about this, and that it is all nonsense.

Enzo’s name appeared in one of Nadia Galiani’s accusations. When Nadia mentions that Enzo accompanied Pasquale in the worker-student collective, the investigators try to involve Enzo in the crimes they suspect Pasquale of, including the Solaras’ murder. Lila concentrates her resources on procuring expensive lawyers for Enzo. Surprisingly, Nadia spares Lila from her list of accusations, either because she fears her or pities her for Tina’s loss. Two years later, Enzo is released due to a lack of evidence. However, people in the neighborhood spread rumors about the crimes perpetrated by him and Lila. In 1992, they break up and Enzo goes to look for work in Milan, telling Elena to look after Lila.

Around the same time, Elsa and Gennaro break up, given that Elsa’s attention has been claimed by a young mathematics professor and a classmate. Lila tells Elsa she is a “whore,” chastising her for hurting Gennaro and her sister’s feelings (429). Elsa then makes her way to the United States where she reconciles with her sister and eventually studies. Still, she maintains that Lila is “the best person she had ever known” (429).

Gennaro continues to live with Elena, using her as a buffer against Lila, who he says ignores him and writes. Elena is curious about the subject of Lila’s manuscript.

Elena misses her eldest daughters in America, and Lila gripes that Imma would have better opportunities if she were to live with Nino in Rome. Meanwhile, Imma writes passionately to her father and even offers to campaign for him. She wants Elena to campaign for Nino too, even though Elena does not like Nino’s politics. Imma is devastated when Nino loses the election. The list of those involved in corruption in Italy grows, and among those is Guido Airota, Pietro’s father.

On the telephone, Adele tells Elena that Guido’s crime “was to be surrounded by newly literate types with no ethics, young arrivistes ready for anything” (435). By this, she means Nino, who is now in prison for corruption.

Imma is devastated to learn the news of her father’s downfall. Meanwhile, Elena is grateful to Nino for enabling her to find out about Pasquale, but now she has no one to turn to for that information.

Lila appears completely indifferent to Nino’s problems, only remembering that in his youth, he never repaid his benefactor Bruno Soccavo. Nino appears periodically on the news, pale “with the expression of a child who says: I swear it wasn’t me” (437). Meanwhile, Lila takes an interest in Imma again and, guiding her around the Naples neighborhood, tells her its story.

Imma retells Elena Lila’s history of Naples. Elena “often had the impression that Lila used the past to make Imma’s tempestuous present normal” (439). Lila explains how in Naples, cycles of magnificence alternate with those of destruction. Imma asks whether she thinks Nino will return to parliament. While Elena replies in the negative, Lila thinks Nino will regain his political success.

Nino manages to extricate himself from trouble and return to parliament. Imma tells Elena, “You write books but you can’t see the future the way Aunt Lina does” (444).

Elena starts to pay attention to Lila’s research on the city of Naples. She is ashamed that she herself has devoted little time to studying Naples, the city of her birth. Elena feels guilty about her plans to take Imma away from Naples, as her youngest daughter has given Lila a reason for living. Even through her struggles.

Before Elena and Imma leave in the summer of 1995, Lila confesses that ever since Tina’s disappearance, she wonders if the kidnappers saw the Panorama piece and took Tina because they mistook her for Elena’s daughter.

While Elena does not believe that the kidnappers mistook Tina for her daughter, she is upset by Lila’s suspicion. However, she remembers the exchange that took place when Lila named her daughter Tina after the doll of Elena’s that Lila threw into a cellar.

Elena and Imma begin a new life in Turin, where Elena runs a small publishing house. She is convinced that Lila is at work on an extraordinary manuscript about Naples and Tina, and she would like to help her edit and publish it. Over the years, she tries to find out about the work from Lila herself, and also from Gennaro who is a frequent visitor. Lila, however, remains evasive on this topic.

Whenever Elena calls Lila, Lila tells her the news of the neighborhood, such as her parents dying and her and Gennaro moving into the apartment she was born into. However, when Elena asks her about her writing, Lila denies working on any such project, saying that she looks up information on electronics on the internet. Lila then says that she does not have Elena’s desire to survive, either in words or in body, and “if I could eliminate myself now, while we’re speaking, I’d be more than happy” (454).

Elena is happy with life until the winter of 2002. Her three daughters are now women who return to Italy to visit her, and Dede even has a two-year old son named Hamid. Elena considers herself extremely fortunate; however, she feels slighted when the girls lead their boyfriends to the shelves with her books. They read the sentences aloud in a manner that makes her find the text flawed and dated. She feels that in contrast to these works, “Lila’s hypothetical text, in parallel, assumed an unforeseen value” (458). She imagines that this wonderful text will show up her own failure and erode her satisfaction with life. She sees that “my entire life would be reduced merely to a petty battle to change my social class” (459).

Elena calls Lila less, fearing that their destinies will reverse. She feels bad luck seeping in, given that she loses readers and her figure. Elena is frightened by the prospect “of an old age of poverty, without fame” (460). When she visits Lila in 2005, Lila says she enjoys the influx of African and Asian migrants to the neighborhood. Elena is haunted by the idea that Lila has written a secret book whose brilliance will ensure her posterity while Elena is doomed to obscurity.

Elena writes Lila an email inviting her to make her first trip out of Southern Italy Having taken for granted that Lila will never produce a manuscript, Elena then realizes that she wants Lila “to last. But I wanted it to be I who made her last” (463).

Elena cannot resist writing A Friendship, the story of her and Lila. In doing so, she expressly goes against Lila’s wishes that nothing should be written about her. However, while the book earns back Elena’s readers, she grows to hate it because Lila cuts off all contact with her. She thinks the friendship is over.

Elena ponders over whether the whole novel offends Lila, or merely a particular detail—for example, her comparison of Tina’s loss to the loss of the childhood doll named Tina. Elena concludes that Lila “wants me to give what her nature and circumstances kept her from giving,” and when Elena fails to satisfy her, Lila gets angry and reduces her to nothing, “as she has done with herself” (466).

When Elena completes an exhaustive account of her and Lila’s story, she realizes that the words are hers alone and that Lila has not entered them, even as she sought to capture her in text. Given that Lila has made good on her promise and disappears, Elena chases her all around the neighborhood, asking people if they remember her. She returns there for the funerals of her father and Lidia, Nino’s mother. Nino has turned into a bloated, aging man. She visits Pasquale in prison. Pasquale is amused by Lila’s disappearance and, when asked, says that he thinks the Solaras took Tina. However, Elena can tell that he is not being sincere. He also predicts that Lila will show up when she decides to, even though there is no trace of her. Elena imagines Lila’s return, accompanied by Tina.

One day, after walking her Labrador, Elena returns home to find a package wrapped in newspaper. There is no return address or note, and nothing indicates that the package is for Elena. She opens the package to find “Tina” and “Nu,” the dolls that Lila and Elena once threw into a cellar as children. Later, Lila pushed Elena to go to the home of neighborhood loan shark Don Achille to retrieve the dolls. Don Achille gave them money, which they used to buy the book Little Women. This book inspired Lila to write her first story, The Blue Fairy, and inspired Elena to pursue her career as an author.

Elena longs for Lila to appear and weeps when she does not. Elena believes that Lila has deceived her for her entire life, and this gift confirms that Lila “had dragged [Elena] wherever she wanted, from the beginning of [their] friendship” (473). Elena wonders whether the gift instead means that Lila loves her, and that Lila is finally free. She places the dolls on her bookshelf and considers that life, “unlike stories,” grows more confusing over time. Elena accepts that she will never see Lila again.