The Days of Abandonment is a visual homage to Elena Ferrante’s novel of the same name, originally published in Italian as “I giorni dell’abbandono”.
One April afternoon, right after lunch, my husband announced he wanted to leave me… he assumed the blame for everything that was happening and closed the front door carefully behind him, leaving me turned to stone beside the sink.
I prepared a sauce with meatballs that he really liked, I sliced potatoes to roast in the oven with rosemary. But I took no pleasure in cooking, I was indifferent, I cut myself with the can opener, a bottle of wine slipped out of my hand, glass and wine flew everywhere, even on the walls.
“It’s true, isn’t it? There’s another woman. Who is it, do I know her? Then, for the first time since the whole thing began, I raised my voice, I cried that I had a RIGHT to know, and I said to him: “You can’t leave me here to hope, when in reality you’ve already decided everything.”
He stared at the plate, then looked me straight in the face and said: “Yes, there’s another woman.”
Then with incongruous gusto he skewered with his fork a heap of pasta and brought it to his mouth as if to silence himself, to not risk saying more than he had to.
He had begun to chew in his usual methodical way, but suddenly something cracked in his mouth. He stopped chewing, his fork fell on the plate, he groaned, now he was spitting what was in his mouth into the palm of his hand, pasta and sauce and blood, it was really blood, red blood.
Immediately, his eyes wide, he wiped off his hand with the napkin, stuck his fingers in his mouth, and pulled out a thin slice of glass and showed it to me … He jumped up, overturned the chair, picked it up, slammed it again and again on the floor as if he hoped to make it stick to the tiles indefinitely.
To calm myself, I got into the habit of writing until dawn. In the beginning I tried to work on the book that I had been trying to put together for years, but then I gave up, disgusted. Night after night I wrote letters to Mario, my husband, even though I didn’t know where to send them.
Maybe I realized first that she was very young, so young that Mario seemed like an old man beside her. Or maybe what struck me was the blonde hair, gathered at the nape of her neck, held in place by a comb, a hypnotic stain.
Time expanded. I crossed the street with long, determined steps, I felt no desire to cry or scream or ask for explanations, only a black mania for destruction.
I struck him like a battering ram with all my weight, I shoved him against the glass, he hit it with his face. Perhaps Carla cried out, but I saw only her open mouth, a black hole in the enclosure of her even, white teeth.
It’s not easy to go from the happy serenity of a romantic stroll to the chaos, to the incoherence of the world. Poor man, poor man.
I grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him so violently that I tore it off the right shoulder, found it in my hands.
I hit him again and again, he fell down on the sidewalk.
I kicked him, one two three times, but — I don’t know why — he didn’t defend himself, his movements were awkward, with his arms he sheltered his face instead of his ribs, maybe it was shame, hard to say.
Give me those earrings, give me those earrings, give me those earrings, give me those earrings, give me those earrings, give me those earrings, give me those earrings, give me those earrings, give me those earrings, give me those earrings, give me those earrings, give me those earrings, give me those earrings, give me those earrings, give me those earrings.