Nani

Nani is Elena’s doll, kept in secret by Leda and eventually returned to Nina in a confrontation that ends their relationship. More than a possession to be recovered, the doll becomes the material focus of a concealed choice: Leda has had it while Elena was distressed by its absence, and Nina discovers that she withheld this fact. Its changing place in Leda’s home—from the bathroom sink to the kitchen table and then the bed—tracks her effort to understand what she has done, while its final handover exposes the gap between the protective, independent woman Nina imagined and the woman who had remained silent.

The Doll in Leda’s Care

When Leda returns to the apartment after an upsetting encounter at the beach, she finds Nani naked, with her head down in the bathroom sink. The water that had been inside the doll’s stomach is gone. Leda dresses her and imagines the doll’s interior as a dry ditch, a thought that gives the object an unsettling bodily resonance without making it a living presence. The act of dressing Nani is practical care, but it also draws attention to the object as something Leda has chosen to keep from the child who misses her.

Later, Nani is on the kitchen table while Leda eats grapes. Leda sees the doll as freshly clean but still difficult to read, marked by an expression that offers no clear order or truth. That description reflects the uncertainty of Leda’s own account of her relationship with Nina. She recognizes that she had assigned Nina the part of a perfect mother and successful daughter, while her own answers to Nina’s anxious questions had been shaped by reticence. The doll is present during this reconsideration: it cannot explain Leda’s actions, but its unexplained presence makes the concealed choice hard to leave in the background.

Maternal Care and Earlier Dolls

Nani’s significance is sharpened by Leda’s memories of motherhood, though the doll she recalls from her own childhood is Mina, not Nani. As a young mother, Leda had tried to give Bianca her cherished childhood doll, hoping the gift might ease Bianca’s jealousy of her younger sister, Marta. Bianca did not want Mina, and Leda felt hurt. The episode makes the meaning of a doll less stable than a simple gift or substitute child: an adult’s attachment to the object does not guarantee that a child will share it, and the child’s wishes do not necessarily match the adult’s hopes.

Leda also remembers becoming Bianca’s plaything when her daughter was small. Despite exhaustion and the demands of caring for Marta, she let Bianca treat her as a doll, caring for her through play. These recollections place Nani beside a history in which affection and burden repeatedly coexist. Leda remembers wanting to be a good mother, yet also recalls the relief she felt when Marta’s cries drew her away from Bianca. Nani does not resolve that conflict. Instead, the doll’s vulnerability and Leda’s choice to keep it bring the question of care back into the present, where the child’s need and the adult’s responsibility no longer align.

A Secret Made Material

Nani’s presence in the apartment changes the meaning of Leda’s role in Nina’s life. Leda understands that Nina may have seen her as free, independent, refined, and courageous, and that she had answered Nina’s questions without revealing everything. She also recognizes that their situations are not equivalent. Leda had left her husband and daughters when she felt entitled to do so, had support from friends, and had a relationship with Hardy during the separation. She recalls that Nina, by contrast, had far fewer protections and faced risks Leda had not faced in the same way. This reflection does not excuse Leda’s silence; it makes the imbalance in their imagined bond part of what the doll exposes.

Before the final meeting, Leda carries Nani to the bedroom, props her on a pillow in a seated position, and lies down beside her. In that quiet arrangement, Leda connects Nina’s expectations of her to her own earlier response to Brenda, an English girl she had met briefly in Calabria. Leda had once attributed to Brenda a power and freedom she wanted for herself, and now sees that she may have been placed in a comparable position by Nina. The comparison leads her to consider that helping Nina might mean allowing her to take responsibility for her choices, rather than deciding those choices for her. Nani, beside Leda on the bed, remains part of that deliberation rather than a straightforward token of reconciliation.

Return and Rupture

When Nina is about to take the apartment keys, Leda tells her she has something else to give her. She retrieves Nani from the bedroom and brings her back. Nina’s hesitant smile disappears when she recognizes the doll; she asks whether Leda took it. Leda acknowledges that she did. Nina then realizes that Leda kept Nani while Elena was crying and Nina was struggling, without telling her or offering help. The revelation changes the encounter: the doll is no longer merely missing property but evidence of what Leda knew and withheld.

Nina takes Nani from Leda in a fierce gesture and says she does not want to see Leda or accept anything from her. The return therefore does not repair the earlier loss or restore trust. Leda tells Nina to take the keys as well, explaining that she will leave that night and the house will be empty until the end of the month. Her apology does not prevent Nina’s departure. Nani’s final movement—from Leda’s hidden keeping back into Nina’s hands—makes the secret tangible and brings the relationship to a break.

Narrative Significance

Nani connects the intimate scale of a child’s attachment to a larger conflict over what maternal care demands and who is allowed to fail at it. Leda’s memories show that motherhood has involved tenderness, exhaustion, play, and the desire to escape competing demands; her present conduct toward the doll adds concealment to that history. Nina’s anger, in turn, is directed not only at the taking but at Leda’s failure to disclose what she knew while Elena suffered. The object makes that failure visible without settling the moral or emotional contradictions around it.

The doll also interrupts Leda’s attempt to define herself as a guide to Nina’s independence. Leda thinks about the very different circumstances under which each woman might leave, and about the responsibility of offering help without taking over another person’s life. Yet her secret keeping of Nani has already shaped Nina’s view of her. By the time Leda returns the doll, it has become inseparable from the limits of her imagined authority and the consequences of her silence.