Adam's Breed by Radclyffe Hall — Read

Gian-Luca having no one to talk to, and having no language wherewith to talk in any case, found himself, as all infants must be, at a great disadvantage in relation to life. Had his mind been a blank, as people seemed to think, it would have been easier not to howl; but his mind was a turbulent seething muddle, in which colic and darkness and the sudden flare of gas-jets and ticklings and prickings and stupid grasping hands and uncomfortable confinement in preposterous positions, were all jumbled together in nebulous chaos, impossible at first to disentangle. From this chaos one day there suddenly emerged a creature who was beautifully concrete, a kindly young woman who had always been there and had always borne a relation to hunger and to hunger's ultimate appeasement. But whereas before she, like everything else, had been part of the haze called life, she now emerged a well-defined being that was capable of arousing anger or approval, capable of being smiled at or howled at, capable even, of being thumped. She could open her bodice and give you what you wanted, or she could refuse to do so. In the latter contingency you felt blind with rage, in the former you felt much less than was supposed, much less indeed than you appeared to be feeling; in the former you quickly became atavistic, doing what you must, automatically, because something, somewhere, ordered you to live.

The concrete creature was Rosa Varese, the daughter of Nerone who sold tobacco a little way down the street; she was married and had lost her own baby of croup in the very nick of time to provide you with dinners, but all this of course you did not know, nor would you have cared if you had. Your emotions were entirely concerned with yourself, not through any wish of yours, but by order of that something that commanded you, Gian-Luca, to live.