Nun (9781609459109) (20 page)

I
n the sixth century, when the Benedictine Rule was formulated, the convents were an exquisitely democratic organization; amidst the Neapolitan obscurantism of the second quarter of the nineteenth century, the convent of San Giorgio Stilita, under the prudent governance of the abbess, Donna Maria Crocifissa, could still make that claim. The Chapter, in which all chorister sisters sat by right, met to make decisions concerning the convent's administration, the admission of educands and novices, whether or not to accept nuns from other convents, and the expulsion of nuns from the Cenoby. All votes were individual and secret, and a decision required only a simple majority—though in the case of particularly important matters, that margin rose to two-thirds. For minor issues, the abbess made decisions in consultation with the deaconesses—wise older nuns, who were frequently former abbesses. Agata, with her aunt's encouragement, had from the very beginning contributed to discussions in the Chapter.

Donna Maria Crocifissa was not a modern abbess. She was tolerant, with one exception: she discouraged requests for
brevi
, leaves that allowed a nun to spend a few weeks with her family. Aside from that aspect, under her rule as abbess the more austere edges of the cloistered life had been rounded off, in particular the practices of the mortification of the flesh: at San Giorgio Stilita the use of hair shirts was frowned upon while the wearing of wrought-iron bodices was forbidden entirely. Within the confines of the Rule and in the context of prayer in the Cenoby, the choristers were largely free to do as they pleased. They could receive packages, they could give the pastries and sweets that they made to whomever they wished, and they could see more than one visitor a month. The abbess tended to allow correspondence with the outside world. There were those who abused their privileges. For instance, at the first sign of a headache or a cold, certain choristers stayed in their cells and had meals brought to them on a tray, rather than go to the refectory, and the many choristers who had their own servingwoman and one or two lay sisters, depending on their financial resources, had these servants assist them in some of the heavier offices, so that they could freely devote themselves to their religious devotions or else, simply, to idle leisure.

Most of the nuns had been admitted to the convent when they were children, and on the whole they were happy and lived in the Cenoby—the only place they could call home—for many years. Those who had been adolescents when they were admitted, like Agata, often had trouble adjusting, unless they already had the vocation—which was uncommon. Often, they “found” a vocation, induced by their families and by the atmosphere of the Cenoby. They too, on the whole, led a good life in monastic seclusion.

Each chorister had a father confessor, chosen by the vicar general from the secular clergy and not from the monastic orders; nuns had the option of changing their confessor. The confessionals were occupied all day long, and it was necessary to make a special effort to secure one of the larger ones, which practically offered the privacy of a bedroom. The wealthier nuns had special confessionals built to order—spacious and comfortable—and refused to share them with other nuns. Given the length of the confessions, the nuns did not kneel, but instead sat upright in a comfortable chair, and were even allowed to offer their confessor coffee, hot chocolate, and lemonade with biscotti, to refresh and reinvigorate him. Many nuns were possessive of their confessors and heaped them with gifts and attention; some even spoke of them as if they were their lovers. Agata continued to be satisfied with hers, Father Cuoco, a native of Nardo, good natured and quite intelligent, and felt none of that obsessive attention to father confessors and altar boys; even the cardinal irritated her.

Agata was different and she felt different. She didn't like to chatter with the other choristers, nor did she enjoy attending the little receptions that they liked to give on the slightest pretext—for the feast day of their patron saint, for an anniversary, for a visit—taking turns showing off the porcelain and silver that they kept in their closets. When she was in company, she spoke very little about her family or herself.

She was also different because she was poor. Her mother hadn't fully paid her monastic dowry and therefore her stipend was so tiny as to be meaningless. She rarely received gifts from her aunt the abbess. She had no lay sister or servingwoman to allow her to save money, she sent her clothing to Sandra's house to be washed, and she supported herself by selling her
cucchitelle
; this was humiliating.

She read. James Garson kept his word, and the first novel,
Nicholas Nickleby
, by Charles Dickens, reached her just a few days after her simple profession. The abbess gave her permission to send him a
paperole
as thanks, and Agata inserted within the door of the little embroidered temple or in the cover of the central oval a tab that, when pulled, would disclose the small note that conveyed her thoughts about what she had read. She never received any reply other than a book, and from then on, all her thank-you notes, laboriously conceived though brief, were ignored. Agata came to believe that not only did James not receive them at all, but that the choice of books had been delegated to an impersonal third party. She continued to write back to the return address—the usual bookseller—and her notes became increasingly intimate; at times she even recorded her thoughts on the back of the paper petals and leaves of the
paperoles
, as if they were the pages of a secret diary that no one would ever read.

 

Singing and music, which she taught to the novices, were her one great comfort. Sometimes she joined the choristers with pleasure, for instance, when they went to church on the eve of an especially important religious occurrence. Belonging as they did to the great families of the episcopal sees of Porta Capuana and Nido, all the nuns brought with them, aside from their trousseaux, sacred furnishings and silverwork. In order to preserve the humility of the order, those objects were kept under lock and key in their cells and used only for religious occasions. The sacristan, on the order of the sister sacrist, would clear the building and lock the doors and the choristers then entered the church carrying their treasures to be displayed on the altars.

 

It was deeply moving to walk on that white and blue floor, which Agata watched seven times a day from high above, in the choir, and stand there, motionless, before the main altar, swollen with gold and silver, as if a tiny nun garbed in black were challenging the massive structure of marble and precious metals. When the entire church flickered with thousands of candles, the nuns, as if dazzled by so much light, wandered through the empty nave and the side aisles, stopping before images that from high above they could only see foreshortened, marveling at their beauty. The younger nuns ran, drunk with light, and stopped before the huge outer doors, locked tight, and then turned to run back to the main altar. Other nuns stopped to pray before the convent's precious relics: the heads of St. George Stilites, St. Blaise, and St. Stephen, covered with silver; a bit of wood from the Holy Cross; two arms, one belonging to St. Julian and the other to St. Lawrence; the chain of St. George Stilites—which bound him to the column atop which he lived for twenty-seven years; and the blood of St. Stephen and St. Pantaleon, which, when liquefied, changed into three different colors.

 

Donna Maria Giovanna della Croce had remained Agata's great and only friend. Like the abbess, she considered herself fortunate to have received her calling. “We constantly receive instructions from God, but we are unable to understand them. It will come to you as well. That is why it is so fundamental to listen, to the Holy Spirit and to other people, and to create silence within ourselves.” She encouraged Agata to make room for silence in order to allow the voice of God to summon her to Him. “Don't be afraid of death: it is only the completion of a cycle,” she said to her, and Agata tried her best to find her vocation. When she thought she had succeeded, the sullen reality of the convent and the magnetic pull of the instinct to procreate made the cloistered life intolerable to her.

 

Agata regularly went to visit her father's other sister, Donna Maria Brigida. The Padellani cousins, long-time nuns, had told her that, unlike her aunt the abbess, Donna Maria Brigida had never adapted to the monastic life and as a young woman had become mentally disturbed. One afternoon, just before Nones, Agata went to visit her demented aunt, who by now never left her cell. The lay sisters who were supposed to provide for her had left her to the care of the servingwomen, who were mocking her cruelly. She would rave about children and newborns and she called all the other women “
mamma
.” They had stitched little rag dolls for her and when she was upset they'd give her two of them. “Here, why don't you feed your daughters,” they'd say, and she would hold them to her breast, laughing and covering them with kisses. Other times they told her that if she was good, the father confessor, with whom it was said she had once been head-over-heels in love, and who had died years ago, would come to hear her confession.

That day, her aunt refused to take her tranquilizer and had spit it out, staining her snowy-white wimple. She twisted on the chair to which she had been tied and tried to snap her middle finger against her thumb to imitate the rhythm of the castanets and, winking at Agata, she intoned in a faint, out-of-tune voice:

 

Me faje fa' vicchiarelle,

Me faje jire a l'acito:

Gue' Ma', voglio o marito,

Non pozzo sola sta'
.
2

 

Agata listened and thought to herself. The rhythm of the Neapolitan song reminded her of the English nursery rhyme, “Oranges and Lemons.” It brought back her faded memories of Messina, of Giacomo, fiery, possessive, irascible; of his sweat and his magnificent charcoal eyes fringed with long eyelashes. Immature. Cowardly. Agata thought of the glaring contrast with James Garson, delicate, cultivated, detached. And chilly. Both married, one dragged wife and sons to the church in search of the thrills of a youthful love long dead, while the other behaved gallantly toward a woman who was destined for a life of seclusion. Agata felt deeply offended. Her gaze returned to her aunt the nun. From somewhere deep within her memory, from her afternoons with her father, she remembered an aria by Cimarosa and began to sing: “
Ma con un marito via meglio si sta, via meglio meglio si sta.
”

 

Full of love for the world, Agata firmly believed that, under this new pope, Italy was on the threshold of a better, free world, in which she would be liberated from the yoke of nunhood, she'd find fulfilling employment, and she would live happily on her own.

T
he choristers held a variety of offices; they were required to change them every year or every three years, but the Chapter of each convent could also reconfirm them in their offices and that is what frequently happened. Agata could choose whether to assist the sister cellarer, the sister hebdomadary, the sister herbalist, the sister infirmarian, the sister pharmacist, the sister who worked the convent wheel, or the sister sacrist. She could not hold the office assistant helper nun, who was in charge of external relations and was allowed to leave the cloister and go out into the world. That position was reserved to choristers with a certain seniority. She chose the office of assistant infirmarian, which wasn't particularly sought after, and which allowed her to be close to the abbess. She worked in close collaboration with Donna Maria Immacolata, the sister pharmacist. Donna Maria Assunta, who was quite old, soon entrusted her with a number of responsibilities.

The sister infirmarian saw to the health of body and soul. Agata was surprised to discover the quantity of medicines and natural products that were dispensed to the nuns to treat their “nervous disturbances.” Agata discovered that the convent was a veritable wasp's nest of groups and factions, riven by jealousy, resentment, and vicious campaigns of hatred that crushed the losers underfoot, driving them to brink of madness. Beneath a still surface, San Giorgio Stilita was a churning whirlpool of unholy passions.

 

One chorister, Donna Maria Celeste, clearly wished to become one of Agata's friends. Agata was wary, because as a postulant she had suffered from her bullying cruelty. At that time, Maria Celeste had just become a nun and she had suggested switching father confessors with Agata. “Father Cutolo is young, conscientious, and well disposed toward you,” she had told her, but Agata chose not to take her advice.

Both postulants and novices came to speak with her; they too recommended Father Cutolo, some of them with a notable degree of insistence. At that point, Maria Celeste stopped being a friend and turned into Agata's enemy. She was peevish and angry with her, and regularly humiliated her. Agata was an object of contention between two bitterly opposed rival parties, and they both wanted the same thing from her—for her to select Father Cutolo as her confessor—but each wanted to boast the honor of having persuaded her to make the change. One day, Father Cutolo sent her a note. He felt that he'd been insulted and unfairly rejected and he suggested they make an appointment to get to know one another so that he could persuade her to change her mind. Agata, curious now, went to the place that he had suggested, the cloister of the novices, where the pharmacy was located. The priest was sitting in a corner, on a low interior wall, next to a slender column. He was young, fit, and fair-skinned. His eyes were dark and smoldering. He paid her a number of compliments and asked her about the books she'd read. Agata answered his questions, but she had the impression that he hadn't heard a word she said: he was looking at her hungrily and she felt as if he was undressing her with his eyes. Agata blushed; she looked down and fell silent. The priest pulled one hand out of his pocket and ran it over her lips, poking at them with his finger. Agata bit his finger hard and ran away, without noticing that the sister pharmacist and her lay sister had been watching the two of them for a while.

From then on, there were mutterings against Agata. One by one, the other young nuns came to act as emissaries: some scolded her for having behaved rudely to Father Cutolo, others explained that the father confessor belonged to Maria Celeste and that she should never have accepted the meeting without asking her permission, and there were those who urged her to see Father Cutolo again because he was desperately in love with her and he was wasting away before their eyes. That horrible chapter finally came to an end when the cardinal came to visit the convent, accompanied by Father Cuoco, and suggested that Agata say confession that same day. For a while, there was a diet of gossip about the favoritism that the abbess and the cardinal had shown for the “Sicilian girl,” until that topic was discarded for other, newer matters. But every time that Agata encountered Father Cutolo, he undressed her hungrily with his eyes.

 

Maria Celeste had matured; now she seemed to genuinely desire the company of Agata, now a chorister herself. Maria Celeste taught her how to make the biscotti di San Martino and gave her lessons on baking in a wood-fired oven. They had discovered that they both read novels; they exchanged books and discussed them together. Agata never mentioned their youthful quarrels or Father Cutolo, who was said to have since fallen in love with another novice. Maria Celeste was frequently sad, and she had recently grown very pale in the face; she had dark circles under her eyes and was puffy-faced. Agata gave her reconstituent syrups and Maria Celeste took them. Only once did she ask Agata for a medicament against nausea and after that she stopped appearing in public: it was whispered that she was indisposed, but she never asked for help. Agata, as sister infirmarian, would go to pay calls on her; they would have pleasant conversations, but Maria Celeste never told her anything about herself and never asked for anything.