Nun (9781609459109) (23 page)

The abbess appointed one of Donna Maria Brigida's servingwomen and Sarina, Donna Maria Crocifissa's lay sister, to keep an eye on Agata. No one else had access to her cell and nothing could be sent to her from the outside world, including the linen that Sandra washed for her. Once again, someone wanted to do her harm.

A
gata truly was afraid now; she had no idea who would want to poison her or why, and the fact that Angiola Maria had disappeared meant that now there was no one to watch over her. The abbess had shown herself to be prompt and thoughtful, for the first time, suggesting that Agata keep to the safety of her cell; the abbess's lay sisters would bring Agata her meals. Her suspicions aroused by this sudden turnabout, Agata thought it over at length and concluded that Donna Maria Celeste's lay sister, now working for the abbess, was the only one who might have a reason to want her dead, out of fear that she might reveal the abortion that she had helped her mistress procure in that ugly situation. So she refused to eat. On the third day, the abbess came to her cell and with a half smile informed her that the cardinal had authorized
brevi
at her mother's home in Palermo. Agata was free to leave the convent as soon as her health improved; while waiting for her mother to come and fetch her, she could stay at the conservatory of Smirne. She neglected to tell Agata that her already modest stipend would be cut in half—the convent would keep the other half—as well as that she and the deaconesses had decided to suggest to the choristers that they vote against her readmission to the Cenoby, should Donna Maria Ninfa ever ask to come back to San Giorgio Stilita.

But Agata had already understood. Anxious about her transfer to the conservatory, which the other nuns spoke of with unconcealed disdain, and uncertain about the welcome she would be likely to receive in Palermo, she felt alone and destined for a vagabond life, shuttling between various religious institutions and relatives who were unlikely to welcome her. Even before she'd lost them for good, she missed her life of religious seclusion at San Giorgio Stilita and the friendships she would be leaving behind. She felt ready to receive the vocation, but now it was too late. That evening, while the others were all at Vespers, she managed to send Nina and Sarina away with a subterfuge and slipped stealthily out of her cell, making her way to her favorite refuge: a little terrace off the uninhabited dormitory of the novices, enclosed by very high walls, from which it was only possible to see a square patch of sky, the inviolate territory of pigeons. The birds' deafening cooing drowned out the noises of the city. After the first frantic burst of wings, though, they accepted her, focusing their pinhead eyes upon her, waiting to regain mastery of the place. Agata, at the center of the little terrace, watched the sky change from light blue to blinding white and then to the red of a hidden sunset, and she prayed for her fellow nuns, certain that God was listening to her. That was her farewell to San Giorgio Stilita.

 

The following morning she was ready to leave. Donna Maria Giovanna della Croce had brought her a saint card of her namesake, St. John of the Cross. They knew they'd never see one another again but that their affection would endure.

“True love knows no measures and is untroubled by the thought of being repaid; it is free. I give myself to you, in our friendship, without expecting anything in return, just as I did with God,” she said to Agata.

“But love between a man and a woman is different, it demands something in return,” Agata observed.

“It's a complex love, because there are children involved. But there, too, if it seeks a
quid pro quo
, it is not true love,” Donna Maria Giovanna della Croce repeated. “My first and only love was Jesus, ever since I was a little girl. They wanted to marry me off, because my older sister went lame and . . . ”—the nun blushed—“ . . . wasn't as pretty as me, according to my parents. I had to beg and plead before they'd send me to become an educand, and I never regretted it. I live happily, in this imperfect convent, for God.”

When the time came to say farewell, Donna Maria Giovanna della Croce embraced her. “You were made to serve the Lord in the world. If you have a daughter, pray that she has the calling, and don't dissuade her. Remember that.”

Aunt Orsola's carriage conveyed Agata, alone, to the conservatory, not very far from San Giorgio Stilita. She had put all her books in the false bottom of her trunks: it had been some time since she'd received any new ones and she wondered whether her last note, in which she had made no secret of her sense of helplessness and despair, might have annoyed the Englishman. Perhaps that was why he'd decided not to send her any more books. She felt as if she'd been abandoned by everyone.

T
he conservatory of Smirne was built in the center of a populous quarter of Naples, around the nucleus of a chapel in which the image of the Madonna of Smirne, thought to have saved Naples from the plague of 1526 and again from the plague in 1603, was venerated. Following the French occupation, it had been given back to the Curia in very poor condition and never thereafter restored. With four cloisters built to gridiron plan and a monumental entrance, it was a collection of bare corridors with very high vaulted ceilings, overlooked by a series of dank cells. It housed women of different religious orders and categories, who lived in the dormitories adjoining each cloister. Occupying one cloister were oblates and widows belonging to the petty bourgeoisie who had embraced vows of poverty and chastity, although they were members of no monastic order, occupied one cloister; the adjoining cloister housed nuns who were either invalids or mentally ill, sent there from a variety of Neapolitan convents, in order to free the other nuns from the burden of caring for them, or else to give them a change of surroundings; the third cloister was occupied by repentant women who had dishonored themselves with one violation or another, fallen women and problem girls who sold, through the turnstile, their needlepoint embroideries and whatever they could cook or bake. Agata would be housed in the fourth cloister, together with a group of oblate sisters and other nuns who, for one reason or another, were no longer accepted at their convent and had nowhere else to go: rebellious, penniless, or on the brink of madness.

 

Accustomed to the Baroque elegance and the sheer opulence of San Giorgio Stilita, Agata's first impression of the conservatory was not good. The coachman had unloaded her trunks and left them in the front hall. The doorkeeper, a coarse and uncomely lay sister who waved filthy hands and fingernails edged with black in the air as she spoke, told Agata to haul her trunks up to the third floor, where she would be staying.

“I can't do that myself. They're too heavy,” Agata complained. “Send me two strong people to carry the trunks upstairs.”

“I'll send nobody. You have to go find two servingwomen who'll carry the trunks on their backs, and you'll have to pay them! Otherwise the trunks stay here, at your own risk,” she replied, and she smirked at her.

The cell was furnished with a folding bed covered by a filthy, grimy mattress, a table and a chair, and a chamber pot. The ceiling was stained by a patch of dampness and the flaking plaster sifted onto the terra cotta floor tiles next to the bed. Spurts of light came in through a window six feet off the floor, dwindling into the shadow of the facing wall, where the gobs of sunshine only accentuated the contrast with the penumbra. The other nuns, many of them demented, stayed holed up in their cells; their shouts echoed down the corridors, and on the rare occasions that Agata encountered one, she was invariably filthy, obscene, and frightening. The sole refectory was used in rotation by the occupants of the various cloisters; the food was awful and the nuns who read the divine lesson shortened and modified the texts as it pleased them.

The abbess of the conservatory had been obliged by the Curia to take her in, and she was annoyed by the terms given her under her
brevi
—she was allowed to go out every day for no more than three hours, between dawn and nightfall, and the abbess found that to be grossly excessive. She warned Agata that life in the conservatory was Spartan and discipline very strict: latecomers returning after the deadline would not be admitted until the following morning.

 

Agata was not allowed to go visit relatives or receive visits from them without special permission from her confessor, and Father Cuoco had not yet come to see her. She had nothing to do, except for going to the chapel to pray, alone, and taking care of herself: cleaning the cell, washing her clothing, and cooking, unless she wanted to go eat in the refectory, where she would have to pay. Along with her books, Agata had brought her nursing supplies—bandages, alcohol, medicinal herbs, unguents, and tinctures—but few if any of the things that she had assumed would be provided for every nun at the conservatory. And so she was obliged to purchase all the little things that she needed: a pitcher and a basin with which to wash herself, soft soap, a broom and a rag to clean the floor, and everything necessary to cook and eat. Now she understood why she was allowed to go out every day: she had to do her grocery shopping.

Unaccustomed to the din of the crowd and the city's deafening racket of wheels and voices, at first Agata was afraid of the streets and the surging and receding flow of pedestrians; she'd make short excursions into some of the less packed parts of the neighborhood, stopping in churches and oratories for prayer at the appropriate times of day in accordance with the Benedictine Rule, then go back to the conservatory and out again after taking a moment to recover. She was also afraid of being recognized by relatives or friends and she wore the turquoise cape of the Order of Canonesses of Bavaria: thus attired, she went out into the marketplaces and, after comparing prices and thinking it over several times–her savings were almost entirely exhausted–she would buy fruit, greens, bread, and sometimes fried fish.

One day, as she emerged from a church, she caught an irresistible whiff of the scent of bread; with the few coins left to her she purchased a piping hot flatbread from a street vendor with a tray slung around his neck who had emerged from an alley. Agata was yearning to eat it immediately, and in order to avoid being seen doing so she quickly dodged into the alley. She sat down on a boulder at the foot of a blank wall, in a wide spot in the alley, which seemed to be uninhabited. She chewed the crunchy dough, lost in thought. Filthy half-naked children, boys and girls, emerged seemingly from nowhere and she was soon obliged to share the flatbread out with them, laboriously distributing chunks that were roughly equal. The bigger children gobbled their pieces down immediately and then turned to snatch the smaller children's chunk of flatbread out of their fingers, occasionally out of their very mouths. Agata shouted at the children to stop, but it was all over in the blink of an eye—the children had vanished back into their dark holes. She sat weeping quietly. She felt something damp on her hand, like a dog's tongue, and she swung around quickly. There, a toddler no older than two, completely naked—arms, legs, and shoulders less flesh than bones and a belly swollen like a wineskin, the belly button looking like it was about to pop off—was licking the palm of her hand in search of any crumbs that might still be stuck to it. The child looked up in fright. Its dirty blond hair was clumped stickily to face and neck, and the bleary eyes were blank, expressionless. The toddler grabbed her hand and began licking, first the back of the hand and then one finger at a time.

After that, Agata never dared to stop again. She walked incessantly through the city, pushing further and further everyday, in a vain search for places to be alone in the heart of Naples. This, she thought, is what they're talking about when they say they want a more equitable society. This is what they've seen, this is what they continue to see.

When she perceived the life of the city from on high, from a distance, she knew that underneath, in the shadows, there was a poverty that was apparently irredeemable. She had read, and reading had sharpened her senses; it was through her senses that she now absorbed the unmistakable evidence of injustice.

 

Agata had sent a note to Don Vincenzo, her cousin's administrator, to ask if he could send her whatever the abbess had left her, because she was truly in need: the conservatory demanded advance payment for food and board, her meager savings would soon run out, and she had no idea when she would receive her half-stipend from the convent. Her cousin the prince replied in person: Don Vincenzo knew nothing about any supposed inheritance, but he regretted to inform her that her Aunt Orsola had died suddenly, without suffering, the week before, after playing a game of cards; she had left her three ducats, which he had sent to the abbess of San Giorgio Stilita, whom Agata should contact.

Agata wrote immediately to the abbess, explaining that that tiny bequest was urgently needed because the conservatory demanded payment in advance for the rent. The following morning, Nina, the servingwoman and shopper of Donna Maria Brigida, came to see her; she had brought the abbess's reply. The parlor was occupied; overcoming her shame and her pride, Agata decided to receive her in her cell. It was a deeply moving moment: Agata had always kept the servingwomen at arm's length, but the two of them knew each other very well, because the lay sisters who ought to have seen to her aunt's every need and requirement usually left the more disagreeable tasks for Nina to do. For the first time, the two women embraced and wept together. Nina gave her the letter from the abbess, and then, warily, looking around as if the little black stains of dampness on the ceiling were so many eyes watching her, she rummaged in her basket and pulled out a package from Detken's bookstore. She had found it weeks ago, in a pile of things to be burnt; the servingwomen went through those piles item by item, inspecting them to see if there was anything that could be reused.

 

Once Nina had left, Agata dissolved into a stream of tears: now she really was alone and friendless in the world. She anxiously opened the letter. The abbess was sending her just fifty ducats; she explained that the cardinal had issued the
brevi
to her on the understanding that any inheritance, as well as her stipend, would be split equally between the convent of San Giorgio Stilita and the Benedictine convent that took her in; just this once, on an entirely exceptional basis, and with the cardinal's consent, she was sending her that money. Agata looked around her, devastated—another brutal blow inflicted by the cardinal—and she met the glazed eye of a
tignuseddu
—a gecko—clinging to the wall with the suction cups on its feet, lying in ambush just inches from her head.

 

She opened the package—it was another novel,
The Monk
. The title made her smile. She wondered who might have chosen it. She leafed through it, as she always did. Every book has its own identity and characteristics, and Agata had a ritual that she followed in order to get to know and love a book. First she looked at it, observing the inscriptions on the spine, the color and patterns on the paper endsheets glued to the inside of the cover, the typographical characters and the intensity of blackness of the ink. She felt the uncut pages, with delicacy, respectfully, to sense the finish and the thickness on the surface of her own skin. Last of all, she hefted the volume, passing it from one hand to the other, to become accustomed to its weight, and only then did she pick up the paper knife. She put the little uneven tabs of paper that ripped off as she cut the pages into her mouth, as if they were communion wafers.

As she sliced the pages with her paper knife, her gaze chanced upon words and phrases of dialogue, and she wondered just what kind of book this was. She'd made her way more or less halfway through when an envelope addressed to her slid out from between two pages and into her lap. The handwriting was different from the lettering of the address on the package, which was very familiar to Agata. She opened it, absent-mindedly, thinking it might contain an odd, personalized sheet of
errata corrige.

 

My dear Agata,

I beg your forgiveness if I dare to write to you in this fashion; if what I am about to say to you should offend you, please rest assured that this is certainly not my intention. Let me come straight to the point; I certainly understand that you might well prefer to let your silence convey to me the answer that I so fear.

The first time that I met you, ten years ago, I was the exact age that you are now, twenty-two years old; I had already traveled around the world and I was accustomed to fighting to achieve the objectives that I had set for myself. You already know that I come from a family of shipowners and that we are responsible for the sulfur trade in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. We own a house in Naples, but our roots were and remain in Devon, where my Norman forefathers settled long ago. I mention these details to make it clear to you that I belong to a family of glorious lineage, that I possess considerable personal wealth, and that when I give my word of honor it is the honor of my entire ancestry that is at stake
.

In September 1839 I left Messina for Naples, where I was to meet my fiancée Georgina, a gentle girl whose family has more than once intermarried with my family, a girl I loved and who loved me. I chose to challenge a furious gale rather than miss my appointment, and I took your family aboard my ship as my guests and as passengers. It was dawn, and the storm had subsided. I heard you sing a song from my childhood; then I saw you leaning against the door of the cabin. Storm-tossed, wind-beaten, and exhausted, we were able to carry on a polite drawing-room conversation, until you looked me straight in the eye and bared your soul, speaking openly about yourself, of your dearest affections, and of your family. The wind had pinned you against the cabin door and it revealed your body to me–legs, hips, belly, breasts; you were looking into the east and the low rays of the rising sun were caressing your face. I desired you. When you spoke to me about your
inamorato
, I was stabbed by a bolt of jealousy so powerful that it made me stagger. That was when I realized that I loved you, more than any other woman on earth, and that that would always be true.

While you were following your father's casket, I was revealing to Georgina that I loved another woman; I offered her the opportunity to break our engagement. She refused to give me back my freedom; she said that it was merely a passing infatuation. I begged her to reconsider and pointed out that I felt no physical attraction for her and that our marriage would be in name only.