The hunger pangs could be managed during the day when the next meal, however meagre or unpalatable, was never more than five hours away, but it was a different matter at night. We were put to bed at eight o’clock and did not rise until six the following morning. The ten-hour span turned the quiet rumblings of my stomach into a deafening roar. Hunger overwhelmed my every thought.
We slept in dormitories, mostly two to a bed. I shared with a girl called Maria. She was also from Lombardy, but I had never heard of her village and she had never heard of Pieve Santa Clara.
Maria would often cry for her mother, who suffered from tuberculosis. She had been extremely ill when Maria had left, and Maria was convinced that she would never see her alive again. Often she would whimper in her sleep. I learned after a couple of nights that if I stroked her hair, she would quieten and sleep more peacefully. I was just grateful that she was not one of the bedwetters.
I cannot say that my nights at the convent were restful. Even when everybody was asleep, there was the constant buzz of breathing, sniffing, tossing and fidgeting. The hacking of catarrh-laden coughs filled the dormitory at all hours of the night. Most of us suffered from permanent colds.
It was not just the noise and the gnawing sensation in my empty belly which kept me awake. Although I was used to sleeping in the cramped confines of a blanket box, I was used to having it to myself. I longed for the comfort of dry sheets, which my mother would warm with a saucepan of embers on winter nights. My convent bed was damp and lumpy and full of flailing limbs and sharp elbows.
Most nights I would lie as still as I could, clutching my doll, and I would take myself for an imaginary walk around my home.
My starting point was always the garden gate, which I would push open, listening for the creak. It seemed no matter how often my father oiled the hinges, the gate would always creak. I would imagine my feet on the gravel, the crunching sound it made beneath my feet and the way I could feel it tingling through the soles of my shoes. I would stand in the very centre of the yard, turning through 360 degrees, looking out across the fields to the south, the horizon broken only by the spike of the belfry in the distance. Sometimes I would listen for the hourly bell.
I would look over to Rita’s house, nestled beside her father’s workshop, and across Zia Mina’s vegetable garden. Whenever I thought of my aunt I pictured her in the garden, bent double between rows of lettuces, or fixing canes entwined with beans. My aunt could grow anything. Papá said that even if she planted a dead stick in the ground it would bear fruit.
When the weather was fine, our garden was always scattered with drying linens, hung from lines strung between the peach trees and draped over fences and bushes. I would imagine my mother calling me to help her fold sheets, or scolding Ernesto for leaving mucky hand-prints on them.
Finally I would turn towards the house, its pale walls shimmering against the sky. Beside the front door there was a small engraved plaque bearing its name, Paradiso. I liked to run my hands over the walls, feeling the heat absorbed from the sun and watching little lizards darting in and out of the cracks. Ernesto said that if you pulled off their tails they could grow a new one.
The part of the house in which I lived with my parents comprised only a kitchen and a bedroom. Both rooms were simple and sparsely furnished. There were two pictures on the kitchen wall: one was a charcoal sketch of Paradiso drawn by my father, and the other was a colour photograph of Pope Pius XII, sporting the red Papal mantle and a stern expression. We called our part of the house ‘the annexe’.
Zia Mina lived in the main house, which was separated from the annexe by a laundry room. My father had intended to divide part of it into a bathroom for us, but his accident had quashed that ambition. The laundry room led through to Zia Mina’s kitchen, where I would imagine the sweet scent of a cauldron of jam bubbling on the stove, and the smell of basil, freshly-cut parsley and nutmeg.
As I lay in the convent bed, in my mind I would climb the stairs of Paradiso and enter the bedrooms one by one: Zia Mina’s room with its lace curtains and the big crucifix above the bed; Ernesto’s room with his ten tin soldiers lined up on his bedside table; and the spare room with twin beds for the rare occasions when we had guests. Finally, I would find myself in the bathroom we shared. How I missed hot baths!
I tried not to think about soldiers searching our house, about bombs falling on the village or about never being able to return home. I thought about Rita and I missed her. I also thought about Ernesto, deciding that if he had not been killed, but instead had been evacuated to a convent or to a monastery, he would probably have caused chaos.
There was no doubt that I felt safe, hidden away at the Convent of the Blessed Virgin. As my mother had promised, there were no soldiers and the night was never interrupted by gunfire. The mountains were silent and empty. We had been taken to a place so remote that it was impossible to tell there was a war. I did not have any idea where I was. I just knew I was far away from everywhere.
Chapter 4
My first experience of school was at the convent. Education had been delayed by the start of war for many of us, so I had never been to school.
Sorella Maddalena organised the classes. We were divided into two groups, one for those who could read and one for those who could not.
I had learned my letters with my father, but I had not yet progressed to proper fluent reading. I could recognise my own name as well as the words ‘apple, pear, potato’ and ‘cabbage’ all by myself. I could also recognise the word Paradiso because it was the name of my house - but unfortunately none of these words had been useful to me for the reading test. I was therefore placed with the non-readers, something which I did not like at all.
Sorella Maddalena taught us to read phonetically, building words letter by letter. It took only a few lessons for me to master reading and I was moved to the higher class. I progressed quickly to writing, but as we did not have any slates, exercise books or paper, we would write in charcoal on the refectory wall, which would be washed down at the end of the lesson.
Within a few weeks I could write out the Ave Maria in Italian without any mistakes. It was not long before I could also reproduce it correctly in Latin.
Being in a convent immersed me so deeply in faith that I embarked upon a constant internal conversation with God. I spoke to Him about my worries and fears, but He did not speak back to me, as Sorella Maddalena claimed He did with her. When I questioned why this was, Sorella Maddalena told me that God spoke back in many ways. He could send signs. She told me the story of Gideon, who had asked God for a sign. Gideon had spread a fleece on the dry desert ground one night and asked God to prove He was listening by making it wet. When Gideon woke the next morning, the fleece was soaked. I attempted a similar experiment by placing my dry handkerchief under my bed one night, but when I checked the following morning it was as dry as when I had placed it there.
The sisters would wake us at six and we would file down to the chapel, which was by far the coldest part of the convent. Through the winter, the pews were permanently covered in a waxy frost and we could always see our breath. During Mass, the nuns allowed us to wear the blankets we had been given for the journey. We wrapped the scratchy brown covers around ourselves and must have resembled rows of miniature monks kneeling in prayer.
None of us looked forward to chapel very much, particularly in the morning as our first prayers were before breakfast and most of us had only slept for a few hours. The rumbling of our little bellies echoed as prayers were recited.
The rhythmic chanting of the Salve Regina and the response of ‘Ora pro nobis’, which we repeated again and again would make our sleepy eyes even heavier.
Yawning during these prayers was severely frowned upon and any child who appeared excessively somnolent would receive a stern look from one of the nuns. Serial and habitual yawners were sanctioned with earlier bedtimes.
I became fascinated by the echo in the chapel. It could make the voice of one nun sound l
ike three, and the small choir of sisters sound like a chorus of many. I concluded that the acoustics must make it easier for God to hear, but wondered whether He might be bored listening to the same sacraments recited repeatedly, day after day. I also wondered whether God ever yawned. I asked Him, but as usual received no answer, then felt guilty about having wasted the Holy Father’s time with such a flippant question.
One afternoon we were called to congregate in the refectory. Sorella Maddalena announced that we would be forming our own children’s choir. This news was met with a mixture of apprehension and excitement as the process would involve an audition.
We all knew the words to the Ave Maria as we had heard it recited so often, so one by one we were called to the top table to sing it as best we could. We all passed. The bar had not been set very high.
Our first few rehearsals made Sorella Maddalena wince, but after several sessions of diligent practice we became rather more melodious.
‘Brave! Brave!’ she said. ‘You are singing like angels!’
The Feast of the Immaculate Conception, held on 8 December, was the most important day of the year for the sisters. Careful preparations were made and our choir was schooled and polished until we were word and note perfect. We were even allowed to miss midday prayers two days running in order to rehearse.
Sorella Maddalena flushed with pride as we sang in pious unison in the chapel. We even staged a concert for the elderly nuns later that day in the refectory. Old Sorella Brunilde screamed that we sounded like strangled cats and had to be ushered out firmly by two of the younger nuns.
But the day after the concert I awoke voiceless and with a searing pain in my throat. I tried to ask Maria to fetch one of the sisters, but no sound came from my mouth. I was moved immediately to the infirmary.
I had caught a fever. Until then I had coped remarkably well with being away from home, but the fever made me so poorly, miserable and homesick that I prayed I would die of it. Not even my dolly, who had been reduced to a sweat-soaked rag and had lost her one remaining arm, could comfort me.
Sorella Maddalena came several times each day with bread and broth, which I could barely swallow as my throat was so sore. She was my only companion as I lay quarantined, but despite her soothing words and the cooling, damp cloths with which she dabbed my forehead, I was inconsolable.
She took me from my bed, sat me on her lap, wrapped her skirts around me and cradled me, singing soft lullabies. She didn’t seem to mind the slimy stream which dripped from my nose and left a long, damp smear on her scapular. I nestled against her, feeling the warm roughness of her woollen habit and the soothing cadence of her songs. The love I felt from her was deeply maternal. Although I was grateful, it made me miss my mother terribly. In a fit of pitiful weeping, I told her that I wanted my mother.
‘Of course you do, my love. And she wants you. You will see her again soon enough. You just have to be brave in the meantime.’
Despite her words, bravery was something I could not muster.
‘I miss my mother too,’ she told me. ‘It’s been five years since I last saw her.’
This only made things worse. Five years was most of my life! The thought of that amount of time away from my parents was unimaginable. I shuddered deep in my heart.
‘Won’t you ever see her again?’ I asked, my voice cracked and thin.
‘Of course I will. But my family live a long way away, right up in the north, near Austria. It hasn’t been possible with the war.’
‘If I can’t go back to my parents, will I have to become a nun, like you?’
Sorella Maddalena smiled. ‘You will go back to your parents, my love. And whether you become a nun one day will be entirely your choice. Nobody is forced to take vows nowadays. It will be up to you.’
‘Why did you become a nun?’
‘I chose to give my life to God because I think it will be better spent serving Him, the poor and the sick, than living a secular life.’
‘How did you know that’s what you wanted to do?’
‘That’s a very clever question for such a little girl to ask,’ she said. ‘Giving one’s life to God is a calling and an enormous commitment. It’s like a marriage.’
‘A marriage to God?’
‘Yes.’ She raised her left hand and showed me a little silver ring on her fourth finger. It was no thicker than a piece of wire. ‘This ring is a symbol of my marriage to God,’ she said.
‘I think God must be very happy to be married to you. You’re very pretty.’
Sorella Maddalena kissed the top of my head. ‘God doesn’t mind what any of us look like,’ she said. ‘We are all perfect in His eyes.’
*
I was ill for over a week, but finally my fever subsided, my throat healed and I was able to find a glimmer of my usual stoical cheeriness. However, my illness had left me weak, and overwhelmed with a craving to eat meat. Our meat rations had dwindled to almost nothing and the focus of my food fantasies had shifted from jam and preserved fruit to chicken and ham.
I prayed hard for meat. I knelt in the chapel with my hands clasped so hard that my knuckles turned white. I explained to God that I was not being selfish and asked that please, could He provide some meat – of a decent quality and not just some slimy bit of offal in soup. I wanted meat into which I could sink my teeth. I wanted meat which I could feel in my mouth and chew.
My obsession with it grew and I even wondered if it would be possible to trap some of the crows which landed in the convent garden. Zia Mina had roasted pigeons before and although I had not been particularly keen on their gamy flavour at the time, now the thought of them made my mouth water.
It was two days before Christmas when my prayers were quite miraculously answered. An old man and a young boy appeared at the convent. They were hardy, red-faced mountain people, dressed in furs and animal skins. Between them they carried the carcass of a wild boar, which was tied to a stick by its feet.
There was such jubilation at the arrival of the animal that we girls and even some of the nuns wept and we were called to the chapel to give thanks.
The boar was mounted on a spit and roasted for fifteen hours. We gathered around the fireplace in the kitchen, taking turns to rotate the spit as the animal browned and crackled. Its scent wafted through the building, cloaking the smell of damp with a mouth-wateringly meaty aroma.
On Christmas Eve we had a feast of roasted boar, bean stew and mashed potatoes. The meat was so tender that we could cut it with our spoons, and it was so succulent and flavourful that the pleasure of eating it made our heads spin. The dish was followed by a pudding made with rice and something which was almost like jam. By the end of the meal we were food-drunk.
Many of us struggled to stay awake during midnight Mass, partly because it was hours past our normal bedtime and partly because we were suffering from the effects of a hearty meal. The sisters did not seem to mind, even when they had to carry some of the younger sleeping children to their beds.
I finally had confirmation that God did listen and that He did answer prayers. I told Sorella Maddalena how I had prayed for meat.
‘There,’ she said. ‘I told you that God always hears your prayers. But He has a lot of people to listen to. Sometimes you just have to be patient.’
*
The only communication we had from our parents during the entire stay was just after the Feast of the Epiphany. One morning the nuns informed us that a delivery would be arriving later that day containing letters and parcels from our families.
The anticipation made emotions run high and many girls began to squabble. The sisters responded swiftly with threats of confiscation of the contents of any parcel received by the perpetrators. All differences were immediately put aside.
In the late afternoon as the light was fading the ration man appeared. Rather than food parcels, however, he lifted several sacks from the back of the cart. I had been talking to God more than usual that day, praying that there would be a parcel for
me. The thought of holding something which my parents had touched overwhelmed me with the desperation to be reunited with them.
When we congregated in the refectory, my heart was beating so fast that I hardly paid attention to the prayer of thanks which was being recited.
My friend Maria whispered, ‘If they’ve sent gifts, that means our parents are alive!’
I had been thinking the same thing.
As the chorus of ‘Amens’ faded, I raised my head and opened my eyes. Several nuns stood by the top table, each with a sack at her feet. We were told that each sister in turn would take a parcel and call out the name of the child to whom it was addressed. That child would go and collect their package and take it back to the table. No parcel could be opened until every child had sat back down.
The allocation of parcels was a long process and one wrought with anxieties as nobody could be certain that everybody had received a package. I glanced from child to child at my table. A little girl opposite me was the first to be called. She scuttled up to the top table with such excitement that Sorella Maddalena had to tell her not to run. She came back to the table clutching a box tightly to her chest then sat down, and breathing heavily, rested her head on her precious package.
I was waiting a long time whilst those who had been called shivered with excitement and those who had not stood in dread. I prayed with all my might that there was a parcel for me, confiding to God that my desire was not the selfish wish for gifts, but the longing for something which connected me to my parents. Anything would do. I wouldn’t care if all they had sent was a handful of gravel from our yard. So engrossed was I in my prayer that I did not notice when my name was called. It was only the poke of an elbow in my ribs, delivered by Maria, which roused me. Mine was the last addressed package to be handed out.
Paradiso: Utterly gripping and emotional historical fiction (The Paradiso Novels Book 1) Page 5
