The garden was the responsibility of the kitchen servants and a few lay sisters. The choristers looked down upon gardening with disdain, while Agata loved it; the abbess had given her permission to help Angiola Maria, who was the chief gardener. Each morning, the lay sister gathered herbs and flowers, added a fistful of lavender, and filled a little muslin sachet that she presented to the abbess—and now she made one for Agata, too: from under her shirt, there wafted a fragrant scent all day long. Angiola Maria had truly taken a liking to Agata; she taught her the properties of the medicinal herbs and she never failed to give her gifts of whatever herbs she thought Agata might like: fresh green beans to be eaten uncooked from the garden, pods of tender baby peas, a butterfly imprisoned in a glass flytrap, ladybugs as good luck charms in a jar.
One morning, Agata was walking past the kitchen on her way to the archives room with her perfumed sachet in her hand; Brida, one of the servant cooks, gestured for her to come in. She was a servant who was respected by one and all for her good disposition and her mastery of the culinary arts. Petite in size, she would have looked like a little girl if it weren’t for her wrinkled face, but she was a tireless worker: she carried the heaviest pots herself and worked into the small hours to make sure that bread would be baked for the morning meal, often a task that had to be put off to make room for the choristers’ pastries. Agata, who had worked in the kitchens as part of the process of her induction, appreciated the woman’s straight talk and the way that she worked with a smile on her lips; moreover Brida had a rich repertoire of aspirations for every situation. That day, however, the cook had a grim expression on her face. She said to Agata, without preamble: “I’d advise you to steer clear of Angiola Maria, it’d be better for you, and for everyone else.” Agata’s feelings were hurt. She remembered that her aunt had recommended that she be courteous with the serving-women but not to be too familiar with them. She gave Brida a scornful glance and continued on her way.
That same day, in the evening, Agata was in bed but she couldn’t sleep—she was suffering from a maddening itch on her chest and shoulders. In the silence she heard a subdued sound of people talking. She stepped out into the corridor and followed the noise to the cell from which it was issuing. She looked through the keyhole. A dozen or so novices had removed their habits and were trying out awkward little dance steps in their heavy mannish black leather work boots, preening and posing in their fine linen undergarments adorned with lace, embroidery, and silk ribbons, pointing out details to the other girls. Two of them, perched barefoot on the bed, were talking about life at court and the gossip that they’d heard from their married sisters, and all the while they caressed arms, breasts, and necks; then, with smothered giggles, they lifted their skirts and hoisted their sleeves to show off their naked flesh to long and knowing gazes. Agata was appalled and began walking back to her cell, practically on tiptoe, when she heard a door creak, followed by more giggles. She flattened herself against the wall, her heart in her throat.
The next morning, in the garden, Angiola Maria offered her the usual scented sachet: Agata accepted it and looked up toward the open door of the kitchen with a challenging glare, but she didn’t think there was anyone there to see her.
That evening, when she went back to her cell, she found three large cockroaches on the floor—the iridescent kind, black and green, with wings, deeply disgusting—and she shoved them out onto the balcony with tiny, fearful kicks. Then she wept with rage.
There were more and more cockroaches every day. Agata was suspicious of everyone. She had the impression that the novices were exchanging winks when she walked by them. She got into a bitter argument with an especially wealthy novice, who coveted the ambition to become abbess herself one day, and who saw Agata as a rival. She wanted the cell to which Agata had been assigned: she claimed that “the Sicilian girl” had no right to occupy that cell because her monastic dowry had been too scanty to cover the rent—at San Giorgio Stilita in fact the best cells were purchased and enjoyed by the nuns as a sort of annuity—and this novice had begun to incite other young women against her. One evening they ganged up on Agata in a corridor and shoved her into a broom closet. They forced her to kneel on the floor in front of them. They rubbed her cheeks with stalks of stinging nettle and heaped insults upon her. Agata started to feel persecuted. She walked timidly down the hallways and when she entered the archives room, she hurried past the kitchen: she felt as if they were looking daggers at her as she went by.
A short while later, an assistant cook fell sick and Donna Maria Clotilde, the prioress, transferred Agata back to the kitchens, where she had seemed to be reliable and hard-working. This time, Agata detected hostility from the other servingwomen and no longer just from Brida. One day she had to lift a pot full of boiling custard; she was given a rag to keep from burning her hand when she grabbed the handle, but it wasn’t thick enough. She asked Brida to give her another, and Brida tossed her an even thinner rag, shouting at her to hurry, otherwise the custard would stick to the bottom; in her haste, Agata scorched the palm of her hand and three fingers with the red-hot handle. They had to send her to the Sister Infirmarian, who treated the burn with tormentil root plasters.
That evening, Agata found a sheet of paper nailed to the inside of her cell door; on it was a drawing of a cross, her name written in crude letters, and a red silk thread wrapped round the pin stuck into the cross in place of Christ. From that day forward, both the cockroaches and the letters stopped, but instead of being relieved, Agata was still more unsettled: she didn’t know who had sent her the cockroaches and who had protected her with the exorcism or why.
She was troubled; she felt not the slightest vocation to become a nun and she couldn’t wait to leave the convent. June was almost over and she thought more and more about Giacomo.
The heat was oppressive even under the arches of the cloister, which were generally quite cool. The two months were almost up. Her mother had given no sign of coming and the abbess had no idea where she might be. No one in her family had written Agata or come to visit her, as if they had all agreed to turn their backs on her. When July 11th, the last day of the trial period, came and went, Agata was plunged into grim despair. The anonymity of the monastic habit weighed on her. The worldly chatter of the novices repelled her. The rigid schedule of each day unsettled her. She considered herself to be the victim of two clashing outside wills: the family that wanted her to become a nun and the conspiracy of serving-women and novices who wanted her to leave the convent.
Now even the Feast of the Assumption had come and gone, and there was still no sign of her mother. When she remembered the party for the Vara the year before, her intolerance of the cloistered life reached a fever pitch and Agata decided that the time had come to force the abbess’s hand. She had read a story about a female saint whose vocation had been strongly discouraged by her family; the young woman wore nun’s clothing and prayed all day long, but her parents refused to consent to her wishes. And so she stopped eating, refused to speak, and would not wash. In the end, her father allowed her to take the veil. Agata would do the exact opposite of the saint in the story. She told everyone who would listen that she was going to leave the convent. She went downstairs into the cloister with her sash wrapped tightly around her waist, to show off her hips and breasts, and with her hair hanging free and curly, to emphasize the fact that she was worldly and not part of the cloistered life. She wandered around the convent and sang as she worked, the way she had done in Messina. During the period of silence, she walked around the cloister dragging her feet; she’d shake out her beautiful chestnut curls and stroke her hair. The teacher of the novices, Donna Maria Giovanna della Croce, with whom she got along very well, had to tell her to tie her hair up in a bun. Agata ignored her, more than once; in the end she was forced to obey an order from the abbess, who demanded an explanation. But she refused to talk even to the abbess, except to tell her that she wanted to go home to her mother.
Then, she started f
asting.
12.
Two sisters-in-law discuss what to do
about their niece’s unhappiness
The boiled potato vendor had set up his stall and his little stove against the wall, near the front portal of the convent of San Giorgio Stilita. In the middle of the stall was a pot of boiling water and to one side was a pyramid of raw potatoes: underneath the counter was a large pot, tightly covered, and wrapped in a filthy rag. It contained the potatoes that the vendor had already boiled, ready for sale. An aristocratic carriage stopped at the street door, just as the man was lifting the pot to stir the foamy boiling water. A cloud of steam reeking of potato starch wafted over the Princess of Opiri; the vendor went on stirring his potatoes in the most complete indifference, unconcerned at the annoyance he had inflicted on the noblewoman and the cry of “Cover them!” from the coachman. Orsola covered her face with her fan and hurried into the front door. The abbess had summoned her to talk about Agata—it was urgent—and she was baffled: as they had agreed, she hadn’t set foot in the convent during the two-month trial period, and from the thank-you notes that Agata had sent her in response to her gifts—a saint-card bookmark and an article about St. Agatha that she’d found in a French magazine—she had supposed that her goddaughter was thriving.
The two sisters-in-law were sitting across from one another in the parlor, separated by the grate. They were distant relatives, and even though they didn’t resemble one another, they had the same nervous tic: at times of tension, they both raised their right eyebrow and blinked spasmodically while wrinkling their nose. It had been that exact trait—and not the profound religious sensibility that both women shared—that had persuaded the prince, who was extremely fond of his sister the nun, to ask Orsola to become his second wife. The abbess came right to the point: she was worried about Agata’s physical and spiritual well-being. She had hoped that after the first few days Agata would fit into the religious community and in fact that was what she thought was happening. After taking her into her own cell as a guest, she had given Agata a very nice cell of her own, all for herself. The abbess told her sister-in-law the various phases of Agata’s induction, which she had thought was going perfectly well—the first time she went downstairs to the comunichino, the first psalms sung together, the pleasant walks in the cloister talking about the Rule—and she wondered where or what she had done wrong with her; as she listened, Orsola was reminded of her own youth, when she had been a happy convent girl and, later, a novice with the Poor Clares, until her desire to take the veil instead of being married had been vetoed by her parents. The princess regretted not having become a nun after she was first widowed, and she listened distractedly. “Agata seemed to be getting along nicely with the teacher of the novices, she read all the books that the teacher gave her and she discussed them—in short, she was beginning very well.” The abbess paused. “Than all of a sudden, she changed, for no specific reason.” And her eyebrow bounced up and down. Agata preferred the solitude of the archives room to the company of the other young girls, with whom she’d had a series of disagreements and minor spats, and when that happened their niece took on an arrogant and dismissive tone of voice. The abbess had hoped that this was merely a passing phase and so she had kept an eye on her, in the cloister. With her, Agata was always affectionate but reserved.
Ever since the beginning of July, every time that Agata saw her, she would ask the abbess whether her mother had come back from Messina yet. She hadn’t displayed any emotions when the abbess told her that she had received no news either. But it soon became clear that Agata was deeply disappointed. She had begun to provoke the community by flaunting the more worldly aspects of her clothing, stirring up scandal. During the last week, she had veered to the opposite extreme: she neglected her grooming, becoming slovenly and even outright filthy. She stopped eating. She attended the divine office only reluctantly, she strode rapidly along beneath the porticoes, hands clenched behind her back, like a man. “These are symptoms of an imbalance, perhaps a mental illness, and something must be done,” the abbess concluded. She chose not to say anything more, to keep from upsetting her sister-in-law whose breathing was starting to become labored.
They needed to decide whether to await Gesuela’s return or intervene immediately and remove Agata from the convent. The two women decided to ask Michele, the prince, to convey a message through court personnel to their sister-in-law and to her brother, the Baron Aspidi, the only person Gesuela would listen to; they would reconsider the situation the following week. But Orsola seemed reluctant to leave. Weeping softly, she told her sister-in-law how deeply she desired the monastic life and how fond she had become in the last few months of her newly acquired niece, whom she had treated as a daughter. Orsola’s heartbeat was beginning to race and drops of perspiration were pearling her brow. The abbess could hear her panting anxiously.
“Here, take this, it’ll do you good,” she said, and she turned the wheel.
Against the iron background there appeared a tray with a glass of cool lemonade and a crunchy warm puff pastry.
13.
End of August 1840.
The betrayal of Donna Gesuela Padellani
Agata waited hopefully for her mother. She had washed carefully and dressed painstakingly, her hair parted in the middle, covering both ears and then joined in the back into a bun on the nape of her neck. The evening before, the abbess had walked into her bedroom to inform her of the visit and to urge her to clean herself up. Agata’s face had lit up and when the abbess left, she’d caressed Agata’s cheek.
Donna Gesuela walked into the parlor with a bold gaze and a confident step—her handsome face was grim. Her brother had obliged her to cut short her stay with her relatives in Palermo because a court functionary had urged him to arrange for her to go immediately to Naples. She listened with annoyance to what her sister-in-law had to tell her.
The abbess conducted Agata out of the cloistered area and into the parlor; her mother coldly extended her hand for the ritual kiss. Agata covered her mother’s hand with tiny kisses, and then she burst into subdued sobs. She told her about her misery at the hands of the novices, the hostility of the serving-women, her yearning for freedom.
“Now, now, calm down, the first few weeks went so well . . . ” The abbess put her arm around her shoulders and comforted her: “Why don’t you tell us what happened, just tell us and we can help you . . . ” Agata stood up, dropping her mother’s hand; her mother hadn’t said a word. Agata asked, hesitantly, if she could be left alone with her mother; the abbess complied.
Standing before her mother, she begged her to take her away from the convent: she was certain that she didn’t feel the calling. She’d given it her best effort, but she didn’t have the vocation. She was born to live in the world; if she wasn’t destined to be married, she could work as a governess or a schoolteacher and she wouldn’t be a financial burden on her. She seized her mother’s hand again and began kissing it. Her mother, saddened, stroked Agata’s hair. Just then, Angiola Maria and Sarina entered the parlor with a tray of pastries and biscotti. Agata had been obliged to step aside, and she couldn’t wait for the two of them to leave but, after the customary exchanges of compliments and greetings, they began pouring out praise of Agata’s skill at recognizing medicinal plants and the diligence with which she studied. Instead of encouraging them to go away, Donna Gesuela was indulging them. At that point, the bell of Sext rang. Agata’s mother leapt to her feet and said that she had to go to church; she promised to hurry back immediately after service and with a strained smile she left the room.
The lay sisters had conducted Agata back into the cloistered section and had then gone off to recite the Aves and the Paters. The nun concierge had followed them into the cloister. Agata stood at the door; she watched her mother until she vanished from sight. She returned to the vestibule and was about to go inside when she noticed a line of ants crossing the pavement of the portico. Instead of cutting straight across the floor, t
aking the shortest route to reach the wall up which they then climbed to follow the curve of the arch, the ants crossed the pavement diagonally, forming a sort of zigzag along the edges of the cobblestones and, in confusion, they wandered off along cracks that led them down blind alleys, only to retrace their steps. Agata was sort of half-hypnotized by that moving enigma. Then, all of a sudden, she understood. Like the ants, ever since her father’s death, her mother had been pushing her along toward the cloistered life, without ever coming right out and stating it, but by making her life at home deeply unpleasant, by isolating her from her sisters and her relations, by planting seeds of fear in her of the future and of poverty, depriving her of the pleasures of music and singing, and by sabotaging her love with Giacomo—just like that mad zigzagging line of ants. She had oppressed her with predictions of imminent financial catastrophe; she had isolated her from the family in order to make her more willing to accept the cloistered way.
Now she understood why, whenever her mother went to lunch or just to visit with relations, she took Anna Carolina with her and left her, Agata, at home, with orders for Nora to serve her leftovers; why she was not allowed to go see her Aunt Orsola or even her cousins downstairs; why she had forbidden her to write to her sisters in Messina and to spend time with Sandra; why she had restricted the time Agata was allowed to play piano with the excuse that it bothered the neighbors, and why she had forbidden her sisters to write to her or to go see her in the convent. Agata would talk with her mother when she came back. She looked up at the sundial on the wall of the church. An hour had passed. Mass was over. The rustle of habits dragging on the floor told her that the nuns were returning, in silence, from the divine office, ready for lunch. Then, silence. Agata feared the worst. She shouted and went into her first convulsion.
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