She opened her eyes, her vision was blurred. Next to her, she saw Dr. Minutolo, kneeling, and a knot of whispering nuns. The doctor was administering a bitter beverage and, with the help of Angiola Maria, he lifted her off the ground and carried her toward a wicker armchair with poles running through the armrests like a low sedan chair. Agata tried to struggle free of their grip: she didn’t want to leave the parlor. She was still clinging to the hope that her mother would come back that afternoon and she grew so agitated that it seemed as if she had gone into another fit. She wanted to be laid on her back on the ground and they complied with her wishes. Someone brought a pillow for her head, someone else brought her a glass of water, a third person gave her a tablet of sugar and mint.
Time passed and there was not even the shadow of her mother. Agata wept quietly. Two lay sisters entered at the abbess’s order to take her to the choir. Agata resisted, she was sure her mother would come back any minute. She shouted at the women: “I have to wait for her here, that’s what she told me!” They summoned the abbess. Agata heard her heavy footsteps and in order to forestall her, Agata dragged herself onto the prie-dieu in front of the image of the Madonna dell’Utria. She joined her hands in prayer.
“Let’s leave her alone: she’s praying. She’s getting better,” the abbess whispered to the two lay sisters, and they left together.
Agata had no other memories of that afternoon. She was told that after the divine office the abbess had found her lying face downwards on the pavement, breathing normally, before the miraculous image of the Madonna dell’Utria; the Madonna was smiling in the newly restored splendor of her jewels, surrounded by her glittering and traditional magnificence. That icon of the Virgin Mary, venerated with special devotion by the Benedictine nuns, had been gradually embellished over the centuries with golden ex-votos and precious gems—gleaming where they had been pinned to Her hair, Her neck, Her fingers, and the background of the painting, covering it entirely. Two years earlier, the most beautiful jewels had been stolen and never recovered. The abbess had done everything she could think of to remedy that sacrilegious act; she had even promised to forgive the nuns who had stolen the gems, but it had done no good. That afternoon, through Agata’s intercession, the Lord had persuaded the thieving nuns to return the jewels.
The nuns hurried from every corner of the convent to kneel by Agata where she still lay on the ground. Now however she’d been turned on her side and had a cushion under her head. The nuns were singing hosanna to the miracle, fruit of the prayer of the abbess’s niece. Some of the older nuns were singing psalms in their lovely modulated voices. Angiola Maria was wandering around at the edge of the crowd without arousing notice. She was listening. She was observing. There was no one calling the miracle into doubt. At that point, Angiola Maria ran off, exultant, through the laundry room, and a short while later the bells in the campanile began to chime in staccato—announcing to all Naples that a miracle had taken place in the convent of San Giorgio Stilita.
The vocation of the daughter of the late field marshal Padellani was officially confirmed and the neighborhood gazette reported the news at length.
14.
After the miracle of the Madonna dell’Utria,
Agata denies her vocation, falls ill, offends the cardinal, and finally leaves for her Aunt Orsola Padellani’s house
It was shortly before Matins, and there wasn’t a living soul in sight. The bell announcing that outsiders were coming rang down the hallways of the novices. Agata lay in a feverish delirium. She had lost consciousness more than once, and the abbess had decided to summon Dr. Minutolo once again. With the assistance of the sister pharmacist, Donna Maria Immacolata, the doctor bled the young woman and obliged her to drink decoctions that helped to lower her temperature. Agata began to fall asleep, and the physician left her in the care of Angiola Maria. He walked back through the maze of hallways, discussing with the sister pharmacist the potential causes of her malaise. At the sound of the ringing bell, the novices hurried to eavesdrop from behind their doors. Each novice had prepared a story of her own, true or untrue though it might be: Agata had had celestial visions, stigmata had appeared on Agata’s body, the Madonna dell’Utria was summoning Agata to Her side, in heaven. There wasn’t a novice, or a postulant, or an educand who wasn’t eager to congratulate her for the miracle and to verify in person her own version of what had happened. The stream of visitors in Agata’s bedroom began just after Matins and never slowed throughout the day.
Agata had started raving again; in the days that followed she refused both food and medicine, and as a result her fever spiked again. This time the doctor diagnosed a diffuse weakness of both body and mind. He prescribed total rest, ordering only very plain food and beef broth. To prevent visits, the abbess sent Angiola Maria to act as Agata’s custodian. In the meanwhile, news of the miracle had spread from the neighborhood to the entire city of Naples and had reached all the monasteries and convents. The Gazzetta di Nido e di Capuana reported it with sensational headlines and requests for meetings and audiences with the “miracle girl,” as Agata was being called, poured in from all directions.
A prisoner of the convent, betrayed and abandoned by her mother, Agata had fallen prey to events. She was rude and resentful with Angiola Maria, who, at the abbess’s orders, never left her alone for even a minute. Angiola Maria took it all patiently, murmuring, “My little miracle girl, my little miracle girl” in response to all Agata’s imprecations. Agata answered her in grunts of one syllable and for the first few days refused to get out of bed. She refused to wash, comb her hair, even to change her sweat-soaked linen. When she opened her eyes, it was only to stare at the blank wall across from her bed. She hated her body, which was by now the one and only thing over which she had any power. She deprived her body of nourishment and she hurt it, digging her fingernails into her arms and slashing the flesh of her thighs with an old tonsure razor, in a series of parallel cuts. She was visibly wasting away.
Dr. Minutolo was walking, lost in thought, along the portico of the cloister, dragging his feet as he followed the servingwoman ringing the bell—another victim of that disease, this time a young lay sister eaten up by breast cancer. He couldn’t resign himself to it. He slowed down in order to give two young nuns idling by the fountain a chance to hide from his sight. He passed in front of the abbess’s drawing rooms, which were usually closed. That morning she was changing the arrangement of the paintings in the first reception room in order to hang a new one, a gift from the queen. Hammer in hand, Angiola Maria stood at the top of a ladder braced against the wall by two lay sisters, waiting for the order to drive the nail, while two other lay sisters, on tiptoes, held the painting up with both hands, moving it slowly along the wall under the abbess’s sharp eye.
At the sight of the physician, Donna Maria Crocifissa left the lay sisters to go talk to him. Both of them had known nuns who had taken fasting to lethal extremes, and she was determined to avoid having that happen to Agata; they spoke in hushed voices about the best course of action and agreed that a change of air might be beneficial: Agata would go to stay with her Aunt Orsola as soon as she received permission from her mother. Otherwise, the abbess would be obliged to ask the cardinal’s authorization.
Dr. Minutolo resumed his walk and the ringing of the bell echoed through the cloister. The abbess went back to her unfinished task. “Move it just an inch to the right, and then it’s perfect!” she ordered, but the painting didn’t move: both of the lay sisters were considering and elaborating what they’d managed to gather from the conversation that had just taken place, so they could repeat it to everyone else.
Agata remembered the cardinal’s smooth jet-black hair and air of power from when he had officiated at her father’s funeral. Sitting at the abbess’s small round table, he seemed smaller to her. He extended his hand, adorned with rings, to her and, after she kissed it, he kept her standing in front of him; he watched her, uncertainly, with a scrutinizing gaze that shifted from ben
evolent to hostile. The abbess was sitting to one side and was reading some papers.
“I’ve heard that you won’t eat. That’s wrong, my daughter,” he said, paternally. “Our Lord wants all the little nuns to be happy and healthy.”
“Your Eminence, I’ll try to eat.”
“Did you hear that, Donna Maria Crocifissa?” the cardinal then said, speaking to the abbess. “Your niece has promised to behave and to eat.” Then he turned back to Agata and repeated, aloud, in a threatening tone of voice: “You promised, didn’t you?” He looked at her, and his eyes cast a spell on her. Agata began to tremble and once again she lost her voice; she nodded, lowering her head repeatedly, without losing eye contact. After a time that seemed interminable, the cardinal lifted his arm as if he were going to bless her. Agata lowered her gaze, in a sign of respect. A hand grazed her cheek and then caressed the line of her jaw. A fierce glance upward and then an immediate reflex—Agata slapped that hand away vehemently. Astonished at the enormity of what she had just done, fearful, she awaited the inevitable.
“Forgive me, Your Excellence . . . ”
“Donna Maria Crocifissa, let’s go to see the sisters, they’re waiting for us. Agata has made a promise. She’ll stay in the convent with you.” The cardinal didn’t take his eyes off Agata’s emaciated, ashen face. Head bowed, she was staring at the cross on his purple-garbed chest, then up, up, to the Adam’s apple and the bluish bulge of the swollen vein, the smooth chin, the tight lips, the slightly aquiline nose. Until she came level with his gaze.
“You may go.”
Since then, Agata had persisted in her fasting. She wanted her mother and she asked for her every day. She denied her vocation and reiterated her determination to leave the convent. Her talk, after the miracle of the Madonna dell’Utria, was scandalous. Agata’s words clearly showed that she couldn’t tell fantasy from reality. For that reason, and also to accommodate her desire for solitude, the abbess allowed her to stay in her cell, while waiting to receive permission from her mother to send Agata to her Aunt Orsola’s house. But Donna Gesuela had left for Palermo without a word as to if or when she would return.
When she found that out, Agata began to refuse water as well. She tore at her hair, she tugged handfuls of hair out of her scalp. At that point, Aunt Orsola decided to step in and take responsibility; she took Agata home with her to Palazzo Padellani.
15.
Agata discovers that her mother wants to marry her off
to another man and decides to go back to the convent
Agata had assumed that when she went back to Aunt Orsola’s house, where she lived in the same room and had the same maid, she would resume the same life she’d been living, but it was not to be. The hairdresser, after grooming her aunt’s hair, no longer came by to comb and tease her ringlets. Her aunt no longer invited Agata to come with her to the singing masses and to Vespers in the oratories, which she loved so much. Now Agata had to listen to Mass in the palazzo’s chapel, sitting with the help and with the young daughters of her cousin the prince. She sat at her aunt’s table when there were just the two of them or when there were elderly guests. Otherwise she ate by herself in the small dining room. She wasn’t allowed to enter the drawing room when her aunt was playing cards. Relatives and female cousins no longer wrote or came to see her; in other words, Agata was as isolated from the rest of the world as if she were already a nun.
All the same, her Aunt Orsola lavished her with attention and affection. Every morning she rode out with her in the enclosed carriage and treated her to ice cream and sweets, which were served to them without their having to descend from the carriage, however. She encouraged Agata to spend her afternoons reading on the terrace, while Orsola played cards. The terrace had been carved out of the attic. It was quite deep and was surrounded by rooms on three sides, to ensure that its interior was entirely concealed from prying eyes—just like a cloister. Her aunt also allowed her to play the pianoforte. Little by little, Agata began to think of the future and even dared to hope; she was afraid to talk to her aunt about it—she knew that everything depended upon her mother, and she had written to her. She was awaiting her mother’s reply, but it was slow in coming.
Once, out the window of the carriage, she thought she glimpsed Giacomo in the Via Toledo: he had his back to her and he was entering a men’s clothing shop. From that day on, Agata fostered the belief that soon he would make himself known, and she let herself slip into a romantic daydream of her beloved. She secretly took books of poetry and tragedies by French and Italian authors from the shelves of the library; she lingered over the love scenes and the passages of great pathos, and she meditated over those verses as if they were versicles of the Psalms. She smeared onto her damaged skin her aunt’s fragrant bergamot pomade and twisted her hair into ringlets; in a few days she had become beautiful again, if shockingly skinny.
The only family member that Agata was allowed to see was Sandra, but only in Palazzo Padellani, not at the Aviello residence. With the enthusiasm and recklessness of youth, Agata talked to Sandra about the books she was reading. Sandra, the best educated of her sisters, told her that some of her favorite books were the heroic tragedies of Corneille. Horace, in which the three sons of the Roman Publius Horatius challenge and defeat the three Curiatii brothers from the enemy town of Alba Longa, thrilled her: the sole survivor of the duel, Horace, is scolded by his sister Camille, the bride of one of the Curiatii brothers, for having failed to put family loyalty before love of country, whereupon he, in a fit of anger, kills her. The father defends his fratricidal son before king and populace, upholding the defense of love of country, and the Roman people decide to pardon their hero. “St. Paul is right, when he says that man was not created for woman, but woman for man,” said Sandra, and she explained to her sister, exalting it, her role in supporting the work of her husband the Carbonaro: she, as a patriot, accepted without complaint his long absences, when he was away from Naples on secret missions, and the cost in terms of financial comfort. “But don’t you miss him at night?” Agata asked. “No, it’s so wonderful when I finally see him again, and I can feel that I’m worthy of him because I too am contributing to our cause.”
Agata thought again about Horace’s sister. But if a woman falls in love with a man who then becomes an enemy of her nation, how can she accept the need for her own brother to kill her beloved? she wondered. Then she said to her sister: “Shouldn’t her brother be aware that he’s killing his sister’s husband? Couldn’t he spare his life?” At that, Sandra exhorted Agata to abandon that attitude, so unworthy of a modern woman: “What you are saying would make it impossible for any woman to rise to become a true patriot. Tommaso always says so: a patriot’s woman must remember that certain sacrifices are necessary in order to attain a given higher end: the unity of the nation and the good of the Italian people.” And Sandra told her, stating first and last names, about mothers who encouraged their sons to take part in uprisings and expeditions of liberation in the sure knowledge that they were sending them to their deaths. “I don’t understand. I’d prefer to go into war myself rather than send my sons,” Agata replied. Sandra replied: “All the same, it happened, after the French Revolution, with the Société des citoyennes républicaines révolutionnaires, in Paris. But it didn’t work. We women are different from men.” Her sister decreed, with satisfaction: “St. Paul was right.”
At long last, one morning the Princess of Opiri received the long-awaited letter from her sister-in-law. She insisted on reading it out loud to Agata in the presence of Sandra, who had in turn asked her husband to accompany her. The letter was brief; Gesuela thanked Orsola for taking care of her daughter and ordered Agata to board the next mail boat for Messina and to bring all her summer clothing with her. She also commanded her to go with Sandra and buy whatever light muslin she liked for an elegant outfit. Agata rejoiced: her engagement! She regretted ever having thought ill of her mother, who had been far away, working to secure her happiness. She embraced h
er aunt and her sister, and broke into a slow pirouette on tiptoe, murmuring the words to the sweet melody of La Barcata, “the river runs down to the sea, flowing away like life, stretched out on the stern in a dream you think that the journey will never come to an end . . . ” At every turn, she spun faster, her grey petticoat whirling outward and swelling as she expanded into a dazzling smile. Then, exhausted, she threw herself into an easy chair, arms thrown wide. Sandra’s face was as puckered as a prune. “What’s the matter? Don’t you understand? I’m going to be engaged to Giacomo!” Agata shouted at her, and she turned to the other two for reassurance. She understood from their faces. At that point, her sister felt obliged to tell her the truth. Amalia had written to her in confidence, informing her that Giacomo had officially announced his engagement to the girl that his parents had chosen, and that their mother had arranged two marriages: one for Agata with the elderly Cavaliere d’Anna, without any dowry required, and her own with General Cecconi, who was stationed in Palermo, where she would go to live. Agata listened, and as she listened she tucked up her legs and curled into a ball in the armchair: with her back pressed against the armrest, she stuck her thumb in her mouth and sucked on it like a newborn. Her blank gaze was fixed on the flowered majolica tiles on the floor.
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