O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes!
Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all thy commandments.
I will praise thee with uprightness of heart, when I shall have learned thy righteous judgments.
I will keep thy statutes: O forsake me not utterly.
Every so often, the abbess looked sidelong at the cardinal. He was on the threshold of the choir, lips compressed, with eyes only for Agata.
24.
April 1845.
On the verge of her simple profession,
Agata withdraws but then gives in
Her mother had not replied to the letter the abbess sent her to inform her that Agata, after a conversation with the cardinal, had been accepted for her simple profession and, at the same time, to urge her to bring to conclusion the negotiations for the payment of the monastic dowry.
But when Aunt Orsola heard the good news, she went to the convent to congratulate Agata, accompanied by her brother the admiral. Not only did he renew his offer of a thousand ducats towards Agata’s monastic dowry, he declared that he was willing to contribute seven hundred ducats more for the reception. Agata’s aunt told her that her mother had not only set aside money for the dowry, but now she fully approved her decision to become a nun—once again, and without providing explanations, on one condition. Agata’s simple profession was no longer in doubt.
In the long years of cloistered life, Agata had regressed to the world of her childhood—preordained by adults, in which obedience is an absolute requirement—and she had gained access to a spiritual world in which prayer was a step leading upward toward peace. She had diligently read everything available to her, from medical science to theology, and she had been scrupulous in her sacred readings. Outside of that scrupulous devotion, Agata wavered between the hope that she would be visited by her calling—and in that hope she was greatly aided by The Imitation of Christ, four slim books by a medieval monk, Thomas à Kempis–and the certainty that she wanted to live in the outside world and find love, like the Bennet sisters.
It was in fact over love that Agata was tormenting herself. She loved God. But she also wanted the love of a man, she wanted to have children, she wanted a love made up of the kisses, caresses, and thrills that culminated in the union of two bodies. The closer the moment of her simple profession drew, the more it broke her heart to say farewell to her hope for a love that might lead to motherhood. The ineluctable nature of her monastic fate was, however, softened by her fondness for her aunt the abbess. It was for her that Agata was agreeing to become a nun. She darkened at the thought of what would become of her after her aunt’s death.
Agata was walking in the cloister. Regular steps, head bowed, hands crossed in front of her—apparently untroubled; but inside, tangled in the throes of turmoil over her mother’s unexpected demand: after ignoring her for all these years, now she wanted Agata to spent the last two weeks before her simple profession with her.
She was terrified at the thought of leaving the convent to go to stay at Sandra’s house, meet her relatives, see her mother and sisters again—things she’d yearned for over the years. She was afraid of the streets, the carriages, the crowds, the horses, the dogs, the cats, the ungrated windows, the sounds of the city. She thought about all she’d lose during those two weeks. She would be disoriented by days not punctuated by the canonical hours, she’d miss singing in the choir. As she had gradually reduced her expectations, she’d become accustomed to the tiny yet great pleasures of the cloistered life—waiting in expectation: would the eggs in the swallow’s nest in the rain gutter hatch? would the clusters of oleander flowers bloom? at dinner, would they serve the soup blended with tomatoes or plain? would the white butterfly fluttering over the castor-oil plant land on the back of her right hand or in the palm of her left hand? She’d learned to love the small things. She’d become accustomed to solitude. She trembled at the thought of chatty women and the idea that she would be forced to answer the inevitable questions. And the thought of being once again tempted by what she had so painfully learned to renounce—when she thought of that, Agata truly desired to be a nun, in full.
And so it happened. Agata began thinking of Sandra’s comfortable home, full of books and prints of Pompeii. And the pianoforte, which she’d missed so much and would probably no longer know how to play. And music. The harp, the violin, the oboe. The mandolin. And then dance. Now she slipped into her memory of the waltz, unforgettable. There she was again, in the alcove off the drawing room in the home of the Tozzis, dancing with James Garson; together they were pirouetting, beating time, following the rhythm as if they were a single body. She was ready for life. Just as during a lesson, when with a few vigorous strokes of the sponge she erased all the writing on the chalkboard, so too, with just a few sharp blows, Agata had wiped out all the years she’d spent at San Giorgio Stilita. And that wasn’t all. Giacomo Lepre no longer existed for her. It was James she desired now, excruciatingly.
In the pharmacy, Agata had just finished preserving a batch of white willow bark. An entire cartload had just come in from some of the convent’s farmland. It was a very painstaking operation. Once the bark had been rinsed and dried, she had to chop and dry it a second time to prevent mold. Then she put it into little sacks, carefully noting the dosage on each one: the sacks were sent to other convents and monasteries, in exchange for other medicinal herbs. The willow bark decoction was given to nuns with fevers or for the pain of rheumatism, but it was also given to young nuns suffering from carnal desires, as a sedative.
One evening Agata was so taken with her thoughts of James that she had to run back to the pharmacy to make herself a decoction of white willow bark. The sacks of bark had already been sent out and for the first time in her life, Agata found herself stealing. She took chasteberry to calm her nerves, a remedy that had been handed down by Armenian nuns. Then, curled up in her bed, she broke into sobs of shame and relief.
The peace of the cloister, so hard-won, became more of a burden day by day. Then, a yoke to bear. She avoided Donna Maria Giovanna della Croce. She psalmodized in the choir—and was burning to be somewhere else. She was in the middle of doing needlepoint, and she set it aside without even finishing the needleful. They gave her silver paper for her paperoles, and she rumpled it in her pocket. Everything that she’d always liked about the cloistered life she suddenly couldn’t stand. Agata only wanted to love and be loved by a man.
She spent her nights reading by candlelight, like a madwoman: first, the love story by Madame de Staël, the story of Corinne and an Englishman, in which the heroine was admired and feared by men, and therefore destined to a life of solitude. The novel explained Italy and the essence of Italians, and not just to foreigners. Then she read the books of Giuseppe Mazzini, which Tommaso had concealed in her clean laundry, for fear of police searches. The visionary thinking of this man opened a new world to her, a world that gradually became attainable and real; the world she’d always known receded before these unfamiliar images.
By day, Agata was the dutiful future novice, ready for the solemn moment in which she would pledge herself as a bride of Christ, but by night she was a clandestine reader of books outlawed by the king and placed on the Index by the Church. Every morning, she woke up with the taste of forbidden dreams. She was fixated with James Garson and the books he sent her. Agata felt a strange affinity with certain nuns that she’d always avoided till then or had chosen to ignore: each of them had found their own form of forbidden love, there, in seclusion. But she didn’t want to wind up like them.
Her simple profession was drawing closer. This lie she was living had become an intolerable burden. Agata couldn’t become a nun, she could no longer ignore it. She had to tell her aunt the abbess.
Donna Maria Crocifissa was indisposed. She sent for Agata as soon as Angiola Maria told her that her niece wished to speak to her. She was sitting on the terrace, which had been transformed into a veritable little hanging garden, filled as
it was with the round and rectangular terracotta pots in which Angiola Maria was capable of getting anything to grow. In that period, both oregano—which was particularly difficult to cultivate in a pot—and mint were flowering, in great profusion. A potted Japanese camellia, the Oki no Nami, “waves of the sea,” was at the height of its blooms. Against the background of the blistery foliage—a periwig of glistening green hair—there stood out, as if they’d been pinned in place, the full-bodied flowers with their pink petals, with white striations and edges; from the center of each projected, erect, a dense topknot of yellow pistils. Hypnotized by the opulence and the perfume of the Oki no Namis, Agata stood speechless. The abbess coughed to attract her attention. Agata hesitated, then spat out the words, brutally: “I don’t have the vocation, I don’t want to become a nun.” And she waited, in fear.
Her aunt covered her face with her emaciated hands and sat there, her chest heaving with sobs, her shoulders hunched forward, her head bowed. Her hands resembled the small, feminine hands of Agata’s father.
She would become a nun. And that was that.
25.
Agata spends the last two weeks with her family
before beginning her cloistered life
and she encounters James
It had been decided well in advance that Agata would leave the convent to go to the Aviello home on exactly June 3, 1845.
Ever since it had become clear to the people closest to Donna Maria Crocifissa that the abbess did not have long to live, Angiola Maria had paid closer attention to the gossip of the cloister and, through trusted servingwomen, had maintained contacts and exchanges with the outside world. Among the novices, a wide array of rumors were circulating—that Agata’s mother had been given a sharp discount on her dowry as well as favorable terms on the payment of the installments, that her simple profession had been moved up for the convenience of a very important visitor, that a foreign power was interested in her, and even that the cardinal had paid the monastic dowry for his young relative in full. Angiola Maria warned Agata of what she was hearing, and encouraged her not to let the backbiters and gossips embitter her; she stayed especially close to Agata, when she could, and she had made Agata promise to report to her anything odd that might happen.
The evening before she was scheduled to leave the convent, Agata worked late in the pharmacy to make sure that she left everything in order. Angiola Maria had urged her to go, assuring her that she would make sure everything was taken care of and that she would bring her an infusion of herbal tea to help her sleep.
Agata said goodbye to the abbess and the nuns she loved the best. She still had to fill her trunks with all her possessions: she was afraid that someone might rummage through her things if she left them in her cell. Suddenly, she remembered that she had forgotten to say goodbye to Donna Maria Brigida, her now demented aunt. She found her curled up in the arms of her favorite servingwoman, Nina, a small pile of bones in a nightshirt, like a little naked baby bird, slumbering as she sucked her thumb. When Agata went back to her cell, she noticed on the night table, next to little boxes of herbal teas, packets of officinal herbs, and jars of tinctures to take as gifts for her sisters, a glass with a warm amber beverage. She felt sure that this was a kind thought on the part of Angiola Maria; deeply moved, she decided to write her a thank you note immediately. It was a time-consuming task, and it absorbed her attention—she had to use very clear handwriting and simple words for the functionally illiterate lay sister: she didn’t hear the knock on the door, nor did she hear the door being opened.
Agata was trying to come up with just the right word. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to take a break and sip some of that herbal tea. She reached out and picked up the glass. Like a vise grip, a powerful hand grabbed her arm and another hand yanked the glass out of her fingers; she resisted the unseen aggressor and the glass slipped out of her grip, shattering on the floor. Now Angiola Maria, down on all fours, was gathering up the shards of glass and crying. Agata was completely bewildered. Then she noticed a tray on the bed, a tray that Angiola Maria had been carrying: on it was another glass of herbal tea, almost the same color as the one she’d been about to drink, and then she understood. There was someone who wanted to hurt her. Angiola Maria tasted a bit of the liquid that had spilled on the ground. “That’s poison. I have more than just an idea of who it might have been.” She assured Agata that nothing like this would ever happen again, she would put a stop to it. She stayed to help Agata close and fasten her trunks and she watched as she drank the herbal tea. It had a wonderful effect. Agata fell asleep immediately.
Agata and Sandra were heading for the Aviello home, riding in the enclosed carriage that Aunt Orsola had once again put at their service. Agata looked out the window without pushing the curtain aside; the world appeared opaque. She was curious, but she was anxious, too. Naples had changed, and it was prettier now. The gaslights along the streets, a system that the French had put in, had been inaugurated six years earlier; now all the main streets had their own handsome lamp posts. People were dressed in a fashion she’d never seen; everyone looked a little better off. Gleaming and sumptuous new carriages rolled through the streets, there were more shops, fewer beggars; many of the façades of the palazzi had been rebuilt and new buildings were under construction. Sandra gripped her hand tightly; she told her that her mother and Carmela were waiting for her at home, while General Cecconi would arrive next week from Palermo, aboard the steamboat Rubattino. Then she fell silent. Agata turned to look at her; her sister’s eyes looked dead.
The concierge of the palazzo in which the Aviellos lived opened the carriage door with a sweeping bow. Dazzled by the light glancing off the white stone façade, and intimidated by the sight of men loitering on the sidewalk and inside in the courtyard, Agata hesitated. Then Sandra took her by the arm and they started upstairs. Her mother gave her a hug as if she’d just left an hour ago; her only comment was on how tall Agata had become–and she really had grown–with no reference to the past or the future. Carmela, now quite the young woman, latched onto her sister and followed her around like her shadow all day. Agata saw the signs of the passage of time on the faces of all three women: her mother’s lovely body had filled out almost to stoutness; sumptuously dressed, the Generalessa–as she was now called–still cut a very fine figure, but every so often a shadow passed over her eyes, and she clutched her bejeweled fingers together as if she were trying to hurt herself. Sandra had lost weight. Sloppily dressed and tense, she seemed pensive; but when the two sisters’ eyes met, Sandra still had a ready smile. Carmela had become a blooming thirteen-year-old girl with distinctively provincial manners, distinctly similar to her mother’s.
Those two weeks were supposed to be the final test of a postulant’s rejection of the worldly life, but actually for the first week Agata lived a semi-cloistered existence. She wasn’t allowed to go out into the city, or take walks or carriage rides. She received a few visits from relatives curious about her dowry—she was thought of as Messinese and therefore different—but no one was really interested in her.
When no visitors were scheduled to come, her mother and sisters went out, leaving Agata alone in the apartment. She was glad of it, because she already missed her solitude. She hesitantly approached the piano, and played somewhat gingerly; little by little she gained confidence and familiarity, but she was still far from the fluency she had once possessed. She read everything that came within reach and, when they were alone, she talked with her brother-in-law. At the age of forty, Tommaso Aviello was a handsome man with salt-and-pepper hair. Agata remembered him as someone who believed passionately in the pillars of Carboneria—the equality and dignity of all Italians, united in a state governed by a constitutional monarchy—and who was proud that in 1820 the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was the first nation on earth to hold an election with universal suffrage, even for illiterates. She considered him a dreamer with his feet on the ground who managed to keep his sense of humor as well as a percept
ive lawyer who was able to analyze and solve even the most complicated situations.
But now, Tommaso was discouraged. He had hoped that the king might understand that he had a chance to unify the peninsula by expanding his kingdom northward. But instead the king had retreated behind a wall of surly isolationism and, unsure of the loyalty of the royal armies, he had humiliated his soldiers and officers by hiring mercenaries and running up debts with the Rothschild banking house. He had gradually undermined the liberties that had been won by his people, while his police and secret services increased their ranks and their power with their successes: Mazzini’s popularity was plummeting, the Giovine Italia, the movement that he had founded, had been unsuccessful in not one but three attempted insurrectional coups, and Naples was no longer the headquarters of the Carboneria. Tommaso was afraid that the movement to which he had dedicated his life was about to be stamped out throughout Italy.
Then Tommaso screwed up his courage and began talking about Gioberti’s Primato degli italiani, the possibility of a customs union and federation between the Italian states with the Papal State at its head—but the pope was a reactionary. “Something is going to have to happen, the people are suffering and nationalism can no longer be suffocated. Naples is still teeming with secret societies. The king, humiliated by the English who rule the seas and control all commerce, behaves like their underling—he must shake off their rule; he will do it!” Tommaso seemed hopeful. After a while, though, he plunged back into his dark pessimism. “The internal situation is precarious. Like so many others, I’m going to have to consider exile. I may go to Tuscany. I’ve lost nearly all my clients, and I have a family to feed.” More than once he told Agata that he mistrusted General Cecconi, who had once been a reactionary, and was now making gestures of interest in the Carboneria. He was certainly a police spy.
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