Agata stepped out of the carriage and hesitated: the staircase leading to the front entrance was not indoors; instead it opened out like an outspread fan and descended down to the square before it. The two women on either side of her urged her to climb the steps. Midway up the steps was a platform from which two other sets of stairs ascended; these steps too were semicircular and cone-shaped. One led to the convent and the other to the portico in front of the church. The three women climbed up to the oaken front door of the convent, which swung open before they could knock. The Chapter Hall was filled with choristers—there were a great many of them, all waiting for the new arrival. They made much show of the honorific title of “Donna,” but they struck Agata as so many bumpkins unaware of outside events. They knew nothing of the uprising in Palermo—Agata had referred it in order to explain her presence among them—or of anything not directly connected to life in Chiana, where nearly all of them had been born. They spoke a different variety of Sicilian from Agata’s Messinese dialect and, like her fellow sisters in Naples, they immediately and roundly mocked her accent.
During her stay in Chiana, Agata was treated by the monastic community with ill-concealed suspicion. For her part, she did little to win them over; she expressed lavish thanks for the infrequent courtesies she received and she diligently obeyed both the prioress and the abbess. During her leisure time, she retired to her cell or climbed up the campanile: the convent was lightless, and she felt a pressing need of open sky and sunlight. And yet, if it weren’t for her anguish at having completely lost contact with James and being unable to do anything to find out where he was, Agata would have gladly preferred the convent to her mother’s house.
*
In contrast with the convent of San Giorgio Stilita, at the convent of the Santissimo Sacramento the nuns followed Chapter 39 of the Benedictine Rule—which forbids eating the flesh of quadrupeds—and scrupulously respected all the requirements of abstinence and fasting. It was not just devotion that imposed their dietary regimen; it was poverty. The Santissimo Sacramento was a poor convent. During meals, there were always the canonical “three things,” and, on the days when it was allowed, a “fourth thing” as well. The dishes, however, were by no means lavish: the “first thing” was a watery soup, the “second thing” was a varied array of casseroles made with stale bread soaked in water and vegetables, sometimes with eggs, or with tiny scraps of chicken or fish; these dishes were cleverly inspired by the dishes of the high cuisine found in the wealthier Bendictine abbeys. A spoonful of pasta cooked in grape juice might constitute the “third thing,” while a slice of apple or orange might be the “fourth.” That cuisine, which was primarily composed of bread, vegetables, legumes, pasta, and eggs, was very tasty indeed; with the addition of the gifts brought by the faithful—milk, cheese, ricotta—and spices, which were plentiful in that cuisine, the nuns transformed the most humble ingredients until they were mouthwatering. Just before Lent, Agata tasted the best dried codfish she’d ever had in her life: baked with a filling of almonds scented with cloves and oregano from the Madonie mountains. The nuns provided for themselves with the help of their families, through charitable donations, and by selling biscotti that were famous throughout the district: the biscotti ricci, or curly cookies. All the nuns made the biscotti together. No one had a specialty of their own, the way they had at San Giorgio Stilita. The aroma of freshly made almond flour, mixed with vanilla—work that had to be done every day by hand, with mortar and pestle, in order to make sure that the baking released the scents of the essential oils—filled the corridors lined with cells and every room in the convent, finally wafting forth to blend with the acrid scent of the incense that invaded the convent through the grated windows.
It was time for Agata to choose a job. She thought of the pharmacy, but the sister pharmacist seemed to be nothing more than a habited sorceress—she cast spells to ward off evil and dripped oil into a basin of water to “read the oil” of the sick woman, rather than offering any treatment. In the small dark cloister, there was no garden in which to cultivate simples. Sometimes families brought unguents and medicines to sick nuns, but that was rare: faith was expected to heal all ills. And so Agata chose to make bread, as she had when she was a postulant.
Every day that passed only confirmed Agata’s initial impression: that the convent had remained anchored and faithful to the stern severity of the Counter Reformation. At the convent of the Santissimo Sacramento, the routine that punctuated the day was an integral part of the nun’s very being; there was not a single nun who tried to avoid common prayer, and they all sang in the choir with true passion. The mortification of the flesh, fasting, and ecstatic prayer were all practiced by many of the nuns and were considered by those who didn’t to be simple and straightforward forms of religious devotion. Agata had never encountered such a welter of spirituality as she found at the convent in Chiana. It became clear to her that there was really no difference between sacred love and profane love. This only encouraged her to abandon herself to her desire for James. Like her sisters in Christ, she trusted in James and his promise: soon they would be together—soon, and for the rest of their lives.
The nuns were passionately in love with their spouse, a beautiful and carnal Jesus. Scuffles and fights broke out over where to place the small icon of that Jesus during the recitation of the rosary when the nuns were working outdoors, over whose turn it was to dust the large crucifix on the steps and, in the Chapter Hall, over who was allowed to sit closest to the glass casket that contained a wonderful papier-mâché Christ, life-sized, with dreamy eyes, His head languidly resting on one arm, virtually naked, with only a thin cloth draped over His groin. In the chapel, they meditated upon a blond depiction of Jesus, with a trim little goatee and straw-yellow eyelashes, just like James’. And Agata let herself slip into desire, while making bread, without the slightest sense of guilt or restraint. She punched and kneaded the dough after the first and second risings, using first one fist, then the other to crush out the yeasty air; then she rolled the dough up into long cylindrical loaves, smooth, swollen, and glistening. She caught her breath, wiped the sweat from her brow with her sleeve, and went back to work. She lifted one loaf at a time and ran her flour-dusted hands over it to keep it from sticking to the wooden kneading board. Then she worked them all into a single lump of dough, without haste. She caressed them, squeezed them, folded them, and braided them together. When they were well amalgamated, Agata went back to her kneading–one fist inside, the other outside–and then rolled out the dough, only to repeat the process and work out the last air pockets. She kneaded the bread dough, thinking of only one thing: James, the way she knew him.
At the convent of the Santissimo Sacramento, the nuns were neither isolated from the village nor buried alive, the way they were at San Giorgio Stilita. The stream of gifts and notes exchanged between the nuns and their families was intense and entirely free of censorship, provided the nuns only spoke about it during recreation after their midday meal. They owned small plots of farmland outside the town of Chiana—part of their monastic dowry—and they went there to work and for their health: the convent was overcrowded, cramped, and sunless. In January, they took turns spending entire days on the land, harvesting oranges. Their faces covered with veils, they would leave the town by cart and then finish their journey on foot: like most Sicilian towns, Chiana had no passable roads. The garden, as Sicilians call their citrus groves, was surrounded by dry-laid stone walls, and stood not far from the white marlstone cliffs that reared up from sea. The sky was dazzling and bright from the excessive sunlight. From there, it was possible to look back at the hill and the town—a cluster of churches and monasteries huddled around two aristocratic palazzi built with yellow limestone, porous and wind-worn—and the ruins of the Norman castle, high atop the hill, looking as if it were melting back into the earth. Agata, like the other nuns, loved the garden; there had been plenty of rain on that coast of Sicily in December and the land was green. Agata gathe
red tiny meadow flowers, caressed leaves and buds, sucked on the tender stalks of wood sorrel; she drank in the tastes and aromas of Sicily—the scent of wild oregano, baldmoney, and pungent whiffs of rosemary. In February the nuns went on country outings to their almond grove, a large plot of land—part of the monastic dowry brought to the convent by a “burgisi,” the daughter of a large landowner—on the terraced ridge of a rocky hill, to celebrate the blossoming of the almond trees. There, on the south side of the island, the almond trees bloomed early. Indigenous to the Mediterranean basin, and considered since antiquity to be particularly healthful, the almond trees grew straight and erect on the fertile soil, and the plentiful pink blossoms completely concealed the grey bark of the branches. Other almond trees grew stunted among the rocks; they were short and angular, but they too, covered with dense clusters of pink blooms, were beautiful to behold. The nuns wandered from one tree to the next, exclaiming in wonder, touching the tiny white and pink blossoms, careful not to bruise them. Then, equipped with basket and knife, they tucked their habit and scapular between their legs, like peasant women, and went in search of the vegetables that grew wild: borage and Swiss chard.
During those outings the nuns had no contact with the secular world, except for the carters, who knew that they were expected to look straight ahead. But from the windows of the distant town, those black-clad figures were caressed by the loving eyes of mothers and sisters.
Visits to nuns in the parlor were practically a daily occurrence and the supervision of the deaconesses became three- and four-way conversations—everyone knew everyone else, in Chiana, and everyone was related. The townspeople considered the convent to be part of civil society: every sort of litigation—even those involving prelates and prominent citizens—was submitted for meditation or arbitration to the abbess, and everyone accepted her judgment. Sick children were brought to the convent to be given a healing prayer. Aside from people who came to the parlor to tell tales of woe, young newlywed couples would present themselves in order to receive the congratulations and best wishes of their relatives who were nuns, as did students who had successfully passed an examination or anyone who had had a piece of good luck. Newborns were brought here immediately after their baptism and when they were toddlers, ushered into the seclusion of the cloister to receive a loving hug from their aunt the nun. People came to talk, to laugh, to joke.
And yet the same nuns who enjoyed their country outings and participated in the lives of their families through the grate in the parlor, also employed sackcloth, self-flagellation, and fasting to attain ecstasy. One nun, during Lent, wore a painful rasped iron bodice that had been handed down in her family from one generation of nuns to the next. It was unusual but not unheard of for one or more nuns to immolate themselves by fasting for a serious and sacred purpose, such as the recovery of the Holy Father or perhaps a bishop.
Agata did her work, listened to the prayers of the choir, and then curled up in her cell to await James’ call. It struck her that, in spite of all their differences, the convent of the Santissimo Sacramento was simply an extension of the convent of San Giorgio Stilita: she felt as if she’d lived there for years. She wasn’t alone, she’d learned the habits of the solitary tignuseddu, the gecko that every day, around Sext, penetrated from outside and perched in the well of the little window of her cell, head down, watching her. Then, when the sun struck the facing wall, the tignuseddu quietly moved away, only to appear on the facing wall. From there, the tignuseddu continued to watch her, or at least that’s what she believed. Agata wondered how the lizard managed to reach the opposite wall: did it climb down and cross the narrow lane? or did it leap the five-foot gap? Or perhaps it sprouted wings like a bat, so that it could fly towards the sunlight.
As many had predicted, the uprising of Messina in September 1847 was not the only one. Still, no one could have ever imagined the strength and the popular support of the revolt in Palermo on January 12, 1848—the first uprising in the year of the revolutions that swept Europe—nor the sheer violence of the king’s reaction. From shouts for the restoration of the 1812 Constitution it was only a short step to angry demands for the independence of Sicily, and from there to the immediate, cruel, and disproportionate repression visited upon Palermo by the fleet of the kingdom, bombarding the city from the sea, killing and destroying, and stiffening the spines of the Sicilian revolutionaries, hardening a resistance that lasted sixteen months in conditions of partial independence.
In his haste to get Agata safely away from Naples, and not only because of his fear of political unrest in the capital, the cardinal had committed a gross error of political analysis. After the failure of the bombardment of Palermo, the king acceded with indecorous swiftness to the demands of the riotous Neapolitans by promising them a new constitution on January 26, thus restoring a provisional calm. The Sicilian uprising, in contrast, proved to be much more violent and stubborn, a genuine revolution. Communications between Naples and Sicily were interrupted, and the Sanctuary of Chiana was no longer safe.
The sole intermediaries between the illegal Sicilian government and the Bourbon administration were the British diplomats. James Garson assisted Lord Pinto, the British consul in Naples, and both of them shuttled between Naples and Palermo. Garson’s ships were among the very few vessels that set sail from Malta and passed through the Strait of Messina, undisturbed by either the rebels or the royal garrison that subjected the city to daily bombardments from the Messina presidio, which overlooked the Strait.
James was able to learn that Agata had gone to stay with her mother in Sicily, but the trail went cold after her stay with the Cecconis. One of his informers had said “too much” to a man who was close to the cardinal. Worried that he risked becoming persona non grata, James temporarily suspended his investigations of Agata’s whereabouts. The strategy of doing nothing had borne fruit: at the end of February the cardinal turned to him and asked him to help bring Agata back to Naples. James plunged into the work of preparing for the trip.
One evening after Compline, Agata found a Bible on her chair. Pressed between the pages of the Pslams was a dried camellia petal. She glimpsed a faint, small J alongside the words of Psalm 119: “I am thy servant; give me understanding, that I may know thy testimonies.” And she waited, trusting.
42.
The long journey to reach her beloved
The carriage conveying Agata to the loading docks of Licata rattled through the almond groves. It was a day of sirocco wind, murderous for the blossoming trees. With every gust of hot wind, the petals tumbled from the branches, fluttering and then falling to earth or lodging in the low stone walls. A wave of wind rushed through the open carriage window. A coat of pink and white petals covered her habit and veil: a promise of a wedding, soon.
It had happened all at once. The week previous, the abbess had received a visit from “important” people. She had cleared the parlor especially for this meeting, a place where two or three visits were normally going on at any one time. Then she had summoned Agata to her little drawing room. “They tell me that you speak English, is that true?” she asked her, torn between disgust for the language of the heretics and admiration. Agata confirmed that she did. Then the abbess wished to know if she would be willing to talk with the British consul at Girgenti, in English, in her presence, and Agata said that she would. Then the abbess told her that Cardinal Padellani had summoned her to return to Naples, but the English captain who would convey her there had requested proof of her identity and free will: the abbess’s word was not enough for him. “He wants to have this talk in English,” she muttered, the corners of her mouth downturned in indignation at such shamelessness. The convent of the Santissimo Sacramento was all abuzz; they wanted to knew where, when, and why Agata had learned English and all the rest. She explained the honest truth. Familiarity eliminated their mutual distrust and the few days that remained went by in an atmosphere of affectionate support. Exceptionally, the English consul, Mr. Stephenson, had been received
in the parlor. The abbess sat behind the grate to monitor the conversation; next to her, an employee from the consulate was acting as her interpreter. Agata walked into the parlor, uncertainly, her face covered by her veil. “I would like to ask you two questions,” the consul began, in some embarrassment. “The first is this: do you own a volume of John Keats?” Keats was a forbidden author. Agata hesitated; she’d have to think quickly. Was this a trap? The silence was intolerable. Then she raised her head and, looking him in the eye through her veil, declaimed, in a clear voice: “Dry your eyes, o dry your eyes, For I was taught in Paradise To ease my breast of melodies.”
“What did she say?” the abbess asked her interpreter.
“Nothing, nonsense. True Christians don’t engage in chitchat, because they have been taught that Paradise is in the sacred music.”
“Brava, Maria Ninfa, bravissima. You teach this heretic what it means to be a servant to God!”
The second question was in Italian: “Are you ready to leave?”
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