Agata appeared at the door, her white smock knotted at the waist. She recognized him, even though his back was turned: it was him. She couldn’t move. James didn’t turn around; he was looking at the tree’s graying bark. Then he heard the rustle of cloth behind him and asked, in a loud voice: “So is this the historic bitter orange tree?”
“James,” she whispered, slipping the ring off her finger, and this time it was he who lost his voice.
Checchina was weeding around the fishpond and every so often she looked up, keeping an eye on the two of them.
“I’m here,” she said, in English.
“Are you ready?” he asked her.
Together they walked down the stairs. As they went past the fishpond, Checchina asked Agata: “What are you doing?”
“I’m accompanying him.”
“Where?”
And James answered: “To the harbor.”
“All right,” said Checchina, and resumed her hoeing.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The inspiration for the story I told in this novel came to me four years ago.
In those days, my knowledge of the monastic world was limited to the infrequent purchase, through the wheel of the cloister, of the biscotti ricci of the Benedictine convent of Palma di Montechiaro and the family stories of a female forebear, Aunt Gesuela. An unusual stay-at-home nun, she had underwritten the convent of the Boccone del Povero in Favara but she also never denied herself, every other year, a nice trip to Paris.
Shortly thereafter, I was invited by Francesca Medioli to talk to her students at the University of Reading, and I wish to thank her first, because on that occasion she gave me a gift of a fascinating piece she had written about a Venetian nun; in a note she referred to I misteri del chiostro napoletano, published in 1864, the autobiography of a former nun, Enrichetta Caracciolo. My second thank-you goes to her; I am indebted to her in particular for her descriptions of the ceremonials.
Let me also thank Alfredo De Dominicis for helping me to know and love his city of Naples in the only way possible: by talking and strolling through the city, as long as our feet held out. The memory of our walks together is indelible.
I would like to thank Gianbattista Bertolazzi and Piero Hildebrand for introducing me to the world of heirloom camellias.
My thanks go to Gaetano Basile for introducing me to the cloisters of Palermo with the evocative power of his stories.
I’ve read extensively about monasticism, and not only the monasticism of Southern Italy. I’d like to thank Father Anselmo Lipari–prior of the Abbey of San Martino delle Scale, respected university professor, and author–for our conversations and for what I learned from his books while I was gathering documentation on the various monastic rules; I would also like to thank in the same connection Luca Domeniconi and his team of Feltrinelli booksellers for suggesting so many interesting readings and David Bidussa, director of the library of the Feltrinelli Foundation, for his patient and unfailingly intelligent assistance in the selection of material about the Neapolitan and Sicilian Risorgimento.
Let me thank Uberto De Luca, my “long lost” cousin and connoisseur of the sea and of the history—naval and otherwise—of our island, for having meticulously corrected—and in part inspired—the descriptions of the crossings on which I sent my heroine.
My deepest and most heartfelt thanks to the abbesses and nuns of the convents I visited throughout Italy, from Sicily to Lombardy, some of them more than once. They allowed me to glimpse a life made up of work and prayer in which little and few become much and many, in which solitude becomes a communion with the outside world and the spirit rises above material things: there, love reigns supreme.
I thank Piero Guccione: meeting an artist of his quality was a gift. The beauty of his paintings has honored the covers of my books twice.
As always, last of all, a heartfelt thank-you to Alberto Rollo, Giovanna Salvia, and Annalisa Agrati. Not just for their unmatched professional dedication, but also because when I was tempted, the way that nuns are tempted, to go back to my old life, each of them silently made me understand that there is no longer a way back from the writing life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Simonetta Agnello Hornby was born in Palermo in 1945. Her bestselling debut novel, La mennulara, published in Italy by Feltrinelli in 2002 and subsequently published in twelve languages, was the recipient of the Forte Village Literary Prize, The Stresa Prize for Fiction, and the Alassio Prize. Since then she has published five novels. She has lived in London since 1972.
1 Let us die together, Yes, let us die: / My last word will be that I love you.
2 You make me old / You make me bitter / Oh, but I want a husband / Alone I cannot stay.
3 That flame still lives, and that affection pure; / Still in my thought that lovely image breathes, / From which, save heavenly, I no other joy, / Have ever known; my only comfort, now! [trans. Frederick Townsend]
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