By My Hand (37 page)

“So what's new this year?”

The nun was thrilled at this display of interest on Ricciardi's part.

“I go on working on it until Christmas Eve, even when it's already open to the public. This year, working with the materials and tools you see on that workbench, I added a hill. I arranged sheep here and there on it, and I added three houses, with two lightbulbs, you see them? I'm still not done. I'm finishing gluing on the moss, but we're almost there.”

As she danced on tiptoe pointing to the places she was describing to Ricciardi, Sister Veronica seemed like a little girl. Her voice, already piercing, had risen even higher, accentuating the impression that she'd regressed to a child's age. Suddenly she stopped and regained her composure, seeming to remember whom she was talking to.

“Forgive me, Commissario. Whenever I talk about the manger scene, I lose my head a little bit; it's just that I love it so. It represents the triumph of faith in everyday life, with the symbols of our beliefs mixed in with everything that happens around us. It helps us to teach children that God, the Madonna, and all the saints can see us at any time, no matter what we do, and therefore we must act in accordance with their will, even when we think that we're alone.”

Ricciardi listened, his hands in the pockets of his overcoat, his eyes fixed on the face of the diminutive nun. He could still feel the fingers of the woman's sweaty hands on his own.

“You're quite right, Sister. Everyday life conceals any number of things. We know that all too well ourselves, sadly, dealing as we do with the things that human beings do to their fellow men. In fact, that's why I'm here. I have a few questions I'd like to ask you; I have a theory about just who might have done this terrible thing to your sister and her husband. Is the little girl all right? Where is she right now?”

Sister Veronica shrugged.

“She's sad, some of the time. She doesn't talk about it, but it's clear that she's thinking about her home, and her parents. But as long as she's here—with me, with my sisters in God, who all love her, and with her classmates, with whom she plays and has so much fun—she's perfectly safe. Of course, now it's Christmas, the holiday of the family. She even wrote the little Christmas letter to her mother and father; she thinks they're traveling, and we pretended to mail it to them.”

Ricciardi heaved a sigh of relief. At least he wouldn't have to carry that burden on his conscience. The nun went on speaking.

“But you were telling me, Commissario, that you have some idea about who could have been responsible for this horrible crime?”

The commissario walked over to the manger scene, so that he was standing next to the Grotto of the Nativity.

“The other time, when I came here to talk with your niece, you scolded a little boy who hurried past an image of the Virgin Mary without crossing himself. Do you remember?”

The woman was standing by the workbench where tools and materials were laid out and, as she went on talking to Ricciardi, she started to test the thickness of a piece of cork glued down less securely than the others. She smiled.

“Certainly I remember. That was Domenico, a little rapscallion, he always runs in the hall, though I've told him a thousand times not to do it. He's not bad, though; he's just a child.”

Ricciardi nodded, his eyes fixed on the Holy Family.

“Of course, a child. Still, it made me think about the importance of sacred images, about their worth. The failure to honor a sacred image, as you said on that occasion, is a terrible sin.”

Sister Veronica had changed her position somewhat so that she could go on handling her tools and still look at Ricciardi. She was closely following everything he said.

“That's right, exactly right. But they're just children, Commissario; it's hardly right to punish them past a certain point, don't you agree?”

The commissario picked up the figurine of Saint Joseph and hefted it in his hand.

“But what if an adult intentionally failed to honor a sacred image? Or what if, worse still, they deliberately destroyed one?”

The woman watched, petrified in horror, as the policeman threatened the safety of her Saint Joseph.

“Commissario, what are you doing? Put Saint Joseph back immediately! You have no idea how much that piece is worth!”

Her voice had become even more shrill than before; it was if the nun had shards of glass in her mouth.

“What would you think of me, Sister Veronica, if I were to hurl this statue to the ground and shatter it into a thousand pieces?”

“Don't you dare! Don't you dare! You don't even have the right to touch it! Put it back this second!”

Ricciardi didn't bat an eye.

“But that's exactly what I intend to do. I can do it, seeing as you did it yourself.”

The nun, her face disfigured by rage, emitted a high-pitched scream that sounded like a sharp blade scraping across a slab of sheet metal. With a sudden lunge, she grabbed a long, well-honed knife from the workbench and drew it back to launch herself at Ricciardi, but a strong hand seized her arm.

She turned around and found herself face-to-face with two hundred and sixty-five pounds of out-of-breath police brigadier.

“I wouldn't do that, Sister. If I were you, I wouldn't do that.”

N
ow she's calm. She's talking, and her voice and her thoughts are at cross purposes, and they echo in the minds and hearts of Maione and Ricciardi.

 

I didn't break it! I didn't throw it to the floor, you understand? I'd never do such a thing, and since then I've prayed day and night that no one up in Heaven should ever think that I did it intentionally.

To break a sacred image, me of all people—why, I'd never do such a thing. It fell, I dropped it, because of these cursed hands of mine. It slipped through my fingers, it hit the ground, and it broke, may God in Heaven forgive me.

Only for that one thing do I ask the Lord for forgiveness. Not for the rest. The rest was justice. The rest was the right thing to do. The Madonna in person told me so; even with all the pain from the swords in Her heart, She told me Herself that the time had come to do it.

You must listen to me. I have to tell you everything, down to the last detail. I'm not interested in your forgiveness, let me be clear about that: or even your comprehension, as far as that goes. I just want to tell you my story so that you understand what happened, so that you learn how a respectable person ought to behave.

Because I'm a nun, you understand? I'm Sister Veronica. I'm the nun who makes the manger scene, the little nun with the big brassy voice like a trumpet; I'm like a fairy godmother, the children all adore me. And I adore them back. Children are my mission, that's why the Madonna summoned me in the first place.

 

Suddenly, her face is transformed; it becomes sweet and devout, like the faces of the saints on the saint cards that women kiss and men keep in their wallets.

 

I wanted children of my own when I was young. I wanted a family, with lots of children, born of true love. And I waited to meet the right man, I wrote poetry in my diary, and I even drew pictures of him, as best I could imagine him, because I dreamed about him from sunrise to sunset.

My mother always used to tell me, wait and you'll meet him, the father of your children. I'd say to her, Mamma, tell me, how will I know it's him when I meet him? And she'd say, don't fret, you'll hear a little voice inside you that'll tell you: it's him, he's really the one.

I waited. I spent every day preparing myself to be a good wife, learning to sew, wash, iron, and cook. If I never found him, I wouldn't settle for anyone else. I'd much sooner have no one at all.

My sister, on the other hand, thought only of herself; she brushed her hair and strutted around in front of the mirror like a peacock. That's the way she was, my sister.

And then one day I met him. My father worked at the port, he had a small company, I used to take him lunch when he couldn't get away to come home to eat; and that day, talking to my father in his office, there he was. Emanuele.

 

Ricciardi sees her regret, her melancholy. And he sees love, the ancient enemy.

 

He was an official with the port authority; the militia wasn't something they'd dreamed up yet. He was so handsome, you know? So handsome. He looked at me, I looked at him, and I heard that voice deep inside me, the little voice that my mother told me I'd hear: it's him, the voice told me. It's him, I said to myself.

My father didn't like him, he thought he was just a grabby careerist and a social climber. That he seemed far too comfortable handling other people's money. But I'd heard that voice inside, and from that day I thought of nothing else.

We would meet in secret. He'd tell me that I seemed like a little girl, and he'd smile. I was happy, like I'd never been before, like I'd never be again.

Then one day I came down with a fever. My sister went to take lunch to my father that day.

 

A cloud passed over her face. Not remorse, not displeasure. Annoyance, rather. A bump on the road, an inconvenient mishap. The vain sister, the stupid sister. The sister who won in the end.

 

I don't know what happened. I hadn't told anyone about him, because my father was opposed to him. My mother didn't know, my sister didn't know. But he knew, he knew perfectly well. But he pretended not to. He avoided me for the next couple of months, and then one night there he was, at the dinner table: my sister's fiancé.

I'd always said it: either the man that fate had chosen for me, or no one. The next night, as I lay in bed sobbing, I heard a voice deep inside me saying: then come to me.

It was the Madonna. That was Her voice: now I knew. She wanted me, even if no one else did, She wanted me. I entered the convent as a novice just a week later, and my parents put up no objections. But my sister had plenty to say: Didn't you want lots of children? she asked. And I told her: Yes, and in fact, I'll have lots of children. Lots and lots.

 

She was scary now, with that shrill little-girl voice and a grim expression, like a hundred-year-old woman. A shiver ran through Maione, who was standing behind her, ready to immobilize her again if necessary.

 

Several years went by, at least five. I went to their wedding, but I never went to see them. To see them happy together—no one could ask me to do that, except the Madonna, but She never did. My father died, my mother fell sick, but we nuns say that our family is the convent.

I learned that my sister was expecting a child. I went to see her. She was annoyed, angry, worried. She told me that she would turn into a cow, and that her husband's eye would wander, that he'd find someone else. That was all she cared about.

I told her that she'd surely end up in Hell, thinking and talking that way. That a child is the greatest possible blessing, that it was sheer sacrilege to complain. And she said: Fine, if you like children so much, why don't you raise it. And I said: Of course, I'll be happy to raise her. Because I knew she would be a little girl, and so she was.

 

The smile, a chilly, frightening smile. Or perhaps it's just the lights of the manger scene which looks like a distant city, and the air that's growing colder minute by minute.

 

It was a little girl, sure enough, and from the very beginning she spent more time with me than with her mother. My sister, you see, wasn't born to be a mother. She would always smile, she was courteous, and she liked to look at herself in the mirror, but she was good for nothing else.

You've seen Benedetta. She's like me. Serious, well-behaved, intelligent. She'd rather be here than at home; that's what she always tells me.

Everything was all right, no problems. I saw him only rarely, he pretended not to see me, the only reason he even said hello to me was to keep my sister from getting suspicious. Once or twice she told me: My husband doesn't want the girl to spend all her time at the convent. But he was working all the time and she was happy to be able to have the hairdresser come over or to go out window shopping.

Do you know that song, the one that talks about toys and perfumes,
Balocchi e profumi
? The one that makes everyone cry when they hear it? My sister was like the mother in that song.

But in the song, the little girl is alone and she falls sick, but I'm there for Benedetta. And so everything was all right.

Until, in mid-December, that devil in human form gets it into his head to make a manger scene.

 

She looks at Ricciardi, as if that were an explanation. As if that were enough to explain all that blood, all that pain. As if that were enough.

 

The manger scene, you understand? The manger scene, in that home. A depiction of the family in its holiest form, a depiction of faith and love, right there in that apartment. I said: A manger scene? Why on earth a manger scene?

My sister laughed, she laughed right in my face. She said: You're asking me why, you who spend the whole year thinking about nothing else, going around begging for donations, you who build yours piece by piece? And anyway, it's your fault that we're doing it, the girl is so in love with your manger scene at the convent that Emanuele has finally decided to put one up here. In fact, he told Benedetta that he's going to buy her one even more beautiful than yours.

 

She's started crying, a terrible sight. The tears are streaming down that face of an aged little girl, reddened and furious. Her voice continues scratching the blackboard.

 

*

 

I waited, and I prayed to the Madonna to pardon this blasphemous act. How could a man like him depict the Holy Family, a man who had discarded me, who had brought a daughter into the world who he didn't care about, a man who pretended he had forgotten everything that had happened between us? How could he? I prayed for her to forgive him, to forgive them. Believe me, I really wanted to save them. But one night the Madonna told me no, that the sin was too great. That the world couldn't be soiled like that, that the world had to be cleansed.