Nun (9781609459109) (3 page)

 

Agata raced upstairs four steps at a time and elbowed her way silently back among her sisters at the very moment that the Vara passed in front of the balcony. The third circle, the one with the constellations, was barely a yard away, and it was revolving like the stars and the constellations. The Sun, as large as a dinner table, had eyes, a nose, a large smiling mouth, and twelve rays. At the tip of each of those rays, a baby no more than six months old, with gilded wings fastened to its shoulders, was confined in a cage that enclosed its body while leaving arms, legs, and head free. Each baby's head was covered by a bonnet with curls that were also gilded. The rays spun in alternating directions: at that very moment, they changed direction and stopped right in front of the balcony. Less than a yard away, Agata found herself face to face with an array of screaming little angels, their faces deformed by terror; then the wheel began turning again and the noise of the procession drowned out the wails of the babies.

“Blessed angels of Our Lady of the Assumption!” “Little beauties!” “Holy souls!” commented the women.

“May the Lord bless them every one,” whispered Annuzza as she crossed herself. And then, speaking to Carmela: “See how pretty they are!” The heat of the afternoon sun had become an intolerable flame. Agata could feel herself going into a swoon; she shut her eyes and gripped the railing with all her might. Even the railing was hot; she clamped her fingers down hard, then harder, until she'd hurt herself. When she opened her eyes again, the Vara and the ravaged children were no longer there. Like a torrent in spring spate, the crowd thronging the street had closed ranks behind the sacred cart. The shouts of “Long live the Virgin Mary!” were deafening—to the faithful, that was the moment of utmost pride and religious exaltation.

Meanwhile, the Padellanis' guests already were buzzing around the sherbets.

 

After the procession with the Vara had passed by the house, it was customary for the field marshal, with the Marescialla on his arm, to lead all his guests to witness the end of the procession in the cathedral square. Followed by the officers from the garrison and the other guests, they created a smaller private procession within the larger one. Donna Gesuela slowed her pace to make it easier on her husband, who suffered from gout; she also took advantage of this opportunity to sashay and pivot voluptuously, scattering smiles in all directions. This gave the footservants a chance to straighten up back at the house, in preparation for the final refreshments. Moreover, it was the Marescialla's opinion that their guests, with the flavor of the sweets still in their mouths, would be less spiteful in the comments they might offer on the party to the people they chanced to meet on the street than they were likely to be the following day. After a good night's sleep, their guests were likely to make a special effort to come up with some detail to complain about. She knew her guests were always afraid that they'd be taken for unsophisticated bumpkins if they couldn't find some detail to criticize.

Agata did her best to break away from the festive group without arousing suspicion. She pushed upstream through the crowd and turned into a narrow alley where cobblers and knife sharpeners plied their trade. Not a living soul was around. The fourth door on the right had been left ajar.

They didn't exchange a word of greeting. Keenly aware that they were alone, they were afraid of themselves and each other. A feeble checkered light filtered down through the grated transom over the door; aside from that glimmering light, the little shop was shrouded in darkness. Agata looked around. The filthy walls were studded with hooks, from which hung pieces of leather of every imaginable shape, goat hides, tattered rags stained variously with wax and pitch, lasts for boots and shoes, and all of the cobbler's tools and equipment.

Giacomo reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder. They had danced together once before, and she remembered the way she'd shivered when their bodies—arms and hands—had touched, as well as the exquisite trembling of their alternating breaths. It was a game they played: she inhaled the air that he had exhaled, and he did the same in reverse, until they felt as if they had become one. This time, though, when he touched her through the layers of her muslin dress and undergarment, it was different. She felt naked. And that's how she felt to him. He fiddled with her lace shawl. She blushed hotly. He delicately tickled her neck, touching her with his thumb and index finger. Her skin grew moist.

“I want you to be my bride.” Giacomo broke the silence. “My grandfather will do as he's promised and my parents, once our engagement is official, will give in. But before anything else I want you to make me a promise: I'm a jealous man, I want you to swear that you'll always be faithful to me.” Agata nodded, and placed her hand on his. He took her finger and brought it up to his throat, laying it across his jugular. Together, they felt the heartbeat. Their bodies thrilled. Giacomo was pulling her toward him with imperceptible movements, without haste. In a swelling crescendo of pleasure. His panting breath and his handsome mouth were on her together. Giacomo unsealed his lips as she opened hers. Suddenly, Agata pulled away. “Remember that a woman who takes certain things in her mouth or other places is fallen.” Annuzza had said those words to her older sisters when she was just little, but she still remembered it clearly because Amalia, her favorite sister, had burst into tears. “No, no, that isn't right . . . ” Agata protested, and looked at him with fright, worried that she'd offended him.

“Let's embrace once, tightly, and then you can go.” As he spoke these words, Giacomo slid his fingers down from her neck to her shoulders, running them under the muslin of her dress and her undergarment, where he brushed the bare flesh of her back. Quickly, Giacomo then wrapped his other arm around her waist and tugged her close to him. Agata threw back her head to avoid his mouth, but she allowed him to shower her throat and shoulders with a rain of tiny, delicious kisses. Giacomo's hand began sliding down her back. Agata didn't struggle. Suddenly, he shoved her forward, powerfully, and pressed himself hard against her lower belly.

 

The aroma of the cobbler's glue—dense, pungent, inebriating—stunned them both.

 

Agata wandered through the crowd in a daze. She felt a piercing gaze upon her: the Cavaliere d'Anna, one of the guests and a well known libertine, was following close behind her, hobbling along on his rickety legs. When he managed to draw even with her, he flashed her a drooling smile with his pendulous lips. Agata pretended not to have seen him. She despised him, because at her parents' parties he always managed to rub up against her when it was impossible for her to put him in his place; she heard the shouts of the crowd surging around the cart of Our Lady of the Assumption and turned her steps in that direction. The Cavaliere smirked and veered over toward a knot of women who were bending over to help an old woman who had slipped and fallen on the pavement. As they struggled to help the woman up, he circled around them, his gaze fixed on their bosoms, then he rubbed up against the vast and impressive derriere of one of them, and scurried off before the unfortunate woman could straighten up and turn around.

The shouts intensified: the men were dismantling the Vara. It was time to take down the little angels, and their mothers—the poorest of a generally poor populace—came rushing to crowd around. After seven hours of constant twirling motion, devoured by the harsh sunlight, starving and parched, the poor little things were half-dead. Some of them wailed bitterly, others whimpered like stray mutts, a few seemed to be lost in a trance. Two were motionless, their heads lolling to one side. The men on the cart were pulling them out of their cages and passing them down in buckets to other men atop tall ladders who called out from on high: “Who's the owner of this one?” And then they'd hand them down the line, until they were turned over to the mothers. The mothers, cursing and shoving themselves forward, were wrestling to lay their hands on their own child or, more simply, to lay hands on any live child—the ravaged faces were in some cases quite unrecognizable. The laments of the most sorrowful mothers mingled with the crowing shouts of the victorious ones, the deafening jeers of the spectators, and the shrill whistles of the rabble. One mother clutched her comatose child and consoled herself by crooning that the Virgin Mary had decided to take her boy with Her to heaven.

A pair of clergymen watched over the proceedings benevolently. The girl who was playing the part of Our Lady of the Assumption had left the cart. The glittering golden pedestal had reverted to painted papier-mâché and Agata prayed to the Virgin Mary to ask forgiveness for them, but not for herself.

I
t was a cool morning in early September. The two youngest Padellani daughters, accompanied by Annuzza and Nora—the Marescialla's personal maid—were traveling by carriage to their sister Amalia's country home, built high atop a hill not far from their brother-in-law Domenico Craxi's silk mill: the road that ran out from Messina had been widened into a fine thoroughfare lined by mulberry trees, prickly pears, and pomegranates. Their parents and Anna Carolina would join them for lunch and they'd all spend a few days in the country visiting with Francesco Gallida, the nine-year-old son of Anna Lucia—eldest of the Padellani sisters, who had died tragically young in childbirth. Francesco was with his father and the family from his second marriage.

Once they'd passed through the villa's ornate front gate, Don Totò reined in the team of horses. Here the road steepened and the carriage was bouncing and swaying around the hairpin curves. Carmela, already a spiteful harridan at the age of seven, was gossiping about the outfits she'd seen other little girls wearing at the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Agata let her talk; she was looking out the window of the carriage, lost in thought. As the carriage climbed higher and higher, the landscape stretched out before their eyes. The Ionian Sea, beyond Messina, glittered with silver and lay flat as a table; under the lighthouse and off into the distance of Reggio Calabria, the surface of the Tyrrhenian Sea was dark blue and choppy. Beyond the lighthouse were the particolored villages and the steep mountains of the mainland–the “continent.” It was the season for catching swordfish–their migration brought them through the Sicilian seas just twice every year. The Strait of Messina was thronged with small vessels that had been jury-rigged and equipped for deep-sea fishing.

At the foot of the hill, monitoring the mouth of the bay, small formations of fishing dinghies rode at anchor, lashed together at the bow, empty of crew, oars, or yards. From them rose straight up a single exceedingly tall mainmast, and at its summit was a man, lashed to the mast, his feet perched on a wooden crossbeam. Motionless, his eyes swept the water: it was his task to spot the first swordfish and point the sailors in that direction. Other formations, each with its own lofty mainmast and lookout, roughly equidistant one from the next, spangled the seawaters from the Sicilian to the Calabrian coast. Each formation had a squadron of fisherman in highly maneuverable watercraft, each manned by four oarsmen, a harpooner, and a man astride a smaller yardarm. The instant the lookout spotted the prey, he signaled as much with a rapid movement of arms and torso, accompanied by high-pitched cries directed toward the lookout of the nearest boat. That lookout, equally noisy and just as prompt, issued orders to the crew, and the fishing boat shot out over the waves to the sound of the seamen's chanteys. Standing erect in the bow of the boat, the man holding the harpoon scanned the surface of the sea—muscles taut, ears alert, eyes peeled. The fishing boats bounced along from crest to trough at furious speeds, forming curves and curlicues, halting and then coming about, slowing, crowding one another, and finally hurtling forward across the water until the harpoonist launched his harpoon. The hissing rush of the hull over the waves was drowned out by the rhythmic shouts of the oarsmen—slow, relentless, warlike—and by the cries of the lookouts—the one high atop the mainmast at the center of the dinghies fastened together in a platform shaped like the petals of a flower and the other lookout on the boat that was trailing after the faster launches of the fishermen—calling out to one another, and once they were out of earshot, gesticulating like madmen to communicate. Once the prey was within range, silence fell as everyone waited for the signal from the man with the harpoon, erect in the bow—half-naked, muscles swollen, stiff-armed, wide-legged—as if he'd been bolted to the wood.

Like a wasp in flight, the fishing boat shot off over the water, zigzagging across the oil-smooth surface. The man shouted and hurled the harpoon with all his might; the harpoon whistled into the sea and vanished under the surface. The harpoonist stood wobbling in the bow of the boat, moving not a muscle, like the rest of the crew. The harpoon's line, coiled in a wide-mouthed half-keg fastened to the bottom of the boat, paid out rapidly until it jerked the keg into the sea. A shout from the boat's lookout and the oarsmen began rowing again, pulling desperately after the keg that was skipping rapidly over the waves, marking the route of the harpooned fish. Then the keg started wobbling and jerking around as if it were possessed. In its death throes, the swordfish was twisting and turning, creating whirlpools and geysers of water, and then it started to slow down; it broke the surface, then plunged back under, emerging again, while its silvery belly glittered in the sunlight, reflecting the light like a mirror held underwater. At last, the fish plunged shuddering into the depths. At a signal from the harpooner, the boat inched forward to haul its prey gently up from below.

 

The carriage climbed up onto the hilltop. The air was cooler up here. From this distance, the swordfish hunts—hundreds of them at any one time, spread out over the Strait of Messina—sketched arabesques in white foam over the surface of the sea, lingering only for instants, then vanishing; the tiny fishing boats seemed like so many swallows soaring over the water which was dotted with long-pistilled flowers bobbing in place. “Ah, how I love swordfish,” Annuzza murmured, licking her wrinkled lips, certain she could already taste it. At the Craxi house meals were lavish affairs, and Amalia would make sure she was given a generous serving of swordfish.

“Mmm,” Agata echoed her. She too loved to eat. She flashed a melancholy smile, then shivered.

After the Feast of the Assumption, Giacomo had vanished and she hadn't heard from him since. Every morning, she rose at dawn, tormented by her yearning to see him, thirsting for a sign from him, any sign. But in vain. The shutters of Giacomo's bedroom remained resolutely fastened shut. There was not the slightest sign of life, even from the line of balconies with their jutting “goose-breast” railings, crowded with flower pots and covered with thirsty ivy plants, dangling and tossing in the wind. And each morning, Agata relived the anguish of hope and disappointment that she'd felt on that melancholy August 16, when the city, exhausted from the celebrations of the previous day, still slept, and in the streets below there was not a living soul around, not even one of the nanny-goats with swollen udders that goatherds drove from house to house every morning, milking them at each stop. She'd considered everything imaginable: perhaps his father or his cruel mother had forbidden him ever to see her again, perhaps her beloved had fallen ill or even died, perhaps he was angry at her for her refusal to kiss him, maybe he'd fallen out of love with her, or even decided to go ahead and marry that other girl. Agata wasn't jealous by nature, and she'd come to accept the fact that her mother preferred her other daughters—in fact, she often felt pity for her sisters, forced as they were to suffer the attentions of Donna Gesuela, while Agata remained free to read and spend time on her own pursuits. But now she felt the pangs of jealousy: just the thought that Giacomo might have agreed to marry the other girl was pure torture. She'd rather see him dead than happy with that one. She went so far as to dream of her own death, but only after she'd successfully murdered the two lovers. Jealousy not only clouded her mind, it was driving her into the throes of delirium. That morning in the city, she'd peered into every carriage that they passed, searching for his face: she could have sworn that she spotted him at least twice, sitting between a pair of glowering thugs. The blood of the swordfish hunt, the harsh beauty of the hillside and the bracing scents of the countryside sharpened both her yearning and her despair. She felt a chill. Without a word, Annuzza threw a cotton quilt around her shoulders and tucked it snugly around her.

 

At the age of twenty-two, Amalia was a happy bride and a contented mother. She lavished the same loving care on her own children and those from her husband's first marriage, and her husband, in his gratitude, never thought of trying to restrain his wife's extravagance toward the Padellanis. Amalia had inherited her father's cheerful good nature and her mother's love of good food; the Craxis' guests invariably enjoyed their stay. Agata and Carmela enjoyed playing with their nieces and nephews. After a quick snack and refreshments, the English governess who was in charge of their Calabrian nephew Francesco took them all out into the garden. They wandered, singing, down the shady garden paths while the youngest children skipped and jumped in time with the melodies. Once they reached the overlook, they threw themselves down to rest on the blankets arrayed beneath the pine trees, all but Agata. She looked out over the panorama and felt cut off from the world and hopelessly unhappy. The pine needles rustled in the gentle autumn breeze. The tall lighthouse loomed up over the deep blue waters. Messina stretched out at their feet, with Reggio facing it, directly across the strait. The fishermen had suspended their swordfish hunt to allow ships to pass back and forth through the strait. The vessels that shuttled back and forth between the two cities left foamy wakes on the dark blue sea, an evanescent spider web linking island and mainland. All it took was two sailing ships flying French colors plying the waters of the Strait of Messina to disturb that illusion of fine, taut threads, making it clear just how distinctly separate the two shores really were.

 

That afternoon, Agata welcomed her parents with a dazzling smile. She'd persuaded herself that, after
ferragosto
, Giacomo must have gone to his grandfather's villa, there to discuss the best way to win over his parents and that he had succeeded in having his way—that that very morning the Lepres had come calling on her parents; which must be why at the last minute she had been told to ride out to Amalia's house in the first carriage, instead of riding in the carriage with her parents. The more she thought about it, the more sure Agata felt that this was exactly what had happened. She expected her father to give her the good news immediately after lunch. At the table, she kept her eyes glued on her parents' faces, in hope of detecting a look, a signal of some kind, but they were busy talking with their hosts and no one gave her so much as a glance.

She had guessed right—but only in part. That morning, Senator Lepre had, in fact, asked to meet with the field marshal. He'd climbed the stairs alone, leaving Giacomo nervously waiting in the carriage, eager to be summoned inside once the details had been thrashed out. As soon as he was ushered into the apartment, he was informed that Don Peppino was indisposed and that the Marescialla alone would receive him. Caught off-balance, Senator Lepre decided it would be a good idea to reveal to her what he intended to tell her husband: he had come to ask Agata's hand in marriage for his grandson, having chosen to stand in for his own son, as a gesture of respect toward the field marshal, an old friend and contemporary. But then, under a relentless hail of questions from Donna Gesuela, he'd been forced to confess that his daughter-in-law remained implacably determined when it came to the matter of the dowry and that he, moved by the purity of the two young people's feelings, had decided to take action on his own, confident that his son and daughter-in-law would come to accept the fait accompli. Moreover, he would make a sizable gift to Giacomo on his wedding day.

“And if the field marshal bestows our daughter on you, what kind of treatment can I expect my baby to receive from this mother-in-law who doesn't want her?” asked the Marescialla, in a sugary sweet voice.

The kind old man's answer—that he fervently hoped, indeed, he had no doubt whatsoever, that once his daughter-in-law glimpsed Agata's qualities, she would change her mind—only landed him in the trap Donna Gesuela had laid for him. She asked him to reassure her by recounting in detail all the other occasions in which his daughter-in-law had revised her opinion of someone after acknowledging that she'd misjudged them. Senator Lepre was forced to admit that he couldn't recall a single instance and he foolishly confided that, precisely because of his daughter-in-law's prickly personality, once he'd become a widower he had chosen to give his eldest son the main, aristocratic floor of the family palazzo and had himself gone, in open violation of tradition, to live in the apartment of his bachelor sons. He even added that he rarely visited his son's house, so disagreeable did he find his daughter-in-law.

“I've heard enough,” Donna Gesuela broke in. “Your family has offended the house of Padellani by turning up its nose at a daughter-in-law of such nobility!” Then she added, imitating her husband's Neapolitan accent: “‘
O megli'e Napule
!'—The finest in Naples!”

She'd made up her mind: in the unlikely case that the field marshal gave the hand of Agatuzza in marriage, her blessed daughter would be an unwelcome addition to her husband's household, subjected to who could imagine what humiliations at the hands of that mother-in-law, as the notary himself had described her! As for her, she would never consent to such a marriage. Still, the final word remained with the field marshal. From her tone of voice, it was unmistakable that a ”yes” was at best a remote possibility.

After lunch, the extended family went downstairs for a walk in the garden. Agata's father leaned on his daughter's arm: that morning, he'd been indisposed with an acid stomach, but glutton that he was, he'd eaten heavily and drunk liberally when Amalia presented him with the usual lavish spread. Agata didn't dare to ask a thing, but even if she had, she'd have been disappointed: the field marshal knew nothing of Senator Lepre's visit; his wife had decided that there was no reason to poison the perfectly nice day that her husband hoped to spend with his Calabrian grandson.