Nun (9781609459109) (4 page)

 

Night had fallen. Agata tossed and turned in her bed. She couldn't sleep a wink. What had become of Giacomo? The day's anxiety had been transformed into a serpent fastened to her breast, eating her alive, as in the image of King Palermo that was so dear to her mother. She heard a noise outside, somewhere deep underground. She lifted her head: Carmela was sleeping peacefully in the next bed, her nightcap askew across her forehead. The dogs were howling, and one in particular was emitting cries that were almost human. Agata tried to sit up, but the room jerked, knocking her back onto the pillows. In the silvery moonlight, the central chandelier was swaying: an earthquake. Doors and windows were creaking, servant bells were chiming. The first person to enter their bedroom was their mother: she ordered them to throw on some clothes and hurry out to safety in the garden, around the fountain. Then came a second shock, stronger than the first. It was followed by a third, a deep roar. They accompanied by rushed outside, young and old, men and women, masters and servants, some in nightshirts, others half dressed. The birds, abandoning nests, branches, and roofs, were soaring in vast looping circles, never daring to set down.

The villa was shaking. One tremor came hard on the heels of the last; they waited for them, speechless and shivering in the biting damp of the starry night. Suddenly, Agata's jealousy dwindled and vanished. Swept away by the love she felt for her Giacomo, she only wanted him to be safe and happy, whoever that might be with, even if it was the other woman. She prayed to God on his behalf, with all her heart. Her prayer drained her of anxiety; it gave her strength and peace of mind. Agata stared up, as if in a state of ecstasy, at the dark sky crisscrossed by the flight of frenzied birds. The shocks become less frequent.

 

The earthquake was stronger in Messina. A number of houses that were already crumbling had collapsed entirely, while many others had been damaged, but not severely—nothing comparable to the terrible earthquake of 1783, the memory of which had been impressed in the minds of the people of Messina by the stories of the survivors and the buildings that were leveled. The Padellanis yielded to Amalia's pleas: they would stay a few more days at the villa. Annuzza had been sent down into the city with a carriage to fetch clean linen and medicine for the field marshal's catarrh: he'd caught cold during the night they'd spent outdoors, and he now had a fever. She came back with a note for Agata: Giacomo informed her that his father, having learned of their meeting in the cobbler's shop, had threatened to send Giacomo away to Naples until he got over her. He hadn't written her before this because he was convinced that they were being spied upon; he begged her forgiveness for the brevity and the terseness of that note—when they were able to see one another again, he'd explain the rest to her. Giacomo made no reference to the meeting between his grandfather and the Marescialla. He concluded by pledging his undying love and urging her to await his return from Naples and to remain faithful to him.

Aghast, Agata took comfort in caring for her suffering father. At the first signs of improvement, the field marshal had stubbornly insisted on returning to Messina, despite the doctor's opinion and the wishes of his family. It wasn't often that the field marshal dug in his heels, but when he did there was no dissuading him.

Agata went into her father's bedroom. She perched on a stool next to the night table and poured him a glass of sweet lemonade: then she sat waiting, without a word. He began reminiscing. It was as if he were recalling his life and giving it to her as a gift. She devoured his words.

He told her about the glittering magnificence of his family and the happy years of his childhood with his beloved younger sisters, a childhood idyll that was cut rudely short: “I know that I haven't been a good father to you, or perhaps to your sisters, but I've done my best,” he told her. “There's just one thing I'm happy about: I never forced you into a convent.” He told her that one day his mother took the three littlest girls–Violante, Antonina, and Teresa–had them dressed in their finest, and left the house with them. He remembered it clearly because after his mother left, the wet nurses seemed heartbroken and he couldn't understand why. “I never saw them again,” he said, sorrowfully, and then went on: “She left one at the convent of Santa Patrizia and the other two at the convent of San Giorgio Stilita. Just like that, she left them . . . I complained about it to my father and he told me to shut up and try to understand. King Louis XV, thirty years before that, had sent four of his daughters–the princesses Victoire, Sophie, Marie-Thérèse-Félicité, and Louise Marie–to the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud, and he left them there for ten years. Then he took them back home–or perhaps I should say, he took the ones that were still alive back home–and everything was all right. ‘He was the king and he could provide them with dowries. We are princes but we have to count our pennies, and a monastic dowry is much smaller than a matrimonial dowry. Your sisters will be very well off,' he told me.” Then her father's gaze sought out her almond-shaped eyes. “I'm not sure that's how it went.” A pause. “But for you girls, I've managed to find good husbands, even with a tiny dowry.” He snickered wickedly: “But my daughters have their mother's sharp, clinical eye, and men seem to like that. When I was a boy, the women of the house of Padellani were fine and expensive, but they were dull-eyed.”

Frequently he struggled to tell her the story of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, of the fragile successes of the French revolutionary cause, of how that cause had attempted to sink roots in Naples, likewise without success. Agata did her best to take it all in, but when her father drew political links between the recent past and the present day, she struggled. He could tell. He gazed at her keenly. He took her hands in his. He relied upon her intelligence. And Agata returned his confidence with a sort of hope that took the form of inquisitive glances. One day he sent her to retrieve from a shelf hidden in his secrétaire a copy of the
Historical Essay on the Neapolitan Revolution of 1799
. He hefted the volume as if it were a fine wheel of tuma cheese, and waited until the maidservant had left the room; then he whispered to his daughter, without taking his eyes off the door for a second: “Read it carefully, and don't forget what it says. Remember not to speak about it, even in the family.” Lowering his voice still more, he went on: “Cuoco was right. Now it's forbidden even to own this book, or to own any of the others on that shelf. This too is a mistake on our government's part.”

He was worried about the state of the kingdom and the state of Europe at large. “There's always something lurking behind the friendship and benevolence of foreigners. Nelson, the friend and protector of the kingdom, persuaded King Ferdinand to burn the fleet stationed in Naples, to keep it from falling into the hands of the French. I was there, on that 9th of January, 1799, and I saw our glorious fleet go up in flames! That's how our English friend cut our legs off at the knee, and ever since we've been at the mercy of the English shipbuilders! King Ferdinand II, many years later, rebuilt our navy, but only at the cost of great sacrifices.”

Other times he talked to her about the independence movement. “There are times when I can't understand what ‘nation' means. You, for instance, daughter of a Neapolitan father and a Sicilian mother, what nation do you belong to, my Agatina?” He gave her a loving pinch on the cheek and snickered. “Let me tell you, and I want you to remember this, whoever you happen to marry, you belong to the house of Padellani, a house that has survived and will continue to survive all the foreign dynasties that have set up as rulers in Naples.” Then he grew serious again. He foresaw other uprisings and revolutions. “There's not a single European state that will emerge intact. We must establish a standing army to protect us against domestic rebellions. Our army isn't effective,” he commented dolefully, and that is why he accepted the need to pay mercenary troops, though he detested them roundly.

Her father remembered the days of his youth, before the French Revolution, when King Ferdinand and Queen Carolina sympathized with Freemasonry; he remembered his friendships with people of all stripes. “I was a Freemason, when I was a young man, and I was a sympathizer with the Carbonari, but I never joined their ranks. Their initiation rites put me off: it culminated with Pontius Pilate's trial of Our Lord and a scene of the crucifixion! A national ideology should have nothing to do with political religion; they're two different things.” He absentmindedly murmured to himself in a low voice: “The Neapolitan Carbonari won our constitution in 1820,” and then, in a louder voice, exhorted her to trust the husband of his third daughter, Sandra: “Tommaso Aviello, he's a Master Carbonaro, he's a good young man!”

Agata's father encouraged her to approach all new ideas cautiously and to be a friend to everyone and an enemy to no one: “Taking positions is a dangerous hobby for the wealthy and the utter ruin of the poor, which is what we are.” Then he veered back to politics. “Keep an eye on Mazzini—he's a cunning thinker, now in exile. They tell me that he's opened a school in London for our youngsters, there are so many Italians there now. He's doing the right thing. It's necessary to educate people, but it will take generations before they understand and accept what he dreams of, a unified Italian republic, God and people. As for me, I'm too old to change.”

 

Agata liked nursing her father. She'd moisten his lips with rose water and rub his head. The doctor had taught her how to dose his medicines to alleviate the pain, and she was the scrupulous and careful executor of all his orders. But above all, she loved to sing to him. Her father loved bel canto and he asked her to sing him songs by Giordanello
.
The Padellani house echoed with singing at all hours; in the morning the songs of servant women scrubbing the floors, and in the afternoon arias from the most popular and fashionable operas, which mother and daughters sang alone, a cappella, or else all together, providing themselves with piano accompaniment. Agata, who had a fine mezzo-soprano voice, stood off by herself near the balcony. From there, she could glimpse the shutters of Giacomo's bedroom, invariably shut, and she sang with all her passion, tears brimming in her eyes, as her father smiled.
Caro mio ben, credimi almen, senza di te languisce il cor.
She had been taught arias from operas by Vincenzo Bellini, one of the most fashionable musicians—the Marescialla had attended a performance of his
Norma
in Palermo and had been dazzled—and she sang them over again a cappella. One day, Agata was humming
Qual Cor
Tradisti
,
Qual Cor Perdesti
, the field marshal's favorite aria; he opened his eyes and called her over to him. “I wouldn't mind dying so much, if it weren't that I'll have to leave you,” he told her, and looked at her lovingly. “
Nennella mia
, what will become of you?”

T
he court, controlled by the king and a few powerful families with close ties to the king, such as the Padellanis—who had been rehabilitated after serving under Murat during French rule—was the driving force behind a system of patronage that helped to strengthen the iron grip of the large landholding class and increased the pressure that the capital exerted over the provinces.

Over the nine years of Ferdinand II's rule (he had ascended to the throne at the youthful age of just twenty), the ranks of the aristocracy had been encouraged, pomp and ceremony were looked on favorably, as were choreographed displays of power. In those years, the Spanish aspects of court life that were first set in place by the king's great-grandfather, Charles III of Spain, were preserved and even exacerbated. Pensions, lifetime offices, special endowments, straightforward gifts of cash, and the responses to the thousand daily supplications that southern society laid at its monarch's feet were filtered through the office of the Chief Majordomo, head butler of the royal house. Even the most minute details of the everyday lives of the king and his family were tangled up with the administration of matters of public interest. The royal festivities and days of mourning had to be observed not only by the nobility, but by commoners as well. The mood of the people was expected to match that of the reigning family. The aristocracy, in particular, was expected to be especially loyal: failing to attend a party or observe mourning could result in falling out of royal favor.

On September 17, 1839, shortly before the death of Field Marshal Padellani, Queen Maria Theresa gave birth to a son, Prince Alberto Maria. The blessed event was commemorated throughout the kingdom with three days of gala celebrations, and the funeral and period of mourning for the field marshal could not be conducted with the solemnity due to the elevated rank and office of the deceased.

Donna Gesuela understood that, with the death of her husband, not only had she lost her family's one means of sustenance, but she herself had now been deposed from the pedestal upon which the Padellani name and her and her husband's assiduous presence in social, political, and civic life had once placed her. The reports of his death, the night previous, were immediately on the lips of all Messina. First thing in the morning, mourners filled the house—there are no established schedules for visits of mourning. Among the first to arrive were the creditors, who kissed the Marescialla's hand and in the same breath delicately alluded to the sum due, “whenever Your Excellency likes, there's no hurry,” followed by the elderly female relative who owned the house, and who reassured the Marescialla, between one tearful embrace and the next, that she could certainly continue to live in the apartment, making vague references to the payment of back rent. Even relatives and friends seemed eager for the family to leave Messina, where the field marshal had first been sent in 1825 by express command of the newly crowned King Francis I. The Baron of Solacio encouraged his sister to leave for Naples at the earliest opportunity in order to ask the king for the special bestowal of a pension. Without the slightest hesitation, the general commanding the garrison, a Sicilian officer in his forties, far inferior by birth to the Padellanis—who had long been hoping for Don Peppino to make up his mind to retire from the army, with a view to his own promotion—immediately informed the Marescialla that she would receive no support from him: that same day he summoned back to the barracks the orderly, the coachman, and the carriage that had been assigned to the field marshal. He did offer for the funeral the finest mourning gear the army could make available.

Whereupon Donna Gesuela understood. She decided to go on the offensive immediately, carrying the attack to the kingdom's capital, Naples. She would depart immediately, and take the field marshal's mortal remains with her. She dispatched a message to his Neapolitan relatives. She would arrive at the end of the period of celebration, and a solemn funeral would be memorialized in the capital city, providing the honor and attention due to a Padellani and, more to the point, making the king or his counselors more likely to come to her assistance. Obtaining the health permits required was quite easy: the previous year, when the king reformed the administration of Messina, the candidate her husband had named and supported was in fact appointed chairman of the senate; she also managed to find a Basilian monk from Alexandria who was able to embalm the corpse. Then, with the dispatch for which she was so well known, and with the assistance of her married daughters, she arranged the prompt sale of all excess property as well as her husband's personal effects and issued orders to dismantle the house; she dismissed all the household staff with the exception of Annuzza and Nora, her personal chambermaid. She then decided that Carmela and Annuzza would stay with Amalia as guests, while Anna Carolina, Agata, and Nora were to accompany her to Naples.

 

The departure was scheduled for the 20th of September.

Misfortune would have it that on that date the Tyrrhenian Sea was tossed by a furious gale driven by a force 9 or 10 mistral wind, which the Messinese interpreted as an omen of imminent aftershocks. The sea was a mass of crashing waves that broke with brutal might over the few vessels still seeking shelter in the nearest port. Don Totò came back from the harbor with the disheartening news that that afternoon only one steamship was expected to sail, flying the British flag, and the only reason it was setting out was that Captain James Garson, son of the ship owner, wanted at all costs to see his fiancée, who was awaiting him in Naples. “A grand vessel,” he said. “The late Field Marshal would have appreciated it.” The in-laws inquired and discovered that the Garsons were friends of the Padellani princes. At that point, Donna Gesuela had no more doubts: that was the ship for them.

Agata hadn't stepped away from her father's catafalque for all the long hours during which it had been on display in the largest drawing room of the house. Shabbily dressed in dark clothing and brokenhearted, she sat next to the coffin, taking the place of her mother, who was busy with other obligations. People commented on her pallor and her puffy eyes in a tone that verged on derision. Agata was afraid for the future—her father's last words echoed dully in her head. For her, the departure for Naples was a sign that her love with Giacomo was doomed not to survive.

 

It was raining and the wind was gusting powerfully. Soldiers, relatives, and household staff had accompanied the Padellani women to the Messina harbor. Salvo Bonajuto, husband of the fourth daughter, Giulia, was the director of a shipping agency and he had reassured them: they would be sailing in an extraordinary and very modern steamboat—the finest ship in the Garsons' Mediterranean fleet. Aside from the two powerful sidewheels driven by the steam engine, the ship was brigantine-rigged with two masts flying square sails and a third mast rigged with a spanker. It carried passengers and it made unthinkable time. If the weather had been good, it would have reached Naples in just thirty-six hours.

Salvo Bonajuto had taken care of the bureaucratic formalities for the Marescialla's embarkation. The luggage and the coffin were already on board; James Garson had come to express his condolences to the Marescialla and had given her the use of his private cabin. It was an act of respect, of piety, and also a highly practical solution: it was the only room on the ship with enough room for the important passengers and the coffin.

The exhausted group of mourners were awaiting the boarding call in a waiting room crowded with harbor workers. With no ships sailing, the longshoremen had no work to do, and so they had sought shelter from the storm. Their sweat, strengthened and made more pungent by the humidity of the enclosed room, prickled Giacomo's sensitive nostrils, as he stood pressed against a window. The bold air and confident words with which he usually concealed his own insecurity had abandoned him. He peeked at the Padellani women for a long time, before he made his way through the dock workers and their stench. Giacomo extended his condolences to Donna Gesuela; then he asked her permission to speak with Agata, who was sitting separately with the married sisters. Caught off guard, and perhaps moved by the young man's solicitude, the Marescialla agreed.

They stood together, apart from the others, next to the large French doors. In the dim light that filtered through the glass splashed by gusts of foaming salt water, in the midst of the crowd of steaming dockworkers, the two lovers said not a word: they communicated through the mute language of emotions. Agata stood in profile against the window, leaning against it with her left shoulder, and pressed her open hand against the glass, as if she were trying to push it away from her, or perhaps rest her weight on it. The trembling of her palm and fingers with every flicker of the lashes on Giacomo's glistening eyes betrayed her deep emotions. He whispered to her about the unfortunate outcome of the meeting between his grandfather and her mother, and as he spoke to her, Agata laid her head against the glass, lowered her eyes, and didn't look up again. Giacomo began to muddle his words, in fear that she might be about to faint. Then he saw Agata's hand emerge from beneath her short cape and he reached out and seized it. The Marescialla was watching them, hard-eyed. “Agata! The son of the steam boat's owner is here! We need to board, come along!” A squeeze of the fingers, a last gaze, and the two lovers took their leave, promising they'd see one another again in Naples.

 

In the sky, a whirling multitude of gales, lightning bolts, and lashing rain. The steamboat, after emerging from the Strait of Messina, proceeded at low speed, pitching, rolling, and yawing violently. Visibility was minimal and all that could be seen of the island was the dull glare of the lighthouse—nothing more.

The women were in the cabin. Anna Carolina and her mother, both terrified and suffering from seasickness, had curled up in the far corner of the captain's bunk. Wrapped in one another's arms, they were murmuring incantations and prayers to St. Christopher, when they weren't moaning or retching.

Nora, who had never left solid land before, stoically performed her duty as if it were the most natural thing on earth. Kneeling before the coffin, she prayed to St. Nicholas of Bari and Our Lady of the Assumption, providing them with a list of all the cataclysms that had befallen Messina and to which she could personally testify—the devastating cloudburst of 1824, the invasion of the grasshoppers in 1831, the outbreak of cholera of 1836 and the even worse outbreak of 1837, and the more recent, quite modest earthquake—in order to persuade them to intercede with the Lord Almighty to give the late field marshal a tranquil crossing to his native city. But the saint and the Virgin Mary didn't lift a finger, and Nora resigned herself to reciting funereal aspirations and to continuing to watch over the corpse by herself. She only stopped when the rollers tossed the ship so violently that the coffin went sliding across the floor, just like the Vara of Our Lady of the Assumption; at that point, in high dudgeon, she wedged the field marshal into place with all available luggage and then resumed her funeral vigil. She held out until lunchtime, when another duty supervened: feeding her mistresses. A steamer trunk was packed with provisions. Aside from the mourning pastries and black
pignoccata
, curled shortbreads, marzipan “olives”—and the food for the crossing—cutlets, fried rice balls, bread, fruit, and vegetables—there were huge tins of Cappuccinelle pastries and wheels of pungent romano cheese to give as gifts to their relatives. The mistresses, however, refused even to consider taking a bite of food. Indignant, Nora ate something herself and went back to her prayers and aspirations.

 

Ever since they'd left port, Agata, standing leaning against the door, had looked through the porthole, watching the fury of the gale, without feeling weariness, hunger, or sleepiness. The steamboat was tacking, following a zigzagging course with reduced sails, in order to beat against the wind. It had passed close to the Aeolian Islands; Agata knew only Lipari and with a bit of imagination she was able to make out the castle. Off Stromboli, the ship turned again; in the dark of night, whipped by gusts of wind and buckets of rain, the eruptions of the volcano seemed like menacing firework displays. The steamboat slowed and then suddenly came about, setting a course for the Calabrian coast; the closer they got to Italy, the more the gale seemed to quiet down.

 

After the encounter with Giacomo, her mother had been unusually solicitous and loving with Anna Carolina and even with Nora, but not with Agata—she hadn't said a word to her. Agata deeply missed her father. From regret she progressed to a lament over the misfortune that had befallen her, and then to a desire to be with her father again; from there, it was only a short step to a yearning for death. With every ounce of her being, she wished she were dead. Just as a snake sheds its skin, she felt as if she were wriggling out of her own body and, transformed into a light breeze, wafting heavenward to rejoin her father. Her eyes glued to the stern of the ship no longer saw a thing. Not a tear, not a thought of God in Agata, at that moment. She was all spirit.

 

The blackness of night was torn asunder by bolts of lightning. The mistral wind blew viciously. Once again, the steamer was tossed to port and starboard by angry rollers. Asleep in a deck chair next to the coffin, her head lolling from side to side, Nora was snoring; the two other women catnapped between moaning wails, Anna Carolina curled up against her mother's side.

To the east a pale dawn appeared. The storm was beginning to abate. Agata hadn't moved away from her porthole. She distractedly noticed the work of the sailors out of the corner of her eye and she could hear the orders that the captain was issuing from the bridge behind her. The sea was covered with grayish foam. The cabin reeked of pungent cheese and fresh vomit, and she opened the door. The rain pelted lightly onto the wooden beams, bouncing up again as if in a dance. And, light as the raindrops, the tears she'd held back streamed down from Agata's eyes. The harder she cried, the brighter grew the flaming sky, and the better she felt. Without realizing it, Agata was murmuring the verses of the song that she had sung in Amalia's garden: