Nun (9781609459109) (6 page)

 

Suddenly, and without any explanations, Donna Gesuela gave her daughters permission to frequent the Aviellos. Twenty years old, and married for six years now, Sandra was the sister who most closely resembled Agata; she was childless and she helped Tommaso in his work as a lawyer. They were a very close couple. They lived in a spacious apartment, where Tommaso had his law office, in a
palazzo
in the San Lorenzo neighborhood, inhabited by professionals. Every room was lined with bookshelves or built-in shelves covered with books; Sandra let Agata borrow modern novels, ghost stories, stories of cruel and romantic hatreds and love affairs that made her shiver; her brother-in-law encouraged her to complete her education and explained his vision of the future to her
.
She was thrilled by Carboneria, at least the way that Tommaso presented it to her. The movement originated among the officers and soldiers of the Neapolitan army during the last years of Murat's regime, in reaction to the scorn of their fellow French soldiers who mocked the Neapolitans calling them
Italiani
and
codardi
(cowards). It was a secret society and had as its first objective the creation of an Italian nation with an independent government under a constitutional monarchy.

Many members of the social classes that Murat had marginalized from the kingdom's political, social, and commercial life, including the aristocracy, had joined. “The unification of Italy ought to take place under the auspices of our kingdom. We are the greatest state in Italy and Naples is the sole metropolis on the Italian peninsula that can rival the other great cities of Europe.” Tommaso was moody; when he was feeling pessimistic he complained about the inconsistency of the five leading European states: they encouraged the Greeks to seek their independence, but not the Poles. That wasn't all he complained about: the inequality of wealth in the industrial nations was only growing, bringing poverty, misery, and disease—for instance, cholera, which had spread throughout Europe—as well as discontentment. “The people are no longer willing to suffer,” Tommaso would declaim, his voice growing louder. He felt no admiration whatsoever for the English; their policies were directed toward preserving the status quo and preventing French influence from being once again brought to bear on the Italian peninsula. The king, fearful and suspicious of both the English and the French, tended to cultivate a policy of isolationism, but this was no longer a practicable option: soon railroads, steamships, and the stunning new invention, the telegraph, would allow people and ideas to travel the world at incredible speed. The king did have the merit of having reinforced the kingdom's administration, industries, and economy, but nonetheless he was a despot; the police had unbridled power and the people were restless without liberty. Then Tommaso grew optimistic: the people's revolt would not be long in coming now, and then he would be able to devote himself to the unification of Italy, body, heart, and soul.

In the Aviello household, there were often dinner guests. The conversation turned not only to politics, but also to the arts and to literature; Sandra took part in the discussion on an equal basis. Agata realized that her sister was happy, even though there was no sign of children on the way, and she comforted herself with the thought that she too could have a life of her own, even if she was unable to marry. She believed that in time another world would come into being, where equality and respect reigned uncontested.

One afternoon Agata was on the small kitchen balcony, above the cornice of Palazzo Tozzi, watering the pots of rosemary and parsley. She lingered as usual, enjoying the panorama of the city viewed from above: the roofs of buildings, churches, and monasteries seemed to be glued to one another, so tall were they and so narrow were the streets. From far below the muddled noises of the city wafted up—voices, songs, neighing, shouts. That day, the breeze carried with it the perfume of the invisible gardens in the cloister and ruffled the surface of the turquoise sea in the distance, where foaming waves surged. Agata noticed across the street, and just a little to the left, beneath another roof, an open balcony: Giacomo appeared on it. She stood there, under a spell—the water from the watering can had flooded the vase and overflowed, dripping onto her feet. They couldn't hear one another's voices, they were too far apart. Resuming their old language made up of signals and gestures, he conveyed to her that he was studying at the university and that he would leave a note for her in the conciergerie.

 

The chief porter of the
palazzo
put on the airs of a very important man, and justifiably so. It was he who controlled the very movements of the building's tenants—summoning the rented carriages—and even the details of their lives; he was the building's mailman, and he accepted deliveries as well as packets of groceries. In Messina people did their shopping by lowering a wicker basket from the balcony, but in Naples that happened only in the poorer quarters. The
palazzi
were very tall indeed, and groceries were delivered to the concierge's office: he rummaged through the baskets, unwrapped grocery packets, and pilfered freely. Because he had taken a shine to Nora, he skimmed fruit, vegetables, and handfuls of spaghetti from other tenants' grocery deliveries and slipped the plunder to her, saying: “Take it, take it . . . eat, they'll never notice a thing.”

Agata was afraid that if he ever took a dislike to Giacomo, he would stop delivering his letters, but no such thing happened. When she went out, he'd call out to her as she passed: “This is for you!” and then he'd wink at her.

 

From that day on, Agata began smiling for the slightest trifle and she became truly beautiful—her dark clothing highlighted her fair complexion and her happiness. Giacomo wrote her frequently and at length, but they still hadn't had an opportunity to meet in person. She was very much afraid of her mother's reaction and she spent her afternoons on the balcony, book in hand. He too, on his own balcony, read and studied. Then one of them would look up, the other would respond, and they'd smile at one another. When her mother found out about it, she didn't seem to be particularly annoyed. She asked her whether Giacomo had good and serious intentions and if there had been any changes, and little by little their interactions sweetened. One day he presented himself in the conciergerie to pay a surprise visit and Agata's mother allowed him to come upstairs. Agata had remained in her bedroom in fear, but Gesuela came to get her, beaming: Giacomo had assured her that this time he would succeed in winning his parents' consent. She had given him until January to persuade his family, and in the meanwhile, she had invited him to visit them at home. Agata was overjoyed.

 

Despite her mother's permission, the young people were able to see one another only two more times before Giacomo returned to Messina, because from that day forward—no doubt, intentionally—Donna Gesuela constantly had chores and assignments for Agata to do and took her with her whenever she went out. He talked, talked, talked, and didn't seem to want to touch her; hopelessly in love, on the other hand, she was melting inside for the slightest caress—but Giacomo never again wanted to be close to her as he had on the Feast of the Assumption.

 

After Giacomo left, Agata no longer liked staying at home—everything reminded her of him—and so she would go to pay visits on Aunt Orsola. They tatted lace pillows together and chatted; other times Agata would sit reading by herself while her aunt tended to her business.

One afternoon her aunt was playing cards; Agata walked into the game room to bring her the pencil that Aunt Orsola thought she had lost—it was her lucky charm. The players were all male and female relations and two foreigners, an elderly gentleman and James Garson, who was sitting at her aunt's table. Agata hadn't expected to find so many people and she stopped at the threshold. Her aunt encouraged her to come over to her table. Play was interrupted for introductions: the mistress of the house explained that Garson's father and uncle, well-to-do shipowners and businessmen with close ties to the Rothschilds, had kept a home in Naples for two generations now; they were close family friends and great card players, and James was no exception. “He does not disdain playing with elderly ladies like me,” she concluded, coquettishly.

“Thanks very much for the book you sent through the admiral. I should have written to express my gratitude . . . ” Agata was embarrassed.

“The admiral must certainly have told you that there was no need to write a reply, I was just leaving for London,” he said. Then he asked: “Did you like it?” And he leveled his light colored eyes on her, with their straw-blond eyelashes.

“I read it all at one sitting, to tell you the truth.” Agata stopped, embarrassed again.

“Do you have anything else to read?” James wouldn't let her go, and he listened to her attentively. He offered to send her more English novels. “There's no need to thank me, it's really no bother at all. I send them to my sister regularly. She's in boarding school. I'll just tell my bookseller to send a copy to you as well.”

 

From then on, and as long as Agata stayed in Naples with her mother, books would arrive for her, wrapped in a handsome brown paper that she later cut into rectangles and pressed flat so she could paint watercolors. There was never a message from James; she knew who had sent them and she would write a note expressing her gratitude to the sender—Detken's bookstore—and describing her impressions of everything she had read. A few days later, she would receive another package.

T
he Christmas of 1839 was a sad one. Both mother and daughters missed the sisters back in Sicily. The letters from Messina were heartbreaking: furniture and other household objects had been sold off hand over fist; Carmela was pining for her mother, Amalia's oldest son was sick, and Anna Carolina's prospective marriage teetered in uncertainty because they had still been unable to scrape together the money for the dowry. With the excuse of the period of mourning, the Padellani relations had excluded “the Sicilian women”–as they referred to them–from the family Christmas celebrations. Even Aunt Orsola, normally so solicitous and affectionate, was avoiding them. Just as people had done when they first came to Messina, everyone asked the Padellani women when they were planning to leave Naples. The mother had been obliged to borrow money and she dreaded the days when creditors began demanding repayment; all the same, whenever visitors came, Nora, who had turned out to be a first-rate cook, managed to put together tasty meals with what little was on hand and the treats that the doorman skimmed off for her. In the presence of outsiders, Donna Gesuela put on a show of lavish generosity. She had ordered Anna Carolina and Agata never to accept invitations to any family receptions or celebrations, in the unlikely case that such invitations were extended, and not even to novenas at any of the more fashionable oratories, lest the Carnevales, sanctimonious nitpickers that they were, might find some pretext to find fault with Anna Carolina and refuse to honor their undertaking.

Throughout Advent and during Christmas, Naples celebrated. The scents and aromas of sweets and pastries—wafting ginger, cinnamon, cloves, sugar both caramelized and in the form of cotton candy, vanilla, anise—filled the air, emanating from pastry shops and from corner kiosks. Every day there were processions, religious feasts, displays of relics and novenas. These were sung everywhere, and not only before manger scenes—in churches and in oratories, on the street before shrines and holy niches, and even in the courtyards of aristocratic
palazzi
. At Father Cuoco's advice, Agata had attended the novena sung in Sicilian at the convent of Palma di Montechiaro by the Benedictines of Donnalbina, and she had found that she was deeply moved by the sound of her native language. There wasn't a church or patrician residence without its own manger scene of shepherds as tall as your arm, veritable sculptures, with outfits stitched in cotton, silk, or wool, depending on their rank, and bedecked with miniature jewelry, hats, shoes, and gloves, with animals of all kinds, and elaborate settings: grottoes, mountains, rivers, little lakes, and an enormous starry sky with a star of Bethlehem. The Neapolitan manger scenes was not limited to the Nativity and the visit of the Three Wise Men—it included the scene of the Annunciation and other secular scenes set in taverns, farmhouses, courtyards, where flocks of sheep blended seamlessly with sacred events in a distinctly Neapolitan atmosphere.

Agata also liked staying home and opening the drawing room's interior window to listen to the Christmas songs of the Poor Clares, or sit on the kitchen balcony, with a shawl over her shoulders and a blanket over her legs, reading a book with the background sounds of the street—shouts, the squealing of cartwheels, the music of bands, the novenas and songs of the women of Naples'
bassi
—faint and mingling as they wafted upward. At times like those, she thought of Giacomo.

By now, Agata was well acquainted with the Padellani relations, including the nuns: Sister Maria Giulia at the convent of Donnalbina and the two nuns at the convent of San Giorgio Stilita, Donna Maria Crocifissa, the abbess, and Donna Maria Brigida. The Padellanis, like all the other great aristocratic families, had “their own” favorite monasteries and convents where they sent their cadet sons and excess or unwanted daughters—as well as their bastards, as simple servants, friars, or lay sisters. Those monasteries looked like palaces. Of all the aunts who were nuns, Sister Maria Giulia was the most likable, because she had the same tone of voice as their father and she had confessed that, of all her relations, that brother was the one she missed most of all. Every time she mentioned him in the parlor, the aunt's voice changed, choking with emotion. Then she'd turn the wheel and out would come another pastry or biscotto for Agata, whom she treated like a little girl. But that aunt, even though she was more than sixty, behaved as if she'd never grown up past the tender age at which she'd been sent to the convent.

The other two aunts lived in the most prestigious convent in Naples, the convent of the high nobility, where the nuns who sang in the choir had the right to be addressed as “Donna”—My Lady—rather than “Suora”—Sister. Donna Maria Brigida was not in good health. Agata's mother told her that her aunt had had a stroke and that's why she mumbled and required constant assistance and care. Her aunt the abbess took a maternal attitude toward Agata and intimidated her with her questions. During the visits with her aunts, Agata caught a whiff of the mysteries of religion and the familiarity of blood relations. The monumental staircases and the sheer richness of the decorations in the parlors clashed with the devastating simplicity of the three iron grilles in a row behind which her aunt the nun was sitting. What little Agata could see through the iron bars—flashes of bright white veil and dark habit, patches of diaphanous flesh, the corner of a firmly closed mouth, the glitter of a curious eye—encouraged her to play the game of reconstructing eyes, mouth, nose, and a whole image of her aunt. Speaking through a grate reminded her of the grilles of the confessional: she responded with total sincerity to the forthright roughness of the nuns. Her aunts pelted her with questions about herself and her family and they wanted her to tell them about her father. Agata described him to his sisters as he had been: an old man with modern and not always conformist ideas, someone who read foreign books; a spendthrift, excessively generous and prone to piling up debt; a proponent of social justice; and a loving father. A man who enjoyed life. The field marshal and his wife had not been particularly religious, even though they complied like everyone else with the practices of Catholic devotion, and when they no longer had enough money to pay Miss Wainwright, they had sent their daughters to the less expensive Collegio di Maria—a product of the French Enlightenment, where their mother had been educated—intentionally ruling out the possibility of sending them to a convent boarding school.

Agata told Sister Maria Giulia that her father used to put on fanciful costumes every Carnival and that the year before he died he had told her about the time, when he was a gentleman of the chamber of His Majesty King Ferdinand I, that the two of them had dressed up as chefs. They cooked together in the royal kitchens, and amused themselves by selling what they'd cooked to the courtiers. At that point she thought she'd heard a stifled laugh and she seemed to glimpse a diaphanous hand covering the laughing mouth of the young Teresa Padellani.

 

At the end of January, good news arrived: back in Messina, Donna Gesuela's sons-in-law had managed to secure a court ruling in her favor and they had secured a cash payment. It wasn't much, but it was enough to stave off the most persistent of her creditors. Donna Gesuela commented that this was a good sign and that it would help her to make the right decision in another matter that was very much in her mind, something that she preferred not to discuss. Admiral Pietraperciata, back in town from Lecce, where he had gone to spend the Christmas holidays, informed Donna Gesuela that he had managed to secure a loan for Anna Carolina's dowry, a loan secured by the future inheritance of a mutual Apulian relative—and so it was established that the wedding would take place within the year. Donna Gesuela then pointed her finger at Agata and in a sugar-sweet voice flutingly told the admiral: “With this daughter who resembles me so closely I'll need all your help as well.” Agata blushed, contentedly—her mother was asking for assistance with her dowry too, she felt certain of it, because she'd just received a letter from Giacomo, who had stayed in Sicily after the Christmas holidays. He wrote that he would be back in Naples just as soon as his father had set a date for the trip up.

 

In February 1840 their mother decided to lighten her daughters' state of mourning. She therefore gave permission to Anna Carolina—who would soon be married—but not to Agata, to take part in receptions in the Tozzi household. Agata wasn't offended, confident as she was that her mother was doing everything within her power to make her own engagement to Giacomo become a reality. One day, while they were sitting down to a meal, Donna Gesuela announced that Anna Carolina's wedding would take place when six months had passed since their father's death, and that she would then go back to Messina. Agata's face lit up: her wedding would take place in Sicily. She was tempted to ask her mother if it was true, but she didn't dare: at that exact moment her mother had shot her a strange glance. Eager to celebrate her happy intuition, she asked if she could go downstairs, where her female cousins were holding an informal evening of dancing with friends—the last celebration before Lent. When her mother distractedly consented, she was certain she had guessed right and hurried to get dressed.

 

Agata's cousins talked excitedly about the Royal Academy of Music and Dance, founded a few years earlier by the king. At least once a week, the Academy held balls, concerts, and theatrical performances put on by amateurs or professionals. The king had set aside for their use the foyer of the San Carlo opera house; the president of the Academy was chosen from among the gentlemen of the king's chamber and took orders only and exclusively from the king and from the Minister of the Interior. Members of the Academy must belong to the families of the nobility who were allowed admittance to the great balls of the Royal Palace—families like the Padellanis. It was a way of satisfying the upper classes' demand for entertainment and culture and at the same time of keeping an eye on them, a way of reinforcing the government's isolationism, as well as keeping at arm's length from the kingdom the dangerously modern political and artistic ferment of mainland Europe. That evening the cousins had invited their friends from the Academy, to show their parents what they had learned, as if it were a recital.

Agata went downstairs to the
piano nobile
in the early afternoon to help out with preparations for the dance; she helped her cousins to dress, put on their makeup, select the right jewelry for their gowns, and make sure that the refreshments had been properly laid out and that everything was in order in the drawing rooms. She was thrilled and there wasn't a shade of envy in her excitement. She was ashamed of her own clothing and didn't expect to take part in the festivities; her dark dress clashed with the colorful costumes of the other girls, and she was afraid that she didn't know how to dance as well as they did. The guests arrived, beaming; she stayed in the background, out of the way, and before the dancing began she found a place in the venerable old musicians' loggia; the loggia, transformed into an alcove with curtains, was used every Christmas for a magnificent mechanical manger scene with streams and fountains with running water. She admired the guests contentedly. She loved the elegance of Neapolitan youth, so knowing and far more self-assured than the young people of Messina, and she was also happy to see how many foreigners there were: Swiss officers in the Royal Army and civilians of various nationalities. The young people from the Academy danced both the quadrille and modern dances with equal mastery, under the severe gazes of Aunt Clementina and her husband and of other married couples of parents who had little patience for modernity but, eager as they were to marry of their daughters, could ill afford to swim entirely against the current.

Transported by the music, Agata began to sketch out the steps of each dance while dreaming of her Giacomo. They were dancing a waltz. Agata lifted her arms as if they were wrapped around the shoulders of an invisible gallant escort, she arched her back and raised her head, chin held high, sliding back her left foot to make room for the right foot of her imaginary gentleman in the first movement of the waltz. She executed a pirouette, whirling and spinning, her back increasingly arched, then she stood erect and resumed the slower step, wreathed in smiles.

And so she was smiling when James Garson saw her. His curiosity aroused by the sound of tapping heels that came from the alcove, he had gone over to take a peep behind the curtain. Agata came to a sudden halt, in embarrassed confusion. He made his way carefully into the alcove and pulled the curtain shut behind him. Then he wrapped his arm around her waist, slipped his other hand between her fingers, and they resumed the dance that had been interrupted. Agata's foot, hesitantly, struck his longer foot. Just once. Then they danced slowly and in perfect time, managing even to pirouette in that cramped, confined space.

The music came to an end. “Thank you,” he said to her. They were still standing, still in position for the dance.

“Go,” she replied, without attempting to unravel their fingers. James lifted her hand and grazed her knuckles with a feathery kiss. Then he turned and left. The pianist had begun playing again and Agata went on dancing until the soirée ended. She was dancing with her Giacomo, with renewed transport.

 

That night, Agata had her first carnal dream, and she abandoned herself to it.