The Confessions of X (31 page)

Soon after I had manumitted them, Marcellinus took it in his head to see the world. I gave him a purse of money, Tanit gave him food, and Anzar gave him an earful of advice, which I could see Marcellinus ignored. He returned a month later, his money all spent on wine and games of dice, sheepishly asking to be taken on again. Anzar winked at me over his head as the youth stood looking at his feet, a picture of dejection.

“I think we can find you something, lad,” he said. “How does cleaning out the pigs sound?”

I was smiling to myself as I remembered this and thinking that Marcellinus was like the Prodigal Son, Adeodatus's favorite parable, when Tanit awoke and cried: “Domina! Someone is coming.”

I heard the sound of hooves. Dropping my basket, I ran to the road and saw a mule-drawn gig approaching. There were two people in it. As it drew nearer I felt a joy so fierce I could not breathe. “Adeodatus,” I whispered. Then a great cry: “Adeodatus!”

And his aunt was seated next to him. “Perpetua!”

Adeodatus drew up the mules so suddenly they sat back on their hind legs, their front hooves pawing the air, eyes rolling white.

“Steady, nephew,” Perpetua said. “You'll kill us both and we have only just arrived.” Then she, too, was scrambling down.

Adeodatus threw himself off the gig and, running to me, gathered me in a fierce embrace that drove all the air out of my lungs.

“Mama,” he said, his face buried in my chest. “Oh, Mama.”

I was laughing and crying. I could barely speak. “My son, my son.” I could not believe I had the feel of him again, more solid than when I held him last, his shoulders broader, his head on a level with my own. I kissed him over and over again, my tears wetting his face so I did not know if he wept or if it was only I.

“I am come to visit,” he said and then laughed at the obviousness of his words.

“Your father?”

“He is still in Milan,” Adeodatus said. “He has chosen another path. I will tell you about it by and by.”

I marveled at the firmness of his tone, an assuredness that had not been there before. His eyes, brown and serious, studied mine.

“All will be well,” he said. “I promise.”

Perpetua was standing back a little. Over Adeodatus's shoulder I saw her smiling with tears flowing down her cheeks. At last I released my son and embraced my friend.

“Perpetua,” I said. “How I have missed you.”

“And I you, dear sister.” Then she held me away from her and looked at me with her head on one side, pretending to be critical. “Humph,” she said. “We must fatten you up. I will give you some of my flesh. I have enough.”

She was now a mature matron, her waist thickening a little as she grew into middle age.

“You are beautiful,” I said. “Blooming.”

“You are too,” she said. “I am so glad.”

“How many children now?” I asked as we walked back to the house, Adeodatus on one side and Perpetua on the other, our arms linked. I didn't think I could ever let go.

“Five,” she replied. “And, God help me, they are a handful. A bunch of savages.”

“I know exactly what you mean.” I jerked my head at Adeodatus. “This one drove me near mad at times.”

And we all burst out laughing and went into the house where Tanit, bless her, was already laying out food and wine in the atrium.

CHAPTER 32

N
ever have I known time to pass so quickly as those weeks I spent with Adeodatus and Perpetua. As I look back, it seems as if each day was haloed by a light more golden than the sun, the heat of it the love that wrapped us round and illumined everything we touched. We were not to be parted, my son and I, nor indeed with Perpetua, although she would sometimes go off by herself to give us time alone. We spent the days sitting side by side in the orchard or walking the lanes and fields about the farm, talking, always talking, the days too short to tell of all we felt.

Adeodatus had changed greatly in the year we were apart, not just in outward appearance, but in his inmost self. The boy I said good-bye to in Milan was gone, even the boy who wrote me that letter saying how much he missed his mother; a young man stood in his place. I mourned the death of his childish ways, his guileless need of me, but more I felt a pride in him, an enormous thankfulness that I could now depend on him for strength when my courage failed. The only blight upon our time was its brevity, the fact that we knew it must end.

He told me he was present in the garden when Augustine heard
a child singing, “Take it and read, take it and read,” although my son heard nothing.

“Opening up the Bible, Mother,” he recounted, “Father read: ‘Not in quarrels and rivalries. Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.' ”

“Monica must have been happy,” I said, thinking of the dream she had related all those years before. The young man starving for food she could not give him. My mother's heart was glad for her, for what mother can watch the suffering of her child?

“She was,” Adeodatus replied simply. “She said it was a miracle that as St. Paul was freed of his chains by an angel while the guards stood amazed, so too her son had been freed from the chains of his doubt. Afterwards,” he went on, “Father, Nebridius, and I were baptized. We are to go to Cassiciacum on my return to Italy.”

At the mention of his departure, I grew quiet. He put his arm about my shoulders. “Do not grieve, Mama,” he said. “I will come back. Papa says he will return to Africa, that his future is here and not in Italy.”

Then he made me laugh by turning cartwheels on the grass, his wise heart knowing that to act the boy would be my greatest comfort.

Perpetua was interested in every aspect of the farm. She and Tanit spent hours in the kitchen discussing recipes, how best to braise lamb with apples, how to cure a ham whether with applewood or other. She wrote down the recipe for Tanit's pomegranate preserve.

“I should squeeze the juice from these,” I said, indicating the pomegranates on the trees in the atrium. “I owe you.”

She laughed. “Tanit's recipe is sufficient recompense, my dear.”

I had given Adeodatus the tunic I made for his birthday. It was a little short but it fit him in the shoulders.

“That's the main thing,” Perpetua said. “I see you wisely left a good hem.”

I smiled at Tanit, for that had been her suggestion.

“It can be easily let down,” Perpetua said. “Turn around, nephew.”

We had made Adeodatus get up on a chair in the middle of the atrium, and Perpetua, Tanit, and I were walking around him, pulling on the material and measuring it critically with a piece of yarn. I especially wanted to be sure to get the right fit and jotted down his measurements on the silver-framed wax tablet Monica had given me all those years ago in Thagaste. Come winter, instead of pining for the spring, I intended to make him a full set of new clothes, which I would present to him on his next visit. I was already anticipating his delight.

Adeodatus was a little embarrassed at being the center of all this female attention but he endured it stoically, obediently turning and straightening his shoulders when we told him he was slouching. But at last, even his patience wore thin.

“Mama,” he said, “can I get down? Rusticus wants to show me the new foal.”

And so we had pity on him and let him go. He ran outside and I could hear him shouting for Rusticus. The sound was so sweet to my ears that I suddenly felt dizzy and had to sit down.

“Are you all right?” Perpetua asked, concerned.

I nodded.

“It's because your blood is still thin after your illness,” Tanit said and she went to fetch the apple cider she had made from last year's crop.

At mealtimes I loved to watch Adeodatus eat, his appetite insatiable, Tanit nodding with approval as he cleaned his food bowl twice and asked for more. When at last his hunger was sated and the lamps lit, we would sit in the atrium, me in a chair, my son at my feet, his head laid sleepily against my knees as he was wont to do when a boy, Perpetua sewing quietly in a corner. Tanit, Anzar, and the others would sometimes join us but not often for they knew how precious my time was with my son. This was just one of many loving courtesies they showed me and Adeodatus and my heart was filled with gratitude.

My son spoke of his father, hesitantly at first because he knew it gave me pain, then with more assurance when I reassured him that I loved to hear his father's name on his lips, that the pictures he drew for me would be my solace in the years ahead.

He told me how much happier Augustine was, how filled with faith, how the doubts that had plagued him were quite gone.

Listening in the darkness with the lamps guttering and the shadows flickering on the walls as if we sat, secretive, in the center of my heart, he conjured Augustine to me, and I could even believe that at any moment he would walk in from his study where he had been writing and bend to kiss me and ruffle his son's hair.

I sat quietly and let Adeodatus talk, grateful just to have him with me and make believe we were three together again.

“Mama,” he said, as if the past and present, boy and man, could mingle in this hushed and half-lit space. “He loves you, misses you every moment, but has found a happiness he did not know before. I can see it on his face. No longer does he strive for something out of reach, like Tantalus, but now holds fast to something real.”

The purity of his love, of his desire to make things right, his young man's ardor I had known and loved in Augustine when first we met, pierced my heart. Adeodatus lifted his head to look at me.

“Losing you broke him,” he said. “But it was needful for him to come to God. He had to lose the thing he loved the most to find what he had been seeking all his life. Do you understand?”

“Yes, my son,” I said, stroking his head. “I do.”

Before I was prepared to part with him, the time of Adeodatus and Perpetua's departure came. Perpetua was to see him to the ship in Carthage and then return to Thagaste and her children.

“Navigius is still in Milan with Augustine,” she said. “Oh to be a man and travel the world.” For a moment she looked sad and I realized that the life she led in Thagaste must sometimes be dull for her.

We embraced with many tears. “I will visit again soon,” she said. “If I don't fall pregnant again, that is.”

“Not much chance if Navigius is in Italy,” I joked.

“There's a thought,” she said, suddenly brightening. “I must admit I am a bit sick of always being with child.”

Adeodatus helped his aunt into the gig and then turned to me.

We embraced. Holding him I did not think I would ever have the strength to let him go but, after a long time, I did. I held him at arm's length so I could look him in the eyes, so tall he had grown.

“I love you more than I love the world,” I said. “More than I love myself. Remember that I love you, my son.”

“I love you always,” Adeodatus replied.