Bakhita

by Veronique Olmi

  * * *

  —

  Three months after Mimmina’s birth, pressured by those around them, and influenced by Paron Stefano too, it has to be said, out of superstition, Maria Michieli agrees to have her baptized, a real baptism this time, in Zianigo’s church. The Moretta stays at the door. Maria carries the baby, all in white lace, to the font where Mimmina’s screams ring out against the cold stone. Maria cries too, all that emotion, people think, but it is only disappointment. She looks at the baby howling in her christening robe and cannot wait to hand her back to the Moretta, begrudges the girl for having powers she does not have, her gratitude tainted with resentment.

  * * *

  —

  Bakhita enjoys Mimmina’s infancy. At six months, the parona stops nursing her, and Bakhita now feeds her, cooking up little meals and gruels, it is she too who knits her bonnets and slippers, embroiders her layette, tends to her fevers, her diarrhea, her inflamed gums, she has learned everything, can do everything, “as clever as a monkey,” the housekeeper says. She takes the baby for walks in the countryside around Zianigo every day, and their walk frequently pauses at Stefano’s house. If he is not in, Clementina and the children welcome her, congratulate her on the baby’s progress, her good health, her weight, her smiles; if Stefano is there, he always makes them a little snack, this man can never see anyone, be they famished or well-fed, without giving them something to eat. He always tries to talk to Bakhita of religion, cannot help himself. He points to Mimmina’s locket, “Santa Maria, do you understand, little sister? Santa Maria!” Bakhita smiles her gentle disarming smile. He suppresses the urge to take her into the church to show her the statues, the crucifix and paintings. He could play the organ while she discovered the Virgin, the Christ figure, the saints and the Real Presence, Bakhita understands all this without words, he knows she does, but Maria Michieli has forbidden her servant from entering the church. This torments Stefano. Keeps him awake at night. He feels guilty, as if he were watching Bakhita drown and standing by with his arms crossed. Her soul will be lost, and he will have done nothing to stop it. And yet a tremendous power emanates from her, like a well-kept secret. He knows from his conversations about her with Zianigo’s poor, and its wealthier inhabitants too, that it is not only the color of her skin that frightens them. It is not only out of ignorance, superstition, or stupidity that they avoid her. She is beautiful, she is gentle and resigned. But she is also indestructible. A survivor who carries within her an incommunicable world. And this is what frightens them, this power they cannot fathom.

  * * *

  —

  How did this idea come to Stefano? How did he think it achievable? He decides to adopt Bakhita. Does she not call him babbo, as his own children do? He is already a little like a father to her, and if he adopts her, she will have a name, a family, an inheritance, and he could have her baptized, erase the original sin, and save her soul. He launches himself into a headlong crusade to find papers that do not exist, birth certificates and sales receipts, a forgotten village, a lost nationality, he writes, telegraphs, uses his connections, asks for help from the archpriest, the mayor of Zianigo, the doge of Venice, goes to Padua to see Consul Legnani, who left six months ago for Egypt, writes to Augusto Michieli, begs him, where he is in Suakin, to research Bakhita’s origins, he has faith enough to move mountains, mountains in a country about which he knows nothing, and the more vain his attempts, the more determined he becomes, caught up in the panic of his generosity, but perhaps…perhaps he also knows intuitively that this needs to be done quickly, that soon this gentle life, this respite, will be only a distant memory for Bakhita.

  Bakhita is running through the streets of Zianigo alone. Running as if fleeing. As she did, with little Binah’s hand in hers, when they ran away. She runs and the children she passes flatten themselves against the yellow walls of Zianigo’s leaning houses, the elderly sitting by their doors take off their hats and hold their tongues, the women think some disaster must have struck Mimmina, for disaster runs hand in hand with the Moretta, every local woman can see that.

  * * *

  —

  She can feel the chain on her ankle, the chain she wore in the Turkish mistress’s house, it weighs her down and makes her lame, she has her halting slave’s gait once more, her slave’s heart, and the fear that goes with it. Her tight shoes hurt, her dress clings to her sweating body, and under her hat, her hair is soaked. She trips in a rut on the small dirt path to Stefano’s house and has mud spattered on her face like patches of crusty skin. Stefano already knows she is on her way, has told Clementina to fetch the doctor and send him to Maria Michieli, something has happened to Mimmina, he goes to Bakhita on the little dirt track, goes to take her in his arms, but she throws herself at his feet, like a poor peasant. He lifts her back up and does not recognize her face, it is both younger and appallingly old. Her eyes are the eyes of a very small child and yet something terrified and ancient emanates from them.

  “Mimmina?”

  “No.”

  “Maria?”

  “No?”

  “El paron?”

  She shakes her head and points to herself, thumping her chest, her heart, showing that it is here, inside her that disaster has struck. He casts an instinctive eye over her, she has run here and does not look sick, he wonders briefly whether she has received the adoption papers, bad news of her family, her village, and immediately realizes that would not be possible, in all the efforts he has made, he has only ever given his own address. He sits her down on a stone bench. Facing the tall cypress trees that sway in their sad, sugary smell. It has rained all day and the air is saturated with heavy humidity, birds sing in the water-laden trees, the last grumble of thunder can be heard in the mountains in the distance. Something is coming to an end. And all at once Stefano understands. The shock of it takes his breath away. And yet it is so obvious. He is angry with himself for failing to anticipate this, for never mentioning it to his little Moretta sister, it is his fault, he should have warned her…But saying such things in a dialect she does not fully understand would have been worse still, more distressing and worrying…She is to leave for Suakin, with the Michielis. She will leave Italy. He puts his hand on hers, she is crying now, and it is the first time she has cried in front of him. And so he cries with her, he sobs, and they sit there on that bench, in the air damp with spent rain, filled with a pain against which they can do nothing, because there is no possible consolation for what is to happen. He would like to ask her forgiveness, if only he had thought of the adoption sooner, if only he had warned her this could happen. Augusto Michieli has left him to run the estate alone for a year now, he has not met his baby daughter, has never been away from Zianigo for so long…Stefano takes off his round spectacles and wipes his eyes.

  “Suakin?” he asks.

  “Yes, babbo, yes…Aiuto…Help…”

  He looks at the sky. But the sky gives no reply.

  * * *

  —

  He takes her back to Maria Michieli. The parona tells her to go change her clothes and relieve the housekeeper who is watching Mimmina. She adds that they will have words later about her escapade, one on one. Bakhita climbs up to the bedroom that gives her the illusion of freedom, the illusion of motherhood, of a life of her own.

  * * *

  —

  Maria has invited Stefano to sit down in the drawing room, and she serves him a glass of grappa.

  “I shall be needing you more than ever, Stefano.”

  “I know…”

  “The estate will be entirely in your hands. Of course, there will be financial compensation.”

  He does not touch his glass. Looks out at the wet garden, the heavy magnolia and rain-battered flowers. Thinks how strange it is that the weather sometimes is in tune with our hearts. There will be more rain, the sky is colorless.

  “Are you leaving for Suakin?” he asks, and hates the brevity of t
hese little words.

  “Mimmina is nine months old, and her father doesn’t know her.”

  “Of course.”

  “He can’t come home, I’m sure you understand, now’s not the time to abandon the hotel.”

  “Ah…so he bought it, in the end…”

  “In his letters he tells me the houses in Suakin are made of coral stone, can you imagine that, Stefano?”

  “It must be very beautiful.”

  “He tells me Suakin is a peninsula and is almost perfectly round, do you see, I mean completely, like…like a pearl nestled in the Red Sea. Can you—”

  “Imagine it, yes, yes I can, signora. It must be very beautiful.”

  “All of Europe is doing business there: the English, the Germans, the French, the Italians. Oh, the riches of the Sudanese coast, if you only knew…”

  “I can imagine, signora.”

  “Africa, from the moment you reach the Suez Canal, Africa is…! Oh, Stefano, it’s…a crossroads, a hive of activity, a—”

  “Of course, of course, signora, but tell me, with the Moretta, aren’t you afraid—”

  “What? That when we arrive she will escape?”

  “No, no, what I mean is—”

  “Escape to go where, I ask you? She doesn’t even know her own name!”

  “What I mean to say is—”

  “When the consul tried to help her find her family, she didn’t even know the name of her village, she has no sense of family.”

  “I was thinking how difficult it will be for her to return to Sudan.”

  “Sudan or here, it’s all the same, she’ll be looking after the baby!”

  “Signora, could I ask you something…I would never forgive myself if I didn’t ask you…Tell me…Wouldn’t you like to have her baptized? Have the Moretta baptized? Before you leave?”

  “I’m very fond of you Stefano. You’re stubborn and superstitious, but I’m very fond of you. You’re the only person I’ll miss in this country of scabious illiterates.”

  The rain thuds dully on the magnolia leaves and the drawing-room windows. The garden is very soon lost in a haze and there is no horizon. The thunder returns from the mountain like a lazy wildcat. It is suddenly almost dark. Stefano can hear Bakhita passing in the corridor with little Mimmina in her arms, their voices mingled, one so deep, the other delicate, like an intimate song. He feels like a dispossessed father. He feels he has been weak and has no rights. And so very sad. Maria has taken out her ledgers, Stefano’s letters, blotting paper, ink, and a quill, he looks at the columns, the spidery scrawl, the dates and figures.

  “Signora,” he says wearily, “I should tell you that Giuseppe, my eldest son, is trying to teach the Moretta to read. Just a few letters. Nothing more. It’s important.”

  “A few letters from the catechism?”

  “No. From the alphabet.”

  “I’m teasing you!”

  * * *

  —

  He would have liked to slip a pendant of the Virgin into the leather purse, but does not. Instead, he puts a little handful of this deep, dark Italian soil, this generous and accursed soil. He would have liked to write her a letter in which he told her that he loved her like his own daughter. Just those words, and perhaps a few of their memories too, in his home, around the family table, the dishes she tasted for the first time, those she cooked, her laughter that she brought to them, and the evening he sat down at the piano and she clapped in time to the music. Chiara had burst out laughing and sorrellina Moretta was ashamed and stopped immediately. He then started playing faster and glanced at Clementina, who quickly understood: She started clapping her hands and encouraged the children to do the same, and they all laughed at the incongruity of it, they had never clapped along to Mozart’s “Turkish March” before. He would have written about the joy she brought into his house, and the respect he had for her, about everything he could see and the things he did not know: when she pulled down her sleeves to hide her scars, when she suddenly limped, when her slow serious eyes came to rest on pigheaded, snot-smeared street children, when she whispered incomprehensible words to Mimmina, when she picked up the stones people threw at her and looked at them sweetly before putting them back on the ground…He has so much to tell her, so much to write. But she understands neither writing nor Venetian. So he puts the leather purse in her hand, hugs her tightly in his brusque awkward way, and never mind about Parona Michieli, whispers in her ear, “I shall pray for you every day,” and makes that furtive sign on her forehead, blessing her. And then he leaves, as miserable as a dog, he the exuberant local character goes home and, without even meaning to, limps like her, one foot here, the other over there, that vast Africa on whose threshold everyone is milling like children around a Christmas tree, more of them merchants than missionaries, true, and he will stay behind with the peasants who have no hope. And then out of nowhere he takes a turning, does not go home. With his halting stride he comes back into the village, goes all the way to the church. Climbs the narrow dusty wooden stairs, sits at the organ, and for her, for his little sister, almost his daughter, he plays “Ave Maria.” Plays like this for a full hour, a slow solemn hour, so as not to hear the sound of the carriage taking her to the station. Not to think of the village watching her leave. This life coming to an end. He plays, and his mind is blank now, and then all of a sudden, he knows. People will say, not for the first time, that he’s eccentric, harebrained. That doesn’t matter. They will say, not for the first time, that he’s a dreamer, an idealist. Maybe it’s true. He will come into the church to play “Ave Maria” every day. Every day. And it will be his call to bring her back. Because he now knows, she will come back.

  This is Sudan. Looking across at Sudan. A land. Detached from the land. Connecting the desert and the sea. The gateway to Africa. An island on which pilgrims stop on their way to Mecca, on the far side of the Red Sea, a sea whose coral is ripped out, whose shores are overrun with pitiful dhows and gigantic ships. People set sail for the Indies, the Americas, they speak Arabic and Turkish, Egyptian and English, they speak every language and, more than anything else, they speak of money. There are civilians and soldiers, governors and thieves, mosques and brothels, cafés, and all along the street, all through the day, markets. Because everyone is selling. And everything is for sale. Men, gum arabic, ostrich feathers, coal, elephant tusks, copal and incense, newly discovered riches, exportable riches. Some might think the world is opening up, making acquaintance with itself, expanding. It is in fact growing smaller, being broken up, hollowed out.

  * * *

  —

  Bakhita arrives in Sudan in September 1886, eighteen months after leaving, and all her wounds reopen. This is the country of her ancestors, the country of her mother, the country of her color, her language, and her name. It is the country across which she traveled and that she does not recognize on any map. The country she survived but where she has no one to meet. From the hotel windows in Suakin, she watches. There it is, looking back at her, distant but also terribly close. By day the coastal strip is lost in mist, moisture hangs over it and the motionless sky leaves nothing to see. Her country is deep and isolated. Her country says nothing. By night the too-bright light of the city masks the stars, Suakin never sleeps, the island is always noisy and busy, intoxicated and dangerous, the shrieking of monkeys mingles with the cries of men, and it sounds as if the whole world is laughing. The stars are far away, only the moon is still here, shining above the city’s brilliance, and Bakhita talks to it.

  She is in this huge hotel as if in a lawless country and is aware of how vacuous this life of profit is, this life with no ties, no anchor other than the accounts books and the hotel’s coffers. She does not know what to do with the tips men give her when she serves them their strong liquor and Turkish coffee. Has never known what to do with money. She left behind in Zianigo the tips that Parona Michieli’s guests gave her wh
en she served at receptions. She would thank them with lowered eyes and put the coins with the linen in her dresser, and then forget about them. She once heard a guest ask Augusto how much the Negress had cost him, and he, embarrassed, gave a reticent shrug, No, he would not discuss the rescue…And there in that drawing room was the knowing, admiring atmosphere that good society feels for discreetly wealthy men.

  * * *

  —

  She does not leave the hotel, which is as Parona Michieli wants it. Sees nothing of the island. It is said to be as beautiful as it is dirty, as dangerous as it is powerful, still wild despite the rich traders’ towering houses, it is said that the sun sets in the sea as if Allah’s hand were diving into the waves, producing colors no one could ever name. Suakin is discussed like a living animal to be feared and tamed. There is talk of pilgrims in rags, contraband rifles, sharpened sabers, and big cats that prowl in people’s houses at night. There is talk of the ghosts of the forty virgins, Abyssinian slaves pregnant by jinn, whose forty daughters founded the city, and who haunt its palaces. Talk of lost legends and a profitable future. The prevailing mood is of malice and misery.

  * * *