Bakhita

by Veronique Olmi

  —

  She remembers the island. With little Indir nestled against her, in that stopgap inn, the smell of camels and leather, of urine and kelp, and the red soil she brought with her all the way to Genoa, after the days in the desert. Remembers the wild dogs and their fights on the port’s muddy shores. Unveiled girls outside of inns, their eyes as empty as cloudless skies. Women selling old fish individually, and lepers sitting under palm trees, beside baskets of spices and dried coral. Remembers all the Sudanese people torn from their land.

  * * *

  —

  When she is not serving in the bar, she takes Mimmina for walks in the garden, and it reminds her of the harems, those closed communities, the dovecotes, henhouses, the walls and terraces, and slave quarters. Here too the staff goes home to sleep at night in low-slung non-mixed houses, where the children have the eyes of old men and a longing to rest. She sees pregnant girls, and very young boys with that air of sad submission, who are told they are the lucky ones. To have masters. A roof over their heads. A bowl for food. And water. Who are told to be good and servile. And she knows, without looking at them, what each of them has lost, and the loneliness that will be theirs for all time. Because it is here, intact, eternal. Loneliness. Bakhita is not beaten now. She does not sleep in the slave quarters. But planted deep inside her like a stake is her need for something different. A different light. A little of the love she felt with Stefano and Clementina, a love that was so unlike her childhood but had the same music to it. She keeps her hands in the pockets of her apron, when she longs to reach out her arms, generously, with the full force of her youth. She is held back at night when she knows that there is a light, so close by but she cannot turn to it. She has never forgotten that consoling voice, the earth telling her this was not right. Abda. It was not right, and it was not her fault. So there must be something else for her.

  * * *

  —

  Mimmina calls to her from over by the small fountain in the middle of the garden. She cries “Mama!” and Bakhita does not have time to scold her with a “You must say Bakhita, not Mama!” before the child is in her arms. They laugh together, happy and surprised. Mimmina just walked for the first time! She took her first steps toward her nanny. She breaks away from her arms, wants to do it again. Sets off, falls, picks herself up, crying and laughing, dirties her clothes, crushes flowers, and frightens the cats. She is afraid of nothing, studies the world now that she is standing. Bakhita smiles at her and knows. Today her little Mimmina learned to walk. Soon she will have to call her Alice. And Alice will never make the mistake of calling her “mama.” The call of the muezzin rings out across the sky like a hoarse, lilting instruction, Bakhita looks at the child and knows she will not grow up here. Alice will go to school, like all white children. She will leave the garden. Leave Suakin. And what of her? Where will she live? To whom will she belong? She looks at this child, whom she saved from death and who is now splashing her hands in the fountain, proud and upright on her little legs. She has all the vigor and authority of someone discovering a new freedom.

  * * *

  —

  Bakhita lives like this for nine months, in this mood of uncertainty, this travelers’ hotel where, despite her eighteen-year-old’s beauty, despite the color of her skin, the men she serves do not touch her. She does not lower her eyes so much. When she recognizes an insult in their voices, she eyes them fleetingly. Dares to, for a few seconds, and there is neither defiance nor anger in her eyes, but any man who makes inappropriate moves toward her gets a look that says, “I’ve seen all this before.” And she remains an enigma. Submissiveness coupled with strength. This is what intrigues them, as if this slave girl, this Bakhita, were somehow out of place. Her master is a Christian, she will never be his wife or his concubine and does not appear to have any children by him. They see her looking after the master’s daughter, sometimes even when she serves at the bar the child is in her arms, like a monkey on a tree. This slave girl has a status all her own. She speaks little, and her voice is as deep as a dark cave, she is a barmaid but dares to move with the slow confidence of those who are sure of themselves. She avoids men and takes an interest in children. She always has a scrap of bread or a piece of fruit in her pocket to give them, and she also makes some gesture, a hand on their head, a stroke of their cheek. Her mistress ought to reprimand her, these children are all contagious, hanging about outside the hotel gardens with their begging and their skin diseases, clustering around the gates like flies on sweat. The gardener chases them away, back they come. They are hungry, but she feeds them in vain, because they multiply as quickly as they die.

  * * *

  —

  Bakhita lives in a time of uncertainty, but time keeps ticking by, the masters are busy doing their sums, and eventually these sums produce results. The results for which they have been working day and night. Success. No one tells her anything, but she knows, and because she understands some Venetian, she overhears conversations between Maria and Augusto. There is a buzz of panic and hope in the air, a life change starting with the nervous excitement of major decisions. Mimmina can feel it too, and however much the parona insists the child is teething, Bakhita knows that is not what makes her cry at night. But the nightmares. She knows, they have the same nightmares. Of steep sands, tall dunes circling them with wooden stakes all around, and there is no way out, no way of seeing the horizon, she and Mimmina are trapped there, within these walls, and they stay there. Motionless. Anxious and confused.

  * * *

  —

  And then one day there are suitcases. Their open jaws filling with the mistress’s and Mimmina’s clothes. They are returning to Italy, they need to sell the estate and come back, because it has now been decided: The Michieli family will move to Suakin permanently. Bakhita has guessed as much, of course. The hotel is still just as busy and Parona Michieli reigns supreme, she is no longer the taunted foreigner in Zianigo, being foreign here means being African. Everyone else is at home. Bakhita’s fears are reawakened. She is helpless and determined, there is a struggle between her fear and her survival, and just as she implored the consul, she asks Parona Michieli to take her to Italy with her.

  “Too expensive, Bakhita.”

  She offers her tips. Maria throws her head back and laughs. She falls to her knees.

  “Don’t do that!” Maria explodes.

  She stands up again, kisses the parona’s hands. Is slapped. For the first time by Parona Michieli. Only a few years ago she would hardly have felt this slap, an everyday forerunner to whippings and insults. Today, though, the violence of it rocks her life and reminds her that she is less than a servant, a slave. Straight after the slap, she and Maria have the same instinct, they look into the garden where Mimmina is. The child saw nothing, she is sitting with her back to them. But this is where everything is playing out. Around the child. Maria wants to make the journey alone with her daughter. She could leave the child with her nanny and spare her two exhausting crossings, but she wants to have this experience, wants to be alone with her daughter. She can picture herself returning triumphantly to Zianigo with her child in her arms or, better still, holding her hand and walking by her side. She is very fond of Bakhita but resents her, as the weak resent anyone to whom they owe a great deal. Bakhita watches Mimmina playing, beating her little drum. She lowers her eyes.

  “You will do very well, parona,” she says.

  The steamboat for Genoa leaves on June 21, 1887. Maria asks Bakhita to carry the suitcases and come down to the port with them. When Bakhita steps out of the hotel she is struck again by the violence of Suakin, teeming with hidden lives and visible destitution, the threat and power of the place is in the air she breathes. Her eyes are burned by the clarity of the sky, and the sea draws her like a pool of silver warmed in the sun. Beyond the city’s swarming streets and tall houses there are wastelands and arid fields, the wildness of uncultivated spaces, there are forgotten cemete
ries and deserted hangars, boat carcasses, coal stores, and above all the memory of the thousands of slaves from the most intensive period of the slave trade, and Bakhita can feel it: The earth quivers with it, the life of stolen people. Abid. Unjust. Unjust. Unjust…She walks behind the parona, who holds her daughter close, dressed all in white as if for a ceremony, and it seems a shame because surely the parona knows that the coal will make quick work of dirtying these unsuitable clothes? She too has dressed in white, and she looks like a bride holding a child to be baptized. Mimmina looks over her mother’s shoulder and talks to Bakhita, sends her words and dribbles, kisses and funny faces, Bakhita is annoyed with herself for not explaining again that they are to be parted, she can see the child has not realized it. She knows what it is like. Leaving the person you love. She spent the night watching her sleep and whispering to her quietly.

  * * *

  —

  When they reach the port there is the usual air of panic and brutality, as if everyone were afraid of losing his or her place, not only on the boat but in the world too, as if their lives were being played out here. Perhaps because they are saying their goodbyes, for now or forever, there is a frisson of heartbreak on the quayside, the footbridge, and the decks. Bakhita does not know whether the parona will let her say goodbye to Mimmina, whether she will allow the slave to embrace her child in public. She hands the suitcases to the porter, and Maria turns to her. She wants to be kind. A great lady with nothing to be ashamed of.

  “I’m relying on you to look after the bar, you know, Moretta?”

  “Yes, parona.”

  From her mother’s arms, Mimmina tries to grab Bakhita’s hat, and Bakhita steps back slightly, when in fact she wants to move closer and take her in her arms.

  “Say goodbye to Bakhita, Mimmina!”

  Mimmina opens and closes her little hand.

  “Blow her a kiss!”

  The child blows a kiss. Her mother turns around and walks away. Bakhita did not have time to kiss her. She watches them move off in the crowd and stays there, upright and idiotic, jostled and insulted, can no longer make out anything or anyone in the heat of the crowd, is knocked, asked to move aside, totters under the harsh sun. And over and above the savagery and incoherence of it all she suddenly hears the cry of the child she knows as if she were her own daughter. It is Mimmina screaming, she knows it. She thinks of the song of separation that never made any difference, all those women watching their children leave, and she stays behind like them, silent and with no rights, but Mimmina’s screams are growing louder, and soon she hears her coughing too, and then choking with rage, the juddering sobs of hysteria. Bakhita clutches her chest. This hurts her, too.

  “A tantrum! She’s having such a tantrum!”

  Parona Michieli is standing right in front of her, and Mimmina throws herself into Bakhita’s arms.

  “Yes, parona, a tantrum.”

  And Bakhita hugs the child so tightly it seems she might turn and run away with her.

  “It’s incredible how willful she’s become!”

  There is a note of reproach in the parona’s voice, along with fear and a huge question: And what am I to do now?

  “I don’t have money for the fare.”

  “No, parona.”

  “I didn’t buy you a ticket.”

  “No, parona.”

  “And you don’t even have a suitcase.”

  “That doesn’t matter…Parona…the suitcase…”

  Exhausted and trusting, Mimmina falls asleep in Bakhita’s arms. She has stopped coughing at last, the choking is over. She is sweating and her white dress is already stained. Bakhita can feel the parona’s terrible fear, does not look away, implores her with her eyes, and her sweat trickles from her hair down her neck, from her neck down her back. Maria looks at her daughter. And then, as if defeated, she murmurs, “It would be a shame to wake her.”

  * * *

  —

  And that is how Bakhita stepped onto the footbridge to the boat. She held in her arms a willful little girl who, without even realizing it, had just done what Bakhita did for her eighteen months earlier: She had saved her life.

  Ave Maria, gratia plena…Dominus tecum benedictis…benedicta! Ave Maria, gratia plena…

  * * *

  —

  Morning and evening, kneeling at the foot of her bed, Bakhita recites this prayer with Mimmina. The parona insisted on it. She taught them the Ave Maria, the Paternoster, and the Gloria. In Latin. Once the estate, the house, furniture, and livestock were put up for sale, Maria started wondering how her daughter would grow up in Africa. She consulted the doctor, and the priest while she was at it. The doctor recommended a dose of quinine in the morning and the priest the three essential prayers, twice a day. Paternoster, Ave Maria, Gloria. With constant repetition, and although she does not understand a single word, Bakhita doggedly learns the prayers, and it is not only morning and evening, she also recites them all through the day to remember them. People in Zianigo say the Moretta has grown pious, not baptized but pious, because when they come across her, she can be heard mumbling: “Pater noster, qui es in caelis,” “Gloria in excelsis Deo,” or “Ave Maria, gratia plena.” They no longer throw stones at her, they cross themselves slowly as she passes and whisper that it is a miracle, and even Maria Michieli is seen in a different light, they might almost like this foreigner now that she is to leave and they will no longer see her. Bakhita does not know why the parona asks her to say these words morning and evening, but despite her problems remembering them when she does not understand them, she likes this ritual that sits well with her contemplation of the day ahead and her secrets at night. And then there is Mimmina’s little voice, Mimmina whom she is teaching something, their connection is growing stronger still, in the hard work of it and the forbidden explosive laughter, yes forbidden, because these words seem so serious, and in front of the parona they always have to recite them very seriously, while she listens with exasperated weariness.

  * * *

  —

  Oddly enough, if there is one person who is unimpressed by this, it is Stefano. Bakhita’s return was a double shock for him, the shock of surprise and of a revelation: Not in vain had he played the “Ave Maria” on the church organ every day he was in Zianigo. He prayed for her, intently, and they were bound together by unfailing filial love. But he is shocked to hear her recite the sacred words of these prayers without understanding them. So she can be made to say whatever you like, without any explanation, like a well-trained dog performing a trick? He thinks she deserves better and is frustrated that all she knows of Venetian are everyday words. It is Clementina who tries to calm him one evening and may have found a solution to his torment.

  “You should be delighted, Stefano,” she says.

  “Be delighted? When I hear her reciting like a parrot? She says ‘Sed libera nosam lo’ instead of ‘nos a malo.’ A malo, Clementina! Malo! Evil! She knows what evil is, she really does, but she doesn’t know how to pronounce the word.”

  “You shouldn’t think of it like that.”

  “It hurts me to hear it! Yes, evil! A malo! A malo!”

  “Calm down. You’d do better to make the most of the fact la Michieli has lowered her guard and talk to our little sister.”

  “And what am I supposed to do, then? Translate from Latin into Venetian? Are you making fun of me?”

  Clementina goes over to her dresser, takes out something very small, and hands it to her husband.

  “Give it to our little Moretta sister.”

  He looks at his wife in amazement and is suddenly calm. “You think so?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “Won’t you miss it?”

  “No. It would make me happy.”

  “But it was your father’s—”

  “Stefano! Do as I say, won’t you, just this once…”

  * *
*

  —

  He watches Bakhita as she sits in the garden, keeping an eye on Mimmina. The child is playing with Melia and Chiara at the foot of the big oak tree. Little Alice has grown so, she is thin, still fragile, but there is a life force in her, and she is such a happy child that she is recognized by her laugh, Mimmina’s laughter is like another person’s footsteps, it is what announces that she is there. She has the happiness of children who are never afraid, always protected.

  * * *

  —

  On this particular afternoon, Bakhita is watching her, with her knitting in her hand because she never sits and does nothing, her hands are always occupied with something, and Stefano thinks she would look like any young nanny to Zianigo’s wealthier families were it not for her color, and her calm, something young Italian girls do not have, and also, if he is entirely honest, her mystery. She has the slow sad expression of women who cannot be carefree, a deep smile with a distant goodness to it. Her beauty does not attract the young Italian men, her African culture is a natural barrier. She is not a foreigner among them, nor even a stranger. She is a strangeness. He sits down beside her, and she makes room for him and points to Mimmina.

  “Happy!” she says.

  “Yes. Your little Mimmina is happy. Very happy…”

  She turns to look at him discreetly, questioningly, aware of his embarrassment, nothing can be hidden from her, she knows. From the way he sat down, the sound of his voice, she knows. He has something to say to her. She will wait. She has the patience of another era, which he, the ebullient Stefano, finds almost irritating. He hesitates. Waves a few times to his daughters, turns to the Moretta, and laughs a little, his hands spread, as if to say “They play nicely together, don’t they?,” and this Italian gesticulation is something the Moretta learned very early on. Stefano looks at the sky, clouds are coming in from behind the hills, a slight chill settles in the smell of cut grass and wild roses. Bakhita sets down her knitting and goes to put a cardigan on Mimmina. When she comes to sit back down, he is reaching one arm toward her, his fist closed. She stops and waits. Studies this outstretched fist, unsurprised. Then he opens his hand.