* * *
—
The nuns very soon realize that the Moretta recites Latin without understanding it, that she knows neither the name of God nor the name of the crucified man, that she cannot read, write, or count, and that her language, made up of disparate, sturdy threads, asks first and foremost to be heard. “It’s like sorting lentils or raking soil,” says Madre Agostina, who is a simple, sensible woman. “It will take time and concentration,” replies Mother Superior. Which amounts to the same thing.
* * *
—
It started the morning Madre Teresa approached the Moretta and Mimmina, both kneeling at the foot of their bed and reciting an incomprehensible Paternoster, interrupted by untimely Amen yeses from the child and Amen nos from her nanny. It was the strangest prayer ever heard, beyond offensive, a complete hotchpotch, ignorance to the point of blasphemy. Softly, the nun drew closer.
“Pater,” she said to the Moretta. “Do you understand? Pater. You say it. Slowly.”
“Paternosterqui.”
“No. Just Pater. It means Padre. Father. Say it again.”
“Padre.”
“Very good. Father. You’re talking to the Father.”
“Me?”
“You. Every morning and every evening you talk to the Father, Bakhita.”
“The Father?”
“Yes. The Father who is in caelis. In cielo. In heaven!”
“In heaven?”
“That’s right! In heaven and on earth.”
“On earth…yes…”
“Do you understand, Bakhita? Your Father is in heaven and on earth. And you too, Mimmina, your Father is in heaven and on earth.”
“No, he’s in Suakin!”
“No. He’s in heaven and on earth. And mine is too. And your mother is too. And Bakhita’s too. And Bakhita’s mother’s—”
“Amen yesssss!” Mimmina interrupts.
Then comes a crestfallen silence. And a profound feeling of helplessness. Madre Teresa goes to leave, terribly disappointed. She has failed. Then she spins around in the doorway, her robes fluttering like a bird flying away, and in a voice that she hopes sounds less desperate she cries, “Dio! Dio! God!”
She waits for a reaction that is not forthcoming. Dio is a word Bakhita knows. It crops up in every sentence in Italy, as Allah did in Africa. It must be the translation. And to comfort this nun who looks so disconsolate, she says in a deep and, she hopes, reassuring voice, “Allahu akbar.”
* * *
—
Mother Superior asks Madre Marietta Fabretti to take personal responsibility for the Moretta. Madre Fabretti is fifty-four and one of the senior catechumen assistants, she has a naturally cheerful disposition and is blessed with great patience. The first thing she does is to ask no questions. To insist that nothing be recited or learned. She starts at the beginning. Behind the black drape. Behind the door. In the chapel attached to the institute.
* * *
—
It is a small Roman chapel with high walls of ocher-colored brick, a dark nave lit by candlesticks set into the walls; brass incense burners hang on long chains, pale flowers are arranged on the side altars, and behind the high altar is a painting depicting Christ on the Mount of Olives. At the far end of the aisle to the left, near the wooden door that leads out to a small square, a recess houses the baptismal fonts in all their austere simplicity. A smell of incense and wilted flowers fills the chill air, but that is not what is immediately noticeable, it is the silence. A true silence. One that eclipses everything around it, an enveloping silence, a welcome. Madre Fabretti sits down and invites Bakhita to do so too. Mimmina sits on Bakhita’s lap. The pew faces the crucifix, and on this dark wooden cross the man whom Bakhita still calls “the slave” has his eyes closed, and blood trickles from his pierced heart.
“He’s dead,” Bakhita says.
Madre Fabretti says nothing. She lets her study that outstretched body, the nailed hands, and ravaged face.
“I know him.”
“You know him?”
Bakhita takes from her pocket the crucifix she hid on her person when Parona Michieli was preparing her clothes.
“Yes, that’s him,” says Madre Fabretti. “His name is Jesus. Do you understand? Jesus Christ. That’s him.”
“It’s a nice name.”
“If you like…let’s go outside now. Will Mimmina be warm enough?”
Madre Fabretti opens the wooden door and they are greeted by the delicate subdued light of late afternoon. Mimmina lets go of Bakhita’s hand to run into the small square. They walk in silence to the Grand Canal, the sea air mingling with the wind carries an untamed quality, a restrained violence behind its initial beauty.
“Jesus died a very long time ago. A very, very long time,” says Madre Fabretti, and she takes Bakhita’s arm.
Bakhita pulls back momentarily and then accepts the gesture, uncomfortably, like the day Stefano offered her his arm to walk through Zianigo.
“Was he very far back?”
“Very far, yes. Jesus was very far back.”
“An ancestor…”
“If you like. An ancestor. His father is the Father in the Paternoster. His name is God. Not Allah, not Allah at all.”
“No.”
“God.”
“Yes.”
It is the first time Bakhita has not noticed the frightened looks she attracts, the first time she has walked on a woman’s arm, with this child running ahead of them to scatter pigeons and seagulls. There is something comfortingly familiar about this quay on the Grand Canal, a peaceful intimacy in keeping with the encroaching evening. Not yet nonchalance, but confidence.
“I’m a slave,” Bakhita says.
“I know that.”
“Are the little girls slaves?”
“No. The little girls are not slaves. The little girls are all alone in the world. Do you understand?”
“Oh yes.”
* * *
—
The cold comes out of nowhere, with blue clouds massing on the horizon and merging with the canal. Mimmina, terrified by a dog, throws herself at Bakhita who takes her in her arms. The child is heavy, and Bakhita limps slightly now as she carries her. Ahead of them the whiteness of San Giorgio Maggiore on its island fades slowly in the darkness, and the fishermen’s lights come on all across the lagoon. As one thing disappears, another comes to life.
“It’s beautiful,” Bakhita says.
Madre Fabretti is surprised. Did not realize beauty could touch this simple soul.
“The moon! The moon! I saw it first, Bakhita! I won!” cries Mimmina, pointing to a wavering moon, ensnared in cold mist. “But you can’t see anything this evening.”
“Do you think so?”
“I know so!” Mimmina insists, and she covers Bakhita’s eyes, to play the blind game they invented. But Bakhita puts her back down again. Does not feel like playing. She has talked too much. Madre Fabretti takes Mimmina’s hand and walks away with her. The Moretta’s black face is swallowed up in the darkness, bringing out the bright gleam of her eyes.
Over the course of a year, Bakhita will learn a new language, new rituals, new stories, prayers, words, and songs, she will do her utmost to join the women with whom she lives, women who talk to God and Jesus as others address their parents, parents who are constantly by their side, eternally and everywhere. It is this “everywhere” that so affects her. Madre Fabretti tells her that God sees and hears her all the time. From her first day to her last, He is there. She is ashamed. Remembers the most violent scenes of her captivity. Did He see that? Was He there, that first night with her captors and the other nights locked away, nights of suffering, the days in the desert, the torture and humiliation, and with Samir, the masters and the masters’ children, was He there?
“Yes, Bakhita. He was t
here.”
“Shame…Madre…shame.”
“He was there so you would never be alone.”
* * *
—
The effect on her is violent. A struggle between her desire to live and a longing to give up altogether. She does not understand these words Madre Fabretti tells her again and again: “He loves you.” And she thinks Madre Fabretti is wrong: He doesn’t see everything, He’s not there all the time, and He doesn’t know. She’s a slave, and no one, no master, even the best of them, no one ever loves their slave. And she believes that one day, somehow or other, Madre will understand what slavery is, and on that day she will punish Bakhita for hiding this monstrous existence of hers. A life as less than an animal. A life stolen, bought and traded, abandoned in the desert, a life without even knowing one’s own name. She succumbs to terror at any moment, in any circumstances, in the kitchens where she learns to cook, in lessons where she learns the alphabet and her catechism, and she slips away without asking permission, without taking Mimmina. No one knows what goes on in her mind, there she is bent over her work and all of a sudden she vanishes. They know where she goes. It is always the same, she runs like a disoriented stray and looks for Madre Fabretti, who is always available to her, patient, calm, and anxious too about the turn events are taking. This simple soul is too sensitive, the shock of the revelation has profoundly shaken her, and more than once Madre Fabretti contemplates asking Mother Superior to summon the doctor. Stefano’s visits with his family do the Moretta good, but this soothing influence never lasts long. She gets up at night, plagued by nightmares, and by day she has moments of exaltation and then weeps for no reason, she is sometimes found kneeling at the foot of the cross, begging forgiveness, prostrated Western-style, and it is impossible to break her of this habit or to stop her from calling God “el Paron.” The master.
* * *
—
Bakhita really does understand, though: Jesus is the Son of God. Who created the night she looks out at every evening, with the stars and moon. Who created the earth, with all its bounty. Who created man and the animals. Rivers and streams. She has always known the universe is alive and must be thanked. Always has. Knows the living and the dead are together. And has always respected her ancestors. God is the master of the universe and of all men. She has grasped more than they realize. But is ashamed. Ashamed of herself. Ashamed of her hope. And ashamed of her sorrow. They talk to her of baptism. Tell her that when she is baptized she will be the paron’s daughter. The love she has been waiting to find for such a long time (“thirteen years,” they tell her, “you were held captive for thirteen years,” so thirteen years it is), that love is here now. Within reach. They tell her that if she agrees to be baptized she will be loved, and loved forever. Whatever she does and whatever is done to her. Is that possible? Sometimes she is overwhelmed with joy, wants to sing and give thanks. To stop being this Negro girl who comes ten times a day to disturb the woman she calls just “Madre,” and who asks her to follow her one evening into the little chapel where she lights an altar candle, opens the book, and very slowly, almost breaking it into individual words, reads quietly: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”
And then she lets the silence breathe. She closes the book and waits. Bakhita is looking away, Madre Fabretti takes her chin with one hand and makes her look at her.
“I don’t mind that you’re crying, my darling. Look at me. Do you understand the beatitudes?”
“Yes, Madre. But is it true?”
Madre Fabretti would smack her over the head with the Gospel if the book weren’t sacred. This Bakhita is so stubborn, her only prison is herself.
“But of course it’s true,” she says, spreading her arms. “And you know it is, don’t you? Tell me you know it is.”
“Yes, I know it is.”
“Ecco!”
* * *
—
Her baptism is planned for the following January. But two days later, on November 15, a telegram from Suakin announces that Maria Turina Michieli will soon be home.
* * *
—
Mimmina is about to turn four, and she has not seen her mother for a year. She now calls Bakhita “mama” with no reservations, and together they learn to count with the abacus, to read with alphabet primers, and are taught about the lives of the saints. Saint Blandine, a Roman slave who was eaten by lions; Saint Mark, who died near Suakin in Egypt with his limbs broken and his body burned and was brought back to Venice; Saint Alice, the most beautiful of saints, wife to the king of Italy, an empress who loved the poor, whom Mimmina pretends to be, as other little girls play at being princesses. It is a woman’s world, a protected, ritualized, reassuring world. She has a friend, young Giulia Della Fonte who lives opposite the institute, they play together in the square every afternoon, watched over by Bakhita. Her world is not Italy or Africa, her world is Bakhita. She lives in an eternal present where there is nothing to threaten her. She is told that her mother is to return, and this makes her happy, although she is not sure why, she is happy with a joy that hopes for nothing, anticipates nothing.
* * *
—
One evening when the rain is falling on the Virgin with her outspread arms at the very top of the Basilica’s dome, Bakhita and Mimmina watch the darkness merge into the rain. Bakhita cradles the child to the rhythm of a monotonous tune. It will soon be over. This world in the institute. The Italy of Stefano and Madre Fabretti. The Italy of Mimmina’s peaceful childhood and Bakhita’s acquaintance with God, the father whose daughter she was to become, almost became, but deep down she knew very well. Knew this baptism would never take place. There is no justice in it, abda, there never has been, but that is what she is. And she has trouble acknowledging that at Mimmina’s age she still lived in her village. Protected and happy in the same way, with a happiness that does not recognize its own existence. And she catches a very obscure glimpse of her father, a voice, an outline, his neck where she rests her head, and facing her is the other one of her, her twin. She will not be seeing them when she returns to Africa. They will always be on the other side of the island. She will be in the bar at the hotel, at the beck and call of men from every country and of every religion, brought together by alcohol and vice, and her days will be spent serving them and saying no to them. Trying to spare Mimmina…“It’s impossible.” She keeps saying this to herself. “It’s impossible.” She doesn’t know why but it’s impossible. She looks at the Virgin at the top of the dome, the Virgin who is said to have saved Venice from the plague. With her forehead against the windowpane she recites the Ave Maria quietly, her words clouding the glass, and it looks as if it is raining inside too.
* * *
—
Maria Michieli is at the institute the next day. She is reunited with Mimmina and Bakhita in the visitors’ room, with Mother Superior and Madre Fabretti in attendance. Mimmina is happy to see her mother again, her mother who thinks this daughter has grown so beautiful, who’s amazed at how much she’s learned, she speaks so well now, and they hug, smother each other in kisses, they make a charming picture, to the delight of the nuns, it makes a change from the orphans and the young women who have gone adrift, this family scene is a blissful sort of break for them, and Maria, who left on a note of defeat, leaving the child with her nanny, now reclaims her rights. Bakhita hangs back slightly, ever the well-trained servant. Her mistress comes over and takes her hands.
“You’ve taken very good care of Mimmina. And you have too, my sisters. Your country is glorious, Moretta! It truly is. That perfectly round little island…can you imagine, sisters? A pearl set down in the sea…Well, enough of that. Moretta, there’s something I must
tell you, we’ve made great improvements at the hotel, the bar will be yours alone, and for the first time in your life, you will have a small salary. Oh, I don’t have to do that, I know I don’t, but I’d like to.”
Bakhita backs away slightly. In that dark, dreary visiting room the only sound now is young Alice playing with her doll, as if she were in another world, a bright world all her own. And then out of nowhere, Bakhita’s deep voice.
“No.”
It is like an intrusion, something in the room that should not be there at all, unseemly. Madre Fabretti notices Bakhita’s clenched fist and guesses that in this fist is her crucifix.
“I beg your pardon?”
“No.”
There is a brief pause, a suspension of time, and Maria bats it away, waving her hand in front of her face.
“Well, yes or no, it makes no difference to me, I shall be back to collect you in five days.”
She goes over to her daughter to say goodbye to her, explains she will return soon, but the word rings out again in the visiting room.
“No.”
Sharper than a dagger in the back. A public affront. Without even turning around, Maria responds with an instruction issued in a slightly too-shrill voice.
“Go pack the bags!”
Mimmina bursts into tears. Bakhita does not move. Her lips quiver and her eyes look both frightened and alarmingly determined. Maria takes her daughter in her arms, holds her high, with the child’s face against her own, rocking her to comfort her.
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