“Aha! Here is our Moretta!” he says with an air of satisfaction, then adds, “God has given us free will, whatever our race or religion.”
* * *
—
This man will talk for a long time, she can tell. He doesn’t look cruel. He looks happy, a little tired, he eats too much and doesn’t sleep well. He is hot too, and his voice is an echo, talking to everyone and no one. Talking to himself. Bakhita waits for the right time to say her piece but the cardinal is making his plea. At length. Talking of absolute love and an uncertain future, what will become of her once she leaves the institute, is she aware of the dangers lying in wait for young girls in this Italy in which she is a foreigner, wouldn’t it be better if, once baptized, she returned to her glorious Africa with Signora Michieli who promises always to watch over her, this defenseless easy prey, who is humble among the humble, poor among the poor…? Bakhita does not understand a word. When he has finished, she turns and tries to catch Madre Fabretti’s eye, sees her elbowing through the crowd to reach her, whisper in her ear, tell her the time has come, she must say her piece, does she remember it?
“I love…”
Madre Fabretti points to her throat, not so deep, make your voice softer.
“I love…”
And all at once she cannot manage it. Everyone around her longs to hear. She can hardly breathe in this atmosphere of impatience, would like to run and hide but does not, she is gentle and kind, and they wait, patiently, powerfully. Well then? She must express her love. In just one sentence. Everything that is inside her. In just one sentence. Now.
“I love…” How can this be? She’s going to hurt the only person she loves: “Mimmina…”
This is not enough, this truth is not enough. She must dig deeper. Keep going. A little further and it will all be over.
“And I want God.”
She collapses, falls onto the dark wooden floor, curls up on herself, and hears the piercing inhuman cry, the animal cry that foreshadows death and never does any good: “Mama! Mama! Aiuto! Mama!” The visiting room erupts like wildfire, and she does not save Mimmina, leaves her alone in the flames and devastation, does not answer her call, never will. Never. This is the only truth. Never again. She beats her forehead on the floor, the room is emptying, the howling child is carried off, taken far away from this Negress to whom Maria Michieli screeches, “You ungrateful girl, you ingrate!,” as if it were a curse. Bakhita cannot hear a thing now. Not the love or the hate. Not the final farewell or the decision, the words she has waited thirteen years to hear: “I pronounce the Moretta free.” She does not hear it.
* * *
—
The Crown Prosecutor says this with more emotion than he was expecting. Is a little disappointed that she does not thank him, does not kiss his hands or prostrate herself at his feet. Thinks she is weeping for joy. She is devastated. Will never truly recover. She has abandoned her little girl. It is Friday, November 29, 1889. Bakhita is free.
The following morning, when Madre Fabretti comes for Bakhita in her bedroom, she finds her curled up asleep in Mimmina’s bed. She looks at this black adult in the white child’s bed and sees the burden of all the things she does not know, the past from before Bakhita’s slavery, her childhood. And her loneliness. Like a constant ally. There is damage in her face, it expresses neither liberation nor exaltation, it expresses weariness and tears. She is a dispossessed mother. An exhausted, guilty child.
* * *
—
Stefano did not attend the trial, he let Signora Michieli fight for herself, stake her own claim, he was her steward and did not want to see her as all those people saw her, a cruel woman who thought herself the rightful owner of another human being. He truly knows her, he understands: Maria Michieli is a mother afraid of being left alone with her child. Afraid of letting her die. Afraid of having only that to her name, her children’s deaths. After the trial, Mimmina fell ill, she slept restively and had no appetite, and surely she too would never entirely recover from this wound. Her abduction from the visiting room. She heard her mother’s curse, “You ingrate!,” and the whistling of the crowd waiting for them outside the institute, a crowd that followed them through Venice, insulting her mother, pitying Mimmina herself, heard what they shouted to one another through those streets striped with light and shade, “The Moretta is free! The Moretta is free! Oh, Lord! Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!,” before falling to their knees, their hands clasped, their eyes to the heavens. Mimmina will remember the pure panic of that crowd, and her ambivalent feelings for her mother, a love tarnished with anxiety. Her mother’s love like a death threat.
* * *
—
Two days after the trial, Stefano, Clementina, and their five children are at the institute. Seeing their little Moretta sister’s dejected expression, they decide to take her out for a walk along the lagoon, but they have not turned the first corner out of the institute before they give up. Going out in Venice with Bakhita proves to be a nightmare they should have anticipated: Since the previous day, the inhabitants of Dorsoduro have been ringing at the institute’s door to offer flowers and small gifts, wanting to show their love to this freed slave, wanting to see her and, if possible, touch her.
* * *
—
December has started very cold, and they cluster around the fire lit in the dark visiting room, where it is difficult to imagine so many celebrities gathered a couple of days ago. On their father’s instructions, Chiara and Melia do not leave the Moretta for a moment, climbing on her lap, trying to fill the void left by Mimmina but succeeding only in emphasizing it, because they have not been molded to Bakhita’s body since infancy, cannot know how naturally the two of them fitted together, without even thinking, without knowing it, forgetting they were in each other’s arms just as others forget they are breathing or putting one foot in front of the other to walk. Stefano would so love for Bakhita to be happy again, he takes her hands in his.
“You’re free now, my little sister.”
“Yes, babbo.”
“You mustn’t be sad.”
“No.”
“You’re going to be God’s daughter and you’ll always, always be filled with boundless joy.”
“Boundless, I know.”
“And you’re my daughter too. I’m not God, but still…”
“Our home will always be your home,” Clementina says.
“Yes, and our children are your brothers and sisters, and when I die my inheritance will be shared between all of you, what’s mine is yours. You will never want for anything, never be alone, don’t be sad. What do you say? Do you understand what I’m saying?”
* * *
—
She understands and is frightened. Will she really become God’s daughter? This “boundless” love, this love in the rising sun and the setting sun, this love in all living things, all things on earth, this love…is unbearable. Her chest has been cleaved open right down to her heart, her heart has been torn out and now she sees. Sees what filled her heart. What she was protecting, what she kept locked there so as not to die of it. Not the Madonna, no, her own mother, that woman who sat on the fallen baobab trunk in the mornings. She misses her. The simplicity of it could kill her. She does not know the words but knows that this particular absence has no name. She will become God’s daughter, and she wonders whether within Him, He who encompasses everything, there will be a tiny fragment of her mother. And the feeling being rekindled now, the savagery of this raw emotion, nails her to the spot, and she knows they are right, she is earthbound, grounded, when she should be filled with joy. She will become the daughter of the one she calls “el Paron,” the great giver of life but also the great forgiver. He will grant her forgiveness. Forgiveness for her disobedience. Forgiveness for her mother. Forgiveness for Kishmet, for Binah, for all slaves. Forgiveness for the love she has lost. She smiles at Stefano, she does not understand
everything he said but he is so wonderful with his helpless affection and the awkward way he has about him that she wants to please him.
“I understand everything, babbo,” she says.
“Aha! I knew you’d come on in leaps and bounds with your Venetian, I told them: With the nuns she’ll make incredible progress, she’ll be able to count and read and write and—”
“Have you seen her?”
“Who do you mean?”
“Mimmina.”
Stefano is caught off guard. He gestures to Chiara and Melia to move aside. “What on earth are you two doing there? You’re smothering her with your hugs and kisses, she can’t even breathe, poor girl. Of course I’ve seen her, she’s very well.”
“Sad?”
“No. She’s doing very well, I tell you.”
“Does she cry?”
“Goodness, no! She’s happy for you. She’s thrilled, like all of us. We’re all so happy, aren’t we?”
“Stefano, stop.” Clementina looks right into Bakhita’s eyes and speaks gently, as if her tone of voice could lighten the load of her words. “Mimmina’s gone. Mimmina’s on her way to Suakin.”
Bakhita understands. They have swapped countries. Given each other their homelands. And she can see it all: the train, the boat, the stops, the Red Sea, the island of Suakin, the shores of Africa in the mist, and the hotel. The men. The children at the gate driven away by the gardener. And Mimmina playing by the fountain where she learned to walk.
“That’s good.”
She has faith in Mimmina, knows her. Does not believe the child smiles all the time, knows she cries and calls for her because she can hear her. But she also knows that this little girl, this rich free white little girl who is inquisitive about everything, who is funny and affectionate, this little girl will bring a pretty burst of light to the martyred land of Sudan. And who knows? Perhaps one day, without even realizing, she will meet Kishmet. Or Binah. There is no knowing. There is never any knowing where life will take us.
Start again, Madre, please. Start again.”
Madre Fabretti has never prepared an adult for baptism with such application. Every day Bakhita asks her to go over the words she will have to say, she is frightened of saying them wrong, as she did at the trial, and she repeats them to herself all day long: “Faith, eternal life, I renounce, I turn to, Credo, Credo, faith, eternal life, I turn to, I renounce.” Madre Fabretti is worried Bakhita will scramble the words, then decides she must trust her. Now aged twenty-one, Bakhita has a combination of vulnerability and strength, a powerful energy, a deep-seated intelligence, and she is funny too, often risking a little joke that the others struggle to understand, but she smiles and the others think it must be affection, must be her good humor, to hide her inner turmoil.
* * *
—
Madre Fabretti has shown Bakhita which entrance she will use to come into the chapel and where the cardinal will stand, the things he will do, the words he will say, in what order and why. She has acted out every part—Bakhita, the cardinal, the chaplain, the godfather—and has warned her there will be a lot of people. In the chapel. At the institute. And out in the small square. She knows there is something fierce, avid about the way people stare at Bakhita, hopes she can enter the church as if entering her own home, in a mood of trust and peace. Will that be possible?
* * *
—
It is a clear morning in Venice on January 9, 1890, with generous sunshine, it is the day of her baptism, Bakhita knows it will be the opposite of the trial. There will be powerful men, the nuns, the Checchini family, the inquisitive crowd, but she also knows she will not be cursed (“You ingrate!”), she will be welcomed instead. But does she really have a right to this? She is still a slave. Slavery never fades. It is not an experience. Does not belong in the past. But if she has the right to be loved, then this day ahead of her is her reward. She has walked all the way to this day. Has been walking for years. Walking all the way to el Paron. So that she never has to obey other orders again, never has to prostrate herself before other masters again.
* * *
—
The small chapel has been decorated, adorned with flowers, lit up. It is very soon full. The institute’s bell rings nonstop and the portinaia is overwhelmed by eager crowds, there are friends but also strangers, nobility, intellectuals, a few artists. Not all of them are Italian, they belong to the European intelligentsia who live in old palaces, patrician homes, and sumptuous private hotels. The rest, ordinary Venetians, jockey for space on the small square and spill out into the whole Dorsoduro neighborhood, and people who were once so afraid of the Moretta and laughed at her expense now boast that they know her. Impoverished local women are curious to see this girl from savage, faraway Africa, where men eat human flesh, children are sold, and villages burned, and they are reassured to know she is to be saved by their God, the one in whose name they accept so much unacceptable suffering. Today they love the Moretta with a fervor full of hope, she is poorer still than they are and look how famous she has become. The institute’s bells ring, the basilica’s bells ring, and it all starts again, the patriarch cardinal, and his retinue, and the authorities, all these important figures back in this their neighborhood, going into this institute full of abandoned children and uneducated young women, and the lives of these poor, lowly people are caught up in this dazzling event, as if catching the reflection of a bright light.
* * *
—
But who notices them? Who looks at them, the crowds who are left at the door? A thin, pushy little woman has barged past all of them to stand on the threshold of the chapel whose wooden doors have been opened wide, and, perched up on tiptoe, she sees how beautiful it is, inside. She turns toward the thronging crowd in the small square and shouts out what she can see. Tells the story, describes what is going on. Mamma mia, it’s so beautiful. And how wonderful it is to have faith.
* * *
—
The little chapel has lost some of its humility, has grown opulent and flamboyant, magnified by candlelight and flowers, by the officiators’ heavy colorful clothes and the Sunday best of the congregation. People turn to Stefano to ask what she was like before, when she arrived here from her own country. What was the black girl like? And how do you feel, having succeeded in saving her? One woman dares to step over to the men’s side to ask whether it’s true she was tortured. Was she boiled like Saint George or burned like Saint Joan? Will he make a pilgrimage to the Virgin to give thanks? But Stefano says nothing. He is choked with apprehension, is afraid for the Moretta, and happy, too. He has been fighting for this day for five years, and he remembers Bakhita on the day after she arrived in Zianigo, when he saw her at Augusto Michieli’s house. He wonders whether the shock he felt was because of her color, that very dark, very fulsome black, or her presence. Paternal love at first sight. Does that happen? He looks at the font that is simply carved out of the brick wall and thinks it right that Bakhita should be baptized in a place where the children of ordinary people live—lost, unloved children. He stands very upright. So that she will see him alone when she steps inside the chapel.
* * *
—
She waits in the oratory. Kneeling, in private contemplation, private contemplation of her life. Thinks of her twin and speaks to her: Look at the clothes I’m wearing, they’re as beautiful as the red paint on our mother’s naked body. As beautiful as our beads and bracelets. As white ash. Tattooed eyelids. See what you would look like if you lived here, in Italy, a very long way beyond the Nile. You do live here, in Italy, a very long way beyond the Nile. You crossed the deserts and the seas with me, and I want to thank you for also being by our mother’s side. Never leave her.
* * *
—
She hears Madre Fabretti come over to her and stands up. Her thigh hurts, a familiar, almost reassuring pain.
“I’ve come to fetch you
, my darling.” Then she adds quietly, “Heavenly Father, Bakhita…you’re so beautiful…”
Bakhita hears this word, which is no longer acquisitive but respectful. And it is true, she is beautiful in her purple cloak, her face covered with a long black veil. She is tall, imposing, and Madre Fabretti gestures for her to hold her head high. It is difficult, she is not used to it. She crosses the cloisters where the institute’s little orphans are waiting to see her. It is cold, and they stand there in their gray coats with thick socks peeping out of their clogs. She wants to tell them she loves them. But doesn’t know how to say it in the plural. Wants to tell them she knows them. The frightened way they wait, and the feeling of hope mixed with so much apprehension, this too she knows. One child is bolder than the other girls, wishes her good luck, and the others tease her because she has dared speak to the Moretta. Bakhita lays her hand on the face of each of these little girls whom, when she arrived here, she mistook for slaves, like herself.
Bakhita Page 24