* * *
—
Madre Fabretti is next to her, standing by the chapel’s side door. Bakhita knocks three times. Hard and slow. The door is opened. She stands in silence on the doorstep and remembers to lift her head. Her father is waiting for her, she will be reunited with her father today, with el Paron. The chapel is full. She cannot see Stefano but knows he is here with Clementina and their children. She remembers what she must do. Has now come to this intensely powerful moment in which nothing can happen but the event. Hears Domenica Agostini, the patriarch cardinal of Venice, praying, then he walks into the attentive crowd, all the way to her, and accompanies her to her godfather, Count Marco Soranzo, her godmother is unwell and he is representing her. She keeps her hands joined and can tell from the shaking in her legs that the fear is back, despite her best efforts. Her breathing makes the long veil quiver. The cardinal’s voice reverberates around the brick walls, loud and clear.
“What is your name?”
The question pierces right through her, she was not expecting it. It is the greatest shame of her life, that she has forgotten her name. Does God not accept stolen children? Madre Fabretti did not make her rehearse this question. She flashes her a look of panic. The silence seems to go on forever. What her name is. What her name is…No. Impossible. Asfa. I’m sorry, all of you. She bows her head. It is over.
* * *
—
“She doesn’t have a name!” The pushy little woman has turned to tell the crowd, and the rumor spreads, disappointing and toothsome. There is whispering and coughing in the chapel, the congregation is stunned. But the cardinal moves on to his second question.
“What do you ask of the Church of God?”
Is it still happening, then? She must pull herself together. Must look him in the eye to give her answer, Madre Fabretti told her so. She raises her veiled face and is careful to reply confidently.
“FAITH!”
“What does faith give you?”
She knows the answer. Has already said it. Said it again and again. She looks up to the heavens to show what faith gives her, it is up there: love and the healing power of love. The cardinal sighs.
“Yes, that’s right,” he says, “eternal life.”
The congregation can breathe, the pushy little woman on the doorstep turns around toward the square and shouts out, “She gave the right answer! Eternal life!”
* * *
—
And now comes the moment everyone has been anticipating with apprehension and relish. The terrifying story they have known since their childhood. The story that frightens, and soothes. Sometimes.
* * *
—
“The exorcism! The exorcism!” shrieks the avid woman on the doorstep.
And the crowd prostrates itself, crosses itself. The Venice sun hides behind a cloud. Impressionable girls weep, lockets and rosaries are kissed. Men, women, the young, the old, all are united, all alike and humble, and inside the chapel the shadow of fear settles over the congregation. Who knows? The devil might win. Hasn’t the Moretta been compared to a black devil? Who is she really, this foreigner with no name and no language, this foreigner people suddenly started to love? Some find this stage of the proceedings exotic, titillating, already eager to describe it, write about it, even draw it. The truth will erupt now or never. Everyone will know on which side the forces of evil lie. The cardinal comes up to Bakhita and blows on her face three times. Her veil shivers and her eyelids are closed. She waits. Something weighs on her shoulders, heavier than her cloak, an atmosphere of distrustful curiosity and rejection poised to explode.
“I exorcise thee, unclean spirit, in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, that thou goest out and depart from this servant of God, Bakhita. For He commands thee, accursed one, Who walked upon the sea, and stretched out His right hand to Peter about to sink. Therefore, accursed devil, acknowledge thy sentence, and give honor to the living and true God: give honor to Jesus Christ His Son, and to the Holy Spirit; and depart from this servant of God, Bakhita, because God and our Lord Jesus Christ hath vouchsafed to call her to His holy grace and benediction and to the font of baptism.”
The cardinal traces the sign of the cross on Bakhita’s forehead, on her ears, her eyes, mouth, heart, shoulders. She is shaking and drives away images from the past, the expression in little boys’ eyes when the cleric took them off for castration, the screams of that young mother whose baby was slammed against the rocks, little Yebit’s body when she died during the torture of her tattooing, she could scream out loud, give a bestial howl to drive out this demon and restore the good in the lives of all these martyrs. But she makes no sound. Wants the cardinal to do it for her, drive out evil with the appropriate words, he alone knows how this ritual should be performed, and she trusts in him. She concentrates on the people who are there and who love her, the Checchinis, the nuns, forgets the insatiable crowd, the power of all those people gathered in public places who have always stared at the Negress she truly is.
* * *
—
Now that the devil has made room for the Holy Spirit, she can enter the God’s Temple.
“Do you renounce the devil?” the cardinal asks her.
“I renounce him.”
“And all his works and vanities?”
“I renounce them.”
The cardinal anoints her forehead with the holy chrism.
“Do you believe in God the Father and His only son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit?”
“Credo! Credo! Credo!”
“Do you want to be baptized?”
“I want to be.”
She is overcome and exhausted, as if she has run a long way to reach this moment. And she hears her baptized name, which includes the name of her baptismal godmother, her confirmation godmother, her slave name in Italian, the name of the Virgin, and her slave name in Arabic.
“Gioseffa Margherita Fortunata Maria Bakhita, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
Three times in succession the cardinal pours the baptismal water on her forehead, her purple cloak falls to the floor, she removes her long veil and emerges, a new creature, clothed in a white habit. Her face appears to everyone as an indelible truth above that habit filled with light. To their great shame, some think of the body that must be there, underneath, it is said to be black too, black and marked, could it possibly leave traces on the baptismal gown? And they predict, with some delectation, that this girl’s story might disturb their sleep and transfix their souls.
* * *
—
A large candle is brought to her, and she lights it from the one her godfather holds. The final words are about to be pronounced. The order and the dispensation.
“Go in peace. The Lord is with you.”
“Amen.”
* * *
—
“Amen yes!” Mimmina is with her. She can hear her. “Amen yes!” Mimmina would almost certainly be playing with the veil that has fallen to the floor, dressing up as Saint Alice, the beautiful empress. Bakhita and her little girl are the same now, both daughters of God. Held within the same love, part of the same family. But who will tell her, tell her little Mimmina, that she now has a name? Who will tell her to stop calling her mama?
She is officially called Gioseffa, but people will always use the diminutive “Giuseppina.” They will struggle to say it, concentrate on saying it, because to everyone, she will always be the Moretta. On the baptism certificate she is declared to have been born to unknown parents, a Mohammedan girl from Nubia. No one knows either her history or her geography. Her country has no name and her mother does not exist. Her childhood is not her childhood, it is a collective imagining, years summed up in a single word, “suffering,” years that are now diluted in an Italy that represents “deliverance.” Deliverance, and yet…It is a year s
ince she was baptized, she has continued her catechism education, and those around her would like to see her glow, living proof of the love of Christ. She is destroyed. She is sometimes found alone in the small chapel, prostrated at the Virgin’s feet, praying and weeping. The sisters talk to her and she does not listen, she is devastated, no one knows why. Stefano often invites her to spend a few days in Zianigo, in this family that is now hers. She has interludes of happiness with them, moments when she laughs at last, launches into impenetrable descriptions and waves her hands in every direction. The laughter they share with her is a surprise and a blessing. Stefano cherishes these moments. Bakhita has watched his children grow up, attended his son Giuseppe’s wedding. Stefano’s happiness, the bride’s beauty, the white bride in her white dress, and the promise of children to come, children who will be her nephews and nieces too, he tells her this and she knows it is true.
* * *
—
Everything they say is true. They love her. And she would so love to reciprocate this love, would so love to be a Giuseppina who brings joy and gratitude to everyone. She cannot. She wants something she cannot say. She knows that her catechumen year is drawing to an end. She is twenty-three and will have to choose: living with the Checchinis, as Stefano has suggested, or going into service to a mistress, being a servant. When girls leave the institute, with their small “dowry,” they have become true Christians, good housekeepers, and excellent embroiderers. They can read and write. They will work and marry, because without marriage they would simply not exist. But of course, in Bakhita’s case, marriage is out of the question. The color of her skin is an insuperable natural barrier. No marriage or children.
* * *
—
One evening when they are taking their walk along the Zattere landing docks, Madre Fabretti asks her what memories she has of her childhood.
“I mean…your childhood before.”
“Before slavery?”
“Yes, before you were a slave.”
Bakhita was not expecting this. She has already been asked this, of course, by the Italian consul, by Stefano and his children…Why do they want to know the things she feels but cannot say? The things she remembers so obscurely. And yet so intimately. It is like asking her to understand the workings of her blood, her breathing, everything she is. The air is mild. The day waning in a faded pink light, cast tenderly over the sky. Abda…What was there before? Abda. A life that happened so long ago, rooted so deep inside her, where words do not exist. Describing the place she has never managed to revisit. The family she has never been able to find. Impossible. She looks at what lies in front of her, the sea and the sky. The expansive but somehow cozy scene in the gathering gloom. A large fishing net is attached to the banks of the canal, the posts are covered in moss and look so old, but these posts are in fact what hold Venice up on this powerful, living body of water. The sky has widened, extended into fine blue and gray trails that cross over each other and disappear. It is so vast that the horizon is moving away. It is very beautiful. Almost too beautiful. Bakhita gazes at this devastating beauty and speaks, as if addressing the wonder of it.
“I don’t leave. I stay.”
Madre Fabretti does not understand. Is she talking about her childhood? But Bakhita turns to look her in the eye, her face glowing with emotion, astonished by her own boldness.
“I don’t leave the institute, Madre. I stay.”
It knocks the breath out of Madre Fabretti. But she admires the girl for this, this strength. This way she has of going to the furthest reaches of her pain and returning infallible. Of course, Madre Fabretti would like to keep Bakhita by her side for another year…She could teach her more Venetian, a language to help her understand more than other people’s words, to understand their way of life, the way they think. She could protect her a little longer from everything that awaits her outside, and she is disappointed with herself for loving her so much, a nun forms no relationships, only with God. But this girl, this girl is different. Bakhita is quite different.
* * *
—
Madre Fabretti writes to the supervisors of the Charitable Congregation, asks for an extra year, Giuseppina needs more time than the others, she is a slow learner, still cannot write. The request is swiftly granted.
* * *
—
A year goes by, a year of patient teaching, difficult confidences, periods of respite, but also long phases of sadness. This time Bakhita does not need to look at the three hundred sixty-five suns drawn by Madre Fabretti to understand the passing time. She watches the sky and the days drawing in, growing icy and short-lived, the year coming to a close and showing her the door. This time, she must leave the institute once and for all. No more exceptions. No letters, no recourse. She cannot write, people still have trouble understanding her, but she is a peerless cook, she embroiders, knits, and darns better than anyone else, she uses beads to make things no other young woman can make: purses, strange belts, bunches of flowers. She would make an excellent servant. Perhaps not a nanny, she becomes too attached. But being a servant is exactly right for her.
* * *
—
Once again, she wants something she dare not say, and as time marches on it takes her to the edge of the abyss. Her life is made up of violent separations, abductions, escapes, she has survived it all…but still. When she tries to admit her innermost desire, she freezes. Mute and helpless. Madre Fabretti tries to soothe her, understand her, console her. In vain. Bakhita is overwhelmed by her anxiety. Imprisoned within it. She is cut off from those around her by a longing she cannot admit.
And then one morning she asks to see her confessor. She has had a dream that, yet again, took her back to the violence, to the days when she had nothing left to lose, when she threw herself at the consul’s feet, begging him to take her to Italy, and persisting, despite his repeated refusals. In her dream the earth was red, and she could hear the laughter-like roar of camels, their teeth grinding and their hobbled legs, the sound of them clanking in the dark, a sound that woke her with a start. And the fear was right there, spreading out before her with no horizon. A vast naked fear. And in that moment, she decided to free herself of it.
* * *
—
Her confessor listens attentively. Through the wooden lattice, he can see only the whites of her eyes, and he likes the spark in them, likes the Moretta’s voice too, reverberating in the confessional, her deep exotic voice, and her new convert’s fervor.
“Padre, there is something I want.”
“I’m listening, Giuseppina.”
“It’s very big.”
“Hmm…very big, yes.”
“And I’m small.”
“Hmm…”
“Black.”
“Keep going, keep going…”
“Well, there it is.”
“No. Keep going. Don’t be afraid.”
“Padre.”
“Don’t be afraid, Giuseppina, keep going.”
“I’m not leaving. I’m staying.”
“Again?”
“No. Not again.”
“Well, yes, Giuseppina, it’s nearly two years since you were baptized, three since you arrived here!”
“Padre…”
“My poor Giuseppina…”
“Padre, I want something.”
“Say it. Say it slowly and I’ll understand.”
“I want…to be…like…the others.”
“White?”
He hears her laugh. Her throaty laugh, peals of it going on and on, and he wants to laugh too, with relief. For a moment he thought she was half-witted, but the truth is, he’s the half-wit.
“But what do you mean by being like the others?”
“A nun.”
It is raining in Venice, icy raindrops spattering passersby, pelting roofs, and lancing into the narrow canals. The ra
iny season here is short. A momentary hesitation. She remembers those days that felt just like the nights, enveloped in the same rain. Remembers stores of grain kept safe, frightened patient livestock, angry rivers, and her own fearful respect for the sky. Distantly remembers rain in her village, a choked color, a smell of mud and grilled maize. Strangely, a smell of skin too, perhaps her mother’s skin as she held her close, or her twin’s as they slept side by side. Remembers rain in masters’ houses, and their anger, which amazed her at first and then stopped surprising her once she grasped that they despised anything that disobeyed them.
The rain beats down and swells into rivulets on the paving stones, she listens to the force of it, Venice resigned. She takes shelter, with two other women and some children, in a shed open to the street, where an old man is weaving baskets. He shows very little surprise at this intrusion from these women who do not look at him and, not daring to uncover themselves in front of him, keep their soaked scarves over their heads. They stand there looking out at the rain as it comes down even harder, while the children squelch their hands in the wet dirt on the beaten-earth floor. Bakhita knows that in the half-light she is less black. She keeps her head bowed, clutching to her the bread bought in the market. It feels good being in this semidarkness, this sustained silence. Not frightening anyone. Not being recognized, as she still so often is, with faces coming so close to hers she can smell the breath from their gap-toothed mouths, intrusive smiles that she reciprocates shyly, revealing her unusually white teeth. Sometimes wealthy passersby stop her. Once a painter wanted to paint her, one of the numberless artists, Venice is overflowing with them. She very rarely goes out alone, and the nuns ward off unwelcome intrusions for her. But when it rains as it is today, artists, noblemen, and rich traders stay indoors, having headed home the moment the sirocco picked up. She closes her eyes and can hear flies maddened by the rain, and the sound of the rain itself, endless and unrelenting. She feels good. She dared speak to her confessor yesterday. Dared to utter the word. Like something blasphemous. That she, Bakhita, Giuseppina, she should be a nun! Oh, if the priest understood her language, she’d have told him how surprised she was at first. Almost as much as he was. She didn’t understand what was going on. Yes, it really is astonishing: having faith. Hearing God’s sweet song, and knowing it is addressed to her, yes her! She is changing, she can feel it, changing in a world that is the same everywhere. Sudan, Italy, the beauty is the same, as is the evil. She used to weep because God knows everything, He can see her whole life, and then she realized that God is like a particular kind of love coming to rest. Would her confessor have accepted that? Would she have succeeded in being understood? She now has the strength to love others. Now that her life is in higher hands.
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