Bakhita

by Veronique Olmi

  She has been exhibited here for two days, certain visitors have come twice to tame their fear of her, as the sisters from the institute explained. “Getting used to her and not being so frightened,” but all the same, you can’t see her eyes, and it’s hard to make out her face. Sometimes Mother Superior goes over to her and says something in her ear, then the black woman slowly looks up. The crowd gives a long “Ohhh” of unruffled disgust. Her black eyes swim in such pure white it might have been stolen from the Madonna’s veil. A child throws a spattering of water at her and is slapped, he cries loudly, only wanted to see if the color came off when she’s wet. He is chided but everyone understands. Would it rub off? She can’t speak but can she cry? And what if it rains? Oh, sweet Jesus, the nuns could exhibit this woman again and again, and they still wouldn’t understand a thing about her! Before long they resent her for making them feel so awkward, things were easier before, did they really need this here? And off they go, disappointed and embittered, but all the same they feel a shiver of horror run down their spine, a sweet sensation they had quite forgotten.

  * * *

  —

  When it is over, she runs, body aching and soul stultified, runs as best she can, limping more than usual, until she reaches her room, and there, once the shock has subsided, she cries. Cries so much that her body is wracked with furious hurt, cries hoarse sobs like the wild animal she is, would tear her hair out if she had any, would scratch her face were she not restraining herself, teeters on the brink of madness because she knows she will have to see these people every day, all of them, will have to get to know them and, more than that, to love them. That is why she is here. To forget Madre Fabretti and open her heart to these people, the inhabitants of a town whose name she still cannot remember, a short name, like a snake slipping past, a name like a curt merciless order.

  * * *

  —

  The door to her cell opens, Mother Superior puts a hand on her shoulder. Asks her to see sense. She had to exhibit her to bring an end to this nightmare. Since Bakhita arrived at the institute, everything has been turned upside down, the convent’s orderly life is in disarray, no one can work or pray, and the pupils stopped wanting to come in for classes. Bakhita has shown herself once and for all, surely that’s better than hearing howls every time someone comes across her? Can she understand that she frightens the younger nuns who’ve never seen a Negress before, who dare not touch a door after her for fear of being stained, dare not get up in the night for fear of running into her, and surely it’s fair that the laundry sister has refused to deal with her sheets? How could she be sure the color wouldn’t run out of them?

  * * *

  —

  Bakhita is exhausted and wants to sleep, to dream she is somewhere else, where nothing is expected of her, a slave lost among slaves, a black girl in the midst of desert caravans, the child who is stolen and then thrown away, invisible, forgettable, a girl with no value, worth less than a bag of maize. And then she is ashamed, horribly ashamed of this longing that is so like death. She thinks of the slave Jesus Christ, didn’t he suffer spitting and laughter from the crowd too? She doesn’t want to compare her life to his. She is nothing, he is everything. She would just like to lie down for a while and for him to watch over her, then she will pray, will honor him, but tonight will be too long if she is not loved.

  * * *

  —

  She dreams of fire. Of Binah who has a terrible toothache. Binah’s face is buried in the ground and she cannot get out. Bakhita calls to her, tells her they must leave, the fire is coming closer, she must come with her, but Binah says she will not, her teeth hurt too much. Bakhita calls her again, and oddly, Binah becomes little Yebit who died, tortured by the tattooist. She is held prisoner by the woman, kept in place by a slave, Bakhita kneels next to her and feeds her with a huge spoon. The child’s body bleeds and convulses, and still she eats calmly, opens her mouth for each spoonful, soon her head comes away from her body, and she keeps eating. Bakhita screams and wakes in a sweat, and immediately checks whether she has soiled her sheets. She hopes her scream woke no one, they are all so frightened of her already, what will they think? She gets up and opens the window. It is an autumn night, deep and cool. Schio is protected by mountains, edged by the torrent and rivers. There is a chill coming off the clear fast-flowing water. She can hear the bells on livestock in mountain pastures and, from time to time, a brief bark, and then silence closing over everything again. She looks for the stars and the moon, but it is a misty night, shrouded in slow clouds. She would like to see a star, just one. The wind blows gently through the trees in the courtyard, motionless cypresses, and the sweet chestnut tree makes a sound like ruffled fabric, she likes this sound, which reminds her of palm trees in the warm Sudanese wind. A colorless cloud moves away, purifying the night sky. The stars are as small as pinheads. Bakhita thinks el Paron created night for men and beasts to rest, but also for no reason. For the beauty of it. She pushes up her sleeve, reaches her arm toward the window, shakes it gently, and makes herself look at it. And this may be the first time. Her body is hidden from her, is no longer hers, it bears the deep scars of whips and the tattooing chosen by her Turkish mistresses, ugly welts like crisscrossing snakes, she’s so frightened of snakes, and she can feel them distend and tear when she moves in her sleep or prostrates herself, claws trying to hold her back. Her arm is like the night, a star could alight on her wrist like a bird. She wants to forget her nightmare, forget Binah and little Yebit, forget the fire, but when she opens her hand to the night air, she realizes she is wrong. She must not run away from her dreams. Must listen to them. Binah is far away, while she herself is free. Why?

  * * *

  —

  It is during lauds, the dawn prayers she so loves, that she understands the message in her dream of Binah and the hungry little Yebit. She is singing the Song of Zechariah: “…the oath he swore to our father Abraham: to set us free from the hands of our enemies, free to worship him…” Is so disturbed by these words that she cannot keep singing. Stands there, transfixed by the revelation. If she wants to serve el Paron, she must stop being frightened. He brought her here, among all those people who eyed her with wary curiosity. “They’re called slaves,” Binah told her. In the name of everyone with whom she grew up, all those she saw being born, suffering, and dying, the time had finally come for her to go fearlessly among the people.

  She asks permission to light the fire before the pupils arrive. Says she likes doing it, fetching wood in the dawning light, and she would like to get the stoves going in the classrooms. Hopes that by doing this she will be there to see them arrive, the youngest pupils, little children of nursery-school age, some of whom will have walked for hours. She will help them put their freezing clothes to dry around the stove and to sit themselves down before their teacher arrives. But is told this is not her responsibility. She has been assigned to the kitchens, in the basement, and if she wants to light fires, there’s plenty to keep her busy: The kitchen has three wood ovens and a main fireplace. More than two hundred meals are prepared there every day for the orphans, pupils in the nursery school and elementary classes, teachers and nuns. She works under the kitchen sister’s orders, with two orphan girls of about fifteen. It is never-ending work, starting at dawn and finishing when everyone else is in bed. She puts so much zeal into making meals, attends to it with such reverence and care, that soon people are teasing, “Madre Moretta always looks as if she’s in church!” They poke fun. And envy her a little. The darkie smiles as she lights ovens, peels potatoes, scours pans, scrubs the floor, and carries cooking pots. She works as if her life depended on it. It must be the Negro cheerfulness the newspapers are all talking about, these people are used to working and obeying. A race that won’t rebel.

  * * *

  —

  They do not know. That she understands what they are saying. And has the patience of the saved. They cannot guess at the joy she feels preparin
g food for the institute’s orphans, and the little peasant girls who come such long way, but not every day, only when they are not helping in the fields. And if she could, she would even work at night, would give up her rest, all her hours of sleep, to ease a single child’s hunger. The head cook watches her warming the younger children’s bowls so their food is always hot, making special dishes for the sick and often doubling the rations, warns her, “That’s too much, Madre Moretta! The children don’t need to eat that much.”

  * * *

  —

  She is wrong. The children need a lot to eat, they just do not say so. The children are hungry, and no one realizes. She knows, though. She knows you can lose the habit of eating and of asking. Knows it takes time to win over an unhappy child. She will find a way to approach them. Does her job quickly and well, always making a spare few minutes to come up from the basement to the refectory, or sometimes the infirmary. Slips a hunk of bread or a chunk of cheese into the children’s pockets, crouching on a level with them to talk to them, the youngest of them call her the “Mare Moretta,” “Madle Moletta,” or even “Moetta Bella,” and it is not long before they look out for her, call for her by drumming their fists on the table and chanting her name, she comes up and scolds them for the noise they make, is gentle, has a calm authority, and very quickly becomes more than a kitchen assistant, becomes someone who is needed. She is loved for the same reasons she was rejected. Her differences are reassuring, because when it comes down to it, which of the children and teenagers at this institute feels she belongs? Which of them does not feel threatened? Schio is a prosperous town for those who work at the Cazzola spinning mill and, to a greater extent, at the Alta Fabbrica, as people call the huge building that towers over the town and keeps it alive, the Lanerossi wool factory. But what of the rest? Being employed by Lanerossi means being saved. Means having a job, living in a factory workers’ village, sending your children to the factory’s school, having medical care, attending schools for adults, going to the theater, and having access to reading clubs. But what of the rest? Being “a Lanerossi” means feeling pride in being part of this model factory, contributing to the prestige of this town, of Veneto and reunified Italy. Being “a Lanerossi” means being a living example of what a post-unification Italy has to offer the sick and the cowed: education and culture. The men, women, and children of the Lanerossi workforce are literate, educated, and their work is exported all over Europe. Being “a Lanerossi” is an opportunity. Of course, you must abide by the working hours, the regulations, not challenge the wages, but most important you must not fall ill or be injured. Because stopping work at that factory, leaving Lanerossi, means leaving the country, sending your wages and your lies of happiness to a family you will never see again, to a country that will forget you. In the heights of Schio is the prosperous and proud town begat by the Alta Fabbrica, and down below is the other, older town of peasants and servants, small shopkeepers, municipal staff, single women, the elderly, and the sick.

  * * *

  —

  The children recognize themselves in Madre Moretta. Like her, they make themselves understood in a language of few words, and like her, they are trying to find where they belong. They study this world, the places to which they are sent: the institute or the fields, mountain pastures or school, family or absence of family. With the passing months, Moretta Bella comes up from the basement more and more frequently, comes out of the kitchen to join them in the yard. She tells stories of a little girl who sleeps in trees, wild animals that want to eat her, tells stories that end well, true stories, describing things with her hands, and she has that way of looking at you, with huge silences, her eyes locked onto yours, and the eye contact is as intimate as kisses. The children cluster around her in the schoolyard, they sit on the ground and she joins them, never wants to stay on the bench, and it’s funny seeing a nun dirty her habit sitting on the ground. Before she leaves them she always asks them to hold hands and say softy, “I won’t let go your hand.” Then she stands up with a grimace because her thigh hurts, she claps her hands and the children disperse, slightly dazed, half daydreaming, some run back to her spontaneously, throw themselves at her legs, and then set off again, she rests her hand on their heads, that was all they wanted. She knows the things they cannot say. Knows about sickness and poverty, and the shame of poverty. Always has a needle and thread in her pocket and surreptitiously mends tears and holey pockets, sees the hidden bruises, guesses a child is in pain from how she holds herself, how she walks, how she refuses to play. Bakhita is not like other adults, does not teach, not personal cleanliness or the catechism, not reading or arithmetic. But she is the one summoned to feed a sick child who has stopped eating, to comfort a girl who has hurt herself and is calling for her, she is the one the children call to when she crosses the yard, she gives them a little wave and walks on with her hasty, slightly lopsided step, they shout out and blow her kisses that she can feel even when she does not see them. The children love her the way you love someone who will never betray you. She can feel the warmth of it, and her voice is slow and deep. She is as black as a warm night, she is the one you can pick out instantly from the others, the not-same, an overgrown child, and the girls who go home in the evenings do not mention her, keep their discovery, their Moretta Bella, to themselves, and clamp their lips when their parents ask if the Negress has the evil eye.

  * * *

  —

  She knows she must not become attached to any of these pupils, the youngest of whom are only five. Knows she must not become attached to the orphans who grow up at the institute until they marry or have found work. Knows she must become attached to no one, only to God. This is what they say, but she does not believe it. What she believes is that she must love above and beyond her own abilities, and she is not afraid of separation, this woman who has lost so many people, who is so full of absences and loneliness. What she now does, helping in the kitchen and telling stories to the children, is exactly why she came into the world. The moment she is out of the kitchen or away from the children, she goes to pray in the sacristy, the refuge behind the church that opens onto the schoolyard. From here, she can hear the children’s shrieks, and she collects her thoughts in this tide of voices absorbed into the silence of the sacristy, like sunlight in clear water. She speaks to el Paron, and He never rejects her, this love is forever, it is the wide meadow in which she can rest, and she feels her heart might burst with joy and pain. Is almost crippled by her gratitude and strives to give the best of herself, everything she can. The stories she tells the children are a sugar-coated version of her childhood, her misfortunes become adventures, her despair, a fearful adversary. But when she goes to bed at night, it is quite different. Having unwound the spool of memories, images come flooding in, brutal and truthful. Sometimes she can hardly breathe and fear rises within in her like a rush of heat, enveloping her, holding her tightly, she has to get up in the night to avoid succumbing to panic. Are these memories real? Her body bears witness to things her mind has buried, and she gradually reconciles the two, accepts what happened to her and cannot belong to anyone else, to any other life but hers. Slowly pieces together her family, her village, her life before, but her name, that she does not find. It stayed back there, a name that would be difficult to pronounce in Italy, would be a distortion of what only her mother can say. And so she accepts even this unforgivable lapse, and her shame becomes her mother’s secret.

  In 1907, five years after she arrived in Schio, the woman who was exhibited for two full days, like a wild animal brought to heel, is appointed head cook at the institute. Bakhita is thirty-eight, Mother Superior hands her the keys to the kitchen and appoints three orphans—Anna, Elena, and Elvira—to work under her. Keys to the kitchen, the cupboards, the storeroom, the cellar, the storehouse, a heavy bunch of keys, and an acknowledgment.

  Anna and Elena emerge with stories that the other girls listen to with amused curiosity.

  “Yesterda
y, the Moretta hid the cornmeal! We couldn’t make the polenta. She wanted us to improvise, she said, ‘Come on, girls, quickly, an idea!’ We ran to find the gardener and picked and peeled so many zucchinis our hands are still green!”

  “The other day when it was raining hard, she made us put cloves and onions in everything we cooked. She said, ‘The little ones are cold.’ She treats them before they get sick! Oh Dio! And there I was with all those onions, I spent the whole morning in tears!”