Bakhita

by Veronique Olmi

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  One day when Bakhita takes the priest’s chasuble and alb to the laundry room, she happens to hear that grenades have been dropped on Africa. The laundress nun has never liked Madre Giuseppina and, even though her color does not run as the laundress first feared it would, the Moretta’s sheets disgust her and she leaves the task of cleaning them to her helpers.

  “They’ve dropped grenades on your home, Madre Giuseppina, do you know what that means?”

  “My home?”

  “Africa! Boom!”

  “Which Africa?”

  “Your Africa. Boom!”

  Bakhita does not tell the laundress nun what she knows. Neither about Africa nor about the grenades. She learned long ago that to reassure others she must always be the one who knows nothing, and she remains impassive when people shout at her to make themselves understood or talk in staccato, unconnected words. She holds her tongue and smiles. Waits. Is very good at waiting. Has had so many masters, has been given so many bizarre orders, knows that keeping quiet is often the wisest stance. So today she does not reply to the laundress nun, simply brings the dirty washing and takes away the clean, does everything as usual. But when she leaves, her heart is thudding with panic and her breath whistles, churning in her throat, like the watery noise in the slave women’s throats when they were yoked. She can feel the sweat running down her cheeks and she makes her way back to the sacristy as best she can, to put the clean laundry away in the linen press. Her hands make tiny movements, folding slowly, smoothing and stroking, separating the garments with a clean piece of cloth, her eyes are misted but she checks carefully, diligently that there are no signs of woodworm, mites, or mice in the drawers, that the garments do not touch the wood, that there is no dust, there are no loose threads on the sacred vestments, and then she starts again, takes out the albs, takes out the chasubles and stoles, unfolds them, piles them up, scrambles them together. And sits down. All the clean clothes are now in a mess and she cannot think what she should do with them. “Africa! Boom!” It doesn’t sound like that. When Africa explodes. The threat is silent, and the explosions sound like cries from the earth itself, deep and unintelligible, their echo around the mountains has the racing tempo of a heart about to explode. She remembers the Mahdi’s advances. For the first time clearly sees in her mind’s eye the night when the Turkish master gathered his slaves before disbanding them so that he could flee Sudan as quickly as possible. She hears the wails of those who had been separated and the terror of people at the very limits of pain.

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  —

  She was born of war. Has seen so many men and children bearing arms, so many wounded, so many raped women, that she must have lived several lives. She thinks of her village. Would anyone here have told her if grenades had been dropped on it? But for that to happen she would need to give names, need to understand maps and talk properly. She looks at the priests’ clothes, crumpled and chaotic, an accumulation of bright colors and gold thread, like a child’s drawing of a hill. What a disaster. She lets her tears flow. She should put away the clothes and clean the candleholders, it will soon be time for nones prayers, she can tell by the light coming in from the yard. But she is crying and can do nothing else. She looks up at the crucified slave who knows about war. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” She misses Madre Fabretti. She cries and thinks to herself that it takes a lot of tears and a long time to understand convent life. She kneels, bows down as she is not supposed to, Eastern-style, because it is like this, with her bare palms and forehead on the flagstones, with her chest bent forward and her arms outstretched, that she finds it easier to think of Africa.

  She has been given permission to accompany Elvira to the train station. Has pluck enough for the two of them. Keeps her sorrow for later, does not show her sadness, only her confidence and pride. Would like to carry Elvira’s suitcase but does not have the strength, her body is struggling, no longer has the resilience and endurance that saved her so many times, she walks in the same way she breathes, painstakingly, cautiously, and her unremitting suffering is becoming increasingly obvious. Elvira is a strapping girl, she carries her bag and forces herself to keep pace with Bakhita, even though she wishes she could run, briskly leave all this behind, without thinking, without pain.

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  It is a crisp, frosty morning, there is snow on the mountaintops, and the arid trails soon to be deserted by the flocks herald the imminent winter that will gobble up daylight hours, freeze the ground, and drive peasants to despair. The sun is white, shadows are pale, as if nothing has a real hold, everything is ready to fade and vanish. It is the fall of 1913, a time that no one will remember but that everyone should in fact be cherishing. For now the station is still a place for elective departures, individual journeys, and goodbyes are said without heartbreak. Bakhita stops to catch her breath, despite the chill, her forehead and eyelids are slick with sweat. She looks at Elvira, who seems so young but could be a mother already, strange the way time accelerates, as if the girls were all growing up suddenly.

  “You’re right to leave, Elvira. The right time to leave is when you really want it.”

  “I’ll write you often, Madre. I’ll send you postcards every week, all the time.”

  “Drawings. I’d prefer that.”

  “I won’t be drawing in the streets but in studios. I told you. I’ll be drawing beautiful young men, glorious models. Would you like me to send you drawings of beautiful boys? I’m sorry…I’m so dumb when I’m emotional.”

  “You must be careful. Very. Men don’t understand girls’ happiness.”

  “Parisians are very romantic.”

  “What does ‘romantic’ mean?”

  “It means…gentle…kind…loving.”

  “Oh, I’ll pray for you! You’re so innocent…”

  They walk on, and the only sound now is Bakhita’s resolute breathing, her shoes hurt her, she could walk so much better without them, her feet are deformed and more and more swollen. Elvira feels like running and whooping. Crying, too, with frustration and joy. She is leaving Italy, escaping the never-ending wait for her mother, her need of her, she does not want to spend her whole life hoping for her mother’s letters and does not want to go into service for a rich Schio housewife. She does not say that she is emigrating to France but that she is going to study painting in Paris, as so many other Italian artists do. She is giving herself an identity, a certain stature. They reach the station and have nothing left to say to each other. Are stranded in a time that no longer belongs to them, in this noisy, baffling place where everything is pointless. Everything is important.

  “Do you have the ticket to Milan, too? Do you have everything?”

  Elvira does not reply, looks at her Madre, eleven years they have known each other, and Elvira has drawn this thoughtful face so many times, knows its expressions by heart, its concentration at work, its flinches at the slightest sound—people calling to each other outside, footsteps, whistling—its happy surprise at the least sign of affection, her hand in front of her mouth before she breaks into a true laugh, the way she looks to the heavens and bites her lip when trying to find her words, Elvira loves her and likes to shake her up a little, to push her beyond propriety, to forget the nun and allow the unusual and passionate woman that she is to emerge. But Bakhita has never wanted her to keep the portraits, images of her laughing heartily, singing with her eyes closed, silently contemplating her own hands. Would like to live her life without anyone watching. Asked her to tear up these drawings. Elvira did not do so every time. Keeps these portraits as a privilege. The Moretta is now well-known in Schio, former pupils from the institute meet her in town and approach her with the contained enthusiasm of girls who have grown up, would no longer dare to call her Moretta Bella, would no longer dare to say “Come here!” to her, and are embarrassed to remember that they once
licked her hands to get a taste of chocolate, once rubbed handkerchiefs on her cheeks, and she would let them put their hands on her face to feel her skin, saying, “Don’t be frightened.” And also, “Are you hungry? Tell me if you’re hungry, always tell me.” Elvira thinks she may perhaps have been her favorite, but knows that plenty of the boarders would have liked this honor as much as she, being the one Madre Moretta loved more than the others. Now she is about to leave them together, Bakhita will be all theirs, the pupils’ and the orphans’, and Elvira wonders whether there are black women in Paris, if people look at them the way they do at her Madre, as they do here on this platform, with that offended air of embarrassment.

  Bakhita spots it before she does, the gray cloud cutting through the trees in the distance, growing, darkening, and the locomotive’s thundering power, its earsplitting whistle, do they do this on purpose so you can finally scream everything you have been holding in, the fear of leaving and the constant feeling of loneliness? A small tuft of hair has snuck out from Madre’s bonnet. Elvira tucks it back with a smile.

  “You didn’t tell me you had gray hair.”

  “Soon I’m white.”

  “I will be.”

  “Yes. I will be white.”

  “Don’t ever do that, Madre! I don’t want you to be like the others. Never.”

  She snatches Bakhita into her arms, feels her heart next to her own, her thin bones, and the sweat running down her neck.

  Elvira does not believe in God but says in all sincerity, “Pray for me, Madre. I’m not as innocent as you think, but still pray for me.”

  Bakhita closes her eyes, it is a yes, a very gentle, very heartfelt yes. Elvira walks away, leaves her with only the crowd and the smoke, the usual panicky excitement of travelers already mingling with regrets and guilt, with kisses blown and tears carried all the way home, with such courage that you are left wondering why life is this great mountain of renunciation and heartbreak.

  Time passes, and its effects are seen only in the way bodies age and children come into the world. The war has started in France, on the far side of the mountains, and in Austro-Hungary, on the other side of the river. The newspapers talk of allied countries and enemy countries, of countries far away and countries coveted, Russia, Africa, nations argue and posture. Should they fight too, break the pact of neutrality, make war or not make war, and in which camp, with Germany and Austria, Italy’s allies, or with France and England? Educated men read the papers, yell at each other in cafés, at home, in public squares, there is talk of revolution, of a republic, empire, democracy, and despotism. The socialists, including the popular Mussolini, urge factory workers and farm laborers to pacifism, unionists and intellectuals want the proletariat to fight at last, factory owners dream of mass production, nationalists want to wipe away the humiliation of emigration and rebuild the country, émigrés flee to France, Belgium, and Germany only to return home, and town criers in the streets no longer simply announce the times of funerals or the arrival of particular tradesmen but also call for gatherings outside the town hall where the podestà is to speak, will be louder and more passionate than the others; men come to life as they take sides, talk without a moment’s silence, cling to news stories and become impassioned, attend demonstrations and fight for a war about which, deep down, they know nothing. So they change camps, change their minds. Mussolini, now barred from the Socialist Party, campaigns to go to war, is joined by anarchists and nationalists, sets up networks of revolutionary action, Italy becomes a nation divided, is already fighting on home territory, in a frenzy that nothing can contain, in a state of overwhelming exasperation and intoxication.

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  Bakhita prays in the convent’s infirmary, prays all day without rest, all night without sleep. The world reaches her, she recognizes it, it is like a market, a bazaar where human lives are sold, always the same, a disoriented commotion. It is the winter of 1915, she has been in the infirmary for several weeks and is sitting up in bed, supported by piles of pillows and coughing nonstop, her skin is going purple, a dark, torn purple, she is choking to the burning pain of a crackling cough and feels she is being skinned on the inside, her lungs, the depths of her chest are being ripped apart, she is exhausted, as if she has been running under a blazing sun, her body sweats, and to her great shame her sheets are changed every day. She could go now, in the calm of this convent, with a crucifix over her bed and a visit from the priest every morning, but she wants to stay in this human chaos and battles against her bronchopneumonia. She knows that men want war and that they will have their war, family men and young lads, off they will go to war, to the massacre, to what they call “the great collective experience,” and their wives and mothers will be inconsolable, irreparable, as her mother was. She remembers, after Samir’s beatings, after the torture of being tattooed, those months spent fighting off death, lying on her mat on the bare earth, earth that kept traces of every martyr’s blood, and she is aware of how things come around and leave their mark, all human suffering in the din of combat. She has difficulty breathing, has a fever, but has never been so lucid. This time spent in sickness feels unreal, but she can hear what is going on, can smell the smells and see the day dawning and fading outside the window, she is in a reality that confuses people and times, people whose paths have crossed hers, those with whom she has lived, she hears the haranguing of powerful leaders, the children’s nursery rhymes, the nun’s canticles, demonstrators’ slogans, day laborers singing “Cornmeal polenta, water from the ditch, you work, boss, because I can’t,” she thinks of the pupils who have grown up, of the children she has watched being born, of these generations of soldiers. Will the men hide in the hills or come out of their houses, come out from caves and log cabins, from the remotest places, Eutichio the wolf charmer who lives up in the mountains, Angelo the charcoal burner who lives in the woods with his family, Tano the illiterate goatherd, peasants with no land of their own and those who hide in the fields and live off contraband tobacco? Will all these men who no longer know where to live or how to live join the great amassing armies? She must pray for the men who want to fight but do not want to die, who want to be unique but want to wear a uniform. Wishes she could tell them how fleeting life is, it is just an arrow, a slender searing arrow, life is a single gathering, frenzied and miraculous, we live, we love, and we lose what we love, so then we love again, and we are always looking for the same person in all the others. There is only one love. A single shared host. One bread multiplied. She wishes she could tell them, but with her jumble, and her shyness, who would understand her?

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  Night has fallen, the sky is deep, the blazing moon is cut in two, Bakhita wonders where in the world the other half lives, invisible in a bright sky. This half-moon as she sees it now, while she lies in this room with its smell of camphor, ether, and burning wood, is something she has in common with soldiers on the far side of the mountain, and the other side of the river, in warring lands whose names she cannot remember. She is safe, once again. Is sick and is being tended to. Her thirst is quenched and she is fed, is one of those to whom everything is given. She pushes back the sheets and blankets, and swings around her swollen legs, sits on the edge of the high bed and catches her breath, then stands and walks slowly to the window, opens it, as she normally does in the evening, and drinks in the metal cold of the night and the harsh light of the moon. She clings to the windowsill, her breathing gradually settles, she listens but hears nothing, not a single animal, not a breath of wind, as if over the convent and the town, over the mountains and streets, the factories and cowsheds, the night has laid the full weight of its scorching contempt. Showing no mercy and no succor. She would like to recite a Paternoster but her mind is hazy. Would like to kneel but her knees are stiff. Looks for her crucifix, around her neck or in her pocket, but finds nothing. Nothing but her old slave’s body, black under her white nightdress, and before it, a world
standing silent. A slave, yes, she is that. Bakhita. The Lucky One. The one that a priest teasingly nicknamed “Jesus’s fly” because she was there in the sacristy, black and busy, black and buzzing, like a fly. She is an insect, perhaps less than an insect. And she will protect her life, however small it may be. And will recover in order to live on among men, the men who gather every day to wave flags and holler words that do not belong together, insane, determined perennial words: “Hooray for war!”