The Confessions of X

by Suzanne M. Wolfe

  ACCLAIM FOR THE CONFESSIONS OF X

  “Suzanne Wolfe gives us, in The Confessions of X, the absolutely compelling story of the mysterious unnamed woman with whom Augustine spent so many formative years of his life. This is a beautiful and worthy book.”

  —BRETT LOTT, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF JEWEL AND A SONG I KNEW BY HEART

  “I hope your whole afternoon is free: you are likely to read this absorbing—truly engrossing—novel in a single sitting. And after you close The Confessions of X, you are likely to pick up Augustine’s Confessions, whether for a first or fifteenth read.”

  —LAUREN WINNER, AUTHOR OF GIRL MEETS GOD AND STILL

  “Saying I love Suzanne Wolfe’s new novel is like saying there are waves in the ocean. It totally transported me. I have lived a complete life as the concubine of a Saint.”

  —RIVER JORDAN, AUTHOR OF SAINTS IN LIMBO AND THE MIRACLE OF MERCY LAND

  “A gorgeous, poignant story—a journey both in time and to the soul. Wolfe’s writing is evocative, her research immaculate. I am a fan.”

  —TOSCA LEE, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SHEBA, ISCARIOT, DEMON, AND HAVAH: THE STORY OF EVE

  “Writing in glorious detail, Wolfe brings to life a woman ‘lost to history,’ and in so doing animates the full, profound, thrilling world she inhabited, and the aching knot of love and faith that sustains, undoes, and ultimately uplifts her.”

  —ERIN MCGRAW, AUTHOR OF THE SEAMSTRESS OF HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD

  “The Confessions of X propels this story into a fresh understanding of the conflicts warring in the life of the saint and Bishop of Hippo.”

  —LUCI SHAW, AUTHOR OF THE THUMBPRINT IN THE CLAY AND THE GENEROSITY—NEW AND SELECTED POEMS

  “The Confessions of X is a masterpiece of historical fiction. With beautiful descriptions, well defined characters and thorough research, Suzanne M. Wolfe makes the ancient city of Carthage rise up from the pages. Wolfe transforms a sliver of history into a remarkable story of forbidden love, unfathomable sacrifice and redemption of the human spirit. The Confessions of X is one of my favorite novels of the year.”

  —MICHAEL MORRIS, AWARD WINNING AUTHOR OF MAN IN THE BLUE MOON, SLOW WAY HOME, AND A PLACE CALLED WIREGRASS

  © 2016 Suzanne M. Wolfe

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

  Thomas Nelson titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-0-7180-3962-2 (eBook)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Wolfe, Suzanne M.

  The confessions of X : a novel / Suzanne M. Wolfe.

  pages ; cm

  Summary: “Before he became a father of the Christian Church, Augustine of Hippo loved a woman whose name has been lost to history. This is her story. She met Augustine in Carthage when she was seventeen. She was the poor daughter of a mosaic-layer; he was a promising student and with a great career in the Roman Empire ahead of him. His brilliance and passion intoxicated her, but his social class would be forever beyond her reach. She became his concubine, and by the time he was forced to leave her, she was thirty years old and the mother of his son. And his Confessions show us that he never forgot her. She was the only woman he ever loved. In a society in which classes rarely mingled on equal terms, and an unwed mother could lose her son to the burgeoning career of her ambitious lover, this anonymous woman was a first-hand witness to Augustine of Hippo's anguished spiritual journey from religious cultist to the celebrated Christian saint and thinker. A reflection of what it means to love and lose, this novel paints a gripping and raw portrait of ancient culture, appealing to historical fiction fans while deftly exploring one woman's search for identity and happiness within very limited circumstances”-- Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-7180-3961-5 (paperback)

  1. Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo--Fiction. 2. Christian saints--Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3573.O5266C66 2016

  813'.54--dc23

  2015029203

  15 16 17 18 19 20 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Greg

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  “There is no saint without a past . . .”

  —ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO

  CHAPTER 1

  There is a well in the courtyard where I sit that is not yet dry and at daybreak a young man in a dark tunic comes to draw water. One by one he fills earthen pots with the bucket he hauls again and again and again until the ground blooms dark beneath the well and water runs along the gullies between the stones where thirsty dogs lap it up. When he stoops his neck shows white below the hairline, tender like the milky stems of new grass in spring, his eyes brown and liquid like a doe’s. He sets the smallest vessel brimful beside me with a piece of flatbread he takes from a sack.

  “Here, Mother,” he says. “May your prayers be heard.”

  I do not speak to him with my tongue but my eyes speak. They say: “I thank you, you who could be the son of my son’s son. As for my prayers, there is no one left to hear.”

  Long ago in Rome I saw a woman so ancient of flesh that she was kneaded and furrowed like God making the world. She was earth, root, and stone, and the shadows of the buildings of men fell across the square in silent homage. I have become that woman, and the people in the courtyard do not jostle me, although it is crowded, but leave a circle around me as if I were charmed or cursed. They think I am wise because I am old past counting and all those who knew me are dead or dying. I would tell them that if it is wise to have lived so long, to have borne so much desolation and not to have died of it,
then I am wise indeed.

  When the people in the courtyard ask me what they must do in such times, I am silent; when they ask where God has gone, I am silent; when they show me the bloated bellies of their children, I look away. They think endurance is wisdom and perhaps that is so, but it is not the wisdom of men but of women, for though we live longer, history does not remember us and so we are a mystery to each generation.

  Now that the city of Hippo Regius is besieged, the people whisper that the world is ending, that the clouds will part, and the Christos will descend to scourge the city of men and lead the blessed to the city of God. But first the barbarians from across the sea, the Vandal hordes, a plague of locusts swarming the land, consume our orchards, our crops, our vines, our livestock, all growing things under the sun until there is nothing but the barren husk rattling in the wind and the emptiness of children’s eyes. They smote our bishop and he will die and his flock will be scattered. His death will be the beginning of the end of all things.

  On the long journey of my life I have seen many beginnings and many endings. I have seen many deaths, and sometimes the living die and sometimes the dead live on and it is difficult to tell the difference. My son died young and I died with him, yet I breathe. His father lives, yet he also died forty years ago on that day in spring when the air was filled with blood and the world tilting forever beneath my feet.

  I have come to this place to sit beneath the pear tree he planted to remind him who he is. My garments against the trunk are blackness upon blackness and perhaps, if he looked, he would see the shadow of his heart and would know, irrevocably and for all time, he is that same man though more than sixty years have passed. And so I have come, to rest here against this tree, the tree he planted against the day of his judgment, to see if what he said was true when he wrote, “It was not the pears my unhappy soul desired. For no sooner had I picked them than I threw them down and tasted nothing in them but my own sin.”

  Each day we gather in the courtyard of the church outside his window. Many come and the sound of their prayers is sometimes like the thrumming of bees deep within the hive in winter and sometimes like the cry of an animal in the dark. Its ebb and flow sets the leaves shaking and the shadows dancing until it is hard to know what is sorrow and what is joy, what is greeting, what is farewell. Such has been the sound of my life as it has passed along the wide corridors of time to this moment, here in this place, where I will once more look upon his face.

  Now the church bell is ringing and soon the chanting of the faithful will rise like smoke from the campfires of the enemy outside the city walls and hope and fear will again contend in the souls of men. Their prayers for him and for their own deliverance are spoken in the same breath and none can tell which is which, save God. Thus the desires of our hearts knot and twist until we cannot discern the one from the other, neither seek to know, and so we weave the tapestry of our lives and wonder at the pictures we make.

  An old dog makes his home in the courtyard and lies beside me when the shadows shrink to knives against the walls. He is the only one who does not fear me, his breath ragged, intermittent, his ribs fretted with want, abandoned by his master in the exodus as I myself was abandoned. My hand rests on his head like a blessing as I feed him bread, piece by piece, for he has few teeth and those carious; the crusts he mumbles wetly in my palm. He reminds me of Torch, too old now to be much use on the farm except to lie in the sun and dream.

  Once I had my fill of touch, skin smooth and languid against my flesh, my body falling, falling, the smash of it, then darkness and a slow returning. Later, my arms drawing him down once more, the rush of our meeting a vortex and a roar.

  Then the sweetness of my son’s limbs, brown, creased, firm as figs ripe for eating, his body slippery as I bathed him, then sheeny with oil as he lay kicking before the fire, his hands clutching the air as if to catch up the stars. Never have I loved with such rapture, that tiny body bequeathed me out of blood, a long laboring through the night and then the day coming and with it, you, my son.

  Memory for the old is not solace but a terror and those with clouded minds are God’s favorites. I remember your hair springing strong and silky as young wheat between my fingers as I kissed your forehead on the day I left. My little son whose hands I still feel fisting my skirts in the marketplace, shy of the skitter of mules, the bully of legs crowding the stalls, the shouts of sellers, hands now blunted and veined as your grandfather’s, my father’s, a laborer’s hands wearing an iron citizen’s ring as you lead me through the street, I your child, you the parent. I have it still, this ring that once encircled your finger, that once was warmed by your flesh, and have worn it on a chain against my heart these forty years.

  And afterwards, after the parting, your letters so brave, your pain ducking and peering behind the lists of days, books, hymns, lessons like a child playing hide-and-go-seek, until the sudden finding, the wail, “Oh, Mama, I miss you!” Then that last perfect summer we spent together as if the world and you in it would be forever golden and ripe with promise even as the vines and orchards grew heavy, the grain swelled on its stalk, all things living delighting in plenitude.

  Then the news that you were gone. I never saw you dead but the picture of you upon your bier plays ceaselessly before my eyes.

  Oh, my son.

  Once he said that memory is a longing, that the pictures we make in our minds are the soul’s remembrance of the place where God dwells in immutable light. I have found that place and it is a lonely house, a place for kites and jackals, a fit dwelling for the God who stayed the knife of Abraham but would not spare my son.

  Many and many are the times I have watched you sleep, my son, and never was sleep so still, so absolute, as this your long last dreaming. The goneness of you is an ache in my bones on a winter’s night with the wind blowing cold and desolate off the mountains, my heart a hovel fallen in upon itself, the sky a mocking eye.

  Gift we named you, so blindly bestowed. Adeodatus. Given by God. Iatanbaal in my mother’s Punic tongue. And I a month short of my seventeenth year. My body was a woman’s, my heart a girl’s, and my womb was stunned by its swelling, its stirring a burden that would not let me rest. When, after all that anguish, I reached down and touched the rounded orb of you, a new world crowning and crowned, it was another birth entire, my own, this strange anointing above the lintel of my soul.

  Long ago he said that when something is lost to us, its image is retained within us until we find it again. Crippled by the loss of it, the memory demands that the missing part should be restored. This I believe.

  We are, he and I, as if never parted yet we have been as distant as the stars that roll in darkness and never meet.

  CHAPTER 2

  My mother died birthing me and when the wise-woman showed me to my father saying, “A girl-child”—eyes averted, voice ashamed—he took me in his arms and held me tight to still my wailing, for he loved my mother and I was her remnant. She was Punic, from the tribe of the Imazighen, the free people, ancestors of the Phoenicians who crossed the seas to Africa and settled on these northern shores, and from her I got my light skin and green eyes. He was a poor man, my father, an itinerant mosaic-layer, often drunk but never violent or unkind, his love for me a lame and faithful dog that followed upon the roads we trod from job to job and curled beside me when I slept, the heavens a spangled canopy, the ground, oftentimes, our bed.

  I was wet-nursed and weaned in Carthage at my father’s sister’s house. My father began to take me with him on his travels when I turned four, curled like a mouse in a nest of cloaks he made for me in the cart when I was weary, skipping at his feet or, best of all, riding on his shoulders, for he was a young man then, his back not yet bowed from bending to his craft.

  I first remember colors though I could not name
them. The clip and clink of tiles gritting my fingers, these my first playthings tumbled in gaudy heaps in the marketplace of Carthage or piled on the ground at work sites. Slate, basalt, marble, veined with blue and red and green as if lapidary spiders had spun fantastic webs within—these I sorted when I got older and laid in baskets my father heaved onto the cart pulled by our patient mule, tramping the countryside, a shabby legion of three.

  I was his apprentice, he often boasted, as good if not better than any lad. He would wink at me when he said this and the other craftsmen would laugh. Many of them had daughters at home, and I could tell by the way they would look at me that they missed them sorely. Some had sons with them, learning the craft, much older than I, gangly youths who teased but tolerated me, for one of my tasks was to fetch water from the well when they were thirsty or needed it to mix mortar. Sometimes they gave me things, a necklace plaited out of flowers, a bird crudely carved from wood, to carry to a kitchen-girl or one of the lady’s maids. I soon learned that if the girl accepted, I would receive pieces of honeycomb or perhaps an apple for my mule, but if the girl rejected the gift, the boy would be sullen and bad-tempered for the rest of the day and I knew to keep away.

  They were given the heavy work, carrying baskets of fine rubble to be laid as the base of the mosaic, mixing mortar and then shoveling it over the stones as the second layer, the men smoothing it down with long trowels until it was even, checking constantly with a lead plumb line suspended from the apex of a triangular wooden frame laid flat. This was followed by another layer of mortar mixed with terra-cotta. Above this, the final layer of pure mortar was applied only by the craftsmen themselves when it came time to lay the tiles, and only in small areas, for the mortar had to be wet, the tiles laid swiftly and precisely before it dried. Each son would stand near his father, ready to supply him with fresh mortar, and tempers grew short if the mortar dried too fast and the next batch was not yet ready. I would scurry about with my bucket and dipper so that setting mortar could be dampened and made pliable again. My father had no boy to do this for him and did it himself. It made him slower than the rest but he was an artist of figures rather than of geometrical designs used in bordering—a much rarer skill—and the client never complained.