She placed the tiny animal on the top of the backrest of the pew in front of her, watching as its black eyes bulged with shock at its sudden freedom and its naked pink feet set off at full speed towards the far end.
Rosa screamed. Jumped to her feet and shouted, ‘Mouse!’
Screams are catching. Panic is like fire, it leaps from one head to another, its flames igniting fear even when the person doesn’t know what they are afraid of. She had seen it before, how easy it is to stampede a herd of empty-headed girls. The pupils bolted out of the pews into the aisles in a jumble of squeals and shrieks, and it could easily have been an accident that Rosa bumped against the wooden box on an iron stand by the wall. It could have been an accident that her elbow nudged open the lid as it fell.
It could have been.
Sister Agatha and Sister Pietra came flapping their black wings down the aisles, voices raised even in the house of God as they ordered the girls back into their seats. But by then Rosa was picking up all the small votive candles that had fallen on to the flagstone floor and was replacing them in the box.
A hand slapped her ear. ‘Hurry up, girl. Get to your seat.’
She hurried. It was only after she’d taken her place on the pew once more, heart thumping hard, that she looked up towards the altar and saw the priest’s gaze fixed on her. She didn’t look away. She sat there and stared back. But the four slender candles tucked behind her pinafore bib were burning a hole in her chest.
‘Don’t, Rosa.’
‘I have to.’
‘You’ll get caught.’
‘No, I won’t.’
But Carmela didn’t look convinced. They were whispering at the far end of the dormitory, crouched down under the casement window in the dark. There were metal bars over the panes of glass, too close together to squeeze between, and the door was locked on the outside, so all sixteen girls inside were secured until morning. But several times a night the door would swing open and a torch beam in the hand of whichever nun was on night duty would swoop on to each bed.
Rosa wrapped an arm around Carmela and drew her closer. Partly to bring her ear nearer so that the other girls wouldn’t wake, but mainly because Carmela may be brave with mice but she was terrified that Mother Domenica would cut her hair. It had been threatened. To shave off her long auburn curls. She kept them covered in a white scarf for much of the time to lessen the provocation they caused. She was shivering and Rosa rubbed her long back vigorously. Her friend was absurdly tall for a nine-year-old and the nuns found her white-skinned face and fiery hair an irresistible magnet for their slaps and smacks.
‘Go to bed, Carmela. I can do it on my own.’
‘No, I’ll stay.’
Rosa kissed her cheek. ‘The match?’
Carmela held up a single match that she had sneaked from the priest’s coat in the cloakroom while he was closeted in the Mother Superior’s office. Rosa had noticed several times that he drew matches from his pocket when he wanted to smoke his vile black cheroots.
‘Candle,’ she announced.
She drew a short thin candle from the thick knot of her hair at the back of her head and held it out to be lit. Carmela struck the match on the rough floorboards and it flared into life with a hiss. Both girls glanced nervously at the beds but could see no movement among the blankets. Rosa melted the bottom end of the candle first and stood it on a flat stone she had picked up in the yard, then Carmela lit the wick before the match burned out.
The darkness leapt backward. Wisps of yellow light flickered on their faces and scampered up the wall. The candle was the kind worshippers lit in church as a prayer for someone, so Rosa knew it wouldn’t last long, any more than people’s prayers did, so she stood quickly on bare feet and lifted the flame to the window. Slowly, carefully, she moved it from side to side.
‘Can you see anyone?’ Carmela whispered.
‘No.’
‘He may not come.’
‘He’ll come.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Or tomorrow night. Or some other night. But he’ll come.’
‘How can you be sure, Rosa?’
Rosa smiled softly as her eyes scoured the blackness in the convent garden beneath them. ‘I’m sure.’
‘But there’s a high wall down there.’
‘That won’t stop him. Nothing will stop him.’
‘Oh, Rosa.’
‘Go to sleep. I can do this.’
But Carmela curled up at Rosa’s feet, unwilling to leave her, and it took a whole hour for the candle to burn to nothing. Rosa was ice cold by the end, hearing her father’s deep voice in her ear and feeling his hand warm on her shoulder, until she no longer knew what was real and what wasn’t. The darkness outside seemed to drift closer, to rap on the glass, to seep into her mind and distort her thoughts, twisting them into knots that she couldn’t undo. She believed she saw the architect. Sitting on the window sill and offering her hand. But when Rosa reached for it hungrily, the architect vanished and all she clutched was cold brittle emptiness.
When the answering light flashed, she almost missed it. She blinked. She waited for it to come again out of the darkness but the garden remained stubbornly mute, no sound, no light. Did she imagine it? Had the night played a trick?
She waited another hour. No more lights flashed. The darkness and the cold swallowed everything out there and her chest hurt so bad that it squeezed tears from her eyes. She dashed them away and knelt down to wake Carmela who was still curled like a long-limbed cat at her feet. Gently she patted her shoulder and placed a hand over her mouth, so that she would make no noise.
That was when she heard the sound of a key in the lock and the yellow beam of a torch sprang into the room.
14
It was the silence that hit Roberto first, a silence so solid he could have stood his tripod on it. The high ceilings of the convent of Suore di Santa Teresa echoed with it. He strode down the corridor behind the black robe that billowed beneath the tall white headdress with its ice-hard triangular edges and he inhaled a smell. That’s what hit him second. The raw smell. Not the stink of paint and damp plaster and freshly oiled wood that permeated the new buildings throughout Bellina, he was used to that and expected no less. But over it and under it lay a different smell, one he had not expected to find in this house of God.
It was the smell of a bordello.
Not the cheap scent of a whore’s perfume, no, not that. The only perfume here was the smoky aroma of incense. No, what caught his nostrils was the unmistakable smell of sex. Musky and muted in the air around him, a femaleness that lingered, as if it were hidden away behind the bricks in the wall and tucked into the mortar that gripped the tiles under his feet. It made him wonder. What thoughts filled the heads of the nuns when they scourged their pale and untouched bodies at the end of each day, and what dreams stalked the nights of the older girls in their care as their young bodies ripened out of their control?
The squat fat figure in front suddenly halted and turned humourless eyes on him. He could see rage within her but he had no idea whether it was directed at him for being a man and a sinner or at the Mother Superior for being the one whose door she was obliged to tap on so meekly.
‘Thank you, Sister Agatha,’ he said.
But his tone had an edge. And she was sharp enough to pick it up.
‘Signor Falco, while under this roof I suggest you learn to practise a little humility.’
‘Thank you, I’ll make sure I bear that in mind.’
Her shoulder gave an annoyed little hitch before she tapped on the door and walked away, leaving him to it without a word. He opened the door and entered Mother Domenica’s inner sanctum. It was a beautiful room, though he could have done without the cardinal portraits. Tall arched windows along one wall allowed sunlight to drift through the fine muslin curtains that robbed it of its glare and gave the room an elegance that he did not associate with convents, but maybe that was because he’d never been inside one before. Certain
ly this chamber was furnished with a degree of luxury that came as a surprise to him.
‘Good morning, Signor Falco.’
So this was the Mother Superior who didn’t stint herself. Wasn’t there supposed to be something about a vow of poverty? He hid his frown and didn’t offer his hand, any more than she did.
‘Good morning, Reverend Mother. Thank you for seeing me so promptly.’
‘It’s my pleasure. We are proud to be part of this town and the recording of this historic achievement.’
‘I will cause as little disruption as possible. As I explained on the telephone, I will need to photograph the buildings and then the pupils in their class groups. With teachers, of course, to indicate the most valuable work that your convent does here in Bellina.’
‘Our most valuable work, as you put it, lies in our prayers, young man. Now, sit down, if you please.’
The order was given affably enough but there was that look at the back of her pale eyes; a look he’d seen before in the eyes of those within the church. A look of forgiveness. As if they could see your sins written in black slime on your skin, yet were willing to let you sit with them and drip your filthy stains on their pristine carpet.
Maybe she was right. Maybe he did need forgiveness. But not right now and not by this woman with her narrow disembodied head that looked too cumbersome in its finery for her thin stalk of a neck. He took the seat in front of the large desk and she sat herself behind it opposite him, her hands folded away in her lap. But Roberto wasn’t fooled by the serene expression she assumed. Those eyes of hers were sharp enough to skin a rabbit.
‘Here,’ he said, and placed a folded sheet of paper in front of her. ‘My letter of authority. Signed by Chairman Grassi himself.’
The nun examined it thoroughly and returned it with a nod. ‘He must think highly of you to give you such access to people’s lives.’
‘It’s my job.’
‘A movie camera team arrives in town every now and again, I’m told.’
‘Yes, that’s L’Unione Cinematografica Educativa. LUCE. They make short showreels to run in cinemas, so that people throughout Italy can see how well the great project is progressing.’
‘But they’ve never come here. Why you?’
She sat forward a fraction and placed both hands quietly on the surface of the desk. Roberto presumed that was as close as she would ever come to expressing aggression. He sat back in his chair and wondered what it was she was nervous of behind the calm passive face.
‘I am employed to keep a record of everything in the town,’ he explained, ‘not just the big cinematic events. And your quiet haven of peace here at the convent of Suore di Santa Teresa is a small but important part of the whole picture.’
The nun’s upper eyelids slid down until she was staring at him through no more than narrow slits. ‘You mean you are a spy,’ she stated. ‘You and your camera have come to snoop on us.’
‘No, Reverend Mother. Quite the opposite. I have come to show the world what a model of rectitude you have created here.’
‘It is not for the world that we do it, Signor Falco.’ The tip of her tongue flashed across her lips. ‘It is for God that we do it, for our Father in Heaven.’
‘Of course.’ Roberto inclined his head in a small gesture of courtesy. ‘Now,’ he picked up the letter he had extracted from Grassi when he first agreed to undertake the wretched job and replaced it in his pocket. ‘Time to take some photographs.’
‘The smallest ones in the front, the tallest girls at the back.’
Roberto was arranging the class of pupils. These girls were too young, Rosa wouldn’t be among them, but still he studied their small faces, seeking clues to their life here. He did not miss the bruises on the backs of their hands or the quick feral way their eyes darted back and forth. They reminded him of a young fox he’d once seen cornered by two hounds in a field. Quivering on its toes, ready to bolt before they ripped its throat out.
He had carried one of the long benches out into the quadrangle that lay at the centre of the convent. He set up his tripod and summoned the classes one by one. He didn’t ask any names, but as each group trooped into the courtyard he arranged them, settling the smallest girls in a row cross-legged on the cobbles. The next in height were seated on the bench and behind them in a line stood the tallest ones, stiff as Roman guards.
He noted how they huddled together, shoulders brushing against each other, as though eager to avoid standing out from the grey nervous little flock. He told them to smile. But they didn’t. He checked the average age of every class with each of the nuns who came to stand one at a time smiling placidly beside their pupils, hands tucked discreetly into loose black sleeves, so no man could look on them.
‘I need an assistant,’ he announced.
Twenty-two pairs of eyes fixed on him instantly.
‘Sister,’ he addressed the nun with old acne scars over her face, ‘I would like one of these girls to assist me.’
‘Reverend Mother didn’t tell me anything about that,’ she answered uneasily. She flapped her wings like a nervous crow.
‘I’m telling you,’ he pointed out.
The class was of nine-year-olds, some in pinafore dresses too large for them. None of them spoke.
‘I require one of the girls to help me with my camera equipment,’ he explained. He made a fuss of unscrewing the film-holder slot, adjusting the tripod and reaching for a new lens in his case all at the same time. ‘I do not have three pairs of hands,’ he snapped with a frown.
‘Well, I suppose Sofia might…’ The nun turned to one of the girls with small sharp features.
‘I’ll have that one.’ Roberto pointed to the only girl who possessed a mass of unruly curls, as Isabella had described, and shy dark eyes. ‘She looks competent enough.’ He didn’t wait for the nun to object. ‘Come here, girl. Pronto!’
The girl scurried forward. He handed her a film holder to keep ready with a warning not to drop it. She looked terrified. When he’d rewound the shutter and the next class started to file into the courtyard, he told her to place the holder into his dark-box.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked casually.
‘Gisella.’
His hand paused. Damn it. The wrong girl. Yet there was no other nine-year-old who fitted the description so well. It would seem that the child Rosa had already been removed from Isabella’s reach.
‘Well, Gisella, don’t worry, you’ll be good at this. You just have to hold things when I hand them to you. Understand?’
The girl nodded nervously and Roberto had an urge to wrap one of his hands around the long white throat of the Reverend Mother in her overheated study and question why the girls in her school had eyes that looked out through a veil of fear. What kind of spiritual guardianship or pastoral care did she envelop them in?
‘Signore.’
‘What is it, Gisella?’
She stared at his shoes. ‘Thank you for choosing me.’
‘You’re welcome,’ he smiled.
She ‘assisted’ him through the photographs of the last two classes and stood silent at his side while he set up for shots of the convent building itself. He talked her through what he was doing with the Graflex, popping up the viewfinder, opening the lens F-stop to make it brighter and using a cable release to press the shutter more gently. When he’d finally finished he led her into a small gloomy storeroom at the back of the kitchens, ostensibly to pack up his equipment case in its dim light without damage to the film stock. It led off the quadrangle and was a place where they would not be overheard.
It was there among the strings of onions and sacks of coarse flour that he asked casually, ‘Do you know a girl called Rosa Bianchi?’
Gisella was eyeing up a large tin box that was marked Biscotti. ‘Si, I know her. She is the one with the mother in hell.’
‘Is that what the nuns say about her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is she still here?’
‘
Yes.’
‘Which class?’
She didn’t answer but her fingers crept out and ran along a corner of the tin. Roberto moved over to the shelf, tore off the lid and scooped out a handful of the hazelnut and aniseed biscuits. She gasped as he piled them into her cupped hands.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘which class?’
‘Mine.’
He looked at her plain little face and swore at himself for making such a mistake. Rosa had been there all the time. Right under his nose.
The Italian Wife Page 14