Almost Famous Women

by Megan Mayhew Bergman

  Vendors set up leather, vegetable, and paper carts underneath our public arches. The Roma curled their dirty fingers around our iron gates—a little something, gaje, they said to anyone looking—but we were not allowed to help them. I could smell garlic, pungent and a little sweet, burning in the trattorias on my afternoon walks past the Palazzo Gradenigo to the boundary of Porta Pieve, the town gate. At night, from my cold bed, I could hear the syncopated rhythm of horse hooves on via Garibaldi’s cobblestone when all else was still.

  I’d come to Bagnacavallo the year before Allegra arrived, the month my newborn daughter and husband died from typhus. My milk was still strong, and I wanted to be put to use. I wanted to be occupied, exhausted, sucked dry. I wanted to cut myself off from everything outside of the convent walls.

  Say hello, Allegra, her chaperone urged.

  The girl’s eyes were large chestnut jewels, insouciant below ash-blond curls. Her chin was dimpled, giving her face a strange maturity. Her empire-waist muslin dress, which peeked out beneath her unbuttoned velvet coat, was wrinkled from constant movement. Instead of pleasantries, the girl marched off to shake an olive tree, leaving footprints in what remained of a late snow.

  Allegra is prone to fevers and tantrums, the lead chaperone said. She likes to drink warm milk and eat biscuits in the evenings. Her father requests that—

  We have biscuits, the abbess said, turning to project her voice toward the girl. The abbess was a formidable woman of sixty-eight with short gray hair she cut herself. She was tall, humorless, and deeply committed to the church.

  Amaretti? Allegra asked, the question shaping the bow of her cupid’s mouth.

  The abbess nodded, but I’d never encountered amaretti in the convent. It was my first notion that the girl was being won over in front of her charges, that she was a prize. This was not the type of place that made cookies or catered to whims. The sisters were thin. Righteous, they ate like sick birds.

  I could tell immediately that Allegra was a difficult child, but something in me felt I could reach her. I watched her quietly, the way she pretended to play while eyeing her chaperones’ every move. Her anxiety was evident. She moved to clutch at the knees of the lead chaperone.

  At the convent I’d nearly found what I was searching for: blankness. I sought exhaustion through labor, a mind quieted by industriousness.

  When I arrived in Bagnacavallo, they’d given me the problem children—the ones yellow with malaria or wild with seizures. My first six months, I nursed a countess’s discarded son to health, despite his severe cleft palate, which wrenched his lip into his nostril like a drawn curtain. I stroked his thick black hair and rubbed his cheek with my callused thumb, watched his chest rise, his stomach swollen with milk.

  Early on, one of the Capuchin sisters gave me a warning. Your first instinct at the orphanage is to possess a child, she said, to make it love you best.

  But guard your heart, mia cara, she said, her habit the color of light coffee, faded from coarse hand washing. When the children you’ve suckled are grown, they will forget you. When the children you’ve taught go home, they will hate you as if you’re the one who kept them here.

  In the nursery, you could get away with the luxury of affection. But as soon as the children became toddlers, the tone sterilized, as if reticence and decorum were more instructional than compassion.

  The nursery walls were a sickly green, and there was, I worried, malice in our Madonna’s face. She stood with her hands out and open on a wooden table. Her fingers were too thin; her hair, too gold; her lips, too red.

  Hail Mary, full of grace, I said that evening before dinner, rosary in hand at the Madonna’s feet. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb . . .

  You could tell she hadn’t enough mercy for all of us. Perhaps it had been siphoned off years ago. Perhaps there wasn’t much to begin with.

  I did not see Allegra again until bath time, when I left the sleeping infants in the nursery to assist with turndown rituals for the older children. As my milk had dried the month before, I’d been asked to make the transition from the nursery to the boarding facilities.

  I manned my station, a tin tub on a wooden floor, the bathwater a little dirty but warm. Allegra was undressed and handed to me. The rims of her eyes were red with fatigue. I set her down next to the bath. She looked at the water, then pressed her feet—still plump with baby fat—against the tub and shot backward, the skin of her bottom taut against the cold floor.

  No! she screamed, smacking her naked heels on the wooden floors. Lo non voglio un bagno! Her words echoed off the walls and tall ceiling as if she were calling from the top of the Alps, unholy and alarming sounds.

  Allegra fell into a wild tantrum, her nostrils flared, her back arched. Her little body was a wonder, stout and athletic. She threw herself across the floor, kicking the air. No, she screamed. No.

  Shh, mia cara, I whispered. Shh, Shh.

  I brought her to her feet, placed one arm around her chest, kneeled behind her, and tried to contain her. Her arms flailed and one struck me in the nose, sending tears to my eyes. I was afraid she would hurt herself. Her body went slack. The other children watched, wide-eyed.

  Ten minutes more and I will call for an exorcism, the sister beside me said.

  It’s her first night, I said.

  Mammina, Mammina, Allegra wailed. Her breathing was jagged. Papa.

  She now stood a few feet from the tub, her eyes shut and mouth gasping for air between sobs. She urinated on the floor, watery beads sliding down her solid legs. No, she screamed. No bath!

  Shh, shh, I said. If you will bathe like a good girl, I said, taking her hand, we will make a letter for Papa.

  She continued to cry but let me move her into the tub. She sat still, like a stone cherub in a fountain, her face a tableau of misery. Her blond curls flattened to her shoulders and neck as I poured a cup of dull water over her head.

  I washed her quickly and not without tenderness. I lifted one arm, then the other, enamored with their girth and proportion. As I raised her from the tub and began to towel-dry her hair, she started to wail again. Her cry was sharp and unpleasant, like that of a bleating sheep lost from the herd, and everything in me wanted it to stop.

  Take me home, she begged, casting herself forward over my arm. Take me home.

  Hush, I said. You must calm down.

  Her eyes looked past me. I picked her up off the floor. She kicked and clawed at me and slid down my frame as I repeatedly bent to find a better hold. Darkness was coming in through the windows, and we were losing precious visibility. The convent was too large to light in entirety.

  Allegra’s young skin was like marzipan, her cheeks scrubbed and shiny like the frutta martorana the cafés served at Christmas. I wrapped her tightly in a towel, whisked her down the hallway to the bedchamber.

  The bedroom for three- and four-year-old girls—there were six of them—was small, but the ceiling rose to enormous heights, capped off in a Gothic arch, humbling everything beneath it with space and shadow. As soon as Allegra’s body went limp with exhaustion, I pulled a nightgown over her head. Her eyes opened once, blank. I ran a comb through her hair and tucked her underneath the sheets, which smelled of lye. The beds were donated from a hospital, undersized wrought-iron frames that sat upon the old floor unevenly.

  Try to sleep, I whispered, touching her small back, feeling its heat. I’ll see you in the morning.

  I had a chill as I made my way back to clean the bath station; the fight with Allegra had dampened my clothes and hair. I crouched to mop the spilled water around the tub. The horsehair packed between the cracks of the wood flooring occasionally came loose, dirtying my rag.

  The abbess approached me. I saw her worn shoes first, then looked up to meet her eyes. Sister, she said. You broke protocol this evening putting Allegra to bed.

  She was upset, I said. I thought—

  There are no favorites here, she said. Consider this a warning.

  It had always be
en my intention at the convent to be nobody, to go unnoticed, to punish myself until I could no longer feel the weight of my dead child in my arms. But the old fight in me stirred, the fight of a peasant’s wife who had sewn seeds in the hills of Alfonsine while pregnant, tended my ill husband a day after childbirth. I swallowed the protest and continued drying the floor.

  Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope, I mumbled. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs . . .

  Prayers were dead songs lodged in my head, soothing, routine words that meant less to me than they should have.

  That night my room—one that looked like all the others, with whitewashed walls, a cracked plaster ceiling, and a small bed—smelled damp. I went to bed with a body of glass, tired and aching for the child I’d lost. At least it was she who had abandoned me.

  Across the convent, we knew what we weren’t supposed to know, that Allegra was the illegitimate daughter of the notorious poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, and his mistress, Claire Clairmont. A sister had overheard Allegra’s chaperones gossiping with the abbess in her lamplit chambers. The abbess was merely a receptacle for such talk, never engaging in it herself.

  He does believe her to be his child, one said. The likeness is there, as is the temper, and it’s the temper he can no longer stand. Perhaps from that estranged, godless mother—

  She’s only three, the other chaperone said, exasperated. One can only expect so much from a child who’s lived all over the country with four families in so many years.

  The chaperone had tears in her eyes. We don’t want to see her go, she said. She so loves her papa.

  The child will be fine, the abbess assured her. She’ll receive an excellent education, both spiritual and academic.

  But will she be loved? one chaperone asked the other as they turned to leave.

  Either the abbess did not hear her or she did not wish to speculate.

  I saw Allegra a few evenings later at mealtime. I looked forward to dinner every night—the soft, solemn chatter and bowed heads, the clanking of silverware. Allegra had not touched the spaghetti on her plate, and as I walked past she raised her hand to get the attention of the sister who was manning her table.

  More milk, she said. And then, with a voice that was at once sugared and wicked, added: please.

  Allegra’s manners were affected and her face did not show residual infancy like those of her peers. Now that we knew who she was, we attributed intelligence to her eyes and remarks. Early on she wielded intimidating power over the sisters. No one wanted to instigate one of her notorious tantrums or become the object of her dislike.

  I was drawn to her face, the life within it, the light underneath her skin.

  The letter, Sister, she said, in a childish but articulate voice, catching my sleeve. I want to write a letter to Papa. You promised. During the bath.

  The sisters had already received instructions that no one but the abbess was allowed to contact Lord Byron directly.

  We’ll begin tomorrow, I said. I’ll find you before prayers.

  I did not know if I would be permitted to send her letters, but I knew we would write them. An academic exercise, I told myself.

  As I turned to leave Allegra’s side, I heard one of the older boys at a neighboring table speculate on the existence of the Capuchin Crypt. The boys’ eyes still sparkled; they ran down the halls when no one was looking. They did not break as quickly as the girls.

  And underneath the churches in Rome, he said, there are thousands of skulls and rotting bodies of friars. Their bones are nailed to the walls, and they make chandeliers from the skulls, candles in the eye sockets.

  Allegra’s eyes were wide. She was leaning forward, taking in the boy’s words, though how much she understood was hard to guess. At three, nearly four, she inhabited the space between a baby and a child, far more interested in the older kids than in the benign beings at her own table.

  Is that what happens to our bodies if we die here? the boy asked the sister at his table. Our bones are nailed to the walls? Candles are lit inside our heads?

  No one is dying here, the sister said, though we all knew it wasn’t true. People were dying everywhere.

  Even inside the convent walls we felt the threat of typhus and malaria, the stress and strain of political turmoil. We washed our hands raw. The last of winter was still upon us and we did not have full gardens or a lemon harvest to take our thoughts away from the unrest. Though the Carbonari insurrections and violence were worse in the south, there were revolutionaries in our hills—the Adelfia and Filadelfia. Just last month the Austrians had crossed the Po, upsetting Italy’s unification advocates. One had the feeling that Italy did not yet know itself, and more blood would be shed in its quest to become whole.

  Do not let strangers in, the abbess instructed, and do not leave the grounds unless absolutely necessary. The Carbonari are anticlerical, and we do not know what or whom they would use to make a point.

  That afternoon, after Allegra had received her lessons, we sat together in the cafeteria, light streaming through tall, thin windows. A dinner of ribollita and piselli was being prepared. The cooks, I knew, were dumping the week’s leftovers into a pot with tomatoes and bread to make a thick soup. I could smell the onions frying on the cast iron.

  Tell me, I said, what you want to say to your papa.

  Dear Papa, she began, her lovely face racked with concentration. There are no amaretti and I do not receive evening milk here. I want to come home now.

  Allegra could not yet read. She looked at the paper—a used sheet of music I’d found with one blank side—eagerly.

  She watched my hand as I wrote: Dear Papa, I am happy here but miss you dearly. Please bring amaretti when you come.

  Knowing the abbess would not be pleased with the letter’s contents, I edited the text.

  Allegra’s blond hair was pinned into a simple knot. She was thinner, I felt, than when she had come; she had not eaten much since arriving. Her knees bounced.

  Now, she said, pointing to the page, tell him that I like singing. If he visits, I will sing for him. I will sing “God the Son” and “O Salutaris Hostia.”

  I did as instructed and ended the letter: Con affetto, Allegra.

  Now, I said, patting her small hand. Off to prayers. She trailed behind me as we walked to the chapel, the convent’s bells tolling the hour of four, reverberating in our chests. As we reached the great doors, Allegra touched the back of my leg, pausing for a moment, gathering herself before she joined the other children.

  I wanted to cup her small head in my hands, crouch low, kiss her worried forehead. I wanted to bring her to my hip, tell her a funny story, play with her hair. But I did not touch her, and let the girl go running down the center aisle alone, blond hair bouncing, the travertine loud underneath the soles of her feet.

  In August, just as the walls of the convent began to pulse with the sun’s heat, Allegra received a visit from the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, a thin man with feminine cheekbones and burning eyes.

  He was immediately affectionate with her, hugging her and kissing her forehead, though her stiffness indicated that she did not remember him. He’d come to us while we were seated in the cafeteria for our morning chat, escorted by the abbess, who receded into the background.

  She’s pale, he whispered to me, nodding at Allegra. What is she fed?

  What everyone else is fed, I answered. Soups, bread, meat, vegetables.

  Allegra was inserting spoons into stacks of cloth napkins, in a manner that was industrious and childlike at the same time.

  Why doesn’t she speak more? he asked.

  She speaks plenty, I said, trying to reassure him. She’s one of our most precocious students.

  Tell your friend, the abbess boomed from the shadows at Allegra, what you learn here.

  Jesus, Allegra said, prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. His sweat became blood.

  Can you recite the Apostles’ Creed
for your friend? the abbess said, a note of pride in her voice, as if she was eager for Shelley to report Allegra’s progress to her father.

  I believe in God, the Father almighty. Allegra looked up at Shelley’s eyes, perhaps sensing his horror. Her voice fell flat.

  That won’t be necessary, Shelley said, holding up one hand in protest. I’m quite confident in Allegra’s capacity for recitation.

  Shelley struck me as a nervous man, constantly running his fingers through his hair, a stream of energy and inquiry enlivening his body. I could sense his discomfort and wondered if he’d pictured another life for the girl, something more worldly and secular, a life hard for me to imagine.

  Come, Allegra, he said, arms out. I’ve known you since you were a baby. We rolled billiard balls together once at your father’s house. Do you remember?

  Allegra remained coolly out of reach.

  Do you see Mammina and Papa? she asked. Why have they not come for me?

  The abbess took Allegra by the arm in her strong and sensible manner. It’s time for prayers, she said, pulling the girl to her side. Say good-bye to your friend. Allegra moved compliantly, though she turned to stare at Shelley and me with wide brown eyes as she was led away.

  Pardon the intrusive question, I said. But if you see her father, might you ask if he’s open to receiving letters from his daughter? We have a rule against sending correspondence, but Allegra has written letters—

  The poet nodded and was quiet for a minute, absorbing the visit.

  She appears greatly tamed, Shelley said to me as the abbess and Allegra disappeared down the hall, though not for the better.

  When her fourth birthday came, I checked frequently, but nothing arrived for Allegra—no gift, no letter, no word of a visit from her father, his wife, or the girl’s birth mother.