Nun (9781609459109)

by Hornby, Simonetta Agnello

  In February 1840 their mother decided to lighten her daughters’ state of mourning. She therefore gave permission to Anna Carolina—who would soon be married—but not to Agata, to take part in receptions in the Tozzi household. Agata wasn’t offended, confident as she was that her mother was doing everything within her power to make her own engagement to Giacomo become a reality. One day, while they were sitting down to a meal, Donna Gesuela announced that Anna Carolina’s wedding would take place when six months had passed since their father’s death, and that she would then go back to Messina. Agata’s face lit up: her wedding would take place in Sicily. She was tempted to ask her mother if it was true, but she didn’t dare: at that exact moment her mother had shot her a strange glance. Eager to celebrate her happy intuition, she asked if she could go downstairs, where her female cousins were holding an informal evening of dancing with friends—the last celebration before Lent. When her mother distractedly consented, she was certain she had guessed right and hurried to get dressed.

  Agata’s cousins talked excitedly about the Royal Academy of Music and Dance, founded a few years earlier by the king. At least once a week, the Academy held balls, concerts, and theatrical performances put on by amateurs or professionals. The king had set aside for their use the foyer of the San Carlo opera house; the president of the Academy was chosen from among the gentlemen of the king’s chamber and took orders only and exclusively from the king and from the Minister of the Interior. Members of the Academy must belong to the families of the nobility who were allowed admittance to the great balls of the Royal Palace—families like the Padellanis. It was a way of satisfying the upper classes’ demand for entertainment and culture and at the same time of keeping an eye on them, a way of reinforcing the government’s isolationism, as well as keeping at arm’s length from the kingdom the dangerously modern political and artistic ferment of mainland Europe. That evening the cousins had invited their friends from the Academy, to show their parents what they had learned, as if it were a recital.

  Agata went downstairs to the piano nobile in the early afternoon to help out with preparations for the dance; she helped her cousins to dress, put on their makeup, select the right jewelry for their gowns, and make sure that the refreshments had been properly laid out and that everything was in order in the drawing rooms. She was thrilled and there wasn’t a shade of envy in her excitement. She was ashamed of her own clothing and didn’t expect to take part in the festivities; her dark dress clashed with the colorful costumes of the other girls, and she was afraid that she didn’t know how to dance as well as they did. The guests arrived, beaming; she stayed in the background, out of the way, and before the dancing began she found a place in the venerable old musicians’ loggia; the loggia, transformed into an alcove with curtains, was used every Christmas for a magnificent mechanical manger scene with streams and fountains with running water. She admired the guests contentedly. She loved the elegance of Neapolitan youth, so knowing and far more self-assured than the young people of Messina, and she was also happy to see how many foreigners there were: Swiss officers in the Royal Army and civilians of various nationalities. The young people from the Academy danced both the quadrille and modern dances with equal mastery, under the severe gazes of Aunt Clementina and her husband and of other married couples of parents who had little patience for modernity but, eager as they were to marry of their daughters, could ill afford to swim entirely against the current.

  Transported by the music, Agata began to sketch out the steps of each dance while dreaming of her Giacomo. They were dancing a waltz. Agata lifted her arms as if they were wrapped around the shoulders of an invisible gallant escort, she arched her back and raised her head, chin held high, sliding back her left foot to make room for the right foot of her imaginary gentleman in the first movement of the waltz. She executed a pirouette, whirling and spinning, her back increasingly arched, then she stood erect and resumed the slower step, wreathed in smiles.

  And so she was smiling when James Garson saw her. His curiosity aroused by the sound of tapping heels that came from the alcove, he had gone over to take a peep behind the curtain. Agata came to a sudden halt, in embarrassed confusion. He made his way carefully into the alcove and pulled the curtain shut behind him. Then he wrapped his arm around her waist, slipped his other hand between her fingers, and they resumed the dance that had been interrupted. Agata’s foot, hesitantly, struck his longer foot. Just once. Then they danced slowly and in perfect time, managing even to pirouette in that cramped, confined space.

  The music came to an end. “Thank you,” he said to her. They were still standing, still in position for the dance.

  “Go,” she replied, without attempting to unravel their fingers. James lifted her hand and grazed her knuckles with a feathery kiss. Then he turned and left. The pianist had begun playing again and Agata went on dancing until the soirée ended. She was dancing with her Giacomo, with renewed transport.

  That night, Agata had her first carnal dream, and she abandoned herself to it.

  7.

  Preparations for the wedding of Anna Carolina Padellani;

  Agata instead receives a tray of pastries

  from her aunt the abbess

  Donna Gesuela had entered a phase of frantic activity. With the help of Tommaso Aviello, she had completed in record time the procedures involved in paying Anna Carolina’s dowry and she had set the date for the wedding on the first day compatible with the liturgical calendar, immediately after Easter, in Naples. It was necessary to make sure that there was no way for the Carnevale family to wriggle out of its commitment, and with a view to nailing them down securely, she decided to take the promised bride to Messina immediately and to stay there right up to the eve of the wedding. Agata could go and stay with Aunt Orsola, who had generously asked her stepson Michele to let them use the chapel and the drawing rooms of Palazzo Padellani to hold the religious function and the wedding reception.

  Agata wasn’t thinking about anything other than her wedding, and she was happy to go stay with her aunt. Spring had come early and in the mornings her aunt took her by carriage down to the Marina, the Naples waterfront where she treated Agata to pastries and ice cream. In the afternoons, she was permitted to sit at a corner of the table where her aunt unfailingly played cards every day. The Princess of Opiri was under the spell of cards: along with religion and opera, cards were her guiding passion. Her Wednesdays were devoted to whist.

  James Garson, who was likewise on the verge of being married, was a frequent visitor to the Princess’s salons.

  Agata listened to the conversations at the card tables and during refreshments and absorbed everything she heard like a sponge: through the assortment of gossip and the occasional anecdote, she was able to get glimpses of a larger political, commercial, and artistic world. She was burning with the desire to have her say, but she was ashamed to speak out. Once, Admiral Pietraperciata, noticing a gleam in her eye, asked her to express her view—they had been talking about the fact that Jane Austen published her entire body of work anonymously. Agata blushed, then looked around at the others sitting at the table: Aunt Orsola was studying her cards; Aunt Clementina, caught off guard, shot a glare at the admiral and then focused at her hand of cards; James Garson in contrast was waiting for her to speak, his eyes looking straight into hers. Once again, that gaze made Agata hesitant, but then she spoke with growing confidence.

  That night Agata was euphoric when she went to bed, her cheeks burning and her heart pounding furiously. The conversation had been stimulating that evening, and for the first time she had savored the pleasure of meeting minds and comparing views with refined, educated people. After saying her prayers, her thoughts turned to Giacomo. She felt as if she could see his dark handsome face, his fleshy lips, and she realized that in Messina a conversation of that kind and on that level would have been unthinkable, especially in the Lepre household. With a faint sigh, she resolved that there was no alternative but to follow her beloved to Sici
ly, so that’s what she would do. She fell asleep trying to guess who her aunt’s partners at cards would be the next day.

  Her aunt allowed her to visit with Sandra, even though her mother had fought with her again over money. Tommaso Aviello claimed that his mother-in-law had been more generous with Amalia and Giulia, when she’d dismantled the family home in Messina, because they were married to men of whom she approved, while he was merely useful to her in taking care of her business. Sandra took her husband’s side in the argument.

  At their home, Agata met young men who were quivering with passion for the Italian cause. She listened to them in admiration and did her best to understand what had lit that flame in their eyes, what made them willing to sacrifice themselves. Then, when she was alone, she knew that she had no desire to emulate them, she would be unwilling to sacrifice her life for anyone but Giacomo.

  The months of February and March, which she spent in her aunt Orsola’s home, were perhaps the most peaceful period in Agata’s life.

  Her mother and Anna Carolina had returned from Messina with Carmela and Annuzza at the beginning of April, three weeks before the wedding. They astonished Agata with their decision to stay at the Aviello apartment—Donna Gesuela had made peace with them now—leaving Agata with her aunt. Agata’s feelings were hurt; she wished that she could stay with her sisters, especially with Carmela to whom she had been a sort of substitute mother in the past. Then she decided not to take it personally: after Anna Carolina’s wedding, it would be her turn.

  Her fond hopes however were soon cruelly dashed. Amalia sent her mother a letter to say that there had been a furious quarrel in the Lepre home, and that all Messina had known about it immediately because of the sheer volume of the shouting. Giacomo had been the loser in that fight: shortly after Easter he would be engaged to the heiress that the family had already chosen for him. Simultaneously, another letter arrived from Giacomo, addressed to Donna Gesuela, assuring her that he had no intention of giving up. He greatly preferred to live in poverty with Agata and he implored her to consent to their wedding, now that he had come of legal age.

  Agata was crocheting, tatting a simple cotton lace for a hand towel. Her mother burst into the room and stood furiously in front of her, waving the two letters in her face: “Read them!”

  Agata inserted the crochet hook into the ball of fine cotton yarn and took the letters. First she read the letter from her sister. Then she opened the letter from Giacomo. It was very short: not a word to her. She looked up at her mother, dry-eyed but aghast.

  “Do you understand what that miserable scoundrel has done to you?!” her mother spat out.

  “He wants to marry me.” Agata’s voice was trembling.

  “Oh, certainly, he wants to marry you, but how does he expect to support you? Who’ll pay for rent, groceries, and servants? What about your children, how would he feed them?” By asking Donna Gesuela for an impossible marriage, Giacomo had offended both her and her daughter. She inveighed against him: he was cunning, dimwitted, childish, and wrong-headed. Agata defended him and there ensued a scene that came close to deteriorating into an actual brawl. Agata’s entire body was trembling as she sat in a pool of silent tears; her mother, leaning over her, continued to upbraid her, lifting Agata’s chin so that she could spit the harsh truth into her face.

  The next day, a package arrived for Agata. Inside it was a little gold box, inscribed on the inside with her and Giacomo’s initials. Along with the box was a card made of glossy paper, its edges perforated like a piece of lace, and decorated with little red hearts, tiny colorful flowers, golden leaves, and a gleaming ribbon; at the center, a rosette with two robin redbreasts, their beaks joined in a kiss. Giacomo wrote exactly what he had written to her mother: they would be married, provided that Agata would wait for him and remain faithful to him. Agata believed him.

  A few days before the wedding, Donna Gesuela was invited to lunch with her sister-in-law; she arrived early, and Orsola had not yet returned home. She was in a good mood, she seemed years younger, and she gathered Agata up in an impetuous hug. Shortly thereafter, the footman announced a visitor for Signorina Agata.

  A woman in servant’s clothing entered the room hesitantly with a large pastry tray in her hands: “Are you Signorina Agata?” When Agata nodded, she stood straight and recited, word for word, the message that she had memorized: “Madame Abbess, Donna Maria Crocifissa, your aunt, sends you her best wishes and wishes to inform you that the Chapter of the Benedictine convent of San Giorgio Stilita has voted unanimously in favor of your admission.” At that point, she stopped, visibly satisfied, and then went on with the easier part of the message: “Please come, then, to say thanks to the nuns and to set the day for your entry.”

  This was Nina, the chambermaid of the other aunt who lived in that convent, Donna Maria Brigida. She extended the pastry tray with a broad smile. Agata accepted the tray uncertainly; she was about to venture a “you must be mistaken,” when her mother burst in vehemently: “Please thank Madame Abbess on my part and on behalf of my daughter. Tell her that the young sister will be conveyed to the convent this very afternoon.” She gestured with one arm for the woman to leave by the front door, and she shut that door firmly behind her with her own hands after she left, before the eyes of the astonished footman and a petrified Agata. Then, with a chilly hand, she seized her daughter’s arm and dragged Agata, against her will, into her bedroom.

  Sprawled across the sofa at the foot of the bed, Agata was wailing in despair, until her voice grew hoarse and raucous. The footmen buzzed around in the adjoining rooms and outside the door, unsure whether they should intervene. Agata begged not to be forced into the nunnery. Standing in front of her, Donna Gesuela was implacable. Then she glanced at the clock: it was almost time for lunch, her sister-in-law was about to return home. She wiped her daughter’s eyes with her handkerchief and explained that the family’s straitened finances and her behavior with Giacomo—she had learned of the gift of the little box with their initials—left her no alternative: Agata must become a nun. Admiral Pietraperciata would help her to find the money for her monastic dowry.

  “Life is good in the convent, you’ll be with the crème de la crème of the nobility, and you’ll never go hungry. In the meanwhile, I want to entrust you to your aunts, while I hunt for other pensions. They’ll coddle you, and the cloistered life will calm your heart.” Between sobs, Agata continued to beg her to change her mind. Her mother grew tense. She told Agata that her father had left her without a dowry, without even a guardian, and that she was responsible for her fate and the fate of her sisters: “The laws of man and God demand obedience, and obey me you will.” Agata fell silent. Gesuela seemed to grow gentler; she promised Agata that if she still didn’t like the convent after two months, she’d take her back home to live with her. For the moment, she couldn’t refuse to go, not after the vote of the full Chapter, which had been a great honor. Agata was aghast.

  Her mother reached out and took one of her braids in her hand, stroking it, while she explained the benefits of the monastic life to her: it was an oasis of health, uncontaminated by the squalor of ordinary life, and every generation of Padellanis had given a number of nuns to San Giorgio Stilita. Agata would win honors, she would be revered, and without doubt in time they would elect her abbess. At these words, the girl only began sobbing harder. Her mother shook the braid as if it were a noose, then pulled Agata toward her, lifted her chin, and gazed into her eyes: they were bloodshot. She couldn’t take her to the convent in that state.

  Stung, she shoved her roughly away from her, warning her not to come down for meals or dare to sniff out another tear: “Look out! If I find you in the same state tomorrow, I’ll take you anyway, and I’ll introduce you to all the nuns as the little ingrate that you are.”

  Agata spent the rest of the day in her bedroom. She hoped that her aunt Orsola might pay a call on her, but not even she, in compliance with her mother’s orders, dared to knock on her niece’s d
oor. She sent lunch and dinner up to her on a tray; Agata noticed that on a little dish on the side were her favorite almond biscotti. That’s when she understood that there was nothing left to be done—no one would take up for her against her mother.

  8.

  April 20, 1840.

  Reluctantly, Agata goes to visit

  the convent of San Giorgio Stilita

  Early the next morning, mother and daughter left Palazzo Padellani for the convent of San Giorgio Stilita. Aunt Orsola had ordered the most sumptuous carriage to be brought out, the one painted blue with the pure gold Padellani coat of arms on both doors and on the back. Donna Gesuela had ordered ice packs to be placed on Agata’s eyes and cheeks; the swelling of her face had visibly diminished. “Just a short visit, then you can come home,” she said encouragingly, “and remember to thank them for the pastries. Oh, you’ll have plenty of pastries to eat in the convent.” Then she repeated the promise to her once again: if she didn’t like the monastic life, she could leave the convent two months after she entered it, which would be immediately after Anna Carolina’s wedding.