O God!
When will I die? If I could at least die quickly! This spiritual torment is so painful!
4 June
I’ve made my confession. How terrifying, Marianna, how terrifying!
While everything going on around me was speaking to me of the next life, I was still thinking of him! And with all the nuns kneeling around me, reciting litanies, his name was on my lips!
What a gloomy ceremony, with those candles, that bell, that canopy, that chanting!
Goodbye to all those I love, to my father, Marianna, my sister, Gigi … and to you … goodbye.
O Marianna, tell him that I was thinking of him even at this moment!
7 June
O Marianna! Marianna! Thank the Lord! I’m not dead … I may well live … God will show me His mercy, and let me see my dear ones again …
They’ve told me that even this hope is a sin, and that we must resign ourselves to the will of God … Lord, forgive me for this desire, but my heart is weak and feeble …
10 June
O God is merciful! I shan’t die! The doctor says that I’m getting better …
I’m going to live, Marianna, I’m going to live! God’s letting me live! I’m so weak … I pray … I bless the Lord … and when I see that sunbeam glistening on the window-pane I cry with tenderness, and my crying does me good.
O my dear Marianna!
13 June
What a joy it will be to see that good old man again, and all my nearest and dearest! What tears! What consolation!
They won’t let me tire myself, so I shan’t write a long letter – and anyway, I wouldn’t have the strength. If you only saw how wasted away your poor Maria is!
They tell me to keep calm, but they can’t prevent my mind from racing away, and thinking of all those things make me cry with joy … of the day when I’ll go down to the parlour and see you all … and my poor heart is filled with gladness.
But then you’ll go away and leave me again – here, alone!
24 June
Praise be to God! At last I’ve seen my papa! You know how much I had to beg the doctor and the abbess to grant me this favour. Yesterday the doctor finally allowed me to leave the sick-room.
The weather was fine, and I could feel my poor, very unhealthy chest swell to breathe in the invigorating, morning air. Filomena lent me her arm to cross the garden. The sun was shining brightly and there were flowers … I’d been so cold in those dismal big rooms that were practically dark! The leaves barely rustled because the breeze can’t get into this enclosure, with such high walls all around. The gravel on the paths crunched under our feet, and two or three butterflies flitted from flower to flower … It didn’t amount to a great deal, admittedly, but you don’t know how much this very little means to a poor recluse! Up above, at one of the dormitory windows, a canary sang sweetly … it’s true that it was in a cage, poor thing, and that had we been able to understand it we might have realized that it was grieving … Yet all these insignificant things that cannot be put into words, that for most people pass unnoticed, constitute a wealth of joys for anyone who has nothing but the memory of fields, woods, life … and they gladden the heart, if not the mind.
If you closed your eyes in that walled enclosure, you might forget that you were in the convent and imagine yourself to be surrounded by cheerful countryside, full of light and fresh air … and to be free. Then the sight of such high walls and windows all covered with grilles sends an involuntary shudder through your heart.
You see what I’m like! To think that this corner of land, a patch of sky, a vase of flowers could have sufficed to give me all the happiness on earth, if I hadn’t experienced freedom and felt in my heart the gnawing fever of all the joys that lie outside these walls. And to think that if I fall ill again, if they put me back in that sick-room, I’ll be deprived even of this garden, these little flowers, and this sun that doesn’t come to visit the poor nuns who are ill because even its rays would be saddened …
O Marianna! What a thrill it gave me to see my beloved papa waiting for me in the parlour! And to put my trembling hands to the grille! I couldn’t tell you whether it was a thrill of pleasure or pain. The good old man couldn’t hold back his tears, to see how pale and wasted I am. Gigi cried as well, and so did Giuditta, and I with my weak heart, who am so feeble and give way to tears over nothing, burst into sobs that brought relief to me. I wanted to throw myself into his arms, but there was that hard, cold grille between us, between father and daughter who were seeing each other after being on the point of never doing so again … I’d never fully understood until then, all that’s hateful about life in an enclosed order.
When we had given vent to our tears, my father questioned me in great detail about my illness. He tried to smile, and comfort me, and every so often sobs would choke his voice, while tears fell on his grey beard and he didn’t notice … It broke my heart! Yet it was supposed to be a joyful occasion, wasn’t it? Giuditta was there, looking so pale! She was also crying. I gazed at her closely, as though I could see in her something new, and indefinable. I wanted to sob or cry out aloud in her arms, and her affection made my heart ache. I gazed at her and my eyes filled with tears, and through my tears I could see another very pale face, beside hers, that temptation conjured up before me …
O Marianna! This weakness comes from my long illness. These hallucinations are the work of the devil. O God, help me!
And in those moments that should have been sacred, coming between me and those dearest to me was the nun who accompanied me, an outsider indifferent to this joy, this sorrow, these tears … Don’t you think even tears have their own modesty? There was also my stepmother who wouldn’t allow us the blessed relief of tears, on the grounds that crying was bad for me. Among all these cold, hard, unforgiving things, the iron grating was the least hostile.
How quickly those two hours that I was allowed to stay in the parlour flashed past! Eventually all those people that I cherish, who are a part of me, had to leave. My eyes followed them to the door, but when they were about to cross the threshold my heart failed me, I felt as though I were going out of my mind. I called out loud to my father, almost beside myself, as if I were never going to see him again. I wanted an excuse to keep him for a few minutes longer, but I didn’t know what to say, and I burst into tears. We all cried and no one could find a single word to say. My papa promised to return the next day. Then he really did leave, and I felt the sound of the door closing reverberate in my heart. I gripped the iron grille convulsively, and kept my eyes fixed on that closed door … My God, those were the worst moments! The nuns helped me back to my cell, and only when I was alone, with no one to see me, could I go down on my knees and give way to sobs.
Now I’m calmer. I’ve thanked the Lord for allowing me to see my papa again. I’ve asked His forgiveness for this grief, which is an offence, because I’d already accepted this life of privation and sorrow, I’d vowed to dedicate myself entirely to Him … and the world still binds me with its most tenacious ties.
Merciful God, am I to blame if I haven’t the strength to break these ties?
My dear Marianna, won’t you come to visit this poor invalid one of these days? Come, please, do. I so badly need to see you!
28 June
I wonder what you’ll think of me – a nun who moans and complains, and writes to you in secret? When I stoop to examining myself, I find myself so culpable, so abject, that I don’t understand how you can still favour me with your friendship … My sin is monstrous, admittedly; yet I feel there’s something more culpable than I am for my misfortune … and for this reason, God will forgive me. There are times when, if I didn’t write to you, all the pain inside me would scream out of every pore …
Do you know, Marianna, the same temptation still possesses me? I have the same serpent still lurking here, in my heart! When I talk to you about anything else and try to hide it from you, from myself, then it bites me even more sharply, piercing me with its pois
onous fangs. I’m afraid of being damned. I struggle against the Devil and he tightens his grip on me … I’m in his possession, do you understand? He possesses me! Now that I’m weakened by my illness, I haven’t the strength to fight any more. I don’t want to die, because I’m afraid of hell … because I love my sin!
Forgive me, my dearest sister! Even I’m appalled by what I write, by what I think … I can’t pray to God any more because I daren’t raise my eyes to Him …
My God, what have I done? What ever have I done?
I still love him! More than ever! Insanely! And I’m a nun, and he’s married – to my sister! It’s horrible, monstrous! I’m damned to perdition! But what fault is it of mine? How can I have earned such harsh punishment? Now that I’m buried alive, this love has grown into a fury, a raging frenzy! I no longer recall those moments of bliss, I no longer feel those timorous joys … Here, in my mind, in my heart, before my eyes, there’s always a fearsome figure that makes me burn with anguish and passion … I hear a voice calling me from the world of the living … Listen … Maria! Maria! The name I had when I was alive … Now Maria is dead … and quaking all over, in a cold sweat from the terror in her limbs, because she feels the hand of the devil dragging her by the hair into the abyss …
Seeing all these virgins, so pure and innocent, as they kneel and pray, and feeling that I’m the only guilty one among them, having to hide my remorse, when it increasingly torments me, and with the most comforting religious practices turned into yet another sin for a poor fallen woman! And being forced to deceive God … Oh!
Every Sunday I go and kneel in the confessional-box, but alas, I haven’t the strength to admit to this terrible transgression … I even invent sins I haven’t committed, as though to compensate for what I never dare say, what I jealously hide in my heart, as a she-wolf hides her young in a cave.
I think I must be mad, Marianna … I’d like to tear my hair out, and rip open my chest with my fingernails. I’d like to howl like a wild beast, and shake these grilles that imprison my body, torture my spirit, and provoke my nervousness …
What if I really were to go mad? I’m scared … so scared … A shudder runs through every fibre of my being, and the blood turns to ice in my veins.
I’m scared of that poor Sister Agata who’s been locked up in the lunatics’ cell for fifteen years. Do you remember that ghastly, thin, pale face, those wild, dull-witted eyes, those bony hands with long fingernails, those bare arms and that white hair? She’s never stops prowling round, in the confined space of her tiny room. She clutches the iron bars and appears at the grille like some wild beast, half-naked, howling and snarling! And do you remember, there’s a frightful convent tradition by which that cell is never left empty, and when one poor lunatic dies there’s always some other miserable wretch to be locked inside? Marianna, I’m scared that I’m to succeed Sister Agata when God takes pity on her and calls her to Him.
I’m feverish. I shall die young. O God, don’t punish me so harshly! I’m scared, I’m scared of that white hair, those eyes, that pallor, that grimace, those hands that clutch at the bars of the grille … What if I were to become like that! Oh, no! no!
It’s night, and all is silence. The window’s open. I heard a shopkeeper arguing with his wife, and in the end he beat her! Lucky, lucky woman! Then came the footsteps of someone out late: someone with a home, a family, and cherished possessions … Why do I think of these things that make me cry? Why am I sickly and weak-minded? Why am I at fault? Oh, I’d forgotten about my fault!
Now, let me tell you how terrible my transgression is: how it recurs in every guise. On Sunday I was in the chancel, attending mass. I felt such peace, calmness and serenity in my heart. It seemed to me that at last God had taken pity on me and forgiven me. I prayed, with my eyes fixed on a man standing below, in the church, leaning against a pillar. He was of the same build, with the same black hair and a certain similarity of bearing. I’d have sacrificed what little hope of life was left to me, if he had only looked up at the chancel. I watched, and at times I thought it was definitely him … and then the blood would start rushing round my head. When mass was over, he turned to go, and I prayed to the Virgin that he would look up at her statue, which is by the chancel, so that I could see his face, but he left, and I couldn’t be sure it was him. I remained there, for I don’t know how long, as if turned to stone, staring at the pillar that a man who might have been a complete stranger had been leaning against.
5 July
I want to see him! I want to see him! Just once! Just for one moment! O God, would it be such a great sin to see him? Only to see him … from afar … through the grille! He won’t see me. He won’t know that behind the grille there’s a woman here dying, damned to everlasting punishment for his sake …
Why did they take him away from me? Why did they steal my Nino from me? My heart, my love, my share of paradise … Murderers, who killed my body, and are still torturing my soul!
Oh, how I love him! How I love him! I’m a nun … I know! Who cares! I love him! He’s my sister’s husband, and I love him! It’s a sin, a monstrous crime … I love him, I love him!
I want to see him! I want to see him! If only for the last time! I’ll wait for him at the window of the bell-tower overlooking the street. I’ll wait there every day … he’s bound to pass by … once, just once … God will send him this way …
God – O Marianna, how that word terrifies me! I’m raving, you can tell … I’m beside myself … I don’t know what’s wrong with me … it must be fever … or nerves … I must be mad …
25 July
I saw him, Marianna! I saw him! I suffered this additional agony! Praise be to God!
He went by with some of his friends, but he didn’t even look up. Perhaps he didn’t remember that his poor Maria from Monte Ilice was in this convent … a pale, dying Maria, who cries, and shivers with fever, and keeps him always in her heart … The sparkle in my eyes didn’t dazzle him! He talked and laughed, with a cigar in his mouth, and the smoke rose to my window … I saw him, yes, yes, him, his face, clothes, movements, and I was scared of that smiling man, smoking and talking to his friends … Isn’t that horrible, and monstrous?
Then he disappeared. He turned the corner into another street and I lost sight of him.
All those people continued to stroll and chat and enjoy themselves, and didn’t notice that he wasn’t there any more. Where was he? Where did he go? Home? To my sister … to his wife!
If only I were a tiger, or a demon! I’d tear my flesh to pieces, poison the air with my desperation, blot out the sun with my sorrow.
Damn! Damn me, him, everybody!
O God, God, what do you want of me?
5 August
Marianna, I ask your forgiveness, and the forgiveness of everyone I might have scandalized with my sins, just as I’ve asked forgiveness of merciful God … What must you have thought of me – of this abject sinner who spends her life weeping and praying at the foot of the Cross in order to purge her transgressions?
We had a special series of spiritual exercises. A very renowned preacher was called in, and speaking through him, God’s voice thundered in the semi-darkness of the church with its black-curtained windows. How dreadful the word of the Lord is! No, it was my sins, my guilty conscience, and my remorse that made it frightening. For my heart tells me that the word of God cannot but resonate with infinite love and mercy.
How upset I was by those sermons! They instilled me with fear and terror. God seemed cruel. I saw the blast of His divine anger strike from above the altar, I heard a snarling of demons that was lost in the dome, and I saw the black wings of bats etched against the shadows of the vaulting. God spoke of hell, and of the damned … and all night long I thought I heard the lamentations of the souls in torment, weeping and wailing in the next world … And I was filled with dread, of myself and my sin.
Now I feel completely deranged … my heart tries in vain to take refuge in the thought of divine
mercy … My sin is monstrous. Can I ever be forgiven? The preacher wasn’t clear about that – he listed every transgression, threatening divine retribution against all the most wicked sins, but he dared not even include mine among them. His mind must have shunned the enormity of it!
Good God, what’s become of me? Perhaps I’ve even forfeited the right to invoke you! A depraved sinner, condemned to suffer your anger, can I still listen to your word? Can I still prostrate myself at your feet among these virgins that are your chosen?
Marianna, it’s dreadful to be abandoned even by the Lord! Yet there are times when temptation tells me that I’m innocent, that I’m blameless of my sin, that God might forgive me … Why am I lost? What have I done?
It’s the devil that suggests these doubts to me, and it’s the devil that possesses me!
I consider myself damned. I’m filled with fear and loathing of myself, with remorse and terror. Yet I still love my God, and I wish I could unburden my soul of its immense anguish at the foot of the crucifix. But I can’t, I can’t … I’m damned!
The nights! If you only knew what the nights were like – when the light burns out, and the shadows waver, and the furniture creaks, and the silence is full of whisperings and indistinct sounds. They’re nights of deep terror, of sepulchral mysteries, the snarling of demons, the howls of the damned, an unholy rustling of wings. Everything’s so gloomy – that long, dark and silent corridor, the dead lying beneath our feet, that church, those lamps and pictures – grotesque figures appear on the walls, and above my bed, at the foot of the crucifix, there’s a shapeless skull … there’s the fear of the air you breathe, of a silence that conceals sinister noises, of the space around you, of the weight of the blankets on your body … I daren’t cry out because I’m afraid of awakening terrible echoes, of feeling a thousand horrible shapes settling on my flesh. Sleep is troubled, fraught with nightmares. I often wake with a cry, bathed in a cold sweat and tears.
Sparrow (and other stories) Page 9