But then I see that the tall gates of the convent—always locked tight—are open, and so I enter, cross a gravel lot and walk through a dark open lobby into a cloistered garden thick with plants, four trees anchoring its corners. One wall of the cloister is a small chapel, windows glowing, and I can hear voices chanting in an unfamiliar language.
I take a few steps before I see her: a stone woman at the garden’s center, the evening fog rising around her. It is her. It must be. She looks like she might stride right off the pedestal. Her halo is bent back, flying from her head as though it is being torn away by an invisible hand. I walk around the cloister until I’m standing in front of her and can read her name cut into stone before me: SANTA MARIA MADDALENA DE’ PAZZI. Mary Magdalene of the Crazies. Of course. This is where she lived. Where she died. I look up. Her eyes are globes. I step to one side, then the other, and they follow me. I sit down on a bench in front of her. On the other side of the courtyard, there are two signs: HOSTEL DE’ PAZZI and, in blue block letters that tumble down the edge of a doorframe, BAR DE’ PAZZI. A few chairs. A game table. All empty and quiet. And so this is how she is remembered, in this overgrown garden with her back to this bar. Bar of the Pazzis. Bar of Crazies.
When the service ends, there is an avalanche of voices as people file out, shades walking away, leaving me in the growing dark. I wait until it is silent and I am alone, and I feel, finally, calm. Far from the afternoon. Far from Luca, from Sergio, from Lorenza, who must be closing up the library now, wondering what’s become of me.
A light blinks on across the courtyard, buzzing over the falling letters. I freeze. There’s the sound of clinking inside the little bar and then, a few seconds later, loud English, and two men step out holding beers. They walk over to the game table, begin playing, the clicks and spins echoing. A third man, tall with a grizzled beard, appears and leans against the wall next to those falling letters looking out. It is dark here, I remind myself. It is dark. The table clicks and spins, and one of the players curses. Then I see the tall man’s look change, grow focused, and he lowers his beer.
“Hey,” he says. “Hey! There’s someone out there.”
I stop breathing. The clicking and spinning stops.
“Hey, who’s there?” He takes a step forward, his voice gruff.
“It’s a statue, idiot.”
“No, behind it, right there.”
“What the fuck?” says a third voice. “Who’s there?”
The tall man begins making his way around the garden, under the arcade.
“Are you staying here? What are you doing here?”
“Nothing,” I say loudly, and this stops him for a minute. “Just sitting.”
But he keeps coming, the others behind him, and so I jump up, walk fast out of the garden and back through the convent. I start running. I can hear them following, and a voice shouts, “Hey!” as I run into the lot. There is light, revealing me. I run for the gates. They are closed. I panic, then see a button to one side. I push it hard and the gates begin to creak open. As I slip through the widening crack, I hear, “It’s just some woman. What’s her problem? It’s just some woman.”
I keep running, filled with rage now. How dare they? Chasing me off like vermin. And now there’s nowhere for me to go. I slow to a walk and then stop, sweating, and lean against the wall. I won’t scurry for them. The bells of San Frediano in Cestello begin to ring, long and loud. Love itself is not loved. Love itself is not loved.
The night guard at the library’s entrance nods sleepily as I pass her. I mumble about having forgotten something. There’s something I’ve forgotten to do. I walk up the dark steps and down the hall, push my key into the lock and open the door, half expecting to see Lorenza there waiting. But the library is silent. I turn on one of the lights, find my bag, then make my way back to the shelves, to all those books I’d returned weeks ago. I run my hands along the spines. They chased me out, those men. That place might be theirs, but these are mine. The Life and Miracles of St. Margaret of Cortona. The Dark Night of the Soul. The Order of the Poor Clares.
I begin to pull out books, one by one, and put them into my bag. I take one and then another and another, the corners catching on the shelf with a loud thunk. One cover tears—The Blessed Angela. Of course. But it doesn’t matter. I can never come back here. I resist the temptation to open them, to read the first few lines. Later. Later. It is amazing—there is so much here and it feels as though I have my arms deep down in mud, digging with cupped hands. It’s so obvious now. So obvious that there must be an answer hidden amid the muck. Something I missed. Something they didn’t tell me about. Something that could free me. I squeeze the last book into my bag, then turn out all the lights in the library except for the one in the hallway where Signora Arcelli’s portrait stares at me accusingly. I find my way down the stairs, past the night guard. I imagine she will stop me, search me, ask me about all these books, but she only nods.
As soon as the night air hits, I’m frantic to get home, as though something might happen to these books or to me between now and then. I cross the street, hugging the wall along the river. I look down at the club as I pass and it seems like a memory from long ago.
I don’t stop for food, but I do stop at the all-night vineria, squeezing in between the group of men huddled around the small, fluorescent window gripping plastic cups. I smile but I cannot look the elderly vendor in the eye as I pay for four bottles of wine. Look normal, I think, but what could be normal about buying so much wine at this time of the night with this odd grin? Say something.
“Grazie.”
Then I walk fast, almost running the final few blocks, loping and off-balance, the bag heavy at my side. Everything looks misaligned and the sidewalk feels unsteady, as though the ground is not solid, as though the earth is not earth but something gelatinous. Chills scale my legs and I’m light-headed. I’ve felt this before, the ground giving way. Felt it for months back home. Just like old times.
“Ciao, bella,” I hear as I approach my door. I don’t stop. I just need to get home.
The light in the stairwell is out, and I’m forced to walk up slowly, my shoulder screaming from the weight, feeling along the wall until I reach my floor, where I use all my energy to push open my door. From far below, I hear that haggard voice—“Signorina”—and I slam my door, triple-locking it. Too bad.
The apartment is dark and I turn on only the small kitchen light. I take off my sweater, lay it over the back of the chair, walk down to the bathroom, empty myself, wash my face, dry it, and return to the kitchen. I open the doors to the balcony and the cold air feels good. I am calm now that I have a direction, a task. I need to think clearly. Puzzle it out. There is an answer. There must be.
I open the wine, pour myself a tall glass, take out the books, and begin, one by one, unearthing the words.
Do not ask me to give in to this body.
The words that stare up at me are different, though, transformed as though the texts have changed. Though perhaps it is only I who have changed. This is true. I am not the same woman who read these words before. That woman is gone. And what of all the women before her? If I could go back to the time before I was carrying this emptiness, before I was carving away. If I could find that moment when everything shifted—when did this start?—that kernel, however small.
Do not ask me to give in to this body.
Because there was a time when I was safe in my body. A long time. The years when Kate and I shared a room. I was grounded, practical, somewhat oblivious. Even after our father left. I didn’t act out, didn’t adopt extreme behavior. I didn’t start wearing makeup early, wasn’t the last girl in the grade to get my period or the first to get a bra. I was average, normal. I was safe.
Between me and my body there must be a struggle.
A gymnasium. Three girls lined up, standing at attention. He went down the line with his finger, labeling our breasts. We did not look at one another. We did not speak of it.
Be
tween me and my body there must be a struggle until death.
But that’s not right. That was a story people told me. This is where it begins, they said.
Priests cannot preach it.
In health class they talked about eating disorders; we read dramatic testimonials in a text that tried to be contemporary but wasn’t, that tried to shock us into identification but didn’t. None of the girls in the book sounded like me. I knew girls in real life who didn’t eat. They looked like ghosts, but the boys still liked them.
They do not understand what they preach.
I wasn’t jealous—my boyfriend didn’t like them. He took off my shoes one cold winter evening, warmed my feet with his hands. And I knew things were coming and I only had to wait.
They babble.
I wasn’t like the ghost girls and I didn’t want to be like them. Anorexia was something for other people. Not eating was something other girls did.
My delights have heretofore been bodily and vile…
Even in college when I gained weight, I didn’t care. I had sex for the first time when I was at my heaviest. Did I think about the additional flesh? Did I want to live any other way? There must have been women in school who were sick, but I wasn’t like those women.
…because I am a body.
I graduated, got one job and then the job at the museum. I had friends. I dated and had relationships. Nothing that lasted, but what does in your twenties? I was safe in my body. I was fine.
She did not seem to be the same.
And then I wasn’t fine. At some point, I found myself in that fog. It sat thick around me. Impenetrable. How long did it last? Years. For years I fell in and out of that state.
She did not seem to be the same person.
And then Julian arrived.
I saw a brightness.
I felt hopeful. I close my eyes and everything returns vividly, months compressed. A break in the fog. Finally. Someone good. Someone kind. The beginning, the warmth and elation, as though a great light were shining on me. I see myself then, satisfied in the glow.
Let the tongue of the flesh be silent.
And I see, too, when things began to change, the sadness creeping in, expanding between us. He peppered me with questions as I pulled away, asked me to describe that thing I had no words for. Leave me alone. Those were the words I had.
Let the tongue of the flesh be silent when I seek to express my love for you.
Why won’t you talk to me? he’d asked, the room coming apart in ribbons around us. I remember his hand sliding up and down my arm, along the scabbed line where I had cut myself—not on purpose, though it felt like it had happened because of some error on my part. There was something in the pain that felt good.
Let the tongue of the flesh be silent…
I kept going, carving deeper into my flesh, watching it disappear around me. How do you cut so close to the bone? they asked. The truth I did not tell: I have found a shortcut.
…when I seek to express my love for you.
It was not his voice that I heard. He never said, Starve yourself, shed yourself, change form, disappear. He cared about me.
Strip yourself of everything.
Leave me alone, I said.
Of everything.
Leave me alone. Until he did. And I kept going, digging deeper and deeper, sculpting and scratching, then bending over so many toilets.
Of all attachments.
Because it wasn’t his embrace I wanted. It was that other voice I clung to. If only you were. It wasn’t the voice of anyone I knew. It didn’t belong to my sister, my mother, my friends. It came from somewhere else, from somewhere within me. A need. A hope.
Even your very self.
And when that voice appeared—if only you were—I grabbed hold of it tight. This is mine, I said. I gave it words, I gave it language. I wrapped it around me, slipped down into it. And once I was down into it, it had nothing to do with anyone else.
Do not ask me to give in to this body of mine.
I knew what that voice was saying with its grip. If only you were. I heard it. I embraced it. And I replied. Digging ditches around the bone, I replied, If only I were.
Between me and my body there must be a struggle.
And still I didn’t recall the ghosts in the hallways of my high school. Those girls remained in the domain of after-school specials, and I was different. At work, at the gym, over dinner, women—specific women, my colleagues, my friends—talked endlessly about appearance and dieting, and I was different from them, too. How do you cut so close to the bone? It was a secret. It was mine but not mine to tell.
I have reached the summit of perfection.
They were talking about taking away—bellies, thighs, age. I wasn’t taking away.
The eyes of my soul were opened.
I was constructing. I was revealing. With every bite I didn’t eat, I was creating.
I comprehend the whole world.
I am disappearing. Like a hiccup, this phrase emerged before vanishing just as quickly, eclipsed by other thoughts—the food, the exercise, a safe place to throw up.
It seems I am no longer of this earth.
I existed in two worlds then. Like a mini-nap for the sleep-deprived, I would nod into that second world—the one where I lived most of the time—even as I was speaking with my sister, the doctor, a friend.
I saw a fullness, a brightness…
Walking down the street, I would have five or six flashes of that tower of food.
…with which I felt myself so filled that words failed me.
Winding through a party, I would smile instinctively at a familiar face, while thinking about my clothing, which felt tighter. I didn’t need a scale—the tools were on my body. Lifting my shirt in the bathroom, I measured the distance between the waist of my skirt and my belly button.
I am continually in this state.
At some point, I could no longer tell when I was present and when I was drifting into visions; when I was asleep and when I was awake. If only you were.
It is like a stone flung in the forge to melt into lime…
Did I dream about that voice?
…it crackles when it is licked by the flames…
Did I dream about food?
…but after it is baked …
I’m not sure.
…makes not a sound.
My days became:
Chills.
Sunlight too bright.
Sounds attacking me.
Counting.
We must fast every day.
What I ate, when I ate, counting and categorizing, tearing apart a plate. I built my day around these rituals.
I stripped myself of everything.
I no longer accepted invitations to meals. I could not hold my wine.
Even my very self.
Could not defend myself against questions and suggestions. Sleep more, eat more.
I forgot to eat.
Hannah, you can’t forget, she’d say, looking at my journal, now filled with gaps. Do you understand what will happen to you?
Priests cannot preach it.
I was filled with rage. Rage at the impossible things she asked of me. Rage at her inability to understand. All she did was disrupt my rituals.
I have reached the summit of perfection.
Because it wasn’t denial, a rebellious refusal to consume. I was consuming something. The promise of something.
I comprehend the whole world.
St. Catherine knew.
I am continually in this state.
Counting and categorizing, dividing my days into consumption and expulsion, dividing my body into parts I could look at.
And when I am in this state…
My image in a mirror, naked and growing.
…it seems I am no longer of this earth.
These were the things they didn’t understand.
Wholly true. Wholly certain.
These were the things I believed in.
Wholly celestial.
This was where I put my faith.
Even if the whole world were to tell me otherwise…
I gathered people around me as witnesses to something—my isolation? My demise?
…I would laugh it to scorn.
But I was not sad. I was proud.
She did not seem to be the same person.
Look at you. This isn’t you. When did this start? They were wrong. All of them. They could not see that I was not only taking away. They could not understand.
Priests cannot preach it.
My rituals.
They do not understand what they preach.
My body in a mirror.
They babble.
But then I saw. One afternoon in a shop window, I saw. Everything written across me.
She was filled with love and inestimable satiety,
And still I clung to it.
which, although it satiated,
I clung to it.
generated at the same time inestimable hunger.
Here is the truth.
In touching her it seemed to take the form of a sickle.
I loved it.
Love took the form of a sickle.
It hurt me, but I loved it.
I could not imagine a death vile enough…
It was mine and I loved it.
…to match my desire.
There was something in the pain that felt good.
I could not imagine a death vile enough.
I was a repository for pain. I was a sponge.
For when love is pure you see yourself as dead.
I invited it back in.
I have fled the world.
I gave it words. I gave it language.
I have changed my life.
Take this body, I said. Take this pain.
Is it not enough?
My eyes well up. I slam my palms down on the table. The apartment rings with it and the pain stops the tears.
There is in my soul a chamber…
Why?
…in which no joy, sadness, or enjoyment enters.
They erased themselves, every single one.
Florence in Ecstasy Page 23