Awakening of Miss Prim

by Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera

  “Many years ago, when I was a young man, I had a teacher. He taught that a priest, any priest, must always be a gentleman.”

  She blinked, confused.

  “You came here worried that I would tell you something that would frighten, disturb, or trouble you. What kind of courtesy would I have shown if I’d behaved like that the first time you came to see me, without your even having asked for guidance? Don’t be afraid of me, Miss Prim. I’ll be here. I’ll be here waiting for you to find what you’re looking for and to return to tell me all about it. And you can be sure that I’ll be with you, without leaving my cell, even as you search.”

  “You can go to the ends of the earth without leaving your room,” whispered the librarian.

  “I’ve been told that you value delicacy and yearn for beauty,” the old man went on. “So seek beauty, Miss Prim. Seek it in silence, in tranquillity; seek it in the middle of the night and at dawn. Pause to close doors while you seek it, and don’t be surprised if it doesn’t reside in museums or in palaces. Don’t be surprised if, in the end, you find beauty to be not Something but Someone.”

  She looked into the venerable Benedictine’s eyes and wondered what he could have taught her if she’d agreed to come to him sooner, as her friend Horacio had suggested. Then the intense chill made her glance at her watch. It was getting late and she had a train to catch.

  “I’m afraid I have to go,” she said. “Thank you for your thoughts, but it’s getting late and I have to get to the station.”

  “Go,” he said, “don’t miss your train. That would be no way to start a journey as important as this.”

  Miss Prim rose, taking her leave warmly and politely, and started walking back toward the abbey. But before she had quite crossed the kitchen garden, she stopped and retraced her steps to where the old man was still sitting on the bench.

  “Father, I’d like to ask you something. These past few months I’ve heard people say many things about love and marriage. They’ve given me plenty of advice, and expounded many theories. I’d like to know what you think is the secret of a happy marriage.”

  His eyes widened as if this was the first time anyone had ever asked him such a question. Smiling, he struggled to his feet and slowly approached.

  “As you’ll appreciate, I don’t know much about it. No man could who has devoted himself to God from his earliest youth, as I have. No doubt the people who gave you advice have experience of marriage and therefore can say much more on the subject than I can. And yet . . . ”

  “Yes?” she said, painfully aware of the fast-moving minute hand of her watch.

  “And yet, I think I can say what constitutes the spiritual core of marriage, without which it can never be much more than a house of cards that stays up more or less by chance.”

  “And that is?” she pressed, seized by a feverish desire not to leave doors ajar, but to slam them shut.

  “And that is, my dear child, that marriage involves not two, but three.”

  Astonished, Miss Prim was about to reply when she remembered the time. She held out her hand to the old monk, turned, and hurried away from the abbey of San Ireneo to catch her train.

  Nursia

  Prudencia Prim climbed the last few steps up from the crypt of the Basilica of St. Benedict and, unhooking the crimson rope that cordoned off the entrance from the rest of the building, went outside. She felt the cool morning air on her face as she descended the steps into the main square in Nursia. The market was mostly still closed but some of the stalls were coming to life, ready to sell local handicrafts to early passersby. In the norcinerie, which sold impressive arrays of sausages, prosciutto, mortadella, and salami as well as lentils, rice, pasta of all shapes and colors and the most delicious truffles, shopkeepers were raising shutters, opening doors, and arranging baskets and attractive displays of goods outside their premises. The town hall, adorned with the Italian flag that flapped in the wind, and, opposite, the severe edifice that housed the Castellina Museum, were delightfully familiar to her. Yet she’d only been living there for sixteen weeks.

  It was a Friday and, as she always did, Miss Prim turned the corner at the church and walked down the street to the small terrace of the Bar Venezia. Looking forward to a large breakfast, she sat at a table, picked up the menu, and ran her eyes down the list of cured hams and brawn on offer. When the waiter came to take her order with his usual friendly smile, she sighed happily.

  “Buongiorno, signorina.”

  “Buongiorno, Giovanni.”

  “Cappuccino?”

  “Cappuccino,” she said. “And some of your excellent prosciutto.”

  He looked at her dubiously.

  “Prosciutto? I don’t think so. You must be mistaken.”

  Miss Prim shot him a look of surprise. She opened her mouth as if to say something but merely grinned in embarrassment.

  “Of course, what was I thinking?”

  “How about some toast with cream cheese and jam?”

  “That’ll be lovely, thank you.”

  She settled herself in her chair and half closed her eyes. She’d arrived in early May, just in time to enjoy spring in all its finery, the spring that filled the Piano Grande of the Monti Sibillini—a vast plain surrounded by mountains that stretched like a lake only a few miles from Nursia—with flowers. On the advice of the hotel owner, one morning she had walked up to the plateau and admired the incredible sight: an endless carpet of poppies, daisies, clover and violets, dandelions, yellow, pink, and red ranunculus, blue gentians, bellflowers, and many other wild species. That morning Miss Prim had stepped onto the carpet of flowers, wandered among them, sat and even—who would have thought it?—lain down. With dazzled eyes she could make out the tiny, isolated village of Castelluccio, a lost kingdom in a fairy tale, rising like an island from the sea.

  And yet it wasn’t the abundance of nature that had kept her there. It wasn’t the ancient Sybilline Mountains, the vibrant red poppies or the slender cypresses edging the wheat fields. Nor was it the serene faces of the monks or the austere radiance of their chant. It was all these and much more that had made her stay.

  She’d crisscrossed Italy, from north to south and from east to west. She had absorbed the grandeur of the cities and the beauty of the landscapes. She had given herself up to the dazzling coasts of Liguria and Amalfi, strolled along the shores of Lombardy, surrendered to the harmony of Florence, the beauty of Venice, the spirit of Rome. She’d been captivated by the bustle of Naples and lost all sense of time along the coasts of the Cinque Terre; she’d admired the luminosity of Bari and wandered the sober streets of Milan. For two long months she wandered down narrow streets and around harbors, palaces, fields, and gardens. She’d sauntered through the villages of Tuscany and lands of Piedmont. But only in Umbria, that corner of Umbria, had she come to a stop at last and unpacked her bags.

  “What a small thing happiness is, yet what a big thing,” she said to herself as she munched her toast and sipped her cappuccino.

  She had to plan her day. She had thought of spending the morning answering letters—Miss Prim was one of the few guests at the hotel, if not the only one, who sent and received letters—and the afternoon visiting Spoleto. What a pleasing prospect to be able to spend hours on a café terrace, observing the people around her, occasionally reading some poetry—since she’d been in Italy she’d only been able to read poetry—and breathing in the gentle warmth of the summer air. She bit into a second slice of toast and motioned to the waiter, who was lingering benignly in the café doorway, watching the morning unfold.

  “Cappuccino, signorina?”

  “Cappuccino, Giovanni.”

  “The postman left a registered letter for you yesterday,” said Giovanni a few moments later, placing a steaming, fragrant cup of coffee, more toast, and a tray with three envelopes on the table.

  “Thank you.”

  “Prego.”

  Miss Prim opened the first letter, read it, and put it down. She drank some
coffee, opened the second letter, read it, and put it down. She took a bite of toast, opened the third letter, read it, and put down the toast. For a few minutes she simply reread the sheet of paper she had taken from the envelope. Then she unfolded a newspaper cutting that had come with the letter, smoothed it out on the table, and examined it closely. It was a page of small ads from the San Ireneo Gazette. At the bottom of the third column an item was circled in red.

  Wanted: a heterodox teacher for an unorthodox school, able to teach the trivium—Greek and Latin grammar, rhetoric, and logic—to children aged six to eleven. Preferably with no work experience. Graduates or postgraduates need not apply.

  As her eyes alighted on the last two sentences, Miss Prim’s heart began to beat faster. She took a few deep breaths and her pulse slowed. At last, there it was: the moment had arrived. During her months of traveling she’d corresponded regularly with some of her friends in San Ireneo. None of them had mentioned it, nor had she. But in a way, they had all been waiting for the moment to arrive. So many letters sent and received, so many anecdotes recalled, so many small events recorded on sheets of paper shuttling back and forth, north to south, linking the librarian to the place she had found so difficult to leave and to which she so feared returning.

  So much had changed during those months. Sometimes she was quite shocked when she remembered how indignant she’d been when leaving San Ireneo that frozen February. How angry she was as she stormed out of Lulu Thiberville’s house—dear Lulu Thiberville, with whom she’d exchanged so many letters over the past month. How could she not write to Lulu after her seventh visit to the crypt? How could she not write to her after walking, kneeling—who would have thought it—and lying down on the carpet of a thousand colors overlooked by the Sybilline Mountains? How could she not explain that she’d learned to look, scan the horizon, close her eyes, and travel back to the past, to identify monsters and avoid icebergs, to understand and appreciate the arduous labor of the gatekeeper?

  She also wrote often to her dear, much admired Horacio. How could she not write when one day she succeeded at last in admiring Giotto without trying to dissect him? How could she not tell him that in some local villages children still played football in church courtyards, just as all the children in all the villages of Europe had played before Europe forgot games and courtyards? How could she not tell Horacio about the silence of afternoons in Spoleto, the beauty of the narrow streets of Gubbio, the tranquillity of the gardens around the monastery of San Damiano? She missed her friend, she missed his severe, gentlemanly kindness, she felt its loss keenly. But she knew that she missed more than that, and more than him.

  “Cappuccino, signorina?”

  “No, thank you, Giovanni. Could I have the bill, please?”

  Miss Prim paid, gathered up the letters, and left the terrace of the Bar Venezia just as on any other day. She crossed the main square and paused to chat with the carabiniere, asking after his wife and mother just as on any other day. She stopped briefly at the shop of the Monastery of St. Benedict, bought a few things, and left with a smile on her face just as on any other day. Then she returned to her hotel, located a stone’s throw from the square. She walked up to the reception desk and waited patiently while the receptionist dealt with a young Japanese couple who, with much gesturing and giggling, were asking how to get to Assisi. Miss Prim looked at them warmly.

  Tutti li miei penser parlan d’Amore

  Dante: Every one of my thoughts speaks of love. Since setting out on her travels, she kept remembering poetry. It flooded her mind with the vigor of the wildflowers blooming on the Piano Grande. It wasn’t her own—Miss Prim had always had sufficient respect for poetry not to write any herself. But since the morning when she had gazed out to sea in Santa Margherita Ligure and, astonished and bewildered, whispered: E temo e spero; ed ardo e son un ghiaccio—I fear and hope; I burn and freeze like ice—she’d felt overwhelmed by poems long forgotten, poems studied, poems learned, dissected, and analyzed. In Santa Margherita Ligure it was Petrarch; in Naples it was Boccaccio. In Florence it was Virgil; in Venice it was Juvenal’s turn. And the strange thing was that never during these lyrical invasions had Miss Prim felt any urge to study, dissect, or analyze. Poetry seemed to have taken possession of her and done so with no hint of study, dissection, or analysis. It was not her enjoying the poems, it was the poems enjoying themselves in her. They alighted in her mind—or was it her soul?—at dawn, as she rose to watch the sun rise. They startled her at midday, as she watched the Benedictines out in the fields put down their hoes to go and recite the Angelus. They lulled her in the evening as she sat at a café terrace reading until the diminishing light and evening chill roused her from her reverie.

  In this feverish poetic ecstasy, Miss Prim had looked to her favorite authors. But all that came to her lips were odd lines of Ronsard or triplets from Dante or stanzas from Spenser. At first she’d been put out by her inability to recite exactly what she wanted, but soon she realized that the ancient verses were soothing to her soul. Who could remain tense or anxious when Queen Gloriana and her knights echoed in their mind? How could you fail to feel uplifted when a voice was telling you at every step that the year, month, day, season, place, even that very moment were blessed? She couldn’t fight it and she had absolutely no desire to. The images that had always so moved her with their terrible, desperate humanity no longer lodged in her mind, no longer took control of her but fled to be lost in the brilliance of the day. Then beauty returned and harmony was restored; and Miss Prim surrendered. And with her surrender, Dante, Virgil, and Petrarch also returned.

  “You need to take this road,” the receptionist was saying to the Japanese couple. Becoming aware that another guest was waiting, she gestured in apology.

  Miss Prim sighed benevolently and found a chair to sit on.

  She’d learned how to close doors. She’d learned to open them gently and close them carefully. And when you learned to close doors, she reflected as she watched the pair of lovers, in a way you learned to open and close everything else correctly. Time seemed to stretch out indefinitely when you did things properly. It froze, halted, stopped suddenly, like a clock that has wound down. Then the small things, the necessary things, even the ordinary, everyday things, especially those one performed with one’s hands—how mysterious that man could do such beautiful things with his hands—were revealed as works of art.

  She’d given up trying to achieve perfect virtue on her own. She’d realized how exhausting, how inhuman and wrong it was to live enslaved by this goal. Now that she was aware of her overwhelming imperfection, her fragility and contingency, she no longer bore the burden of the hammer and the chisel on her back. It wasn’t that she’d accepted imperfection, or grown accustomed to it, but she no longer carried the load alone, she no longer shouldered the yoke with only her own strength, she was no longer shocked when she struck a bad patch. She also knew that none of this would last, that after the joy there would be dips, caverns, tunnels, and ravines. But for now, everything was a gift that she was learning to accept.

  “No, signore, not that turning. Here, I’ll give you the map. It shows it clearly.”

  The previous week she’d had a call from her old employer, Augusto Oliver. He needed her urgently, he missed her, he wanted her to come back to work for him. Naturally she would no longer be a mere administrative assistant—a woman like her should never have been employed in such a capacity—she was too talented, too capable for administrative tasks. Miss Prim had laughed inwardly. For forty long seconds she hadn’t been able to say a word because she had been silently laughing. Then she’d said no and hung up.

  She didn’t want to go back. She couldn’t bear the thought of burying herself again in that dark, narrow place, shutting herself up in the dull gray cell where she’d spent so much of her life. She wouldn’t return to the trivial chitchat, wouldn’t listen or take part. And she definitely had no intention of going back to the sordid game of dodging her boss’s advances
.

  There was also the matter of air. Miss Prim now needed air. She needed to feel it on her face as she walked, to smell it, to breathe it. Sometimes she found herself wondering how she’d lived so long without the need for air. On winter mornings in the city she left home wrapped up to her ears, scurried to the underground, descended the steps with dozens of other people, and shoved and jostled her way onto a train. She emerged with the crowds and rushed to her office, where she spent a long day. Meanwhile, where was the air? At what point in her life had she forgotten about the existence of air? Walking without having to rush, a pleasure as simple as taking a stroll, wandering, ambling, even idling—when had something so ordinary, so humble, become a luxury?

  No, she wouldn’t, couldn’t go back.

  “That’s right, signori, have a good day.”

  The Japanese couple left, all smiles. The receptionist turned to the waiting guest and signaled apologetically that she was now free. But the guest did not move.

  “Can I help you, signorina?”

  Miss Prim, staring absently at the piano that dominated the hotel lobby, did not reply.

  “Signorina?” said the receptionist. “Can I help you?”

  “Something unexpected has happened,” Miss Prim said at last, advancing toward the desk. “I’m afraid I have to leave in an hour. I apologize for any inconvenience. Could you prepare my bill, please?”

  “Of course,” replied the receptionist, dismayed. “I hope it’s not bad news.”

  “Bad news? Oh no, definitely not,” beamed the librarian, her mind busy in a hall of mirrors.

  The receptionist smiled back.

  “Actually,” said Miss Prim, eyes shining, picturing a door being closed with infinite patience, “it’s good news. Extraordinary news, I’d say.” She sighed euphorically. “It’s strange and wonderful news.”

  “L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle,” love that moves the sun and the other stars, murmured the receptionist half an hour later, as she watched the beautiful, graceful woman walk out of the hotel toward the waiting taxi with her chin held high and a gentle smile on her lips.