Nun (9781609459109) (27 page)

T
he abbess of the convent of the Santissimo Sacramento of Chiana considered the arrival of the Neapolitan nun to be an unreasonable imposition on the part of the clergy: the cardinal of Naples had written a letter to the archbishop of Palermo, who spoke to the abbot of San Martino delle Scale and with the provincial mother superior of the Benedictine order; then all three men had written to the bishop of Girgenti and directly to her: neither the abbess nor the bishop could hope to withstand such high-placed pressure.

In the seventeenth century the pious founder of the convent had settled the first group of nuns in his own
palazzo
in order to comply with the vocation of his favorite daughter; the central wing of the convent still preserved that original structure: drawing rooms divided into cells, the inner courtyard become a cloister, and windows blinded by wood timbering painted black. Inside, everything had been whitewashed and left simple and bare. The convent of the Santissimo Sacramento was well known throughout the
comarca
for the devout adherence to the old ways of the choristers who, in the previous century, loyal to the intentions of the founder, had refused to give in to the deterioration of mores of the period, which had infected most other convents. There was no shortage of vocations, and the convent was packed. The level of frugality was in sharp contrast with the richness of the building and the decorations and furnishings of the church, which was built in the eighteenth century. The walls and the chapels were decked with white-and-gold festoons, angels, and cherubs, contrasting sharply with the rich dark brown of the magnificent wooden coffered ceiling. The acoustics were perfect.

Agata stepped out of the carriage and hesitated: the staircase leading to the front entrance was not indoors; instead it opened out like an outspread fan and descended down to the square before it. The two women on either side of her urged her to climb the steps. Midway up the steps was a platform from which two other sets of stairs ascended; these steps too were semicircular and cone-shaped. One led to the convent and the other to the portico in front of the church. The three women climbed up to the oaken front door of the convent, which swung open before they could knock. The Chapter Hall was filled with choristers—there were a great many of them, all waiting for the new arrival. They made much show of the honorific title of “Donna,” but they struck Agata as so many bumpkins unaware of outside events. They knew nothing of the uprising in Palermo—Agata had referred it in order to explain her presence among them—or of anything not directly connected to life in Chiana, where nearly all of them had been born. They spoke a different variety of Sicilian from Agata's Messinese dialect and, like her fellow sisters in Naples, they immediately and roundly mocked her accent.

During her stay in Chiana, Agata was treated by the monastic community with ill-concealed suspicion. For her part, she did little to win them over; she expressed lavish thanks for the infrequent courtesies she received and she diligently obeyed both the prioress and the abbess. During her leisure time, she retired to her cell or climbed up the campanile: the convent was lightless, and she felt a pressing need of open sky and sunlight. And yet, if it weren't for her anguish at having completely lost contact with James and being unable to do anything to find out where he was, Agata would have gladly preferred the convent to her mother's house.

*

In contrast with the convent of San Giorgio Stilita, at the convent of the Santissimo Sacramento the nuns followed Chapter 39 of the Benedictine Rule—which forbids eating the flesh of quadrupeds—and scrupulously respected all the requirements of abstinence and fasting. It was not just devotion that imposed their dietary regimen; it was poverty. The Santissimo Sacramento was a poor convent. During meals, there were always the canonical “three things,” and, on the days when it was allowed, a “fourth thing” as well. The dishes, however, were by no means lavish: the “first thing” was a watery soup, the “second thing” was a varied array of casseroles made with stale bread soaked in water and vegetables, sometimes with eggs, or with tiny scraps of chicken or fish; these dishes were cleverly inspired by the dishes of the high cuisine found in the wealthier Bendictine abbeys. A spoonful of pasta cooked in grape juice might constitute the “third thing,” while a slice of apple or orange might be the “fourth.” That cuisine, which was primarily composed of bread, vegetables, legumes, pasta, and eggs, was very tasty indeed; with the addition of the gifts brought by the faithful—milk, cheese, ricotta—and spices, which were plentiful in that cuisine, the nuns transformed the most humble ingredients until they were mouthwatering. Just before Lent, Agata tasted the best dried codfish she'd ever had in her life: baked with a filling of almonds scented with cloves and oregano from the Madonie mountains. The nuns provided for themselves with the help of their families, through charitable donations, and by selling biscotti that were famous throughout the district: the
biscotti ricci
, or curly cookies. All the nuns made the biscotti together. No one had a specialty of their own, the way they had at San Giorgio Stilita. The aroma of freshly made almond flour, mixed with vanilla—work that had to be done every day by hand, with mortar and pestle, in order to make sure that the baking released the scents of the essential oils—filled the corridors lined with cells and every room in the convent, finally wafting forth to blend with the acrid scent of the incense that invaded the convent through the grated windows.

 

It was time for Agata to choose a job. She thought of the pharmacy, but the sister pharmacist seemed to be nothing more than a habited sorceress—she cast spells to ward off evil and dripped oil into a basin of water to “read the oil” of the sick woman, rather than offering any treatment. In the small dark cloister, there was no garden in which to cultivate simples. Sometimes families brought unguents and medicines to sick nuns, but that was rare: faith was expected to heal all ills. And so Agata chose to make bread, as she had when she was a postulant.

Every day that passed only confirmed Agata's initial impression: that the convent had remained anchored and faithful to the stern severity of the Counter Reformation. At the convent of the Santissimo Sacramento, the routine that punctuated the day was an integral part of the nun's very being; there was not a single nun who tried to avoid common prayer, and they all sang in the choir with true passion. The mortification of the flesh, fasting, and ecstatic prayer were all practiced by many of the nuns and were considered by those who didn't to be simple and straightforward forms of religious devotion. Agata had never encountered such a welter of spirituality as she found at the convent in Chiana. It became clear to her that there was really no difference between sacred love and profane love. This only encouraged her to abandon herself to her desire for James. Like her sisters in Christ, she trusted in James and his promise: soon they would be together—soon, and for the rest of their lives.

The nuns were passionately in love with their spouse, a beautiful and carnal Jesus. Scuffles and fights broke out over where to place the small icon of that Jesus during the recitation of the rosary when the nuns were working outdoors, over whose turn it was to dust the large crucifix on the steps and, in the Chapter Hall, over who was allowed to sit closest to the glass casket that contained a wonderful papier-mâché Christ, life-sized, with dreamy eyes, His head languidly resting on one arm, virtually naked, with only a thin cloth draped over His groin. In the chapel, they meditated upon a blond depiction of Jesus, with a trim little goatee and straw-yellow eyelashes, just like James'. And Agata let herself slip into desire, while making bread, without the slightest sense of guilt or restraint. She punched and kneaded the dough after the first and second risings, using first one fist, then the other to crush out the yeasty air; then she rolled the dough up into long cylindrical loaves, smooth, swollen, and glistening. She caught her breath, wiped the sweat from her brow with her sleeve, and went back to work. She lifted one loaf at a time and ran her flour-dusted hands over it to keep it from sticking to the wooden kneading board. Then she worked them all into a single lump of dough, without haste. She caressed them, squeezed them, folded them, and braided them together. When they were well amalgamated, Agata went back to her kneading–one fist inside, the other outside–and then rolled out the dough, only to repeat the process and work out the last air pockets. She kneaded the bread dough, thinking of only one thing: James, the way she knew him.

 

At the convent of the Santissimo Sacramento, the nuns were neither isolated from the village nor buried alive, the way they were at San Giorgio Stilita. The stream of gifts and notes exchanged between the nuns and their families was intense and entirely free of censorship, provided the nuns only spoke about it during recreation after their midday meal. They owned small plots of farmland outside the town of Chiana—part of their monastic dowry—and they went there to work and for their health: the convent was overcrowded, cramped, and sunless. In January, they took turns spending entire days on the land, harvesting oranges. Their faces covered with veils, they would leave the town by cart and then finish their journey on foot: like most Sicilian towns, Chiana had no passable roads. The garden, as Sicilians call their citrus groves, was surrounded by dry-laid stone walls, and stood not far from the white marlstone cliffs that reared up from sea. The sky was dazzling and bright from the excessive sunlight. From there, it was possible to look back at the hill and the town—a cluster of churches and monasteries huddled around two aristocratic
palazzi
built with yellow limestone, porous and wind-worn—and the ruins of the Norman castle, high atop the hill, looking as if it were melting back into the earth. Agata, like the other nuns, loved the garden; there had been plenty of rain on that coast of Sicily in December and the land was green. Agata gathered tiny meadow flowers, caressed leaves and buds, sucked on the tender stalks of wood sorrel; she drank in the tastes and aromas of Sicily—the scent of wild oregano, baldmoney, and pungent whiffs of rosemary. In February the nuns went on country outings to their almond grove, a large plot of land—part of the monastic dowry brought to the convent by a “
burgisi
,” the daughter of a large landowner—on the terraced ridge of a rocky hill, to celebrate the blossoming of the almond trees. There, on the south side of the island, the almond trees bloomed early. Indigenous to the Mediterranean basin, and considered since antiquity to be particularly healthful, the almond trees grew straight and erect on the fertile soil, and the plentiful pink blossoms completely concealed the grey bark of the branches. Other almond trees grew stunted among the rocks; they were short and angular, but they too, covered with dense clusters of pink blooms, were beautiful to behold. The nuns wandered from one tree to the next, exclaiming in wonder, touching the tiny white and pink blossoms, careful not to bruise them. Then, equipped with basket and knife, they tucked their habit and scapular between their legs, like peasant women, and went in search of the vegetables that grew wild: borage and Swiss chard.

During those outings the nuns had no contact with the secular world, except for the carters, who knew that they were expected to look straight ahead. But from the windows of the distant town, those black-clad figures were caressed by the loving eyes of mothers and sisters.

Visits to nuns in the parlor were practically a daily occurrence and the supervision of the deaconesses became three- and four-way conversations—everyone knew everyone else, in Chiana, and everyone was related. The townspeople considered the convent to be part of civil society: every sort of litigation—even those involving prelates and prominent citizens—was submitted for meditation or arbitration to the abbess, and everyone accepted her judgment. Sick children were brought to the convent to be given a healing prayer. Aside from people who came to the parlor to tell tales of woe, young newlywed couples would present themselves in order to receive the congratulations and best wishes of their relatives who were nuns, as did students who had successfully passed an examination or anyone who had had a piece of good luck. Newborns were brought here immediately after their baptism and when they were toddlers, ushered into the seclusion of the cloister to receive a loving hug from their aunt the nun. People came to talk, to laugh, to joke.

And yet the same nuns who enjoyed their country outings and participated in the lives of their families through the grate in the parlor, also employed sackcloth, self-flagellation, and fasting to attain ecstasy. One nun, during Lent, wore a painful rasped iron bodice that had been handed down in her family from one generation of nuns to the next. It was unusual but not unheard of for one or more nuns to immolate themselves by fasting for a serious and sacred purpose, such as the recovery of the Holy Father or perhaps a bishop.

 

Agata did her work, listened to the prayers of the choir, and then curled up in her cell to await James' call. It struck her that, in spite of all their differences, the convent of the Santissimo Sacramento was simply an extension of the convent of San Giorgio Stilita: she felt as if she'd lived there for years. She wasn't alone, she'd learned the habits of the solitary
tignuseddu
, the gecko that every day, around Sext, penetrated from outside and perched in the well of the little window of her cell, head down, watching her. Then, when the sun struck the facing wall, the
tignuseddu
quietly moved away, only to appear on the facing wall. From there, the
tignuseddu
continued to watch her, or at least that's what she believed. Agata wondered how the lizard managed to reach the opposite wall: did it climb down and cross the narrow lane? or did it leap the five-foot gap? Or perhaps it sprouted wings like a bat, so that it could fly towards the sunlight.