Marianna! Marianna! Cry with me! Laugh with me! Hug me! He loves me! Would you believe it! He loves me! Can you imagine! I can’t tell you any more. You’ll understand totally what these three little words mean: he loves me!
Yesterday evening, do you remember? I had that sad letter in front of me, with my elbows resting on the desk. My tears were very quietly falling on to the paper and, without my noticing, were blotting out what I had written. All of a sudden came a noise from outside … the sound of footsteps! Could you explain why the sound of footsteps should be detected by your heart, as though the heart could hear? And why it should shake your nerves, and make your blood run cold?
I looked up … the window was open, and outside there was a figure, a voice softly calling me. It was him, do you understand? Him! If a cry didn’t escape me, it was because I couldn’t breathe.
‘Forgive me, signorina,’ he said, ‘forgive me.’ And that was all.
I dared not look at him, but those words were as sweet as honey to my heart.
‘Your mother’s mean and unfair to you. Everyone over there is having fun, and I thought of you, being here on your own … Have I done wrong?’ After a brief pause, during which he must have heard my heart beating, he added, ‘Will you forgive me?’
Then I looked up at him, and I saw him with his elbows resting on the windowsill and his chin cupped in his hands, as I had seen him before. He had been thinking of me, and his voice was trembling!
‘Signor!’ I said. ‘Signor!’ And I couldn’t say anything else. Then he began to sigh, in the same way that I did. ‘Listen, Maria …’ he said, but nothing else. He passed his hand over his eyes, and seemed to be stammering – he, a man! I was shaking all over, as if that name had penetrated every pore of my living flesh. He called me Maria, do you understand? Why did it have that effect on me, to hear him say my name?
‘Listen,’ he repeated. ‘You’re a victim.’
‘Oh no, signor!’
‘Yes, you’re a victim of your circumstances, your stepmother’s unkindness, your father’s weakness, and fate!’
‘No, signor, no.’
‘Then why are you forced to become a nun?’
‘No one’s forced me, signor … it was my own free will.’
‘Ah!’ And he sighed again. I think he actually wiped his eyes. I couldn’t see him clearly, because he was in the dark, in front of the window, and my eyes were veiled with tears.
‘Necessity,’ I said.
He didn’t say anything. Then after a few moments’ silence, he asked me – but his voice was husky – ‘And will you return to the convent?’
I hesitated, but replied, ‘Yes.’
He fell silent again. He didn’t say any more. Then I waited. I waited for a long time for him to say something. I wiped my eyes to see if he’d gone: he was still there, in the same place, in the same position, except that his face was buried in his hands. This gave me courage, and I stepped forward, away from the candlelight that was bothering me. You know how narrow my little room is – one step and you’re by the window … He heard me and raised his head, and I saw that he was crying. He held out his hand to me, without a word. There was a moment when I couldn’t see anything at all any more, either with my own eyes or in my mind’s eye, and I found myself with my hands in his.
‘Maria,’ he said, ‘why are you going to return to the convent?’
‘Do you think I know? I must. I was born a nun.’
‘So you’ll leave me then?’ And he wept silently, like a child, without the pride that other men have to hide their tears. I think I must have cried too, because I discovered that my cheeks were wet, and my hands as well … but my hands might have been wet with his tears, which I felt dripping on them. In fact, when I was alone again, locked in my room … tell me off and shout at me, if you want to … I kissed my hands while they were still damp.
We stayed like that, in silence, for a long time. The only thing he said was, ‘How happy I am!’
‘And I,’ I replied, almost without being aware of it.
You see, Marianna, we were crying and saying that we were happy! But we hadn’t yet said that we loved each other. Such sweetness flooded my heart that I wasn’t thinking of anything any more, and I no longer felt ashamed to be with a man … with him … alone, at night! We didn’t speak, and didn’t look at each other. We gazed up at the sky, and it was as though our spirits communed through the surface of our hands, and embraced each other in the meeting of our gazes among the stars.
Marianna, this part of God that has been given to mankind must be very great if everything before it – both sin and crime, duties and the most sacred attachments – pales into insignificance, if it can create a paradise out of a single word!
I’ll leave you now. My heart’s too full to think of anything else. In writing to you, I’ve relived the same emotions … Now I need to be alone, to dream, think and be happy …