10.
May 11th, 1840.
Agata enters the convent of San Giorgio Stilita
 

It was May 11, 1840. Agata got dressed for the last time in the bedroom that for nine weeks had been her home in the house of her Aunt Orsola. She looked disconsolately at the wrought-iron bed, the little round mahogany table with the single foot in the shape of a column, the boudoir vanity with the adjustable mirror and the chaise longue that had kept her company through good times and bad. She buttoned up her bodice and draped the peignoir over her shoulders so she could finish fixing her hair. She had curled it into the usual ringlets, but bigger than usual. Her mother had walked silently into the room and was watching her from the door.

“Have you gone mad? The idea of going into the convent with curls!” She was to be admitted to the convent with straight hair, her aunt the abbess had been quite specific. For once, Agata refused to obey; she pointed out to her that she would be going into the monastery for just two months, not as a convent schoolgirl and not even as a postulant. She intended to leave her hair the way it was. In response, her mother said nothing but grabbed the comb and brusquely straightened out her curls for her. Agata was about to try to stop her; then she glimpsed a tear on her mother’s face and she lowered her hand. Her eyes riveted on the face she saw reflected in the mirror the whole time, Agata witnessed the destruction of her ringlets. She allowed her mother to twist her hair into a bun and pin it up to the nape of her neck, and as she watched her she struggled to hold back her tears. That was when her eyes began to become bloodshot. Her mother had brought a black veil, just as a precaution, and after carefully placing pins and clips, she placed it on Agata’s head, covering her face in silence.

 

Admiral Pietraperciata, who had close ties with the Catholic curia, and Ortensia, the wife of their cousin the prince, accompanied the two women to the convent of San Giorgio Stilita. Agata had said goodbye to Aunt Orsola and the servants without even a shade of emotion. As soon as she got into the carriage, she opened the floodgates of sobs and that was how she arrived at the convent.

 

It was as if the abbess and the two nuns who were waiting for them had known in advance that Agata would arrive in tears. The nuns took her, removed her shawl and her veil before she had a chance to object and then pushed her, gripping her by the arms, through the Chapter Hall, the passageways, and a short flight of stairs, until they reached the choir. There they forced her to kneel before the gilt wooden railing that faced the nave of the church. Agata leaned her forehead against the wood and went on weeping.

“Don’t cry, enjoy it: look at this marvel!” one nun told her. “Thank the Lord that he has brought you to this garden of salvation!” added another. “Ingrate!” muttered a third, seeing that Agata was reluctant.

The billowing scent of incense rose thick and pungent from the main altar. Looking down, the white and dark-blue tiles of the church’s majolica floor glittered, as did the gold stucco of the walls and cornices. Agata prayed to God to give her the strength to stay in that place for the two months to which she had agreed, and she slowly regained her calm. She tried to stand up, and she found herself surrounded. Someone asked her if she liked the choir, someone else congratulated her on her sister’s wedding, someone asked her how old she was, and many, many voices repeated the rhetorical question: “Don’t you want to become a nun? Don’t you want to become a nun?” Her two guardians dragged her away from the choir without giving her a chance to answer—the abbess was expecting her.

 

The abbess’s drawing room, redecorated in the eighteenth century, was cluttered with furniture, paintings, and ornaments: in the long succession of abbesses, every one of them had tried to leave a tangible sign of their presence there. Agata recovered as she ate the biscotti and drank the lemonade that she had been given. She looked around her, curiously. “Come, then, say farewell to your mother,” the abbess gently told her. “Now I’m going to call two novices, members of the Padellani family of Uttino, relations of yours, and they’ll show you around. Then I’ll join you and show you the rest of the convent.”

 

The “little nuns” were first cousins, and they looked alike as two peas in a pod: close-lipped with olive complexions and aquiline noses. They had the same voice—low and shrill. They started their tour with the cloister, which was reached through the large carved wooden portal. The cloister was rectangular and split into two sections—one part a flower garden, the other an orchard and vegetable garden—by an exedra decorated with statues in stucco and clay. At that time of day it seemed deserted. Four symmetrical beds surrounded the monumental fountain—round and made of white marble, with mascarons, dolphins, and sea horses—that dominated the garden. Standing in front of the fountain and facing visitors were two statues: Christ and the Samaritan Woman—larger than life and leaning toward one another, the Christ ready to step forward and the Samaritan Woman coyly reserved, as if they were engaged in a gallant conversation. Those statues were completely devoid of any spiritual content, and would have been much better suited to an aristocratic palazzo or villa.

Everything was magnificent, ornate, and rich. The corridors, with piperno-stone arches and cross vaults, supported spacious majolica-tiled terraces, overlooked by the French doors of the luminous second-story cells. Those were the most desirable cells. The third-story cells had equally large French doors, but they only featured narrow balconies. In the orchard and vegetable garden, on the far side of the elegant exedra, orange, lemon, and other fruit trees grew; in the beds, greens, vegetables, aromatic and medicinal herbs were cultivated.

While they were showing Agata around, the two young girls chattered about altar boys and father confessors, using much the same language that Agata’s cousins, the Tozzi girls, used when they talked about their beaus.

Suddenly the bells rang Terce. The young nuns fell silent. The cloister began to fill with black-clad figures; they scurried out of every staircase and door and walked rustling down the porticoed corridors, striding past her and hurrying into the little wooden door that led to the lower floor and to the comunichino, the little window through which the nuns took their communion. Agata wanted to be alone; she took advantage of the situation and offered to wait for her guides in the choir, so that they could attend Terce with the others. “Oh it doesn’t matter, we can hear it from here,” the two young girls reassured her, and they threw open one of the six arched doors that lined the south side of the cloister: on the other side was an alcove with a grated window and side seats, from which it was possible to see the nave and the main altar. The church of San Giorgio Stilita, seen from above, was a magnificent sight. The paintings in the chapels across the way, the stuccoes, the volutes, the putti, and the white-and-gold wreaths of flowers and fruit on the pillars and walls seemed stunningly close, while the white marble altar, illuminated by eight silver candelabra, was like an island of light. Agata held her breath. From the stone seats, the novices listened to the prayers with compunction.

When they returned, the nuns stopped to greet Agata. For the most part, they were young and cheerful. “Don’t you want to become a nun?” was once again the question on everyone’s lips, and in response to Agata’s repeated “no”—sometimes immediate, at times terse, occasionally accompanied by a vigorous shake of the head, other times harsh and grim—they laughed and added that Agata would soon change her mind. When the throng of nuns had passed, Agata felt her cheeks burning. The young sisters told her that the two of them had entered the convent together, at the age of eight, and that they were happy. They said nothing more, though, because now the abbess was approaching. With a simple nod of the head she intimated that they could go.

 

“Let’s start with the kitchens,” the abbess decreed, and she leaned on Agata’s arm. Agata extended her arm to the abbess and instantly felt completely at ease with her father’s sister. The two were both the same height, one slender, the other stout, but they soon fell into step.

Behind a pomegranate tree there were some workshops; in one, various kinds of flour were being milled, in the other, bread dough was being prepared. The first room in the kitchens was a succession of wood-burning ovens, identical and numbered. On the shorter wall were two ovens, both much larger than the others. On a stone in the wall that had been left uncovered, a phrase was carved in crude letters: “The second week of December bread is not to be made: the large and small ovens belong to Madame the Abbess.” The abbess pointed it out to Agata; it was an inscription from the previous century. She added, with slight irony: “Even then they disobeyed the abbess, if the poor thing had to carve it into stone!” Then she turned serious: “Work and prayer: that’s the life of a Benedictine nun. Here our work is to make sweets and pastries, to be sold or given as gifts. It’s hard work, if it’s done right and conscientiously.” Agata saw a gleam in her aunt’s eyes: “When I was younger, I would commandeer all the ovens just to bake ricotta tarts for my relatives!”

 

They were walking through the Chapter Hall, on their way to the choir. The abbess was explaining to her that the nuns were self-governing and that in a certain sense that was their parliament: here they deliberated on admissions, such as Agata’s, with votes that involved secret balloting. Then the abbess added with pride that in the old days, when male monasteries and female convents coexisted in the same building, it was the abbess who enjoyed seniority of command over the abbot, and not the other way around.

That second tour of the choir made quite an impression on Agata. It was a vast square room, with a majolica-tile floor, and it was built over the portico of the church. It communicated with the church through a gilded wooden grate with diagonal openings, embellished by tiny scrollwork that reproduced a floral motif. Like the grate in the parlor, this wooden grate made the nuns invisible to the congregation. It also fragmented their view of the church, preventing them from having a complete picture. The two levels of stalls were decorated with exquisite wooden intarsias and could seat two hundred nuns. At the center stood a podium for the abbess, who was thoroughly enjoying the sight of her niece’s astonishment at such lavish grandeur. “I thank God for making me a nun,” the abbess said. “Here we sing the entire Book of Psalms every week. Every day we praise the Lord, beginning with the Nocturnal Office and continuing with Matins, the prayers of Prime, Terce, Sext, and None, Vespers, and finally Compline.”

Just then, the bell rang and the nuns—hands joined, eyes lowered, dressed in habits with flowing sleeves—were taking their places silently in the stalls. Pressed back against the wall next to the holy water fount, Agata observed. At a sign from the abbess, the nuns began singing a cappella in a single clear, pure, incorporeal voice. Faces that were wrinkled or fresh, hollowed out or pudgy, all diaphanous and impassive. Eyes focused on the glittering silver and gold of the altar, soft lips opening and closing in unison like the mouths of the living corals of a reef—it was wonderful singing. Agata was sorry when the nuns began filing out of the choir, as silently as they’d entered, two by two: they lowered their heads before the abbess and then they kneeled in the direction of the altar below them.

The abbess took Agata up onto the catwalks that ran from the choir, extending just below the roof along the entire perimeter of the church—these were narrow corridors, lit by double skylights set in the roof. On the wall overlooking the nave there were alcoves with grilles made of gilded wood. Through these, the nuns could watch the Mass and enjoy an uninterrupted view of the church. Along the outer walls, on the other hand, the abbesses belonging to the families of the sees of Capuana and Nido had built little altar shrines embellished with needlepoint, silverwork, enamels, statuettes, paintings, and crucifixes, all for their own personal use. They had thus vacuously emphasized the dynastic power and might of their families. Those luminous and airy parapets seemed more than anything else a place of regret, not of prayer: up there, alone, unseen by the congregation, a patrician nun would remember her family’s love and be tormented by worldly concerns. Her aunt the abbess showed her the little altars of the other Padellani abbesses and went on at length with stories of the family’s power and piety. Agata was sweating and her eyes were burning, as if from the grains of windblown sand tossed by the sirocco wind that was flowing down through the skylights on the roof, enveloping her and immobilizing her. At that moment, and for the first time, Agata perceived, as if it were corporeal, the haughty solitude of the cloistered life.