33.
April 1847.
Agata is not well loved at the convent and does
everything within her power to leave the cloistered life
 

From then on, Agata lived in the convent as an outsider and a rebel. She continued to sing in the choir assiduously, but she skipped Mass, though she still said confession regularly. She performed her duties as infirmarian, which she considered to be her civic duty, and then she spent her time reading, making her cucchitelle, upon which she now painted hibiscuses and camellias, and creating wonderful paperoles with bird feathers, scraps of paper, threads teased out of rags, dried leaves, and pressed flowers. She walked frequently and at length, in her seclusion; she followed a route that she had created for herself, passing in front of the staircase that led down to the underground cemetery, into the cloister of the novices, and then upstairs into the uninhabited dormitories, walking through abandoned halls, taking stairs and passageways, opening doors that had never been open, concealed behind curtains weighed down by dust, and making her way onto tiny secret terraces tucked away on the convent’s roofs. From up there, she could see Naples and she felt at one with the outside world. And she prayed for the others. How many times had she sought out the city from high above? How many times had she felt it calling to her, like a hope, like a natural destination? Hers was a prayer that called for fullness, space, action. She couldn’t bring herself to feel shame for such a swelling wave of feeling. But she was confused. She let her hair grow, and she was vague and distracted. She prepared the request, but she didn’t send it. Aunt Orsola, with whom she had spoken of her desire to leave San Giorgio Stilita, suggested another, less controversial way: seek an appointment as a canoness of Bavaria, an ancient knightly and religious order; the practical effect of that move would be to preserve her vows of chastity and poverty, but not the other two; the canonesses of Bavaria had the right to live independently, far from the cloister. Admiral Pietraperciata had offered to sound out his contacts with certain German noblemen of his acquaintance and to pay the 390 ducats for the honorific.

 

The abbess’s lay sister had come to convey the message that Donna Maria Ninfa was wanted by the cardinal. It was a formal meeting, in the abbess’s drawing room and in her presence. “It is my pleasure to approve this new honorific for Donna Maria Ninfa,” he said and then, looking her straight in the eye: “But, for the moment, I don’t want to deprive the new chorister of the joy of life in the cloister. I will therefore permit you to wear the insignia of the Order of Bavaria on your habit.” Then he furrowed his brow and said that she could go. Agata died inside: she realized that the demand to dissolve her monastic vows would likewise be rejected by the Curia of Naples.

 

In the convent, the atmosphere had become intolerable. Veiled accusations and allusions to Brida’s suicide came up continually. From that evening on, there was also gossip to the effect that Agata had caused the death of Donna Maria Celeste by administering the wrong medications, and that that was why she had asked to leave the convent, first with a request for brevi and then with the stratagem of her appointment as a canoness of Bavaria. Agata felt that she was under suspicion. Donna Maria Giovanna della Croce encouraged her to confide in her, but Agata was forced to remain silent by the obligation of obedience to the abbess.

They were sitting outdoors, embroidering a chasuble.

“Something new is tormenting you.”

“There is a dark night in my soul,” Agata burst out in reply.

Donna Maria Giovanna della Croce pinned the needle trailing purple silk thread into the damask and let her eye wander around the cloister beneath them; then she murmured, keeping her gaze directed away from Agata: “Just when it seems that everything is going wrong, when you are experiencing the ‘dark night’ of the soul, that is when the process of purification is beginning. The seclusion of the cloister is not pointless, the vocation is to live every second full of love for the universe.”

But Agata’s dark night showed no sign of ending. To avoid the murmurs and the open hostility of the other nuns, she refrained from eating meals in the refectory with the excuse that she was indisposed; in time she became accustomed to not eating. She was visibly wasting away, but she didn’t care. Instead, she longed to learn things, to find out what was going on outside of the convent, from reading the Gazzetta del Seggio, which unfailingly found its way into the cloister, and through accounts of the conversations that other nuns had in the parlor. Agata began to frequent the more “worldly” and social choristers, despite their shallowness, just so that she could learn from them what was happening outside and the gossip from within their own families. Every time that she sent her linen out to be washed, she sent Sandra little notes requesting help in small tinfoil tubes baked into the cucchitelle. What came back was invariably clean laundry and nothing else. And yet she was determined to leave the cloister, God was with her.

Agata’s behavior and her emaciation were impossible to overlook, and the abbess wrote about it to the princess of Opiri; she in turn informed Donna Gesuela, who reacted this time with motherly concern: not only did she make a special trip to Naples, but she seemed to regret her neglect of her daughter and she suggested to Agata that they go together to see the cardinal and ask him for the brevi. The request for an interview was granted immediately, and mother and daughter together went to the Abbey of San Martino, where the cardinal, on a spiritual retreat, had agreed to see them.

The veiled carriage clattered up from Via Mezzocannone and had reached the intersection with Via della Certosa. During the trip, Agata avoided looking out the window—it made her head spin. She pulled back the curtain only to peer out at the distant view of the Castle Sant’Elmo; it loomed, massive, against a gleaming, intensely blue sky, like something painted on glass. She remembered her carriage ride with Carmela and Annuzza before Anna Carolina’s wedding, and her pride as she had showed them her Naples—memories from another life. At the age of twenty-one, she felt hollowed out, stripped of all vitality and hope for the future.

The team of horses was struggling as it pulled through the last few hairpin turns. The Abbey of San Martino was in plain view, high atop the hill. Agata began to feel uneasy; she couldn’t understand the cardinal’s attitude–he’d swung from benevolent to punitive for no apparent reason. He imposed his will upon her with a harshness that verged on the sadistic, as if he were her master, and yet she seemed to detect some genuine fondness for her, as if he just wished that she would bend spontaneously to his will. Likewise, Agata couldn’t understand her own reaction to the cardinal’s behavior. She, who was not rebellious by nature, almost instinctively became rebellious toward him.

They were walking through the abbot’s apartment, accompanied by the cardinal’s secretary. Agata, her face veiled, was walking with her head bowed, close by her mother’s side. It was not only the vast space of sky and earth, but even unfamiliar interiors that disoriented her; she paid close attention to the white-and-green diagonal tiles of the majolica floor. The secretary left them in the Cloister of the Procuratori, which offered a magnificent view of the Gulf of Naples; he would come back later, to give them a tour of the Charter House. The air was fragrant with the airy perfume of linden blossoms. The grey piperno-stone arches stood out against the pietra serena, a grey sandstone, and the plaster of the walls. Agata lifted her eyes and immediately lowered them again, overwhelmed.

The cardinal came toward them from the opposite door. He seemed annoyed by the ritual kissing of the ring and he gestured for them to rise. “What new problems do we have with our young chorister?” he said in a cutting tone of voice. The narrow tip of his right slipper was tapping the floor.

Her mother lifted Agata’s veil with a gesture of ownership. “My daughter is wasting away, just take a look at her! Send her home with me for a while, the next time I come.” Donna Gesuela had drawn herself erect, back straight, chest thrust out; beneath the hem of her dress, lifted slightly off the floor, the light-green leather tips of her shoes could be seen.

Agata stubbornly kept her eyes glued to the floor. She had once loved those fetching little shoes. Her mother’s shoes, with silver buckles and knife-sharp heels, next to her own shoes, black and clumsy, made her feel incongruous and out of place, as did the soft morocco leather slippers worn by the cardinal, directly across from her.

“If it’s so urgent, shouldn’t you want her with you immediately?”

“I have a husband to take care of. I came in a hurry because Orsola was so worried about my Agatuzza that . . . ”

“About Donna Maria Ninfa!” he corrected her.

Donna Gesuela leaned back against a column and crossed her ankles, one small shoe with the heel raised and the tip dug in against the floor. “Whatever her name might be, she’s still a daughter of mine . . . Will you let me have her, then?” And she stamped her heel.

“I see no reason to do so. Your request for brevi is for health reasons. Either your daughter truly needs fresh air, and if so she will have it immediately, or else she does not, in which case she will not be given leave at all. Are you ready to take her away tomorrow?” His purple slipper was tapping time.

“How can I do that? You tell me! My husband isn’t well . . . ” And her voice cracked.

“We all make our own choices and we all take on certain obligations, and we must meet those obligations. Donna Maria Ninfa took the monastic vows of her own free will, after passing the appropriate examinations. Her physical and spiritual health is very dear to me.” A pause, and then, “As is that of all the servants of God in the diocese.” Then he pushed forward his right foot, practically toe-tip to toe-tip with Donna Gesuela. Agata lifted her eyes but she did not dare to look him in the face. The two were practically chest to chest.

“Well, then?”

“‘Well, then,’ what? You, Generalessa, should go home to your husband. Our young nun will return to San Giorgio Stilita, where her fellow sisters will cook her delicacies and delights of all sorts to tempt her to eat.” The cardinal had turned toward Agata and he whispered: “You will try to eat, won’t you?”

Agata didn’t answer.

“The poor girl doesn’t have the strength to answer! Are you trying to kill her?” Donna Gesuela was quivering with indignation. “You need to give us this brevi!”

Her back flat against the column, Donna Gesuela was twisting the silk bow that dangled from her hat, draping over her breasts, murmuring all the while. He responded by fiddling with the cross on his chest.

There was an unspoken discussion in the air between them, and Agata was its designated victim, caught like a hare with its leg in a trap.

“I’d like to hear what Donna Maria Ninfa has to say.” And he stiffened back into his initial position, feet flat and parallel on the ground in a wide stance.

“I too would like to speak with Your Eminence, alone.” Agata had screwed up her nerve. The cardinal sketched out a hint of a bow to the Generalessa and stepped aside with Agata onto the portico overlooking the Bay of Naples.

“Tell me, my daughter.”

Agata started laying out the details of the story of Father Cutolo, but she was immediately interrupted. “I’ve already heard it, from others,” he said, quite dismissively. Then, in a silky, almost caressing tone of voice: “I ask you to show compassion. We aren’t executioners, nor are we judges; those are prerogatives of the Lord.” And he said, again: “Compassion, I beg of you.” He looked her straight in the eyes, the glittering black of his pupils shining beneath his half-lowered eyelids.

Agata accepted the challenge.

“You’ve never shown any compassion for me. Never. And you should have, you of all people. I would like to be better than you . . . ” Agata had spoken all in a rush. She stopped to catch her breath. Then she went on: “But, like you, I have no compassion for a priest who seduces a woman, whether she is a nun, an old maid, or a wife.” She lowered her eyes to the parapet. The rocky escarpment beneath her made her head spin.

After what seemed to both of them like an interminable interval, the cardinal laid a hand on her shoulder. “Come now, let’s go, your mother is waiting for us,” and he gave her his arm as they walked back.

In the narthex of the Charter House, the cardinal’s secretary was showing them a painting of the destruction of charterhouses by the English during the Reformation. The bodies of the monks in white habits being murdered occupied the foreground. Agata and her mother listened distractedly. The cardinal was in the background, silent. At that point he spoke: “Remember, it was the English who did this, treacherous they were and treacherous they remain.” She took this as a personal criticism, but she only needed to take a look at him before deciding not to dignify it with a response: he was pathetic.

 

In the carriage, Agata was relaxed. Her mother snorted in annoyance at how late they would be returning home. “You seem very pleased with yourself, as if you didn’t care a fig whether you leave the convent or not,” she said, “but for me this has been nothing but a waste of a day!”

 

Three days later, Dr. Minutolo was summoned to the convent in the middle of the night: Agata was twisting in agony. The sister pharmacist had no idea of what to do. They did their best to identify her last meal: it was a bowl of salad, which still sat on its tray, in her cell. They discovered that the oil had been dusted with verdigris. Agata had ordered the salad from the kitchens and the tray had been left outside her door: anyone could have added the poisoned oil.

The abbess appointed one of Donna Maria Brigida’s servingwomen and Sarina, Donna Maria Crocifissa’s lay sister, to keep an eye on Agata. No one else had access to her cell and nothing could be sent to her from the outside world, including the linen that Sandra washed for her. Once again, someone wanted to do her harm.