34.
May 1847.
The cardinal learns that someone tried to hurt Agata
and he removes her from the convent of San Giorgio Stilita
 

Agata truly was afraid now; she had no idea who would want to poison her or why, and the fact that Angiola Maria had disappeared meant that now there was no one to watch over her. The abbess had shown herself to be prompt and thoughtful, for the first time, suggesting that Agata keep to the safety of her cell; the abbess’s lay sisters would bring Agata her meals. Her suspicions aroused by this sudden turnabout, Agata thought it over at length and concluded that Donna Maria Celeste’s lay sister, now working for the abbess, was the only one who might have a reason to want her dead, out of fear that she might reveal the abortion that she had helped her mistress procure in that ugly situation. So she refused to eat. On the third day, the abbess came to her cell and with a half smile informed her that the cardinal had authorized brevi at her mother’s home in Palermo. Agata was free to leave the convent as soon as her health improved; while waiting for her mother to come and fetch her, she could stay at the conservatory of Smirne. She neglected to tell Agata that her already modest stipend would be cut in half—the convent would keep the other half—as well as that she and the deaconesses had decided to suggest to the choristers that they vote against her readmission to the Cenoby, should Donna Maria Ninfa ever ask to come back to San Giorgio Stilita.

But Agata had already understood. Anxious about her transfer to the conservatory, which the other nuns spoke of with unconcealed disdain, and uncertain about the welcome she would be likely to receive in Palermo, she felt alone and destined for a vagabond life, shuttling between various religious institutions and relatives who were unlikely to welcome her. Even before she’d lost them for good, she missed her life of religious seclusion at San Giorgio Stilita and the friendships she would be leaving behind. She felt ready to receive the vocation, but now it was too late. That evening, while the others were all at Vespers, she managed to send Nina and Sarina away with a subterfuge and slipped stealthily out of her cell, making her way to her favorite refuge: a little terrace off the uninhabited dormitory of the novices, enclosed by very high walls, from which it was only possible to see a square patch of sky, the inviolate territory of pigeons. The birds’ deafening cooing drowned out the noises of the city. After the first frantic burst of wings, though, they accepted her, focusing their pinhead eyes upon her, waiting to regain mastery of the place. Agata, at the center of the little terrace, watched the sky change from light blue to blinding white and then to the red of a hidden sunset, and she prayed for her fellow nuns, certain that God was listening to her. That was her farewell to San Giorgio Stilita.

 

The following morning she was ready to leave. Donna Maria Giovanna della Croce had brought her a saint card of her namesake, St. John of the Cross. They knew they’d never see one another again but that their affection would endure.

“True love knows no measures and is untroubled by the thought of being repaid; it is free. I give myself to you, in our friendship, without expecting anything in return, just as I did with God,” she said to Agata.

“But love between a man and a woman is different, it demands something in return,” Agata observed.

“It’s a complex love, because there are children involved. But there, too, if it seeks a quid pro quo, it is not true love,” Donna Maria Giovanna della Croce repeated. “My first and only love was Jesus, ever since I was a little girl. They wanted to marry me off, because my older sister went lame and . . . ”—the nun blushed—“ . . . wasn’t as pretty as me, according to my parents. I had to beg and plead before they’d send me to become an educand, and I never regretted it. I live happily, in this imperfect convent, for God.”

When the time came to say farewell, Donna Maria Giovanna della Croce embraced her. “You were made to serve the Lord in the world. If you have a daughter, pray that she has the calling, and don’t dissuade her. Remember that.”

Aunt Orsola’s carriage conveyed Agata, alone, to the conservatory, not very far from San Giorgio Stilita. She had put all her books in the false bottom of her trunks: it had been some time since she’d received any new ones and she wondered whether her last note, in which she had made no secret of her sense of helplessness and despair, might have annoyed the Englishman. Perhaps that was why he’d decided not to send her any more books. She felt as if she’d been abandoned by everyone.