The Hermit is neither deep in meditation or study nor is he engaged in work or action. He is walking. This means to say that he manifests a third state beyond that of contemplation and action. He represents—in relation to the binary “knowledge—will” or “contemplation—action” or, lastly, “head—limbs”—the term of synthesis, namely that of heart. For it is the heart where contemplation and action are united, where knowledge becomes will and where will becomes knowledge. The heart does not need to forget all contemplation in order to act, and does not need to suppress all action in order to contemplate. It is the heart which is simultaneously active and contemplative, untiringly and unceasingly. It walks. It walks day and night, and we listen day and night to the steps of its incessant walking.
Next to the chair where Sabina was sitting to drink her anti-influenza liqueur—with it, she always had a chocolate in the form of a flower, rose or camellia—was an old straw basket draped with blue material. Issues of a magazine that was not in Nicola’s old house were piled up in it: La Donna (Woman). It didn’t resemble any of the newspapers Vincenzo bought; it seemed, rather, a version for ladies of the Giornalino della Domenica. Sabina, leafing through it, was very amused.
Nicola stood in the doorway of the big living room observing her. She had pale smooth skin, very black eyes, and an enormous bosom buttoned into a burgundy-colored silk shirt. She dangled her feet, rubbed her shoes with the buckle against each other, letting them fall to the floor, took a second chocolate, looked up and found Nicola staring at her. She smiled at him and it was as if the whole world were smiling.
“What are you doing there alone, come here,” she urged him, huddling to one side of the green velvet chair to make room for him.
Nicola didn’t move.
“Come to Mamma. You want to read me something? I know you can read: I saw you looking through the magazines.”
For three days the Crestani husband and wife had tried in vain to make that mute child speak.
When Don Franco ordered his twenty-two orphans to dress as well as they could to meet with Monsignor Emilio Cottafavi, the papal envoy sent to Reggio Calabria to carry out the will of Pius X, Nicola had looked at Emma with a questioning expression, and she, as always, had intuited what the question was: Was that really him, the Pope’s man?
“I remembered that his name was Don Orione, but this must be someone more important,” she said, more confused than knowing. “That other one was supposed to take us to his shelter in Cassano allo Ionico, I don’t know where this one’s taking us,” she added.
They had gone to the meeting, and there they’d found orphans from various parishes of the city and the area from Palmi to Gioia Tauro. Nicola had never seen so many children all together; when Vincenzo and Maria were alive they had enrolled him in an exclusive private school in which boys and girls occupied two separate wings and caught glimpses of one another only on the way out, after the sound of the bell. Here, instead, in the big square where they gathered, boys sat next to girls, ages and sexes mixed in a great tumult, some covered their heads with caps fashioned by stretching a newborn’s bonnet, some pulled over their knees a coat two sizes too small, some hid bruises and injuries on their knuckles or cheekbones, some clutched the hand of a sister or a friend, some acted tough, speaking in overly loud voices to make a show of not being scared. Nicola was very scared. He wondered if leaving his cellar had been the right choice; was he still in time to escape and live like a pirate or a thief? Who was now sleeping on his bier? Had the monsters stayed underground or vanished with the smoke of the fires after the earthquake? Had anyone recovered the bodies of Vincenzo and Maria, whom he continued to imagine as horned devils, even now that they were dead and buried?
Emma’s small hand clutched his elbow. She had placed herself between him and Camilla, halfway between a guardian angel and a bodyguard. Believe me, said her posture, there’s no reason to be afraid. Where did she find such courage and such trust.
When the Monsignor’s hoarse voice rose, the children were suddenly silent. He was a corpulent man with a frowning expression, and he blinked his eyelids behind the glasses, as if he couldn’t see well.
“The directives of our dearly beloved pontiff are clear,” he began, and then: “Our Church is large, it will take care of you: the Calabrian children should stay in Calabria, the Sicilians in Sicily, and each of you has the right to receive a Catholic education. Nevertheless,” he added, “in the days of the recovery many families in Italy have expressed a desire to help the orphans of these lands, and we believe that for you the right thing is to be welcomed into the warmth of a home: Who of us doesn’t want to find again the warmth of the embrace we’ve lost? Who of us doesn’t desire a mother and a father? To many loving couples the Lord has not given children. His will is inscrutable, yet today we understand the reasons: Their fate was not to bring forth new children of God but to adopt children already born. For those who have faith and patience,” he concluded, “the moment always arrives when the mystery of our suffering becomes clear: You innocents are here to fulfill the will of God. The Lord has chosen you to make some suffering adults happy—are you ready for this task? The Lord summons you.”
At those words Emma lit up, Camilla remained impassive, and Nicola grew pale.
The Monsignor listed the cities that had made themselves available to welcome the orphans; they were many, many were far away, and some Nicola had never heard of.
“. . . and the very generous city of Biella, which will be able to take care of two hundred orphans.”
Biella, strange name for a city, with an extra vowel that ruined a known adjective, bella, beautiful, what was Biella like, was it bella? With a convulsive laugh, Nicola turned to look at Emma and Camilla. Camilla smoothed the wrinkles of her dress over her knees. Nicola tugged Emma, who made him a sign to be quiet.
Soon afterward, every child was assigned a destination. Emma and Camilla’s was Naples. But Nicola would go to Biella.
They spent the night in the same bed, all three of them. Emma’s breath was no longer sour and Camilla’s hair smelled of milk. The girls snored softly, Nicola didn’t close his eyes.
The next day—with a bundle prepared by Don Franco that contained a change of underwear, a package of cookies, two rations of meat, and three bottles of water—Nicola wondered if it had been he himself who, with the power of his brain, had named that particular destination. Of the years with Maria, the years of nights tied to the bed and devils who threatened to seize him, the certainty had remained that it was he who controlled things: thoughts weren’t only thoughts, the mind manipulated and originated the facts, sometimes blocked them. Shooting stars, the death of his parents, stopped clocks, and earthquakes were his fault. At the word Biella he had laughed, so God had decided to send him there.
“Bye, Nicolino, write to me,” Emma said goodbye when the train stopped in Naples. “I’ll get your address from Don Franco, I think once you’re there you’ll speak again.” She was nearly crying as she shook him, and he couldn’t respond, couldn’t even open his mouth; he looked at her stupidly, as if all eleven years he had spent on the Earth had crashed down on him. Emma hurried to get off, dragging Camilla, before the train started again. She was the younger but acted as if she were the older: she would manage in Naples, she would manage anywhere. As for Nicola, he continued the journey.
“Come to Mamma,” Sabina repeated, indulgently, putting down the magazine.
The child kept staring at her.
The mayor, a photographer, and a reporter had been waiting for him in Biella. He had had to pose, so that the city’s daily paper could glorify the story of the arrival of the orphans of the earthquake. Then they had gone to the town hall, and in a room of officials their names had been joined to other names.
“Fera, Nicola . . .” the official looked up from the register, “you go to the Crestanis!”
So a guard had led him on foot to a small pink building with wood-framed windows, surrounded by plane trees.
“Come and read something to Mamma.”
Sabina’s request became a plea. They had told her the child didn’t speak because of the trauma: he wasn’t born that way, they would have to be patient, give him time. Sabina was sure of it, but occasionally she had a suspicion that she wasn’t enough, she wasn’t a good mother, who knew what Nicola’s mother had been like, the real one. A suffering expression escaped her, and he, noticing it, was sorry. Didn’t the woman’s patience, her sweetness deserve a reward? For three days Nicola had hidden. The first night he had slept under the bed, the second in the closet; he didn’t answer if they called him, he ran away if they tried to caress him. He had eaten everything they put on the table, from pastina to wild game, he had scraped the plate with his fingers and licked them, although he knew it wasn’t a polite gesture. He wanted to see if those two who had been introduced as his new mamma and his new papa would really love him. His heart said yes, fear said no, no, no. His head said: Now they’ll send me away, now they’ll send me away.
Nicola continued to watch them.
Giuseppe had thick gray hair and the same glasses frame as Monsignor Cottafavi. Unlike the monsignor, however, he often took off his glasses and he never blinked; in fact he kept his eyes open. Sabina seemed more like a daughter than a wife; with a cheerful, ringing voice she had run toward him on the street, but Nicola had retreated. Sabina smelled of fresh flowers, she changed her blouse two or three times a day, all the blouses were silk and made in Switzerland: Nicola knew that because he had glimpsed the labels and addresses of the shops on the boxes when she took them out.
The sideboard in the living room was laden with sweets to celebrate his arrival. He had taken the candies he liked best, with carob, and put them in his pocket, without saying a word. Sabina and Giuseppe had looked at each other, worried, but had let him do it. Who knows what he had seen, poor child, he had heard them repeating, in turn, in low voices, when they thought they were alone. But Nicola was never very far away, hiding behind a wall, behind the sofa, so that he would not be seen too much but not forgotten, either.
Sabina stopped insisting. She began reading again, resigned, but she didn’t re-occupy the other half of the chair. Her eyes fell on an ad: “Advice to mothers of families!” it said, and then sang the praises of Phosphatine Falières, “the most highly recommended food for children.” When her friends stopped nursing, they exchanged information on products like that. She would never have a newborn, but now she had a child, a son of her own. It was only a matter of time, sooner or later Nicola would stop hiding in the house like a wild animal and would yield to the love she had been preparing for him, ever since she and her husband had understood that the cradle would remain empty but not their hearts. When she decided to welcome one of the orphans of the tragedy, Giuseppe had warned her: “It won’t be your imaginary son, it will be one of flesh and blood, and maybe you won’t like him.”
But Sabina liked Nicola immediately, with his hair that was too long and his dazed yet wary expression. He was an unusual and troubled child, but still a child. Maybe he didn’t like her, and that was a painful uncertainty.
Attracted by the photos of a girl with a horse, she began reading an article on the life of some American women, cowgirls. Their freedom fascinated her, even though she would never have had the courage to wear men’s clothing, to let herself be pictured without makeup.
Was a mother like this: nothing from which to protect himself, no one for whom to pretend; not a powder keg but a magic powder that dissolved obligations and fiction, a full warm embrace. With Sabina, Nicola would not be afraid. She waited for him, didn’t force him, even to love her; she didn’t interpret his thoughts, didn’t put herself in his place, didn’t insist on the opposite of what he really wanted.
Nicola approached the chair.
The magazine was open to a page that showed a woman in a cowboy hat, smiling and happy in an unusual way, out of the ordinary. He had never seen a woman like that. He had a great desire to read the caption, or, rather, to consume the whole article. He came a little closer.
Sabina looked up and gave him a big smile.
“Come,” she repeated. “Come here and read with me.” The space beside her was warm, inviting. From the magazine basket a ball of wool stuck out, every so often Sabina put down the magazines and began knitting. A thread of blue wool. She could bind him, as his old mother had done: it was an instantaneous vision, and Nicola ran away.