The first Arcanum—the principle underlying all the other twenty-one Major Arcana of the Tarot—is that of the rapport of personal effort and of spiritual reality.
No, I would not ingest potions or inject soaps into my body to abort. I was cowardly, afraid of dying myself, of ending up like the women who’d bled to death in the stories of abortionists and their victims told by my grandmother to keep me from imprudent acts. And I was courageous out of recklessness, convinced that, if the world was urging the people of Messina to be reborn, no one could stigmatize a real birth. With the unconsciousness of a survivor I said to myself that, if no man wanted me because I had given birth to a child, then, too bad, I would remain alone: as I would find bread for myself I would find it for two, at the cost of stealing from the larders of others. Life had burdened me with enough injustices, it was time for retribution. The freedom I wanted, which the earthquake had given me, would confirm my dishonor: because of that stain my father would definitively reject me and I would have no more chains. Bitterly I had to admit that he was right. Desires have a price, he’d repeat when I asked him for something.
I asked Jutta to help me find Madame. I was entering into an unfathomable future and I needed a guide, I deserved a reading of the tarot: a second card would reveal how I would be able to feed and protect the child. I was also anxious to know if I would survive the birth, if the fetus was healthy, and if it resembled me, because it should have nothing to do with that sailor.
One night I dreamed that the Morgana set sail from Messina and was swallowed up by a black sky, while a warm sun of rebirth looked out from the coast. If it was a boy, would he be disgusting like his father? The question terrified me. Would that man ever return, would he look for me? His accent wasn’t from the south, I couldn’t identify it precisely, but as soon as he left the Strait he would no longer have a reason to come again, unless some politician decided to recall him to shower him with medals. A medal for volunteering in Messina and Reggio had now become a tool for putting oneself forward and getting ahead; I wouldn’t be surprised if he, too, had ambitions. I hoped he had died in the collapse of a building, as he himself had feared. Would I see his eyes again in my child’s eyes? Every time I thought of the sailor, two eyes with long lashes materialized, staring at me. Not knowing whose they were, I said to myself that they were my child’s, but deep down I didn’t believe it. In truth I was sure I had a girl inside me, and the idea calmed me, removed every fear. Then I said to myself: It will be a girl even if it’s a boy.
Jutta, asking again and again in the city I no longer ventured out into, finally was able to get news of Madame: no help for it, she had returned to France, and while the king of Italy awarded medals to every soldier, the memory of the seer in the places of the disaster was erased; she was called a witch and no one wished to speak of her. It was the fate of women; I grieved. That night I dreamed I had the deck of tarot cards, I shuffled and cut them, but I saw no figure, the cards were white and empty, useless. I would have to get by on my own.
I didn’t tell the sisters about my pregnancy. Some began to treat me with irritation, considering me fickle and proud, because I refused the food and in fact walked away from it; meat and fish gave me nausea. Instead I eagerly ate scraps and side dishes, like the minestra sabbaggia, the soup of wild herbs seasoned with oil, to which I added an abundance of salt because it lessened the metallic taste I always had in my mouth and the excess saliva that forced me to spit secretly. Rosalba stopped along the roadside to pick sorrel leaves and borage for me, Jutta got the pot ready, and Mother Fortunata gave us ugly looks because I’d fill my dish two or three times with this and ignore the rest.
In February the government declared that the state of siege on the Strait was over. A few days later, Rosalba said to Jutta and me that the Superior had summoned them. The order had assigned them to a destination: some would remain in Sicily, others leave for the continent. As long as it was a matter of first aid, it was tolerable that a group of nuns should live outdoors, in a camp, but it was now time to find each nun a proper and protected solution. The camp would be emptied, and Jutta and I would be abandoned to our capacity to invent a life for ourselves.
I was seized by fear, rather than uncertainty. I hadn’t gone out for weeks; with the excuse of being the servant in our camp I saw no other souls but the sisters. I feared the crowd, I feared walking in a new city, which I had left in smoke and would find again deserted, I feared not recognizing it, I feared having to confront all my memories at once: the years before and the days of the fire. No matter how I looked at it, I wasn’t ready for the future.
“Barbara,” Sister Rosalba resumed, “I’m sorry to leave you, but it’s better this way. Not everyone here looks kindly on your sin.”
So the sisters had found me out? And Rosalba, with whom I had never talked about it, how did she know I was pregnant? Jutta, it must have been she who betrayed me.
“No one told me,” Rosalba explained. “My Barbara, we understand that in that body you are two. Just because we’re nuns we’re not ignorant of the world. I’ve seen sisters with full bellies, have you never heard of babies born in convents? And how many are not born. I asked Jutta how to help you, but she denied that you were expecting a child, she loves you, trust her. And don’t trust anyone else, the rumors about you have become malicious.”
My secret was the favorite subject of the camp.
“I asked for a place for you in the Regina Elena village. A pregnant woman will always find a roof over her head. You have to go right away to where the queen has ordered the church to be built. There’s a priest who is assigning the new lodgings, you’re already on the list. I had to choose a name for you, and since I’m about to go to Calabria, near Cosenza, I thought of Barbara Cosentino. That way no one will recognize you, you’re a different person.”
“You said I’m pregnant?” Shame at my condition was stronger than my amazement at a sister who lied so casually.
“And that you lost your husband in the disaster. You’re not at the end of the third month, right? I said Cosentino was the name of your husband, they won’t ask you any other questions.”
“But it’s known that I’m not married.”
Rosalba laughed. “You have in your mind the city of before. The records have been destroyed, families no longer exist. No one knows anyone, and if people do recognize each other they pretend not to, it suits everyone. Criminals have taken the clothes of respectable individuals and the houses of the dead, gentlemen reduced to hunger have become thieves, streetwalkers cool themselves with elegant fans stolen from ladies’ trunks, and mothers of families become prostitutes to get food for their children. In Messina you’re no longer who you are but who you can and want to be.”
“And if I meet my father?”
“You have a treasure in your belly, use it: the wives of the dead have precedence over all, like war widows. There’s a place for Jutta, too: she’ll have to help you bring up this poor child who lost its father before it was born. Your father won’t help you.”
Looking at Jutta I understood that she and Rosalba had already talked about this, which was the best solution, the only one, but I was still afraid.
The next day we packed our bags, mine was almost empty, I put in it the book by Matilde Serao that I’d read a hundred times, the fragment of writing from the tombstone of Letteria Montoro and her flaking photograph, plus a couple of changes of clothes.
Sister Velia pointed to a pile of garments. “They’re a large size, they’ll be useful to you,” and I took them and didn’t lower my eyes. I was no longer ashamed of the creature who was saving me: I will give life, what do you have of equal importance to set against me, besides your scorn?
Mother Fortunata didn’t come to say goodbye, she had us informed that she was busy taking care of correspondence, and urged us to pray a lot and never forget to thank God for our good luck. Again my breath failed; now it wasn’t the child but, rather, the terror of returning among people.
A last glance at the crucifix hanging at the head of my cot, and those weeks, too, were behind me.