Part 14
That was the last weakness. In April of 1858, shortly after Ascension Day, she fell sick. She remained in bed almost a month, tormented by a pulmonary inflammation. Donna Cristina came morning and evening to her room to visit her. An aged maid servant who made public profession of assisting the sick gave her medicines to her. Then the turtle cheered the days of her convalescence. And as the animal was emaciated from fasting, and was nothing but skin, Anna, seeing him so lean, and perceiving herself so debilitated, felt that secret satisfaction that we experience when we suffer the same pain as a beloved one. A mild tepidity arose from the tiles covered with lichens, in the court the cocks crew, and one morning two swallows entered suddenly, flapped their wings about the room, and fled away again.
When Anna returned for the first time to the church, after her recovery, it was the festival of roses. On entering she breathed in greedily the perfume of incense. She walked softly along the nave, in order to find the spot where she had been accustomed to kneel, and she felt herself seized with a sudden joy when finally she discovered between the mortuary stories that one which bore in its centre an almost effaced bas-relief. She knelt upon it, and fell to praying. The people multiplied. At a certain point in the ceremony two acolytes descended from the choir with two silver basins full of roses, and commenced to scatter the flowers upon the heads of the prostrate ones, while the organ played a joyful hymn. Anna remained bent in a kind of ecstasy that gave her the blessedness of the mystic celebration and a vaguely voluptuous feeling of recovery. When several roses happened to fall upon her, she gave a long sigh. The poor woman had never before in her life experienced anything more sweet than that sigh of mystic delight and its subsequent languor.
The Rose Easter remained therefore Anna’s favourite festival and it returned periodically without any noteworthy episode. In 1860 the city was disturbed with serious agitations. One heard often in the night the roll of drums, the alarms of sentinels, the reports of muskets. In the house of Donna Cristina a more lively fervour for action manifested itself among the five suitors. Anna was not frightened, but lived in profound meditation, having neither a realisation of public events nor of domestic wants, fulfilling her duties with machine-like exactness.
In the month of September the fortress of Pescara was evacuated, the Bourbon militia dispersed, their arms and baggage thrown into the water of the river, while bands of citizens flocked through the streets with liberal acclamations of joy. Anna, when she heard that the Abbot Cennamele had fled precipitately, thought that the enemies of the Church of God had triumphed, and was greatly grieved at this.
After this her life unfolded in peace for a long time. The shell of the turtle increased in breadth and became more opaque; the tobacco plant sprang up annually, blossomed and fell; the wise swallows every autumn departed for the land of the Pharaohs. In 1865 the great contest of the suitors at length culminated in the victory of Don Fileno D’Amelio. The nuptials were celebrated in the month of March with banquets of solemn gaiety. There came to prepare the valuable dishes two Capuchin fathers, Fra Vittorio and Fra Mansueto.
They were the two who after the suppression of the order remained to guard the convent. Fra Vittorio was a sexagenary, reddened, strengthened and made happy by the juice of the grape. A little green band covered an infirmity of his right eye, while the left scintillated, full of a penetrating liveliness. He had exercised from his youth the art of drugs, and, as he had much skill in the kitchen, gentlemen were accustomed to summon him on occasions of festivity. At work he used rough gestures that revealed in the ample sleeves his hairy arms, his whole beard moved with every motion of his mouth and his voice broke into shrill cries. Fra Mansueto, on the contrary, was a lean old man with a great head and on his chin a goatee. He had two yellowish eyes full of submission. He cultivated the soil and going from door to door carried eatable herbs to the houses. In serving a company he took a modest position, limped on one foot, spoke in the soft idiomatic patois of Ortona, and, perhaps in memory of the legend of Saint Thomas, exclaimed, “For the Turks!” every little while stroking his polished head with his hand.
Anna attended to the placing of the plates, the kitchen ware and the coppers. It seemed to her now that the kitchen had assumed a kind of secret solemnity through the presence of the brothers. She remained to watch attentively all of the acts of Fra Vittorio, seized with that trepidation that all simple people feel in the presence of men gifted with some superior virtue. She admired especially the infallible gesture with which the great Capuchin scattered upon the dishes certain secret drugs of his, certain particular aromas known only to him. But the humility, the mildness, the modest jokes of Fra Mansueto little by little made a conquest of her. And the bonds of a common country and the still stronger ones of a common dialect cemented their friendship.
As they conversed, recollections of the past germinated in their speech. Fra Mansueto had known Luca Minella and he was in the basilica when the death of Francesca Nobile had happened among the pilgrims. “For the Turks!” He had even helped to carry the corpse up to the house at the Porta-Caldara, and he remembered that the dead woman wore a waist of yellow silk and many chains of gold....
Anna grew sad. In her memory this matter up to that moment had remained confused, vague, almost uncertain, dimmed by the very long inert stupor that had followed her first paroxysms of epilepsy. But when Fra Mansueto said that her mother was in Paradise because those who die in the cause of religion dwell among the saints, Anna experienced an unspeakable sweetness and felt suddenly surge up in her soul an immense adoration for the sanctity of her mother.
Then, remembering the places of her native country, she began to discourse minutely on the Church of the Apostle, mentioning the shapes of the altars, the position of the Chapels, the number of the ornaments, the shape of the cupola, the positions of the images, the divisions of the pavement and the colours of the windows. Fra Mansueto followed her with benignity; and, since he had been in Ortona several months before, recounted the new things seen there. The Archbishop of Orsogna had given the Church a precious vase of gold with settings of precious stones. The Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament had renovated all the wood and leather of the stoles. Donna Blandina Onofrii had furnished an entire change of apparel, consisting in Dalmatian chasubles, stoles, sacerdotal cloaks and surplices.
Anna listened greedily, and the desire to see these new things and to see again the old ones began to torment her. When the Capuchin was silent she turned to him with an air half of pleasure, half of timidity. The May feast was drawing near. Should they go?
XIII
During the last days of May, Anna, having had permission from Donna Cristina, made her preparations. She felt anxious about the turtle. Ought she to leave it or carry it with her? She remained a long time in doubt but at length decided to carry it for security. She put it in a basket with her clothes and the boxes of confection which Donna Cristina was sending to Donna Veronica Monteferrante, Abbess of the monastery of Santa Caterina. At dawn Anna and Fra Mansueto set out. Anna had from the first a nimble step and a gay aspect; her hair, already almost entirely grey, lay in shining folds beneath her handkerchief. The brother limped, supporting himself with a stick, and an empty knapsack swung from his shoulders. When they reached the wood of pines, they made their first halt.
The trees in the May morning, immersed in their native perfume, swayed voluptuously between the serenity of the sky and that of the sea. The trunks wept resin. The blackbirds whistled. All the fountains of life seemed open for the transfiguration of the earth.
Anna sat down upon the grass, offered the monk bread and fruit, and began to talk about the festivity, eating at intervals. The turtle tried with its two foremost legs to reach the edge of the basket, and its timid serpent-like head projected and withdrew in its efforts. Then, when Anna took it out, the beast began to advance on the moss toward a bush of myrtle, with less slowness, perhaps feeling the joy of its primitive liberty arise confusedly in it. Its shell amongst the green looked more beautiful. Fra Mansueto made several moral reflections and praised Providence that gives to the turtle a house, and sleep during the winter season. Anna recounted several facts which demonstrated great frankness and rectitude in the turtle. Then she added, “What are the animals thinking of?”
The brother did not answer. Both remained perplexed. There descended from the bark of a pine a file of ants and they extended themselves across the ground, each ant dragged a fragment of food and the entire innumerable family fulfilled its work with diligent precision. Anna watched, and there awoke in her mind the ingenuous beliefs of her childhood. She spoke of wonderful dwellings that the ants excavated beneath the earth. The brother replied with an accent of intense faith, “God be praised!” And both remained pensive, beneath the greatness, while worshipping God in their hearts.
In the early hours of the evening they arrived in the country of Ortona. Anna knocked at the door of the monastery and asked to see the abbess. On entering they saw a little court paved with black and white stone with a cistern in the centre. The reception parlour was a low room, with a few chairs around it; two walls were occupied by a grating, the other two by a crucifix and images. Anna was immediately seized by a feeling of veneration for the solemn peace that reigned in this spot. When the Mother Veronica appeared unexpectedly behind the grating, tall and severe in her monastic habit, Anna experienced an unspeakable confusion as if in the presence of a supernatural apparition. Then, reassured by the kind smile of the abbess, she delivered her message briefly, placed her boxes in the cavity of the turnstile and waited. The Mother Veronica moved about her benignly, watching her with her beautiful lion-like eyes; she gave her an effigy of the Virgin, and in taking leave she extended her illustrious hand to be kissed through the grating, and disappeared.
Anna went out full of trepidation. As she passed the vestibule, there reached her ears a chorus of litanies, a song, very regular and sweet, which came perhaps from some subterranean chapel. When she passed through the court she saw on the left, at the top of the wall, a branch loaded with oranges. And, as she set foot again on the road, she seemed to have left behind her a garden of blessedness.
Then she turned toward the eastern road in order to search for her relations. At the door of the old house an unknown woman stood leaning against the door-post. Anna approached her timidly and asked news of the family of Francesca Nobile. The woman interrupted her: “Why? Why? What did she want?”—with a voice and an investigating expression. Then, when Anna recalled herself, she permitted her to enter.
The relations had almost all died or emigrated. There remained in the house an old, rich man, Uncle Mingo, who had taken for his second wife “the daughter of Sblendore” and lived with her almost in misery. The old man at first did not recognise Anna. He was seated upon an old ecclesiastical chair, whose red material hung in shreds; his hands rested on the arms, contorted and rendered enormous through the monstrosity of gout, his feet with rhythmic movements beat the earth, while a continuous paralytic trembling agitated the muscles of his neck, elbows and knees. As he gazed at Anna he held open with difficulty his inflamed eyelids. At length he remembered her.
As Anna proceeded to explain her own experiences, the daughter of Sblendore, sniffing money, began to conceive in her mind hopes of usurpation, and by virtue of these hopes became more benign in her expression. Anna’s tale was scarcely told when she offered her hospitality for the night, took her basket of clothes and laid it down, promised to take care of her turtle and then made several complaints, not without tears, about the infirmity of the old man and the misery of their house. Anna went out with her soul full of pity; she went up the coast toward the belfry of the church, feeling anxious on approaching it.
Around the Farnese palace the people surged like billows; and that great feudal relic ornamented with figures, magnificent in the sunlight, was most conspicuous. Anna passed through the crowd, alongside of the benches of the silversmiths who made sacred apparel and native objects. At all of that scintillating display of liturgical forms her heart dilated with joy and she made the sign of the cross before each bench as before an altar. When at night she reached the door of the church and heard the canticle of the ritual, she could no longer contain her joy as she advanced as far as the pulpit, with steps almost vacillating. Her knees bent beneath her and the tears welled up in her eyes. She remained there in contemplation of the candelabras, the ostensories, of all those objects on the altar, her mind dizzy from having eaten nothing since morning. An immense weakness seized her nerves and her soul shrank to the point of annihilation. Above her, along the central nave, the glass lamps formed a triple crown of fire. In the distance, four solid trunks of wax flamed at the sides of the tabernacle.
XIV
The five days of the festival Anna lived thus within the church from early morning until the hour at which the doors were closed—most faithfully she breathed in that warm air which implanted in her senses a blissful torpor, in her soul a joy, full of humility. The orations, the genuflections, the salutations, all of those formulas, all of those ritualistic gestures incessantly repeated, dulled her senses. The fumes of the incense hid the earth from her.
Rosaria, the daughter of Sblendore, meanwhile profited by moving her to pity with lying complaints and by the miserable spectacle of the paralytic old man. She was an unprincipled woman, expert in fraud and dedicated to debauchery; her entire face was covered with blisters, red and serpentine, her hair grey, her stomach obese. Bound to the paralytic by vices common to both and by marriage, she and he had squandered in a short time their substance in guzzling and merry-making. Both in their misery, venomous from privation, burning with thirst for wine and liquor, harassed by the infirmities of decrepitude, were now expiating their prolonged sinning.
Anna, with a spontaneous impulse for charity, gave to Rosaria all her money kept for alms-giving and her superfluous clothes as well as her earrings, two gold rings and her coral necklace and she promised still further support. At length she retraced the road to Pescara, in company with Fra Mansueto, and bearing the turtle in her basket.
During their walk, as the houses of Ortona withdrew into the distance, a great sadness descended upon the soul of the woman. Crowds of singing pilgrims were passing in other directions, and their songs, monotonous and slow, remained a long while in the air. Anna listened to them; an overwhelming desire drew her to join them, to follow them, to live thus, making pilgrimages from sanctuary to sanctuary, from country to country, in order to exalt the miracles of every saint, the virtues of every relic, the bounty of every Mary.
“They go to Cucullo,” Fra Mansueto said, pointing with his arm to some distant country. And both began to talk of Saint Domenico, who protected the men from the bite of serpents and the seed from caterpillars; then they spoke of the patron saints. At Bugnara, on the bridge of Rivo, more than a hundred cart-houses, among horses and mules, laden with fruit, were going in a procession to the Madonna of the Snow. The devotees rode on their chargers, with sprigs of spikenard on their heads, with strings of dough on their shoulders, and they laid at the feet of the image their cereal gifts. At Bisenti, many youths, with baskets of grain on their heads, were conducting along the roads an ass that carried on its back a larger basket, and they entered the Church of the Madonna of the Angels, to offer them up, while singing. At Torricella Peligna, men and children, crowned with roses and garlands of roses, went up on a pilgrimage to the Madonna of the Roses, situated upon a cliff where was the foot-prints of Samson. At Loreto Apentino a white ox, fattened during the year with abundance of pasturage, moved in pomp behind the statue of Saint Zopito. A red drapery covered him and a child rode upon him. As the sacred ox entered the church, he gave forth the excrescence of his food and the devotees from this smoking material presaged future agriculture.
Of such religious usages Anna and Fra Mansueto were speaking, when they reached the mouth of the Alento. The Channel carried the water of spring between the green foliage not yet flowered. And the Capuchin spoke of the Madonna of the Incoronati, where for the festival of Saint John the devotees wreath their heads with vines, and during the night go with great rejoicing to the River Gizio to bathe.
Anna removed her shoes in order to ford the river. She felt now in her soul an immense and loving veneration for everything, for the trees, the grass, the animals, for all that those Catholic customs had sanctified. Thus from the depths of her ignorance and simplicity arose the instinct of idolatry.
Several months after her return, an epidemic of cholera broke out in the country, and the mortality was great. Anna lent her services to the poor sick ones. Fra Mansueto died. Anna felt much grief at this. In the year 1866, at the recurrence of the festival, she wished to take leave and return to her native place forever, because she saw in her sleep every night Saint Thomas who commanded her to depart. So she took the turtle, her clothes and her savings, weeping she kissed the hand of Donna Cristina, and departed upon a cart, together with two begging nuns.
At Ortona she dwelt in the house of her paralytic uncle. She slept upon a straw pallet and ate nothing but bread and vegetables. She dedicated every hour of the day to the practices of the Church, with a marvellous fervour, and her mind gradually lost all ability to do anything save contemplate Christian mysteries, adore symbols and imagine Paradise. She was completely absorbed with divine charity, completely encompassed with that divine passion which the sacerdotals manifest always with the same signs and the same words. She comprehended but that one single language; had but that one single refuge, sweet and solemn, where her whole heart dilated in a pious security of peace and where her eyes moistened with an ineffable sweetness of tears.
She suffered, for the love of Jesus, domestic miseries, was gentle and submissive and never proffered a lament, a reproof, or a threat. Rosaria extracted from her little by little all of her savings, and commenced then to let her go hungry, to overtax her, to call her vicious names and to persecute the turtle with fierce insistency. The old paralytic gave forth continuously a species of hoarse howls, opening his mouth where the tongue trembled and from which dripped continually quantities of saliva. One day, because his greedy wife swallowed before him some liquor and denied him a drink, escaping with the glass, he arose from his chair with an effort and began to walk toward her, his legs wavering, his feet striking the ground with an involuntary rhythmic stroke. Suddenly he moved faster, his trunk bent forward, while hopping with short pursuing steps, as if pushed by an irresistible impulse, until at length he fell face downward upon the edge of the stairs.
XV
Then Anna, in distress, took the turtle and went to ask succour of Donna Veronica Monteferrante. As the poor woman had already done several services for the monastery, the Abbess, pitying her, gave her work as a serving-nun.
Anna, though she had not taken the orders, dressed in the nun’s costume: the black tunic, the throat-bands, the head-dress with its ample white brims. She seemed to herself, in that habit, to be sanctified. And at first, when the air flapped the brims around her head with a noise as of wings, she shuddered with a sudden confusion in her veins. Also when the brims struck by the sun reflected on her face the colour of snow, she suddenly felt herself illuminated by a mystic ray.
With the passing of time, her ecstasies became more frequent. The grey-haired virgin was thrilled from time to time by angelic songs, by distant echoes of organs, by rumours and voices not perceptible to other ears. Luminous figures presented themselves to her in the darkness, odours of Paradise carried her out of herself.
Thus a kind of sacred horror began to spread through the monastery as if through the presence of some occult power, as if through the imminence of some supernatural event. As a precaution the new convert was released from every obligation pertaining to servile work. All of her positions, all of her words, all of her glances were observed and commented upon with superstition. And the legend of her sanctity began to flower.
On the first of February in the year of Our Lord 1873, the voice of the virgin Anna became singularly hoarse and deep. Later her power of speech suddenly disappeared. This unexpected dumbness terrified the minds of the nuns. And all, standing around the convert, considered with mystic terror her ecstatic postures, the vague motions of her mute mouth and the immobility of her eyes from which overflowed at intervals inundations of tears. The lineaments of the sick woman, extenuated by long fastings, had now assumed a purity almost of ivory, while the entire outlines of her arteries now seemed to be visible, and projected in such strong relief and palpitated so incessantly, that before that open palpitation of blood a kind of dread seized the nuns, as if they were viewing a body stripped of its skin.
When the month of Mary drew near, a loving diligence prompted the Benedictines to the preparation of an oratory. They scattered throughout the cloisteral garden, all flowering with roses and fruitful with oranges, while they gathered the harvest of early May in order to lay it at the foot of the altar. Anna having recovered her usual state of calmness, descended likewise to help at the pious work. She conveyed often with gestures the thoughts which her obstinate muteness forbade her to express. All of the brides of Our Lord lingered in the sun, walking among the fountains luxuriant with perfume. There was on one side of the garden a door, and as in the souls of the virgins the perfumes awoke suppressed thought, so the sun in penetrating beneath the two arches revived in the plaster the residue of Byzantine gold.