“So. Let us put it to the vote. The motion before the sisters of Santa Caterina today is whether to move our aged and beloved Suora Magdalena from her cell into the infirmary, where we may ease her passage into God’s hands.”
The novices watch as the choir nuns come up one by one to the front and, with their backs to the rest of the room to ensure anonymity, pick out a small wooden ball from the bucket— white for yes, black for no—and drop it through a hole into the voting box.
When everyone has voted, the box is emptied and the balls are counted by the sacristan and witnessed by the gate mistress; the motion is declared duly carried. It is noticeable, however, that among the winning white balls are a greater than usual number of black.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
SHE IS EMPTY. Quiet. Still. Maybe stiller than she has ever been in her life. It must be the aftermath of the poison. During her time in the dispensary, she had wondered about the drama of the hellebore: what it might feel like to have one’s insides ripped apart, scraped out nigh unto death. To be so purged, so emptied out. Almost as if one might be able to start again. Another Serafina. Newer, lighter, cleaner, with no hand gripping her heart and twisting her guts. No man to love and yearn for anymore. Because it seems, after all, that he never loved her.
He does not care, you see.
He does not care. Yet how could that be? What of all the poetry? The music? The harmony of voices, the starburst sweetness of mouth on mouth, skin on skin, the mingling of souls that made them for that instant pure, afraid of nothing? Ah, now—now it is too late, she knows that she did really love him; that, amid all the rebellion and hot blood, the very exhilaration of being alive, separately and together, Jacopo had been a man worth loving, himself generous, filled with song and no malice.
Except, it seems, he wasn’t. Instead, he, like she, had been a master of deception. Yet how could that be?
At any other time these thoughts would have been like hooks in her flesh, but there is nothing left to lacerate. She is so tired, too tired to think properly. Certainly this new cleansed Serafina cannot hold on to anything for very long. Her head feels as light and empty as her body. It is not so awful; more like dizziness, like holding a high note for longer even than your longest breath allows, hearing it vibrate, shimmering inside your head.
Perhaps this sensation is the result of her confession? The scouring of her soul as well as her stomach. She has told the old priest everything. With the screams of the pierced and the sliced still inside her, how could she not? Everything—the bliss, the rage, the terror, the disobedience, even the self-destruction—such a fast-flowing river of sin. How much of it he heard she has no idea, for both their eyes were closed as she spoke. But at the end he had prayed for her, imposed a penance of confinement with bread-and-water fasting for two weeks, and given her absolution.
Two weeks’ confinement and fasting. It is not such a torment. In fact she welcomes it. In the time since she opened her eyes on the cell full of nuns, she has relished the solitude. How can she bear to face people again? As for the fasting, well, her hunger is so familiar to her now that even when she does feel the need to eat, she feels a greater sense of triumph when she overcomes it. Her gut has been full of undigested rage and panic for so long that to be without anything inside her seems a marvel in itself.
Whether it comes from the quiet or the exhaustion, she prays more: simple prayers held inside simple phrases. I am sorry. Help me. Forgive me. Childish, almost. Each time she sleeps she wakes to the sight of the crucifix on the wall, but often when she looks at it she sees instead the figure of the man in the marshland, walking toward her with the sun as a radiating halo behind him. The moment when he first came she had thought it might have been Jacopo, because his hair also fell curling around his shoulders and he, too, walked with a long stride. But she knows now that it was not Jacopo but Christ Himself and that He came to her through Suora Magdalena. Why and how this happened she does not know. She is certainly not deserving. Yet, oh—He brought her such comfort then! And now. For He also is generous, filled with song and no malice.
As for the future, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow …well, she does not think of that. How could she?
“SERAFINA.”
She knows Zuana is in the room. She heard her come in and registered the noise of something being placed on the table. But once she opens her eyes she will have to speak to her, and of all people she is the one who will surely make it all begin again. Nevertheless …
“Serafina.”
She turns her head and blinks.
Zuana is sitting on a small chair close to the bed. Next to her is a wooden plate with bread and cheese and a bowl of hot soup. She had forgotten how familiar this face is: the broad open forehead with its furrowed lines of thought and those clean clear eyes, smiling now along with the mouth. No malice here, either. Despite everything, she is pleased to see her.
“Praise be to God for your recovery. Do you still have pain in your stomach?”
“No.”
“Any nausea?” She leans over and takes the girl’s pulse, red-stained fingers on the thin pale wrist.
The smell of the cooked food brings a rush of saliva into Serafina’s mouth, but she swallows it down again. Only when I imagine eating, she thinks. “No.”
“What about dreams? Are you having bad dreams?”
“No.” She sees the man in the mist striding toward her. “No, not anymore.”
“Good. Here, I have brought you some cheese and fresh soup and bread.”
“I am not hungry.”
“Still, you should eat.”
“I can’t.” She shakes her head. “I am given penance.”
“Penance?”
“Father Romero. He heard my confession. My penance is confinement and bread and water for two weeks.”
A frown moves across Zuana’s face. “Did no one tell him you had been ill?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you sit up?”
She attempts to pull herself up, but it is an effort.
Zuana goes to help, and as her hands touch her, for an instant Serafina is pulled back into the maelstrom of that night— hanging suspended in strong arms as her bowels open and her stomach screams. Such intimacy makes her embarrassed now, almost ashamed. She moves away, pulling the blanket around her.
“I am sorry”—she keeps her eyes on the blanket—“if what I did got you into trouble.”
Zuana shakes her head. “There is nothing to be sorry for. You have confessed your sins. And you are forgiven.”
“I told him everything,” she says, looking straight at her now, the words thrown down like a gauntlet. “All of it.”
“I am glad,” Zuana says gently.
“Do you think it a fair penance?”
“I can’t say. Though it is not healthy to starve yourself after such violent purging.”
“It doesn’t matter, I am not hungry,” she says again. Then: “Suora Magdalena has not eaten for years.”
“That is not true. She just eats exceedingly little, so that over the years her body has grown used to it. I think she is not someone to emulate in this regard. Not at this moment.”
“That is not what Suora Umiliana says.”
I wonder what else Umiliana says, Zuana thinks to herself, though no doubt some of it she can guess. “Who else has visited you?”
“Suora Federica came. She brought me a pear—look, here.” She pulls it out from under her pillow, the green marzipan coated in particles of dust. “I don’t want it. You take it.”
Zuana shakes her head. “Keep it until the end of your penance. It will be something to look forward to.”