“Give it up to Him. The struggle, the temptation. Your weakness and your unworthiness. For no one can do it alone.”
It is as if the novice mistress has been waiting for this moment, to see her so reduced and defeated that she can be rebuilt. Her voice, once so harsh and prodding, has grown gentle in this companionship.
“Hoard your hunger, taste the ache, feel the emptiness. Give it all up to Him, Serafina. He has felt it all and worse. If you are truly humble, He will not reject you. Ask Him for His help. I am not worthy, Lord, but be with me now in this fight. Fill me with emptiness. For You are my only food, my only sustenance. Purge me so I will be ready for You”
MY ONLY FOOD. My only sustenance. When she is not thinking of the stale bread she is thinking more and more about the host, constructing the moment, wondering what it might taste like on a clean conscience. Even as a child, when she tried to be good she was often distracted by small sins of thought, itching like fleabites on her soul. But it is different now. Now, with nothing else in her life to long for, she begins to long for this: the sacrament, laid out like a banquet in her imagination, the tang of the wine, the incomparable melting sweetness of the host on her tongue. But only if she keeps herself pure for it.
So the days begin to blur together, and under Suora Umiliana’s tutelage she waxes fat while she grows thin.
Meanwhile, through the parlatorio come mangled rumors of visitations, changes, and troubles inside other convents in other cities, so that many nuns bow their heads in prayer and give thanks to God that here in Santa Caterina they are not so oppressed.
Many nuns …but not all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
ON THE THIRD Sunday of Lent, after two weeks of confinement and penance, the novice Serafina is given leave to attend mass and take communion, and so rejoin convent life.
Zuana takes her place early in the chapel. She has not seen her former assistant since the morning of her recovery. The girl arrives supported on the arm of young Suora Eugenia. Even at a distance Zuana is disturbed by what she sees. The girl is hunched and withdrawn, eyes to the ground, each step small, considered. Beside her Eugenia stands slender and proud. Like a number of the younger nuns, she has been much affected by the story of the illness and semi-miraculous recovery, and now seems content to offer herself as the novice’s acolyte rather than her rival. They make an arresting pair: the convent’s two songbirds, both in their way highly strung, both worn thin by the intensity of being alive. How susceptible the young are to such storms of emotion and drama, Zuana thinks. It is as if their very hearts beat faster than those of others. She keeps an eye on them as they settle in their seats. Theirs has been an entrance as much as an arrival, and she is not the only one watching through half-closed eyes. There will be no further rebellion. The abbess’s words sound in Zuana’s ears. As Madonna Chiara will be the last to take her seat, she is not here to witness this moment—which is unfortunate, for it is perhaps something she should take note of.
Except …except, Zuana thinks, while I know this young woman to be a dissembler of extraordinary talent, there is no deception in what we are seeing now, surely? How could there be? Installed in her choir seat she looks so small, curled in on herself, eyes dull, her expression almost dreamy. If, on top of her drug-induced voiding, she is starving herself more than the allotted penance, there will be precious little stamina for deception in her now. A better confessor would never have imposed such a rigorous penance, for young girls are known to be more susceptible to the drama of fasting than their older counterparts.
Still, it is possible some good will come of it. She thinks of Suora Magdalena, dried up in her bed like a piece of salted meat. While she represents the extreme, degrees of hunger are necessary—even beneficial—to convent life. In readiness for the host, Zuana herself has not eaten since last night, and there is a familiar, almost pleasurable hollowness in her stomach. For those who find themselves distracted by the world around them, fasting can be a wondrous tool. Indeed, this is the time of year for it: Lent after Carnival. Carne vale, farewell to the flesh. Most of the nuns will be feeling the growl of hunger in their stomachs at some time in the weeks to come. Disciplining the body to free the souclass="underline" with the convent still so upside down there will be those who will actively look forward to fasting as a way of returning to a state of greater calm.
When they are all seated, Father Romero enters, flanked by the sacristan sister and the chosen choir nun who will aid him in the business of the mass. In contrast to the ceremony celebrated in the public church, mass in the convent chapel is an intimate affair: a simple altar set below the great crucifix, with the nuns gathered in their choir stalls close by; the greatest privilege as well as the greatest pleasure.
If they are honest they might admit that it is not, alas, always a transcendent experience. Father Romero’s surplice, embroidered by the sisters themselves, is so heavy with gold thread that he can barely walk underneath it. Zuana watches him fumbling with the objects on the altar. In the sixteen years she has been here there has been only one confessor whose inner light matched the gold on his robes. He had lasted a mere seven months, taken when a sudden wave of pestilence hit the city, and in the years that followed they had all been either too fierce or too feeble. In the lives of the convent saints, the journey of the most holy women is marked by the wisdom and charity of their confessors. How would Caterina of Siena have learned to speak so clearly to the world if her first human listener had not been Father Raymond de Capua? But here they must fend for themselves spiritually—what is it that Suora Umiliana says? — “like lambs bleating with hunger in need of a pasture to nurture them.” Though Zuana does not want to live in a convent run with her strictness and ferocity there are nevertheless moments when the novice mistress’s eloquence speaks to her. How many other choir nuns, she wonders, may have felt the same?
The service begins. While Father Romero’s voice is cracked and wheezy, the nuns’ responses are full and joyful and the chapel resounds with eager voices.
“God be with you.”
“And with you also.”
And despite Father Romero, surely He is.
Zuana bows her head. She has lived among these women for almost seventeen years. Recently even her father’s voice has been growing quieter compared with theirs. The thought does not frighten her as it once did. The abbess is right: through the rhythm and discipline of prayer eventually comes acceptance. How many of them could that be said of? She glances across the stalls and senses Suora Umiliana’s eye upon her. Ah, she always has an uncanny way of knowing who is not properly concentrating.
Zuana gives her attention to the altar. They are reaching the moment of the blessing of the Eucharist.
“This is my body.”
“This is my blood.”
She glances up at the great crucifix, the trickle of blood unfurling like a scarlet ribbon from His punctured side. And as she studies it, the body seems to tremble forward against the nails. Zuana narrows her eyes to look more clearly. I am tired, she thinks. It makes my vision untrustworthy. She glances around her but, with the exception of Agnesina, whose faulty vision makes even the closest things unreliable to the eye and who is now staring fixedly upward, no one else seems to have noticed. The bell rings, and all of them bow their heads for the elevation of the communion.