There followed his hope that her sister could make use of this information, then some information about his own ongoing research, a polite closing, and an offer to facilitate access to the manuscript, should her sister so desire.
“And there you have it, my dear,” Cristina continued. “I’ve no idea what she means by all of this. She doesn’t say she was there, she doesn’t say she saw your Abbé kill him, only that he ‘made possible the crime.’ Like my friend, I don’t read souls, only texts.
“Let me go back to the idea of reading souls for a minute, if I might and if you don’t mind. Mine is very tired and because of that probably illegible. I keep working at the research, but the more I read, the more irrelevant it all seems. The Vatican’s foreign policy during the twentieth century? What can any thinking person believe it was except maneuvering in pursuit of power? On the wall in front of my desk, I’ve put an old photo of the pope giving communion to Pinochet, and that’s enough to make a person go out and join the Zoroastrians, isn’t it? They, however, don’t allow people to convert, and can you think of a more noble tenet for a religion to have?
“Yes, Kitty-Cati, I’m thinking of jumping ship, of telling them they can have their wimple back, not that I’ve ever worn one, or would. I’m deeply tired of it and of having to close an eye and then close the other one and then close a third one if I had it, so much do I read and see about what they’ve done and still do.
“They’re drunk with power, the men at the top. Please don’t tell me you told me so. It’s not the basic faith that’s troubling me. I still believe it alclass="underline" that He lived and died so that we would be better and it—whatever ‘it’ is—would be better. But not with these clowns in charge, these old fools who stopped thinking a hundred years ago (I’m in a generous mood and so left the other zero off that sum).
“Please don’t say anything at home, and please don’t be angry that I asked you that, as if I couldn’t trust you to keep your mouth shut. I know they don’t really believe it, but I don’t want them to worry about me because they know I do and know how much it will cost me to walk away. Isn’t it funny how it all shifts around at a certain age, and we start worrying about them and try to spare them from being hurt? You think that’s what it means to be a grown-up?
“I’ll probably wake up in the morning with a hangover for having said all this, but you’re the only one I can say it to. Well, there’s someone here, but he doesn’t want to hear this sort of thing from me. Or, more accurately, he does. What he doesn’t want is for me to go back and forth or agonize over it, just to do it. Yes, Kitty-Cati, it’s really a ‘he,’ just to put your mind at rest after all these years. No, that’s to do you an injustice, you wouldn’t care one way or the other, would you? And he’s nice and single and uncomplicated and very smart and leaves me alone when I want to be left alone and doesn’t when I don’t, and where does a girl find that sort of thing these days. Eh? It’s still too soon to tell you more about him, but don’t worry, please. He’s a good man.
“All right, go back to your research, and I won’t go back to mine. I just don’t care about it anymore, and I know myself well enough to know I won’t ever care about it again. I find your Abbé and his doings far more interesting, probably because he is so far removed in time, so if you don’t mind, I’ll continue to work as your research assistant. That failing, you think Uncle Rinaldo would hire me as an apprentice plumber if I came back? Love, Tina-Lina.”
For the first time in her life, Caterina was hurled into a crisis of faith. So strong was Caterina’s faith in her sister’s faith that she had stopped arguing with her about it years ago and confined her comments to the odd flash of sarcasm. The zest of confrontation had gone out of it for Caterina in the face of what she believed was Tina’s happiness at having found the place in the world where she belonged and where she could work at what she loved while believing to do so somehow made a difference to the god she worshipped.
And now along comes Tina and pushes down the graven image that Caterina had built. She had no idea of what happens to an ex-nun, or even of how a nun goes about becoming an ex. Did she have to ask permission of someone, or was it enough simply to pack her bag and walk out, a clerical Nora closing the door behind her?
So certain had Caterina’s faith in her sister been that she had never seriously considered the possibility that she’d bolt. A marriage couldn’t just be walked away from because it was, at base, a contract between two people, and the contract had to be dissolved before they could be free of each other. With whom did a nun make the contract, the order she joined or the god she joined it to serve? And who had God’s power of attorney?
Caterina felt the pull of irony and the absurd, two tidal forces she always found hard to resist. Their mother was forever giving the girls the advice to think one year ahead before trying to assess the importance of any situation, but Caterina had always found her life trapped in the instant. Tina’s pain—for it had been pain animating her email—was now, not a year from now. If you discovered the man you had been married to for more than twenty years was not the man you believed him to be, that his virtue was a show, his honor a sham, what did you do?
Caterina closed the window and created a new mail (how strange that Windows would use that verb rather than write). “Tina-Lina, my dearest dear, you’ve got a job, a family that loves you beyond reason (I’m in there, as mindless as the others), your health is good, you have intelligence, grace, and wit. And you still have the Baby Jesus, asleep in His bed. If you do jump ship, you have a safe, warm berth to come to, though I’m sure they would keep you on there: you just switch from the Catholic side to the Protestant, and how clever of you to work for a university that is religiously ambidextrous.
“If you decide to come home, no one will care why, and Mamma will be delirious at the possibility of cooking for you again, and she’ll love it even more if you bring your friend and give her another mouth to feed. You are such a hot shot in your profession that universities will fight over having you.
“I shouldn’t say this, but I will. In the end, does it matter if your god exists or not? And isn’t it pretentious and self-important of us to insist that we know how to describe or define him/Him? We can’t figure out the value of pi, and yet we think we know something about God? As Nonna said, it would make the chickens laugh.
“To put an end to your worse existential uncertainty, I promise to call Uncle Rinaldo tomorrow and ask him if he wants an apprentice. Love, Kitty-Cati.”
Twenty
INSTEAD OF SITTING AND CONTEMPLATING THE COLLAPSE OF her favorite sister’s life, Caterina chose to work. Spurred by the email from the professor in Constance, she began looking into Countess von Platen and learned of her semiofficial position as the mistress of Ernst August.
Caterina was struck by how little things changed in this world of hers. Kings were once wont to make their mistresses the duchess of this or the countess of that and now prime ministers gave them cabinet ministries or ambassadorships. And the world chugged on and nothing changed.
Caterina checked the dates and, sure enough, the countess had been in Hanover at the time Königsmarck disappeared. There was a great deal of contemporary testimony stating that Königsmarck had been one of her lovers and that she was violently jealous of the younger man. She also found an 1836 magazine article about Countess von Platen’s purported memoirs, where the reviewer wrote that she claimed to have been a witness to the murder. She was often named as the person who reported the affair between Königsmarck and Sophie Dorothea to the elector Ernst August, though what Caterina had read made her suspect that the few people who might not have known about this affair were the deaf and the blind and perhaps the halt and lame.