The
Apprenticeship of
Isabetta di Pietro Cavazzi
by
L. Timmel Duchamp
But,
yes it is true, that I, Isabetta Cavazzi, daughter of Pietro,
have this twenty-third day of March, in the year of our Lord
1626, been received here in the Via del Galliera, into the Casa
del Soccorso di San Paolo, which some call the “Malmaritate,”
though most here have been dishonored rather by their lack of
husbands than by the unhappiness of their unions.
(Io,
Isabetta di Pietro Cavazzi. . . .)
Never did
I imagine that I would find myself in such a place. It is like a
convent, only none of us are nuns. (Though they say that
sometimes women who come here do indeed become nuns.) Through
Mona Gentile’s benevolence, I enjoy the privilege of a private
room, for which she has agreed to pay an extra sixteen lire a
month. The poorest here, with the least connections, toil day
and night performing the dirtiest and most arduous of chores,
and sleep in a common dormitory. I must, Mona Gentile told me,
be very quiet and mannerly and docile. In that way I will help
achieve the end toward which we together strive.
In fact,
most of the women here are prostitutes who have fallen on hard
times, unable even to pay the Ufficio delle Bollette the fee for
being licensed.
I write
these words in secret, in accordance with the counsel given me
by Mona Gentile last night when she furnished me with this
little notebook. If it becomes too difficult to keep all that is
in my mind and heart
from passing my lips, it is better that I write it down, because
concealing words written
on paper is easier than stopping up the flow of a confidence
once made. “Trust no one to keep unspoken anything that you tell
them. You know how easily gossip flows from one to the next. And
above all, neither confide nor confess anything about our
affairs to any priest there you might see, since most priests
lack the wisdom and sympathy of our own Don Tomaso.”
(E
sopra tutto. . . .)
Here in
this place where I am subject to the rigors of the
Congregation’s rule and sharing a roof with those who have
fallen so low, Ser Achille’s laugh rings again and again in my
ears. “You fool,” he said to me after he struck me so hard that
I fell to my knees, his voice so cruel and scornful, “Signor
Alberto has given you the trick. How could you believe that such
a one as you could be worthy of marrying a signore of such a
magnificent family? And you,” he said to Mona Gentile, shaking
his finger at her as Lucia often does with Giuseppe, when he has
been naughty, “how could you encourage her to imagine herself so
grand? She has squandered her honor for illusions and vanity,
like the poor country fool that she is. But you, my wife, knew
better.”
Ser
Achille is wrong. My honor will be regained, and my love, too,
with Mona Gentile’s skillful help, God willing. Ser Achille
knows nothing of the binding powers of love, or of the hammers
that strengthen it where it falters (as I fear has happened with
Berto). But Ser Achille knows little of his wife. And if he did,
who then would be the poor country fool, eh?
Rising
for chapel well before dawn is no easier than rising in the cold
dark to fetch in wood and water and get the fires going. Truly,
it sounded to me so easy— to lead the devout life, with my only
chores a bit of spinning and needlework. But when the matron
woke me from my sleep in the cold, still darkness of a night not
yet finished, I could think only of the emptiness of my stomach.
It growled so loudly that I could hear it even through the ugly
racket of our voices singing the liturgy (without so much as an
organ to help guide our pitch). Oh the chapel is a dismal one,
with just the crucifix above the altar and only the one
painting, of the Magdalene washing Christ’s feet, which cannot
be seen at all before dawn, and only poorly when the light seeps
in through the one window, which is behind the altar. Kneeling,
it seemed to me the cold had settled into my bones for good. I
could not stop shivering. Perhaps it is best, working
straightaway on rising, for then even in the bitterest cold the
blood heats quickly. And breakfast seems that much nearer when
you are the one preparing it yourself and when you can filch a
crust of bread between trips to the well.
When Mona
Gentile comes, I will tell her I need more food than they allow
us. Perhaps they will give us meat when Lent is over, but though
we observed Lent as Christians in Mona Gentile’s house, I never
felt hungry on leaving the table, as I do here. I had to bite my
tongue this morning, for I wanted to insist to the matron that I
should be given more because of the child. (Francesca— whom we
are supposed to address as “Mona Francesca,” a travesty since
she has never been married— is only an old prostitute, who has
been on “good behavior” for the nine months she’s been here. I
have already learned that she and the other two warders have
their favorites. But, “Make no fuss,” Mona Gentile told me.)
Perhaps Mona Gentile will bring me extra food, or bribe
the matron.
Many
priests think fasting and hunger is good for the soul. Yet this
morning in chapel I could not keep my mind on the devotions, but
only thought of how much I’d like to be building the fire in
Mona Gentile’s kitchen, and how good it would feel to be putting
a cup of broth into my stomach. Somehow this kind of hunger is
different from the hunger of a fast undertaken to do the
powerful things Mona Gentile has been teaching me. It is,
perhaps, because then I can feel the power inside myself, being
drawn upon, and fashioned, whereas going before breakfast to
sing lauds seems a gesture wasted. There is holy water, and a
holy candle or two, but the bareness of the chapel makes it feel
as though God would never deign to set foot in the place.
Perhaps it
will be different when a priest is present, saying the Mass. . .
When
I took out this little book just now and looked at the pages I
had already written, the ugliness of my scrawl made me think of
how Ser Achille would mock it if he were to see it. In truth, I
don’t believe anyone but me could even read it. (Even I have
trouble making out all of the words, because I have written them
so closely together, with each word pressing on the last, with
each line right up against the one above it.) Yet, that I can
write, and read, too— and not just my name, as is the case with
those of my brothers who did learn to make their names— this
gives me an advantage, because it means that not only can I
write down my thoughts instead of foolishly speaking them to get
them out of my head, but I can also make power-writing, which is
in many things better than making a hammer. . .
There are
birds nesting in the roof of this house. I hear them now,
flapping and billing and cooing. Doves, perhaps. Which make me
think of my love, my own dear Berto, and the little bird of his
that I have pleased so much. . .
(Le
columbe, forse. . . .)
Oh
yesterday was wonderful! Mona Gentile came to see me—
accompanied by her sister-in-law, the Signora Consolini, whose
husband is a member of the Congregation and so is held in the
highest esteem in this house. Last night before sleeping— lying
in sheets warm from the bricks I heated in the kitchen hearth,
as the Signora Consolini insisted on my behalf that I be allowed
to do— I went over and over in my mind all that had passed
between us, enjoying the repetition with almost as much
exaltation as I felt during her visit. She walked with her
sister through the entire house before drawing me aside, asking
that I show her my room. And though I had vowed to myself never
to complain to her of my place here, the first thing I said when
we were alone was how, if it was on account of my pregnancy that
I was here, I wish I had chosen rather to abort it than to tell
Berto of it and demand he restore my honor.
“Foolish
child!” she said. And she remonstrated with me and said that in
the eyes of all my value had risen with my pregnancy, and that
if I safely delivered a healthy child it would be proof of my
fertility, and that the fact that I was pregnant made the suitor
Ser Achille had selected for me more eager than before to wed
me, once I have had my honor repaired by staying here and living
piously and chastely under the Congregation’s supervision. This
she said here, in this room, which is where she gave me a store
of sugared almonds. (She and the Signora Consolini brought also
a barrel of salted fish, which I and the others who are pregnant
are to be given every morning in addition to gruel.)
And then,
it being mild and midday, we went out into the courtyard and
walked to and fro in the sun, our arms linked as if we were
indeed mother and daughter. (And truly Mona Gentile always set
herself to teach me the things mothers teach their daughters,
since I left my own mother at such a tender age. And besides,
that time Ser Achille exploded in wrath when it seemed to him
that Berto had given me the trick, he said that this stained his
own honor, because my having served in his house from the time I
was eleven years put him in the place of a father to me, for
that he had made a contract with my father that he would provide
me with a dowry and an honorable marriage.)
“Tell me,”
Mona Gentile said as we walked, “do you remember the first time
we talked about the special powers of the body?” And of course I
remembered, so clearly, the beginning of my secret
apprenticeship with her, when she began by asking me if I knew
any spells, and if I had ever employed them. At which I told her
of how when I was seven, and the caterpillars infested the
cabbages, my mother had put the yoke on her shoulders and had me
ride on it, as she walked through the fields, calling out to the
caterpillars a spell she said she had called out for her mother,
as her mother had before her. And that the spell was in words
brought from the land her great-grandmother had lived in,
Fui, fui ruie et il mio con ti mangiuie, which means “Flee,
flee, furry caterpillars, or my cunt will eat you.” The words
were strange to my ears, and felt strange in my mouth, but I
have never forgotten them. And after I told Mona Gentile of this
spell that I knew and had made, riding on the yoke, she asked me
if I understood that the power of the spell came from my being a
woman— or going to be a woman. And she asked me if my mother had
said why a young girl, and not herself, must make the spell. And
I remembered, then, my mother saying the spell did not work if
it wasn’t made by a girl before she had begun issuing her
flowers.
So I
remembered all this yesterday when Mona Gentile asked, and when
I said yes, I did remember, she then stopped and laid her hand
over my womb, which isn’t very big yet, and said that all the
power that is mine as a woman is working now to make a human
being, and she touched my breasts and said that the power was
working in my breasts now, too. (I felt foolish at Mona
Gentile’s mention of my breasts. It was when I went to her,
saying that I thought I needed the spell for madrazza,
that she discovered I was pregnant, which I hadn’t known. “And
how,” she said then, “would a woman who has never given birth,
come to suffer madrazza, which is caused by an excess of
milk?”) “And so it is true,” I asked her, “what they say about
breast milk, that it is flowers stored up and cooked in the
breasts?” And she said yes, which was why husbands who could
afford to pay a wet-nurse would not allow their wives to suckle.
(Besides, of course, their not wishing to abstain from the
pleasures of the marital bed for all that time.)
In the
countryside we are poor, and all women suckle. But then the rich
women in the city always do send their babies away from the
moment of their birth, or bring women in from the country to do
that work.
My hand is
too cramped to write more. And the light is getting thinner. And
we will soon be called to supper, and then compline, anyway.
I
woke early this morning, well before they summoned us to lauds,
in the cold, still darkness. Though I had great need to relieve
myself, I lingered in bed, where some of my body’s warmth, at
least, remained. And yet the cold did not seem that terrible to
me, because I felt a great warmth kindled in my heart as I
remembered Mona Gentile’s visit, still fresh in my thoughts.
“And why,” Mona Gentile had said to me when I told her how I
loathed rising for lauds, “do you think nuns and monks are
obliged to do this? While it is true that all the Signori wish
masses to be said for the souls of all their dead fathers and
brothers and grandfathers, you may believe me that they all rest
easier knowing that thousands of nuns and monks rise in the
night to say matins and lauds, during the hours in which all the
powers of heaven and earth are nearly extinguished, particularly
in the two hours before dawn, when the earth has lost its heat,
and finally even the birds become alarmed and cry frantically
and pathetically their most doleful plaints, a time when even
demons and spirits and angels flee the utter coldness and
stillness of a dying world. And then the nuns and monks rise for
lauds, seeking to touch the heart of God, lest he not let heat
and life and vitality return to the earth, and lo, as the end of
lauds comes, the sun rises, and life has been saved, again, from
the risk of endless night. And then there is power enough to say
Mass, and all living things whether incarnate or only spiritual
revive, in the daily resurrection of what we call the ‘new
day’. . .”
Mona
Gentile is so wise, understands so much! And yet is so
beautiful, her eyes the most radiant blue, her hair a fiery gold
that compares with the sun itself. . . It almost seems a scandal
for a miserable prostitute like that little Anna Laura Spighi to
whisper in my ear, “Your lady is so very beautiful,” and yet it
is true, and it makes the others here look at me differently, to
see that such a beautiful and respectable lady as Mona Gentile
takes so great an interest in me.
(È
tanta bellissima, tua donna. . . .)
Of course
I do not tell anyone here how Mona Gentile came to bestow her
trust and affection on me. After all, when I first came to Ser
Achille’s house, I was just another miserable girl from the
country hired to do the drudgery that must be done in every
household, even those in the city. And I was laughably ignorant
and required much scolding before I learned how to give good
service. Mona Gentile had scant patience with me and seemed
beyond pleasing. And my weeping with homesickness increased her
displeasure. But one day she caught sight of the caule my mother
had placed around my neck. (“Never, never, never part yourself
from it,” my mother told me. “It is what makes you special, it
holds all the power of my womb when it was making you.”) I was
frightened, for I thought, being a fine city lady, she might
make me throw it in the fire (which is what, my mother says,
some priests make people do when they discover them wearing
their caules, because the priests know the caules hold power and
can’t abide anyone else having power besides themselves).
But in fact
Mona Gentile spoke gently to me, and called me “sister,”
because she said she too had been born with a caule, and wore it
next to her skin, though she never let anyone see it, especially
not any man. And from then on she began to instruct me in the
ways of magic, and the powers of the body and hearth. And I
became then not just her servant, but her pupil, and her “sister
of the caule.”
But I have
yet to write down (as if I could forget anything that Mona
Gentile has said to me!) the rest of our conversation. It
concerned Berto, and my pregnancy, and Ser Achille’s plans for
my future. Mona Gentile says that Berto is very pleased that I
am pregnant. (And yet he will not keep his word to me! Which I
do not understand!) He is concerned, she said, that I look on
only beautiful things, and that I eat well, so that the child
will be born healthy. (To this end, he has pledged to make a
donation to this house.) If it is a boy, he will give it to a
wet-nurse he will hire, and when it is weaned raise it in his
house. If it is a girl— I had to prompt Mona Gentile to tell me—
he will have the child taken to the foundling home. Alas, poor
thing! And how many survive to live after having been taken to
that place? I have heard, I had no need to ask Mona Gentile
about it, because it is so well known and talked of in the city,
how foundling homes were first established to take the infants
of slaves, because their milk was wanted by their masters for
renting out, and would dry up if they were to watch their own
children die
before
their eyes, or else would be given them illicitly, as a theft
from their masters. While there are few if any slaves in the
city now, yet there are still children born for whom there is no
milk, their own mothers’ milk being needed for other children.
It is
bitter indeed. For whether I give birth to a boy or a girl, Ser
Achille will arrange a contract for me to go as balia to
a good family in the city, for wages that will enlarge my dowry
greatly (particularly since some of the portion coming to me— as
well as the sheets I had sewn and laid aside— will be spent on
my maintenance here). And when the child I am contracted to
nurse has been weaned, I will return here briefly, and
then marry.
Wet-nursing is an honorable profession, Mona Gentile said to me.
But I was so upset that Berto is eager for the child, yet still
refuses to publicly acknowledge me as his wife, that I said
again that I wished I had taken the sage-leaf medicine, for then
I would still be Berto’s wife, and that besides, I would
probably die in childbed. But Mona Gentile promised me she would
deliver me herself and asked me did I not have faith in her
powers? And of course it is true, if Mona Gentile is with me, I
must be delivered safely. As for Berto, she did not need to
remind me that Ser Achille owes much to Berto’s father, who is
the magistrate for whom Ser Achille has been a notary for many
years. These city ways! I always believed in my heart that if
Berto broke his word to me, that he would be made to keep it, as
when I was eight years I witnessed my uncles, the priest, and
the mayor besides make another who would break his word to his
pledged wife, marry her as he had promised.
But “Do
not despair,” Mona Gentile said to me. “Pretend to agree to any
arrangements Ser Achille makes for you. There is time, and
opportunity, for making Signor Alberto change his mind. Do not
forget the power of the hammer, my child. I promise you, Signor
Alberto will be struck. We will make him come back to you,
begging you to marry him. Trust me.”
(Mi
credi.)
I do, Mona
Gentile, I do trust you. But how to make a hammer in a place
like this? Teach me, my lady, teach me how. And if it hurts
Berto— though of course not mortally. . . if it causes him
pain. . .let him think then how he has caused me pain.
Yesterday
when Mona Gentile visited she brought me lemon verbena, mint,
and camomile, for steeping in hot water and drinking with honey
(which she also brought me), the lemon verbena in the morning,
the mint in the afternoon, and the camomile in the evening,
before compline. Though I keep these herbs and the honey in my
room, I still need to use the kitchen hearth, for getting the
water. But that is part of the point! Not only are these drinks
good for pregnant women, but I need access to the kitchen hearth
if I am to make the hammer that will bring Berto back to me. As
Mona Gentile observed yesterday, though she can prepare some of
it, and
place it for me, there are certain things that I must do myself.
For all that my powers are diminished, because they are needed
for the growing of the child, they are not entirely lost.
And so I
made an appearance in the kitchen yesterday evening, not just to
fetch the bricks that I heat there, but to steep the camomile
leaves in hot water. Mona Elissa was there, of course. (She has
a bed in the alcove to the side of the hearth, where it is
nearly always warm, just as I do in Mona Gentile’s house. That
arrangement, plus the fact that it is she whom the Congregation
entrusts with the key to the cellar, where all the food staples
and wine are kept, makes her behave as if she is lady of the
house. Of course it is true that she is a widow, and more
respectable than any of us here, since it is only because her
children are dead and her husband misused her dowry that she is
in this place, which she prefers to a convent.) Mona Elissa
stood with her hands on her hips, like a great black crow
shrilling warnings at me, only instead of
cawing, she
held her lips pressed tightly together, as though to let me know
that it was only because I am the Signora Consolini’s protégée
that she would allow me the use of her hearth.
“Accustom
all who work in the kitchen to seeing you there often,” Mona
Gentile said. I know, without doubt, what enrages Mona Elissa.
It is not that I am Signora Consolini’s protégée, which is the
reason the matron hates me, since she owes her position to the
Signora’s rival, Donna Masserenti, also the wife of a member of
the Congregation. No, Mona Elissa dislikes anyone she cannot
order about as a servant; and those who enter the kitchen are
mostly the residents who are obliged to work for their
maintenance. And so it vexes her that she lacks authority over
me. She is foolish, though, for thinking herself above the
factional rivalry. Coming from a mere village, I know that it is
always necessary to choose sides. Even in the great city of
Bologna, it is necessary. And here in this small house, it is
even more necessary. Mona Elissa has not been here above two
years. That is not long enough to judge the situation.
This is
how foolish Mona Elissa is: “She is the Signora Consolini’s
little pet,” that one hissed at the miserable little Catarina,
who was scrubbing the enormous kettle that had been used to make
the soup we ate at supper. And did she notice, that the little
Catarina sent me a friendly, respectful look, as if to say that
though she is a partisan of the matron, she might change sides
if it were expedient?
Mona
Elissa’s voice is the loudest at lauds and compline, and the
ugliest, too. It is a sort of nasal drone, that takes no
pleasure in its own use. It’s no wonder she snapped at me for
humming while I waited for the little kettle Mona Gentile
brought me to boil!
I
woke this morning in tears, brimming with a grief I have carried
with me all day. I dreamed a thing unbearable, I dreamed the one
thing I haven’t allowed myself to think might be really true,
however carelessly my Berto may have behaved (and thus
unthinkingly brought me to this place). I dreamed that Berto
betrayed me as Ser Achille has tried to make me believe, that he
deliberately gave me the trick, all the while laughing at me
behind my back. In the dream it was the night of carnival in
which I did that so daring thing— emboldened, perhaps, by the
assurance Berto’s love had brought me— that is, dressing in
Rico’s clothes (which because they were so large on me exposed
no more than my legs, which many have seen anyway in the
ordinary course of accidents life holds for girls like me). In
the dream, as happened that night, Berto was amused and
applauded my boldness— until Francesca appeared, and said
loudly, for Berto, Rico, and all of our friends who were making
beautiful dances with us: “That one will end up at the baths,
she looks like one of us already.” And hearing that, from one
who for several years worked at the baths (and according to the
portress dressed often in male clothing, and even allowed
herself to be used for every kind of sodomy, including the kind
that is done by men to boys), the other girls there spoke
disapprovingly to me (as they did that night of the carnival),
and Rico and Berto sneered, and Berto said for all to hear:
“Yes, she will do well at the baths, for I have given her the
trick, as she must very well know!”
Mona
Gentile says that dreams are not always what they seem at first
sight. But the heaviness in my heart is so sorrowful that if I
dared I would have spent the day in my room, weeping. Only the
thought of Francesca coming in here, playing the matron over me,
taunting me for my foolishness, made me go through the motions
of all that is expected of me here.
“Fear is
the first great enemy of love,” Mona Gentile once said to me,
when she explained to me why we must never let those we are
binding to us with the magical arts know of our labors for them.
“Fear,” Mona Gentile said, “and coldness. Hot anger is always
better for love than cold. Cold anger will kill love more surely
than anything else. Cold anger makes contempt.” Surely I must
not let fear poison my love for Berto, for that love is greater
than anything I can think of, greater than my life itself. I
must think of his eyes, and his hands, and his mouth, which have
been so tender with me, and are unto themselves grace incarnate.
I must try to remember his delight on that night of carnival
when I wore boy’s clothing, I must try to remember the fierce
joy of our dancing, and
how
everyone remarked about it how perfectly we are matched. That
was the reality, the dream is false, a warning against despair—
and against the evil machinations of the matron.
My fear is
that locked up here, I will be forgotten by Berto. Men forget
the things of the body so quickly— I have heard Mona Gentile
remark on this again and again. But they are written on our
bodies, so that we never forget any of it, neither the pain nor
the pleasure, neither the sorrow nor the joy. Which is the
reason, Mona Gentile says, that magical arts are needed to bind
men.
As for the
question of “giving me the trick,” what matters is how Berto
feels about me, not that I have given him my honor, and am now
without any at all. “Honor is determined by men, who manage
everything to do with its arrangements,” Mona Gentile said when
we first talked about this. “Women are powerless in such
matters, except when defaming one of their own number, since men
will believe the evil one woman speaks of another, but dismiss
the good; and so questions of honor do not concern us. We have
other ways of making arrangements, ways in which men are in turn
powerless. Let Ser Achille and Signor Alberto worry about honor;
we, my child, will arrange things in our own way, and when we
have done, they will make their arrangements to suit ours.”
As with
love, the magical arts require confidence without arrogance, in
order to work. And yet, I am in despair.
Blessed
Madonna, help me!
How
clever of me, is it not, that I’ve invented my own
abbreviations, to make writing so much easier! Because my
fingers grow cramped so quickly, I have been reluctant to bother
with writing, especially now that I seem to want to sleep all
the time. But because some of us now sit outside, in the
courtyard, the weather being so pleasant, with our spindles and
flax, and because of the great scandal, the very details of
which are yet held secret from us here, I find my tongue making
too free with its desire for speaking the many things in my
mind. And so, remembering how Ser Achille and other notaries use
abbreviations when they write (because many times they are
required to write down, at great speed, everything that is said,
particularly in criminal cases, and also because many of the
same expressions and phrases are used repeatedly in legal
documents, and are less tedious to the hand when noted by a
single mark or letter with a mark distinguishing it), it seemed
to me a clever thing to invent my own set of marks. (And I note,
too, that it is not a bad thing that only I know what they
signify!)
The
scandal— ah, that is an enigma. Three of us were out in the
courtyard this afternoon, working our spindles diligently and
singing pretty little ditties with only the most innocent of
words, since we are forbidden to sing “love songs.” (We are also
forbidden to “chatter and gossip,” which is why we choose to
sing, since it is obvious when our voices are lifted in song
that we are obeying the rules of the Congregation.) Suddenly the
little Catarina came rushing out to us, sputtering with so much
excitement that at first she could not get the words out. “It is
impossible!” she said. “But it is true! I cannot believe it, but
the Signora Messina Vignola, whom we all know, because she is
the wife of Signor Flaminio Segnelli, and has often come here
with other ladies, has been brought here to live! I was in
the
hall, scrubbing the tiles, when Mona Antonia gave entry to her
and several signori, one of them the dottore, her husband!”
All of us
in the courtyard believed that Catarina had misunderstood. The
Signora Vignola has been here several times since I arrived. Not
only does she come often with other ladies, bringing provisions
and inspecting and questioning us as is usual with many of the
wives of Congregation members, but it is not long since she
attended the service held in our chapel on Holy Saturday, and
attended the Easter feast with her husband and other
Congregation members and their wives, that was given for us here
in this house. But Catarina was not mistaken! It seems that the
Signor Segnelli has, with the approval of other Congregation
members, chosen to confine his wife here, with us! I do not
understand it. For a Signor to send his own wife, a fine lady,
to such a place. . .it is, as I say, a great enigma. Francesca,
however, tells us we are not to speak about it, that it is none
of our affair.
The lady
will, of course, keep to herself. We are to treat her with the
great respect we always pay the wives of Congregation
members. . .
I have
often heard Ser Achille, joking with Mona Gentile, call the
Florentines “wise” for keeping their wives always locked up at
home, with their only freedom that of peering out the smallest
slits of windows, or occasionally standing on their loggias, to
witness holy processions. (In that place, men as old as Ser
Achille need not worry when they take wives as young as Mona
Gentile!) But of course, as Mona Gentile says, everyone knows
that all business and even political affairs would be thrown
into confusion here in Bologna if the women
were locked
up. And besides, she says, a woman locked up is a prisoner, and
as such an enemy to her keeper. “But Florentine women are silent
as mutes,” Ser Achille always retorts. “What bliss that must be,
to escape the constant natterings of women!”
Many are
the women who have come to this place to flee abusive husbands.
(It is for that that it came to be called the
“Malmaritate.”) If it hadn’t been that Signor Segnelli
accompanied Signora Vignola here, it would be easier to believe
she had fled for safety, than that he was locking her up for
punishment.
I
have such fine news to tell Mona Gentile, that I am more eager
than ever she visit me again soon. Today, for the first time, I
saw the Devil’s eyes behind the flames in the kitchen hearth. I
have been following, with the greatest care and diligence, her
instructions that I feed a little pinch of salt to the fire
daily, when Mona Elissa’s back is turned, so that the Devil will
consider that hearth a good place to lurk. But to tell the
truth, it frightens me a little to be coaxing the Devil here, on
my own, without Mona Gentile’s strength to guide and protect me.
If I am to be successful in making the hammer that will re-bind
Berto to me, I must, Mona Gentile says, have recourse not only
to the powers of the saints and the holy things of the Church,
but also to a very little of the power of hell, as well. The
hammer I will make will be like the one Mona Gentile made three
years ago, to bind Signor Paolo Suffrageneo’s passions the more
closely to her lest her pregnancy cause him to recoil. Of course
I will not be able to walk through the streets along the path
they lead criminals to their execution, nor afterwards walk with
my hands tied behind my back through the house, with all the
doors and windows open, speaking the Our Father for the meanest
souls that have been executed, thirty-three times. But there are
other things that will serve to make my hammer strong, and Mona
Gentile tells me she has a piece of hangman’s rope and some
blood that dropped from the arm of a thief when his hand was
being severed.
It is not
dangerous, Mona Gentile says, to have limited contact with the
Devil. We acknowledge him, so that he can be made to work for us
whenever we wish. The little bit of salt we give him in the fire
is as nothing, like the merest drop of water in the sea. It
encourages him to think that if he helps us he might eventually
snare us, as sometimes happens with the most foolish or unhappy
of women. And to treat the Devil so is not a sin, for God could
not possibly be offended by our making use of the Devil without
giving him anything but trifles in return. Mona Gentile has
discussed these things with Don Tomaso, who told her only to be
careful
when having any dealings with the Devil, and to do no
harm
to others, including not forcing them truly against their will.
I cannot
believe my hammer could harm Berto. It might cause him pain, for
as long as it takes him to remember me and his promises to me
(which he surely did mean at the time he made them), but I do
not believe it truly against his will, in that his will in the
first place intended to do all the right things by me, and not
hurt or betray me (which giving me the trick would indeed do).
Are hammers necessarily implements of harm?
Certainly
not!
(Certo
che non!)
It is a
question of aligning the sympathetic forces of nature to the
ends to which they are meant to go. Berto was drawn to me from
the beginning, as was I to him, in the most natural way
possible. I could feel the power of Fortune in the warmth of
that first moment, even before his beautiful smile penetrated
his face, when his eyes recognized me. My face, neck, and belly
suffused with a fiery blush, and such was my condition that I
almost forgot that I was to give him the wine I had poured out
for him and Ser Achille.
I knew,
yes I knew in that moment. And though our passion has
always been fierce, let no one deny that we knew we were meant
for one another, body and soul, from the start. It was this, and
not mere lust, that made me tremble through the night,
sleepless, my mind burning with the memory of eyes I knew, of
eyes that knew me. . .
Today,
it being Sunday, we went to Mass in the chapel. A certain Don
Alessandro, of whom it is said he is from Venice, preached a
sermon about how the lust of women threatens the souls of both
women and men, and continuously makes chaos and unleashes havoc
on the good order of society. And because he talked about how
women give themselves to the Devil because of their lust, I at
first thought he knew that I had been throwing salt to the Devil
in the kitchen hearth, and was warning me against doing any
business with the Devil at all. But as it happened he spoke of
witches only a little and instead, almost all of the rest of his
sermon, spoke about how
women who
do not strive to control their terrible lust willfully
and scandalously destroy their own homes and the honor of their
families. And everyone sitting in the chapel knew then that the
priest meant his remarks to be taken to heart by the Signora
Messina Vignola. And because the Signora has brought so much
trouble and acrimony into this house, making demands on every
woman living here, whom she treats as her servants, and
complaining constantly, which makes an assault on my ears
especially, her room being next to mine, many were the smiles
only barely hidden from the priest and Congregation’s scrutiny.
The Signor
Dottore Flaminio Segnelli, the lady’s husband, was not among the
Congregation members present today at Mass. (But who would
choose our chapel for attending Mass, if they had a free say?)
But of
course, as became clear to me later, when I heard the matron
joking with the portress, whores do not put much store by
female lust, since it is the lust of males that
benefits their pocketbooks, and female lust, as they
believe, though attractive to men when it is simulated, often
drives men who are not already lustful away.
And
this day Mona Gentile came here, to attend the Signora Messina!
Since we had heard that the Congregation had ruled when it
permitted the Signora Messina to stay here that it would be
forbidden the wives of the members to hold any conversation with
her whatsoever, this was surprising indeed! But the president of
the Congregation made a special dispensation for the visit,
because Mona Gentile is a healer of women’s diseases. To my
great joy and gratification, Mona Gentile requested that I
assist her, and then she sent away the little Catarina, who has
attached herself to the Signora as mud does to the feet, ankles,
and fingernails of any who work in the fields.
The
Signora Messina suffers from the whites— which is a thick white
discharge issuing from her womb, like a continual flow of white
flowers. It stains her linen, which has constantly to be changed
and washed. The smell, when her skirts are lifted, is strong,
not only of the odor that habitually issues from that place, but
of something like the stink of hops fermenting. Mona Gentile has
made a pessary for her; and because it must be changed often, it
means that Mona Gentile will be visiting often, too.
It is good
fortune for me— though not for Signora Messina— that her husband
has made her to be locked up here. It is an ill wind that blows
no good, my father was always saying to my mother.
After Mona
Gentile finished attending the Signora, we came into my room—
bringing the basin with the water she had used to wash the
Signora Messina’s privates. The basin was the one Mona Gentile
often uses for far-seeing, especially when its water has been
penetrated with vital, potent fluids. Mona Gentile stood in the
patch of sunlight streaming in through the unshuttered window,
holding this basin. After she had me compose myself, she bade me
sign myself with the cross, to draw God’s power into me, and
then instructed me to look at the surface of the water only. And
there was a shine on the water, which I knew would hold the
images I wanted to see, but at first I had trouble concentrating
on it only, for I kept seeing traces of the ropy white curds
that had been left in the water. But after a little while it was
as though the dazzle of the sun had showered gold into my eyes,
for the shining surface suddenly rose up, like a liquid, radiant
cloud, in the image of Berto! “My love!” I cried out. And
Berto’s eyes turned to me, as though he could hear me calling
him, then dimmed suddenly and unaccountably. My throat closed
when Berto turned his head away, as though he could not bear to
see me, and the image vanished, and though my eyes were
still a
little blinded, when I blinked several times I saw just the
basin, half-full of water in which drifted nasty bits of debris.
Mona
Gentile assured me that my power to hold the image will grow
stronger each time I summon it. I remembered, then, to tell her
that I had felt the baby moving in my womb. She expressed joy,
and said that she would tell Berto, because she knew it would
please him.
When
Mona Gentile came today to refresh the Signora Messina’s
pessary, she whispered to me that the lady’s husband had been
able to persuade the Congregation to keep her here only by
promising them an enormous sum of money. She says that the
Signora Consolini says that very few members of the Congregation
know the reason Signor Segnelli wishes her to be kept here, and
that those who know are telling no one, not even their own
wives. When I remarked on how much quieter the Signora has
become since Mona Gentile began ministering to her, how she no
longer screams and screeches the whole day long, how she has
even begun to treat Catarina as her special pet, rather than her
slave, Mona Gentile said that the whites often turn even the
most pleasant of women into raving shrews, for they cause great
burning and itching in the private places, and also deprive the
sufferer of sleep. The remedy in the pessaries is working, and
the whites are lessening more each day. And also, Mona Gentile
has been providing the lady with sleeping draughts. Lack of
sleep alone makes people irritable and easily vexed, even when
they lack the Signora’s other afflictions.
And then
Mona Gentile took the opportunity to praise the Signora’s
persistence and resolve. “We don’t know what her husband, the
fine dottore, who is good only for casting horoscopes and
spouting Latin, which do nothing for afflictions like the
whites, wishes to accomplish by keeping her here. But by making
war against her, he has miscalculated. Men say always, with the
utmost confidence, that women lack virtù. But whatever
drives that lady, she has more virtù and forza in
her than the most relentless condottiere. She is recovering and
consolidating her strength now, the Signora. Observe, my
Isabetta, that she does not weep, nor pity herself. For that
reason, she will prevail.” As Mona Gentile spoke thus, her eyes
shone, with that blue fire that makes me feel her words deep
inside, where they kindle a blaze within me, that makes me more
determined than ever to please her.
“The
dottore has never attended a childbed,” Mona Gentile said,
scoffing. “Or he would know that the women who successfully
bring children into the world require as great strength,
determination, and fortitude, as any knight battling a thousand
Turks.”
And when
Mona Gentile had gone, and I was down again in the courtyard
spinning, I went over and over her words, and knew she meant me
to take them deep into my heart. And though I had to get up
often to visit the privy under the stairs, which is one of the
afflictions of pregnancy, my heart sang a proud, fierce song. I,
too, will prevail!
This
morning the matron discovered me feeding the birds a little of
the grain Mona Gentile brings me for that purpose. It was at
that very moment, when the birds were descending to me with
their great clatter and clack of wings, when I was throwing out
the first handful from the knotted bit of cloth in which I keep
it, that she screeched at me, “What are you doing, are you
crazy?” And she confronted me, as though I were a great
malefactor. It was bad enough, she said, that the birds lived in
the eaves, and that we had to hear them night and day, cooing
and crying and scrabbling about on the roof. It was bad enough
that they bothered us from time to time in the courtyard, and
made a nuisance of themselves in the kitchen garden. But that I
encouraged them to it! That was a sin, and wasting grain that
could be used for food, of which we never can get enough in this
house!
In my
startlement (and if truth be given, with intention), I dropped
the cloth so that the grain spilled out all around me, and the
birds feasted royally.
After
several minutes of scolding, in which I pleaded that even the
blessed holy Francis had fed the birds from his own begging
bowl, the matron thought to demand of me where I had gotten the
grain. Surely, she said, I must have stolen it from the pantry,
and how had I done that, when Mona Elissa and the president of
the Congregation are the only ones with keys to that place?
If she had
asked me that question first, instead of scolding at such
length, I would probably not have been quick enough to answer as
I did. “Mona Francesca,” I said respectfully, “I got the grain
from here.” And I showed her the paving stone lying loose and
out of place, beneath which I usually keep my cache.
“And how
did it get there?”
I did not
answer, only shrugged.
She looked
shrewdly at me, and then said that it would serve me right if
she made me dig up all the paving stones, in case there was more
grain put away there.
I am
certain she will not search my room. And since she can’t know
why I feed the birds, she cannot threaten to have the
Congregation throw me out for it. If the Signora Consolini were
not providing so generously for our table, I believe she would
have cut my portions, in retaliation, for the imagined theft.
“Sometimes saints can be fools, and as wrong as any other
sinner!” she said in the rage of the moment. Imagine, a fallen
whore passing judgment on such an honored, holy saint!
Somehow,
though that old biddy will be watching me with the greatest
vigilance, I must find a way to keep feeding the birds. It is
not enough that they live in the eaves. They must be trustful of
me, and come to my hand when I tempt them.
Just as I
must keep feeding the fire with salt, to keep the Devil tamely
by me, for when I need him. It is not enough, as Mona Gentile
says, to wear the caule. One must make one’s preparations,
thoroughly, carefully, and with the best order possible.
It
being the first new moon since the Midsummer Day, Mona Gentile
brought me the wax doll and other items needed to begin
preparing the hammer. Most important of these are the hairs she
acquired from Berto, and a shirt of his with his blood on it,
and a few strands from a hangman’s rope. She said that she
arranged for Berto to have a nosebleed while visiting Ser
Achille, one so heavy that he soiled his shirt, and could thus
be persuaded to part with it. It would have been fine enough to
get the shirt, but the blood on it will of course make the
hammer that much more powerful. Also, Mona Gentile managed to
get a doll with a male member, which is not always possible,
since one cannot then claim to be buying the doll to make into
an image of a saint, or even Christ.
Oh, such a
beautiful shirt, of such fine cotton! I savored the pleasure of
burying my head in the cloth still redolent of Berto’s scent,
which conjured up memories of pleasure and delight, making it
difficult for me to tear strips from the shirt, as I needed to
do.
And yet, I
recalled to myself very clearly and carefully how Mona Gentile
prepared the hammer to bind Signor Paolo and then did everything
as she had done, first pounding the paste of blood not yet
whitened that I took from my left breast, holy oil, rosemary,
dove feather, and the coals I took from the fire that burned in
the hearth on Good Friday, then slathering half of it over the
doll, around which I wrapped first Berto’s hairs, some strands
of the hangman’s rope, and a few of my own pubic hairs, and
around all that bloodstained pieces of the shirt, then piercing
pins into the doll, both to secure the shirt and to bind the
powers. And all the while I repeated the chant Mona Gentile had
taught me, using Berto’s name instead of Signor Paolo
Suffrageneo’s. And then I made a dough with the rest of the
hairs and the paste, and wrapped the shirt around it,
in reserve.
And now as
I sleep with this doll each night while the moon grows to its
fullness, as I stroke and speak to and instruct this doll, more
and more of Berto’s spirit will be drawn to it, and my own power
over it will grow proportionately. I like lying with it between
my breasts. It is as though it draws the swollen tenderness out,
into itself. Perhaps it even draws some of the power from the
milk that is cooking in them. And I like pressing the remains of
that beautiful shirt against my cheek, so that I may breathe in
Berto’s essence, all the night long.
I will ask
Mona Gentile when I next see her. If she thinks it will draw
power from the child, I will not sleep with my little bird
there. Flutter and clatter and clack, little bird. You are
indeed mine now!
As
the moon grows big, I am becoming most attached to my little
toy. I feel less lonely, lying with it pressed tight against my
breast. But by the holy tears of Jesus, I know it is no
substitute for the real thing. It is an instrument, which
contains some of Berto, as much of Berto as I can make it hold.
It cannot steal my strength, Mona Gentile says, but rather it
adds to it. The doll attracts power, and because the doll is
mine in creation and possession, the power accrues to
me, not to
itself, since it is not, properly speaking, an independent
entity. If it is stealing power from anyone, that is Berto.
Still,
though the doll comforts me, I woke this morning very early,
long before lauds, with a terrible fear stalking me, tightening
my belly with cramps so overpowering that I feared the birth was
coming too early. I remembered my mother speaking to a neighbor,
just before my father brought me to the city. She said that
“he”— meaning, I think, my father— had decided it was time that
Lucia be weaned. And my mother complained that it was too soon,
that the baby had only just begun to walk, and that she still
could not chew very well. “He wants to get at me again, and then
there will be that to go through, yet again, and God alone knows
whether I’ll live through it.” And then the women talked about
all those they knew who had died in childbed.
Ser
Achille’s first two wives both died in childbed. But I am not to
think of this at all. When Mona Gentile brought me the doll she
said that Berto asked after my health. Now is no time for doubt
and despair!
What
a timid creature I am, to be sure! Last night, because the moon
was full, I had to take my courage in my hands and finish making
the hammer. Mona Gentile gave me a draught to put in Mona
Elissa’s wine. Thank the Blessed Mary, it worked! Even so, I
could hardly breathe for the trepidation causing my legs to
tremble and my breath to strangle in my throat. It is one thing
to do magic in Mona Gentile’s kitchen, under her direction and
auspices, and quite another to do it alone, in a place where I
am forbidden by authority to be.
Earlier in
the evening, before compline, while it was still light, I went
out to the courtyard and softly whistled the birds to me. I was
frightened of doing this because some of the shutters facing the
courtyard were open. Still, I reminded myself of my
determination and did what I needed to do. I chose the bird that
looked to me as though it had the bravest, most Berto-like
heart, and coaxed it to me with grain, and then imprisoned it in
my hands. How frightened it was! More so than I (and for better
reason, too). It tried, naturally, to escape, and even pecked my
fingers before I managed to close the remainder of Berto’s shirt
around it. “Little bird,” I crooned to it as I carried it to my
room, held closely, under my skirts, to my swelling belly.
“Dear
little bird, be mine.”
(Caro
ucellino. . . .)
I waited
until the house fell into the depths of sleep. Before I did
anything, I made sure that Mona Elissa lay sleeping soundly.
(Talk about snoring! It is worse even than her singing, which is
already the harshest, most grating sound imaginable.) In the
kitchen the coals were still warm enough for me to use the new
pot Mona Gentile had purchased “in the name of the Devil” for
melting the holy candle bought “for Isabetta’s love of Signor
Alberto.” Though the coals had been banked, I kept fearing that
the Devil himself might appear, though I had not called him. I
think I feared that more than that Mona Elissa would awaken and
find me at work. While the wax melted, I removed the heart of
the bird, spread it with the dough I had already used on the
doll, twined a number of my own pubic hairs around it, then
poured the wax over it, to seal it. All the while I chanted the
spell Mona Gentile had taught me. And when it was finished, I
carried the doll and the heart, now wrapped in the remains of
the bloodstained shirt, to my room, and kneeling at my
prie-dieu, prayed to the Madonna di San Luca that Berto’s love
be strong enough to make him keep his promise to me.
Mona
Gentile took the doll away today. She will place it under the
high altar of San Petronio, so that thirty-three masses will be
said over it. After that she will give it to Angelica, a servant
employed by Berto’s father, whom Mona Gentile has bribed. She
will secure it within Berto’s bed, where it will be most potent.
Holy
Madonna, grant me success!
I
am overflowing with a great beauty— which I, having taken
into my heart and mind, now take part in its radiance! And this
is, indeed, the way of beauty and good, that all that is touched
by them reflect them back, as a mirror reflects back light. For
several days now— which seem to pass so slowly, as I wait for
the hammer to be fully empowered and placed in Berto’s bed— for
several days the Signora Messina has begun attending not only
compline, but lauds as well, and sits with us when there is
shade in the courtyard. Though we are forbidden to speak with
her except when absolutely necessary, this is the rule applying
to all residents of the house among themselves, and so though
the Signora’s magnificence strikes us with a consciousness of
our lowliness, her presence does not really disturb us. When she
sits with us in the courtyard, she reads, silently, from a book
she holds in her lap, while the rest of us spin or sew or weave,
and some of us sing hymns or other songs to which the matron can
find no objection. The day before yesterday the matron, annoyed
by our singing (though I do not understand it, except that I
think she believes it is her duty to be sure we are all
miserable and sober and gloomy, so that our punishment in being
here is as oppressive as possible), requested Signora Messina to
read aloud to us from her book. The Signora looked at the
matron, lifted one of her very fine, silken brows, and then
smiled slightly. “It is in Latin,” she said. “Will anyone
understand it if I read it aloud?”
Did the
dottore teach her Latin, or choose her as his wife because she
had been schooled in it in her father’s house?
The
Signora said also, “But if you like, I will read to you
tomorrow, from a book in the vernacular.” And I remembered
observing when I assisted Mona Gentile in curing the Signora’s
whites, that she had a number of books in her possession.
So
yesterday morning the Signora opened her book, saying, “This was
written by the famous cardinal of Pope Leo X, Pietro Bembo.” And
then she read and read and read, even when her throat grew dry
and she required water, and in the late afternoon read again,
and came to the passage of such great beauty that even thinking
about it now makes my eyes fill with tears of joy and pleasure.
The subject of the reading was love, of all things (which
greatly embarrassed the prostitutes, who profess a great
cynicism about love between men and women). “Surely, if our
parents had not loved one another, we would not be here or
anywhere else,” the Signora read. “Nor, ladies, does love merely
bring human beings into existence, but it gives a second life as
well— or should I rather call it their principle life— that is
the life of virtue, without which it would perhaps be better not
to have been born or better to have died at birth.” This is
beautiful and wise, but the next part is astonishing! “For men
would still be wandering up and down the mountains and the
woods, as naked, wild and hairy as the beasts, without roofs or
human converse or domestic customs, had love not persuaded them
to meet together in a common life. Then abandoning their cries
and bending their glad tongues to speech, they came to utter
their first words. Little by little, as men lived in this new
way, love gathered strength, and with love grew the arts. For
the first time fathers knew their own children from those of
other men.
Villages
were newly filled with houses, and cities girt themselves with
walls for defense, and laws were made to guard praiseworthy
customs. Then friendship, which clearly is a form of love, began
to sow its hallowed name through lands already civilized.”
When the
Signora finished reading, I begged her to lend me the book, for
though I did not say so, I wanted to learn that passage by
heart, so that I would always have that beauty within me,
forever. The Signora at first looked surprised, then murmured,
“But you are Mona Gentile’s apprentice, are you not. Naturally
she has taught you to read.”
Because
some made sly comments about that beautiful passage, the matron
coarsely reminded us that not long ago Don Alessandro preached a
sermon to us about the Fall, about how God gave Adam and Eve
everything, and for her insatiable curiosity and lust, Eve
ruined it all— yes, lust, for why else must we learn shame after
her sin, which compelled our first parents to put on fig leaves
afterwards.
But we
could all see, so clearly before us, the nobility and worth of
the Signora Messina, whose hands are as delicate and white as
her face, whose collar and coif-cloth, even on this ordinary
day, were of fine spotlessly white lace, and whose dress was so
exquisitely stitched with bands of silk, her skirts and
petticoats so richly full and stiff. And this lady looked
utterly calm and unperturbed at Francesca’s aspersions, knowing
as she did that such a one could never offer any kind of
reproach to her. She responded firmly, yet easily: “Pope Leo X
thought highly of Cardinal Bembo, who wrote those words.” And
Adriana tittered, and said maybe so, but her first lover, at
thirteen, had been the priest she made her confessions to. At
which the matron imposed silence on us, so that the Signora was
able to resume reading aloud.
Mona
Gentile yesterday sent the message by the portress that she
earlier told me would indicate that the hammer had been fully
empowered and placed under Berto’s bed. And so last night, very
late, I undertook the most dangerous part of my mission. I took
the sealed heart of the bird wrapped in the remains of Berto’s
shirt and lay with it pressed to my breast, and then withdrew my
spirit from my body. It frightened me a little, abandoning my
body defenseless, knowing that if anyone were to come in and
move it that I should perish. All previous times I had done it
with Mona Gentile watching over it, as I have done for her. Yet
I felt a great exhilaration to find myself flying out into the
Via del Galliera, and from thence to the Via Asse and into the
house of Berto’s father. It has been so long since I’ve been out
of this house, so long since I have seen anything but plain gray
walls! Yet suddenly I could go where I wanted, without
hindrance, knowing that I would meet only other spirits, that no
one embodied could see me! Of course I did not want to meet
other spirits, for often they get themselves into mischief, or
engage in terrible battle, as the Benandanti, wielding fennel
stalks, do against witches. Happily, though, I met no other
spirits, and though I enjoyed lingering in the rooms of Berto’s
father’s house, which are filled with fine furniture,
tapestries, and many books more than Ser Achille himself owns,
the desire to see Berto filled me with an urgency to fly to him
with all speed and dispatch.
Berto was
lying on his side, sleeping. After I made sure the hammer was
placed as Mona Gentile had said it would be, I summoned his
spirit, which regarded me in great surprise and confusion. Since
Berto had been born without the caule, his spirit lacked the
power to rise apart from his body, and so was only the faintest
bit evident, trapped as it was in flesh.
“My love,”
I addressed the spirit, as though it were Berto himself. “You
will not remember my visit when you awaken, but you will know,
deep within your soul, that I have come to you to urge you to
keep your promise to me, to make public your having taken me for
your wife. I forbid you to take your flesh to any other, I
forbid you any pleasure in your member until you have kept your
word to me. A promise is a promise, and no one could make you a
better wife than I, who adore and know how to please you, and
who will soon be bearing your child. Until you keep your promise
to me, you will take no refreshment from your sleep, and will
dream only of me,
and how you
now deny the one you once called wife. Sleep now, Berto. But
remember, in the morning, that I am your wife.”
So great
was my delight in seeing my beloved that I remained for some
time to look on his face and form, which in sleep resemble those
of an angel, until I recalled how defenseless
my own sleeping body truly was, lying in my bed in the Casa del
Soccorso. Today I can think of nothing but how much I would have
loved to have stroked his face with my carnal hand, as I could
not, visiting him only in the spirit.
But he
will come to me, of that I am certain. It cannot be long now!
We
are all in an uproar in this house. The president of the
Congregation and Don Anselmo and several members, including the
Signor Dottore Segnelli, have been here, to question all of us,
and to send the matron and portress away altogether! They have
named Mona Elissa as the new matron and appointed Silvestra Leli
to be portress.
It
happened this morning, after breakfast, that the Signora Messina
and I were both coming down the stairs at the same time, I
carrying my work basket, she three books and a silk, gold
thread-embroidered pouch. When we reached the foot of the
stairs, she hesitated, and I thought at first she intended to
use the privy, but then she said to me that she wished to have a
word with the portress. This surprised me, for usually she did
not deign to notice that woman. And so I supposed that the
Signora intended to bribe her to carry a message outside.
Shamelessly I lingered, out of curiosity (though I did not tell
the signori that!), to see if Mona Antonia could be bribed. But
what happened was this: when the Signora had almost reached the
portress’s bench, she dropped her books. While the Signora
exclaimed loudly, the portress bent over, to pick them up. And
quickly, to my astonishment, the Signora raised the pouch high
over her head and then brought it down with great force and
violence on the portress’s head! The portress gasped, and
collapsed. The Signora then unbarred and unbolted the door, and
glancing over her shoulder, saw me standing there, and so called
softly to me to escape with her, if I liked!
Oh the
tightness in my chest at that moment! Oh the tears choking my
throat and prickling my eyelids! The thought of freedom was
sweet— but even without a moment’s reflection I knew that the
cost would be too high. I would lose everything if I fled, I
would lose Berto, I would lose Mona Gentile, I would lose all
chance of restoring my honor. If I fled, I would either end up
in the Casa della Probazione, or as the meanest whore on the
streets— and so far advanced in my pregnancy, too! So I shook my
head, to let her know that I would not go. And then the doorway
stood empty.
I knelt by
Mona Antonia, who was groaning. Her eyelids fluttered, and then
opened, and then closed again as a great moan issued from her. I
lingered at her side, so as to delay going to the matron, who I
knew would set up a great hue and cry. But when I saw a trickle
of blood coming out of Mona Antonia’s nose, I knew that I must
get help for her at once, and ceased to delay.
I do not
know if they will apprehend the Signora. If she has money and
people who will help her despite her husband’s wishes, she will
probably escape. Everyone here is both excited and gloomy. It
will be dull again here without the Signora’s beauty and finery
to lighten our days. And we can all guess that Mona Elissa will
be harsh in enforcing her piety on us. Catarina whispered to me
as we were entering the chapel for compline that we will be
lucky if she doesn’t start making us get up in the middle of
night for matins!
I
have been so dull, and have been so oppressed with the burden of
pregnancy, that I haven’t felt any desire to chatter, much less
write in this little book. Mona Gentile says that Berto is
suffering greatly— that he seems to be literally wasting away.
He has no appetite. A doctor was called and said that he lacked
sufficient heat (which he said was probably caused by dissipated
living). The doctor bled him, and purged him, and gave him an
emetic, and put him on a strict regimen.
Every now
and then I send my spirit to Berto, to bid him to keep his
promise. How can he be so stubborn? I do not understand it,
since to keep his word to me will bring him everything that is
good, while resistance is making him ill, and less than a man.
It is sad.
But my love will prevail and be justified.
“You
must decide how far you want to go,” Mona Gentile told me this
morning. Angelica, the servant she bribed, came to her, deeply
distressed by Berto’s debilitation. She wishes the hammer
removed because she thinks Berto may die of it.
These
words, when Mona Gentile conveyed them to me, struck terror deep
into my heart. Surely he will not die! I said to her, begging
her reassurance. But Mona Gentile said, “He has indeed become
ill. His spirit is resisting the hammer, and may even resist it
unto death. It may be that the love, or even desire, that you
wished to bind no longer existed at the time you made the
hammer. If there is no love, nor even desire, the spirit cannot
be compelled, though it dies resisting your will to bind it.”
Do I wish
Berto to die? No, a thousand times no! Though I am sometimes
angry at him for having abandoned me, his promised wife, I am a
woman, not a man who would rather see his beloved dead than
leave him. Unwomanly revenge could never be my way.
And so,
Mona Gentile says, I must either decide to release him, or go to
the Devil, that he may be inspired with the love that he no
longer feels. But if I go to the Devil for such a purpose, it
will cost me dearly. It will cost me, no doubt, my soul. For the
Devil never performs such arduous feats but for the ultimate
price.
I ponder
these things. A few months ago, before I began to contemplate
the risks of childbed, I might have cast my soul to the winds,
to win Berto to me. I can think of nothing more important to me!
And yet— when I think of how I may well perish in the struggle
to be delivered of this child, I feel fearful for my immortal
soul.
Don Tomaso
has warned that in the practice of magic one must be careful not
to endanger her soul. When I threw the pinch of salt into the
fire today, not only the Devil’s eyes, but most of his face
manifested itself to my sight. My heart almost failed when I saw
it, and I trembled so violently I collapsed right there in the
kitchen and had to be assisted by Catarina, who being a silly
fearful thing, believed I was beginning my pains. Fear has
become my shadow. For I do not know what I will do. I cannot
face losing Berto, either to death, or to his indifference. But
do I wish to lose my soul to regain him? Alas! I must be the
most unhappy woman alive!
If
Mona Elissa was a disagreeable old scold before, she is now an
insufferable tyrant. Daily she rages at all of us— and lately
I’ve become the favorite target of her fury. Yesterday when I
nodded over my spindle, she shrieked at me that I should not be
sitting about idle, that a “strapping great girl like me” ought
to be doing all the hardest work in the house, instead of none
at all. And it especially annoys her that I have become so large
and clumsy that I need help getting up from my knees in chapel.
“Putting on airs, as though noble and delicate blood flows
through your veins, when you and I both know your mother worked
in the fields through all her pregnancies. You are nothing but a
concubine who got herself dismissed for getting pregnant.
Idleness is not for such as you!” And though Ser Achille pays
the full “extraordinary” board for me, and the Signora Consolini
would be angry to hear of it, Mona Elissa persists in trying to
put me to work with the residents too poor to pay maintenance.
But it’s obvious she hates the Signora Consolini— and since the
Signora Messina’s escape has loudly proclaimed that the
Congregation put her in charge, that members’ wives have no
authority in the house, and that many of them are no better than
they should be.
Other
examples of her officiousness: last week when Anna and Angela
quarreled over whose turn it was to clean out the chamber pots
in the dormitory, and not only screamed invectives at one
another but began hair-pulling and other sorts of disorderly
behavior typical of whores, Mona Elissa went and fetched the
cudgel the Congregation gave to the new portress so as to
prevent any further escapes, and beat both women about the
shoulders and haunches, in a rage at their creating disorder in
this house, which she called “honest.”
And then
today she came in here to inspect my room, to see that it was
“in order.” When she saw the one book that I own, a gift from
Don Tomaso, she demanded to know what it was. When I told her it
was Il Legendario de Santi, she was suspicious, as though
she thought I might be lying to her, and opened it at random and
ordered me to read from it. The page she opened to was a
description of the martyrdom of Saint Perpetua. Talk about fury!
That one, it turns out, was enraged that a book should praise
that saint, who Mona Elissa said was a shameful example to all
decent women, for having deserted her husband and child and
disobeyed her parents for the glory of martyrdom, because she
was so full of herself. Clearly Mona Elissa can have no respect
for any of the
women
saints, since no woman, other than Mary, was ever sainted for
bearing children and being a good wife and daughter!
And then
she saw this little book, and seeing that it had script in it
asked me what it was. I said that it was a book Don Tomaso had
given me for making observations on my devotional progress.
(That is what such little notebooks are usually used for, and
since Mona Elissa cannot read, I did not fear my lie being
exposed.) Mona Elissa snorted, and said that it was a bad thing,
making women too full of their own importance, there being so
many women these days writing at their confessors’ request, and
taking their souls so seriously, which had previously not been
necessary, when simply going to Mass and confession and saying
one’s prayers sufficed.
Soon Mona
Gentile will come, and I will have to give her my decision. Time
is running out— both for Berto, and for me, since my labor will
begin any day now. I fear it is not a good thing to send my
spirit out from my body when the baby is so active and lively
within me. And yet, before I can make my decision, I must speak
with Berto’s spirit. I must know why he has spurned me. Perhaps
it is because his father has forbidden him, or his mother has
made him promise to break his word to me.
I wish for
a sign, to tell me what I must do. No method of divination I
have tried yet has given me one. I pray that this night will
show me the way.
I
would not have believed it was possible to be more unhappy than
I have been these past months that I have been living in this
house. Nor would I ever have believed it possible that the
spirit of vengeance and outrage, such as that motivates men to
kill their own wives and other men when their honor is
threatened, could move me. And yet both these things have come
to pass. Oh miserable girl, who thinks now of the Devil, lurking
in the hearth, eager to become her lord, though he is such a
low, mean creature, who must skulk in out of the way places,
such a miserable power who has never had even one altar raised
to him, much less a church. . .
The pain
in my breast is a coldness, that makes all of my body ache with
the most forsaken emptiness. And this though my breasts and womb
are full past belief!
I parted
my spirit from my body last night and flew to the Via Asse to
see Berto. An old woman sat at his bedside,
continually replacing wet cloths on his head which, his head
whipping constantly about, were again and again dislodged. His
breathing was harsh and difficult, full of hoarse cries and
whimpers such as I have never heard. His face was pale and
wasted, and his eyes, which were open, stared wildly about,
without apparently seeing anything. My heart was wrung with pity
and remorse for what I had brought on him.
I almost
left his bedside then, determined to free him from the power of
my hammer. But I could not refrain from speaking to his spirit,
certain, as I was, that it would be the last time we met, face
to face. So I summoned his spirit, and bidding it speak
truthfully— which it could not help but do, since it was obeying
my summons— I demanded of him whether any trace of love for me
remained in his heart.
The spirit
laughed raucously and shrilly, as though untouched by the
weakness of the body it inhabits. “Love!” it scoffed. “I set out
to give you the trick, and I succeeded. I even made a wager with
Rico, that I would. I possessed you for months— and now will
even get a child from you! What a fool you were, thinking you
could snare the son of a high magistrate with your body,
thinking that the man whose mother is the daughter of a long
line of noted bankers would throw his family’s magnificent honor
away on you, you with generations of mud under your fingernails,
your father and his father before him bred like oxen for the
fields. You! You are nothing! Nothing!”
(Sei
niente! Niente!)
Though my
body lay some distance away, it was as though Berto had plunged
a knife into my heart. But even more than the pain, I burned
with a sudden frigid anger, like a piece of smoking ice within
my belly, for never even in my darkest moments had I believed
Ser Achille, or the truth of the terrible dream, that my beloved
had deliberately set out to give me the trick. Nothing, he
called me. And the word reverberated in me, and it seemed to me
that I was indeed nothing, a hollow being, whose spirit would
blow away now that her heart had been stolen from her.
I do not
know what happened then. A kind of red mist obscures my memory,
I only remember later, lying in my bed, plotting Berto’s
destruction, plotting his father’s destruction, plotting even
the destruction of his mother’s so-magnificent kinsmen. The
Devil could be summoned, he was nearby. This thought rang
through my mind, like a bell that will not be silenced. Like a
bell tolling a death. Like the bell of doom.
I dozed a
little. Later, during lauds, I thought about the consequences of
doing such great business with the Devil. In that little chapel,
our Lord Jesus looks pathetic hanging on his cross. And so as I
knelt, facing the crucifix, the words of Antonio, the journeyman
of the baker in the Via Sarogozza, came to me, arguing that
Jesus was too powerless to have been a real lord, or he would
not have been crucified, but was just the illegitimate son of a
cuckolded carpenter, and that there is no hell, for there is no
heaven, because there is only death, and then nothing. And yet—
I kept thinking, in argument with myself— the Devil is even less
impressive, and commands no respect at all, anywhere. What truly
powerful lord lurks about, waiting for even the meanest of
servants to summons him, to do business?
The
initial fierceness of my rage has cooled, leaving me doubtful
that I want to exchange my soul for vengeance. Still, what joy
it would bring me to triumph over Berto, to command his every
obedience, even if it meant incurring his eternal hatred! I was
willing to do anything to please him— and I did— but that for
love, for which he now scorns me, as though love were worthless.
Per
dio. I wish Mona
Gentile had come today. I am tired, and sick, of the tolling of
that bell in my head. I could die in childbed tonight, or
tomorrow, or the next day. And if I pledge my soul to the devil,
I could be in hell before I even saw my vengeance carried out.
By
the blessed tears of Jesus, this book of mine is a near ruin. A
great storm came in the night and because I had left the
shutters open on account of the terrible close heat, the rain
poured into the room, soaking my little book, as well as my
Legendario de Santi. The printed book is not nearly as
soaked, because the leather of its covers protected it; and
though some of its pages are damp, and far more costly than the
cheap paper of my little book, they will dry unscathed. My
little book, though, is a disgrace. The soot I have been using
for ink smeared over the pages horribly, blurring my already
ugly hand. Even as I write now with such difficulty because of
the dampness of the paper, I see my writing as Ser Achille
himself would see it: ugly, misshapen, a blur of soot marring
what was once good (if cheap) clean paper.
It strikes
me, like a sign: if writing is the mirror of the soul, then mine
is misshapen and deformed, a veritable blot on Creation.
Love—
yes, today, it is on my mind. I was reminded of the passage I
learned by heart, read to us by the Signora Messina. To think of
it redoubles my pain. We made a child, Berto and I, a child he
will own. And yet— what of love? The only love was mine, and
that was a delusion, conceived, birthed, and nursed by him.
And still—
I feel in my heart, which is otherwise a cold hollow thing, the
beauty of the love there described. I am nothing, my love simply
derisory, according to Berto. Perhaps. But perhaps, too, it is
simply that Berto’s soul is too small, or I wholly unworthy of
inspiring love in anyone. Is my soul truly so deformed as this
little book now tells me? Is it as good as given to the Devil,
whatever I decide? What is the meaning of the sign that this
little book has given me? What does it mean that even as I
scrawl on these damp pages, the writing blurs into stains and
lumps of soot?
And
now I write one last time in this book, to make it complete,
before burning it in the fire, to make pure what has been vile
and ugly.
When Mona
Gentile came to me today I related to her all that Berto’s
spirit had said to me, and told her how I had thrown the bird’s
heart into the kitchen fire and released Berto from the hammer.
Mona Gentile then embraced me as tenderly as I have ever known
her to do and kissed my cheeks many times, saying that she was
gratified, and happy at my decision. Her eyes became bright, and
shone with emotion, and even filled with tears of wonderful
sincerity. I was surprised, because she had never said that
releasing Berto would please her, and asked her why she hadn’t.
“There are some lessons that cannot be taught, but only learned
through experience,” she said. “Many are the women who become so
possessed by the desire to be desired, that they lose the whole
world in their effort to achieve it. There is nothing to be done
for those so possessed. Nothing else can matter to them, and
indeed the world is lost to them. You have learned now for
yourself that sometimes our spells to bind have the effect of
binding us, who cast them, just as closely and relentlessly as
those we seek to bind. Magic is strong and powerful. And now we
know that you are strong enough and powerful enough to become a
master of it.”
And though
my heart did not cease to be bitterly grieved and bruised, yet
Mona Gentile’s rejoicing, and her teaching me a lesson I had not
known I was learning, filled up the emptiness that Berto’s
spirit had hollowed out when he said that I was nothing.
I am ready
to become a healer, Mona Gentile says. And there is nothing more
powerful that any woman can be, except for queens and consorts
of dukes and princes. That is, I know, true. Only what of love,
I wonder? What of the great thing called love which has
civilized man?
When I
asked Mona Gentile, she smiled, and patted my hand, and said
“Child, this is not a question for a girl of seventeen years to
ask. Be patient. And perhaps, when you are twice your years, you
will be able to tell me.”
And so
goodbye, little book, goodbye. Our time together is over.
