She is flooded with relief, the utter joy of feeling nothing. Serenity like a flat surface of water: no ripple, no wind, nothing, just the wonder of being still. How is it possible for it to have gone? For there to have been so much of it and now none at all? How does that happen? How much care does it take? What kind of miracle?
“Dominussalvedeigratias.”
The singing is high and thin. She moves her eyes up from the still surface of the water to see a bank of reeds moving in the wind. And there is light now, she thinks. Surely it must be the sun, because she can feel warmth on her skin. In the distance there is a heat haze across the world, and inside it something— a figure? — walking toward her.
“See? Oh, yes, can you see Him, Serafina? Oh, He cares so much. He sent me to wake you.”
It is a strange voice, childish except for the cracks of age in it. She knows it immediately, feels it inside as a familiar hollowness. She concentrates on the image ahead of her. The air is so warm. No wonder everything shimmers so. Within the shimmer a figure forms, tall flowing hair, then seems to unform again, as if stumbling, and is engulfed in haze again.
“See how His poor hands and feet bleed. But He smiles for you. He has been waiting for you. He is come to welcome you back.”
Back. She feels a sudden terrible ache inside her, as if after her innards they have scooped out her womb. But she keeps on looking and He is closer now. Yes, yes, she sees Him: that beautiful broad forehead pierced by a line of fat little wounds, the eyes clear, filled with so much understanding. He cares. He would not leave. He loves me.
“If you open your eyes He will be there.”
She lets out a slight cry. She knows she must wake now. Knows that is what He wants her to do.
She opens her eyes. It is gray in the cell. No shimmer or light here. The smell is foul and stale. On the wall Christ hangs forlornly off the cross. Next to her the shriveled figure of Magdalena, her face like a pickled walnut, is rocking and laughing with girlish delight.
“Serafina?” And now Suora Zuana is on the floor next to her, her face close to hers, tired but smiling, smiling like the sun. “Oh, welcome, welcome.”
Beyond, in the doorway, she sees Suora Umiliana, with Eugenia, Perseveranza, Apollonia, Felicità, and others peering in around her.
“Sweet Jesus! She is alive! Suora Magdalena has brought her back to us.”
The novice mistress’s happiness is so complete, so infectious, that a few of the nuns behind her start to laugh, too.
The room fills up as she tries to move, but of course her bones are weak and she cannot raise herself off the bed.
The old woman puts out her hand. “See?” she says, with a toothless grin. “See? I said He would come.”
She opens her mouth a little, moving her tongue around her blistered lips. No, she did not escape, did not find a way to get free after all. She looks at Zuana, then out across the room. They are all here, this family with whom she must now live until she dies, until the white hairs grow on her chin and her skin shrivels up like old leather, each and every drop of juice squeezed out of her.
Except she is not dead yet.
“I saw Him,” she says, so softly that the voice barely reaches those inside the room. “Yes, I do think I saw Him.”
“Oh, but it is a miracle.” In contrast, Suora Umiliana’s voice carries far out into the courtyard beyond.
IN THEIR RESPECTIVE cells, Zuana and Serafina sleep their way through the first days of Lent. The cleansing of the city continues around them. It rains so much that the gutters and the gargoyle mouths cannot keep up with the flow, and the cloisters run with filthy streams. The water seeps under the doors of the cells, and the hems of the sisters’ habits grow sodden as they walk. Even the convent cats retreat indoors, curling themselves inside the warm wood of the choir stalls, to be shooed away at the beginning of every office.
The Murano glass goblets and the ceramic plates are packed back into their dowry chests; the dresses, boots, and wigs are returned to their owners; and the sounds of the stage being dismantled are nowhere near as thrilling as those of its construction. In the kitchens the roasting and the baking pans are shelved, and the sisters contemplate their first fasts, encouraged, no doubt, by the prevailing aromas of boiling vegetables and watery soups.
It is a time for quiet contemplation and considered abstinence. Yet no one is downhearted. Far from it. While Lent usually brings a sense of anticlimax, this year it has been replaced by a bubbling excitement. In the aftermath of the revelation in the novice’s cell, something is happening in the convent. Everyone, novices as well as sisters, is praying more (what else is there to do?), and there is a building anticipation toward the coming chapter meeting.
