Two weeks’ confinement and fasting. It is not such a torment. In fact she welcomes it. In the time since she opened her eyes on the cell full of nuns, she has relished the solitude. How can she bear to face people again? As for the fasting, well, her hunger is so familiar to her now that even when she does feel the need to eat, she feels a greater sense of triumph when she overcomes it. Her gut has been full of undigested rage and panic for so long that to be without anything inside her seems a marvel in itself.
Whether it comes from the quiet or the exhaustion, she prays more: simple prayers held inside simple phrases. I am sorry. Help me. Forgive me. Childish, almost. Each time she sleeps she wakes to the sight of the crucifix on the wall, but often when she looks at it she sees instead the figure of the man in the marshland, walking toward her with the sun as a radiating halo behind him. The moment when he first came she had thought it might have been Jacopo, because his hair also fell curling around his shoulders and he, too, walked with a long stride. But she knows now that it was not Jacopo but Christ Himself and that He came to her through Suora Magdalena. Why and how this happened she does not know. She is certainly not deserving. Yet, oh—He brought her such comfort then! And now. For He also is generous, filled with song and no malice.
As for the future, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow …well, she does not think of that. How could she?
“SERAFINA.”
She knows Zuana is in the room. She heard her come in and registered the noise of something being placed on the table. But once she opens her eyes she will have to speak to her, and of all people she is the one who will surely make it all begin again. Nevertheless …
“Serafina.”
She turns her head and blinks.
Zuana is sitting on a small chair close to the bed. Next to her is a wooden plate with bread and cheese and a bowl of hot soup. She had forgotten how familiar this face is: the broad open forehead with its furrowed lines of thought and those clean clear eyes, smiling now along with the mouth. No malice here, either. Despite everything, she is pleased to see her.
“Praise be to God for your recovery. Do you still have pain in your stomach?”
“No.”
“Any nausea?” She leans over and takes the girl’s pulse, red-stained fingers on the thin pale wrist.
The smell of the cooked food brings a rush of saliva into Serafina’s mouth, but she swallows it down again. Only when I imagine eating, she thinks. “No.”
“What about dreams? Are you having bad dreams?”
“No.” She sees the man in the mist striding toward her. “No, not anymore.”
“Good. Here, I have brought you some cheese and fresh soup and bread.”
“I am not hungry.”
“Still, you should eat.”
“I can’t.” She shakes her head. “I am given penance.”
“Penance?”
“Father Romero. He heard my confession. My penance is confinement and bread and water for two weeks.”
A frown moves across Zuana’s face. “Did no one tell him you had been ill?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you sit up?”
She attempts to pull herself up, but it is an effort.
Zuana goes to help, and as her hands touch her, for an instant Serafina is pulled back into the maelstrom of that night— hanging suspended in strong arms as her bowels open and her stomach screams. Such intimacy makes her embarrassed now, almost ashamed. She moves away, pulling the blanket around her.
“I am sorry”—she keeps her eyes on the blanket—“if what I did got you into trouble.”
Zuana shakes her head. “There is nothing to be sorry for. You have confessed your sins. And you are forgiven.”
“I told him everything,” she says, looking straight at her now, the words thrown down like a gauntlet. “All of it.”
“I am glad,” Zuana says gently.
“Do you think it a fair penance?”
“I can’t say. Though it is not healthy to starve yourself after such violent purging.”
“It doesn’t matter, I am not hungry,” she says again. Then: “Suora Magdalena has not eaten for years.”
“That is not true. She just eats exceedingly little, so that over the years her body has grown used to it. I think she is not someone to emulate in this regard. Not at this moment.”
“That is not what Suora Umiliana says.”
I wonder what else Umiliana says, Zuana thinks to herself, though no doubt some of it she can guess. “Who else has visited you?”
“Suora Federica came. She brought me a pear—look, here.” She pulls it out from under her pillow, the green marzipan coated in particles of dust. “I don’t want it. You take it.”
Zuana shakes her head. “Keep it until the end of your penance. It will be something to look forward to.”
To look forward. Such a simple idea, like waiting for the sun to rise again in the morning. It is a grave sin for any novice to try to escape the convent and an equally grave one to aid or abet her. Serafina has confessed and been forgiven. Zuana should be looking to her own soul now. There is nothing more she can do for the girl. Still …
