Outside the door, she uses the taper she has brought to light the candle concealed in her robe. As she enters, its glow illuminates the room enough to show that the bed is empty. For a second she feels panic, remembering Serafina’s last absence, but then, soon enough, she sees her. She is sitting on the floor with her back to the wall, in the same place where Zuana had found her on that first night. Only now there is no rebellion, no fury, no noise at all, just a small figure swamped by her robe, hunched over, arms wrapped tightly round her knees, head bowed, rocking slightly to and fro.
Zuana crouches beside her. If the girl is aware of her, she does nothing to show it. Zuana’s sin of disobedience is already sealed by her presence there. Now, in the middle of the Great Silence, she must compound it further with speech. “Benedicta.” She says the word gently under her breath, though she knows there can be no absolution of a reply. This time the words Deo gratias remain unsaid. So be it.
She moves the candle closer. “You sleep when you should be awake and you are awake when you should be sleeping.”
The huddled figure remains silent, still no sign that she has heard or even noticed her.
“Come, let me put you to bed.”
“I am praying,” she says at last, her voice dull and flat.
“You are not on your knees.”
“If one is humble enough, He hears you wherever you are.”
“What have you eaten today?” Under the bed the bundle of bread sits untouched. “Serafina, look at me. What have you eaten?”
The girl lifts her head briefly: close to, the planes of her face are sharp angles, her eyes black in deeply scooped sockets, her wrists on her knees as thin as kindling wood. How much body is left inside the sack of clothes? How long before her skin starts bruising purple from lack of flesh? Zuana feels shock like a cold hand squeezing at her throat. Could Umiliana be so unaware of the damage that her search for God is causing?
“Leave me alone,” she says dully.
“No, I will not leave you alone. Your penance is over. You are ill. You need to eat.”
“I am fasting still.”
“No. You are starving.”
“Ha! What do you know about it?”
“I know that without food a person dies.”
The girl shakes her head. “You don’t know what it feels like. How can you? You have never seen Him.”
“No, you are right, I haven’t.”
“Well, I have! I have seen Him.” And for the first time there is a spark of something. She jerks up her head. “And I will again.” Then, as if the move has taken too much energy, she slumps back against the wall. “Suora Umiliana says He will come if I make myself pure for Him.”
“And what about the rest of the convent? Do we not have a place in your search for purity? What about using your voice to praise God? Suora Benedicta waits every day for you. Or your work in the dispensary. I—we, the sick, need your help.”
“Pure voices don’t need an audience.” She shakes her head fiercely. “And you care only for bodies, not souls.”
“Who am I speaking to now, Serafina or Umiliana?” Zuana is surprised by the anger in her own voice.
She shrugs. “In a good convent there will be no need of medicines, for God will take care of us.”
“Oh! Is that how you want to live? Or maybe it is how you want to die.”
“Ah …leave me alone.” She brings her hands up to her head as if to ward off the attack of Zuana’s words.
“No. I won’t. Where are you, Serafina? Where did all that fury and defiance go?”
“I told you,” she says, her voice dead and sullen again. “I don’t feel anything.”
“I don’t believe that is true. I think you are trying not to feel anything, because it hurts so much. I think that is why you have stopped eating. But it will not help. No one can live without sustenance.”
But the girl is not listening anymore. She sits, head on her hands, rocking to and fro, staring dully into the dark. After a while she pulls herself up, slowly, wobbly almost, like a newborn calf not yet steady on its feet. She moves past Zuana as if she were not there and goes to the bed, where she lies down with her face to the wall, curling herself up and pulling the blanket over her.
The room grows quiet. Outside, the convent sleeps. And, beyond it, the city, too.
“No one can live without sustenance,” Zuana says again.
She does not respond or move a muscle. Yet she is not sleeping. Of that Zuana is sure.
“So I have brought you some.”
She takes the letter out from under her robe and unfolds it.
“My dearest Isabetta,
“If this letter reaches your hands, I would understand if you did not want to read it. Yet please, for the sake of what once was between us, continue.”
His handwriting is dense and elaborate, as if he has put his heart into every pen stroke, and in the candlelight the words dance and move on the page. Zuana keeps her voice low, for fear it might penetrate beyond the walls of the cell. Occasionally she stumbles over a phrase and has to stop and begin again. But none of this matters. Not once the first words have been uttered.
