He followed the man down the country path, until the path merged into a larger graveled road. At the intersection the man stopped and lit a cigarette. Looking for an opportunity to start a conversation, Ivano caught up with him and said, “Hello.”
The man returned his greeting. After introducing himself, Ivano waited to see in which direction the man was headed then pretended to be going the same way, entertaining a casual conversation about the weather, the crops, the new car models, and the soccer games. As they walked, Ivano found out that the man’s name was Silvio Motta, that he was the nuns’ gardener, and that he had been born only a few kilometers away. At some point, Silvio asked Ivano what he did for a living.
“I’m field hand in a farm one kilometer down the road,” Ivano lied. “It’s hard work, but I don’t mind.”
Silvio nodded, and the two men continued to walk and make conversation until the road came to a group of buildings built in the style of farmhouses. Noticing a sign that read
Osteria del Gallo Nero
(Black Rooster Tavern), Ivano invited Silvio to have a glass of wine. Silvio accepted.
The tavern was small, with only three dusty tables and a counter. Glasses in hand, four men were chitchatting and smoking. A fifth man, the owner, stood behind the counter uncorking bottles of wine. Silvio waved at him, and he waved back. Ivano and Silvio sat at a free table, and Silvio hung his jacket over the back of his chair. They spent an hour drinking and talking about their lives. The gardener spoke about his youth spent farming in his father’s fields and his gardening job at the convent, and Ivano told Silvio he had been born in Genoa to a family of bakers and had moved north, to Mirabello, after his parents’ death to be with an old aunt who needed assistance with an illness that had left her bedridden for years. The aunt had recently died, he said, and he was now living on his own and in the process of reorganizing his life. Silvio was impressed with the young man’s altruism and dedication.
After the fourth round of red wine, Ivano asked Silvio about the nuns, in particular how they spent their time in that isolated, solitary place.
Silvio shrugged. “I’ve been the nuns’ gardener for fifteen years,” he said, “and never caught a glimpse of any of them. I never even set foot inside the building where they live. As for how they spend their time, only God knows, because, to the best of my knowledge, no layman, or laywoman for that matter, has ever been admitted into their home.”
Ivano refilled Silvio’s glass for the fifth time. “What else do you know?” he asked. “The life of confinement of these nuns intrigues me.”
“All I know is that the nuns leave their quarters early in the morning, at six, to gather in a chapel at the very back of their garden where they sing and pray. On Sundays a priest comes to officiate Mass.” He chuckled. “He must be their treat.”
Ivano chuckled along.
Silvio brought a finger to his temple. “You could go batty in that place, all alone without talking. That’s what happened to my predecessor. He was brought to the asylum because he talked to himself incessantly, day and night.”
Ivano noticed Silvio’s speech becoming slurred. He said, “We should go home. I’m starting to feel tired.”
The two men stood up, and Silvio made an attempt to put on his jacket. He swayed a couple of times; his hands couldn’t find the right holes.
“Let me help you,” Ivano said, taking the jacket and holding it in position.
As Silvio eased his arms into the sleeves, Ivano let go of the jacket and dipped a hand into the left pocket, grabbing the key. He winced as his fingers made contact the cold iron. He extracted the key in slow motion, careful not to touch the pocket lining, all the while telling Silvio how good the local wine was. In his dizziness, Silvio never noticed. He thanked Ivano for his help, and the two men walked out of the tavern.
“It was very nice meeting you,” Silvio said, his words more and more slurred by the alcohol and the weariness that comes at the end of a working day.
“Are you sure you can get home safe?” Ivano inquired, slightly worried about Silvio’s state.
“No problem,” Silvio reassured him. “My home is only one minute away.”
Back in Mirabello, Ivano returned to his raggedy bed inside the construction site and immediately took out of his pocket the stolen convent key. “Thank you, Silvio,” he said aloud, resolving to return the loot before leaving Mirabello. Staring at the rusty, iron instrument, Ivano realized the magnitude of what lay ahead of him. He had a way into the convent now, but once inside what should he do to find Caterina? And what if Caterina wasn’t there? What if Viola had overheard the wrong information? He felt exhausted—from the trip, the months with no sleep, and the emotion of being close to Caterina. He fidgeted with the key, pacing the building back and forth for hours. At three in the morning, after much thinking and brooding, he finally came up with a plan.
At four AM he gathered a few tools—two screwdrivers, a pick, and a foot-long piece of wire—and, undaunted by the darkness and the hostile weather, took on the country paths. The way to the convent was by then engraved in his mind. He could hardly see his feet the visibility was so poor, but made no mistakes. He took all the right turns at the right time, arriving at the convent shortly before five. The fog was thick, and the usual drizzle was falling on him without respite. In the darkness, he slid the skeleton key in the keyhole and turned it three times. He smiled as the gate opened with a squeak. Like a ghost, he tiptoed on the gravel towards the oak and pine grove, crossing it and continuing along the path until he was in the clear again and the path curved to the right. In the twilight, Ivano finally saw buildings: the main house with the golden inscription, a couple of sheds next to a manicured garden, and at the back of the garden a small structure topped by a dome. Based on Silvio’s description, it had to be the chapel. He approached it, furtively looking about, hoping the nuns would be and remain fast asleep.
The chapel door was made of thick wood decorated with worn incisions representing plants and flowers, the work of an artist from a time gone by. A chain ran across it, with a rusty padlock in the middle. That was a lock Ivano knew how to pick. Calmly, he took the wire from his pocket, bent its tip, and pushed it in. He turned and shifted the wire until, a few seconds later, he heard a click and the padlock opened, letting the chain slide to the ground. Chain-free, the door opened docilely under the pressure of his fingers. Thick odors of incense and burnt candles welcomed him inside. He stood still a moment, overwhelmed by the deep silence. The chapel was small but tastefully decorated with tall stained-glass windows and paintings of saints and angels. It had one nave in the center, bordered by rows of wooden benches. Four gas lamps burned on the side walls, two on each side. Calmly, Ivano walked along the nave, the sound of his steps echoing around him. There was an altar at the end of the nave, and he climbed four steps to reach it. It was smaller than the altars he had seen in the churches of Genoa and covered from top to bottom with a white, thick, gold-embroidered drape. To the side of the altar was a door. Past it, Ivano found a wood-paneled room, where religious vestments hung in an open closet. Next to the closet, Ivano noticed a door. It was lower than regular doors and wider. An iron bar was set across it, and when Ivano lifted it, the door opened to the outside. He bent forward to pass. Outside, he followed the chapel’s external walls all the way to the front door. The walk revealed nothing of interest to Ivano, other than for the fact that he now had way to lock the front door with chain and padlock and reenter the chapel from the low door. No one would suspect someone was inside. Moments later, he was back in the wood-paneled room and by the altar. He remembered what Silvio had told him: a priest came to celebrate Mass on Sundays, whereas during the week the nuns prayed in the chapel on their own. He figured the altar wouldn’t be used that day, a Tuesday, and when he noticed a crawl space beneath said altar concealed by the drape, he thought it a good place to hide. So he lifted the drape, squatted, and sat in the crawl space. He took a moment to examine his improvised shelter. The drape had a seam running vertically down the middle. He pulled on its edges with both hands until the stitching came loose. As he pulled harder, the stitching broke, forming a hole the size of a coin. When he put his eye to the hole, he saw a clear view of the nave, the benches, and the entrance door. Pleased, he pulled back and waited, hoping his conjecture that Caterina would be coming to the chapel with the nuns would prove right.
At 6 o’clock sharp, he heard sounds. Through the hole, he saw the chapel door opening and a veiled nun making her appearance. Shortly, the nun began to move forward, along the nave, and behind her, in an orderly line, came her sisters, also veiled and dressed in long black robes. By the altar steps, the first nun kneeled, signed herself, and moved aside. One by one, the rest of the nuns did the same and took their seats on the benches, on both sides. From the hole in the drape, Ivano followed their movements like a hawk. When all the nuns were in their seats, he began to count. He counted five nuns in the first row then his eyes moved on to the row behind it. He hadn’t counted halfway through the second row when suddenly and in unison, as if a signal had been given to them from above, all the nuns kneeled and lifted their veils. Breathless, Ivano watched their transformation. While the nuns, led by one of their own, began reciting litanies and chanting in Latin, he let his gaze wander back and forth along the filled benches in search of the face he wanted to see. Some of the faces, those in the far back, were not clearly visible in the dimness of the gaslights, but Ivano kept scanning the benches slowly, row by row, until he saw, in the third row, all the way to the right, the soft, girlish features of Caterina. His heart jumped. It was true that Caterina was alive! She had been shipped to the convent and kept there. Then the Berillis had told everyone that she had died. He bit his lips, squeezed his fists tight. She was a prisoner, he knew, because however hard he tried, he couldn’t imagine Caterina making such a choice. Besides, had she freely chosen to stay at the convent, he reasoned, why would her family have told everyone that she had died? He swallowed, conscious of the movements of his tongue and throat. His heartbeat was so fast he thought everyone in the chapel could hear it. To calm down, he concentrated on the patterns of the embroidered drape. He moved his eyes along the golden thread, which turned and twirled to form the shape of two leaves and then departed from the leaves’ stems in a curved line to give life to the shape of a lily. He scanned the contour of the lily then shifted his gaze to the leaves and from the leaves back to the lily. Stiff like a mannequin, he continued to shift his gaze back and forth between the lily and the leaves, occasionally bringing his eye to the hole to look at Caterina. He thought of the time past—the funeral, the night in jail, the time spent with the underworld, and the months spent playing the mandolin on Piazza della Nunziata. He tried to imagine how his life would have been with Caterina at his side, and his heart ached at the thought of all the wasted time. She was alive though, and that was all that mattered. He counted: one, two, three. On three, he leaped out of the altar shouting, “Caterina!”
The nuns’ chant faded as a few of them murmured and others screamed. They all covered their faces in a hurry as Ivano ran down the altar steps towards the bench where Caterina was seated. He stretched his arm towards her. “Let’s go,” he shouted. “Haven’t you had enough of this place?”
The moment Ivano had jumped out of the altar, Caterina had thought her head was playing tricks on her as usual. But when Ivano called out her name and ran towards her she realized it was no phantom she was seeing. He was real. Her eyes widened and a shriek came out of her mouth.
“Let’s go!” Ivano repeated, grabbing her by the arm.
At the contact with him, she stood up. With no understanding of what her body was doing, she let Ivano pull her from the bench. Together, they raced down the nave and out the door. They ran along the gardens, to the grove, and from there to the convent gate. When Ivano pulled the key from his pocket and opened the gate, Caterina sprung to the other side and let out a scream so loud Ivano thought her throat might explode. Then they ran again, faster, faster, stopping only when the first houses of Mirabello were in sight.
Panting, in the middle of a meadow, Caterina and Ivano embraced each other tightly, their emotion so strong they couldn’t speak.
“You have no idea,” Ivano murmured several minutes later, “what happened in Genoa after the day your father barged in on us in the oven room.”
“You have no idea what I went through in that horrible convent,” Caterina said, her voice quivering. “I thought I was going to be there for the rest of my life.” She still wore the black prayer veil over her hair, fastened by strings around her neck. She yanked it from her head and threw it on the ground.
Ivano picked it up. “We’ll keep it,” he said then finished the sentence with a voice so faint Caterina couldn’t hear him. “In case someone shouldn’t believe where I found you.”
That’s when Caterina noticed how much Ivano had changed. He was much thinner than she remembered: the skin on the back of his hands was marked by brown spots, and the expression on his face was darker and deeper, like the expression of a much older man. Ivano noticed changes in her as well. Her skin, perfectly smooth in the past, was blemished by fine wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. Her green eyes didn’t spark like they used to, and her hair, always perfectly groomed and shiny, was now a duller blonde and in disarray. Those tired features, he thought, were the mirror of a very deep pain. Suddenly Caterina’s shoulders twitched, and she broke into sobs. He held her in his arms for a long time.
When her sobs subsided, Caterina said, “What do we do now? Do you think we are in danger? Do you think the nuns are looking for us?”
Ivano shrugged. “Even if the nuns found us here, what could they do?” He paused. “There are other dangers, much bigger than a few religious hermits. I need to tell you things, things you won’t like. You need to know everything before we can make a decision about our lives.”