Kay MacCauley

The convent of San Barnabo Redentore was situated on the next street to the San Barnabo Redentore Shelter For Foundlings. For six days of the week, the nuns from the convent devoted their services to the Shelter and other institutions in this, the district of Castello, where the administrator, Sebastiano Finetti, had decreed that the presence of God should be felt. Both in the convent and in her place of work, Sister Clara lived surrounded by others yet in complete loneliness, as she had done since entering the order fifteen years before.

Now, as she crossed the footbridge leading to the convent, church bells all over Venice began to chime the hour, sounding reminders from every direction of who she was and of the vows she had taken.

She stopped and looked up at the sky. With shaking fingers, she pulled back the pleat of her habit and looked at the infant. His eyes were closed. He was asleep.

She stared at him. How odd it was that he seemed to look quite different now. Even the shape of his eyes, which before had been those of her own beloved, seemed changed. Was it that, in the dim light of the Shelter, her own eyes had not seen clearly?

There, when she had picked him up, the urge to take him, the knowledge that she could and should, had driven out all other thoughts. When she looked into his eyes she was overcome, as before, by that same irresistible outpouring of love. For a moment, she had even sensed herself back in that room, on the bed, with the sheets unwashed, dark and stiff from the woman who had lain there before her. And she remembered the bucket in the corner, covered with a cloth.

And while she was still bleeding from his birth, they had pulled him from her arms and given him to those who waited. She had seen them watching from the doorway, impatient for her to be done. They had come from their boat to the house, to the door there, so that they could collect more speedily that for which they had paid.

But now, on the bridge, as she looked down at the infant sleeping in her arms and tried to summon back that other face and that intensity of love, she found that she could not. Then he stirred and stretched, opening his eyes, and as they met hers, suddenly she felt it again. Of course it was him. His weight in her arms repaired what before had been broken.

Licking her finger, she drew the shape of a cross on his forehead. 'Marin,' she whispered. 'My son.'

On entering the convent gates, she pressed him to her so tightly that he could scarcely breathe. Yet this sensation he found intensely pleasurable. Her skin was rough, none too clean and smelled vaguely of mouldering apples and curdled milk, but to him it was the most beautiful scent imaginable.

Hurrying along the path through the courtyard with her child clutched to her bosom, it seemed to Sister Clara that the stones were slippery underfoot.

Over the archway at the entrance to the main hallway hung a portrait of San Barnabo Redentore. His face was drawn, his cheeks were hollow and his eyes, sunken far back into the recesses beneath his dark and heavy brows, stared down at those who passed there. Portrayed at the age of twenty-one, he already had the face of a man bowed and wearied, worn out from the strain of redeeming those who wanted to repent and the greater effort of hauling from the mire those who would rather have remained there.

Inside the hallway was nailed a small plaque telling the history of his service, and beside this another picture portraying the events at the time of his death. Blurred strokes of the artist's brush showed a procession and a throng of people pressing forward to touch him.

Both artists had dated their work. The second had been painted the year after the first.

Sister Clara lowered her head as she passed and moved quickly through the hall to the cells.

Speech, other than at mealtimes, was not permitted, and the only sound to be heard in the corridors was the subdued shuffle of softly-shod feet on the stones - stones of porphyry, stolen by Crusaders from Cairo, now worn smooth by the passage of penitents and the weight of the sins that had brought them there.

When she reached her cell, Sister Clara tucked Marin into the large basket of sheets that it was her duty to stitch and darn, and placed the lid in a position that allowed him air to breathe. Entry into another nun's cell was forbidden. He would be safe there, as long as he did not cry.

'Now you must always be quiet, my little one. If they find you it will be the end for us.' Her lips shaped the words without a sound. And he was quiet. As the days passed, he never cried.

For the six working days of the week, Marin lay silently in the basket, from the five o'clock call to morning assembly and prayers, until late in the afternoon when Sister Clara returned, slowly slid back the lid of the basket, then in a rush snatched him up into her arms so fiercely that he was unable to draw breath.

Of course he never cried during the day. What reason did he have to cry?

Occasionally, Sisters of the convent would leave either due to a change in personal circumstances, a conception unlikely to be Immaculate, or because of an opportunity to live in some other way, outside. It was not unusual for this to happen but it was most unusual for a woman of Sister Clara's age to be successful in her request for employment.

'You are to see to the cleanliness of his house, to the cooking and to his comfort,' Sebastiano Finetti told her. 'In return for this you will receive your board and lodging, and a salary of four ducats.' He cleared his throat. 'You should also bear in mind, Sister Clara, that you are fortunate, very fortunate indeed to have been offered this position. For a woman of your ...,' he hesitated and pronounced his next word carefully, ' ...countenance, you are aware, I am sure, that the choices now open to you are not so many. Perhaps it is God's will that you are able, in this way, to look after your sister's child.'

Sister Clara looked down at her feet. She had no sister but the lie suggested a charitable nature which she knew would be commended.

And so it was arranged that Clara Sannazaro should become the housekeeper for Vittorio Matteotti.

After she had left the office, Sebastiano Finetti wiped the chair where she had sat. He pressed his face to it to make sure that it was clean. He knew why she had come to the convent, but today he had shown that, like Jesus, he could be merciful too. It pleased him to consider himself an instrument of the Divine, tuned to its pitch, strung to its will, and thus prepared to send forth a note so pure and so sweet that its sound would crumble and prise the work of the Devil out from every corner where it lodged.

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Last modified on October 19, 2005  | © Telegram 2005