Autobiography

14. The Cousin and the Uncle

In the summer of 1916 my cousin Giuseppina came to stay with us to get over a dangerous adenitis and mastoiditis. She was the—daughter (at least let us hope so) of the uncle I spoke of earlier, Mother’s brother, the one who had pushed me into boarding-school with his arrival. I had never seen her because she had always been away at school to remove her from the poisonous proximity of her mother and her aunt. She was twenty then, and I, nineteen. I loved her even before having her with me.

Mother had told me that she would not be making any new dress or hat for me that summer because she had to think of Peppina. We were not in a position to be inconvenienced by having to renew two summer wardrobes. But though my mother spoke to me with unusual sweetness to make me swallow what she deemed must be a toad for me—that is, my cousin’s arrival—I would have agreed to go naked provided I could always hear her speak that way...! Just imagine how far I went along with all her proposals. Among other things, detached as I now was from everything and inclined towards death, I was even more opposed than before to all coquetry.

And besides...! The idea of having a cousin of my own age with me, a former boarding-school student, like myself, educated by Sisters of the same Order—oh, how many things aroused my enthusiam! I proposed to love her like a sister. And I did.

She came here to Viareggio with her father. My uncle stayed for a few days and then went back to Bergamo, to the Hospital where he was the librarian, in addition to being an inpatient for life. Peppina remained. We grew quite fond of one another. In her honor, I must say that, though born of a bad egg and having continued in that atmosphere until the age of eight, she never gave me any cause for being scandalized. She was a bit thoughtless. But at twenty we are all more or less that way.

We took lovely strolls with my father, bathed, and so on. Two other little cousins were with us, both boys, aged fourteen and eight; from the Venetian region, they had come there for the baths, since the Adriatic was not very calm then.

For quite some time I had not been comforted as I was that summer. Among other things, because my cousin was, for the time being, very devout, she often went to church—St. Andrew’s, our summer parish—and I went with her. Mother did not dare to oppose her niece, whose affection she wanted to attract.

Here I must tell you something which may not really be connected with my story. But I think it is not completely unrelated.

I greatly loved our little house on Umberto I Street, where I had entered the first time at the age of just seven. And I had always felt very good there. That summer I felt uneasy. Why? Heaven knows! I couldn’t even tell you exactly what I experienced.

I never felt alone. Let me explain. Even if I was at home alone—which sometimes happened—I felt as though someone was around me, invisible but present. And, fearful as I am of what I am unfamiliar with, I was afraid. When I told her, Mother as usual scorned and reproached me. But neither her scorn nor her reproach sufficed to make me braver or keep me from always feeling that mysterious presence.

One night, August 17, 1916, when, after having had a good laugh with our little cousins, we had fallen asleep in our two small beds like two big babies, we were awakened by the tottering of a heavy platform placed in the window opening. My dog, that slept with the two of us, growled. I turned on the light, afraid that it was an earthquake. But the cable for the light was motionless. I turned it off, and with the easy repose of youth we went back to sleep.

After about half an hour three very heavy blows, as if by an open hand banging on a door, were heard at the entrance to our room. Even before turning on the light, while bathed entirely in an icy sweat, I said, “Grandma, is that you?” I don’t know why thirteen years after her death, still between sleep and waking, I thought of her.

The whole house was filled with din. Father, my cousins, and Mother came running. Father and the cousins asked only the natural question as to what that din had been. Ah, if only we had at least known! But Mother really grumbled, and I think she is still convinced that we girls were responsible for that jest.... Just think that we were trembling so that we ended up in the same bed to comfort one another.

In mid-September my little cousins left and the two of us remained with my family.

While we were busy packing to return to Florence, a telegram arrived announcing that my uncle was dying. It was September 30. My mother left with my cousin for Bergamo. I stayed with Father.

In those days when I was alone with my father I felt the invisible presence of incorporeal beings more than ever. I had a black fear—but kept silent so as not to be mocked, though good-naturedly, by Father. One night I took refuge with him because it seemed to me that along the wall—observe that the two-storey house rose above the two flanking it, and my wall was not in contact with any other house—it was as though the surface was being rubbed by hands, a sound like the one a mason makes when he strips a wall.

Mother and Peppina finally returned. My uncle had happily gotten over pneumonia.

We left for Florence and went to live in a new apartment because the other one had been damaged by an earthquake. The new house was sad, on Pippo Spano Street, closed in amidst houses, both the façade and the interior. But even from there I saw the Virgin on the door of the Jesuits’ convent and was close to this church. The winter passed in this way.

I got along well with my cousin, but skirmishes began between my mother and her. My mother, who found me guilty of a thousand thoughtless acts, had realized that her niece was guiltier than her daughter and wanted to use the same severity with her as with me. But Peppina was not Maria.... She thus produced the opposite effect. Peppina found ways to stay away from the house as much as possible. She got a job teaching practical skills—for she was very good at women’s work—at the St. Catherine Institute and at the Sunday Schools. She thereby earned a sum to set aside and remain distant from Mother. I thus lost her company for many hours each day.

Meanwhile the war continued, and restrictions began to make themselves felt. Father, Mother, and Peppina helped themselves to eggs and condensed milk, noodle soup, and pancakes fried in lard. Though possessed of a stomach that is hearty in its way (that is, still able to digest a plate of raw vegetables, but not a cup of milk, or fried food, or eggs—if I consume them today, I must avoid them for at least ten days afterwards), I began to suffer hunger. Until 1919 I never drank black coffee and thus lacked even that, with its corresponding sugar, to sustain myself. My moral sorrows and hunger together weakened me more and more.

In June 1917 my uncle, Peppina’s father, arrived unexpectedly. He had given notice at the hospital, and in such painful moments he would come to us. Mother went into a rage. But it was now done. Though remembering the whims of this uncle, I welcomed him. Provided I could have someone to love, I would have loved—even the devil. At first all went well.

In July we came to Viareggio. But I understood I could no longer undergo the baths. I felt I was dying on entering cold water—and only a year before I had had over one hundred baths...! My heart increasingly gave way. Mother reproached me for not taking the baths. I told her they harmed me. She replied as usual that I had imaginary fears. Amen!

Even more than the previous year I also felt those strange, invisible presences in the house. But, fortunately, that summer the others noticed them as well. I then plucked up courage and said I did not want to stay in that house any longer. Frightened, Mother, though not wishing to say so, considering many other things as well, decided to rent it out. While waiting for the bather who was to spend August and September there, we learned from the neighbors that for two consecutive winters the family we rented the house to so as not to leave it closed—a botany professor, with his wife and two daughters in their twenties—had practiced spiritism there.

I draw no inference. I simply state that this was the first time that solemn incompatibility between spiritism and myself and my sensitivity to certain phenomena appeared. My God, what a scare!

We returned to Florence on August 10.

Peppina, backed by her father, was now more domineering. You are well aware of the fact that similar characters never get along well. The domineering must always be faced with the docile, the proud, with the humble, and so on in order to be able to carry on without fighting. But my mother, her brother, and his daughter had the same character. Hence constant warfare. A hell...!

Meanwhile Caporetto had come, and, given the great need, Del Croix had delivered talks to exhort us women to enter the military hospitals, which had been left without—or with few—nurses; the first ones had gotten exhausted or ill, while the wounded increased to excess.

To go into the hospitals had always been my dream. I could be useful, remain away from home, and—oh great hope!—contract an illness which would take me to the other world. For, if I was no longer tormented by the battles of sensual desire, I always was by the great wish to die—not even Mother’s manners sufficed to pull me away from this desire. Indeed, I was the scapegoat for the nervousness produced in her by the dispute with her brother and her niece; and even my dear uncle, ever an atheist and original, did not lag behind in tormenting me. I thus had two of them on my back...! Not Peppina. She always treated me the same.

Thanks to the eloquence of Carlo Del Croix, who still had fresh scars on his blinded face, and also in order not to cut a poor figure before other people present, Mother allowed me, too, to enroll among the Samaritan Nurses. And so, on November 15 I entered a hospital for the first time.

The first day—rather, the first morning, for it was a morning—on seeing myself observed by so many eyes, shy as I was, I stumbled and made a mess.... I bumped into a night table and knocked everything to the floor: cups, glasses, bottles, etc. Fortunately, the wounded man had just picked up a watch and thermometer.... That was my baptism—a bit noisy, if you will, and a bit costly, but the fact is that I got my nurse’s cross wet that way. I soon became skilled and capable, though.

How my poor lads loved me! They were from the ranks, for I had asked the Inspectress not to send me to a hospital for officers. I was going to serve the suffering and not to flirt or find a husband. I certainly had other things to think about...! I therefore wanted to go among humble soldiers, great only in their heroism and their patience.

The Sisters, Daughters of St. Vincent, with the characteristic large hats, loved me very much, as did my fellow nurses and the doctors. In eighteen months of hospital work, I never received a reproach or was treated rudely. I did my duty and was consequently loved and respected.

I spend the best hours of my day in the wards; I went there every day, including Sunday, and remained from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m., and even longer if there were seriously ill and dying patients. After two months I shifted to the isolation ward, in the midst of consumptives and those afflicted with various incurable diseases. I thus had the second ward and isolation. Somewhere around two hundred beds.

As the hospital was on St. Mark’s Square in the Advanced Studies Building, I always passed in front of the Church and Museum of St. Mark and fortified my heart to face all the misfortunes I would have to witness at the feet of the Nazarene on my way there, and often in the evening I would enter the Museum for a moment before it closed and on the days of free admission to plunge into Heaven after having been in the hospital purgatory for hours, before the angelic tables of blessed John of Fiesole.

Living amidst such distress did me good. It progressively softened my heart, which had grown hard from excessive sorrow. It was as if the scales—similar to those covering tortoises—were falling, leaving my soul free for the flow of goodness. Among other things, having to lead so many poor men entrusted to me to God gently forced me to draw nearer and nearer to Him.

We had a very devout military chaplain, a Passionist, who with his exquisite patience, gentleness, and tact, worked real conversions. My young men listened to him a lot and were faithful to their religious practices.

Every afternoon, towards three, in the Chapel—nearly on the roof, small but graceful—there was the Eucharistic Benediction. The wounded who could move attended. A procession of crutches tapping along the corridors, walking sticks, arms in slings, bandaged heads.... They went up the stairs, and the first to arrive entered until the little church was packed. The others pressed in from outside, on the landing and on down the stairs—and they sang. What fine choruses of male vocies...! It was moving to hear them sing with such faith and emphasis, those reborn men who had combatted and killed in the savage struggles and now, having come back like big children weakened by misfortune, they managed to become good, simple, and trusting once again, as when they had gone to church in childhood with their mothers. I still seem to be hearing those songs: “We Love God,” “Prithee, Restrain the Bold Tongue,” “I Shall Go to See Her One Day,” and so many others....

Jesus availed Himself of my wounded lads as well to speak to my heart. I wept hearing those songs.... But it was now a different kind of weeping. It was weeping-invocation, weeping-lavacre, weeping which was a stairway, the first step of the staircase to ascend to God.

On the eve of feast days and on Saturday they confessed, and the next day they told me they had received Communion and asked me if I also had. Poor boys! How much good has come to me from them! They often saw I was melancholy and did all they could to cheer me up.

But I, too, gave them all the treasures of my woman’s heart. I was a mother and a sister to them. I overcame moments of repugnance, impatience, and weariness because I loved them and was loved by them. And with satisfaction I tell myself, “I did my duty there as well. My conscience reproaches me for nothing, and I am sure because the letters of my sons, older than I, still attest to it.”

I would have a lot to say about my lads, but that would take me very far off the track.... It is enough for me, however, to have told you that I acted uprightly in every way, there as well. Oh, it is immensely comforting to be able to say that you have acted well! I sometimes think that my dear deceased boys are praying in heaven for their young little sister at the hospital and waiting for me above. Indeed, I think they will be close to me at the hour of death to help me, as I was close to them in their final hour.

But let us get back to my uncle and my cousin.

On the morning of December 23 I got up very early to go to the Central Market. It was a time of “waiting in line” even then, and the lines were the lot of Mother and myself. That morning I had gone because Mother had caught a cold.

When I returned, I found a tragedy. Mother weeping, my cousin having fled, my uncle about to go away, in turn.

As has always happened when Mother really suffers, she clung to me, telling me that there had been a tremendous quarrel involving Peppina, my uncle, and herself. To hear my mother, the fault was theirs. To hear my uncle, the fault was Mother’s. I say that both sides were partly to blame and partly right.

Mother was right in counseling her niece to be more serious, for she was now a bit of a flirt, but she should have done so more gently. Instead, she used the same method as with me, and the two of them did not put up with it.

They were wanting, however, in gratitude and propriety. After all, this sister and aunt had always helped her brother and maintained her niece at school. It was really my father who paid, but anyway.... For months and months now she had hosted her niece and, later, both her brother and her niece, making expenditures to care for them, dress them, and feed them. I think she had a right to a little respect. In the end, they should have respected my father, who had always been good to them, too. On the contrary, there was nothing.

I tried to pacify, for I saw that Mother was really downhearted. But my uncle declared that he “could not have his daughter tortured by a slave driver with the methods of a Croat.” Those were the exact words.

At noon, while the three of us were very sadly sipping broth, my uncle slipped off without saying goodbye, leaving the door open and, on the table in his room, a card “ordering” me “to take their things to the address which he would later make known to me.”

That 1917 Christmas was quite a sad one! Mother was in bed with a fever and a liver attack caused by the fine scene; Father was mortified; and I was sorrowful.

Heaven knows! Mother should always remember that neither I nor my Father ever caused her affliction capable of sending her to bed on account of illness....

Fortunately, in those days Mario came to Florence for fifteen days of vacation, and it was he who looked after many things. He accompanied me to my uncle’s to deliver the belongings of the two; to the Town Hall, for dealings connected with the separation of documents; he changed the whole arrangement of the house because Mother said seeing it the same as when the two of them were there caused her too much pain; and, finally, he became the nurse and consoler of Mother, whom he called “his dear mom.”

He set to work with me as well, and at the same time demanded that I accompany him to church every morning and receive Communion with him. I don’t know if he was so devout while at the Academy. But I would say so, for his letters were full of faith. In this case, the disciple had surpassed his teacher.

Of course, with the insight of affection he had grasped that I needed God, if not to suffer less, at least to suffer less harshly, and he led me back to God. I can say that, just as with his strength as a robust youth accustomed to all physical exercises he effortlessly lifted dead weights like furniture, so he lifted me as a weight and set me upon an altar, near a tabernacle. He did not preach to me—something I would not have stood for, since at certain times preaching is annoying, but he acted directly. He had understood that I was miserable.... He had also had a rather unhappy life, and he knew. He had understood that I wanted to die because I was tired of suffering, and he resorted to the Medicine of medicines—he threw me into the arms of God.

Yes, if I returned to God, I owe it to the goodness of the Lord, but also greatly to my Mario, who, among other things, must have spoken very clearly to Mother as well, telling her that I was dying of melancholy and it was necessary to give me a bit of happiness.

At that time my mother still listened to him and loved him. She had always had a weakness for the male sex. She still says that she cannot resign herself to having lost her son, who died after a few hours of life. And, besides, Mario was a fine lifebuoy for her...! At least she thought he was. She saw that I was not concerned about any man aside from him, and she kept him close to me so as to keep all the other suitors out of my heart—they were not lacking, I must say.

But Mario was growing. He was no longer a boy. He was now over twenty and was on the verge of leaving the Naval Academy with the rank of ensign. And he now looked at me differently. Nor did he conceal what he was thinking. He said it openly, frankly, and his father, his grandmother, and his aunts and uncles seconded him. How often, while hugging Mother, he would say, “Isn’t it so, Mom? When I’m an officer, the young lady will be mine, and you will be my mother, and Giuseppe, my father? I’ll have two fathers then, and my Mom, and I’ll have my dear young lady, for whom I have studied and become what I am...!” And he now led me, too, to understand that his fraternal friendship had now changed into something much deeper than brotherly love.

But I did not want to hear of it. And for two reasons. The first was that I now felt incapable of loving a man with my soul and my body.

You will ask, “Why? You had passed through all those battles against awakened sense, and now that you could honestly satisfy the needs of nature, you didn’t want to hear of it?” It seems like a contradiction, doesn’t it? But it isn’t.

The fact that I had cruelly had my freedom to love taken away, and taken away with the embellishment of certain—explanations which had numbed the limpidity of my virginal heart, utterly unaware of certain physiological and instinctive laws, just as a stone thrown into a limpid pool stirs up the bottom and causes the mud deposited there to rise up, had greatly disturbed me.

But it was not in my nature to be a woman exclusively dominated by sense. I was, indeed, passionate—I was, and I am. I grew attached and grow attached to anything in order to love, for this is a real need of my selfhood, increasingly sharpened by the lack of love surrounding me. As a young person, I loved the creature intensely. From the age of twenty-five on I loved the Creator intensely—more and more intensely. But I could never remain without a great love, the goal of my life. I was, then, passionate; perhaps it is better to say impassioned. But not sensual.

There is a marked difference—though it does not appear at first sight—between naturally vicious creatures and those who are led to undergo storms of sense through a set of circumstances willed by the men around us and by the Enemy, who constantly observes us. When in a summer sky storm clouds laden with lightning and hale form, it is inevitable that the storm should break out. But it does not always become destructive. When a microbe assails a person, it does not always wreak the same havoc. If the person is inclined towards that specific malady, the microbe prospers and leads to death. But if the person is from birth resistant to that microbe, it does not succeed in taking root and is sterilized by the full-bodied blood of the one infected.

In my sky storm clouds had arisen, brought together by winds of hell, and ill-omened bacilli had been inoculated into my blood. But if the hail had descended, forever devastating the flowering of youthful hopes, it had not, however, reduced to ashes my vital sap with a thunderbolt, and my tree could still yield, if not the joy of corollas, the usefulness of branches. But my blood, not lustful by birth, had been able to overcome—with exertion and suffering, it’s true, but victoriously—the germs of carnality inoculated into it.

When that fever had passed—and it had passed after my God had given me that reply which served as strength and a norm for me—I had once again become the former Maria—that is, the creature superior to the seductions of nature. And I was even more than before because, detached from life as I now was, forever unresponsive to the capacity to love as a woman, inclined only towards death, I no longer possessed in myself even the holy tendency to perpetuate the species through a fruitful marriage which God does not condemn, for He Himself was the first to introduce it into the hearts of our ancestors.

I thus no longer felt able to love a man as a woman. I felt this incapacity of mine and regretted it only because I had a naturally maternal heart.... The idea that I would never have children of my own caused me sorrow.... It is still my greatest longing, after my longing for Heaven.... I thought of my solitary old age if I survived.... But I did not feel like becoming “one flesh” with a man who would be my husband.

I therefore advised Mario to leave me alone, explaining that I no longer felt healthy as before and did not wish to bind a young, healthy man to a sickly woman. I asked him to leave me in peace, then, while continuing to keep up his good friendship, which was such a comfort to me. I also made him see that if Mother were to grasp that he was serious about being a suitor, she would make him suffer the same fate as the others who had come forward with proposals of marriage. He would be turned out, and forever.

But Mario, his father, his grandmother, and his aunts and uncles could not admit that my mother, after having flattered him so, could treat him that way. Good heavens! He was healthy, rich, fairly handsome, with a magnificent career ahead of him. What obstacles could be mobilized by Mother? Good heavens! I certainly did not want to imply that a mother could be selfish enough to sacrifice her daughter to have an unsalaried servant with her always...? They couldn’t believe it....

Indeed, who would have believed it? Much of my family distress is not believable except for eyewitnesses, Father. I don’t know if you blindly believe all I am narrating either.... It is so opposed to the concept we have of maternal love—that one finds it hard to believe. But it’s the truth. Everything is true in this story of mine. I may die at any moment, oppressed as I am by pericardial and pleural effusion. But I am tranquil about not having to respond to God concerning any lie in all I am stating, even if I were to die without Confession.

With all my strength I thus tried to make Mario reason. But a man in love does not reason, particularly if backed by all his relatives. All I obtained was to have him wait for another year before speaking—that is, until he had his shoulder marks as an officer.

I said nothing to Mother; poor Mario would otherwise have been immediately condemned. I spoke to my father and his and wrote to Mario’s relatives in Rome. And they all exhorted me to accept Mario and not sacrifice myself further to maternal selfishness. And life went on.

We wrote to each other as usual, as good and fraternal friends, and Mario, who had intuited that if the help of the sacraments were more frequent, I would improve not only in the moral sphere, but in the physical one, which always feels the effects of moral repercussions in itself, continually found a way to have me receive Communion. Now it was for an examination of his, now for a sick friend, now for his grandmother, now for his uncle.... Poor boy! He really reaccustomed me to the desire for the Heavenly Bread!I began then, in the spring of 1918, to go to church almost every morning, thereby rebelling against mother’s ukase.

Among other things, Mario had realized that I, a good Italian as I have always been, immediately after Caporetto had made a vow to God for victory and as a reminder of it wore a large rosary from school around my waist under my clothing. It tormented my flesh. One day the rosary broke and fell right at Mario’s feet. It annoyed me immensely because when I do penance, I “anoint my head and wash my face so that men will not notice, but only the Father, who is hidden.”

Even now no one realizes that I am wearing a cingulum night and day which is a real torment, and neither fevers nor sufferings can make me take it off. I remove it only when the doctor comes so that he will not find it while examining me. It is true that the mark remains on my flesh, and the doctor has often been left perplexed about that mysterious mark, but since there, at the waist, the swelling of the tumor is such as to cause a folding of the skin, the doctor has always remained uncertain as to whether it is a natural mark or is produced by a cord.

Well, that day the rosary fell. Mario picked it up and returned it to me without comment. My very confusion had, however, enlightened him.

As you see, despite my tumbling to the ground, I was not really—faithless.

So Mario had realized that I must have made some sort of promise to the Lord so that He would save the country. And availing himself of this, in particular, he pushed me towards God with continual Communion.

The final weapon the devil used with me then was this: unable to disturb me further in other ways—either by sense in a complete manner or by suggesting suicide—with the same intensity as formerly, fearful that I might turn to God entirely, he inoculated me with shame at the prospect of turning to God after having offended Him. These are his usual, very ancient weapons, employed for the first time in the earthly Paradise. But my Mario defeated them.

So I once again got closer and closer to God. I still suffered greatly over my mother’s behavior. But I shall go on suffering on that account until one of us dies. I suffered, though, with more resignation.

It was then that I—dethroned the Virgin on my night table and placed there the Heart of Jesus which remains still and has never left me, accompanying me to Calabria, Cremona, and everywhere I went for longer or shorter periods.

Mario and my wounds joined me to God. The contemplation of pain and death are always a great spiritual medicine! And the closeness of a heart good in a Christian way—honest, Christian friendship—is always a source of Good.

In the summer of 1918 Mother and I had Spanish influenza. I lived among those affected and thus came down with a tremendous case. My daily fever is a remnant of that time. My heart weakened even more. But we took care of each other, without the help of doctors, all of us sick, and those few who were not, extra-busy and invincible. We took care of each other as I saw my young men being cared for at the hospital, and without the help of doctors to get better or to die we overcame the malady. Mother got even more vigorous than before. Either because of my pre-existing heart condition or perhaps because I had picked up something among the diverse infections at the hospital, I never recovered my former state. But I was happy to depart. If I died, I would resolve everything without scenes, including the matter of Mario.

On November 4 the war ended. When the news arrived, I dashed out of the hospital and ran to the feet of the Nazarene in St. Mark’s Church to thank Him.... I offered Him myself then, asking Him to take my life, but not to let other wars come.

That day I still did not know well what I was offering, and my offering was contaminated by the—very human—desire to live no longer so as not to suffer any more. But since then I have always repeated my offer, for this and other motives which I will tell you about in their proper place, knowing quite well what I was doing.

But if Jesus has listened to me regarding many things, regarding this one He did not. From 1918 to the present many other wars have slain the sons of Italy—and perhaps I shall die while the most tremendous of these wars is taking place.