Autobiography

17. Return to Florence

In one of his tragedies Goethe writes, “Let duty be active where love is inert.” The time had come for me to act according to Goethe’s counsel.

When she was convinced that Mario had been vanquished forever—God knows by what weapons!—Mother began to call me back home insistently.

You will understand that I was useful! I worked like the most industrious of maids and, except for food, cost nothing. Except for food, for I had always been indifferent to fashions and coquetry of any kind, which cost the members of my sex no small sum, and, besides, disgusted as I now was with everything, I had become extremely indifferent. I wore what I was given to wear, and, provided it was clean, every dress appealed to me. Fashions years out of date, cheap fabrics (they still existed then)—everything suited me. So, in regard to expenses, I was ideal.

Father could not be persuaded to shift our residence to Reggio Calabria. I thus went back to Florence.

I would be telling a big lie if I said that I went there willingly. I was leaving an oasis of peace to go back to guerilla warfare, if not to outright war. And I knew it. In Reggio I had had afflictions—indeed, the affliction of afflictions. But I was so surrounded by love that this helped me to endure the new thunderbolt.

Nothing is more wearisome, demoralizing, or consuming than the little daily pricks we must cope with when we live alongside certain characters. These pricks are not real wounds, but prove more exhausting than a real, deep wound. They are like the bites of swarms of mosquitoes which, constantly renewing themselves, fall upon our flesh and pinch, nip, suck, irritate, and inject infinitesimal droplets of venom, unable to kill if introduced separately, but depositing germs causing fever, which can kill. Those bites do not visibly tear the flesh, but turn it into a swollen, sore mask; they are exasperating, taking the joy out of sleep, disturbing one’s afternoon nap, obstructing reading. A scourge, small in its instruments, but large in its effects.

I was going to meet this scourge, leaving the peace in which I had lived, the understanding I had received, and the affection which had acted as a medicine for me. In spite of what I had suffered on being abandoned by Mario, I was once again blooming. I had been thriving anew since August. Under the beneficent shock of joy, my youth had been fortified, and a kind of physical resurrection had taken place. Happiness and love can do so much in someone previously bereft of them. With that new pain thrown into the bargain, either because God had now gathered in my poor soul, which was about to be dealt the final blow of sorrow, or because all those harmonious physical laws constituting the human organism’s daily defense which had previously been languishing in soporose exhaustion had now been newly set in motion—whatever the reason was, I had passed the very painful test in good physical condition.

My cousins, most affectionate and proud of my well-being, which they quite rightly attributed to the abundant acts of attention they had lavished upon me, did not want to let me leave. But I certainly could not continue far from my home. I was stung by the desire to return to my family, first of all for the sake of Father, whose life I very easily imagined to be wretched, and also because, in spite of everything, I have always loved and still love Mother. A love which knows it will never be returned, but which does not diminish for this reason.

I well know that my mother, affected as she is by a persecution complex, is convinced that I have never loved her. But I also know doubly well how much I have loved her, with a love which not even her acts of harshness have wearied or decreased. One day, when Mother, too, has risen to the light of God, something which, at the price of my holocaust I have requested and still request for her—and I feel this is a much more effective love than one based on simpering and little kisses—one day, when from that light Mother understands the truth of things, then she will finally comprehend the love with which her misunderstood daughter loved her....

Well, it does not matter if my daughterly affection is unappreciated. I am thus deprived of the enjoyment which might come to me therefrom, and my affection has a double merit.

I returned, then, to Florence. It was August 2, 1922.

Our Lady of the Angels, Our Lady of Forgiveness of Assisi, was my patron for this return, which was a great forgiveness. And the angels must have helped me to overcome the first encounter with the woman who had taken everything from me.... I think the most diligent among them was the angel who comforted the Mother of Christ in the Cenacle while He was being betrayed by a kiss, denied by Peter, offended by those He had benefited, tortured, derided.... The angel of the Desolate One among desolate women, the angel of Gethsemane and Calvary, the angel who moved to and fro between the Mother and the Son, the angel who gathered the drops of divine blood and the tears of the Mother of Jesus was singing to me the hymn of forgiveness for those who have crucified us, pointing out to me the crown of thorns, the torturing nails, the scourges, the cross, the lance, and the sponge which, as they had been for the Savior, the Lamb, were to be poor Maria’s weapons of sacrifice and glory.

I found Father quite run down in health: gaunt, wan—he who had always been so light-skinned and ruddy. Mother was also very run down, in spite of the fact that she had constantly had the help of the woman who, of course, disappeared on my arrival.

My cousin Clotilde and Memmo, who had accompanied me to Florence, made a last attempt to persuade Father to leave with them for Calabria within a month. But Father, with the stubbornness left by certain illnesses, utterly refused. My cousins thus left—and I remained.

The suffocating heat of Florence, truly unbearable for me, accustomed to the light, airy atmosphere of the Messina Straits, the narrowness of the burning apartment, painful to me, habituated as I was to the open air of the large hotel, the memories crowding together to prick my soul and the—shall we say—benign questions of the purveyors, neighbors, and others, who more or less openly asked me what I had done (read: “done with the child”)—some questioned me point-blank—at once occasioned me no small suffering. And my heart began to dance its frenzied tarantella, which had calmed down for some months. I immediately lost weight. But one must be patient.

In the first days, as long as there was a danger that Clotilde might come back, even Mother was gentle. Later, once the threat had passed, she showed her claws—or, rather, talons. She wanted to ask questions and make insinuations. I imposed silence on her so energetically—my only energy—that she did not dare raise the topic for years and years. She must have thought I knew exactly what she had done. If not, she would not have yielded so readily.

The second act of force. Always set upon the idea that being a governess or teacher was the quintessence of beauty, she wanted to turn me into a governess and sent me to Berlitz, the language school. I went because I have always liked to study, and was pleased to refresh my French classes. But dashes to the markets, cleaning house, study, and dashes off to school, scares over the popular uprisings which were raging at that time, my heart’s skipping a beat over running into the colonel, and much more made me so ill that I had to stop. Farewell to my mother’s dream of making me a governess!

Then another caprice. She sent me to the milliner’s school, hoping to turn me into a fashion instructor or dressmaker. I went, thinking it might be useful to tailor those “frocks” I wore.... They were real frocks without charm. But I was not keen on being charming.

That’s it: I’d like to know Mother’s real purpose in wanting to persuade people that I had such a need to earn my living that I had to become either a governess or a dressmaker. I have never found out exactly. But there was a hidden purpose.

I had no need. You can understand that, if after ten years of illness I am not yet like Job, it is a sign that our finances really were not so paltry. We are now reaching the tether’s end, it’s true, but we’ve been living this way for ten years. Previously, our income was more than sufficient to live quite well, and there was even a surplus.

But Mother wanted to persuade someone that I was a poor girl without means. Who was this someone? I have always thought it was Mario and his relatives. Who knows what she had said in that calamitous letter...! Now she had to corroborate her words. I think she may have said I had to maintain them in their old age.... So many things occur to me! I think she may have said I had become engaged to another man rolling in money.... I think she may have said that I had lost my head and my honesty.... I think she may have said I had a shameful illness.... Ever so many things occur to me...! I know my mother and realize that, just to satisfy her whim, she is capable of inventing anything. It does not matter if another’s good name goes up in smoke; it does not matter if people criticize and speculate on the whole family. Nothing matters, provided she wins.

Well, I attended the course in style and fashion, took the exams, and, in spite of the fact that I hated the subject, like all who are not ambitious, earned the highest grades. But I stopped there because my health was deteriorating more and more. Nor could it have been otherwise.

It sometimes happened that I would come across Mario’s father, and seeing that he refused to greet me transfixed my heart.... Every time that occurred I would be ill for several days. And then there was Father, who, forgetful of the part my mother, using her power of suggestion over him, had had him play—that is, the role of being the one who did not want my wedding with Mario—asked nearly every day, “So why didn’t you get married to Mario?” A delight, believe me.

On New Year’s Eve 1923 I went out to buy butcher’s broom and holly. It was a misty, cold night. I had wrapped myself up in a shawl and looked like a Turk. I had my little dog with me.

I went to Cavour—now Ciano—Square. While buying the boughs with the small red balls, I felt a touch, almost as if someone had touched me on the shoulder. I turned around—and saw Mario, who was coming towards me across the square. He was wearing a uniform, bundled in a cloak. I remained bewitched.

I must have had a very sorry expression, for the holly dealer offered me his stool to sit down on. But I remained on my feet, convulsively grasping the side of the cart. I no longer felt even the pricks of the thorny boughs...!

At first Mario must not have recognized me, wrapped up as I was in the shawl. Perhaps he realized it was I from my dog, so familiar to him. He could not get any paler than he already was, but bowed his head like a guilty man and staggered on....

What a wreck, Father, what a wreck...! What had those two women done to my Mario, so robust, strong, healthy, young, and honest? What had my mother ever done in leading him to distust, lack of respect for me, despair, pushing him, in an hour of prostration, into the arms of a vamp? And what had this vampire disguised as a woman done to such fine youth? A wreck.... Bent, thin, wan, a lifeless gaze, the lines of his face prematurely aged, a faltering step.... A wreck of a man, a wreck of a man, my Mario, not yet twenty-seven! Sick, broken—he who just a short time before had been so full of health and hope!

Notice, I told you this morning, “I realize I have changed a lot, for I don’t feel everything going topsy-turvy in me as before when I touch upon certain topics.” But now, as I write of that encounter and again see my Mario looking older, disheartened, wasted, passing close to me with his head lowered, like a culprit, I feel my most vital fibers being torn away within me....

I have reproached myself several times for not having found the strength to call him and ask why he had acted that way. I would have had the key to the mystery tormenting me.... But I was left paralyzed. The pride of a woman offended, love swelling up tumultuously in my heart, and pity, boundless pity in the face of his ruin—everything contributed to that paralysis.... And it would have been so good to ask him, so as to remove from my heart the sting of his behavior, which to human sight has all the appearance of being a betrayal.

But I feel that it is not. Mario was led to act as he did by a set of circumstances reducing his offense from betrayal to weakness. He was then in the flower of youth and, as he had assured me, to obtain me from God had rejected all the deceptions of easy loves. I was the stake for his chastity. I must grant that I was more a soul than a woman. I loved him with my whole self, but without the ardor and abandon enthralling a man. Add Mother’s work, which perhaps corroborated some invented imperfection of mine and which my excessive reserve may have made him think really existed. Finally, add on my indignation and disappointment over being ruined after such a long wait and the fortuitous encounter, precisely at that moment of perturbation, with the infernal Russian woman, and see if he was not of necessity caught in a vortex in which he had to succumb. I do not excuse him, but I pity him.

I came back home with difficulty. I said nothing. For years I had no longer been saying anything. The door of trust in my mother had been closed and nailed shut for years. But now I had God for comfort.

I did not stop at the point where I was in Reggio. I had always walked towards God. On arriving at my home, I had very clearly stated my intention of going to church even every morning, and I in fact did almost every morning, especially in May, June, September, October, December, Carnival, and Lent. Mother was sizzling, but—I let her sizzle.

I had also found a Gospel of St. Luke. Father had brought it home. There must have been some days devoted to disseminating the Holy Gospels during Lent 1922. It was a book with a modest format and went around from one piece of furniture to another. With respect to the Gospel, I was familiar only with those passages commented on at Sunday Mass. Always those, often explained without putting one’s whole soul into it and even more often listened to with less soul than ever. And then, I was a—lone elephant. I had and have to think over a concept on my own in order really to feel it. I thus picked up that poor little book, which Mother had kept dancing for months from one piece of furniture to another and Father had been reading once in a while, took it to my room, and started reading it.

It was “the lamp placed on the lampstand to give light.” The more I read it, the more I felt a new heart being formed within me. I have wept greatly over that little book.... Gentle tears rendering my soul fresh, as in the days of my childhood in love with Christ taken down from the Cross. What hope, what abandon, and what a longing to love as the Divine Evangelizer should be loved!

I have never been able to separate myself from the Gospel since then. It is my spirit’s daily bread. I don’t even need to read it any more because I know it by heart, but I still reread it because I always find a new fascination therein. When I feel very bad, when I am quite afraid of something. I place the little volume with the Four Gospels bought at the beginning of 1925 over my heart and am no longer afraid of anything. From those pages

Jesus seems to be saying to me, “Fear not,” and to things, “Do no harm to this woman.”

I don’t know how to meditate on large or small books on asceticism. I end up reading them as good books, and that’s that. But the Gospel! If I experience a doubt, a moment of melancholy, I pray to the Holy Spirit, to whom I am most devoted, and then open the Gospel casually. I always find a word to comfort me, or enlighten me, or give an answer to the need to know why which is bothering me.

The little book with St. Luke’s Gospel gradually warmed up my heart like the flame of a comfortable hearth. Its heat spread through all my veins, all my fibers, pervading all and making Christ constantly grow in me.

Ruysbroeck—one of the few I understand, together with St. Paul, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Francis of Assisi, among those distant in time, and St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and Sr. Benigna, among contemporaries—says, “When God comes into you, the fact is that you were already in Him, for He never goes out from Himself.... Our aptitude for receiving his grace depends on the inner intensity with which we move towards Him. At the very instant of our moving, Christ comes to us with or without intermediaries—that is, with his gifts or above them. We, too, rush into Him or towards Him with or without intermediaries—that is, with our strength or above it. Now He, in bringing us his gifts and bestowing Himself, impresses his likeness upon us, absolves us, and frees us. At the moment of liberation, the spirit plunges into the delight of love.”

I understand these words quite well. At that time I was precisely at this point. God came to me—that is, my soul realized that He was coming into me, but that was because I had gradually penetrated into Him, attracted by the very sweet magnet of his love.

He had first opened an empty space around my heart and then had attracted and bewitched me, just like someone wishing to attract our affection, with the additional factor of his divine perfection inconceivably surpassing all human seductions. He had then waited for me to respond to his invitation. After I had told Him, with sincerity of heart and firmness of intention, “I want to be yours,” He had moved towards me, and I, towards Him.

I asked Him for nothing more than to reign in me. I no longer asked him to give me this or that, but only said, “Lord, do what You think is right to do. I never see rightly. You act. I trust You!” And Jesus had entered as Friend, Master, and King, bringing me all his supernatural graces, while I precipitated myself into Him with all my strength, with much more than my strength, still frail, thinking that where I did not arrive, He would see to arriving. But even if Jesus had come to me devoid of all his gifts, I would now have loved Him just the same: I would have loved Him for Himself alone, as I have in fact loved Him for years.

In his infinite goodness, at the beginning of my union with Him He wanted to help me with all the tenderness of sensitive love. With St. Margaret Mary, I can say, “My Divine Master then made me understand that this was the time of our betrothal and that, like the most impassioned lovers, He would at that time have me taste all that was sweetest in the caresses of his love.”

Sweet words whispered by his voice with no material sound, but so perceptible to the spirit’s faculties, mysterious caresses on the heart, stretching out like a flower to its Sun, and dreams, dreams, dreams.... Since that dream of June 1916 I had dreamed no more. Now they came back to me with a frequency that made me desire sleep as a second wonderful life of mine. I have followed Jesus through the districts of Galilee; I have heard Him preach to the crowds; I have passed at his side amidst fields of wheat and remained at his feet, with my head in his lap, while He spoke, seated at the top of a stairway; I have seen Him languish and die in the Garden of Gethsemane and on Golgotha; and—I have received Communion from his hands in lovely Paradise. Always with that Face, that Gaze, that Voice, those Hands, and that infinite loving sweetness and sublime majesty. How many sweet visions...!

The fire of his Charity penetrated me ever more deeply and set me aflame. I burned to love Him infinitely and to make Him be loved. I would have said to everyone, “Love, love God if you want to be happy! Love and let Him love you as He wishes to! Do not place obstacles to his entering!”

Liberated and absolved by his love, like Ruysbroeck I plunged into the delight of love. Of this heavenly love, whose gentleness, sweetness, and fullness are such that nothing can bear comparison to it. With all the bonds which had kept me charmed by creatures broken, my soul hurled itself freely and joyfully into the reign of the supernatural and penetrated it more and more. And I have never left it.