Gianrico Carofiglio - A Walk in the Dark

Anna hadn’t heard a thing – he hadn’t even groaned – and didn’t notice anything. I took her by the hand and told her we had to go down to the yard. She took her dolls and followed me. As we were going downstairs, she stopped and pointed. “You’ve hurt yourself, Angela. There’s blood coming out of your hand.” “It’s nothing. I’ll wash it at the tap in the yard.” “But you have to put disinfectant on it.” “There’s no need. Water will be fine.”

After that, my memories are confused. A series of fragments, some clear, others so dark you can’t see anything. At a certain point, my mother came back, passed us and went upstairs. I don’t remember if she greeted us, or just saw us. A few minutes later we heard her terrible screams. Then people leaning over the balconies, or coming down to the yard, or climbing the stairs in our block. Then noises of sirens, and flashing blue lights. Dark uniforms, a crowd pressing around our door, the hours passing, night starting to fall, people talking under their breaths while two men in white shirts carried out a stretcher with a body on it, covered in a sheet. I stayed behind, holding my sister by the hand, until a nice lady came up to us and said we had to go with her. We were taken to an office. There was a man there, and the lady asked us if we wanted something to eat. My sister said yes, I said no thanks, I wasn’t hungry. They brought her a ham roll and a Coke, and when she’d finished eating they asked us questions. They wanted to know if anyone had come to see our daddy, if we had seen any strangers entering our block, anything like that. I asked if they could take my sister out, because I had some things to tell them. They looked at each other and then the lady took my sister by the hand and took her out of the room. By the time she came back, I was already telling my story. I told it all, calmly, starting with that summer morning and finishing the Thursday before Good Friday. Calmly, without feeling anything.

I lit my third or maybe fourth MS and gratefully felt the smoke split my lungs.

Claudia told me the rest. What happened afterwards. The years in reformatory. Her schooling. Sister Caterina, who worked there as a volunteer and came almost every day to see the boys and girls who were confined there. She was an unusual nun, different from the others. She dressed in normal clothes, she was young, she was friendly, she was determined not to talk about religion, and she befriended little Angela. The only inmate who was there for a murder, committed before her fourteenth birthday. Confined to reformatory as a security measure because she was under fourteen years of age, and couldn’t be charged with a crime. And because she was dangerous.

Sister Caterina taught a lot of things to that strange, silent child, who minded her own business and didn’t make friends with anyone. She brought her books, and the girl devoured them and kept asking for more. She taught her to play the guitar, she taught her to make really nice desserts. She taught her first aid, because she was a nurse.

One day, as they were chatting together in the courtyard of the reformatory, the girl, who was now a young woman, told the sister that she didn’t want to be called Angela any more. She’d soon be leaving the reformatory and she wanted Sister Caterina to give her a new name. For outside. For her new life.

The sister was disturbed by this request and told the girl she would have to think about it. When she came back the next time, the first thing the girl asked her was whether she had her new name. Sister Caterina said her mother’s name was Claudia. The girl said it was a beautiful name, and from now on she would be called Claudia. Sister Caterina was about to say something, but then didn’t. She took off the little wooden crucifix she always wore – the only visible sign that she was a nun – and put it round the girl’s neck.

When she left the reformatory, Claudia was entrusted to a family in the north, because she had said she didn’t want to go back to live with her mother. She took a vocational course, gained a diploma, got a job, started practising martial arts. Karate first, then that lethal discipline invented centuries earlier by a nun.

One day, she heard they were looking for volunteers to lend a hand in a community that provided a shelter for ex-prostitutes and abused women. She applied, and at the interview she said she was a nun. Sister Claudia, from the order of Lesser Franciscans. Sister Caterina’s order.

“I don’t know why it came into my head to say I was a nun. I couldn’t explain it even now. Maybe, unconsciously, I thought if I was a nun I’d be safe. I don’t mean physically. I’d be safe from relationships with people. I’d be safe… from men, maybe. I thought everything would be easier, that I wouldn’t have to explain a whole lot of things.”

She turned to look at me, passed her hand over her face, then continued.

“I know what you’re thinking. Wasn’t I afraid of being found out? I don’t know. The fact is, nobody ever doubted I was really a nun. It may seem strange, but that’s the way it is. It’s funny. Say you’re a nun and nobody thinks of checking if you really are. Nobody asks for your papers. Why should a woman pretend to be a nun? People accept it and that’s it. If anyone asks you how come you never wear a habit, you just say it isn’t compulsory in your order, and that’s the end of it. So before you know it, everyone thinks you’re a nun.”

Another pause. Again, she passed her hand over her darkened face.

“It felt comfortable. It was my way of hiding while still being in the middle of people. It was my way of protecting myself. It was my way of escaping, while staying in the same place.”

There wasn’t much else to tell. She’d started working in that community. It was part of an association that had branches all over Italy. When she heard they were planning to open a new refuge near Bari, and were looking for someone with experience to work there full time, for a small salary, to get the community started, she applied.

When she finished her story she asked me for a cigarette. I was strangely glad that she did and that I could give her one and take another one myself and we could smoke together, in silence, while from time to time the sounds of cars could be heard coming closer, passing our car park, and speeding off into the distance.

“There’s a dream I have once or twice a year. He’s calling little Angela from the bedroom, that summer morning. Little Angela goes in, he makes her close the door, makes her sit on the bed, and at that moment the door opens again and Sister Claudia comes in. To save the child. But she never does, because just then I always wake up.”

She turned the cigarette, almost completely burned down now, between her fingers. She looked at the embers, as if they hid a secret, or an answer.

“Once I even dreamed that someone brought my dog Snoopy to the refuge. It wasn’t dead, it had just run away.”

She gave a kind of smile, half closing her eyes, trying to see something in the distance.

There was a catch in my throat and I had to force myself to swallow.

“You know, back in the reformatory, Sister Caterina gave me a poem to read, by a woman poet, I can’t remember her name. She was English, or maybe American. It was dedicated to a mongrel, like Snoopy. It started: If there isn’t a God for you, there isn’t a God for me either .

“That’s nice.” As I said this, I realized they were the first words I had uttered since we’d sat down on that bench, in that service area, on that autostrada. I felt a strange sense of peace as I said it. She took my hand and held it tight, without looking at me.

But I looked at her.

She was weeping silently.