We went on like this, occasionally stopping, for some time, until before a church, Jesus turned to me, his shadow on the earth, and said:
“Rise, and receive me. I want to enter this church and see inside.”
The church was magnificent, an immense basilica with three naves, with fine marble all over, gold gleaming in the vault, thronged with the faithful following along with the service conducted by officiants in clouds of incense on a lavishly adorned high altar. In the warm light of a hundred silver candlesticks, the gold brocades of the chasubles glinted with each movement just past the billowing of the precious lace altar cloth.
“And for them,” said Jesus, dwelling within me, “it would please me to be truly born for the first time this very night.”
We left the church, and Jesus, standing before me again and resting a hand on my breast, continued: “I am seeking a soul to live in again. As you see, I am dead to this world, though the world is bold enough to celebrate the day of my birth. Your soul wouldn’t be too narrow for me, were it not packed with things you should cast aside. You would have of me a hundred times over all you would lose if you followed me and left behind all you falsely deem necessary for you and yours: this city, your dreams, the comforts with which, in vain, you try to lighten your foolish suffering at the world … I am seeking a soul to live in again; it could be yours, it could be anyone’s, so long as his heart were pure.”
“The city, Jesus?” I replied in dismay. “What of my home, and my loved ones, and my dreams?”
“You would have of me a hundred times over all you would lose,” he repeated, removing his hand from my breast and looking at me firmly with those clear, sunken eyes.
“I can’t, Jesus …” I said, after a moment’s confusion. Ashamed and discouraged, I let my arms drop to my body.
As though the hand whose weight I felt on my bowed head at the beginning of my dream had thrown me into the hard wood of the table, I jerked awake, rubbing my numbed forehead. Here it is, Jesus, here is my torment! Here, forever, with no respite, I fret with a heavy head, morning, noon, and night.
1896
CHRISTMAS EVE
Camillo Boito
This is my poor Giorgio’s manuscript: the Giorgio that I taught to read, and write, and so many other fine things. And often, as a child, he would stand on one side of me, and poor Emilia on the other, and they would smother me with kisses. I remember that one day Emilia suddenly said to me, “Maria, you have a white hair!” And she tried to pull it out. My hair was my greatest pride. Twenty years later, Giorgetta, who is now in heaven, was sitting on my lap, and she said to me in the same voice and with the same wonder as her mother, “Maria, you have a black hair!” And she pulled a face, because she liked these snow-white curls of mine.
There is nothing about my Giorgio that I do not love. But this manuscript, which I don’t much understand, wrings my heart and makes me weep. I find no peace except in church, praying to God. I would have given my own good health, my life, to see those three dear children, who are no longer with me, well and happy.
SIGNOR GIORGIO’S MANUSCRIPT
I had been suffering terrible stomach pains for several days. I could not eat. I had been dining alone at the Cavour Inn that evening, and I had to leave the table after the soup. The room was cold and virtually empty. There were three Germans, sighing at every mouthful, and a Frenchman, in despair at not knowing whom to bore to death, chatted desultorily with the waiters, saying that for him there had never been any such thing as Easter, or Christmas, or New Year’s Day, or any other women’s foolishness or childish nonsense. Then, happy to have solemnly professed his strength and freedom of spirit, he stuck his snout into his plate.
In the street, the reddish, almost dark glow of the streetlamps could be picked out, one by one. But the very thick fog was suffused with a pale whitish glimmer, both brighter and denser around the lamps, by which it was barely possible to discern a stretch of shining wet pavement, the dim shadow of a person who bumped into you in passing, the indistinct shape of a carriage driving by, cautiously and soundlessly. Otherwise, the streets, usually so full of people and vehicles, were almost deserted: the silence seemed full of pitfalls. Everything became vast and mysterious. You lost your bearings. You suddenly found yourself at the corner of a street that you thought was still some distance ahead, or you assumed you had reached a crossing that was farther on. You sought your way through the mist, soaked through, stiff with cold, suspecting that you had turned deaf and blind.
I stumbled on the steps projecting from the church of San Francesco, and a woman’s cry emerged from the thick fog. Then a ragged child came running between my legs, begging for money, and wishing me a Merry Christmas, or some such thing. I pushed him aside. I gave him nothing. He persisted. I threatened him. I was in an ugly state of mind. In the Galleria, a reeling drunkard was singing some tedious old song. Under the portico in the Piazza del Duomo, there were two police officers walking along slowly, with measured steps.
In the narrow streets beyond Piazza Mercanti, the fog, trapped between the tall houses, had thinned a little. You could see that all the shops were shut, even the inns had their doors closed. But high-spirited sounds of merriment emerged from windows here and there. Happiness reigned in every dining room. I heard the clinking of glasses, shrieks of joy, loud choruses of vulgar, shameless laughter. It was an orgy—but the blessed orgy of the family. I stopped to listen beneath one of the noisiest balconies. At first I could make out nothing at all, then gradually I managed to distinguish voices amid the great clatter of plates and glasses. A child was shouting, “Mama, another slice of panettone.” Someone else was clamoring, “Papa, another drop of wine.” And I could tell what the mother and father were saying, and I could just see the jovial grandfather and smiling grandmother. I pulled up the collar of my coat over my ears.
I did not know what to do. The streets were like a graveyard, the theaters were all closed; owing to the Christmas holiday there were no newspapers. I was all by myself, alone in Milan, where I had no friends, male or female, no acquaintances: alone in the world. This time a year ago, on Christmas day, after lunch in the handsome dining room of our house in Via di Po, I had been down on the carpet, with Giorgetta and her little friends making me give them horse rides, climbing on my back and using the whip. And Emilia chided me, “Really, Giorgi, shame on you: playing with children at the age of twenty-three.” And she said to Giorgetta, “Leave your uncle in peace.” But the children, taking no notice, continue to dance round me, and to deafen me with their cries. I then got to my feet and picked them up in my arms, one at a time, giving them the last of the sugared almonds and a kiss on the cheek.
What happiness! Such happiness!
The walk and the fog had given my body a great hunger that frightened me. The immoderate and indiscriminate amounts of pepsin that I had taken in the last few days, which had not achieved anything except to make the excruciating pains in my stomach worse than ever, were probably doing what they were supposed to all of a sudden, and stimulating gastric activity. I felt as if I could devour an ox, but unfortunately I had long grown accustomed to the dreadful tricks of the pylorus. And yet that evening I had a restless desire to have a good time. Even the grief that usually overwhelmed me completely, allowing no opportunity for boredom, gave way to yawns. For the first time in a month—since my beloved Emilia had placed her hand, already cold, on my hair, while I hid my tears in her pillow; since I had fled from Turin and gone wandering from place to place through Italy—I felt the want of some distraction, the need to talk to someone, to open my heart to a friend, a woman, or a doctor, and to tell of my moral anguish, and physical agony. A renewed selfishness grew within me. I regretted not being in Turin, where I would have dined, and chatted and wept, with