She spoke slowly. “Your foster mother died of cancer. Her husband couldn’t handle his loss, and he brought you back to us. By that time word of your story had gotten out, and he was a little afraid of you. He was the one who said you were surrounded by death, not us.”
Callie recited Proverbs 5:5, the note he had pinned to her shirt. “Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave.”
“Your memory is accurate on that part, though your presentation is somewhat different from the way you first recited it to us.”
“I was just a child,” Callie reacted.
“You were.”
“And you all scared me.”
“I’m sorry,” the nun said, meaning it. “I’ve been thinking about this since you were up here the last time. We should have discussed all of this with you at the time. Of course we should have. We honestly thought it was for your own good.” She looked as if she might reach for Callie’s hand, but Callie straightened, weaving her fingers together in the same angry pose she had so often seen Agony use.
“We are an old-fashioned order. Not new millennium certainly. Some say we aren’t even of the twentieth century. There was a lot of fear and superstition surrounding your case, particularly from the older sisters. At first we thought we had witnessed a miracle, an amazing example of Christ’s intervention. The hand, once healed, would sometimes bleed for no apparent reason. Some believed that a miracle as well, a holy sign. It took me a long time to realize you were probably cutting yourself; we didn’t see such things much back then. Soon after that, the rumors about the murders began to circulate and the stigmata began to raise fears, not only about the murders but about you. You were a strange child, sleeping with your eyes open, sleepwalking. And just knowing things you could never have known. But it was your recitation that terrified everyone. When we returned from mass that morning, we found you sitting on the top step of the children’s home. When we asked you what happened, you stood up, as if in a trance, and began to recite that psalm. Holding your hands like this.” Sister Agony put one hand over the other in the elocutionist’s pose. “At the end of the psalm, you smiled. Then you curtsied.”
And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
—GENESIS 2:9
They flew overnight to Rome, arriving on Saturday morning, then immediately took a train to Bari, where Paul hired a car to drive them to Matera, as no train line ran to their destination. As they rode away from the coast, the vista broadened, revealing a painter’s landscape of olive groves, vineyards, and the occasional hill town. The ride took almost an hour. Callie was exhausted from all the travel, and her mind, blissfully, was an empty canvas, too tired to host haunting images.
The view narrowed again as they reached the city limits. Matera looked like other European cities: old architecture contrasting with new, street vendors, scooters, and automobiles. But then their car turned, and they began to climb into the Sassi district. The lane narrowed to an impossible width, and the driver shifted to a lower gear. The look of the buildings began to change: They seemed to be made of stone and light. It’s tufo, she realized, the stone she’d heard so much about from Paul.
Callie rolled down her window. The smells on the wind, the bright, clear air, reminded her of the ocean breeze in Pride’s Crossing, but it was lighter here, somehow. The lack of sound was punctuated occasionally by, what was that, music? She strained to hear and then recognized the singing notes of a violin. Someone was practicing scales.
“Do you hear that?”
Paul said, “The violin? Yes.”
Now she heard a horn playing. As they passed a building, she saw a sign for a music school.
The driver downshifted again, grinding the gears. The car lurched, bouncing them around. A larger auto passed going the opposite way, its horn bleating, forcing their driver to move to one side and stop his ascent. Images of the present were flooding Callie’s mind, as if she were snapping photos to be remembered.
The driver put the car in first gear, sliding backward several feet as he let out the clutch, swearing. Aggressively, he pulled ahead to the top of the hill, scattering ambling pedestrians.
At the summit was a church, construction scaffolding blocking its entrance. Beyond were several palazzi, one restored as a hotel.
“This is good,” Paul said. “Please let us out here.”
The driver pulled over.
Paul opened Callie’s door, and she got out, flexing her leg muscles. Beyond the towering cathedral she could see a deep ravine and, far past that, a hill.
She had never seen light like this or felt the air in such a way. The music had faded. There were no sounds at all now. She could see birds across the canyon, but she couldn’t hear their calls. There was something otherworldly about the place, alien and familiar at the same time.
Paul paid the driver. They stood and watched the car descend the hill. A man came out of the hotel, nodded a greeting, then walked across the piazza and disappeared down an alleyway, his footsteps echoing on the stone and then fading to silence.
Paul picked up their suitcases and gestured for Callie to follow him down an alleyway marked Via Riscatto. Stone houses lined its boundaries, their foundations carved into the sides of the hills. Some were occupied, many more stood empty. Callie heard the echoing sound of a hammer growing louder as they approached and then fading again as they made their way past.
They turned left at the corner, and the alley wound downward, the view opening every so often to reveal the colors of the canyon. A dog passed them, paused to drink at a puddle of water, then disappeared up a set of steps.
They stopped at an old monastery that had been turned into a hotel. There were flowerpots by the front entrance and a sign: CASA DEL PELLEGRINO LE MONACELLE. Callie followed Paul inside. A woman was reading a book behind the desk; she looked up and smiled. She welcomed Paul back in Italian, then, hearing him translate to Callie, she changed to English, offering her hand for Callie to shake in the American style.
“Welcome to Matera,” she said. Then turning to Paul: “How long are you here for this time?”
“It depends how long it takes to finish the restoration,” he said. “I’m not sure how far the team has gotten without me. Probably a few months.”
He’d rented Callie a suite for the two weeks she intended to be in Italy.
“Follow me,” he said now. “I’ll show you where you’re staying.”
Paul led Callie up a stone stairway to a room that had two levels: The first contained a dark wooden desk and a few chairs, a small sitting room, and a tiny kitchen. On the second level, located up a stairway, was a loft with a bed. Beyond the bed was another stone stairway leading to a blue door.