Then he spoke to me of the moment of death; of the infinite nature of time; of how certain individuals—like Saint Augustine himself, while writing his journals—experience a premonition of death: the moment in which the individual, confronted with eternal darkness, must fall in submission before God. Confession was not just a preparation for that ultimate submission, not just a foreshadowing, but a way of entering into the moment of death itself, since all time was one time, all moments one moment, and we were, all of us, forever caught in that single moment. As he spoke, I couldn’t help but feel that blackness closing in. And maybe I experienced something of what he was talking about. Maybe I was in that eternal moment then—outside myself, looking down—no longer in that one place but the many, here, too, on the Avenida, on the balcony, listening to the footsteps rushing up from below . . .

Lodovico.

The man’s face, the leering mouth . . .

I startled up.

The priest looked at me expectantly.

“What?”

I shook my head. The image left as quickly as it had come. Or maybe I had no such premonition and only imagine it now, after the fact, and it was simply the priest’s droning that had gotten to me.

“Nothing,” I said. “I was only wondering if I might make a phone call. To my lawyer, maybe. Or my brother.”

The priest lowered his eyes.

“Sometimes it’s best to let things settle within. To ignore the churning of the world. Of the mind.” His smile was too gentle, his voice too calm—and I could tell he wasn’t going to give me permission. “I’m here to talk with you,” he said. “Whenever you’d like.” But I didn’t trust him that far, no matter his pockmarks or his blue eyes.

––––––––

“I got my dispensation,” said Valentina.

“From the court?”

“I’ll be spared prosecution. Arrangements are being made.”

We were bent over in the garden there by the Romano beans, sweating, with our hands in the dirt. Some sisters labored farther down the hill in the tomatoes and the corn, but none was so close they could hear what we said. “I’ve been accepted as a novitiate. At the mission in Sierra Leone.”

“Africa?”

“It isn’t where I’d choose, but I’ll be in a city, at least. For a while I thought they’d refuse me.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s only—sometimes the novitiates are insincere. They don’t have a true vocation but only use it as a way out. They disappear after a few months in the mission, maybe a year. Never to be seen again. Particularly if they have money.”

“Oh.”

“It’s a way to escape the law. Of course, I wouldn’t do that.”

“Of course not.”

“Some women, they even return to Italy. Under a new identity. Or even their old one, depending on the arrangements.”

“On the money?”