Chapter 1 Awakening of Miss Prim #2
Dante: Every one of my thoughts speaks of love.
Since setting out on her travels, she kept remembering poetry.
It flooded her mind with the vigor of the wildflowers blooming on the Piano Grande.
It wasn’t her own—Miss Prim had always had sufficient respect for poetry not to write any herself.
But since the morning when she had gazed out to sea in Santa Margherita Ligure and, astonished and bewildered, whispered: E temo e spero; ed ardo e son un ghiaccio—I fear and hope; I burn and freeze like ice—she’d felt overwhelmed by poems long forgotten, poems studied, poems learned, dissected, and analyzed.
In Santa Margherita Ligure it was Petrarch; in Naples it was Boccaccio.
In Florence it was Virgil; in Venice it was Juvenal’s turn.
And the strange thing was that never during these lyrical invasions had Miss Prim felt any urge to study, dissect, or analyze.
Poetry seemed to have taken possession of her and done so with no hint of study, dissection, or analysis.
It was not her enjoying the poems, it was the poems enjoying themselves in her.
They alighted in her mind—or was it her soul?
—at dawn, as she rose to watch the sun rise.
They startled her at midday, as she watched the Benedictines out in the fields put down their hoes to go and recite the Angelus.
They lulled her in the evening as she sat at a café terrace reading until the diminishing light and evening chill roused her from her reverie.
In this feverish poetic ecstasy, Miss Prim had looked to her favorite authors.
But all that came to her lips were odd lines of Ronsard or triplets from Dante or stanzas from Spenser.
At first she’d been put out by her inability to recite exactly what she wanted, but soon she realized that the ancient verses were soothing to her soul.
Who could remain tense or anxious when Queen Gloriana and her knights echoed in their mind?
How could you fail to feel uplifted when a voice was telling you at every step that the year, month, day, season, place, even that very moment were blessed?
She couldn’t fight it and she had absolutely no desire to.
The images that had always so moved her with their terrible, desperate humanity no longer lodged in her mind, no longer took control of her but fled to be lost in the brilliance of the day.
Then beauty returned and harmony was restored; and Miss Prim surrendered.
And with her surrender, Dante, Virgil, and Petrarch also returned.
“You need to take this road,” the receptionist was saying to the Japanese couple. Becoming aware that another guest was waiting, she gestured in apology.
Miss Prim sighed benevolently and found a chair to sit on.
She’d learned how to close doors. She’d learned to open them gently and close them carefully.
And when you learned to close doors, she reflected as she watched the pair of lovers, in a way you learned to open and close everything else correctly.
Time seemed to stretch out indefinitely when you did things properly.
It froze, halted, stopped suddenly, like a clock that has wound down.
Then the small things, the necessary things, even the ordinary, everyday things, especially those one performed with one’s hands—how mysterious that man could do such beautiful things with his hands—were revealed as works of art.
She’d given up trying to achieve perfect virtue on her own.
She’d realized how exhausting, how inhuman and wrong it was to live enslaved by this goal.
Now that she was aware of her overwhelming imperfection, her fragility and contingency, she no longer bore the burden of the hammer and the chisel on her back.
It wasn’t that she’d accepted imperfection, or grown accustomed to it, but she no longer carried the load alone, she no longer shouldered the yoke with only her own strength, she was no longer shocked when she struck a bad patch.
She also knew that none of this would last, that after the joy there would be dips, caverns, tunnels, and ravines.
But for now, everything was a gift that she was learning to accept.
“No, signore, not that turning. Here, I’ll give you the map. It shows it clearly.”
The previous week she’d had a call from her old employer, Augusto Oliver.
He needed her urgently, he missed her, he wanted her to come back to work for him.
Naturally she would no longer be a mere administrative assistant—a woman like her should never have been employed in such a capacity—she was too talented, too capable for administrative tasks.
Miss Prim had laughed inwardly. For forty long seconds she hadn’t been able to say a word because she had been silently laughing. Then she’d said no and hung up.
She didn’t want to go back. She couldn’t bear the thought of burying herself again in that dark, narrow place, shutting herself up in the dull gray cell where she’d spent so much of her life.
She wouldn’t return to the trivial chitchat, wouldn’t listen or take part.
And she definitely had no intention of going back to the sordid game of dodging her boss’s advances.
There was also the matter of air. Miss Prim now needed air.
She needed to feel it on her face as she walked, to smell it, to breathe it.
Sometimes she found herself wondering how she’d lived so long without the need for air.
On winter mornings in the city she left home wrapped up to her ears, scurried to the underground, descended the steps with dozens of other people, and shoved and jostled her way onto a train.
She emerged with the crowds and rushed to her office, where she spent a long day.
Meanwhile, where was the air? At what point in her life had she forgotten about the existence of air?
Walking without having to rush, a pleasure as simple as taking a stroll, wandering, ambling, even idling—when had something so ordinary, so humble, become a luxury?
No, she wouldn’t, couldn’t go back.
“That’s right, signori, have a good day.”
The Japanese couple left, all smiles. The receptionist turned to the waiting guest and signaled apologetically that she was now free. But the guest did not move.
“Can I help you, signorina?”
Miss Prim, staring absently at the piano that dominated the hotel lobby, did not reply.
“Signorina?” said the receptionist. “Can I help you?”
“Something unexpected has happened,” Miss Prim said at last, advancing toward the desk. “I’m afraid I have to leave in an hour. I apologize for any inconvenience. Could you prepare my bill, please?”
“Of course,” replied the receptionist, dismayed. “I hope it’s not bad news.”
“Bad news? Oh no, definitely not,” beamed the librarian, her mind busy in a hall of mirrors.
The receptionist smiled back.
“Actually,” said Miss Prim, eyes shining, picturing a door being closed with infinite patience, “it’s good news. Extraordinary news, I’d say.” She sighed euphorically. “It’s strange and wonderful news.”
“L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle,” love that moves the sun and the other stars, murmured the receptionist half an hour later, as she watched the beautiful, graceful woman walk out of the hotel toward the waiting taxi with her chin held high and a gentle smile on her lips.