Generally, almost all ghostly stories and facts begin with the special care to alert the reader with a “they say, it is told around, it is spoken…” to prepare them not to be startled by the happy ending…
In one of these tales from Corinto, if I’m not mistaken, we will remember a Novice who appeared in the city coming from who knows where, and how, which doesn’t matter, she appeared at the Franciscan Sisters’ School, fleeing from everything… from a love disappointment, from the rancor of a family from one of the nearby towns, from the gossip of the neighborhood people… In short, she came all loaded with agonies, in the full freshness of youth, with demons that needed to be left behind.
In Corinto, she found peace, opportunity, and a welcome to redeem herself from everything that could turn her torment into something possible to live.
And she was embarking on a new stage and trajectory of life and perhaps happiness.
Who was she? She was a young woman in her early twenties with radiant beauty, pearl-like teeth, and an angelic face that enchanted especially the children who called her Aunt.
To tell the truth, people practically did not know the terms Novice and referred to her as the new Little Nun who was diligently preparing in the novitiate to soon become a master nun, for her religious consecration.
She didn’t bother anyone at all and gradually fell into the immediate graces of the Mother Superior, who always loved to take a nap whenever possible, even during the long and confusing sermons of the priests, calmly carrying her obesity without caring much about the world and the turns it takes. She loved chocolates and rapaduras.
Sister Celina, with her black umbrella, always gifted her with some sugary treat, like the famous caramelized slices of bread and pastries from Padaria Globo that were caramelized to the soul.
The Novice or the Little Nun became one of the most common novelties of Corinto, even if discreetly, since she came prepared with her vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience proposed by the Catholic Church, as she had previously faced the devil to escape the astral hell in which she had lived.
She wore a beautiful and distinct religious habit, showing all the consecration as one of the brides of Christ. For this reason, the beauty of the habit ended up becoming something natural, white and blue, different from the heavy clothes of the other sisters.
In her wanderings beyond the limits of the Sisters’ School, she began to meet people more or less her age, and it was on one of these occasions that she met Eliana de Matos, daughter of the late Hely de Matos from the Ironworks, a traditional family in the city.
Eliana de Matos played the accordion before the start of films at Cine Rex, the priests’ cinema that only showed sugary, melodious family films, and so on…
Eliana, with her impetuous artistic gift, was part of an advanced and brilliant group with Suzana Diniz, the Roller Skating Queen with her pirouettes on wheels to the sound of the “Blue Danube,” always requested to enhance events. There it was discovered that the Novice or the Little Nun sang and played the guitar by ear. A perfect acquisition and combination for a young group that was gaining body.
The Novice or Little Nun became part of the context of modernity. She sang and played guitar alongside Eliana. A beautiful sight before the film presentations.
Who also joined the group was Gildete Boaventura, daughter of Rafael Boaventura, a wealthy merchant who gifted her a Vespa, a Lambretta as a birthday present for her 18th birthday, leaving everyone in awe.
Noeme Coelho, a shrewd and quick-witted merchant in her inventive impulses, saw that as a golden opportunity and decided to take advantage of the moment to create a talent show program, as was the fashion of the time.
If that were to go anywhere, it didn’t matter. The talents were there to be used and launched into the world.
The priests loved that audience that created no problems at all. Sundays were the days for children to gather at the exit of the matinee sessions to exchange comics, marbles, and have fun in the purity of age.
And things went on with a certain tranquility, and the city lived its affairs, its loves, its small conquests, and never forgetting its trains, its tracks, and the many children who left for the capital or other nearby places to learn better and return as doctors, full of greatness.
No one knows where the idea came from, but surely it was Gildete Boaventura who had the brilliant idea of putting the Novice or Little Nun in charge of her Lambretta, her Vespa, through the streets of the city, causing an uproar in conservative minds connected to the church.
An absurdity. An affront? A sin? Progress?
This made the Mother Superior wake up from her long hibernation to act, before the broth of morals and good customs soured.
She thought that the gossip of the city could affect the life of the School, exposing the other sisters in the same package.
She asked for the Little Nun to be transferred to another corner, preferably far away from there, so as not to put the school at the center of what was already considered madness.
There were protests for and against, and the package ended up falling right into the lap of a young, inexperienced Dutch priest named Marco Aurélio, who perhaps didn’t even know what he was doing there.
It was a confusing thing because he didn’t speak any Portuguese. The mass was in Latin, and the confusion was all in Portuguese.
The people loved the confusion, the hearsay.
In almost all the funerals, confusion lingered.
Were they really married? Baptized? Committed?
Deep down, very deep down, people left there with one foot behind in faith…
Especially at the parties. The way to ensure that everything had gone well was to bring the Priest into the party to guarantee that the work had been done according to the laws of the Church.
But the episode of the Little Nun ended up shaking the life of the city, causing it to raise a warning signal about how the lives of those people were going.
Behind the scenes, things seemed to run with a certain normality, which was not true, dividing the social class into three distinct areas.
They realized they were either on the railway and its nuances, patiently waiting for the Paying Train that arrived religiously in the city every month, or in the social life of the parties and festivities of the two social clubs, or as a last option, the religious life of the churches, the festivals of saints, the promises, the rosaries, and so on.
Without a doubt, the last option was the easiest and didn’t require much.
The majority of the priests came from unimaginable places, speaking complicated and mixed accents.
The masses were celebrated in Latin, and the celebrants always faced away from the audience. The gospel was read in Latin, and the homily in the priests’ languages. A Russian salad. A true confusion in the heads of the faithful, who left there more confused than they arrived.
From the masses, they reinforced the learning of obedience to the commandments of God’s law, always recommending to be nice and observant of the fidelity of marriage, as the main dogma until death separated the married.
Those who behaved and obeyed the commandments of the Church, which no one knows where it came from, would certainly also go to heaven.
Thus, without much mystery, what was sane was to attend church, collaborate with social works even without understanding anything, but marking territory and fidelity ensuring that as soon as they closed their eyes to eternal life, they would be going to meet God.
The priests loved the confessions of the pious and some stray faithful who appeared because it was there that they occasionally told everything that was happening in the heart of the community. They had almost absolute control over everything.
One day, a murderer, a hired killer who was constantly being sought by the police, appeared in the city. He was arrested and refused to confess his crimes to the police.
On the advice of his lawyer, one of those old foxes named Dr. Hugo Machado, who had no ethics at all, defended both the victim and the perpetrator of the crime at the same time, suggested to his client to confess everything to the Priest who could not reveal anything outside the confessional.
The priest ended up becoming a silent witness, justifying that he could not reveal anything he knew. The confessed murderer could not be pressured because his confession was with the Priest.
The Judge of the case could not pressure the Priest, and the murderer had already made the confession. A problem that not even an international jury at the time could solve.
The prisoner remained there, without a solution to his case until he died of grief and regret for his dark past.
And the Little Nun, the Novice? You ask me.
They say she was sent to a rough interior of the state, far from everything, where there was no light, there was nothing, in a social work that was starting, by candlelight and lanterns, a lost place in the world, hard to access, discreet and small, full of needy and lost children.
It seems that she stayed there for a long time, aging with her religious mission, as she had promised at the beginning of her wanderings.
EDILBERTO LUCIANO MENDES (Betinho)
International Journalist