My name is Maria Teresa. One month ago, I turned nineteen, eleven of which I lived as a shadow of another's life, that of Don Felipe Lay. To the people of Olmedo, I am sa teracchedda de su Rettore—the rector's maid.
I was, to use the idiom of this time, "indentured" to him, and today I accompany him on his final journey.
Being indentured is the fate every orphan wears like a cheap livery of service, a legal servitude for a fixed term. The indenture is governed by the duties of the orphan and their master. For the former, this includes: serving day and night, indoors and outdoors, on weekdays and holidays. For the latter: two sets of clothes, one for weekdays and one for Sunday; a blanket to survive the cold that bites to the bone; and enough food not to starve. And if fortune smiles upon you, you finish your years of servitude without having brought a bastard into the world!
I still remember the final days of my childhood, while the elm trees were in full bloom, and our mother, Clara, gave birth to Giorgio. Life escaped from both of them after three days, and together they rest in the church of San Giorgio d'Ollastretto. That winter, the first snow, white and merciless, covered the third grave of our house, that of my father, Giovanni Canu. My two younger sisters found a home with their aunt Florenza and her husband, Antonio, who had only one son. My older brother and I were handed over to the Father of Orphans of Usini, Antonio Canu, who was also the majore of the Manor of Olmedo, where we were both indentured.
The first time I set foot in the rectory, the elm trees had lost their flowers, and I had lost my innocence, pouring it out in the last tears of a child that moistened my face on the way from Usini to Olmedo. I was eight years old.
On April 12, 1768, my life changed, and with it, my name: I became sa teracchedda de su Rettore. Only Reverend Felipe Lay did not forget it, and "Maria Teresa" had a sweet sound in his mouth.
Aunt Lucia had taken care of the house and the rector before my arrival; for some time, she had been asking for help. Don Felipe decided to entrust me to her. In a week, I learned everything, from preparing the wafers to mending jackets and cassocks.
When I indentured Maria Teresa, I had been the parish priest of Olmedo, a small village of seventy souls, for ten years. That year, the famine had produced a hunger that enveloped every body I buried. I carved a solemn promise into my soul: I would never again spend another year giving last rites to such wasted bodies. The Monte Frumentario (Grain Bank), with its loans of grain, had already driven away the specter of famine in other villages. After consulting the honest men of the village, I embarked on the long and tortuous bureaucratic path to obtain a license for the Monte Granatico (Granary Bank) from the diocese.
It was a slow and silent revolution that brought prosperity, causing life and the population to flourish, growing to a hundred souls in ten years.
The majore Antonio Canu, Father of Orphans in several villages, told me about the misfortune of his cousin from Usini, who died shortly after his wife. He had placed the youngest daughters with relatives, but the older children remained: Luigi, ten years old, and Maria Teresa, eight.
Luigi was immediately indentured to the shepherd Luca Virdis.
Maria Teresa would serve me for eleven years. I know well that we parish priests are recommended to have elderly maids to simplify carnal abstinence, but that trembling little sparrow, with her hair tied in a spelt-colored braid peeking out from a worn green cloth scarf with more patches than fabric, needed so much protection. She was tiny, with fawn-like eyes. But I soon discovered that behind that gaze lay a fox's curiosity and cunning. I found her a few days after her arrival at the rectory, caressing the pages of a book as if she wanted to hear the words with her hands. And she seemed to grasp the meaning, because as she did it, she laughed, with that marvelous smile that Saint Philip Neri must have had when writing it. I noticed she had no passion for other household objects, the ones that usually enchant young girls: canvases, lace, towels, earthenware dishes, or copper cauldrons. No, paper fascinated her. I didn't scold her. I left without being noticed and then called her.
I admit that, among all the indentured girls in the village, I was the most fortunate. I had my own bed, my wool mattress, the silent guardian of my dreams, my clean-scented linen sheets, and a blanket, and when the cold was most intense, I would curl up like a hedgehog under the covers with Don Felipe. We ate the food prepared each day together with the rector, something unthinkable for the other indentured girls of the village, whom I met weekly at the river to wash linens, or daily at the fonte de su mudeju to fetch water.
None of them had ever seen a book in the houses where they served.
When I first took one in my hands, opening it, I saw tiny birds flying without moving from the canvas where they were embroidered, an embroidery so fine that when my fingers passed over it, I felt the tickle of their thin feathers.
One day, Don Felipe called me while I was in his room and offered to help me understand the flight of those tiny birds by teaching me to read. It would be our secret.
I learned between Christmas and Easter.
I had seen and re-seen those tiny letters so many times that I knew every shape, and it was simple to discover the secret of words when the letters flew together. So I began to read the life of Saint Philip Neri, the saint of joy, and then all the other books. The rector would laugh heartily when I recounted my readings to him; he knew them well, but he enjoyed hearing them told by me.
The years passed, and the indenture was nearing its end. Don Felipe arranged my marriage to his sharecropper. The rector, now old, wanted to settle everything before closing his eyes forever.
The notary Salis arrived in the village on the first day of August 1778 to open the will of Don Felipe Lay.
"All that we have listed in the inventory belongs to the Monte Granatico, and you men of the council are its administrators, as well as the thirty thousand vine stocks, for which you will pay two rasieri of grain to Baron Amat, just as the good soul of Rector Lay always did." In the end, he added, "I leave the books to Maria Teresa Canu, who served me with great devotion for the eleven years of her indenture, as a dowry for her marriage to Giovanni Tinteri."
Georgia and Clara Tinteri, our daughters, learned to read with the books left by Don Lay and cultivated a passion for poetry, so much so that they composed the Sos Gosos de San Filippu Neri, which they sing every year on May 26th in the church in Thiesi dedicated to him.
Angela Simula.
