The Witch of Portobello Page 0,11

the church isn't really the appropriate place for that, she used to bring her guitar each morning and spend some time there singing to the Holy Virgin before going off to her classes.

Chapter Two

I can still remember the first time I heard her. I'd just finished celebrating morning mass with the few parishioners prepared to get up that early on a winter's morning, when I realised that I'd forgotten to collect the money left in the offering box. When I went back in, I heard some music that made me see everything differently, as if the atmosphere had been touched by the hand of an angel. In one corner, in a kind of ecstasy, a young woman of about twenty sat playing her guitar and singing hymns of praise, with her eyes fixed on the statue of the Holy Virgin.

I went over to the offering box. She noticed my presence and stopped what she was doing, but I nodded to her, encouraging her to go on. Then I sat down on one of the pews, closed my eyes and listened.

At that moment, a sense of Paradise, of 'possession by the sacred', seemed to descend from the heavens. As if she understood what was going on in my heart, the young woman began to intersperse music with silence. Each time she stopped playing, I would say a prayer. Then the music would start up again.

And I was conscious that I was experiencing something unforgettable, one of those magical moments which we only understand when it has passed. I was entirely in the present, with no past, no future, absorbed in experiencing the morning, the music, the sweetness and the unexpected prayer. I entered a state of worship and ecstasy and gratitude for being in the world, glad that I'd followed my vocation despite my family's opposition. In the simplicity of that small chapel, in the voice of that young woman, in the morning light flooding everything, I understood once again that the grandeur of God reveals itself through simple things.

After many tears on my part and after what seemed to me an eternity, the young woman stopped playing. I turned round and realised that she was one of my parishioners. After that, we became friends, and whenever we could, we shared in that worship through music.

However, the idea of marriage took me completely by surprise. Since we knew each other fairly well, I asked how she thought her husband's family would react.

'Badly, very badly.'

As tactfully as I could, I asked if, for any reason, she was being forced into marriage.

'No, I'm still a virgin. I'm not pregnant.'

I asked if she'd told her own family, and she said that she had, and that their reaction had been one of horror, accompanied by tears from her mother and threats from her father.

'When I come here to praise the Virgin with my music, I'm not bothered about what other people might think, I'm simply sharing my feelings with Her. And that's how it's always been, ever since I was old enough to think for myself. I'm a vessel in which the Divine Energy can make itself manifest. And that energy is asking me now to have a child, so that I can give it what my birth mother never gave me: protection and security.'

'No one is secure on this Earth,' I replied. She still had a long future ahead of her; there was plenty of time for the miracle of creation to occur. However, Athena was determined:

'St Therese didn't rebel against the illness that afflicted her, on the contrary, she saw it as a sign of God's Glory. St Therese was only fifteen, much younger than me, when she decided to enter a convent. She was forbidden to do so, but she insisted. She decided to go and speak to the Pope himself can you imagine? To speak to the Pope! And she got what she wanted. That same Glory is asking something far simpler and far more generous of me to become a mother. If I wait much longer, I won't be able to be a companion to my child, the age difference will be too great, and we won't share the same interests.'

She wouldn't be alone in that, I said.

But Athena continued as if she wasn't listening:

'I'm only happy when I think that God exists and is listening to me; but that isn't enough to go on living, when nothing seems to make sense. I pretend a happiness I don't feel;