Simple Prayers

by Michael Golding

  “How do you mean?”

  Miriam paused for a moment — and then proceeded to ask Gianluca the same thing she'd asked Piero: to put aside his anger and jealousy and share in the fatherhood of her child. Where Piero's response had been surprise, however, Gianluca's was utter amazement.

  “You can't be serious,” he said. “You can't really be asking this.”

  “You told me you wanted to find your soul. What better way than to care for a child?”

  “A child can't have two fathers. It's ridiculous. It's insulting.”

  “I'm asking for your help, Gianluca. I'm asking for your blessing.”

  “My blessing,” he snarled. “Mine and Piero's.”

  As Gianluca said Piero's name, Miriam understood what he thought: that she had slept with Piero and that the baby inside her was his. In that moment she realized that Piero thought the same thing about Gianluca, and that the entire island most likely believed that one or the other of them was the father of her child. It had not occurred to her that by waiting so long to tell the people of Riva di Pignoli that she was pregnant, they would assume she had become so after her arrival upon their island. Yet as she stood there now, alone in the hen yard with Gianluca, Miriam saw no reason to tell them otherwise. She was going to have a baby, and perhaps it was better if the people of Riva di Pignoli believed it was one of their own.

  “I want you to be a father to my child; to teach it, to help guide it, to love it. Is that so much to ask?”

  Gianluca measured the look of innocence upon her face against the restless throbbing of Il BostÒn. He tried to gauge the love in her eyes, a love that offered to lift him beyond his jealousy to a place of peaceful acceptance. But the thought that Piero had been with her — had known the sweetness that he himself had been too dazzled to reach for — was like the diamond-edged blade of the hangman's ax slicing cleanly between passion and reason.

  “No,” he said. “It's impossible.”

  “Gianluca —”

  “No! I won't even consider it!”

  And before Miriam could dissuade him, he ran out of the henhouse and across the fields like a pheasant marked for supper.

  For the rest of the day, Gianluca threw himself into his labor. He hacked at the soil where the fennel would be planted, pitched late November apples into the baskets of startled customers — in short, did all he could think of to vent the fever that burned inside him. And when the day had ended, and the energy was still as strong as when he had just started out, he knew that he would have to find a way to keep it away from Miriam. So while Albertino lay in his bed at the Vedova Stampanini's, Gianluca set up quarters across the water in Albertino's room.

  With the wind on his face. And the dead for neighbors. And that slim width of water to keep him from his desire and his rage.

  FAUSTO MORETTI could feel that rage when he passed Albertino's room on his way to the cemetery. He was going to visit the grave of his wife, Brunella, who had died from a ruptured spleen some thirty years earlier, when a blast of cold wind rose up from the stones and spat at him across the radicchio patch. For a moment he paused and looked over the wall to the rumpled blankets Gianluca had lately slept on; then he hurried to the graveyard to place a cluster of sweet william on the muddy spot where only memory and a few bones remained.

  Fausto never failed to visit Brunella's grave on the anniversary of her death; he wore the same gray tunic, which had grown tighter and tighter over the years, and he always sprinkled a little hyssop and hornbeam in his beard. Fausto's beard was extraordinary: it started up under his eyes and ran down, in a great, white waterfall, to just below his belly. He felt that it lent him an air of mystery; he'd seen detailed engravings from Constantinople of wise men with facial tresses not half as elegant as his. He even believed that it was on account of his beard that Miriam had chosen to live with him and Maria Luigi.

  When he reached the grave he placed the sweet william at the foot of the marker and then sat on the ground and began recounting the events of the past year. This took a bit longer than usual, as he had the remarkable spring and the arrival of Miriam and the discovery of Miriam's condition to add to the old quarrels and new kittens that peppered his annual report. There had been no births — except for the kittens — and the only death had been Vincenzo Bassetti, who had been buried the previous January just a few paces down and a bit to the south of Brunella's narrow plot. Fausto had considered leaving something on Vincenzo's grave, as they had often played cards together and had known each other since they were boys, but he knew that Brunella would be wildly angry if he spent his visit with anyone else but her (including his mother, who was buried beside Arriguccio Forbi, and his sister, who was somewhere near the Furian family, though he could not quite remember where).

  It had been early afternoon when Fausto had left the main island to cross over to the floating graveyard; by the time he was ready to leave, the sun was half-sunk in the watery embrace of the lagoon. The light was so muted as he moved toward the gate that he almost did not notice the freshly dug mound lying snug between Sineraldo Saccardi and Apollonia Ambrosiana Barbon. When he stepped closer to the south wall, however, the signs were unmistakable: someone had been buried within the month.

  He clasped the ends of his flowing beard and tugged down sharply. How could there be a grave without a body? How could there be a body if no one had died? Yet there was the fresh gravesite, as plain as could be, sitting hushed in the fading light. He returned to his boat and started back across the water. When he reached the main shore he was greeted by a thin, spectral cry.

  “A boar's head … a bowl of mashed chickpeas … a potful of phlegm stirred lightly in the morning mist. …”

  He knew Piarina's voice as he knew the flatness of the bed that he lay down to sleep on each evening. Yet coupled with the inexplicable grave, it sent a flash of fear down his spine. It was nowhere near Brunella, not even close to Arriguccio Forbi, and on the other side of the cemetery from the Furian family. Yet something in his heart could not help but feel that the grave he had just discovered was his own.

  Chapter 11

  THE AUTUMN RAN out like the rivers of rain that gushed from the roof gutters of the Ca’Torta. As the days grew shorter, the villagers began to prepare for both the coming of winter and the celebration of the birth of their Savior. Siora Bertinelli began making stufoli and ambrosina and pan di Natale; you could smell the delicate fragrance of milk and almonds from almost anywhere on the island. Romilda Rosetta began her annual practice of quietly clenching a prickly soursop in either fist; she hoped to create the impression of stigmata by at least the beginning of Advent. Maria Luigi began tying up bundles of sage and tarragon to nail to the villagers’doors. Even Piarina seemed to adopt a holiday air — her cures were filled with the sweetmeats of the season, and the Vedova Scarpa was convinced she was actually leading up to a spectacular recipe for pan casalin.

  Work on the new campo continued with speed and precision; the coming of Christmas seemed to add a touch of glee to the islanders’toil. As Piero's dark vision began to reveal itself, however, the people of Riva di Pignoli became concerned. Maria Luigi let out a shriek when she discovered she was laying the tiles for a newt's tail. Siora Guarnieri had to lie down in the Chiesa di Maria del Mare when she found she was working on the triple penis of a grinning, two-headed dragon. The villagers had faith in Piero's piety, but more than a few of them worried that this time he had gone too far.

  Piarina stared past the devils that were forming below her with the same vacant intensity with which she looked beyond everything. The murderous schemes that had driven her from her bed still danced their goblin fugue inside her brain. Yet now that she had settled into her perch upon the campanìl, they mingled with tender day-dreams of Ermenegilda. She imagined that she and her former friend were the only ones left on the island. She imagined them laughing and swimming, playing hiding games along the banks of the canals, sleeping curled in each other's arms like a pair of cats. The
only time she left these fancies was when Piero brought her her breakfast, when her woeful heart urged her to either ring the bells or call out another cure, and when Valentina appeared at the base of the tower to torment her.

  “Six cakes a day, Piarina! That's how much you'e costing me — six cakes a day for forty-seven days now. That's two hundred eighty-two cakes, Piarina! Two hundred eighty-two today, two hundred eighty-eight tomorrow, two hundred ninety-four the next day — are you listening, Piarina? Do you hear what I'm saying?”

  Piarina gave no answer — in her dreams she was on a cushion before a fire in the drawing room of the Ca’Torta counting the sparks that flashed as she tossed pomegranate seeds into the flames.

  “Because someday you'l come down, Piarina. Someday you'l get fed up with being an undernourished nest for birds and you'l come crawling down the side of that thing and come back to my door to beg for shelter — and you know what I'l give you?”

  Piarina saw the door to the drawing room open — she saw Valentina enter and move toward the fire — and she felt the sting of her hard, horrible hand upon her body.

  “Two hundred eighty-two!” cried Valentina as she slammed against the side of the campanìl. “Two hundred eighty-eight! Two hundred ninety-four!”

  Piarina knew that she was safe. Valentina might assail her with a thousand whacks, but with only one hand and a worn-out heart she could never climb up to get her. She nevertheless managed, through wood and stone and iron, to feel each and every one of her mother's blows.

  Piero was too busy working on the statue for the campo to take note of Valentina's tyranny. As the centerpiece of the new village center, it demanded his finest, most focused energies. Yet even though he'd worked upon it steadily while building the campanìl, while designing the campo, while following Miriam and laying the tiles and reburying the decaying corpse, it was only now, when all the rest of those tasks were very nearly done, that he turned his full attention upon the statue.

  Miriam, in a cloud of light. Miriam, daubed with honey, dusted with dry snow, naked, breasts shining, arms floating, eyes glistening.

  It wasn't going to be easy. It was going to require more concentration, more talent and inspiration, than anything Piero had ever done. And no matter how glorious it might seem when it was finally unveiled on the morning of Epiphany, the only thing Piero felt absolutely sure of was that Gianluca was not going to like it at all.

  MIRIAM SPENT much of the month knitting a blanket for her baby, a blanket made of bright, iridescent seaweed. She'd been out one morning for a walk along the eastern shore when she came upon a great deposit of the stuff, its slick green tendrils snaking in toward her feet. When she bent down to touch it, it felt wonderfully strong, so she gathered up as much of it as she could and carried it back to Maria Luigi's hovel.

  Miriam had tried doing countless things to win back the affections of the people of Riva di Pignoli. She took water to the Guarnieris when their well ran dry. She brought fennel cakes to Armida Barbon when she came down with the grippe. She worked extra hours at the henhouse, she read scriptures to the Vedova Stampanini, she swept the Calle Alberi Grandi from its southernmost tip to where it ran out past the Rizzardellos’salt shed. But eventually she realized that those who had truly taken her into their hearts were not going to turn her out because she was expecting a child, and those who were inclined to judge her were not going to change their minds no matter what she might do.

  Miriam accepted these judgments — and reaffirmed her desire for self-sufficiency. But as Christmas approached, she found herself returning to thoughts of Piero and Gianluca. Her plan to ask them both to father her child had backfired; Gianluca's rage had shown her that she was tampering with dangerous emotions. What confused her, however, was the complexity of her own emotions: she found herself thinking of Piero one day and Gianluca the next, when she did not wish to be thinking of either one of them.

  So she sat before her altar and knitted her blanket. Maria Luigi insisted that it could not be done. Seaweed turns brittle when left out of water, how could a pile of dried grass keep a baby warm? But Miriam's seaweed did not turn brittle as it dried. It turned into soft, ropelike strands that felt like goose-feather down and held like links of iron. While the villagers followed the feast of San Nicolo and the celebration of Santa Lucia, Miriam knitted her blanket for her baby. So that no matter how few or how many fathers it had, it would always be warm, and always be safe, and always belong to the sea.

  A QUIET JUBILATION built throughout the month. There was more eating than usual, more laughter, more song. Yet it was only when the Novena began, those nine nights before Christmas, that the joyfulness spilled through the cracked chimney pots and spread out over the fields and docks and canals. It was as if the spirit of Saturnalia still buzzed in the air: that atmosphere of blissful, giddy abandon. The Vedova Scarpa and Armida Barbon walked up and down the Calle Alberi Grandi singing shepherds’carols. Ugolino Ramponi and Armando Guarnieri tied their livestock to a series of posts behind the Chiesa di Maria del Mare to create the mangerlike effect of a presepio. Candles were placed in the hovel windows; torches were lit by the docks; tarragon and bay laurel were burned in the hearths to send a musky perfume out over the island.

  The Christmas revelry even penetrated the walls of the Ca’Torta. Enrico managed to remain in Verona for the better part of the month, but he sent partridges and pheasants, enameled vials of perfume, and enough silks and satins to make holiday gowns for Orsina, Ermenegilda, and the three Marias. The women of the Ca’Torta were planning a Christmas Eve celebration. Each of the girls was to invite an available member of Venetian society to an elaborate midnight supper. But while Orsina and the three Marias sat together in the main salone trying to choose among the span of wealthy bachelors, Ermenegilda sat propped before her loom in a state of despair. Ermenegilda had found that her recent acts of enmity toward Albertino were not nearly as satisfying as she had anticipated. It had been different when he had ignored her and rebuffed her; she cherished the destruction of the vegetables as one of the high points of her life. But ever since their encounter in San Marco, when his bitter indifference had been transformed into uninhibited yearning, she found that her attempts at humiliation and revenge left an acrid, unpleasant aftertaste. So unpleasant, in fact, she could not eat the ringlike breakfast pastries that lay stacked before her on the loom — nor the sopa di ghiozzo, nor the pheasant with cinnamon sauce, nor the special Advent cake Romilda Rosetta had brought her from Siora Bertinelli. Her appetite had become as erratic as her emotions: she would eat and not eat, starve herself and gorge herself, and had little control over whether she did either one.

  Now, while her mother and sisters were conferring about the selection of suitors and the choosing of fabrics for the dresses they would wear, she sat propped behind the loom playing games with her vegetable dolls. Ermenegilda had fashioned tiny likenesses of Albertino, Piarina, and herself from the vegetables she once set flame to. There was not much to work with in mid-December, but she managed to gather some carrots, a few turnips, some dried figs, and a handful of beans and lentils and worked them into vegetable versions of herself and her two loves. She spent hours creating fantasies between them, not unlike the fantasies of Piarina atop the tower: she and Albertino selecting furniture for their country villa; she and Piarina taking boat rides about the lagoon; the three of them chasing peacocks across the garden of the Ca’Torta. They were always gentle and kind with each other, and the Ermenegilda doll always went to great lengths to see that the Albertino doll and the Piarina doll were happy.

  Today they were out hawking, the Ermenegilda doll graciously allowing the others to take their turns first. Their play was so pleasant that Ermenegilda tried to extend its contentment into reality by reaching for something to eat. When she lifted the nearby miel-pignole pastry to her lips, however, its sweet fragrance nauseated her, and she was reminded of the falseness of her game. She was grateful when Romilda Rosetta's rap on the door interrupted her
.

  “Your mother is waiting for you,” she called through the door. “I told her you'd be right down.”

  Ordinarily Ermenegilda would trounce the tiny maid for saying anything that went against her will. But she was so relieved to avoid the taste of the pastry, she thanked her and went down to join the others.

  The four women were engrossed in discussion when Ermenegilda entered the room.

  “What about the Count Capocchio?” said Maria Seconda as she held a bolt of lemon silk up to the light.

  “Too vain,” said Maria Prima. “All he ever talks about is himself and that ridiculous villa he has in Favaro.”

  “I'm inviting Francesco Montanaldo,” said Maria Terza as she tested the strength of a rippled chiffon between her clenched fists.

  “Francesco Montanaldo!” cried Maria Seconda. “He'l never come to Riva di Pignoli!”

  “Oh, yes, he will. Papa arranged for him to borrow twenty thousand florins from a bank in Siena on the condition that he be my dinner companion.”

  “Papa always makes the best arrangements for you,” said Maria Prima, tossing down a bolt of turquoise satin. “I hate being the oldest; everyone expects me to do everything myself!”

  “Stop it!” said Orsina. “Your father has never failed any one of you yet — at least when it comes to coercing people to dinner. Have a seat, Ermenegilda. There's a case of fabric by the fireplace that hasn't been opened yet.”

  Ermenegilda took a place in the circle and began absent-mindedly fingering a bit of gold-and-cerulean brocade.

  “Then I'm inviting Teobaldo Spumi,” continued Maria Seconda.

  “Teobaldo Spumi!” cried Maria Prima.

  “And I just might tie him to one of the supporting columns in the androne and never let him leave.”

  Ermenegilda winced at Maria Seconda's words; her fantasy about trussing up her dinner guest brought painful memories to her mind.