Simple Prayers

by Michael Golding

  One morning, about three weeks after the devastating storm, Giuseppe started out toward Puntalupa for what he called “the quick catch”: get there early, gather up a dozen in the first few hours, and hurry back to the island to stock the stalls, visit with the Vedova, or, in this case, help Gianluca with the reconstruction. When he reached the zone he'd aimed for, however, he found that the current had shifted and that the water was icier than the water close to home. So he continued south — past Terra del Pozzo di Luna, past Pescatorno and Murano, and even past Venezia herself — until he found a warmer region just north of Chioggia, where he dropped anchor and set up his poles.

  The catch was as easy as any he could remember; the fish practically hurled themselves out of the water and over the side of his boat. By the time the first glow of light had begun to spread on the horizon, his little net was full, and he began to make his way back north.

  Although it was not his home, the southern part of the lagoon was not unfamiliar to him. A lifetime of fishing had given him contact with nearly every patch of land that showed above the surface. One tiny groundswell was something of a haven to him: a shelf of rock that rose so gradually from the water, one could ease one's boat upon it and dock without using a rope. Many times Giuseppe had stopped there, pulled up his rig, and climbed out to sit like a happy pelican, his toes in the water, looking out over the lagoon.

  Today, as he neared that groundswell, he gave an unconscious nod to the figure sitting just as he himself had sat so many times before. But it was not until he had almost passed it by that he realized that there was no boat beside the figure, and that it was not so much sitting as lying slumped on its side. The morning light was still faint and gauzelike, but when he came to within arm's length of the body, Giuseppe could see that it was swollen with death, and that where its clothes were shredded open it was covered with hideous black sores.

  Easing his boat back out into the water, he dumped his entire morning's catch over the side. Then he headed back to Riva di Pignoli, grateful that such a thing was occurring well away from home and eager to see how he might best forget it.

  THROUGHOUT THE BITTER WEEKS of building, Valentina and Piarina remained sheltered inside their hovel — for from the moment Valentina had scooped up the injured girl and carried her home to the low bed made of straw and pigeon feathers, she became as mute and immobile as the storm-tossed, star-crossed child. While Piarina lay on the ravaged bedding, eyes open and body rigid, Valentina sat on the cold dirt floor twisted up in a fisherman's knot. She rose only to stumble to the hearth and either crush down some peas or slice a few onions to make a thin brodo corto to keep them both alive. Once a day she would raise Piarina's head and feed her tasteless mouthfuls of the warm, watery gruel, forcing herself to take a few spoonfuls too before she returned to the dirt and slipped back into her rope knot. What stunned her, what froze her in place, was the awful awareness that, even as her child lay gravely ill, her desire to beat her was every bit as strong as it had ever been. The only thing that had changed was the awareness: suddenly, like Piarina, she saw her impulses and was horrified by them. So she sat in the dirt and stared at the wall, afraid that if she went about her chores, she might forget herself and whack the sickly child into death.

  Piarina, whose already wispy hair had begun to shed and whose body temperature fluctuated between smoldering heat and trembling cold, made no attempt to rouse herself from her stupor. She was convinced that her murderous fantasies had finally gone beyond her control — that the terrible storm that had toppled the campanìl had come because she'd prayed that it might fall on Valentina. So she lay on the bed, sometimes shivering, sometimes sweating, and tried not to move even a toe for fear that it might bring the roof crashing in.

  They remained that way for over a month, growing thinner and weaker as the broth-filled days passed by. The people of Riva di Pignoli noticed their absence, but as long as a few ribbons of smoke continued to issue from their chimney, they figured it was best not to question their habits. They might have stayed that way, in silence and fear, until they'd wasted down to a pair of glowing skeletons, had it not been for Ermenegilda. One morning in early February, she was sitting at her loom staring dejectedly at the dozens of boxes Albertino had sent her, when Romilda Rosetta suddenly entered with a pitcher of fig juice and a plate of sarde in saor.

  “I'e brought you something special!” announced Romilda Rosetta.

  “I don't want it,” said Ermenegilda. “Take it away.”

  Albertino's plan to send Ermenegilda his boxes had tragically misfired: having given him most of them herself, she received them back as a blunt declaration of the end of his affections. After tying him to a flagpole and casting him from a third-floor window, Ermenegilda could not bring herself to challenge his decision; so she sat before the stack of boxes and refused the food that Romilda Rosetta tried daily to get her to eat.

  “It's half-past one,” said Romilda Rosetta. “You know what you promised: one meal at half-past one, and I won't tell your mother you haven't been eating the rest of the day.”

  Romilda Rosetta was amazed to find herself actually encouraging Ermenegilda to eat; for years she'd watched the enormous girl devour whatever was placed before her with unbounded glee. In the past six weeks, however, Ermenegilda had lost that extra layer of fat that made her still seem childlike, and Romilda Rosetta was afraid that if she stopped eating altogether, she would soon be out of a job.

  “It can't be half-past one,” said Ermenegilda. “It's not even mezzogiorno.”

  “I'm sorry,” said Romilda Rosetta, laying down the pitcher and plate before her. “But the sundial shows half-past one. I can bring it here and set it by the window if you don't believe me.”

  “Don't bother,” said Ermenegilda, poking through the onions to count the number of sardelle on her plate. “When are they going to finish that stupid tower? And start ringing those stupid bells?”

  “I think they'e working as fast as they can,” said Romilda Rosetta. “And besides — no one's seen that little girl who rings them since the storm.”

  Ermenegilda had just picked up a sarda by the tail — and there it dangled, dripping with sauce, as she froze at Romilda Rosetta's words. For close to a year she'd repressed her longing for Piarina while she'd busied herself with gaining revenge on Albertino. With what she now perceived as his ultimate rejection in hand, she shrank at the possibility of her little friend being in danger.

  “Piarina?” she said.

  “That's it. The one you used to like to visit.”

  Ermenegilda virtually leapt from the loom — sending spindles and bobbins and sarde in saor flying out toward the west wall tapestry — and fled across the island to the shabby hovel where Valentina and Piarina remained fixed. When she threw open the door the light revealed a dusty mausoleum with a pair of seeming corpses in its grasp — but Ermenegilda knew the flavor of despair as well as she knew the flavor of pignoli, and her sturdy heart was not remotely fooled.

  “What's going on here?” she demanded.

  Valentina and Piarina were so startled by the intrusion, they each turned a double hand's span toward the sudden light. But while Piarina remained paralyzed in her new position, Valentina turned instantly back toward the darkness — forcing Ermenegilda to go to her side and force her into an explanation.

  She muttered about the storm, about “curses” and “magic,” she rapped her wooden stump against the floor and shouted, “Una, do, tre, quÀ tro, cinque!” — until finally Ermenegilda left them and went back to the Ca’Torta, where she gathered up as much food as she could carry and threw it into one of the wheelbarrows from the rose garden, along with Albertino's boxes — the cask of ivory, the coffer of pewter, the chest of cherrywood, the caddy of quartz. Then she headed back to the broken hovel where her fragile friend lay perched between life and death.

  For the next few weeks she kept vigil over the child, feeding her pickled dove and fegato alle erbe and slender strips of roasted goa
t with cherry sauce. In addition to that she strewed the hut with Albertino's gorgeous boxes, placing some upon the hearth and some upon the soap table, some in the straw and one at each corner of Piarina's bed. Finally, on the morning of the nineteenth day of Ermenegilda's succor, while Valentina puttered in the corner with a few cakes of soda soap and Ermenegilda stood over the hearth heating up a sopa di tutti mar, Piarina bolted up in her bed and began crying out in frenzy.

  “A clump of chervil … a handful of dill … an owl's intestines … an ostrich plume … a bead of coriander … a bee's turd … a velvet glove … a gram of goat's blood …”

  Ermenegilda dropped her ladle; Valentina dropped her knife; together they turned to where the cacophony of cures came streaming.

  “A licorice stick … a basin of bile … an ox tongue … a sweet-sugar cake. …”

  Piarina seemed fully restored to her former vitality. But fear still lurked in the dark corners of the hovel, and neither Ermenegilda nor Valentina had the slightest clue as to what she was trying to cure.

  BY MID-FEBRUARY, Miriam's baby was ready to be born. The people of the village didn't know this; had they bothered to count, they would not have been expecting the child before March or April, believing it to have been conceived sometime after Miriam's arrival. But everyone was too busy working to worry about counting, so when Miriam announced that the pressure in her abdomen had become so great that she feared she was going to explode, the only reaction was that it was time to start readying the swaddling clothes.

  Word of the impending birth soon spread across the village. Maria Luigi began stitching fabrics together to make a coverlet for the cradle. The Vedova Scarpa began sending bowls of soup through the gradually thinning fog. And at the site of the reconstruction, where the campanìl and the campo were slowly creeping back to life, the villagers began to quarrel over how to best determine when the long awaited moment would arrive.

  “When it's cloudy for two days,” said Siora Bertinelli, “then sunny for a day, then cloudy again. The baby will be born before nightfall.”

  “When she starts craving salt,” said Siora Guarnieri, “and her feet begin to tingle.”

  “When the geese start coming to her door,” said Anna Rizzardello.

  But the Vedova Stampanini, who had had more experience with childbirth than probably anyone else in the lagoon, knew precisely how to predict when it would happen.

  “As long as it still hurts, you'e not ready. When the pain goes away — when you suddenly feel fine again — that's the sign. You'l deliver within two days.”

  Miriam had moved in with the Vedova Stampanini for the last weeks of her term — into the room, and the bed, where Gianluca usually slept. Gianluca, to accommodate her, moved back out to Albertino's, but Miriam could feel him with her as the birth drew near. His musky odor permeated the straw, his strong laughter lingered in the air like the fog lingered over the footpaths. She would not have admitted it to anyone, but his presence at this delicate time was a source of nourishment to her.

  As the birth approached, Miriam began to sense that the arrival of the baby would finally take away her longing. The glow came so regularly now, she could not imagine it disappearing; it seemed only logical that the baby would replace it and that the aching inside her would finally be satisfied.

  Around the third week in February Miriam announced the lightening of pressure that the Vedova had described, and almost instantly the hovel began to fill with women. They came from all over the island to see that the necessary precautions were taken to insure a safe birth. Siora Scabbri applied a sponge, soaked in morel, mulberries, and mandrake root, to Miriam's forehead to help her sleep; Maria Luigi gave her sage juice to drink to ease her into delivery; the Vedova Scarpa stood guard outside the hovel to prevent spirits from entering to snatch the newborn child. Miriam had never had La Pica — that strange craving for spicy sauces or salty cheese or tiny pieces of coal — but now, as her labor approached, she suddenly could not get her fill of sopa d'osei. Maria Patrizia Lunardi had to coax Ugolino Ramponi to set up a series of special nets to catch the fleet and tender birds, while the Vedova Scarpa worked well into the night stirring them into a fine broth of roots and herbs. Miriam always stacked the bones in a neat pile beside her pillow, which Siora Scabbri removed when she fell asleep and placed in the garden for the cats.

  On the morning of the second day after the lightening of the pressure, Miriam awoke from a horrifying dream in which she'd given birth to a child with a pair of bright blue wings. She was so disturbed that the Vedova Stampanini had to brew a vat of mulled wine to sedate her, and it was as the Vedova sat by the hearth, stabbing dried figs with cloves to drop into the cauldron, that Armida Barbon suddenly cried out that the process had begun.

  “L'aqua!” she shouted as Miriam's waters soaked the bed linens. “It could start any time now!”

  The hovel swiftly prepared itself for action. Siora Scabbri began rubbing an ointment of chamomile and verbena on Miriam's belly; Maria Luigi loosened Miriam's hair; Armida Barbon ran about the hovel opening doors and drawers and cupboards to encourage the opening of Miriam. By late morning the contractions had begun — from the way Miriam grasped the Vedova Stampanini's hand, the old woman knew that the pain was tremendous, but Miriam did not let out so much as a whimper. For the remainder of the afternoon, as the pains came and went, she slept and read and sat propped up on pillows, helping the Vedova pierce dried winter fruit with spice.

  Around dusk the women helped her from the bed and began walking her, in small circles, about the hovel. The pressure grew stronger; there was less and less time between contractions. And as her body hurtled forward toward the moment of release, Miriam suddenly began to fear for her baby.

  “I'm frightened,” she whispered to the Vedova Stampanini as Siora Scabbri and Maria Luigi began to rub her arms and legs with clover oil.

  “It's normal,” said the Vedova. “Your body's about to do something it's never done before.”

  “My baby's going to die!” she cried. “It's going to be born with a pair of bright blue wings and die!”

  “If that's what God decides, cara, there's nothing you can do to prevent it. But it's not going to help your labor to keep thinking about it.”

  “I have to think about it,” she said as she gripped the Vedova's hand more fiercely. “Tell me. Tell me so I can survive it.”

  “Keep moving, Miriam,” said Siora Scabbri. “It's getting close now.”

  “What do you mean, child?” asked the Vedova Stampanini.

  “Your children. Tell me how you lost them.”

  “We have to move her to the stool,” said Maria Luigi. “The pains are coming faster.”

  “It's not the time, cara,” said the Vedova. “I'l tell you about it after.”

  “No!” cried Miriam as the three women led her to the birthing stool. “I want to know now. Tell me now — so I have the strength to face it if it comes.”

  As Maria Luigi and Siora Scabbri helped lower Miriam upon the stool, the Vedova Stampanini let go of her hand and clasped her bony arms about her waist. She stared off into the distance as if she were trying to visualize the separate sections of a huge tapestry that time had torn to shreds. Then she drew a deep breath that seemed to weave the pieces back together again, and spoke.

  “First there was Bernardo. He had a thick head of curls and a cry that woke the entire village. The cry lasted six days; so did Bernardo. We buried him before the sound was out of the roof beams.”

  Miriam gripped the two women's hands as she went into another contraction.

  “Spingi!” cried Maria Luigi.

  “Tommaso was next. He lasted a whole year. Time enough for six teeth, three chins, and a wonderful fat bottom. I used to love to pinch that bottom — I'd sing,‘Tommaso, Tommaso, a baby made of clay!’He was bit by a rat. Six times, in his bed. He died within the hour.”

  “Spingi!” cried Siora Scabbri.

  “Next came a spate of girls. GiovÀna, wi
th her black shining hair, who died of San Vitus’dance when she was four. Isabella, so delicate and frail, who couldn't stand the harsh winters. And Laura — such a strange child, with a bubbling laugh one minute and a face to the floor the next — who simply announced one Pentecost that she was through with eating and was gone before Tutti Santi.”

  “La testa!” cried Maria Luigi as the head began to crown. “Spingi, Miriam! Spingi!”

  Miriam's body was now bathed in sweat, her gown unfastened, her face clenched tightly with her efforts.

  “That's enough,” said the Vedova. “You have to concentrate now.”

  “Tell me all of it,” gasped Miriam. “Please — tell me the rest.”

  The Vedova cast a glance at Maria Luigi, who shrugged, and Siora Scabbri, who nodded, so she closed her eyes and continued on.

  “Egidio came next. He lasted the longest. Sixteen winters to watch the baby become a boy and the boy become a man. To watch the tiny hand I used to hold between my finger and thumb grow big enough to swing a sledgehammer. It was hardest to lose Egidio — we'd given ourselves over to him. And all from a bad tooth —”

  “Spingi!”

  “But then Mario and Agosto were difficult, too. Drowned in the lagoon. That was when I began to accept it. That was when I stopped sitting in the garden eating bitter herbs and crying myself to sleep at night.”

  “It's coming,” cried Maria Luigi. “Don't stop now!”

  “Go on,” panted Miriam. “Go on.”

  “The next to last was Orlandino. Stillborn. His father didn't even want to name him, but after nine months inside me I knew him as well as I'd known the others, so I insisted.”