Simple Prayers (19 page)

“She wants to see you,” said the Vedova. “She wants you to go visit her at the henhouse.”

Gianluca didn't answer, but from the way he shifted his tights the Vedova had little doubt that he would go.

Gianluca had a problem. After months and months of ignoring
Il BastÒn
in pious devotion to Miriam, he was nearly mad with the excess energy that flooded his system. He had not been with a woman in close to six months, his longest period of abstinence since his first encounter with Maria Patrizia Lunardi at the age of fourteen. As a result,
Il BostÒn
was at a constant state of attention, and Gianluca's only recourse — if he wished to show himself on the Calle Alberi Grandi without causing people to drop their teeth in the mud — was to strap it tight against his left leg with a sturdy piece of muslin and dare anyone to cast their gaze below his waist.

Now, however, as he crossed the island on his way to Siora Scabbri's henhouse, Gianluca worried that a confrontation with Miriam might make him burst his fetters. Like Piero, he had not spoken to her since the
pranzo della vendemia,
and like Piero, he was absolutely certain that his rival was the father of her child. The difference was that where Piero accepted his speculations with a valiant resignation, Gianluca found his own assumptions maddening. To think that she had been with Piero, to imagine that she now carried his child, came as close as anything could possibly come to driving him insane.

When he reached the yard where Siora Scabbri's hens roamed free, he was stopped by the smell of chamomile and spearmint leaf; as he pushed open the gate and entered the yard, he found Miriam, in a clean apron with her hair gathered off her face, pouring the contents of a kettle into a series of shallow bowls.

“Do you serve them black bread and
conserva di pesca
as well?” he said.

Miriam smiled but did not turn; even without looking at him she was overwhelmed by the power of his sensuality. “It's for their stomachs,” she said. “It makes the eggs taste sweeter.”

Gianluca watched as she filled each of the bowls half-full and then, bit by bit, with a pinewood ladle, added water from the well bucket. When she was satisfied that it was cool enough, she stood, wiped her hands against her apron, and turned to face him.

“Thank you for coming,” she said.

Gianluca bowed his head somewhat formally.

“I trust your work at the market is going well?”

“My brother had a small accident. He broke his leg. I expect to be quite busy until he's better.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“He'l be all right,” said Gianluca.

Miriam knelt down to take up the kettle, the bucket, and the ladle, which she'd laid at her feet, and then carry them to an open shed near the rear of Siora Scabbri's hovel. Then she gathered some dry crusts of bread inside her apron and returned to where Gianluca was standing.

“I wanted to speak with you about what I said at the
pranzo.
”

“About your baby, you mean.”

“About my baby. Yes.” She reached into her apron as she spoke, crumbling the crusts into tiny pieces and scattering them to the hens. “The people here have been good to me. But my baby doesn't‘belong’to Riva di Pignoli. Not yet. I'm hoping you'l help me overcome that.”

“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

T
HE 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.