Simple Prayers Page 2

  “Maybe you could try flirting.”

  “Flirting?”

  “You know — the way you do. Women can't resist it, Gianluca. And don't forget that Nature is a woman.”

  Gianluca, as the Vedova well knew, was a lover. Tall and handsome, with thick black hair and dark, glistening eyes, he strode down the Calle Alberi Grandi with a look of sated self-satisfaction on his face. One corner of his mouth was always inclined toward the slightest of smiles, one hand was always at his crotch: checking, shifting, squeezing a little life into its roots. Gianluca's penis was commonly referred to as II BastÒn, and everyone on Riva di Pignoli was familiar with its astonishing length. The men had seen it in summer when they went swimming in the cove behind Giuseppe Navo's boat — from the time he was twelve Gianluca had cowed them, from youngest to oldest, into a long, admiring line behind him. The women had seen it by candlelight in the tight quarters of his tiny room; none of them would admit to having been with him, but each communicated an embarrassed warmth when she passed him in the street. Most nights, however, Gianluca brought women from the other islands to his room. It was suggested by more than a few of his former conquests that, more than anything else, he enjoyed the fresh look of awe on their faces as they watched him disrobe.

  “I don't think that can bring the spring,” said Gianluca.

  “You never know,” said the Vedova. “With the right inflection, something just might come up.”

  At eighty-three, the Vedova Stampanini had failed to taste Gianluca's charms herself; but she enjoyed the idea of all this lovemaking going on under her roof so much, she let Gianluca pay his rent in vegetables. Feathery cabbages. Sweet stalks of fennel. Crisp, crunchy carrots. It was common for most villagers to have a small garden of their own, but few could afford more than a little celery and a couple of cauliflower. Gianluca and Albertino fleshed out their meager yields with onions, turnips, parsnips, peas, broccoli, cabbage, eggplant, fennel, carrots, artichokes, and three kinds of insalata — not to mention strawberries, apples, pears, and figs on the fruit side of the ledger. The wetter, colder weather made it more and more difficult to work the land, but Gianluca persisted, eliminating asparagus (too reedy) and beets (too red) and keeping two small fields fallow each season to allow for rotation. After a couple of rough seasons things began to improve; the past three years the fruit and vegetable stand they ran at the village market had actually made a profit. But now it was almost May and the parched earth had not spit forth a sign of foliage nor the promise of a thing to come.

  “On the other hand,” said the Vedova Stampanini, “a woman is entitled to her moods. I gave birth to ten and then buried every one of them. Believe me, Gianluca, it tires you out.”

  Gianluca listened, but he could not accept the argument. There was another explanation for the spring's delay. There had to be. And he was determined to find out what it was.

  The sun had risen just above the horizon when he left the Vedova Stampanini's hovel and took his boat to cross over to the tiny cemetery island; by the time he had docked, and had tied his boat up next to Albertino's, and had walked across to the roofless little room, it was just beginning to lift up high enough to cast its warmth out over the east wall and across Albertino's sleeping body. Gianluca stood there for a moment and thought of how many minutes — hours — days, it seemed — he had spent watching Albertino sleep. But thoughts of time brought thoughts of the reluctant spring, so he moved in closer to the wall and let his broad shadow eclipse the morning rays.

  Albertino opened one eye and glared out of it at Gianluca.

  “You stepped in front of my dream.”

  “Get up, little brother. You dream too much.”

  “It was a nice dream. I was enjoying it very much. You blocked it right out.”

  “Get up,” Gianluca repeated as he stepped over the wall. “The spring is twenty-seven days late. There's no time to be lying in bed having nice dreams.”

  Albertino rolled over onto his belly.

  “Well, what else can I do? I can't work. And if I can't work, I might as well sleep.”

  “Have you thought about it, Albertino? Have you thought about what it means?”

  “I'e thought about it, Gianluca.”

  “Then why don't you seem to understand? If the spring doesn't come, we'l lose everything we'e worked for. We can't just lie in bed. We have to do something.”

  “All right,” said Albertino. “What should we do?”

  Gianluca began to move about the room like one of Siora Scabbri's chickens. He knew what he was going to say, but he did not relish the thought of Albertino's response.

  “I'e tried everything I can think of, you realize. And it's all been a waste of time. But this morning I thought of something I hadn't thought of before.”

  “What's that?”

  “Ermenegilda.”

  Albertino sprang up like the hinge on a mold-board plow. “Ermenegilda!”

  “I knew you wouldn't like it. But I think it's our only chance.” Gianluca, having reached the south wall, picked up one of Albertino's boxes and began fingering the ribbons that wound through its ornate clasp.

  “Put that down, Gianluca,” said Albertino. “I told you never to touch my boxes.”

  Gianluca returned the box to its corner while Albertino slid forward onto his knees. “Gianluca,” he said in a whisper, “do you think so, too?”

  “Do I think what?”

  “Do you think the spring hasn't come because of Ermenegilda?”

  “Because of Ermenegilda?”

  “Because she's so ugly. Because she's so fat.”

  Gianluca remained motionless as he contemplated Albertino's words; then he burst into a great gale of laughter. “Don't be a fool,” he said. “Ermenegilda is rich, that's all. Enrico Torta is always telling everyone that the Torta money can buy anything. Well, let's put it to the test. Let's see if it can buy us the spring.”

  Albertino flopped back on his bed. “That's ridiculous.”

  “We'e desperate, Albertino.”

  “Ermenegilda can't buy us the spring.”

  “Do you know that?”

  “It's the stupidest idea you'e ever had.”

  Gianluca stepped closer to the pile of blankets and crouched down at its side. “Ermenegilda is rich. She'd do anything in the world for you. Tell her you need a spring.”

  “You'e been drinking too much.”

  “It's our only chance.”

  “You'e been out too long in the sun.”

  “Albertino…”

  “No! I won't do it! And don't ask me again!”

  Gianluca got down on his knees and leaned right into Albertino's face. “Do you want to spend the rest of your life cleaning coda di rospo for Giuseppe Navo?”

  Albertino closed his eyes and drew his arms up over his head. Gianluca had to bite his lip a bit to keep from laughing — his little brother's earnest dismay always amused him, but he did not want to offend him when he needed his cooperation.

  “Why is it I always have my arms down into the soil clear up to my elbows,” said Albertino, “and you'e always got a flower between your teeth?”

  Gianluca slapped Albertino's thigh and stood; he knew that he had won. “See her today,” he said. “There's still time to put down the broccoli before the weather gets too hot.”

  Gianluca hopped over the east wall and headed back toward the water. There was not a streak upon the fresh blue sky — not a cloud — not a care — not a cabbage, a carrot, a cauliflower. He did not know whether it was foolish or inspired to send Albertino to Ermenegilda. He only knew that Albertino would do it, and that they were running out of schemes.

  THE CA’ TORTA was not only made of stone it was made of pietra d'Idtria, the same shining marble that was used to face the great churches of Venezia. Enrico Torta had spent a fortune to bring the huge flags of ivory and cream across the cold waters of the Adriatic to Riva di Pignoli. Added to the thick slabs of stone he had sent in from his own country's q
uarries, including a few choice pieces of Tuscan pavonazetto, they made the dwelling sparkle like a diamond in the sun. It took a team of the best Venetian builders over a year and a half to build the house to Enrico's and Orsina's specifications. There were quarrels, conflicts over working conditions, accusations of theft and mismanagement, even a brief fistfight over the placement of an ornamental urn. But the results were worth every denaro spent, every reluctant effort expended. The Ca’ Torta was not just a lavish home. It was a palazzo.

  Ermenegilda's room, like Albertino's, had a north wall, a south wall, an east wall, a west — but that was where the similarity ended. Where Albertino's room was simple and spare, Ermenegilda's was positively bursting. There were Persian carpets on the floor, painted frescoes on the ceiling, and embroidered tapestries on the walls. Such lavishness, outside of court, was quite extraordinary. But Ermenegilda liked her comfort, and Enrico Torta had learned that it was easier to see that his baby girl got what she liked than to contend with her wrath when she didn't. Where the three Marias’ bedrooms had little furniture besides the bed and the washbasin, Ermenegilda's room had a table, two chairs, a chest of drawers, and a weaving loom. Her bed was canopied with Chinese silks and hung from the ceiling on four sturdy ropes. Her frescoes told the story of Leda and the swan, and her tapestries depicted the four seasons in a series of rural tableaux. If she could not buy them the spring, Ermenegilda might at least lend Albertino and Gianluca her west wall tapestry: it was as lush and verdant as anything their callused hands might draw from the earth.

  On the morning in which Gianluca had gone to Albertino and had encouraged him to speak with Ermenegilda, Ermenegilda sat dreaming at her loom. The weaving experiments had long since failed, and she was far from thinking of actually making anything, but the long wooden spindles that lined the frame were the perfect place to stack the ringlike breakfast pastries she feasted on each morning. So she propped herself up on a pair of Turkish pillows, spread her legs wide on either side of the rosewood frame, and lost herself in a miel-pignole daze.

  Ermenegilda was thinking about her wedding day. It would be out in the Torta garden, and all of Riva di Pignoli would be there. She pictured the long, wide banquet tables piled high with savory delicacies and the path of wild rose petals leading out across the lawn. She pictured her mother, lit up like an altar, and her three sisters, stuffed and pickled in bolts of imported fabric. She pictured the fishermen, dressed in stiff tunics and cleansed of the smell of cod. And she pictured Albertino: quiet, serene, almost beatific — a man in ecstasy at the thought of his bride. The only thing missing, the only person absent, was Ermenegilda herself. She pictured only a radiance of light, a bright field of energy without features or form. A glow in a wedding veil.

  When Romilda Rosetta, Ermenegilda's maid and the only servant ever to have stayed at the Ca’ Torta for longer than six weeks, rapped on the door and broke her reverie, Ermenegilda was vexed to find the glow gone to ash again — to see her enormous legs spread out before her and feel the great mass of her body squashed between loom and wall. When the servant told her that “Sior Tonolo” was waiting downstairs to see her, the glow resurfaced, but it located itself at heart level this time, burning inside her astonished bosom as she tried to differentiate between fantasy and reality.

  “Sior Tonolo?” she asked, repeating Romilda Rosetta's announcement half in wonder, half in disbelief. “Albertino Tonolo?”

  Romilda Rosetta had been with Ermenegilda for six years, since the latter's twelfth birthday. She'd stayed because she hadn't been able to think of anything else to do and because, being only half the size of Ermenegilda, she was afraid of what the girl might do to her if she ever tried to leave. Ermenegilda was a monster to Romilda Rosetta. No matter how devotedly the diminutive domestic beat out her tapestries, or clipped her nails in the bath, or brought her an extra plate of frittele di manzo when the rest of the house had gone to bed, Ermengilda used her to vent the boiling fury that ran through her Torta blood. When she was fourteen and Romilda Rosetta forty, she ordered the poor woman to stand on the roof of the Ca’ Torta during a hailstorm and imitate a seagull. The following year, on a shopping trip to Venezia, she knocked her down in the Piazza San Marco and left her to be carried home by a stray fishing vessel. She cursed her, mocked her, tormented her, reviled her. Yet no matter how cruelly Ermenegilda behaved, Romilda Rosetta always received her humiliation as so much fire on the path to spiritual purification. The worse the girl treated her, the more convinced she was of her ultimate redemption — and though she cowered at her mistress's commands and occasionally dropped things when Ermenegilda bellowed out her name, inside she felt the peacefulness and serenity of one of God's chosen. It never occurred to her that she enjoyed Ermenegilda's abuse, that without it she would have been nothing more than a very ordinary, extremely short maid: Her ill treatment gave her life meaning; it gave her a sense of martyrdom that thoroughly compensated for her inordinately small stature. It was therefore with great seriousness, when Ermenegilda tried to make certain that it was Albertino and not Gianluca who waited below to see her, that she replied: “It's the little one.”

  Ermenegilda could not believe her ears. That Albertino would call on her unannounced — on impulse — was too much for her to comprehend.

  “Well, what are you standing there for?” she shrieked. “Go tell him I'l be right there!”

  Downstairs, in the drawing room, Albertino waited uncomfortably on a pink satin sofa embroidered with acorns. He had never been inside the Ca’ Torta before; he had met Ermenegilda only at the gate or, at most, the front door. Now he sat on a tufted throne on a golden chamber in a palace of glittering splendor — and he wished he were back with the dirt and straw of his own tiny room. Before he could change his mind, however, Ermenegilda swept in.

  “Bon di, Albertino,” she chirped gaily.

  “Bon di, Ermenegilda,” said Albertino, standing as she entered but averting his eyes.

  “And how is your little island?”

  “Oh, fine, fine. No one's been out since Vincenzo Bassetti was buried, and that was last January.”

  Ermenegilda issued a high, false laugh, as if Albertino's words were deliciously witty, and began walking slowly around the room in an unnatural circle, as if perhaps her left leg were shorter than her right. She ended up on the tiny sofa in front of which Albertino stood. Albertino had no choice but to sit beside her.

  “And your brother, Gianluca? Is he well, too?”

  “Oh, yes, Gianluca's fine. Gianluca's very well.”

  “And your little room?”

  “Fine, fine. Everything's just fine.”

  The conversation kept on in this way for half an hour. But after half an hour a silence descended. Ermenegilda was too intoxicated by Albertino's presence to think of any more questions, and Albertino was too conscious of the closeness of Ermenegilda's body to offer any of his own. But silence led to breathing, and breathing to sweating, and Albertino soon decided that it was safer to explain why he had come than to travel on in the direction they were heading.

  “Ermenegilda,” he said measuredly, “Gianluca and I were wondering something.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well…” He shifted his body slightly. “We were wondering if you could do something to help bring the spring.”

  Ermenegilda's shoulders twitched involuntarily; she looked at Albertino as if he were a piece of venison someone had already gnawed to the bone. “Excuse me?”

  “The spring,” he said. “It hasn't come this year, if you haven't noticed. No flowers. No leaves on the trees. And not a sign of a vegetable. I don't know, perhaps you can get vegetables from one of the other islands, but on Riva di Pignoli there won't be any vegetables to be got because there hasn't been a spring. No spring, Ermenegilda. Not a pea, not a bean, not a lentil.”

  Albertino looked despondent as he explained all this to Ermenegilda; Ermenegilda did not say a word. She merely rose, walked over to the plate of goose-liver tiles
Romilda Rosetta had deposited on the side table, and devoured several of them in a single gulp.

  “I'd heard something about it,” she said flatly.

  “Well, Gianluca and I were talking,” Albertino continued, “and it suddenly occurred to us that maybe, with all your money, well — maybe you could somehow buy us the spring. I know it sounds absurd, but then the spring not coming is sort of absurd. Anyway, I figured it was worth coming here to ask if you thought you could do it.”

  Ermenegilda had turned back to face Albertino by this time, her hands inert and sticky in front of her. As she watched him sitting there, she imagined him in a dozen guises: fisherman, landlord, pirate; shepherd, eunuch, priest; banker, brigand, bishop, serf, crusader, and hangman. But no matter how he appeared to her — no matter the clothing he wore or the station he represented — she could feel only the tenderest love for him.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Albertino stared at her. “What do you mean,‘yes’?”

  “I mean‘yes.’I mean I can do it.”

  Ermenegilda drew her left hand up to her mouth and licked a bit of goosefat off a fingertip. What mattered was not what he had come for, but that he had come. What mattered was not that he wanted to use her for her money, but that he had chosen to lay his anguish at her waiting feet.

  “I can get you the spring, Albertino,” she said. “If that's what you truly want.”

  Albertino could feel his hair grow hot and the tips of his ears begin to tingle. “What do we do?” he asked as he bounded up and hurried to where she stood.

  “For now just go home,” she said, slipping her arm through his and guiding him toward the door. “Pull the covers up over your head and dream of artichokes and parsley and baby lettuce. Dream of carrots, and cauliflower, and dream of more of them than you ever thought there could be.” She led him out of the room, and down the stone stairway, and across the broad gallery that led to the front door. “Then, at midnight, meet me on the dock to your island.”