Simple Prayers Page 8

  Before the first week was out, Miriam had managed to affect the lives of nearly everyone on the island. She showed Maria Luigi a new way to stitch seams that used half the thread but was twice as strong. She taught Siora Bertinelli how to make a special bread that yielded six times the volume of its ingredients. She showed Giuseppe Navo a quicker knot to use for tying up his boat, she taught Albertino how to prevent maggots from invading the onion patch, she gave Fausto a tip on how to keep his beard from turning yellow in the sun. In return, Siora Scabbri gave her work in her henhouse, the Vedova Stampanini coached her slightly ladino tongue in the basics of the Riva di Pignolian dialect, and the villagers soon began calling her by special names: Siora Guarnieri called her La Colomba, convinced that she would fly off one evening as inexplicably as she had flown in. Brunetto Fucci called her La Santificata, and had to restrain himself from bowing when she entered his shop (in the end he could only manage to half resist the impulse, stopping himself at a slight tilting of the head and a caving in at the shoulders, which Miriam interpreted as a nervous tick). Siora Scabbri called her La Furba, because of her ability to coax her old clucks into laying twice their normal yield. Even Ugolino Ramponi, who had hardly a kind thought for anyone, could not resist laying an occasional goat at her door.

  Miriam had always had a strong effect on people. Her parents had been noted for their uncommon generosity: everyone in her tiny mountain village knew they could get a glass of ale or an extra bit of pan dolce at their door. In time, however, people began to abuse this generosity. Early in the morning, while Miriam and her parents were still asleep, villagers would come in through the unlatched door and seat themselves at the wide trestle table that stood beside the hearth. When Miriam's parents woke and found them waiting there, they would hasten to the dying fire to fix a little broth with bacon or some cabbage and onions. Soon people began coming as Miriam and her parents lay down at night — dogs and cats would wander in — visitors from neighboring villages would stretch out to sleep on the rough wooden benches that sat by the wall. Miriam watched as her parents grew haggard, as her home became a wayfarer's inn. Until one morning she climbed up over the rumpled bodies, stood squarely between the beans and the brewet, and said in a powerful voice, “Go home!”

  Everyone, including the cats, seemed grateful.

  Miriam tried not to question her ability to solve problems, to take action, to give aid. She tried to accept that appetites flared when she passed at mealtime, that tempers cooled when she neared a dispute. Yet within herself Miriam had always felt a strange longing. She'd placed it upon her mother and father, she'd placed it upon an old gray ass her village had named San Tomaso, she'd placed it upon a long succession of slender boys and laughing, beautiful men. But nothing she'd placed it upon seemed remotely to quench it, so she simply went on with it burning inside her like a handful of hot peppercorns. Once she removed it from parents, and asses, and men, it became a fire that illuminated her, a searing flame that knelt her down in the blue light of dusk, or the long, flat shadows that extend before sunrise, in the belief that she needed nothing, and no one, at all.

  Miriam was aware that it was the light of this longing that dazzled the people of Riva di Pignoli. Yet she also saw that for all their love and easy acceptance of her, they could not help but wonder why she'd come to them. Why on the final day of a spring-that-went-beyond-spring? Why when they were just about to build a campanìl, and a campo, and a monument?

  “Miriam! Pranzo!”

  The sweet odor of mint and onions, and the sound of Maria Luigi's voice, penetrated Miriam's reverie.

  “Grazie, Maria Luigi!” she called. “I'l be there in a moment!”

  “I'e made a pigeon stew and some pan da pistor. I hope you have a good appetite.”

  As she listened to Maria Luigi's cheerful tone, it suddenly struck Miriam that she had come to the woman's home uninvited —just as the people had come to her door when she was a child, the people she, and only she, had had the courage to send away. Yet as she stood, and lifted the square of satin from the floor, and folded it, and placed it beside the statue of the Virgin, she knew that there was a reason for her to be there. The only problem was to try to explain it to the people of Riva di Pignoli. She might have told them that she'd left her mountain village to make a pilgrimage — that she'd envisioned herself arriving barefoot and radiant at the gates of the eternal city — but she could not have explained how she'd managed to wind up on a curving path that led through a clutch of pine trees on an island she vaguely suspected did not even exist.

  It would have interested the people of Riva di Pignoli to know that Miriam was going to have a baby. But since she'd only just arrived, and was really still a stranger, and since everyone was so preoccupied with the coming of spring and the construction of the new village center, Miriam decided not to mention it.

  Why start unnecessary rumors?

  Why speak of something that would become evident soon enough?

  IF THE VEDOVA STAMPANINI had known that Miriam was going to have a baby, she would have made her a hearty sopa di verzurra, a fragrant polastrone rosto, and a feather-light crosta di mele. As she did not know, and merely wanted to make her something because she liked her, she decided on a nice, crisp pan duro with aromatic herbs. Of all the many people who made their hearts and homes freely open to Miriam upon her arrival on Riva di Pignoli, the Vedova Stampanini was the one who treated her most like family. Three times a week the old woman helped her to soften her consonants, and lengthen her vowels, and adopt the more standard phrases of the Riva di Pignoli slang. For Miriam this was a privilege, for after losing ten children, but not the capacity to laugh, the Vedova came closest of anyone on the island to the sort of understanding Miriam yearned for. For the Vedova, however, it was something more. The young girl's presence was like the opening of an extra window in her small, dark hovel; when she came for her lessons the Vedova noticed spoons in the straw and knots in the rafters she hadn't seen in twenty years.

  A pan duro, therefore, would be excellent: brittle, teased with oil, slightly bubbly, slightly burnt. But if she was going to make a pan duro, why not make two? A little salt and flour, some olive oil, some herbs, where was the extra work in an extra portion? The Vedova knew Miriam wouldn't care if she made a second one — and more important, she knew Giuseppe Navo would be delighted.

  The Vedova Stampanini and Giuseppe Navo were lovers— though they had never once, in fifty-seven years, made love. It had begun in the earliest days of the Vedova's marriage: one night, over a plate of sardines and a white-bean stew, the then young fisherman (who was eleven years the Vedova's junior) gave her a look across the table that caused her to pour so much coriander onto her plate, she had to run to the well and douse herself with water. Giuseppe Navo soon became a regular guest at her dinner table; her husband and children would listen to his stories of the sea while she returned the heat of his glances with saffroned beef and gingered capons and hot-and-cold cinnamon jellies. It became common to make “one for Giuseppe Navo” whenever she made one of anything. A meal would scarcely be a meal without his well-heaped plate.

  The practice continued throughout the Vedova's marriage, through all the many years of birthing and burying her many children. When he couldn't come to table a plate was always left, in the garden, by the cold press, for Giuseppe Navo. And when twenty-one years had gone by, and all the Vedova's children, and even the Vedova's husband, had died, a strange thing happened: Giuseppe Navo came to the Vedova's door one night flushed with desire for her, shot her the feverish look that had passed through more than two decades perfectly intact — and the Vedova handed him a crayfish pastry and a bowl of milk cabbage. And Giuseppe Navo was content. For after over eight thousand meals of searing looks met by spicy delights, neither the Vedova nor the fisherman wished to tamper with the recipe. For the next thirty-six years they continued to meet — and to eat — with the same thrill of secrecy that had given them so much pleasure when there was still so
meone there to keep secret from.

  Which was why the Vedova smiled as she placed the salt, the flour, and the oil on the table that had borne the weight of all those glances, and paid extra attention as she measured out the herbs. Rosemary, oregano, basil, sage; all she lacked was a bit of thyme. The Vedova knew that neither Miriam nor Giuseppe Navo would notice if the pan duro lacked thyme, but why do a thing, she asked, and not do it well? So she put on her straw hat, took up an old straw basket, and set out toward the field of wild thyme that grew along the north rim of the island.

  The bright June sun was hotter than she'd expected. It made her small, drawn body tighten up like a fist and her brain run loose like a stallion. She traveled up the Calle Alberi Grandi past Maria Luigi's hovel — past the Chiesa di Maria del Mare and the Ca’Torta —past the Rizzar-dellos’salt shed and the fields that backed Gianluca's and Albertino's vegetable garden — until she finally reached the field of wild thyme. It was richly abundant, a tribute to the new spring. But she'd gathered no more than a few bright sprigs of it when she noticed something strange near her feet. She thought she was imagining it, she thought the sun had affected her vision, but there, jutting up from the soil, were the blackened, withered fingers of a human hand.

  Without pausing she turned, walked back to her hut, and carefully prepared a pair of gleaming pan di casa, with thin strips of onions, slender rivers of prosciutto, and bright, heaping handfuls of olives — green, green, green as a wild spring day.

  ALBERTINO WOULD HAVE LIKED to contribute more than just one morning and one afternoon a week to the construction of the campanìl, but the startling bounty of the late-but-luscious spring seemed only to intensify with the increase of summer. Albertino could work from the first rays of dawn to the last glow of twilight and there would still be tender berries hidden in the soft growth and perfect pea pods left on the vine to languish. Yet hard as the labor was — much as it required delicate timing and absolute, unwavering attention —to Albertino it was as natural and joyful as lying in the evening at the edge of the lagoon and counting the stars in Orion.

  Albertino loved harvesting. The joy of finally drawing the fruit from the earth. The sense that the soil was actually handing it up to you. He considered himself a vegetable midwife, birthing fine young cabbages, cradling infant cauliflower, guiding fresh-born radicchio heads into the waiting world.

  Today Albertino was harvesting carrots, and carrots were complicated. If the soil was too sticky, the roots would fork. If there was too much sunlight, the crowns would turn green. Not to mention the dangers of slugs and snails, cutworms and wireworms, motley dwarf virus and violet root rot. Yet Albertino's carrots were sleek and hardy, with nice fat tops and finely tapered tips. He shook them as he slipped them from the soil, to remove any large clumps of dirt, and then separated them into two groups: those that were headed to next day's market, which were tossed gently into a grass-lined barrel, and those that were to be saved for winter, which were cropped of their foliage and placed between layers of sand in a shallow box. When the sun was at its hottest he crept over to the eggplant patch to have his lunch and rest. The curve of an eggplant could please Albertino for hours; he could lose himself completely in the specks of gold that broke through the blackened purple and the glossy surface that seemed so taut yet yielded to his touch. Today, however, the eggplants made him think of Ermenegilda. So he ate his lunch as quickly as he could and hurried back to work.

  Toward midafternoon, as the sun gradually began to relinquish its insistent supremacy in the pale blue sky, he saw Gianluca approaching the carrot patch with an unusual vigor in his gait.

  “Ciao, little brother.”

  “Ciao, Gianluca.”

  “I'e brought you a pair of coda di rospo.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Gesmundo Barbon said to grill them with a little sage. They'e too nice to fry.”

  Albertino was surprised at his brother's carefree manner; considering the heat and the amount of work there was to be done, it seemed slightly ludicrous to him.

  “How's the work today?”

  “Fine, Gianluca.”

  “And the carrots?”

  “The carrots are fine.” Albertino raised a soil-flecked specimen to demonstrate. “Would you like to try digging up a few to see for yourself?”

  “If you'd like that. It's a blazing day. I'm sure you could use a rest.”

  Albertino paused midcarrot and looked up. “Are you all right?”

  “I'm much better than all right,” said Gianluca. “I'm well, Albertino. Really, truly well.”

  “Because if you'e serious,” said Albertino, “we could trade jobs for a while. I'l work the market, you work the fields.”

  Gianluca thought about this for a moment and then shook his head. “It wouldn't work”.

  “Why not?”

  “You'e too good-natured. When I'm not there you give away as much as you sell. It's bad for business.”

  “You'e lying, Gianluca. That's not why you won't do it.”

  Gianluca drew his forearm up to his mouth and smoothed the silky hairs along his wrist with his lower lip; then a strange new light broke over his face. “She might come to market while I'm gone. I can't take the chance. Even now I might be missing her.”

  Where Miriam's presence on Riva di Pignoli had turned Piero's spirituality into carnality, it had had precisely the opposite effect on Gianluca. From the first morning she had appeared at the market — her flowing hair tied back in one of Maria Luigi's silk ribbons, her clear, luminous eyes dancing briskly between the romano and the radishes — he'd felt a rising in his breast that was even greater than the usual rising at his groin. Not that he was oblivious of Miriam's body: Gianluca would have to have been dead not to notice the white throat as it curved beneath the loosened collar of her gown or the slightly tapered belly as she stood, suspended, before the strawberries. But where such charms had before been sufficient in themselves, they now seemed a stunning veil over something deeper — some quality beneath her flesh that produced an entirely new response beneath his.

  “May I help you?” he'd asked, burning behind a pyramid of onions.

  “Yes,” said Miriam. “I would like to buy some fruit.”

  “Why?” he'd said, closing his eyes.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why?” he'd repeated, opening them again to bask in her light. “You will only make them feel embarrassed to be seen beside the sweet grape of your eyes… the ripe prugne of your cheeks… the rich ciliegie of your lips…”

  Miriam had turned and left without so much as an albicocca — so Gianluca had begun to court her. This was not an ordinary experience for him; he was used merely to swaggering up to whomever he happened to desire, leaning his strong, solid body against the frame of her door or the gate of her salting shed, and letting the honey pour down from his smiling eyes. Miriam, however, was different: from the moment he saw her, he could see no one else. So he had dedicated himself to a gentle, persistent wooing of her soul. Each morning, before he went to market, he would stand outside Maria Luigi's hovel and sing ballads in which Miriam chased the summer rains or stirred the winter breezes to blow. Each evening he would lay at Maria Luigi's door a pumpkin or a cantaloupe into which he'd carved, with a stickpin, a finely detailed scene of Miriam conversing with angels or dancing in a field of flowing wheat. The day now possessed two tasks and two tasks alone: selling the vegetables and winning Miriam.

  “I'e never seen you like this,” said Albertino as he watched his brother's eyes gloss over. “It's very bizarre.”

  “It's love, little brother. Reverent and holy love.”

  “Reverent and holy?”

  “I swear to you. I feel as if God has come and clapped me on the back and said,‘Take heart, Gianluca. It's not too late.’”

  “Too late for what?”

  “For God, for Christ's sake! For heaven and angels and holy ghosts. The whole ordeal.”

  Albertino looked hard into his brother's
eyes and saw the shimmer of halos and the white tips of furiously flapping wings.

  “What about Il BastÒn?”

  “He's not quite convinced. But I'm working on him. He hasn't tried to thwart me so far.”

  “And what about Piero Po?”

  Gianluca fingered Il BastÒn? lightly and spat upon the ground. “Piero Po is an imitation insect with an obsession for what he lacks. I can't take such a bug seriously, and I'm sure she feels the same way.”

  “That doesn't sound very Christian, Gianluca.”

  “Some attitudes take longer to develop than others, little brother.”

  “Tell that to Il BastÒn,” said Albertino, pointing to his brother's as-ever distended crotch.

  “Basta!” said Gianluca, giving a playful swipe to Albertino's head. “I said I'm working on it.”

  He tossed the pair of coda di rospo upon the basket of carrots; then he sauntered back toward market, whistling pale inversions of the liturgical chants he remembered from childhood mass. Albertino returned to the carrots, finishing out the rows he'd marked for that day before giving a look to what needed to be done tomorrow. Then he crossed the fields to the western docks and began rowing back to his island.

  As he moved across the water, his body felt wonderfully well used from the day's long labor. Gianluca's visit stood out as a patch of oddity in an otherwise average afternoon, but Albertino chose to concentrate on the nice pair of coda di rospo he'd brought him for supper and the small basket of apricots he'd gathered himself to enjoy afterward. When he reached his island he docked swiftly, eager to hurry home and light the fire to cook the fish. But before he got even halfway to his room he completely lost his appetite.