Simple Prayers (28 page)

Before leaving the hovel, they had divided the list in half: Ermenegilda took the first four items, Valentina the final three. So the first thing Ermenegilda did after speaking with the Vedova Scarpa was to travel out to the western docks to gather a scrap of seaweed. There were bits of it everywhere: clumped in the new grass, strewn along the edge of the shore, hugging the posts where the boats were tied. But as most of what she came upon had dried out in the sun, she lowered herself into one of Giuseppe Navo's boats, paddled out a short way toward Albertino's island, and fetched up a fresh, shining clump of the slimy weed.

The second and third items were easier. She did not know precisely what Piarina meant by a strip, but she gouged and hacked at the pine tree bark until she was satisfied she'd come up with a usable piece. In order to gather a peacock feather she needed only to return to the Torta garden — but as Ermenegilda did not wish to chance being seen by Orsina, she climbed the branches of the wisteria on the wall by the slender canal, raced up behind one of the peacocks, plucked a feather from its tail, and raced back over the wall before anyone had noticed her.

The only person who might help her with the final item was Brunetto Fucci. He had long ago transformed his apothecary's quarters into a spice shop, but as there was a good chance he still possessed the old elements of his trade, Ermenegilda set out for his hovel. When she arrived she found him tossing with the fever, midway between blackish green and greenish black. But when she explained that she had come from Piarina and that she was gathering the ingredients for a cure, he told her where to find a box of flasks and a cabinet that contained a bottle of mercury. Ermenegilda had never seen mercury before, and when she tried to pour it into the flask it ran off onto the floor of the hovel and separated into a thousand beads. She had to get down on her hands and knees and chase after it, but she finally managed to scoop up enough of it to take it back, with the other ingredients, to Piarina.

Valentina's task was in one sense easier and in one sense much more difficult. The six pignoli took minutes to gather; had she needed six hundred it would not have taken very much longer. The sorbs she found in Siora Bertinelli's fruit patch; she took them back to her hovel and laid them out on a piece of white muslin in the sun. In order to find a wasp's wing, however, she would have to find a wasp. So she took a long stick, traveled out to the marshy fields along the north rim of the island, and began poking around the grass until she stirred up trouble. When she passed the field of wild thyme she saw Piero curled up among the weeds. She considered prodding him with her stick — it had been a long time since she'd had that satisfaction — but as her task was urgent she continued on until she found what she was looking for.

It would be more precise to say that what she was looking for found her. For when she unknowingly struck the bowl-shaped object lying hidden among the rushes, a mass of angry wasps rose up and stung her. They bit her forehead and her forearm, her neck and her knees, but she swung her stick, and beat the ground, and finally managed to trap one beneath her broom-handle stump. Then she bent down, removed one of its slender wings, wrapped it in a piece of cloth, and took it home to Piarina.

FOR TWELVE YEARS
Albertino had carefully adhered to the standard calendar for sowing and planting: broad beans in April, eggplant in May, broccoli in June or July or even in August. This year, however, he decided to put down everything as soon as he could. Cauliflower and carrots. Sweet chard and onions. Parsnips and turnips and cabbage and fennel and peas. Whatever else happened, whatever fortune or destiny of the position of the stars decreed, he was determined to see that the vegetables went on without him. Albertino finally understood why the spring had been so reluctant to come to Riva di Pignoli the previous year. Why bring your bounty to a place of sickness and death? Why enliven the landscape with a sweep of brilliant color when the people are turning a blackish greenish gray?

Albertino did not feel the heaviness come over him until the evening of Piero's gathering at the new village center. He told himself that it was only fatigue, but when he woke the next morning and felt the soreness in his side he knew that the sickness had begun. So he gathered up his seeds and his bulbs and the sproutlings he'd begun in a series of shallow crates and set out across the water to do the planting. It was tiring work, and the lump in his side made the digging quite painful, but he wanted to put down the bulk of it while he still had the energy.

As he knelt before the trench he'd dug to lay down the fennel, he breathed in the smell of the fresh soil. He loved that smell, he couldn't imagine living without it; but he wouldn't be living without it, he would be dead without it; if he were living, he would still be able to smell it; but he wouldn't be, he'd be dead; unless you smelled things after death; although he doubted it; though on the other hand he imagined that there were lots of flowers in heaven; but it was better not to think about heaven and hell; and besides maybe it wouldn't happen after all; and so the best thing to do was to just continue laying down the seeds. That was as far as he ever got when he tried to think beyond the pain in his side: six paces down a twisted path that wound up in the mud. Planting the vegetables was the only thing that made sense; as long as he was doing that, nothing that might happen tomorrow really mattered.

Albertino worked through the morning. When he finished with the fennel, he began the cauliflower — bit by bit he sidled down the row, his fingers carefully sifting and patting, his eyes intent upon the placement of the tiny sproutlings. As he reached the middle of the row, however, he became aware of another presence in the garden — and when he turned to his right he found Gianluca, just a few yards away, placing sproutlings from a separate crate in the dark earth beside him.

“Gianluca!” he cried.

“
Ciao
, little brother.”

“What are you doing here?”

“What does it look like I'm doing? Do you think I'e forgotten how to put down a row of cauliflower?”

Gianluca did not look up as he said this; his attention remained on the simple act of placing the sproutlings in the trench and surrounding them with soil. Albertino was moved by his devotion and silently returned to his own work. After about a quarter of an hour, however, he turned back to his brother and spoke.

“You'e got it, too.”

Gianluca gave a quick nod.

“Right side or left?”

“Both.”

Albertino could feel the sun blaze hot on his neck, his back, his shoulders. That he should have the sickness was one thing; that Gianluca should have it was entirely another. He could feel a rising in his throat, a thickening at the back of his tongue, a stinging in his eyes. But as he did not know what to do with these feelings, he turned back to the trench and continued on with his planting.

“We should do the eggplant next. And then the cabbage. I'd like to get everything down by tomorrow night.”

“I'm here, Albertino,” said Gianluca. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

They worked on in silence — row by row, vegetable by vegetable. Gianluca did not mention Miriam; Albertino did not mention Ermenegilda. They merely dug and planted, sifted and cleared, while the light faded, and the shadows crept in, and the darkness overtook them.

AFTER THE GATHERING
at the new village center, and Maria Luigi's ringing of the bells, Piero went out to the north rim of the island and stood in the field of wild thyme. In all the years he'd lived on Riva di Pignoli, Piero had seen the people bounce back from tragedy; famine or flood, they'd always demonstrated a remarkable resilience. What was happening now, however, could not be taken care of by a firm will and a hopeful spirit.

Piero knew that death was upon the island. He could see it in the eyes of everyone he came in contact with. He could smell it on their skin and hear it in their voices. And despite the brave calm he evinced for the benefit of the other villagers, he could not help but feel a shattering sense of responsibility for what was happening. What if he'd told the villagers about the body? What if he'd heeded the warning it had represented — the warning Nature had sent with the delay of spring and the devastating storm — instead of encouraging the people to pour their energy into the building of a useless
campo
? Perhaps he could have evacuated the island — averted the sickness — prevented the horror that was now spreading across the village like a fatal wave of gossip.

He stood there for hours trying to find some pattern in the horror, but nothing could help him make sense of it. Eventually he lay down upon the grave, hoping that understanding might come to him in his sleep. But when he woke the next morning his frustration and despair were as keen as when he'd closed his eyes.

When he returned to Beppe Guancio's hovel, Beppe informed him that Anna Rizzardello and Gesmundo Barbon had died, that Siora Scabbri and Maria Patrizia Lunardi and Paolo Guarnieri had reached the state of fever, and that he had found the first black lump in his side.

“It burns, Piero,” he said. “It's hard to think about anything but the pain.”

Piero instantly placed Beppe in bed and began laying hot and cold compresses on his swelling. He remained at his side for the rest of the day — encouraging him to drink a bit of broth, covering him with blankets when he became racked with chills, and pretending not to seem alarmed at how swiftly the illness accelerated. By nightfall the swelling had already burst and the blotches were beginning to spread across Beppe's belly. He whimpered like a small puppy and clutched Piero's hand and drew from him a strength he could not have drawn from himself.

Late in the evening Beppe's condition eased enough to allow him to sleep. Piero, who had sat by him and comforted him since early morning, was shaken and exhausted and longed for sleep himself. But before he could allow himself to crawl to his corner and lay down upon his bed of straw, he went to the worktable where he'd designed the
campanìl
the
campo
, and the monument, took a clean piece of parchment from beneath his drawings, and with his best quill pen, in his most careful hand, wrote “
Deus non est
.”

God does not exist.

Before he'd even finished forming the final letter, he felt a wave of terror rush through him. He folded up the parchment as small as he could and placed it beneath his tunic and blouse where no one could know he'd written it. With careful steps he moved toward his bed, certain that he would be struck by lightning before he reached it or that the earth would open up to swallow him whole. But nothing happened. So he closed his eyes and waited for death to take him like the others.

Piero was not afraid of death. A part of him even welcomed it. The problem was that as yet he had no pain, no feeling of sickness, nor the slightest symptom of the disease.

WHEN ALL THE ITEMS
had been brought to the hovel, Piarina began to inspect them. One by one she held her hands over them, closed her eyes, and awaited some kind of verification. When she received it — in the form of a light, high humming in her head — she placed a small stool before the hearth, stepped up onto it, placed the items in the cauldron, filled it three-quarters full with well water, and slowly brought the mixture to a boil. Then she took a spoon and began stirring it all together.

Ermenegilda and Valentina tried to busy themselves while Piarina stirred the hopeful broth. As the water evaporated she would replenish it: stirring and boiling, stirring and reducing, stirring and adding again. A new glow came upon her — she became transparent as the wasp's wing — but she continued to stir with an even stroke as the mixture gathered its potency.

Toward the end of the day both Ermenegilda and Valentina felt the tenderness in their sides begin to concentrate into hard centers of pain. By the following morning the swellings had appeared, but though they both felt concerned, neither one of them panicked. As long as Piarina stood stirring the broth, they trusted her cure would save them.

On the evening of the second day of her stirring, Piarina suddenly laid the spoon beside the fire and went to the corner where Ermenegilda sat nursing her pain. After raising her twinkling hands to her cheeks in their old, familiar embrace, she guided her friend to the steaming cauldron across the hovel, stepped up onto the stool, and began stirring the mixture in swifter, cleaner strokes. There was a sense of mission in her movements that made Ermenegilda feel certain the magic potion would work.

“Bless you, Piarina!” she said. “Bless you! To think you can save the entire island with a handful of nothing at all!”

Piarina continued stirring — but then she stopped and turned to Ermenegilda. She seemed puzzled by her words, her starry eyes a pair of vacant screens. Then she understood and began to shake her head.

“What is it?” said Ermenegilda. “You mean the cure doesn't work?”

Piarina shook her head more vigorously, and patted the cauldron, and pointed her finger at Ermenegilda.

“For me?” said Ermenegilda. “You want me to be first! What a sweet friend you are!”

Piarina began to become upset. She placed the spoon down and brushed a wisp of hair off her forehead. Then she patted the cauldron, and patted Ermenegilda, and made a motion with her hands that Ermenegilda knew only too well.

“
Basta così
?” she said. “What are you saying? You mean you made it only for me?”

Piarina smiled a contented smile and began stirring the broth again.

“But you can't give it only to me!” cried Ermenegilda. “The whole island is dying! You'e the only one who can save them, Piarina!”

Piarina stopped stirring again, and again she looked perplexed. Then a torrent of tears flooded out from her eyes and she raised a tiny finger in the air.

“Heaven?” said Ermenegilda, thinking Piarina was pointing up. “We'e all going to heaven?”

Piarina shook the finger wildly, and tapped it against the wall, and beat it against her chest, and raised it in the air again.