Simple Prayers by Michael Golding Page A

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