Free Simple Prayers by Michael Golding

a burning anger, a concentrated anger, hot and tender like the rosy edges of a fever blister. For after an idyllic few hours in the cozy reaches of Albertino's heart, Albertino had disappeared. For two days Ermenegilda had torn her hair and covered her food with salt and begged the fishermen to drag the lagoon. But then, as simply as he had disappeared, Albertino returned. And when he did he behaved as if their torrid encounter had been nothing more than the sticky midnight imaginings of a girl who'd eaten one too many
miel-pignole
pastries.
    To be honest, Albertino felt as confused as Ermenegilda at the drastic fluctuation of his emotions. On that morning when the spring had come — when the landscape had gone mad and Ermenegilda had arrived with all those flowers — he'd felt a sweetness awaken in his heart that was unlike anything he had ever known before.
    “It worked,” he'd murmured as Ermenegilda placed the flowers in his astonished, opened arms.
    “Did you doubt it?” asked Ermenegilda, leading him gently across the radicchio patch to finally enter his room.
    For the rest of the day Ermenegilda's voice was a lute song, her cascading hair the sunset waters of a waterfall. They sat on the floor and ate pignoli; they walked around the tiny island holding hands; they lined the east wall with their fragrant sea of flowers. But as nightfall came, the flowers’scent began to fade, and Ermenegilda began to talk about the future.
    “I want a house that's even finer than the Ca’Torta. I want my own pastry chef and a personal seamstress, and I want to visit Venezia at least twice a month.”
    Now Albertino had been intoxicated by the rush of the sudden spring, but he was in no way ready to abandon his room and spend a lifetime with Ermenegilda. A part of him still thrilled at what they'd done in the graveyard, but another part was horrified at the astonishing intimacy of it. So before he could make the fatal mistake of doing it again, he slipped down to the dock and set off in his
barca da pesca.
    He rowed the lagoon for three nights and two days. The dread he felt was like a turnip in his gut, and the only thing he could do to relieve its pressure was to keep rowing. He rowed in circles and zigzags, stopping only for a few brief naps. He rowed past the gleaming spires of Venezia and the sparse scrub of islands no bigger than his boat. He felt the spray on his face as the morning breeze came up, and he followed the seagulls at sunset. He rowed with the fishermen and the cargo boats and the great clumps of seaweed that floated in with the tide. But the longer he rowed, the heavier and harder grew the turnip, until he could feel its stony denseness rotting inside him. Until he could no longer bear the tension between his repulsion at what he'd done on top of Cherubina Modesta Colomba Ernesta Franchin and his aching, feverish desire to do it again.
    So he erased it from his mind. On the third night, as his arms could take no more rowing, he simply decided that the whole thing had never happened. And it was with that firmness of conviction that he rowed back to Riva di Pignoli, docked his little boat at his little dock, and wondered who had been so thoughtful as to deck his room with flowers.
    Which made Ermenegilda extremely angry. So angry she could barely float in the peaceful waters of the canal. She wanted to yank out the wisteria trees — and the azalea bushes and the gorse hedge and the tulip beds. For a few brief hours, the spring had been a triumph. The shores had shot green and Ermenegilda had been the most beautiful girl in the lagoon. Now every leaf, every breeze, every blossom, was mocking her. And she would not be content until their laughter was fully silenced.
    WHEN ALBERTINO rowed off into the lagoon, he forgot about the miracle of the resurgent spring. When he returned, however, on that third morning after the bay trees had appeared and the pomegranates had turned their delicate, whimsical pink, he was