Page 5 of This Vicious Hunger
I don’t manage to find the library until half an hour before my meeting, so I have little time to explore. It’s as cool and dim as I expected, with huge vaulted windows and row after row of wooden shelves housing so many treasured texts. What I never truly managed to picture in my dreams was the size; there must be ten or twelve floors above my head, each mezzanine guarded from the open atrium by a wooden railing between stone pillars.The height alone makes me feel dizzy, never mind the thought of falling.
I wonder how many books there are in this place, how many worlds of fiction and endless treatises of power and race, religion and philosophy, science—all that science. I wonder, too, if there are any ofthosebooks in here. The kind Aurelio hated most. The kind I haven’t even dared to think of since his death, the kind that changed it all. Inflammatory books. Passionate books. Books about—
I stop myself. I do not want Aurelio, or those books, to taint this place.
I turn instead to the familiar stability of my father. I imagine him in his youth, roving between these endless shelves, absorbing as much knowledge as he could by night, knowing that in the morning he would have to return to the chapel and his apprenticeship there. It isn’t hard to see how his time here influenced his performance of the death rites—every undertaker has a style, a trademark of ritual, and my father’s was at once solemn and erudite. Some undertakers prefer the cleanness of open air, grassy knolls, and cradles wrapped in moss; others prefer the darkness, warmth from a fire and the resultant dripping sweat symbolic of mourners’ tears even for those who cannot—or will not—cry.
I instantly see the Grieve family’s sepulchre echoed in these book-lined halls, the artificial, reverent silence here as holy as that of a family laying their loved ones in the cradle. Incense smoke curls blue from sconces on the walls just like at home, the stones underfoot polished by years of acolytes. It is airy, too, cool but not cold. Somehow even the smell, dusty pages and patchouli, is the same. A pang of grief surprises me, not just for my father but for the sepulchre he spent his life perfecting, likely demolished or soldoff for a tidy profit by Aurelio’s family as soon as my mourning days passed. I asked Aurelio once what would happen to it, but he refused to answer. The building was perhaps my only worthy dowry—and even that was never truly mine.
“Excuse me, miss, the archives are for members of the academy only.”
I startle, turning to see a man with owlish horn-rimmed spectacles and salt-and-pepper sideburns so unruly they’d likely get him thrown out of polite society. The hunch in his back is distinctive of a man who has spent his life surrounded by books.
“Oh—that’s okay, I’m a student.”
“And I’m a maharaja,” the man says without pause. “I’ve told your ilk before, I don’t care if your husband or your brother’s studying at that damned school in the village; that doesn’t mean you can waltz in here and just help yourselves to our prized—”
“No,” I cut him off quickly. “You misunderstand. I’m a student at the university. I arrived yesterday to read botany under Dr. Petaccia.”
The man stops and stares at me. “You?”
“Yes.” I try to curb the bite in my words, knowing that making an enemy here of all places would be a very bad start, but some of the poison sneaks in anyway. “I imagine it’s hard to believe.” I try for a small smile, but I’m not sure it’s very convincing.
“Ah.” A stalemate. Then, after a sneaky glance at the wedding ring on my finger, owl-glasses softens. “Yes. Well. Same rules for everybody. You need to sign in.” He nods over to the imposing polished desk, replete with a rare electric lamp, ledger, mahogany book tray, and other minutiae. “You can’t just wander around willy-nilly; we have a lot of textbooks that require checkout authorisation depending on who needs them. We have a lot of trouble inthat department, people thinking they deserve access by proximity’s sake alone, with no appreciation for the importance we place on endurance…”
I want to point out that I know how a library works, but the logical part of me knows it’s not an unfair assumption for him to make. I might have grown hearing my father’s tales, but it’s clear Aurelio was right in this instance; my upbringing was unusual in more ways than one, and women rarely read.
“Yes, sir,” I say. “Though I’m not here to study today. I have a meeting with the doctor. Can you please point me in the direction of the laboratories? I believe that’s where I’m meeting him, and perhaps other members of the faculty.”
The man looks at me with a puzzled expression for a moment. He once more glances from my wedding ring to the hems and sleeves of my dress, which are still as new as the day they arrived in silk ribbons and lined boxes in Aurelio’s parlour.She’s young, I suspect he’s thinking.She doesn’t belong here.
“Dr. Petaccia doesn’t share a laboratory,” he says, and the strange expression doesn’t leave his face. “The doctor is very protective. But I believe there is a parlour in La Vita—the thin grey-brown building with all the vines up the side behind the square. Perhaps you should try in there.”
Chapter Four
The librarian’s instructions are, thankfully, right on the mark.LA VITA—so christened on the chalky baluster out front—is hard to miss, sandwiched as it is between two much newer white-and-terra-cotta stucco and brick buildings on either side with grander columns and grander titles.LA SCIENZAto the left andL’ASTRONOMIAto the right, both with arching windows and shining pale steps out front. L’Astronomia is crowned with a strange circular tower at its zenith that can only be for stargazing. La Vita hunches between them like a poor cousin, thinner and shorter, its stucco greying and crawling with vines.
The butterflies in my belly I’ve been attempting to still all morning are now wild horses. I chomp down on my lower lip and push into the old building; it is cold inside after the heat of the sun and a shiver snakes up my spine. What if the doctor doesn’t like me? What if he changes his mind? The university, this life, is my last hope of making something of myself. Without it… I have nothing. I could try to set up my own sepulchre—I have enough experience in the business of grief—but I doubt anybody would bring me their dead. Mourning is a woman’s job, but the burial rites belong to men.
I shove the thoughts deeper, so deep that I can barely hear them over the hum of my blood in my ears, the thump of my heart. There is nobody at the entrance to this building, and both doors that branch off in this dim hall are locked. Time is pushing on and if I don’t hurry I will be late for my meeting.
Unlike Aurelio’s family with their silly parlour games, seeing which sister could best seduce her current suitor by the long wait to see her dinner dress alone, my father always taught me that punctuality is the politeness of kings. So I hike my skirts and breathlessly make the climb.
Each floor of the building is near identical, the same two locked doors off each landing until I finally reach the top. This high up there is only a single door, also closed—but this time not locked. I turn the knob and knock loudly, the rap of my knuckles echoing.
This landing spills into one enormous room. It has two huge curtainless sash windows on all three sides, bright and hot and—closed. The air in the room is muggy and green and I catch a breath in shock as my lungs rebel at the heat. Sweat immediately prickles at the nape of my neck, along my hairline, and I’m glad for the loss of my thick curls.
The walls are overrun with greenery, plants crawling on every inch, some alive and growing and others pressed tightly between great slides of glass. There are trenches of soil in curious knee-high troughs, some newly sprouting, and two trees in tubs blossoming with out-of-season flowers—white cuplike petals and long, curling pistils. I don’t recognise either.
Before me, creating an artificial divide in the room, is a large antique desk. It, like the rest of the room, is trailing with vines, some of which I could swear are moving. I let out a croak of greeting, startled.
“Yes?”
The woman—yes, woman—hunched behind the desk, the vines wrapped around her gloved knuckles, peers up at me with an expression of impatience on her narrow face, her dark eyes liquid.
“I… have a meeting,” I stammer. “Sorry. With Dr. Petaccia. If you could—”
The woman’s face shifts into a smile so bright that this, too, startles me. She looks younger then, perhaps mid-forties rather than fifties, her dark eyes sparkling with warmth. She stands, pushing the vines away impatiently, and approaches me; she is tall and thin,willowymight be the word, and dressed in a peculiar arrangement of layered skirt over tight trousers that gives her a range of movement I’ve never seen outside of Aurelio’s sister’s lady sports club. She sweeps some of the papers from the desk in front of her and into a small drawer, which she locks with a little key.
