Chapter One: Page 3

We straggle into the deserted main piazza. It’s not much—a small, uneven plain of patterned cobbles with no central monument or parco, not even an ornamented public cistern installed to weather sieges. Tall palazzi stand like fortifications on all sides, housing city offices, shops and caffè bars. The sun strikes their high yellow facades with such force that I expect the sound of hammers. From open casements and shadowed doorways comes the rapid murmur of men’s voices, plates chiming. The heavy scent of pounded basil and garlic throws me back again, to a cold summer lunch of pasta alla carrettiera, eaten in silence at my mother’s parents’ farm in Aidone; and to my mother spooning ammogghiu over eggplant grilled on her bedroom balcony—the one that finally fell into the street.

Mayor Agretta’s retinue has somehow vanished. The library towers precipitously before me now, its complex face radiating heat. I have an impression of heavy scrollwork, colonettes and rusticated friezes, all effaced by intolerable light. I close my eyes against it, feel myself fall briefly toward darkness—and yank myself back up.

The mayor leans into me as I pass him through the door. “Never mind Signor Chiesa,” he says. “He will simply have to excuse us, eh?”

I smile sweetly, take off my sunglasses and let him see my eyes. “I’m going to blame you, Signor Agretta,” I say, and watch his face rearrange itself.

I’m ready for the Palermo library’s stunted twin—ill–lit stacks and rotting books shelved every which way, walls of bloody-looking porphyry—but Valparuta’s Biblioteca Comunale surprises me. I’m standing in the atrium of a bright, reasonably airy hall occupied by reading tables. Orderly metal stacks are set in galleries all around, and more stacks are visible through the upper gallery’s heavy marble balustrade. A grand, curved staircase rises at the back of the hall. The floors are of pale grey marble, the walls the same, the stacks are grey; Valparuta’s library is like a mind just wakened in the morning, calm, largely clear, ready for the day’s first impressions. I like it immediately.

The tables are all empty.

“Oh,” says Mayor Agretta, “no doubt Signor Chiesa sent everyone out long ago. We’re late, late!”

He slips past me at a businessman’s run, that rapid, self–important walk that executives all over the world have mastered, heading for the marble staircase. “Signor Chiesa, Signor Chiesa—we’re here!” he sings out, as if we’ve all been at a game of hide–and–seek. His voice dies strangely when it strikes the ranks of books.

Mayor Agretta is halfway up the stairs when Chiesa appears above him. The archivist has just put on his suitcoat, a handsome thing—he’s still rolling his shoulders to make it set properly. The coat hangs badly on him, even from where I stand. He’s taken a heavier colleague’s coat by mistake, I think.

The mayor stops on the stairs, suddenly tentative. “Ah, Signor Chiesa,” he says. “There you are.”

“Yes,” says Chiesa. “But where have you been?”

The mayor doesn’t answer. Instead he seizes Chiesa’s elbow and propels him down the stairs to me, talking all the while about supply requisitions and budget difficulties, a work order held up in contract negotiations. He breaks off suddenly.

“Here is Professoressa Severance, Joan Severance!” the mayor cries with a flourish, struggling valiantly with all the strange consonants.

Chiesa is still buttoning his suitcoat, still wrestling the problem of the budget difficulties. He doesn’t know what the mayor is talking about; he looks confused and irritated. Hurriedly, he takes my hand in his. His hand is cool and dry, full of bones; his grip is too hard.