fan of Maltese lace, fine gowns, silk slippers and a perfume flask of Murano glass. Most of them were gifts from Signora Contarini, just like the roof over my head and my place in her workshop.
I ran my fingers over the dozens of books on the shelf, relishing the feel of the mottled calfskin and the stamped lettering on the spines as much as my memories of the words inside each volume. These were my real treasures, but there were too many to take with me. Some were books we had printed, my friends and I. Some I had inherited from Master de Aquila: the books he had bought on our long journey from Amsterdam; each one a reminder of a distant city, a market stall, a bookseller’s shop; each one a memory of him and his joy. Many were books that I had bought and read time after time: about battles and famous deeds; about birds, flowers and the wonders of the New World; books filled with adventures or history or science, in which great men — or women — spoke to me of their thoughts and discoveries.
What a miracle, to have so much wisdom, beauty and genius at my fingertips. It felt like saying farewell to dear friends. I had no idea if I would ever see them again. At one time in my life, I might have said that books were all that mattered. But now I knew that wasn’t true. I had grown up surrounded by books, and until the war came my father and I might have both said that books were our lives, our livelihood. But now he was lost to me, and I lived every day, every hour, with that knowledge — that grief. Now I knew that books mattered a great deal, but not as much as people — as life.
I picked up the perfume flask and held it against the sunshine, tilting it one way and another. The light streamed through the coloured glass and threw fragments of rainbow onto the wall behind me. I watched them flicker and fade as twilight closed in, my mind first racing through myriad possibilities and then lingering on questions that seemed to hold no answers. Was I to spend all my life fleeing from one city to another in search of refuge? Would I never have a place to call my own, a library filled with books, a garden, a family? How could I repay my friends for their many kindnesses and their fierce loyalty?
When the signora knocked on my door an hour later, she found me slumped on the bed.
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Not you, too? I just realised I’ve been sitting staring blankly at my father’s old edition of Dante since you left me.’
‘I’m weary, that’s all,’ I said. ‘I doubt I have the strength to get through the next hour, let alone the whole evening.’
She climbed up onto the bed next to me and pulled the quilt over herself.
‘If someone as brave as you feels like that,’ she said, ‘imagine how feeble I feel.’
‘I don’t know why everyone thinks I’m brave.’
‘When, in fact, you are fearful all the time? You wake at night in tears?’
‘How do you know?’
‘These men, they see in you a woman who argues with tyrants and they think you must be powerful, fearless, always. Yet we women know the truth, and that we cannot let them see our weaknesses.’
‘You, too?’
‘Let us try to think of all this as an adventure,’ she said, ‘just like in those Spanish romances, or we shall both be too immobilised to go on.’
‘You don’t even like those sorts of books.’
She chuckled. ‘We are more alike than you know. In so many ways. You feel the same way as I do about our work and about books, as your master did, bless his soul in heaven. Perhaps you inherited it from your father? Words are in you, part of you. Without them, you would not be who you are.’
‘It’s always been that way,’ I said. ‘Writing down words — now printing them — in the hope someone will read them. My father …’ As always, words about him, of our life together, caught in my throat.
‘I know,’ she said.
‘At times it’s felt like a burden, even a curse. It has certainly brought me endless trouble.
I ran my fingers over the dozens of books on the shelf, relishing the feel of the mottled calfskin and the stamped lettering on the spines as much as my memories of the words inside each volume. These were my real treasures, but there were too many to take with me. Some were books we had printed, my friends and I. Some I had inherited from Master de Aquila: the books he had bought on our long journey from Amsterdam; each one a reminder of a distant city, a market stall, a bookseller’s shop; each one a memory of him and his joy. Many were books that I had bought and read time after time: about battles and famous deeds; about birds, flowers and the wonders of the New World; books filled with adventures or history or science, in which great men — or women — spoke to me of their thoughts and discoveries.
What a miracle, to have so much wisdom, beauty and genius at my fingertips. It felt like saying farewell to dear friends. I had no idea if I would ever see them again. At one time in my life, I might have said that books were all that mattered. But now I knew that wasn’t true. I had grown up surrounded by books, and until the war came my father and I might have both said that books were our lives, our livelihood. But now he was lost to me, and I lived every day, every hour, with that knowledge — that grief. Now I knew that books mattered a great deal, but not as much as people — as life.
I picked up the perfume flask and held it against the sunshine, tilting it one way and another. The light streamed through the coloured glass and threw fragments of rainbow onto the wall behind me. I watched them flicker and fade as twilight closed in, my mind first racing through myriad possibilities and then lingering on questions that seemed to hold no answers. Was I to spend all my life fleeing from one city to another in search of refuge? Would I never have a place to call my own, a library filled with books, a garden, a family? How could I repay my friends for their many kindnesses and their fierce loyalty?
When the signora knocked on my door an hour later, she found me slumped on the bed.
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Not you, too? I just realised I’ve been sitting staring blankly at my father’s old edition of Dante since you left me.’
‘I’m weary, that’s all,’ I said. ‘I doubt I have the strength to get through the next hour, let alone the whole evening.’
She climbed up onto the bed next to me and pulled the quilt over herself.
‘If someone as brave as you feels like that,’ she said, ‘imagine how feeble I feel.’
‘I don’t know why everyone thinks I’m brave.’
‘When, in fact, you are fearful all the time? You wake at night in tears?’
‘How do you know?’
‘These men, they see in you a woman who argues with tyrants and they think you must be powerful, fearless, always. Yet we women know the truth, and that we cannot let them see our weaknesses.’
‘You, too?’
‘Let us try to think of all this as an adventure,’ she said, ‘just like in those Spanish romances, or we shall both be too immobilised to go on.’
‘You don’t even like those sorts of books.’
She chuckled. ‘We are more alike than you know. In so many ways. You feel the same way as I do about our work and about books, as your master did, bless his soul in heaven. Perhaps you inherited it from your father? Words are in you, part of you. Without them, you would not be who you are.’
‘It’s always been that way,’ I said. ‘Writing down words — now printing them — in the hope someone will read them. My father …’ As always, words about him, of our life together, caught in my throat.
‘I know,’ she said.
‘At times it’s felt like a burden, even a curse. It has certainly brought me endless trouble.
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