The Serroni Library seeks a motivated individual… This after two days of manic searching and two broken conversations—one in a shop selling bags and shoes, the other in the home of a wealthy family—both with sleek Italian women who spoke quickly as the color rose to my cheeks and I asked them to repeat again and again. But, signora, they had said slowly with knowing looks, the ad said fluency.
“We do have a position available,” Lorenza says, her eyes probing. “But I should warn you that it is temporary—only for this term. And it’s nothing glamorous.”
“That’s fine. I’m not looking for anything glamorous,” I say quickly, then add, “My degree is in art history. And I worked for a museum in Boston.”
“Hmm. Good.” Her countenance changes, as though I might have something to offer after all. “Well, we need someone to help with cataloging.” She says “we,” but there isn’t anyone else here. “More pressingly, I have urgent travel next week, so we need a person behind the desk, preferably someone responsible who knows what he or she is talking about. I had a young woman here who was completely unreliable. I cannot have that again.”
I nod.
“Do you have your CV?”
“No. I could try and get a hold of it and come back—”
“Not to worry. We’ll do it now.” Lorenza opens the desk drawer and removes a pad of paper. I am fully damp beneath my suit. I squeeze my hands together. The first questions are easy: Education. Previous jobs.
“So you’ve worked with collections, then?”
“Yes.” I keep my voice casual as I run through my experience. Everything that I’m saying is true. I was good at my job—at the beginning, I was. And still I fear, in spite of the suit, in spite of my years of experience, that I don’t have a professional self anymore, that it may have gone with all the rest.
“That was your most recent employment?”
I nod. How will I explain the months between then and now? Adrenaline courses through me and the deepest, most primal part of my brain emerges. The part that screams flight. How have I found myself here again, in a room in a chair across from a person who wants answers, who reveals nothing and asks me to reveal all?
And then all I can see is that past room.
The director called me into his office. The afternoon Claudia found me hiding in the museum courtyard, watching the schoolchildren. It was sometime in May, sometime after I began throwing up.
“It’s the third mistake, Hannah.” Robert was uncomfortable, older than me. He’d been at the museum forever. He cleared his throat repeatedly while he addressed my slipups. They kept coming now. There had been more than three, I was sure of that.
“It isn’t like you.”
I nodded. Assured him that I would be more careful.
He cleared his throat, took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes. “There’s another thing. This is a little delicate,” he said, and sighed. “People have been noticing—”
What people? Who was noticing? Claudia. It must have been her.
“—that you’ve lost some weight.” He cleared his throat again. “Quite a bit of weight.”
“I joined a gym,” I said.
“A gym…” He nodded. I was doing his job for him. I was making it easy.
The room began going in and out of focus. “And I’ve been busy—a little stressed.”
He nodded again. This was a good explanation. He rubbed his eyes, put his glasses back on, and said, “Don’t work too hard, okay? If you need some time off—”
“Absolutely. I’ll let you know.” I would have to be more careful.
And I was more careful. I stayed late into the evenings, going over and over minutiae. There would be no more slipups to reveal me. I began eating publicly, eating more. Defiantly, I ate. I knew people were watching and I performed with confidence. Yes, I’d love to join you. Yes, I’d love a bite. And then alone in the bathroom, I’d retrieve whatever I’d put in.
That bathroom. All steel, all echoes. Two doors: a heavy outer door that required a key and made a loud suction as it opened; a lighter inner door. Three sinks. Three stalls. I chose the farthest one. I was smart at first. I waited until after hours, when most of the staff had left. I knew the click of the key and the sound of that outer door opening against pressure and could right myself. When did I get careless? I would go in a little earlier, just a little earlier, each time. Twice I heard that door open and stood up. But someone must have heard, must have told.
A second conversation. He cleared his throat, took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes. He didn’t want this. Neither did I.
“Hannah, a few people have mentioned—”
What people? Who? “I haven’t been feeling well,” I cut him off. “But I know—that I need to take better care of myself, I mean. Make it a priority.”
“Yes,” he said, relieved. He put his glasses back on. “Take care of yourself. If you need some time—”
“Absolutely.”
“And why did you leave that position?” Lorenza asks.
The larger truth I haven’t shared sits heavy between us. I look down at my hands. Please. Though I can’t think that way or she may sense it, may feel the desperation coming off me. No one wants someone desperate. No one.
Lorenza is looking at me oddly now. You would keep your glasses off, too.
“It wasn’t the right fit.”
“I see,” she says. “And what makes you think this would be a better fit?”
I look around the room, taking in the quiet shelves, the rows and rows of thick leather spines. “I love books,” I say finally. This is true. I used to read all the time—before I stopped eating.
“Mm-hmm.” She writes nothing.
“I read that this collection belonged to a family?” I’ve done my research. I can show her that, at least.
Lorenza nods. “The Serroni. They lived here, in this palazzo. Signora Arcelli”—she gestures to the portrait that had stopped me in the doorway—“married into the family. These books were her dowry. Since the fifties we’ve expanded the collection to make it more accessible, with books in English as well. But this room and the adjoining room are comprised entirely of volumes from Signora Arcelli’s original library.”
“That’s incredible.”
Lorenza nods but remains quiet, waiting for me to say more. Breathe. Be honest.
“My job at the museum—I didn’t feel like what I was doing mattered.” As I say it, I realize that it’s true. “I was good at my job, but it felt… empty.” I look her straight in the eye. “A place like this matters. It means something. I think my work would mean something here.”
Lorenza’s face softens. “Why don’t I give you a tour? Give you a sense of what you’d be getting into.” I don’t know if she’s just letting me down easy, but before I can respond, she’s up and across the room. She must be a head shorter than me and still I need to move quickly to keep up.
“The library is two complete floors and also this middle level—special interest, specific to region.”
I read the labels as we pass them: ARCHAEOLOGY, THE GRAND TOUR, TUSCAN TRAVELS, THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE, THE MEDICI, THE GREAT WAR. We take a staircase to the next floor down, where several students, one a version of Pam, sit hunched over computers. She’s the only person to look up as Lorenza Ricci says, “Buongiorno,” before leading me to the shelves beyond.
“We partner with universities, international programs, make the materials available for a small fee. Don’t be alarmed by the number of students here today. It isn’t always this crowded.”
There can’t be more than half a dozen people, but I nod gravely.
“It’s almost the middle of the term, so there are exams,” she explains. “Not that these programs are truly rigorous anymore. Fewer standards. It’s a shame.”
I glance back at the girl, who is now whispering across the table to one of the boys.
Lorenza turns with force and leads me back up the stairs. “We also have newspapers and journal
s on file. And there are plenty of places to work.” She walks across the main room and through a set of double doors. “The Arcelli Room, for example, is a lovely spot, even when the children are here.”
I realize her speech and her tour are well choreographed. The room we stand in is breathtaking, with long wooden tables, antique books behind glass, and three long windows facing the river. This, I think, is a Library.
“This is the original reading room. The books in here are for use, too, but not to lend. They’re the earliest editions from the Serroni collection. Well, then,” she says. “Any questions for me?”
“What makes you interested in this type of work? What makes it—”
“A ‘good fit’?” She smiles. “The preservation of history,” she says, each word carefully weighed and weighted. “I ought to have mentioned earlier—my father was a Ricci but my mother comes from the Serroni line.”
“Really?”
“Sì. I’m the last Serroni—or the last one who cares, I should say. I have cousins who would like to sell this place, profit off the collection. And perhaps they will. But not while I’m living. These books have been here for centuries and survived worse—part of the collection was lost, you know, during the flood.”
“The flood?”
“Sì. Nineteen sixty-six. You aren’t familiar with it? Just a moment.” She disappears and returns with a large book. “The images will do it more justice.” She sets it on the long reading table and gestures for me to come closer. It feels strangely intimate, standing side by side, our heads bent together, and her reserve disappears as she walks me through the pages. The text is Italian, but the photos speak for themselves. Each scene is a ghostly gray, as though we’ve caught the images just as they are about to disappear. The opening photos are of the Arno on the morning of the flood. The bridge supports of the Ponte Vecchio are entirely submerged and the shops sit on the Arno’s surface like houseboats. In the background, buildings seem to evaporate into fog, the empty ruins of an ancient city. The rowing club is under that water, rapids racing through the cavern where the sculls are stored, filling the coffee bar, washing away the echoes of the locker rooms. The banks where we feed the boats onto the river are disappeared entirely.
“My god,” I say.
“And this is only the beginning.”
In the pages that follow, the disaster unfolds in real time. Water rushes over the river’s walls, pouring into the city, filling the long courtyard between the arms of the Uffizi Gallery, and climbing up the sides of the Duomo and baptistery. Fiats are transformed into makeshift boats, and a bus floats around the square in front of the foundling hospital.
“More than ten thousand works of art damaged or destroyed,” Lorenza says softly without looking up. “And I mean all art—sculpture, painting, manuscripts. Including some of our own collection, as I said.”
She turns another page and a jolt passes through my body. Water sweeps through the sculptures in the loggia of Piazza della Signoria, swirling around Perseus, Menelaus, and Hercules and reaching up toward the open hands of the twisting Sabine woman. I can imagine the rough current licking at her fingertips. She is drowning.
“How awful.”
“Sì,” Lorenza says. “Though there is a—how do you call it? A silver lining. Thousands of volunteers came to save the art—students primarily. A horrific event, but also a testament to the human spirit. If you can imagine how much more would have been lost. Buried.” She shakes her head, then takes a step back, as though remembering herself. I wonder what it is like to be Lorenza, to spend so much time in this place that her ancestors called home, surrounded always by their ghosts. “As I said, the preservation of history. Now, I have some work to do, but feel free to stay and enjoy the books—and take this with you, if you’d like.”
Has she offered me the job? Did I miss that?
“You’ll begin tomorrow?” she asks, after a pause.
I want to cheer, want to throw my arms around this small fortress of a woman, but instead I just smile broadly and say, “Yes, yes,” again the yes-girl, and still—“Yes,” and I take the hand she offers me. Her grip, though small and bony, is surprisingly warm.
Later that afternoon, as I row under the Ponte Santa Trinita and look west over the now-quiet Arno, I can’t shake the image of the water raging with indifference, the city’s lifeblood turning on it without cause or care. The bridge sits high above the water, the streets are dry, and the shops are filled with life. Still, it all feels temporary, perilously so.
On my way home, I decide to stop for an early dinner. I order a glass of prosecco—and why not? I have a job, small as it is. I have the means to stay for a little while longer. I eat my fish and salad and watch the sky grow pink. Things are just beginning. This is a new beginning. Then I take out the book on the flood. In the final pages, I find the silver lining that Lorenza had referenced. Youth crowd into a barely lit hallway, forming an assembly line for the treasures being salvaged from the wreckage of libraries and museums. In one shot, Ted Kennedy acknowledges their efforts. In another, a group sits in the shadow of a column, leaning on one another for support, all mud but their faces. Woodstock in repose. Angeli del Fango, the caption reads. Mud Angels. In the final images, they earn the title as volumes heavy with water and debris make their way down the human chain and, hand to hand, history is passed out of the ruins and into the light.
Chapter Ten
On my first official day of work, Lorenza Ricci insists that I take notes. She goes over in detail the processes for checking out, checking in, and cataloging books, then walks me through all the library’s sections, explaining the organization. It is easy to follow her through the shelves, listening and writing, and I like that these tools—the overly long sheets of European paper with their faint green lines, the generic ballpoint pen a bit narrower than those I’m used to—which are foreign in my hands, have a purpose and will soon feel natural. When Lorenza opens the glass doors of the cases in the Arcelli Room, a thin cloud of dust floats around us. She opens a small drawer to reveal carefully stacked white gloves and puts a pair on before pulling out one of the volumes, impressing upon me the delicacy of the pages and gripping just the very edge of each corner as she turns them. I don’t touch any of the books, but I look forward to the time she is away when I might let my fingers run down their rough edges.
By the time I get home, I have to rush to get ready for dinner. Then I lean out the window, waiting for Luca. It is chilly, the sky is clear, and the street below is empty except for a gray cat that darts around in circles and then ducks under a small yellow Fiat. The door of the building across the way opens and a woman steps out.
“Tommaso!” She takes a few harried steps.
My phone rings behind me and she glances up at the sound. Our eyes meet before I duck back into my apartment and pick up the receiver, sure it is Luca canceling.
“Hannah, it’s Lorenza Ricci. Can you come a bit earlier tomorrow? Eight thirty? I have an appointment that I’m afraid is going to keep me out for much of the day and I’d like to go over some final things with you.”
“Yes, of course, Signora Ricci.”
“Lorenza.”
“Of course, Lorenza.”
I’m employed, I think, the relief hitting me again as I return to the window. The woman is bending over in the street now. I should yell out, disclose the little fugitive’s location, but already the cat’s plaintive cry has begun, a child both wanting and not wanting to be found. The woman becomes a splotch of white, spreading, as she crouches low by the car. She reaches under and drags him slowly out. She carries him, stiff-limbed, up the block, kicks her door open, and disappears inside. Then the street is quiet.
At six o’clock there is still no sign of Luca, and I’m beginning to think he might not show up at all when his car barrels down the street and pulls to a quick stop. He steps out, looks around, and walks to the door. I don’t call out but watch him ring the bell before closing the shutters and puttin
g on my coat. On my way out, Signora Rosa appears on cue with her same look, and I tell her that I will have the October rent to her shortly. I have a job.
In the car, Luca is friendly but quiet. He drives quickly to get us to the restaurant before the sun sets. It is his friend’s place in Chianti. “A perfect spot,” he says. When I tell him about the library, his enthusiasm fills the car momentarily before we fall back into silence. I begin to feel uneasy and realize how little I know about him.
“So do you do something?” I ask. “Other than rowing, I mean?”
“Sì. Lavoro in un negozio di sport.” An athletic store. “I am—come si dice… il direttore?”
I nod. “The manager. Did you ever row professionally?”
He sighs. “I was for a time on the national team. But it was boring. Training in the country. I wanted to shoot myself, it was so boring.”
Soon we’re climbing into the hills, Luca’s little car working hard. There are few buildings here, only the occasional collection of houses, clotheslines strung between their windows. Otherwise it is all nature—a quilt of hayfields, olive groves, and vineyards, golds and greens cascading down slopes and funneling into valleys. Everything is alive and fertile. I envy the grapevines with their thick, waxy leaves. I envy the hardy olive trees that survive on almost nothing.
Luca points to a sign as we speed by. “A Medici villa. Li conosci, i Medici?”
“Sì, certo.”
Luca nods. “The wife of Lorenzo stayed there. Clarice. But it is a sad story.”
“Perché?”
Luca turns down the radio. “Perché Lorenzo, he was crazy, you know? Running with women in Firenze. And Clarice remained at the villa—in the countryside.”
“All the time?”
“Sì.”
“Did they ever see each other?”
“No, perché it was a marriage not for love, capisci?”
“Arranged?”
“Esatto. Clarice comes from Rome. Lorenzo’s mother, Lucrezia—”
“Lucrezia Tornabuoni?” I remember the older woman in the frescoes in Santa Maria Novella.
Florence in Ecstasy Page 10
