Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop by Alba Donati
Author:Alba Donati
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2023-05-30T00:00:00+00:00
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Todayâs orders: Qualcosa by Chiara Gamberale, Les Villes de papier by Dominique Fortier, Rosa candida by Auður Ava Ãlafsdóttir.
March 22, 2021
Itâs 6:00 a.m. The weekend netted us a grand total of eight visitors, plus splendid sunshine and arctic temperatures. Luckily, online orders are keeping us afloat.
Donatella couldnât come, as she was busy organizing a sale of childrenâs shoes. Years ago sheâd opened a little boutique with her daughter, far too fancy for where we live. The shopâs long gone, but they still have some stock in their basement, and they sell it off little by little to mobs of mothers and aunts rooting through the piles of shoes, looking for the right size and color. But Donatellaâs as tough as they come, pretty unflappable.
Yesterday we exchanged a few messagesâI sent her a picture of a haircut that I think would look great on her. Donatella married âa foreigner,â which is to say a guy she met in a club thirty-five years ago. Graziano is one of those old-fashioned, earnest menâunabashedly possessive when it comes to Donatella, but clever enough to accept the resulting mockery with good grace. The truth is, as Ernesto is very fond of saying, that Graziano is still on his honeymoon. And heâs rightâyou wonât find a couple more madly in love than those two.
Donatella is two years younger than me, an age gap that felt unbridgeable when we were little. Childhood is the proof that time is entirely subjective. When I was thirteen, Donatellaâs uncle came to visit from Australia with his son, Silvano, who was eighteen. That was a phenomenal summer. We spent hours dancing to rock ânâ roll in my basement. I contributed our cassette player, he his Elvis Presley tapes. You should have seen his movesâJohn Travolta and Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction had nothing on us, gyrating in a basement along with all the âlittle onesâ: Donatella, Luana, and Tiziana. Silvano was smitten; I was flattered. I wore miniskirts and Iâd started to develop something resembling curves.
Anyway, the summer of â73 was a memorable one. It was bookended by the inauguration of the World Trade Center on April 4âwhich left me largely indifferentâand another event that instead resonated deep inside my young bones: Pinochetâs coup in Chile and Allendeâs suicide on September 11. As for us, we kept dancing, without a care in the world, in our basement ballroom. The following year Silvano came back, convinced he had a girlfriend in Lucignana, but I had moved to Florence. For this Donatella never forgave me.
Today is Monday, which means Alessandra will be here shortly. I smile, anticipating our usual conversation:
âIâd like my breakfast, please.â
âWould you, now? How about some coffee and a nice âfuck youâ to start the day?â
I adore her. Later weâll go to check if Mikeâs house has been damaged by last nightâs storm. I only wish our stockings from Israel were hereâthatâd be perfect.
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