The Italian Bookshop Among the Vines by Amanda Weinberg

Author:Amanda Weinberg [Weinberg, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

Bella stood at the entrance of the Beit Israel Synagogue. The fragrance of wild roses and lavender her stepsisters had picked on the San Gianni path earlier that morning and wound around the pillars of the bimah wafted along the narrow aisles and pricked at her nostrils. Humming of Hebrew melodies; smiling faces; sunlight filtering through the windows drifted through and around her. The soulful notes of the marriage ceremony floated up to the sky, stained fuchsia in the early evening light.

She had been swallowed up in a fog of arrangements and decisions: the wedding, her mother’s dress, where she and Michele would live. She was a witness, a silent ghost, like her dead mother or Tanaquilla, watching as she was carried along on this cloud that was her life. She wondered how it had ever happened, how she had agreed to marry Michele and move to Favore, that godforsaken town in the mountains. When she was younger, she had fantasised about leaving Monterini, but she had never envisaged living in that village with its ageing population and bleak winters. Stone houses clung desperately to the mountainside. There was no school, no library, no grinding of crickets in the summer, no lizards leaping out of cracks in the walls. It felt remote, unfamiliar, barren.

Did she love Michele?

She knew only that the war in Europe wafted around them like a bad smell. How long before the odour would gag them all? She knew life was fragile. She knew money, education and position meant nothing. One intake of breath and it was all gone.

She heard voices in her head telling her to run in different directions: her father’s, Angelo’s, Rico’s. Since his appearance the day before, Bella felt Rico’s presence everywhere; in the cool alleyways, in the warm air around her, even here at the synagogue. When they were young, he used to wait for her on Shabbat, by one of the stained-glass windows. He would lift himself up, resting his feet on a large stone, so he could stare at her during the service. She had always been unable to tear her eyes away from the shadow behind the blue, green and red fragments of glass. Now she couldn’t tear herself away from the memory of him the night before; his teeth glinting, his soot-like eyes hounding her, pulling her further and further into his snare.

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