Venetian Gothic (Venice) by Philip Gwynne Jones

Author:Philip Gwynne Jones [Jones, Philip Gwynne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472129758
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2020-04-01T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

I was glad of the rain. It stopped me wanting to buy cigarettes. I made my way down through Castello until I reached Campo Santa Maria Formosa and the Palazzo Querini Stampalia.

The palazzo was by no means the most beautiful in Venice, but it had become one of my favourites. If I had a particularly difficult piece of translation to do, and Gramsci’s demands for attention had become intolerable, I would come here to work in the library. Or, at least, I would listen to Pink Floyd on headphones, daydreaming away and occasionally tapping at my keyboard until it was time for lunch. Similarly, Fede would come here whenever she had research to do. Only without Pink Floyd.

The Marciana Library, of which I had recently become a member, was closer, much closer, to the Street of the Assassins, but the Querini Stampalia had one great advantage. It had a bar downstairs.

In days gone by I would have taken the lift up to the library, but the new Nathan – new, healthy-living Nathan – took the stairs. I considered taking them two at a time but that, perhaps, was something to be worked up to. I swiped my card through the reader and banged my shins on the turnstile as I forgot, as ever, the momentary delay whilst it clicked open.

I ignored the modern reading rooms with rows of shared computer terminals, and went straight through to the original wood-panelled library with the familiar, comforting sound of the floors squeaking beneath my feet.

Fede was seated with her back to me, in a carved wooden chair, tapping away at her laptop and pausing occasionally to check the yellowing pages of the small, leather-bound book at her side. I took a quick look around the room. There were only two other people. I bent over behind her and kissed the back of her neck.

She sat bolt upright with a shriek, the back of her head banging into my nose and drawing an ‘argh!’ out of me. The heads of the other readers immediately snapped up, an irate ‘hsssst!’ issuing from both.

Fede turned round, and rolled her eyes upon seeing me.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she hissed.

‘Sorry.’ I rubbed my nose. At least she hadn’t drawn blood. ‘I thought I was being romantic.’

‘Well don’t. It doesn’t suit you.’

‘Is everything all right, Dottoressa? It’s just that I heard some noise.’ The speaker was a middle-aged woman, evidently the chief librarian.

‘Everything is fine.’ She pointed at me. ‘It’s just my idiot boyfriend.’

‘I understand, Dottoressa.’

There was silence, for a moment, as the other readers returned to their, well, reading, and the librarian returned to her post, the floors squeaking reproachfully beneath her feet.

‘Well, that wasn’t embarrassing at all,’ I muttered.

‘Your fault, caro mio, for making a scene.’

‘I don’t know,’ I grumbled, ‘a man tries to make a grand romantic gesture and the next thing that happens—’

‘—is that he’s banned from every library in Venice.’

I pulled up the chair next to her, and winced as it screeched across the floor.

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