Page 11 of This Vicious Hunger

Chapter Seven

D espite the exhaustion, I soon fall into a rhythm of learning not too dissimilar from that of my mid-childhood, only here my father isn’t around to corral me as he did back then, and the learning is in lecture halls instead of the dark beneath his desk or curled in the corner of the embalming room with my fingers and toes freezing solid even in the summer.

I think of my father often. Whenever I drink a strong cup of coffee dosed with fragrant cardamom, I’m haunted by the ghost of the same scent caught in his beard during the rites; during my lonely walks about campus, I can’t shake the sensation that he’s right beside me, studying the stone buildings.

I often catch myself spinning my wedding ring, as if this might keep his spirit at bay.

My grief is stronger here than it was even in the city, and I find it hard to shake.

It should be Aurelio I think of—and perhaps those who see me twirling my ring in lectures might think that it is, more fool them—but the more time that passes, the more those thirteen weeks of my married life seem like a bad dream, nothing more than an untenable enclosure.

Most days I wake before dawn, still clinging to the tendrils of nightmares I don’t remember, to read over the notes from my lectures, readying myself for the upcoming tutorial with Petaccia in every way I can since I have no idea what it might involve.

Then it’s breakfast, classes—some more interactive than others—and a quiet dinner in my same spot by the window in the dining hall with barely a minute to think about anything else—although I have taken to counting the number of my classes where Leonardo Vanksy also occupies a desk in the outer row.

He catches my eye outside after class one day as I’m taking a breath of the warm summer air, making the most of a rare fifteen minutes before the next, and stands waiting in the shadow of the building until I wave him over.

“You can stop skulking and come say hello,” I say, giving him a small flustered smile as he lights his cigarillo.

I don’t know exactly what possessed me to give him my maiden name last time we met, though I do know that the reason has less to do with Leonardo than it does with the way Aurelio’s name never felt like mine.

Still, I think of Petaccia’s warning. Leonardo seems like a nice man, but is his friendliness genuine philanthropy?

It pains me to admit, but I am likely the naive one here.

“Sorry.” He laughs through a puff of smoke and comes to stand with me under the trees instead. “I thought maybe you were avoiding me, hiding over here amongst the foliage. I thought, ‘If ever there was a woman trying to turn invisible, it’s that one.’”

I return his laugh, but the comment lands hard.

Invisibility used to come so easily to me—nobody pays attention to the funereal staff, especially not if the chief mourner is nothing but some gangly young girl—but that all changed when I was the new Mrs. LeVand.

Our marriage photograph was even in the newspapers.

And here it doesn’t matter if people think I’m married, divorced, or single—I’m still a woman and that’s reason enough to pay attention.

“I can hardly avoid you; I see you several times a day,” I say as lightly as I can muster.

“I’m sorry about that too,” Leonardo jokes. “I wouldn’t want to look at this ugly mug so often either.”

“Don’t be silly.” Despite Petaccia’s warning about the men here, something about the warmth in Leonardo’s voice makes me like him.

It’s like talking to somebody I’ve known a lot longer than a week.

“It’s not you I’m hiding from. Besides, if I was planning to disappear, I’d do a heck of a lot better than Cupressus sempervirens . ”

“Ah now.” Leonardo nods approvingly, taking a drag and blowing smoke away from us. “Somebody’s been paying attention in taxonomy.”

Coming from somebody else this might seem patronising, but from Leonardo it’s a genuine compliment. I shrug. “Perhaps I have a knack for it.”

“I think you probably do. It’s not often Petaccia takes a new mentee.”

“You said that before. Stop trying to butter me up,” I say. Leonardo raises his hands in defence but his laughter tells me it’s only part of the repartee. “Or are you simply jealous?” I add, playing along. It’s nice to joke.

“Oh, very,” Leonardo says earnestly, and there’s more than a kernel of truth there. “I imagine my parents would be much less disappointed in their only son if he had such a well-regarded mentor.”

“Perhaps we should petition to get her to take you on.”

Leonardo chuckles. “Alas, I actually don’t think my parents would care to know Petaccia from Almerto, since neither is a lawyer and neither would make a particularly good suitor for my sisters. I’m already a lost cause.”

“You think you have it hard, try being the only daughter of an undertaker,” I say blithely.

It’s meant to be another part of the jape, but Leonardo’s face softens in a manner too close to pity for my liking.

I feel myself clam up immediately, the balmy heat against my skin no longer pleasant.

“I mean—we’re very well respected,” I stammer, desperately trying to claw it back.

“But don’t tell me anybody’s top choice for marriage is ever the girl they last saw at their great-uncle’s cradleside. ”

“I…” Leonardo pushes at his spectacles awkwardly.

For a second I debate simply walking away without another word.

Death is not a subject for polite conversation; I know that—Aurelio beat it into me often enough—but what else do I have to speak on?

How will I ever make friends when this, mourning and sadness and Silence—and less than four months as a wife—is all I’ve ever known?

“It’s all right,” I say quickly. “You don’t have to say anything; I know that was strange. I’m sorry. I’m—”

“I was just going to say… You’re right.” Leonardo gives me a tentative smirk, which widens when he sees my expression shift from embarrassment to hesitant relief.

“You did have it harder. Of course, now you have a terribly big advantage. With you as such a shining example of your kind, I think it might very well be more difficult for me to get signed on under Petaccia than it would be to get our fellow scholars to start marrying undertakers’ daughters. ”

“You think?” I choke out.

“Oh, absolutely.” Leonardo finishes his cigarillo and stubs it out with the sole of his shoe. “So how about we call it a draw?”

Lectures aside, life at the university is lonelier than I expected.

Most of the scholars keep their distance, and my evenings are quiet—I’ve yet to brave the library again and have taken to spending the hours between dinner and near dusk with more books for company.

It occurs to me more than once that some would call this just another kind of Silence, an extension of my grief, but if that’s so, then it is at least one of my own creation.

The truth is that I’m accustomed to being alone.

My father was my closest companion after my mother died, and he spent so many hours working that it became second nature to either amuse myself or work alongside him—and even he was not my friend .

An undertaker’s life is one of fluidity; it’s hard to develop any true kind of routine or connection when your days and nights are ruled by the constant unpredictable predictability of death and your home feels like it belongs to the departed more than the living.

I never knew other children my own age, unless they were Silent or lying still in the cradle awaiting their flames, and my mother only ever gave birth to one living child, so I had no siblings.

It wasn’t until my marriage to Aurelio that I knew what it meant to be so constantly near somebody—and with Aurelio’s family, his mother, his sisters and their children and their husbands, it was often more than only one somebody.

It was too much to bear. More than once during our short marriage I had to excuse myself from a family dinner early claiming a headache or indigestion.

Aurelio was always disappointed, though he hid it well in public.

This is why I’m so surprised at myself when I accept the coffee Leonardo offers as we enter Professor Almerto’s next Thursday morning lecture. He comes to the hall bearing two closed-top containers made of glass, the dark liquid topped with a creamy white foam, condensation beading on the sides.

I waver, thinking again of Petaccia’s warning, and the way Leonardo gamely carried on our banter the last time we spoke, but I smile as he approaches my chosen desk and he returns the gesture.

I don’t know anything about Leonardo yet, not really, but I won’t let Petaccia’s fear that I’m shopping for a husband get in the way of a potential friendship just to reassure her of my aspirations—not unless she insists.

Besides, having a friend in the same area of study is, I think, a wise decision.

Petaccia isn’t the only reason for my uncertainty, though. The thing that makes me question myself is much smaller, and also much, much bigger. It’s something I noticed when we first met and saw an echo of in his childish eagerness to continue our conversation even after I made him uncomfortable…

Why do the other scholars in all our lectures avoid him as they do?

They don’t engage with his questions as they do with other classmates, and even the professors seem to falter when he speaks.

He isn’t poor, that much is clear from the clean cut of his clothes under his robes, and he is well groomed and well spoken.

Yet the seas part when he appears, as though the others fear catching something from standing too close.