Page 6 of This Vicious Hunger

As I get ready to leave the hall, I cast my eyes about the room, wondering if any of these men is to be my new mentor.

Of course it’s no use, I have no idea what Dr. Petaccia looks like, nor would it be appropriate of me to approach him before our meeting.

Still, I don’t like waiting—and I definitely don’t like feeling like an outcast. I wonder if I should have worn something less pretty; perhaps then they’d all take me more seriously. I almost laugh.

Outside the sun is unrelenting, the cobbles radiating heat through my thin-soled shoes.

I raise a hand to my eyes, trying to work out which of the buildings crowding the dining hall is the library, or which path between them will lead to the square I landed at yesterday so I can find the blasted library.

This place is so large I can’t imagine I will ever find my way about.

Panic rises in my chest. Maybe I’m not cut out for this environment if I can’t even remember my way around, but I stamp on the feeling.

Don’t be silly , I tell myself. This is your home now whether you feel like it or not.

You’d better get used to being a little lost.

I square my shoulders, deciding to head to the left, when I’m thrown backwards as a man on a bicycle hurtles across my path, his arm outstretched to push me away.

His knuckles connect with the softness of my diaphragm.

I stumble, my heels catching on the uneven cobbles, my stomach lurching and the breath knocked from my lungs.

I let out an indignant cry but manage to keep myself upright.

The man on the bicycle doesn’t stop. Another scholar on his way to breakfast guffaws.

I shoot him an icy look that consumes much of my remaining energy.

He takes in my now-dusty dress and my bare head and his expression morphs into something more like scorn.

I imagine what he’s thinking: What’s a silly, mournful woman like you doing in a serious place like this?

You should be at home with children or a husband—or be content to arrange funeral flowers until your dear dead husband’s deathday, when you can hurry up and get a new one.

I square my shoulders but keep my mouth shut.

“Apologies, lady,” he says with a noncommittal shrug. “But perhaps you’d better look where you’re going next time. Us scholars have got more important things to do than watch out for you. This is a college, not a salon.”

I don’t manage to find the library until half an hour before my meeting, so I have little time to explore.

It’s as cool and dim as I expected, with huge vaulted windows and row after row of wooden shelves housing so many treasured texts.

What I never truly managed to picture in my dreams was the size; there must be ten or twelve floors above my head, each mezzanine guarded from the open atrium by a wooden railing between stone pillars.

The height alone makes me feel dizzy, never mind the thought of falling.

I wonder how many books there are in this place, how many worlds of fiction and endless treatises of power and race, religion and philosophy, science—all that science.

I wonder, too, if there are any of those books in here.

The kind Aurelio hated most. The kind I haven’t even dared to think of since his death, the kind that changed it all.

Inflammatory books. Passionate books. Books about—

I stop myself. I do not want Aurelio, or those books, to taint this place.

I turn instead to the familiar stability of my father.

I imagine him in his youth, roving between these endless shelves, absorbing as much knowledge as he could by night, knowing that in the morning he would have to return to the chapel and his apprenticeship there.

It isn’t hard to see how his time here influenced his performance of the death rites—every undertaker has a style, a trademark of ritual, and my father’s was at once solemn and erudite.

Some undertakers prefer the cleanness of open air, grassy knolls, and cradles wrapped in moss; others prefer the darkness, warmth from a fire and the resultant dripping sweat symbolic of mourners’ tears even for those who cannot—or will not—cry.

I instantly see the Grieve family’s sepulchre echoed in these book-lined halls, the artificial, reverent silence here as holy as that of a family laying their loved ones in the cradle.

Incense smoke curls blue from sconces on the walls just like at home, the stones underfoot polished by years of acolytes.

It is airy, too, cool but not cold. Somehow even the smell, dusty pages and patchouli, is the same.

A pang of grief surprises me, not just for my father but for the sepulchre he spent his life perfecting, likely demolished or sold off for a tidy profit by Aurelio’s family as soon as my mourning days passed.

I asked Aurelio once what would happen to it, but he refused to answer.

The building was perhaps my only worthy dowry—and even that was never truly mine.

“Excuse me, miss, the archives are for members of the academy only.”

I startle, turning to see a man with owlish horn-rimmed spectacles and salt-and-pepper sideburns so unruly they’d likely get him thrown out of polite society. The hunch in his back is distinctive of a man who has spent his life surrounded by books.

“Oh—that’s okay, I’m a student.”

“And I’m a maharaja,” the man says without pause. “I’ve told your ilk before, I don’t care if your husband or your brother’s studying at that damned school in the village; that doesn’t mean you can waltz in here and just help yourselves to our prized—”

“No,” I cut him off quickly. “You misunderstand. I’m a student at the university. I arrived yesterday to read botany under Dr. Petaccia.”

The man stops and stares at me. “You?”

“Yes.” I try to curb the bite in my words, knowing that making an enemy here of all places would be a very bad start, but some of the poison sneaks in anyway. “I imagine it’s hard to believe.” I try for a small smile, but I’m not sure it’s very convincing.

“Ah.” A stalemate. Then, after a sneaky glance at the wedding ring on my finger, owl-glasses softens.

“Yes. Well. Same rules for everybody. You need to sign in.” He nods over to the imposing polished desk, replete with a rare electric lamp, ledger, mahogany book tray, and other minutiae.

“You can’t just wander around willy-nilly; we have a lot of textbooks that require checkout authorisation depending on who needs them.

We have a lot of trouble in that department, people thinking they deserve access by proximity’s sake alone, with no appreciation for the importance we place on endurance… ”

I want to point out that I know how a library works, but the logical part of me knows it’s not an unfair assumption for him to make.

I might have grown hearing my father’s tales, but it’s clear Aurelio was right in this instance; my upbringing was unusual in more ways than one, and women rarely read.

“Yes, sir,” I say. “Though I’m not here to study today. I have a meeting with the doctor. Can you please point me in the direction of the laboratories? I believe that’s where I’m meeting him, and perhaps other members of the faculty.”

The man looks at me with a puzzled expression for a moment.

He once more glances from my wedding ring to the hems and sleeves of my dress, which are still as new as the day they arrived in silk ribbons and lined boxes in Aurelio’s parlour.

She’s young , I suspect he’s thinking. She doesn’t belong here.

“Dr. Petaccia doesn’t share a laboratory,” he says, and the strange expression doesn’t leave his face. “The doctor is very protective. But I believe there is a parlour in La Vita—the thin grey-brown building with all the vines up the side behind the square. Perhaps you should try in there.”