Page 7 of This Vicious Hunger

Chapter Four

T he librarian’s instructions are, thankfully, right on the mark.

LA VITA —so christened on the chalky baluster out front—is hard to miss, sandwiched as it is between two much newer white-and-terra-cotta stucco and brick buildings on either side with grander columns and grander titles.

LA SCIENZA to the left and L’ASTRONOMIA to the right, both with arching windows and shining pale steps out front.

L’Astronomia is crowned with a strange circular tower at its zenith that can only be for stargazing.

La Vita hunches between them like a poor cousin, thinner and shorter, its stucco greying and crawling with vines.

The butterflies in my belly I’ve been attempting to still all morning are now wild horses.

I chomp down on my lower lip and push into the old building; it is cold inside after the heat of the sun and a shiver snakes up my spine.

What if the doctor doesn’t like me? What if he changes his mind?

The university, this life, is my last hope of making something of myself.

Without it… I have nothing. I could try to set up my own sepulchre—I have enough experience in the business of grief—but I doubt anybody would bring me their dead.

Mourning is a woman’s job, but the burial rites belong to men.

I shove the thoughts deeper, so deep that I can barely hear them over the hum of my blood in my ears, the thump of my heart.

There is nobody at the entrance to this building, and both doors that branch off in this dim hall are locked.

Time is pushing on and if I don’t hurry I will be late for my meeting.

Unlike Aurelio’s family with their silly parlour games, seeing which sister could best seduce her current suitor by the long wait to see her dinner dress alone, my father always taught me that punctuality is the politeness of kings. So I hike my skirts and breathlessly make the climb.

Each floor of the building is near identical, the same two locked doors off each landing until I finally reach the top. This high up there is only a single door, also closed—but this time not locked. I turn the knob and knock loudly, the rap of my knuckles echoing.

This landing spills into one enormous room.

It has two huge curtainless sash windows on all three sides, bright and hot and—closed.

The air in the room is muggy and green and I catch a breath in shock as my lungs rebel at the heat.

Sweat immediately prickles at the nape of my neck, along my hairline, and I’m glad for the loss of my thick curls.

The walls are overrun with greenery, plants crawling on every inch, some alive and growing and others pressed tightly between great slides of glass.

There are trenches of soil in curious knee-high troughs, some newly sprouting, and two trees in tubs blossoming with out-of-season flowers—white cuplike petals and long, curling pistils. I don’t recognise either.

Before me, creating an artificial divide in the room, is a large antique desk. It, like the rest of the room, is trailing with vines, some of which I could swear are moving. I let out a croak of greeting, startled.

“Yes?”

The woman—yes, woman—hunched behind the desk, the vines wrapped around her gloved knuckles, peers up at me with an expression of impatience on her narrow face, her dark eyes liquid.

“I… have a meeting,” I stammer. “Sorry. With Dr. Petaccia. If you could—”

The woman’s face shifts into a smile so bright that this, too, startles me.

She looks younger then, perhaps mid-forties rather than fifties, her dark eyes sparkling with warmth.

She stands, pushing the vines away impatiently, and approaches me; she is tall and thin, willowy might be the word, and dressed in a peculiar arrangement of layered skirt over tight trousers that gives her a range of movement I’ve never seen outside of Aurelio’s sister’s lady sports club.

She sweeps some of the papers from the desk in front of her and into a small drawer, which she locks with a little key.

“You must be Thora,” she gushes. “Come here, girl. Let me get a good look at you.” She takes my face in her hands, so close now that I can smell her tart, almost bitter perfume. Her skin is clean and dry, no sign of the sweat that gathers on my top lip.

“I… Yes.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Thora. I’m Dr. Petaccia—though you can call me Florencia if you’d prefer. I don’t like to be too formal with friends, and of course I only work with friends.”

“Friends?”

“Of course! Well, we soon shall be, I think.” She shifts her hands to my shoulders and looks me up and down at arm’s length.

“You don’t talk much. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing; I can’t stand those gossipy society types—and I have to confess, the LeVand connection did make me think twice—but I thought, well, if you’re your father’s daughter…

” She stops and gives a dry laugh, surprisingly deep.

“I’m sorry, my dear. I’m getting carried away.

Please sit. Would you like a drink? I have, oh…

” She glances around. On her desk alone there are several cups and saucers, all coated in some filmy substance that might have been coffee with milk but now looks more like brackish marsh water.

“Well, I can send for something. Or there’s water? ”

“No,” I say hurriedly, taking a seat, “thank you.”

“Good. That’s good. Well.” Petaccia’s smile grows again, exposing her teeth, which are large and stained.

“How are you liking St. Elianto so far? Although I’m very sorry to hear your circumstances, I won’t say I wasn’t pleased to hear from the LeVands.

Your father was a good man and I was saddened to hear of his death. ”

I’m still trying to get my head around it all—that this eccentric person, a woman, seated before me with a vine once again winding around her gloved wrist, and I could swear it’s moving without her training it, is the doctor who may change my life—so what comes out is a garbled mess.

“Thank you.” I’m breathless and flushed and I feel like a child, desperately trying to impress.

“I like the university so far. It’s big, though,” I hear myself say stupidly.

“It’s so big and… full of all these… men.

” The words come out coated in a layer of disdain—I was thinking of the scholar this morning, the one on the bicycle—and instantly I wish to take it back.

Dr. Petaccia’s expression grows suddenly serious, her dark eyes flashing. My stomach drops. It’s as if the air in the room has grown several degrees warmer and I feel my cheeks burn hot and red.

“I was going to wait to delve into the minutiae, but I suppose we’d better get this over with.

” The doctor leans back in her chair and steeples her fingers.

“You understand, Thora, don’t you, that I’m taking something of a risk here with you.

St. Elianto is a serious institution, an academy of learning.

It is not that women are not allowed to study here, but there is a certain expectation of female frippery around learning. ”

“Oh yes. I know it. I very much appreciate the opportunity—”

“St. Elianto isn’t a place for silly girls to meet the silly boys they’re going to marry.”

I stop, a laugh building in me that would be wildly inappropriate to release. “I’m sorry?”

“You mention the men, and I know you can’t be thinking that this is the sort of place to come and while away your days until you find another suitable match for yourself.

Not because you won’t find one, Thora. I was led to believe that your father had taught you to read and write well, is that true? ”

Now the laughter comes out, coarse and ugly. I slap my hand over my mouth.

“Is this funny to you?” Petaccia’s eyes darken further, the effect like a shock of cold water calming my hysteria.

“Phytogeography—botany—is a serious science. It isn’t all fun and parlour games, little walks in the public parks and flowers pressed for pretty displays.

I won’t have myself aligned with any of that brainless hedgerow theology they seem to play with in the polite circles.

You’re here because I had faith that your father did not raise a silly girl and I need somebody I can trust, somebody without preconceptions about phytology. ”

“No,” I blurt. “No, I’m sorry, you misunderstand—it’s absolutely not funny.

The funny thing is that you’d think I speak of men in an…

achievement-worthy way.” I raise my chin and look the doctor straight in the eyes, willing her to see how serious I am.

Men, and the way women are supposed to think of them, have plagued me my whole life.

But something tells me that unlike my father, Dr. Petaccia might understand.

“I was married once, Doctor. I did not plan to be a widow at twenty-five—the Lord clearly had other plans for me—but I can assure you that I am not a silly girl, nor do I ever intend to be one.”

Dr. Petaccia lets the silence gather for a moment before saying, “Good. Because I will tell you now, the men in a place like this have an agenda. They always have an agenda. Make sure it isn’t you—d’you understand?

” I nod briskly. “Good,” she says again.

“Now, your father, did he teach you much outside of mourning?”

I think of the stash of books my father kept in his study—the ones even my mother knew nothing about. We never spoke of them, he and I. To this day I’m not even sure if he knew I knew of them, let alone that I would often squirrel them away to read between mournings, but I suspect he did.

When he taught me to read, we used the Scriptures and later the death rites he’d written himself, but my father’s collection of books strayed into more than just the rituals of grief; he always took his role as undertaker seriously and told me more than once that a man who stopped learning no longer had any right to facilitate the passage of life.