“Marco . . .” Elisabetta didn’t know how to finish the sentence, and before she could use her better judgment, she placed her free hand on the railing, felt its solid stone beneath her palm, and climbed up into a crouch.
“Brava. Look at me and rise to a stand. Don’t look down. Look at my eyes.”
Elisabetta looked up at Marco, who was looking down at her, holding on to her fingertips. His eyes were so dark and warm, like heated coals, and she rose slowly, seeing the curve of his smile. She felt herself smile back as she reached a standing position, and they looked into each other’s eyes, holding fingertips lightly, balancing together on the balustrade high above Piazza Navona.
“What does it feel like, cara?” Marco asked her.
“I don’t know.” Elisabetta’s heart filled with so many emotions she couldn’t parse them, especially not this far above the ground.
“I’ll tell you what it feels like, to me.”
“What?”
“Love,” Marco answered, kissing her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Elisabetta
February 1938
Elisabetta sat next to Sandro and waited for the Deledda lecture to begin. She felt entirely out of place at La Sapienza, among the professors and university students that packed the lecture hall, which had a vaulted ceiling like a church. She had worn the same coat, dress, shoes, and perfume as she had with Marco, and Sofia had given her the tube of red lipstick. Still she was one of the few women present, and the others looked like female professors, with black-framed reading glasses, amber lorgnettes, and accordion briefcases. One graded typed papers using a red pencil, and another read a thick novel; all of them seemed so well educated that Elisabetta felt her heart sink, wondering if this was the closest she would ever come to a college education.
“Everything all right?” Sandro asked, looking over.
“It’s intimidating.”
“Just relax.” Sandro placed his hand atop hers. A calm came over her at his touch, and she realized that it was a very nice thing to have him rest his hand over hers, like a roof over her head.
A hush came over the audience as Professor Oreste Lucci, thin and bespectacled in a dark suit, strode to the lectern. “Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you. The subject of our lecture is our Grazia Deledda, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature and passed away before the publication of Cosima. Though we have lost Deledda, we have this wonderful, complex, and even troubling read.”
Elisabetta perked up, for she had loved Cosima, surprised to find that it was almost autobiographical.
Dr. Lucci continued, “The literary scholarship on Cosima has yet to be written, since its publication is so recent. My preference tonight is not to focus on the plot of the novel, in which a girl finds her voice to become a celebrated novelist. After all, this pedestrian plotline is not what makes this novel special.”
Elisabetta blinked. She didn’t think the plotline was pedestrian. It was exactly what had made the novel speak to her.
“Instead I would like to focus on the troubled family at the core of Cosima.” Professor Lucci adjusted his glasses. “Cosima is ruled by her brothers, the tyrannical Andrea and the alcoholic Santus. The novel illustrates that most modern of maladies and shows how it destroys the family, disfigures it beyond recognition.”
Elisabetta stiffened, thinking of her father.
“Deledda shows us how Santus’s drinking taints Cosima’s life, and although the doctor says alcoholism is a disease, I find Santus to be selfish. His love for his family is dubious, at best. He cares only for himself.”
Elisabetta felt her chest tighten. She didn’t think her father was selfish and she knew he loved her. She thought of her mother, not loving her enough to stay.
“Recall the scene in which Santus experiences delirium tremens. He’s pale and shaking uncontrollably, his eyes ‘wide with a metallic sheen.’ He imagines killers hide under the bed. He thinks the walls swarm with snakes. This description is groundbreaking in its realism.”
Elisabetta remembered the scene, having been horrified at its accuracy. Her father had tried to quit drinking many times, and she had held him while he shook, hallucinating demons, evil spirits, and Fascists coming to kill him. One night, he had raved so loudly that she had feared he was losing his sanity. The memory brought tears to her eyes, even now.
She jumped out of her seat and made her way down the row. She heard Sandro behind her but she kept going. Heads turned as she reached the aisle, but she hurried out of the auditorium. She ran through the entrance hall and pounded through the doors, finally reaching the steps outside. She hurried down the staircase, taking in gulps of the night air.