Now then, Paola said, it’s time you went back to the office. Go by yourself, visit with Sibilla, and see what feelings your place of work inspires. Gianni’s whisper about the beautiful Sibilla came back to me.
«Who’s Sibilla?»
«She’s your assistant, your girl Friday. She’s fantastic and has kept the studio running these past few weeks. I called her today and she was quite proud of having made some amazing sale or other. Sibilla-don’t ask me her last name because nobody can pronounce it. A Polish girl. She was majoring in library science in Warsaw, and when the regime there began to crumble, even before the fall of the Berlin Wall, she managed to get a permit to come study in Rome.
She’s sweet, maybe too sweet, she must have figured out how to win some bigwig’s sympathy. In any case, once she got here she started looking for a job and never went back. She found you, or you found her, and she’s been your assistant for nearly four years now. She’s expecting you today, and she knows what happened and how she should behave.»
She gave me the address and phone number of my office. After Largo Cairoli feeds into Via Dante and before you get to the Loggia dei Mercantiyou can tell it’s a loggia from a distance-you turn left and you’re there. «If you have trouble, go into a café and call her, or me, and we’ll send a team of firemen, but I don’t think it will come to that. Oh, bear in mind that you started off speaking French with Sibilla, before she learned Italian, and you never stopped. A little game between the two of you.»
So many people in Via Dante. It feels good to pass by a series of strangers without being obliged to greet them, it gives you confidence, makes you realize that seven out of ten people are in the same condition you are. After all, I could be someone who is new to the city, who feels a little alone but is getting his bearings. Except that I am new to the planet. Some man waved hello from a café door, no call for theatrical recognition, I waved back and it went smoothly.
I found the street and my studio like the boy scout who wins the treasure hunt: a sober plaque on the ground floor said STUDIO BIBLIO. I must not have much imagination, though I suppose the name sounds serious-what was I supposed to call it, Roman Holiday? I rang, went up the stairs, saw a door that was already open, and Sibilla on the threshold.
«Bonjour, Monsieur Yambo… pardon, Monsieur Bodoni…» As if it were she who had lost her memory. She was indeed quite beautiful. Long, straight blond hair that framed the perfect oval of her face. Not a trace of makeup, except perhaps for a slight touch of something around the eyes. The only adjective that came to mind was darling. (I am dealing in stereotypes, I know, but it is thanks to them that I have been getting by.) She was wearing a pair of jeans and one of those T-shirts with an English message on it, SMILE or something like that, which emphasized, modestly, two adolescent breasts.
We were both embarrassed. «Mademoiselle Sibilla?» I asked.
«Oui,» she answered, then quickly: «ohui, houi. Entrez.»
Like a delicate hiccup. The first «oui,» uttered almost normally, was quickly followed by the second, which caught briefly in her throat as she was breathing in, then the third, as she exhaled again, with the faintest quizzical tone. The overall effect was of childish embarrassment and at the same time a sensual timidity. She stepped aside to let me come in. I noted a tasteful perfume.
If I had had to explain what a book studio was, I would have described something much like what I now saw. Bookcases of dark wood, filled with antique volumes, and more old books on the heavy, square table. A little desk in a corner, with a computer. Two colorful maps on either side of a window with opaque glass. Soft light, broad green lampshades. Through a door, a long narrow storage room-it seemed to be a workroom for packing and shipping books.
«So you must be Sibilla? Or should I say Mademoiselle something-I’m told you have an unpronounceable last name.»
«Sibilla Jasnorzewska, yes, here in Italy it causes some problems. But you’ve always just called me Sibilla.» I saw her smile for the first time. I told her I wanted to get my bearings, wanted to see our prize books. That wall in the back, she said, and she went over to show me the correct bookcase. She walked silently, brushing the floor with her tennis shoes. But maybe it was the moquette that muted her steps. There hangs, adolescent virgin, a sacred shadow over you, I was about to say aloud. Instead I said: «Who wrote that, Cardarelli?»
«What?» she said, turning her head, her hair twirling. «Nothing,» I said. «Let’s see what we have.»
Lovely volumes with an ancient air. Not all of them had a title label on the spine. I took one from the shelf. Instinctively I opened it to look for the title page, but I did not find one. «Incunabulum, then. Sixteenth-century blindtooled pigskin binding.» I ran my hands over the sides, feeling a tactile pleasure. «Headcaps slightly worn.» I flipped through the pages, touching them to see whether they squeaked, as Gianni had said.
They did. «Wide, clean margins. Ah, minor marginal staining on the endpapers, the last signature is wormed, but it doesn’t affect the text. Lovely copy.» I turned to the colophon, knowing it was called that, and slowly sounded out: «Venetiis mense Septembri… fourteen hundred ninety-seven. Could it be…» I turned to the first page: Iamblichus de mysteriis Aegyptiorum… It’s the first edition of Ficino’s Iamblichus, isn’t it?»
«It’s the first… Monsieur Bodoni. Y ou recognize it?»
«No, I don’t recognize anything, you’ll have to learn that, Sibilla. It’s just that I know that the first Iamblichus translated by Ficino is from 1497.»
«Forgive me, I’m trying to get used to it. It’s just that you were so proud of that copy, it’s really splendid. And you said that for now you weren’t going to sell it, there are so few around-we’d wait for one to appear in some American catalogue, since they’re so good at jacking up prices, and then list ours.»
«So I’m a canny businessman, then.»
«I always said it was an excuse, that you wanted to keep it to yourself awhile, so you could look at it now and then. But since you did decide to sacrifice the Ortelius, I have some good news.»
«Ortelius? Which one?»
«The 1606 Plantin, with 166 color tables and the Parergon. Period binding.
You were so pleased to have discovered it when you bought Commendatore Gambi’s entire library on the cheap. You finally decided to put it in the catalogue. And while you… while you weren’ t well, I managed to sell it to a client, a new one. He didn’t seem like a real bibliophile to me, more like someone who buys as an investment because he’s heard that antiquarian books appreciate quickly.»
«Too bad, a wasted copy. And… how much?»
She seemed afraid to say the amount; she got a form and showed it to me.
«In the catalogue we put ‘price on request,’ and you were prepared to deal. I immediately named the highest price, and he didn’t even try to bargain, just signed a check and was off. ‘On the nail,’ as they say in Milan.»
«We’ve reached these levels now…» I didn’ t have a sense of current prices. «Well done, Sibilla. How much did it cost us?»
«Basically nothing. That is, with the rest of the books from the Gambi library we’ll easily make back, little by little, the lump sum we paid for the whole lot. I took care of depositing the check in the bank. And since there was no price listed in the catalogue, I think that with Mr. Laivelli’s help we’ll come out quite well on the financial side.»
«So I’m one of those who don’t pay their taxes?»
«No, Monsieur Bodoni, you just do what your fellow dealers do. For the most part, you have to pay the full amount, but with certain fortunate deals you might, how do you say, round down. But you’re ninety-five percent honest as a taxpayer.»
«After this deal it’ll be fifty percent. I read somewhere that citizens should pay every penny of their taxes.» She looked humiliated. «Don’t worry about it, though,» I said paternally. «I’ll talk it over with Gianni.» Paternally? Then I said, almost brusquely, «Now let me take a look at some of the other books.» She turned around and went to sit at her computer, silent.
I looked at the books, flipped through their pages: Bernardino Benali’s 1491 Commedia, a 1477 edition of Scot’s Liber Phisionomiae, a 1484 edition of Ptolemy’s Quadripartite, a 1482 Calendarium by Regiomontanus. Nor was I exactly lacking when it came to later centuries: there was a fine first edition of Zonca’s Novo teatro, and a marvelous Ramelli… I was familiar with each of these works, like every antiquarian who knows the great catalogues by heart. But I did not know I owned copies of them.
Paternally? I was pulling out books and putting them back, but in fact I was thinking about Sibilla. Gianni had given me that hint, clearly mischievous, and Paola had delayed telling me about her until the last minute, and had used certain
