Pomona E-Book

alastair macleod

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

"He knew these symptoms. These were the physical manifestations of a suppressed desire. In Guiliana’s case it was clear the desire to have children was surfacing in her dreams. Italo had described how Guiliana not only dreamed of the Virgin and Child, but she dreamt hordes of children were possessing her, pleading with her, wanting to be free, to be born. The sweating and writhing Italo described was not unlike the agonies of childbirth. What should Enrico do? He knew this pressure to have children was pervasive in Italy – his own mother never let up about bambini. Italo was getting it from his own mother and now indirectly from Guiliana. How could he, Enrico, interfere? It was something all of his age group was experiencing. Doctors had told him of childless women coming with spurious illness, restlessness, saying they needed change. Few pinpointed their needed to procreate – it wasn’t politically correct."

Leseprobe

Alastair Macleod

Pomona

English Edition

"to life's longing for itself."BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

POMONA

Italo Brunetti turned the key in the lock. It was nine minutes before ten am. He closed the door behind him. He liked this moment, one of supreme order. Things were as he had left them, in their place. The books quiet, silent, still asleep.

His bookshop was rectangular. He stood a third of the way down one long side of the rectangle. To his, right technical manuals, to his front, the long wall of non- fiction. The Pistoiese liked their non-fiction – architecture, interior design, nature, photography, cars Then on his left, at the far end, fiction, the light stuff on the right, classics, his real love, on the left. On the side of the rectangle he had entered by, was the counter, with its few shelves kept for customers’ orders.

He put on the lights, for the bookshop was a cave, even on a bright day. What windows there were, had their light screened through books on display. He opened the till and sorted out the float.

Often by now local customers were already hovering, waiting for 10 am to enter and begin browsing, like bees searching for flowers. As the bells on San Zeno rang out he opened the door with a flourish and, for a moment, as a customer strode in, the clamour of the street threatened the inner sanctum.

Italo regained his counter; the customer was a priest. No harm in that, after all, priests read. Italo watched him scan the non-fiction section. Yes, playing it safe, nothing too provocative there. Italo knew this priest – he was the exorcist, Fra Ignatius, the priest from Chiesa San Paolo. Each Thursday, services were held there to cast out devils. Italo had passed by there some nights – the church ablaze. Through the upper windows the wild cries of women had reached him. He had hurried on. And yet here was the priest as docile as can be looking for non-fiction. Perhaps exorcism was common place to him now, like changing an exhaust on a car, first you loosen this, then that, then crack, off it comes, out comes the devil.

Italo was a non-believer if you can be in Italy. As a child his mother had had him baptised and confirmed. Now he was older, he thought he went his own way.

He was 35 and still living at home with his mama. So what? So were lots of his friends. Property was expensive and mama looked after him well. She kept him like a plump chicken with all her pastas and other delicacies.

Guiliana, Italo’s partner didn’t like it. She wanted them to have their own place. They had been going out for years. She was getting strange, moody. Keeping him late at her flat, she would look at him with wide anxious eyes and plead with him to stay over. She had grown thinner. She told him she only slept well for the brief period after their lovemaking. She said, when he left her, she tossed fitfully. Last night she had started to have dreams and awoke in a sweat.

When he met her for a cappuccino last week she had looked terrible.

She wanted them to go on holiday, then she would have him to herself.

He said he could not leave the shop.” Get someone in,” she said, “and let’s stay here, not go away, just you and I in my flat.”