Chapter 10
The following weekend, Beth placed yet another handful of books on a makeshift table she’d set up on the canal path. It was market day: a day the city came alive, even in the winter, and it had dawned bright and sunny, softening the breeze and blowing away the pale grey clouds she’d woken up to.
Further down the way, other sellers were beginning to organise their barges.
One was stocked full of flowers and plants, another fruit and vegetables of every variety.
They looked like works of art, as vibrant and colourful as the city during Carnevale.
That amazing festival was coming up soon, and Beth hoped that both she and Cesca would have made some progress with selling books and sorting some shelving.
She wasn’t sure if it would be ready in time.
She’d have to speak to Francesca about it.
Perhaps even Marco too, to see if one of his clients made the gorgeous, decorated masks Carnevale was famous for.
Before she’d even moved to Venice, she’d loved the idea of Carnevale.
She’d read about it in books and seen it on TV, but her first real experience of it had been not long after she’d moved here, and it had made the transition from England to Italy even more exciting.
In the depths of winter, Carnevale cheered everyone up with its bright costumes, detailed, hand-painted masks and captivating performances.
The timing of it changed each year as it came before Lent, but when it arrived, the parades and shows filled the centre of the city, concentrated in St Mark’s Square, the most beautiful, historic backdrop to a festival that had its roots in the eleventh century.
Everything about it appealed to Beth and she suddenly felt excited for it in a way she hadn’t before.
Last year, she’d watched elements of it from the windows of the galleria.
She’d dodged between crowds on her way to and from work, watching snippets here and there, but had otherwise kept her head down.
This year, being her own boss and ‘going with the flow’, she’d make time to explore the city, watching the performances in the main square and in the side streets, enjoying every moment of it.
As Beth glanced to her right, she saw that a barge had set up selling coffees and pastries.
The husband-and-wife team chatted as they readied their goods, their laughter louder than the crates being moved and organised further down the canal.
The woman swiped the man with a tea towel as he nabbed a fresh pastry, just put on display, and took a giant bite.
When he caught Beth watching, he winked, and she smiled back.
The coffee barge had only moored up yesterday and she assumed it must move around the city.
She was grateful for it though and decided to grab her wallet and head over just as soon as she’d arranged these last few books.
With a huge number donated to the local libraries, and even a few reference books given to the galleria, which Signor Sanna was particularly happy with, the book barge was looking much better.
Stock was now organised, and she’d got rid of a quarter of it so far.
She was hoping for at least a few sales today due to the knock-down prices.
After all, some of the books were faded from the sun, the pages dog-eared, the covers pale and less than appealing.
Others were better quality, but niche in nature.
She wasn’t holding out hope for fans of door frames and panelling, or cricket of the last one hundred years.
Still, she’d try her luck. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, after all.
She’d made a sign selling everything at under five euros and hoped people would overlook the state of some of them for such a bargain price.
‘There,’ she said to herself, adjusting a thick, hardback book that kept falling over, finally balancing it so it stood upright. She’d created quite a nice display, and in the summer, when she did this again, she’d add flowers and plants to the tables to make them pretty.
Polo sniffed around the table legs and as she turned to walk away, jumped up, knocking over the book she’d only just managed to balance.
‘Polo! Shoo! Go away!’ The cat sat in front of her, knocking over even more books, and she stroked his fur and tickled behind his ears as she told him off again. ‘You’re going to get in the way today, aren’t you?’
He lifted his head and without thinking she dipped hers so he could rub his face against hers.
She’d never really been a pet person before but couldn’t deny the bond between her and the silly grey cat.
She could see how Signor Balbo had loved him and was afraid her heart was doing the same.
She lifted him off the table and onto the floor and rearranged her books once more.
Beth’s stomach rumbled and so after nipping inside and grabbing her wallet, she went to the coffee barge.
The female owner smiled. Her dark hair was striped beautifully with grey and pulled back into a bun. Looking at the woman’s full, rosy cheeks and warm eyes, Beth felt welcomed without saying a word.
‘Buongiorno,’ Beth chirped happily. ‘Potrei avere un latte, per favore?’
‘Sì, sì!’ The woman turned to her husband who began making the latte Beth had requested, and as the rich aroma filled Beth’s nose, making her stomach rumble even louder, the woman said, ‘You’re the English lady, aren’t you? The one who bought Signor Balbo’s bookshop?’
‘Yes, that’s right. My name’s Beth.’
‘I’m Lolanda, and this is my husband, Galvano.’
Her English was heavily accented, and she seemed to struggle with some of the words, so Beth offered to speak in Italian.
‘No, no!’ Lolanda waved her hands. ‘I like to practise. Before the tourists come.’
‘You’re doing very well already.’
‘Grazie.’ She smiled and nodded towards the tables laden with books. ‘You’re selling a lot today?’
‘I’m trying to. I don’t know where Signor Balbo got his stock from but there’s a lot of it, so I’m trying to reduce it down a bit and make some room for new stuff.’
‘He used to take whatever people gave him.’ Lolanda was incredibly expressive and continued to wave her hands around as she spoke.
It was something Beth had come to love about Italy.
Italian women took up space and made their opinions known.
They weren’t made to be small and fit into a man’s world.
They were vibrant and full of life, encouraged to share their opinions and take control.
They took up all the room they needed, and Beth loved it.
‘When anyone moved house,’ Lolanda continued, ‘they would hand him bags and bags of books, and he took them! Always! I didn’t like going inside the barge; there was too much … stuff. Too much to see.’
‘I can understand that,’ Beth replied, not wanting to disparage Signor Balbo, who’d clearly loved the shop and had been incredibly kind to her. ‘But then I used to work in a gallery, and they always have too much stuff too!’
Perhaps that was why she’d been drawn to the book barge in the first place.
There were other bookshops in Venice, but she’d never thought about owning or running one of those.
They’d always felt like shops rather than museums or galleries, spaces for history and heritage.
But the book barge had felt the same as a museum – the slightly dusty air, the sense of time being frozen.
She had to admit though, while that might be great for those type of places, it wasn’t for a shop, as Lolanda had just demonstrated, so she needed to find a happy medium.
She needed light and air and as much space as Francesca could make for her, but with the art on the walls, the cosy lighting, and the warming fire, she might manage the best of both worlds.
Her nerves sizzled at the idea of her friend getting started and the way the book barge would soon be tidy and efficient and, most of all, customer friendly.
‘What time do people normally begin arriving on market days?’ Beth asked, slightly depressed to see she’d drunk most of her coffee already.
Freshly made Italian coffee, made by artisans who knew exactly what they were doing, couldn’t be beaten, but if she had too much caffeine she’d be jittery for hours.
‘About eleven,’ Galvano said, stopping beside his wife.
He checked his watch. ‘So it shouldn’t be long.
I think a few are beginning to come now.
’ He nodded up the bank where small groups were ambling along one behind the other.
‘I hope you sell lots of books,’ he said, his eyes flashing warmly before he winked at her again.
‘And I hope you sell lots of coffee!’
Beth made her way back to the barge and decided to go inside and tidy the now more spacious lower deck.
It would probably put people off if she was stood over their shoulder watching them, hoping they’d buy things.
Nerves sprang up at the idea of talking to them, of not being able to disappear behind the scenes as she normally would have at the gallery.
But it was talking about books, which she loved, and even if they didn’t buy anything, she’d have a nice conversation with a fellow bookworm. She just needed to go with the flow.
After a while and few tentative conversations with people who enquired about the change of ownership, Beth felt more at ease and spotted her first real customer looking around for how to pay, a stack of books in their hand. She made her way outside with her portable card machine.
‘Hai una borsa?’ they said, and an icy chill ran down her spine.
A bag? Did she have any bags? She asked them to hold on and ran back inside, thankfully finding a bag stuffed full of other plastic bags.
It wasn’t exactly environmentally friendly, but it would have to do for now.
As the customer left she made a note on her phone to get paper bags printed with the logo of the shop.