The Demon Catchers of Milan #2: The Halcyon Bird Read Online Free PDF Page A

said, turning her cup slowly.
    “But isn’t there always a way? Can’t people work it out? Isn’t true love that important?”
    Nonna looked at me. “Are you sure they are true lovers?” she asked.
    I frowned at the ceiling. “No. But … how can you tell?”
    At that, she laughed.
    “Are we the ones who can tell?” she shot back. Then she glanced at the clock. “Go read your books,” she said. “I’ll need you in the afternoon, to help with dinner.”
    I gave her a kiss and headed down the wooden stairs to the shop. Nonno was already sitting at the desk, reading the paper.
    “Doing all right after last night?” he asked, glancing up.
    “Yes, thank you.”
    “Read for a while, then go for a good walk, to the Parco Sempione. Take the air, walk among some trees. You’ll beremembering things, under the surface. Any dreams?”
    “Yes … of … of that time,” I said.
    “So. Walk. But start your books first. And then, after lunch.”
    “Okay.”
    The pile of books on the table had not shrunk since yesterday. I pulled it to me. I really was getting interested in all the history I had to read, but still, I think a part of me will always be a B student, looking for a way out of homework. I opened my study notebook and sighed. Nonno looked up from his newspaper and grinned.
    “Try this,” he said, handing me the front page. “Glance at the headlines and tell me what you think relates to the history you’ve been reading. Which headlines have their roots in the past?”
    I took the front page, greasy with ink, and glanced down, still thrilled that I could read it so easily. There was a trial featuring a couple of bankers. One of the people interviewed was a Piero Leone Strozzi, and I knew there was a famous Florentine family of bankers named Strozzi. Had a branch moved to Milan at one point? One of the guys on trial was named Lorenzo Benedetto Rota. “A relative of that famous composer guy, the one who wrote
The Godfather
soundtrack, is being charged with corruption,” I ventured. “Does that count?”
    He nodded. “Do you think that family has made a habit of corruption?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I’d have to look it up.”
    I read another piece about the Sanremo Music Festival. Nonno nodded again. “It’s new, they only started it in 1951, as part of the effort to revitalize their city after the war.” I thought about how 1958, when my grandfather had left Italy, seemed like a long time ago to me. “Its founders have interesting roots, too,” Nonno went on. “Perhaps it’s related to the
famiglia
Rota? I can’t remember, myself.”
    There was an article about the upcoming election, another about Italian politics in general, and one about the financial crises across Europe. I felt suddenly overwhelmed. Did Italy’s political problems begin during the
Risorgimento
, the nineteeth-century movement toward Italian reunification—or during the first time Italy had been united, under the ancient Romans? Did the financial crises have their roots in the banking systems of the Middle Ages or in the invention of numbers, or of money? Or with the development of carbon-based life-forms on Earth?
    An old man had entered the shop. I saw him out of the corner of my eye and looked up.
    I hadn’t heard the shop bells jingle to announce him, and that was the first clue. The second clue was that the light didn’t fall on him the same way it fell on Nonno; this old man’s face seemed to remember another sun. I waited for the third clue, for him to speak words that I could hear only in my thoughts, but it never came; the old man said nothing. He turned and raised his eyebrows at me.
    Nonno said, without opening his mouth, “Allow me topresent you with the newest one. Cousin Roberto’s granddaughter, from America, Mia Della Torre. Mia, this is Respicio Della Torre, a relation of ours from the eighteenth century.” I looked more closely at him, annoyed at myself for not having noticed