In his mid-sixties, Gentel finally decided to put his life in order. He left the university and rented an apartment in Florence, uncertain whether he was running away from his life in Ohio or bringing her home to her native land.
Soon after he arrived in Florence he returned to the cobblestone street and sat in the same spot where he’d fallen in love. He heard her say, “Thank you,” in his mind as he sensed her soul return gratefully home. He felt lonely, as if she was leaving him.
One lazy day by chance he wandered into a store with enticing leather-covered books displayed in the window. When he entered he saw many other books lined on shelves and stacked on tables.
“Can I help you?” asked a lean man with a captivating smile. He was the shop owner, and Gentel took an immediate liking to him.
“Yes, please. You have such beautiful books.”
“Ah, thank you. Pick one up. Feel it in your hands.”
Gentel opened a small book with gold embossing on the leather cover. The book was filled with empty pages of hand made paper. It was magnificent. He looked through several more books. They were pieces of art.
“These are wonderful!” Gentel exclaimed, running his fingers along the bindings.
“Si,” answered the shop owner, immodestly. “I, Giorgio Bellini, made each one.”
Gentel ambled around the shop, picking up books at random, appreciating the high quality of the leather covers and marveling at the variety and impeccable taste of their designs.
After some small talk, Giorgio, who took a liking to Gentel, showed him a nook in the back of the store where he was restoring ancient manuscripts. He carefully turned the pages of a seventeenth century tome that he was restoring, speaking Italian so quickly that the only thing Gentel understood was that he was in the presence of an artist.
They returned to the main part of the shop and Giorgio picked up a book and hugged it. “The empty pages. Hopeful, no? They’re about emotions not yet expressed.”
The scene was surrealistic: a man lost in his own creations in a land of empty pages waiting to be filled. Each book offered a new life to anyone with the courage or imagination to step into it, to write his own story.
Gentel scrutinized the books. The compact ones fit neatly in the palm of his hand; jewels. The larger ones begged for a pen to inscribe stories of love and yearning on their blank pages, to breathe life into these dormant treasures. He wondered whether he could compose anything as beautiful as the books themselves, and he thought of her lying on his lap.
“Writing stories in these books would be like giving birth,” he thought, and had an image of her eyes opening on her ashen face.
“I want to buy these two,” said Gentel.
“Yes, but the larger one is special,” said Giorgio half aloud.
“I know. That’s why I want it.”
“Sorry,” said Giorgio. “I cannot sell that one. The little one, sí.”
Gentel was taken aback that Giorgio wouldn’t sell one of the books in his store. “Really?” he said. “How strange, but if that’s the way you feel…”
Gentel understood the difficulty of relinquishing a love of one’s creation. These weren’t just objects for sale, even if they were in a store; they were Giorgio’s family, his loves. Gentel found another book to accompany the smaller one and bought the two.