My Father’s Books

La Rinascente

110 La Ri­ nas­ cente In my ­ parents’ fifty years of mar­ ried life in the Bal­ kans, years ­ through which world wars and Bal­ kan wars were inter­ woven, the only trip they took to­ gether was to Italy in the thir­ ties. In ­ Rome’s large de­ part­ ment store, La Ri­ nas­ cente, my ­ father ­ bought my ­ mother a beau­ ti­ ful blue dress with white polka dots, a dress she wore for many years and then kept for still more years, for ­ decades, for half a cen­ tury. As they were leav­ ing the de­ part­ ment store, my ­ mother was pre­ sented with the large an­ nual cat­ a­ logue of La ­ Rinascente’s orig­ i­ nal fash­ ions for that one year out of the ­ decade of the thir­ ties. This was the first time in her life she had seen such a ­ brightly col­ ored book, with its nu­ mer­ ous photo­ graphs of dif­ fer­ ent out­ fits and house­ hold items. ­ Though she had seen many other books in ­ Father’s li­ brary, this was the first time that a book had been given to her, one quite dif­ fer­ ent from all the other books she had known until then. My ­ mother kept this book ­ beside her two holy books. She often paged ­ through it, find­ ing amaz­ ing ­ clothes with ­ ever-new ­ splashes of color, ­ dresses for every sea­ son of the year, ­ children’s ­ clothes, jew­ elry, house­ hold fur­ ni­ ture. In her ­ father’s house she had seen a few ­ pieces of such fur­ ni­ ture, but never in the lit­ tle town deep in the Bal­ kans where life had set her down in ­ search of fam­ ily hap­ pi­ ness. When my ­ mother first re­ turned with my ­ father, glad­ dened by her­ once-in-a-lifetime trip, she mis­ placed the Ri­ nas­ cente cat­ a­ logue some­ where, but, for­ tu­ nately, she soon found it and re­ turned it to its place­ beside the holy books. Many years ­ passed. The fash­ ions in the cat­ a­ logue be­ came out­ moded. But not even those out­ dated fash­ ions could reach us here. Fol­ low­ ing 111 the pic­ tures in the cat­ a­ logue, my ­ mother sewed, tail­ ored, and com­ bined­ pieces of fab­ ric, but many ­ things were lack­ ing to make ­ clothes like the ones on the mod­ els. In those rare mo­ ments in her life when she had free time, my ­ mother paged ­ through the Ri­ nas­ cente cat­ a­ logue. The pages trans­ ported her back to Italy, to the time of the fash­ ions de­ picted there. When the ­ family’s mi­ gra­ tions to who knew where began, my ­ mother never ­ parted with her cat­ a­ logue. Its pic­ tures stood in sharp ­ contrast to every­ thing that was and was not avail­ able in the Bal­ kans. But in the cat­ a­ logue my ­ mother had every­ thing she ­ wanted. Then came our great­ est ex­ o­ dus from the lit­ tle town nes­ tled by the lake. We would long for­ ev­ er­ more for the banks of the blue wa­ ters where we had first set down our roots. Even­ tu­ ally we found our­ selves in the large city ­ beside the river that led to the sea. This was our ­ family’s final re­ lo­ ca­ tion. In the ­ course of time there were temp­ ta­ tions to move far­ ther: once you have aban­ doned your na­ tive ­ hearth, the ­ source, why not ­ travel on­ ward to the river basin, on­ ward to the great ocean? There were all kinds of opin­ ions, false hopes, pru­ dent de­ lays, but, for what­ ever rea­ son, the life of the fam­ ily con­ tin­ ued to flow ­ beside this big river. “We will set down roots here,” my ­ father had said, and, in­ deed, we­ stayed there for­ ever. My ­ mother, poor thing, lost her Ri­ nas­ cente cat­ a­ logue dur­ ing this final move. Most of ­ Father’s many books sur­ vived the move in­ tact, but­ Mother had not ­ wanted the cat­ a­ logue to get mixed in with his books, and so it was des­ tined to be lost. Maybe it was a good thing that my­ mother lost the cat­ a­ logue, be­ cause the post­ war years ­ brought with them an even...