Chapter Twenty-Two
Sophia had read just about every English book in the library. Her Italian wasn’t strong enough to attempt any of the Italian-written seventeenth- and eighteenth-century works on theology, literature, history, botany, medicine or geography. She’d spent so much time learning Polish that her Italian left a lot to be desired.
She placed the gramophone’s needle on her favorite piece, Variations in A-Dur. The light cadence reminded her of rain on the rooftops and it relaxed her in a way that no other piece could. Ribbons of silver danced above her. She enjoyed their movement. In the beginning it distracted her, but now they helped her focus as she skimmed through an Italian book on history. She was beginning to grow fond of her mixed senses—or ‘synesthesia’ as Leoncjusz had
