The country has been lashed for a week by a meteorological monster originating in Siberia, and anybody who had to brave the sub-zero temperatures and 30 mph winds didn’t need to be told that it hadn’t wafted in from the Seychelles. Up until yesterday there was snow, it seemed, everywhere but here.
Then finally here it was. I love it, but of course I don’t have to drive in it, or take a train (many were blocked), or do anything other than wrap myself up like Boris Karloff as The Mummy and get out and look at it.
The hardy men — Massimo and Luca — who sell fruit and vegetables from this boat every morning but Sunday had to give in to three days of forced vacation. You think they were enjoying themselves? They told me this morning they’d been worrying about the produce in the storeroom, Maybe they should have bought a few smudgepots, like the citrus growers in Florida.
The next day (today), it was melting. I hate that part because it’s ugly and because who knows how long it will be before it snows again? So arrivederci, snow. At least you’re not turning to ice.
Slush, basically, the stage that happens everywhere. But here we have to take the dreaded Istrian stone into account, which apart from being beautiful and perfectly suited to life in Venice (resistance to compression, freezing and thawing, and salt, primarily), is one of the most slippery substances on earth when wet. Don’t lick the pump handle when the temperature is below freezing, and do not step on Istrian stone when it’s wet. You will not be vertical for long.While everybody else was thinking about problems caused by the snow, not many spared a thought for the birds. They were living the high life drinking all the snowmelt they could hold. Every little depression in the pavement of the fondamenta in front of the Naval Museum was a veritable trough for the Common Seagulls (Larus ridibundus). Sipping delicately, occasionally biting a little snow, these enchanting little birds are wearing their “wedding garb,” signified by the black feathers on their heads which appear in March.
And while I was enjoying this little festa, I spared a thought for the pigeons yesterday when this water was frozen solid. There had been a few of them dejectedly pecking away at the ice, trying to get at least a few drops out of what they clearly recognized as a shallow puddle which had turned against them. I’m not sure how long they kept at it, it was too cold and windy to stand there watching to see how much time and effort they were going to dedicate to the effort before quitting and going home. Maybe they succumbed to the thirst — there wasn’t one pigeon in the scrum today. But this little interlude made me feel happy. These birds were practically singing “Gaudeamus igitur” as they slurped away at what must have seemed something like a granita, a frozen liquid with a delicate aftertaste of sanidine feldspar.
This is a tiny example of the material which can be found strewn about in ever-larger remnants according to the amount of wind, and the mood it’s in. If it has come unstuck because of rain, no matter. It will sit there till it becomes dry and the next windwaft will bring it to your door. Or open window.
You might not intuit this, considering all that water around Venice, but this is an extremely dusty city. Like any reasonable person I hate dusting, so that might explain my objections to the imperceptible but constant zephyrs of scuz. Everybody outside Venice gets all worked up about the water, but the only thing we’re missing here is the simoom.
A few evenings ago the weather took a sudden turn from the clear and hot to the dark-gray and cold, a maneuver that was neatly accomplished by a blast of wind. I felt the temperature suddenly drop and a tiny but ominous breeze passed across my over-heated shoulders and neck. Reef the fo’c’sle and belay the cabinboy! I raced to shut the windward windows but before I could get to them the aforementioned wind had hurtled through the bedroom bearing invisible (I guess) but extremely tangible clouds of Venetian dust, sand, and general grit.
Sorry to ruin the magic, but the romantic city of canals is made of decomposing bricks, crumbling plaster, flaking paint, eroding stone, and disintegrating mortar and stucco, all of which produces everything from powdery dust to assorted chips, granules, motes, particles, and even the occasional scruple. This medley had been flung across the bedroom floor, chests of drawers, the bed, and — shudder — the pillows. The books I can ignore, but just passing my hand over the once-crisp top sheet was like stroking a grimy park bench under a desiccated purging-buckthorn tree. The only positive thing about this is that, by now, it did not surprise me. I experience more environment-fatigue when the weather’s dry than when the tide is rising.
There is no solution; the stuff comes in even when the windows are latched, just in a smaller amount. I don’t know that anyone has ever thought of inventing dust-proof windows — maybe they have them in Timbuktu. If they have, I’m sure they would cost a lot, when you add in shipping and customs costs. Meanwhile, gnashing my teeth is free.
The bottle cap is just passing through.Bricks seem dangerously prone to returning to their primal state. That’s why people cover them with plaster. Which also loses its grip.it may be that the city will have returned to its primordial mud before it sinks beneath the waves. I don’t know how I feel about that, except at least then I wouldn’t have to dust the bed.
No matter how bundled up these little pixies still may be, they say SPRING to me.
We went shopping this morning. Nothing dramatic, nothing involving jewels or cashmere or lambskin. Just checking out the fish at the Pescheria this morning, and we struck paydirt twice.
One, we nabbed the first seppie of the season, a moment we’d been waiting for. They cost more than I’d have wanted to spend (as almost everything does), but we brought them home and Lino is dealing with their destiny as I write.
We couldn’t resist them — or rather, we didn’t resist most of them, except for the bigger one in the foreground, second from left, covered in sticky ink. The young man casually threw it into the paper in his hand along with two of the others, and I said, “I don’t want that one.” He said, “They’re all the same size.” I said, “I don’t care, I don’t want it.” He said, “They’re all the same size.” Lino said, “She doesn’t want it, put it back,” and so he did. What did size have to do with the fact that it was DEMONSTRABLY older — and with fish, that doesn’t mean wiser — than the others? ( And by the way, it was not the same size, it was bigger.) I realize that every hour that passed, the young man would have found it more of a challenge to casually throw it in with somebody else’s order, but I don’t care. We got the good ones.
Two, we ran into two friends of his, which is always what one hopes when wandering the market. M and C used to work at the Aeronavali with Lino, beginning as boys together (16 years old, more or less). They did a little catching-up, mainly about wildfowl hunting (M’s passion since boyhood, but he has relinquished his weapons due to increasing bureaucracy), fishing (still at it, like Lino), and some random remarks about nothing. Nothing is a very large and rich subject, and people can talk about it for quite some time.
I already knew M by name and by occasional sightings; I knew that he had been Lino’s favorite partner when they used to compete on pupparinos in the “interaziendali” races organized between different working groups (a team from the Gazzettino, say, and the ACTV, and other happy bands of working brothers). “He was a wonderful proviere” (rowing in the bow) — “he had a beautiful stroke, it just lifted the boat up and then I’d carry it forward.” Perhaps this makes more sense in Italian. Anyway, the perfect pair.
They also ran into each other out fishing, or at work with whatever catch they brought in to give away. “I’d have sole,” Lino said, “but M didn’t fish for sole, he went out for shrimp. So he’d ask me how much I wanted for my sole, and I’d say ‘You’re kidding, right?’ So we’d just trade. He loved sole.” Today M bought some sole, but it wasn’t for him. “It’s for my cat,” he said. “I also got some sardoni for me.” (Engraulis encrasicolus, or European anchovy).
Lino thought that was funny. “Give the sardoni to the cat, and you eat the sole!” he said.
“Nah…the cat won’t eat sardoni….”
Seppie ink trickling out from beneath the ice at the neighborhood fish vendor. It’s like a moment from some horror movie as you approach the closed door, rendered less horrible by its lack of human characteristics. But this is a tragic waste of precious ink. Maybe it was the creature’s last attempt at self-defense. Or somebody was just careless with his squashy fingers as he rang up the sale.
M worked “inside” at the airport on the Lido, where construction was going on; Lino worked outside, on repairs and maintenance. A young widow with a son set her sights on the even younger M, and the two married and have lived peacefully ever after, with the addition of a few daughters. She was happy for M to be training and racing, which many wives are not. Many a modest racer has been forced to give it up because the wife wants him at home. “At home,” if I understand Lino’s tone of voice, means something like “chained to the wall.”
C, however, was another case. No fishing, no hunting; always to be seen with his father for company. When his father died he latched onto M, and it may not need to be said that he never married. “But he always said ugly things about M’s wife,” Lino recalled with some distaste. M is a good guy and there was no known reason for anyone to say anything bad about her, either. Except maybe (I hypothesized) he might have made a move on her which was rebuffed. “I’ve thought that for years,” Lino replied.
When Lino left the company after some 37 years of service, C became head of the squad, a promotion that would have gone to Lino, but never mind, there it is.
I’m sure Lino could have told me more, but one can’t be writing Russian novels every day. It’s enough to get the highlights, which when they concern people you’ve known since you were 16 can be plenty high enough.
An instant later, they were gone. Two instants after that, they were back. Then they were gone. I never knew pigeons could be so fussy.Spring is now arriving at a brisk trot. Pussy willows at the market.A very little peach tree beginning to bloom on the vegetable boat. Peaches never seem to be forthcoming, but the flowers are wonderful.
One of the many wonderful things about spring is that nobody can start it or stop it. That’s why the earliest signs are always the most eloquent. Here’s a glimpse of the past few days, in more or less chronological order:
The fish are returning to the lagoon from their winter spent wherever they go, and one of the first to arrive are the seppie, complete with ink. This was clearly not the destination this seppia had been imagining on his way up the Adriatic.Another day, another victim. More black drops from an indignant seppia. The seppie are coming into the lagoon to spawn. Just after the feast of the Redentore (third Sunday in July) — feast days are still a standard measure of time here –the eggs hatch, and everybody’s out along the fondamente fishing for the baby seppie. Around about the Feast of the Dead (“i morti,” Nov. 2), the “fraima” commences, which is the annual migration of the fish out of the lagoon and back to sea. However, a few tend to linger, and in late December there comes the first really cold day of the winter. I’ve experienced it several times; the moment seems to favor St. Stephen’s Day, Dec. 26. When the cold hits, it’s very likely that some seppie who’ve stayed behind (squatting in somebody’s summer home?) drift to the surface. I think they’re stunned by the cold, but I don’t know that for a fact. I do know that if you can stand the cold water, you can even catch them with your hands. They move pretty slowly.I grew up in Ithaca, New York, where it snows from October to April (more or less). At a certain imperceptible signal the city is swathed in forsythia, and being young I took it totally for granted and didn’t firmly grasp how thrilling it was. Now that I live in a city not known for any particular flower, I watch this corner every spring for this burst of glory. It’s not nostalgia, exactly. I’d love this even if I’d grown up in Rochester (lilacs).This plum tree — specifically “baracocoli” — is a little behind the blooming curve. Its cousin near the Giardini vaporetto stop is already finished with flowering.There’s an old saying — which probably means that only old people say it now: “Quando la rosa mete spin, xe bon el go’ e el passarin.” When the rose puts forth its thorns, the go’ and the passarin are good. The two lagoon fish — gobies and European flounder (Gobius ophiocephalus Pallas and Platichthys flesus) — are in season, or starting to be. This rosebush is already on its way to producing amazing flowers, and the fish are also going to be excellent.Peach blossoms from Sicily. Not Venetian but I’ve only ever seen them here so I’m adding them to the local squadron of spring.Fish, check. Flowers, check. And of course the tourists also begin to hatch, bloom, reproduce, whatever the right word might be. Do they also come here to spawn? Are these early visitors the ones responsible for the millions we see in the summer?I know it’s a free country, but I can never understand why they’re HERE. There’s virtually nothing in this neighborhood to lure a tourist with its siren song. When the Biennale is open, they inevitably spill over into the rest of the area. But now? Are they lost?Easter is imminent, and as predictably as the seppie or the much-sung swallows of Capistrano, the window of Mascari becomes an orgy of chocolate eggs. You see this and you cannot deny that all is right, if not with the world, at least with this window.
