I’ll never know what happened, but my first reaction was to feel sad for whoever dismembered the rose and scattered its bits to the wind, to the gravel, to the pigeons. To feel sad for the reason why it happened. To feel sad for how they’re feeling now. To feel sad for the rose, too, while I’m at it.
But because I really, really hate feeling sad, especially that early in the morning, when the sun is shining, etc., I let my brain wander around seeking other possible scenarios to account for what had happened that might make me feel better.
Maybe this is an original way for two people to pledge undying, eternal, infinite love. Buy a rose and decapitate it.
Maybe she said, “If I have to choose between having a rose and having you, this is how much I need the rose,” and destroyed it and flung it away. Avaunt!
Or maybe he pulled off the petals one by one and let each float down on her head, saying “I love you” in a different language as each one touched her hair.
Or maybe she hit him with the rose till it fell apart. Maybe they laughed. Maybe they didn’t.
Maybe he said, “If you ever die, I will rip away every remnant of your beauty and sacrifice it to the sun.” (He’d have to have been moderately drunk if he got that far.) (However, I am not.)
I am not going to say that the petals were the color of blood, because that’s just too obvious and trite. But they came darn close.
I’ll tell you what: I’m going to stop all this, and I’m going to stop imagining writing a poem, or a short story, or a one-act play, or anything else.
I’ll leave the subject — and the carcass of the hapless scion of the family Rosaceae — with two thoughts, either one of which makes me feel strangely better.
One — maybe it’s just some work of art from the Biennale, a fragment of improvised performance art.
Two — this observation from an unidentified person:
People say hate is a strong word; well so is love, but people throw it around like it’s nothing.
Or maybe there’s just something about this part of the neighborhood that impels people to strew bits of red vegetable matter.
I appreciate that Venice (well, San Giorgio, in this case) is seductive and irresistible and beautiful and everything. But it wouldn’t have been less beautiful the next day. The city has been here for 1,500 years — presumably it can wait for a family to have dinner and sleep.
After I began to think about it more clearly (that is to say, after I thought about it in the mountains, where we just went for four days, breathing air that was cool and dry enough to resuscitate my mental processes), I realized that I made a small miscalculation in the payday for the police.
I’m referring to the extra paydays they gave themselves by forging permits and whatever else they were doing to help eager immigrants make it through the bureaucracy.
Yes, each of the accused maintainers of public order did indeed receive 300 euros for finagling the permit, which seemed to my super-saturated brain to be pitifully small.
But now I realize what sharp readers have long since understood: It was 300 euros multiplied by God knows how many times they orbited the cash register each day. Each week. Each month.
Before long, it won’t be only God who knows what the total came to. I presume a phalanx of lawyers and judges is already pounding its calculators.
Not me. I don’t care anymore. I’m on to other things. I’m more interested now in the German couple who drove their camper 1,026 km/637 miles from Dresden to Cavallino-Treporti the other day. Even though the trip probably took them ten hours, and most likely more, when they got there the first thing they wanted to do was to get on the motonave and go to Venice. How romantic, how beautiful. And how inconvenient that their ten-year-old daughter dug in her heels at yet another trek before the day could finally be over.
Nothing daunted, her parents locked her inside the camper. Then they went off on their own, feeling fine about her being fine, except she wasn’t.
She got out of the camper, couldn’t get back in, became distraught, and was collected by a sympathetic passerby who took her to everyone’s favorite caretakers, the Carabinieri. Who were waiting for her parents at midnight when they got off the boat from Venice. To present them with the formal accusation of abandonment of a minor.
Mann kann nicht alles unter einen Hut bringen, as they say in the Vaterland. You can’t put everything under one hat. Neither can you have everything you want, including a child-free jaunt to Venice whenever you feel like it, no matter where you might be inclined to put it.
I don’t know why he has to look so hangdog. At least he gets to lie on ice.
Laboring under the phenomenal force of the combined heat and humidity which have been oppressing us (Italy as a whole, but I take all this personally), I have slowed my blogging efforts, as has probably already become evident. We have had two successive heat waves — ours come from Algeria, if that tells you anything — and the names are indicative: “Charon” and “Styx.” You know those animals that only move once every few months when they have to eat something? That would be us.
Having now pled the “Smothering Heat Wave” defense, I will proceed.
On a normal day, I would now be catching you up on a lot of stuff that’s been going on in and around the old most-beautiful-city-in-the-world. None of which resembles much of what you could call beautiful. Anybody who hasn’t managed to get to the beach or the mountains appears to be taking it out on the rest of the world.
Anyway, since my energy has to be dedicated to maintaining my life-sustaining physical functions — nothing left over for such frivolity as scorn and umbrage — I will give only a smattering of headlines from today’s Gazzettino. I will then try to cool us all off with some views that show that there are still plenty of glimpses around here that make me smile.
National news:
Kashetu “Cecile” Kyenge is not only Minister for Integration, but also a doctor specializing in ophthalmology. I think everybody in the Northern League should be forced to go to her for their myopia. And possibly cataract operations. Too bad she’s not a brain surgeon. (Photo: Provincia di Modena)
Cecile Kyenge, a Congolese-born doctor and only months-long Minister for Integration, and Italy’s first African-Italian minister, has been working out on a sort of political and human Parkour course composed of a seemingly endless series of racist insults from assorted members of the extreme right-wing Northern League.
The process goes like this: The politician says something repulsive (such as comparing her to an orangutan), other politicians indignantly reprimand him, he offers a sort of non-apology along the lines of “I regret if I said anything that might have been construed as offensive” (or “misunderstood,” or “taken out of context,” or “a private communication that was somehow made public,” etc.). At least five Leaguers at various levels have contributed to the stringing of this uncharm-bracelet of abuse regarding her color or her religion. Some have been expelled from the party, but more just keep coming up. It’s like some Whack-a-Mole from Hades.
“Drug dealer dies in the barracks; “Violent asphyxia.” (Riva Ligure) A Tunisian suspect was being held since June 6 in a barracks, awaiting his turn in the legal process. That’s no longer necessary, due to a “powerful pressure exerted on his thorax,” as the coroner put it. The three Carabinieri who arrested him and had him in custody have now been arrested.
“She tried to kill him, he applauds her.” (Castiglione delle Stiviere) That’s not quite what it sounds like, but it is somewhat thought-provoking. Claudio del Monaco (son of the famous tenor Mario del Monaco) is married to Daniela Werner, a German former nursery-school teacher and aspiring soprano. In December 2011 things went wrong and she tried to stab him to death. She went to the psychiatric penitentiary and by applying herself to her singing, was able to perform a concert in public last July 2. “I love my wife more than before and I want to forget the past,” said her husband. Now she goes back to serve another three years. Maybe it’s neurotic, but in a strange way I find this admirable. I suppose it’s because the “for better for worse” isn’t usually taken to this extreme, or illuminated by this bright a light.
“Few mosquitoes; layoffs at the insecticide company.” (Trento) Last spring was unusually cold and wet, and it went on far too long. You’d think the resulting lack of mosquitoes would be a good thing, and for most of us, it is. But not for the employees of the Zobele company, 70 of whom are going to be at home from September to November because sales are so slow. It is, indeed, always something.
Venice news:
“Train Hell, few, late, and boiling.” Riders on the national network in the Veneto — not just tourists, but loads of commuters — are once again taking the hit of the management’s inability to provide even minimal rail service. To the many trains which have been canceled, and the super-many which are late, has been added the increasing percentage of trains in which passengers travel in torrid conditions because the air conditioning doesn’t work. This story comes out every summer. I mean, every summer. Do the managers not have calendars? Or is nine months not long enough to make a plan and carry it out? Women do it all the time. Sorry, that just slipped out.
“Money for permits; Three policemen in handcuffs.” Just over the lagoon in Jesolo, they discovered three of the Polizia di Stato’s finest taking cash for various special services, such as expediting applications for “permessi di soggiorno,” permits to stay in Italy for a specified length of time. What makes it worse — as if it had to be worse — is that a number of the immigrants they passed weren’t eligible for permits. The charges: Conspiracy, corruption, counterfeiting documents, and illegal access to computer systems. What inspires the urge to smack one’s forehead isn’t that they took money, but that they took 1000 euros. That is, about 300 euros per policeman. I know. If you’re going to risk blowing your career to smithereens, wouldn’t you make it just a little bit more?
I could go on, but my brain is too tired. There will be more of these antics tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and on and on till we all disappear over the horizon. Where they will continue, wherever we are.
A man setting out in the morning with a bag and a bouquet of hydrangeas. It looks good.I was tempted to remove the empty detergent bottle, left out to await tomorrow’s recycling pickup, but I kind of like the fact that it says “Sole” (sun).And while I’m on the subject of flowers, a woman waiting for the vaporetto was bearing this astonishing armload of peonies. I invite anyone to tell me that there is anything more beautiful than this.This cat wouldn’t deign to acknowledge a heat wave, but did graciously recognize the presence of a lower-order mammal nearby.One of my all-time favorite repair jobs. What? There’s something wrong with this?Perhaps you were unaware that Venice was bombed 42 times by Austria in the First World War. These plaques will help you remember.“Destroyed by an Austrian bomb February 27, 1918. Reconstructed 1920.”Sometimes our favorite late-afternoon cafe is overrun by women who smoke and babble, but sometimes it seems magically to turn into a sort of little kinder-haven. Manuela, the owner (seated), loves them all.If there is any breeze at all in Venice, a little swirl of air will always form right exactly there and make a scuffed-up patch of water. It makes me smile.
The announcement of her death, and funeral details, typically taped up on assorted walls. The portrait was made in 1997, when she was 76.
It’s a glorious spring morning, the sun is coruscating and the breeze is cool and the world is clean and happy. Naturally I’d have to be going to a funeral.
By now I’ve gone to plenty of funerals, but they’ve always been people that Lino knew, whether I had made their acquaintance or not. I’ve been here long enough now to go to funerals of my own.
Her full name was Countess Alma Lippi-Boncambi Messe di Casalpetraia. I called her Signora Alma and had long since forgotten that she was a countess. At the point I came to know her she was in her late 80s, and had accumulated enough physical problems that she needed a live-in, full-time caretaker: my friend and matron of honor, Anzhelika.
A few years ago she finally had to be installed in a long-term-care hospital (or whatever they’re called; it could have been a nursing home except that it seemed like a hospital to me). At that point Anzhelika had already planned a six-week trip home to Ukraine and was urgently seeking a temporary substitute to tend Alma from 10-12:30 and 3:30-6:30 every day except Sunday afternoon. I volunteered, and this became an annual engagement. Last year I did this from January to August (time reduced to the afternoon only).
By then, of course, Signora Alma was loaded with what Italians call acciacchi (ah-CHAH-kee) — which literally means “afflictions,” but which usually refers to everything from a chronic cough to a bum knee, a bruised rib, extreme bunions, osteoporosis, cataracts, and so on. In short, physical deterioration which is assumed not to be fatal in itself but which degrades your life in various ways. I won’t list her assorted acciachi here because I don’t think any one of them carried her away, it was all of them together. And besides, her extraordinary forceful character pushed her acciacchi up against the wall, where she told them to sit still and be quiet, except when she wanted to be pampered and coddled and there-there’d.
She was born in Trieste, the only child of older parents who were extremely unhappily married, slept in separate bedrooms and rarely spoke to each other. Her mother was jealous, suspicious, and domineering, and also psychopathically possessive. She accompanied her daughter to school every day till Alma entered the University of Padova, but there she merely waited at home for her, watching the clock.
Alma’s salvation was her brain. By the time she was 13 she was already tutoring students in Latin, and making good money. She earned her doctorate degree in literature at the age of 22. She made a career of private instruction in Latin and Greek, following her own particular method which was clear, rigorous, and effective, as her former students attest. They also attest to her total lack of tolerance for ignorance, verbal clumsiness, mental blundering, uncertainty, approximation, and any intellectual or personal trait that wasn’t first-class.
I know this because I was in her cross-hairs every day. My mistakes in grammar would exasperate and even enrage her; I would come home exhausted from what amounted to private tutoring by a Marine drill sergeant. She forbade me to speak in Venetian; it had to be the language of the divine Dante, or nothing. She couldn’t believe I couldn’t get rid of my American accent — I guess she thought it was either laziness or stupidity on my part, but she didn’t comment often, thank God. Though there was the time she was feeling poorly, and I asked if she’d like for me to read to her. “Per carita’!” she blurted, which in this case meant something like “Heaven forfend!” That stung.
My duties weren’t merely to keep her company. Her left arm was essentially useless at this point, so in the early days I bathed her eyes with boric acid, and wrangled her dentures — taking them out, scrubbing them, gluing them back in her mouth — and feeding her when she was laid up with one of her spells. It took years to learn how to put her glasses on JUST RIGHT.
But gradually we created a friendship. She loved to talk about books, music and travel, and the hospital didn’t contain anybody who knew or cared about any of it. I even made her quirks work for me. If I wanted to rouse her from one of her occasional afternoon torpors, I’d deliberately make some grammatical error and she’d leap to life, eyes aflame, like an old warhorse who had suddenly heard the distant trumpet call. It was fabulous — it never failed. But unfortunately I made plenty of inadvertent mistakes and not a single one ever got a pass. When the last grim shades of senility close my brain down forever, the last thing flickering in there will be the words “lo scialle” — the shawl. I screwed that up often enough to drive her one day to shout it at me. That was an exciting and effective moment.
One of her greatest passions was for the classic Italian novel, “I Promessi Sposi,” by Alessandro Manzoni. She nagged me for most of one year’s stint to read it. It wasn’t a request, or a suggestion, it was an order. I finally started the book just to get her to quit hounding me. After the first page, I was hooked. And we had finally found a real connection.
When we went downstairs in the morning for a cup of hot chocolate from the vending machine, she would ask me how far I’d gotten, and we’d talk about the characters and what they were up to. Then I’d start asking her to explain certain words to me. I could have used the dictionary, but she was better, because she understood the nuances of words that nobody uses anymore, and could explain them with clarity and with pleasure. I was happy because I was learning so much, and she was happy because she was teaching again. And we were both crazy about this book. When I’d leave in the evening, she’d sometimes say, “Wait till you see what happens next.” It was better than TV.
We did watch a lot of TV in her room in the winter afternoons; she liked police crime programs, most of them German, dubbed in Italian. She liked documentaries, and she loathed cooking programs. In the summer, we spent most of our time outside in the garden. We’d sit under the trees and play infinite rounds of scopa, an Italian card game, and smoke cigarettes. Neither one of us inhaled; it was just something she liked to do. It was like we were teenagers, pretending. In the winter, when she was stuck inside, we’d quit.
Unfortunately for me, she had begun to forget a lot of particulars that would have interested me about her life. But sometimes she’d startle me with a gem.
Knowing that she had grown up in Trieste, I asked her casually one day — grasping for a topic — if she could hear the bells of San Giusto from her house. There is a famous song called “La Campana di San Giusto.” For those who don’t see the clip below, here’s the link: http://youtu.be/MmPGTB7igLs
“No,” she replied; “I could hear the firing squads.”
Excuse me? “I would lie in bed in the early morning and listen to the firing squads.” I counted backward. The Fascist dictatorship took power in 1925, when she was four years old. A little girl could easily have heard the sound of organized reprisals in the dawn. Gad.
Then there was the episode of the laurel wreath. When she graduated from the University of Padova, she was awarded a genuine laurel wreath according to the custom in the Veneto and Friuli. Naturally she was very proud of this, and hung it on the wall in the living room, carefully wrapped in its original cellophane. Time passed. Sometimes she’d glance at it and think, “Strange….my wreath seems to be thinning out somehow.” By the time there were almost no leaves left on it, she asked her mother if she knew what might be happening.
“You’ve been eating them,” her mother replied. “In the beans.”
What could be simpler? Every time her mother cooked some fagioli, she’d take the necessary laurel leaves from her daughter’s hard-won victory crown and toss them in the pot. I did mention that her mother was borderline.
Alma married late, had no children, and was widowed early. She lived in Perugia with her husband till he died at her feet of a heart attack, at which point she returned to Venice — or rather, the Lido. She began to fall too often; there were the bedrails, the canes, the walker, the wheelchair, the emergency room, the nursing home, the end.
If I get to meet her in heaven, we’re going to sit in the shade and she’ll beat me at scopa because she always draws the king, drat her. And we’ll talk about what a sleazebag Don Abbondio was, and I’m going to show her I can finally say gli.
Bianca, her former student and sole heir, wrote this the night before. But what can you really say?
Ciao Alma…and you answered me, I love you very much.
You had a very eventful life.
You were born in Trieste. In ’42 the degree in literature at Padova at only 22 years old.
Then Venice, the teaching, the care of your parents, and when you were left alone, the trips, many trips.
To reach another level you moved to Perugia, and you met Carlo, the companion you had always longed for, but after only a few years you were left alone again.
You came back to the Lido, and again many trips, with me and your friends.
After the last trip, to China, on your return you said, “That was the last one.”
Then the Third, and the Fourth Age, and unfortunately the nursing home.
You were a severe teacher; your students, when they grew up, came to appreciate your efforts.
And Angelica, who helped you with affection and dedication, an angel who came from Ukraine.
