After a certain amount of time, one gets the feeling (“one” means me) that nothing ever gets done around here. But lately, one would be wrong.
Invigorating confusion has been literally surrounding our little hovel, spreading into some side streets, for the past two weeks or so. And it’s impossible for a civilian to guess how long it will continue.
The Biennale is all over the city, but here on our street we've got a real "work in progress" underway. (Our front door is on the right.) I'm beginning to wonder if this is really performance art sponsored by the People's Republic of Erewhon.
The gas and water lines need to be fixed, replaced, spayed, embalmed — something important, anyway. I glimpsed the hole in one wet degraded portion of a water pipe just unearthed — no telling how many gallons of the precious liquid had been lost forever (or on whose monthly bill the loss was charged).
This means, as everywhere in the world, they tear up everything and then have to put it all back when they’re done. Each phase is loud and dirty. Here, the work is all at the artisan level — no big fancy machines that make lots of noise. But that’s fine, because the men laboring on this task make enough noise all by themselves.
This is what today's work looks like right outside the window on the left, behind which I am attempting to think.
I don’t mean the assorted incessant clinkings and clunkings of heavy iron objects copied from tools excavated in Etruscan mining settlements. Chisels on stone, hammers on nails. This goes on all day but you can get used to it. At least it’s not drills. I’ve been through that too.
No, it’s the euphonious tones of the workmen themselves. They are louder and more insistent than the noise of their implements. You can hear them as they arrive for work, getting closer and closer, walking down the street and over the bridge already shouting at each other. And you can really hear them right outside your window as you try to think of other things, like what to have for lunch or why, if God is good, there is evil in the world.
They may be deaf. Even if they are, that doesn’t stop them. The comments are truncated, and inane, but almost always loud, and enlivened by unimaginative swearing and boring blasphemy. I can understand enough of it by now to be annoyed. I hate the blasphemy but I hate the inanity even more. I want to ask them why this is desirable, or (God forbid) necessary, but then I remember they’re making 40,000 times more money while talking than I am while listening.
Besides, I already know the answer. Instead of the missing motors, it’s their mouths that provide the energy necessary for their work. No shouting and blaspheming? The worksite suddenly freezes, men standing with half-raised utensils, staring at nothing.
And this portion of work is just outside our two bedroom windows. The whole street is helpfully covered up with wooden planks when the men go home at night, which means that I can lie in bed till after midnight listening to people going by. They sound like horses going over a covered bridge.
If we were to put duct tape over their mouths, the world would stop. Or the repairs to the gas and water lines would stop, thereby prolonging the already prolonged project.
So if we have to endure bellowing and blathering in order to enable replacing that leaky pipe and re-cement those snaggled paving stones, I guess that’s the tradeoff. It would be nice if they’d work faster, but then again, it could be centuries since those pipes got a checkup.
I mean the submerged ones, not the ones in their throats.
The reason for the unusually long time since my last post is the inverse correlation between the current heatwave (still increasing) and my capacity to think and/or act upon my thoughts (still decreasing).
Of course it’s summer so of course it’s hot. What does everyone expect? The Siberian front that usually moves through here in January? Everybody complains about that too.
And I recognize that longer and more intense heatwaves have been tormenting people in many other parts of the world. But I don’t use my brain there and I haven’t been using what’s left of it here lately either.
For about a week now the daytime temperature has gone near, and now will be going past, 96 degrees F/36 C. With searing sun which not even the most foolhardy cloud has dared to veil. The “perceived heat” will be over 100. It’s like living in Pascagoula with palazzos.
But heat doesn’t seem to prevent people from doing all sorts of unusual things, so I thought I’d share one of the more eccentric or anyway less horrifying recent summer events (by “less horrifying” I mean episodes not involving drug overdoses, marital homicide/suicides, fatal hit-and-run accidents, and so forth). Many of those have a highly ironic nature which might lead you to consider them humorous, but I’m going to avoid them.
The best of the batch is being accomplished by a certain Ivano De Marchi, 65 years old, who lives in Marcon (just 14 miles/22 km from Venice). He has been driving around the Veneto in his convertible BMW with a coffin jammed into the passenger seat.
Here is a video of a sighting on the A4 highway near the Vicenza Ovest exit.
For those who don’t see the video, here’s the link:
I’ll simplify his explanation: It’s a pilgrimage. Not any ordinary one, but a “protest pilgrimage” to punish the mayor.
Back in 1988, De Marchi paid a lot of his own money and time and energy to create a motocross track, presumably near his hometown and presumably something he intended for his own enjoyment. I don’t know how much money or time you need to construct a motocross track but I know it’s not something you just throw away, like the 20 million dollars Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt spent for that chateau in France.
Anyway, he spent the money, then the mayor razed the track and cut it up into parcels, presumably for houses (there was no mention of a miniature golf course or firing range).
So now, 23 years later, revenge. According to De Marchi, the Virgin Mary came to him in a dream and told him to undertake 1000 pilgrimages with a coffin to 1000 churches, after which time presumably the ex-mayor will be ready for his box. That’s the assumption De Marchi is going on.
Of course the police have stopped him (no word on whether the bishop has sent out his own squad). They gave him the breath-test and the drug test and he was just fine. “Then they made me open the coffin, which obviously was empty” — actually, not so obvious to even a moderately alert policeman. “After that they told me to be careful, and they let me go,” he concludes.
“Of course I”m careful: The coffin has got its seatbelt fastened.”
If we are given any updates on the fulfillment of his vow, especially the expected outcome, I’ll certainly let you know. As it is, while the rest of us are being steamed like asparagus out here, he is out there breezing along with his coffin and his retaliation to keep him company. I have no idea if he has a time frame for this quest — even if he were able to visit ten churches a day, he’d be at this for at least three months. It’s not going to be quite so much fun when the winter rains move in.
But for now, he’s happy. At the least, he’s not stuck in miles of traffic coming home from vacation, like all those really dumb people.
The other afternoon, as I was lolling on the embankment of our rowing club lightly toasting my skin and reflecting on how monotonous the sound of the surf was, surf caused by the incessant passing of every conceivable type of motorized boat, I noticed something unusual.
All I had was my cell phone, so the quality of this picture is regrettable. The wreath is evidently gifted with total protective coloration (they ordered a wreath the color of bricks and busted-up pilings?). It is sitting on the edge of the water at the point closest to the viewer, just to the left of the big chunk of concrete. What a place to run aground.
Just a few yards away is a mass of rocks, sand, bricks and other detritus which over time have created a small sort of beach, and on it there was something alive. Well, it had been alive, in the sense that its flowers were only slowly fading. But while it’s not all that strange to find a vaporetto route sign (the kind they hang on the side of the boat to list the stops) floating in the lagoon, I’d never seen a funeral wreath before.
Naturally, the vision of a floating funeral wreath inspired a backwash of mournful thoughts, loaded with other bits of detritus from all those somber poems and short stories they make you read in school. But then I became curious.
Why would a wreath be floating in the lagoon? It should have been removed from the casket and left at the cemetery. Did it fly off the hearse (naturally, a motorboat) on its way to eternity? Did a person or persons deliberately cast it upon the waves, in an uncharacteristically romantic gesture to the recently departed? These wreaths cost real money. Who would have spent all that for a wreath that was going to have a shorter life than the funeral leftovers?
I went to discuss all this with Lino, and when he came over to investigate, we saw that the waves had pulled the wreath away from its temporary resting-place and had drawn it seaward, right into the center of the straps attached to the crane which puts our boats into the water.
Seeing it there inspired a small, ancillary rush of half-baked melancholy thoughts. But curiosity won out.
We took the boathook and pulled the dedicatory ribbon around to where we could read it. It said: “CIAO CAPITANO.” Goodbye, Captain.
I’ll spare you my next batch of thoughts (gone down with the ship? Lost at sea?). Lino had a better theory.
Just a few days ago, a man named Anacleto Marella died. His funeral was held on June 20 (Saturday) at the church of San Francesco della Vigna, roughly just around the corner from our club. So this must have been borne by the tide from there.
Marella had been employed for years as one of the many “captains” of the ACTV, the public transport company — a vaporetto driver, in other words.
But don’t imagine that they all get wreaths, floating or otherwise.
Some investigation has revealed that Capt. Marella was hugely famous, an extraordinary person who had been deeply involved for decades in the struggle to help the handicapped. Specfically, those suffering from muscular dystrophy. And he was one of the driving forces, along with Dr. Diego Fontanari and Mrs. Luciana Sullam, in the founding of the local chapter of the UILDM, the Unione Italiana lotta alla Distrofia Muscolare (Italian Union in the fight against Muscular Dystrophy).
According to the story published in the newsletter of the association, back in 1966 or so, Marella noticed that every day at a certain time, a young man with muscular dystrophy boarded, with tremendous effort, his vaporetto. Struck by the man’s tenacity and courage, he began to urge the bus company (as I think of it) to improve its accessibility to the handicapped, particularly by creating specific spaces designed for wheelchairs. This was revolutionary work, especially when you consider the cost of retrofitting all those vehicles. Did I mention that the transport company is public? That means it was born to say “We can’t afford it.” But Marella seems to have been born, as his grandson once remarked, with “Duracell batteries.”
He didn’t stop with the vaporettos. He organized a medical conference on neuromuscular diseases. He raised funds by participating in telethons. He accompanied groups of tourists with MS in tours around the city, not to mention on trips out in the lagoon.
He even convinced the 66 other vaporetto drivers to donate part of every paycheck to the UILDM. In fact, they still do. I want you to stop and think about that for a minute. Yes, it is unbelievable. But there it is.
I think roses are absolutely beautiful for a wreath, and not all that common, either. At least not for a man.
Small digression: When I first came here, and for years, the vaporettos all displayed several discreet but noticeable square stickers with a design of a person in a wheelchair, with a small note encouraging the public to remember the UILDM and its mission. I used to wonder, “Why MS? If the public transport company is publicizing one disease, why not all of them?” Now I know the answer. Because Anacleto Marella asked them to, and it was nobody could say no to him.
“My father’s enthusiasm and tenacity overwhelmed everybody,” his son, Giovanni, remembered. “He involved entire families in his initiatives. Nobody could stop him.”
Yes, he was left fatherless as a boy, and had to start working early to support his family. Yes, he was a wounded veteran of World War II. But these experiences don’t inevitably make pioneers, much less heroes, nor do they guarantee any skill in navigating the immense sea of bureaucracy and lethargy. As far as I can tell, he had no relatives with any physical disabilities. What he clearly had was a large heart, a clear mind, and a spectacularly hard head.
He would have been 94 on July 1. Ciao, Capitano. If you had ever wanted to round Cape Horn with your vaporetto, I’ll bet you could have gotten everybody to sign up.
On Christmas Eve, Luca Zaia, president of the Veneto, received a visit — not by the Spirits of Christmas, but by four hooded men who broke into his country house looking for money. (He wasn’t there.) They pretty much trashed the house looking for a safe to steal; when they finally found it, it was empty. No happy ending for Mr. Zaia, at least not yet, and probably not for the four men, whenever the carabinieri succeed in interpreting the film from the security video cameras.
A view of Mr. Zaia's rural refuge. (Photo: Gazzettino).
On the same day, thieves also broke into at least five other houses in the same area, and plenty of other places, I assume, and stole things. But all robberies are not created equal. Even I have to admit that, if not on a moral level, at least on a curious-human level, the theft of a Picasso from a palace is somewhat more interesting than the theft of some money and a few high-tech electronics from a suburban villa. And the fact that this misfortune struck an Important Person obviously deserves a few columns.
A few columns? For two days we’ve been served whole roasted articles about this event, as if it had never happened before, or that it somehow was worse for him than for the suburban villa-dwellers.
He, bless his shellshocked little heart, has given vent to some extreme emotions and opinions which, while you can understand them, lead you to wonder why he never had or expressed them in other cases in which he was not personally involved.
In fact, he was quoted yesterday as saying (and this looks great in a headline): “He who steals is like he who kills.”
Excuse me? Is he not clear on the essential nature of death? Because the Veneto is full of people every day — alas — who literally are killed, get buried or cremated, and leave behind suffering families and huge holes in their hearts and lives which can never be filled. There is a reason why the death penalty is considered justifiable for punishing murderers, but not thieves.
Mr. Zaia has had a fine time fulminating about robbery and retribution (which would make a great title for a novel, by the way. Where is Dostoyevsky when we need him? Oh sorry — he died of a lung hemorrhage, and not from having a couple of delinquents steal his cufflinks) — as I say, Mr. Zaia has given himself over to ranting, throwing out platitudes such as “Zero tolerance!” and “Fist of iron!” Now that it’s happened to him, thievery suddenly matters?
Oliver Twist is wounded during a burglary (George Cruikshank). I imagine Mr. Zaia would have liked this approach.
Correct answer: Mais oui, mon capitaine. Being a politician, no experience can be left unexploited for political gain, and being on the extreme right of the political spectrum, he would naturally be calling down brimstone on criminals of every sort.
Not that I’m defending criminals, but committing crimes is what they do and you should make some reasonable effort to prevent it rather than declaring jihad after it happens. When I lived in New York, I experienced break-ins in two different apartments. In the second, they carried off jewelry and a large load of recent wedding presents, and a whole set of family silver. (In case you think I didn’t know how to protect my stuff, in the second instance the thieves had obtained the keys.)
So Mr. Zaia has a large, beautiful, obviously expensive house in a fairly isolated position in the country, which clearly was empty on Christmas Eve. The security system consisted of video cameras. What do you think could possibly happen? He claims that the Code of Country Life has always meant trust in one’s neighbors, peaceful coexistence, leaving the keys in the car, whatever.
He didn’t consider the possibility that some passersby might not be neighbors, and may not have been informed of the Code. So now he’s mad.
Me, I’d be embarrassed for people to discover I was so naive. But as I say, if you’re a politician, you tend not to say “How stupid could I be?” That would set a Dangerous Precedent.
So what we’ve heard for two days is the sound of the doors of the horseless barn being closed. It is, as always, a very silly — regrettable, but silly — sound.
