The tree has served its purpose, and now it’s on to the mulch-mill, or wherever trees go to be reincarnated. Of course this isn’t the correct way to dispose of your spare timber. When Lino was a lad, nobody had trees at Christmas — they had broth with homemade tortellini and were thankful. When trees began to be used, they were often disposed of in the same way as much of the other trash: with a splash. Nowadays you’re supposed to work it out with the garbage collector, but as you see, that’s irksome for some people, who’d rather haul it to the curb, so to speak, and just leave it to its fate.
The high tide of the holidays has washed over the calendar, the budget, the crumpled handful of tomato-stained to-do and to-buy lists, and as the tide retreats into the new year, I thought I’d give a tiny review of the two weeks (it seems so much longer) just past.
After so many holiday seasons here, I don’t have much to say that’s new. Christmas, New Year, and the ineffable Befana have passed in orderly single file, and here we are, facing the next 12 months. The holidays don’t end on New Year’s Day, they drip on for another few days till the day after Epiphany, which my calendar says is dedicated to St. Raimondo de Penafort, who must be the patron saint of children going back to school.
If the panettone is gone, can the box be far behind? Obviously not. Hardly anything says “party’s over” like a busted panettone-box. The panettoni are now on sale at drastically slashed prices (2 for 7 euros? You could stock up now for next Christmas!). But anybody who has managed to finish one is glad to see the box disappear. My own experience is that I love the first two wedges, and after that it’s an increasing struggle to get through it. The person who left this dismembered box is happier than I, because we’ve still got two more panettoni in the gift pile and we can’t fob them off on anyone, even as a gift. Yes, I know: If only all problems were this innocent, not to mention easy to resolve.This is a cry for help. It may also demonstrate a buyer who seriously misjudged demand, and/or let a producer beguile him with a price that was even more drastically low. I’mi imagining the seller saying something like “Buy 2,000 panettoni and you pay a mere 50 cents each.” I wonder if there’s a dead panettone dump somewhere, a mountain of rejected Christmas confectionery. I hope never to know.
How to beguile the dead-air space between New Year’s and Epiphany? The old-folks’ club of Castello East, which undertakes some very charming initiatives for the neighborhood kids, came up with a new idea this year. On Epiphany Eve (last Monday), they arranged for some of the carnival rides which are here for their annual two- to three-month stint, to open at 10:00 AM, and they were free for children up to 11 years old. I think it was a very likeable idea, even if not very many kids made it out into the sunshine from their festive lairs (fancy way of saying “beds”).
This is the usual method of advertising local events — just type it up, print it out, and stick it on a wall somewhere. It says: “Elder Group Castello-East, Monday 5 January 2014 The group of elderly in collaboration with the operators of the carnival-rides on the Riva Sette Martiri offer a turn on all the rides, cotton candy and candy to children not older than 11 years old. From 10:00 AM to 12:00. Whoever wants to contribute candy or chocolate is very welcome; just come to the group’s headquarters.” I took a bag of candy to the clubhouse, my tiny contribution to the revels. I’m not responsible for anybody’s teeth.Free candy and cotton candy? Just what played-out parents and grandparents want: Kids in sugar-shock before noon.
I realize that the modest turnout was probably due to sheer sloth on the part of the kids. But I also think there was another drawback: Sunshine. I’m convinced that half, if not more, of the fatal fascination of these rides is that you indulge at night, when the lights are at their most dazzling and you’re out late in the dark. Taking a ride in the daytime is like somebody giving you an apple as a treat when you really want a deep-fried Mars bar.
Compare this sunset view to the one of two days ago. No comment required.
Yes, the haze has evaporated, or migrated, or flown — anyway, it’s gone.
Yesterday afternoon the wind veered around to the northeast, where the bora lurks. A northeast wind may be fierce, and even dangerous, and whatever else you want to call it (especially if you live on the northeastern edge of the city, where you get it straight in the teeth), but I call it just about my favorite wind.
Perhaps you have never thought about the various winds, and their characteristics. Here’s a thumbnail: “Scirocco,” southeast wind. Warm and damp and, if it’s strong, it becomes an unindicted co-conspirator of acqua alta.
“Garbin,” southwest wind, known in Italian as libeccio. Its special trick is to bring fog — I mean real fog, not the haze of the past few weeks. It can also blow like blue blazes.
“Bora,” northeast wind. Cold and dry. That’s why I love it. I can deal with the cold, as long as it brings the dry. As for force, it can be ferocious, though here we don’t usually get the extremes that can make the bora life-threatening in Trieste. Not made up.
There are many fine variations of wind as you work your way around the compass, but those are my main players. When I look at the weather forecast, I don’t primarily care whether it says rain or sun, or even cold or hot. I look to see which direction the wind is predicted to come from, and its speed. I can deduce most of the other attributes from that, at least as far as my modest needs are concerned.
Oh sorry, that was redundant. All my needs are, by definition, modest. Example: Comes the bora, Erla is happy. You can’t get much simpler than that, at least if you’re a person who really doesn’t care about rubies and platinum and Densuke black watermelons and lavender albino ball pythons, like humble, honest, hard-working, plain-speaking little me.
Turning the other direction, I see not only sun, but shadows, for the first time in several eons. This isn’t just air you can breathe, it’s air that knows what to do with your laundry. You can’t see me here, but believe me, I’m happy.
8:30 AM: Another day of romantic haze. It would make a great Turner painting, but the unromantic clothes are still damp.5:30 PM: There might have been some intervals of sun during the day, but the haze is too happy here to think of going somewhere else, like the Grand Banks.
South Asia has the monsoon season; Lapland gets the white nights; Egypt endures the periodic simoom.
Here we have two separate months of heartless humidity, almost inevitably in October and April, two otherwise lovely months which in Venice reveal their dark, unregenerate side by smothering the city in a combination of cool temperatures and sodden, sticky air. Even when the sun shines, the dampness in the atmosphere is implacable. A gauzy mist softens the city’s silhouette, which is sheer photo-fodder, but its meaning in real life is quite otherwise. I haven’t given this phenomenon a title yet because I generally call it by short, rustic, Anglo-Saxon names.
The sheets on the bed remain repugnantly damp, the towels refuse to dry, potato chips no longer crunch. I am forced to wash the clothes even though I know they will not give up their moisture without a long, long fight. Five days after hanging them on the line, I’m still touching them and trying to convince myself that they’re dry. Of course they’re not.
Gone is that heavenly summer period in which you could hang out a huge soggy beach towel at 10:00 AM and by noon it would be crackling like desiccated firewood. Not yet arrived is the long winter season in which the radiators toast the underwear and bake the bedsheets. We have to accept this interval because, frankly, the longer we can put off turning on the heat, the better for everyone; the gas bill is an instrument of torture unknown to the Inquisition (deepest respect to the victims thereof), and after the recent unpleasantness between Ukraine and Russia, we know the gas bills will be higher yet this winter.
So much for the sense of touch around here these days. Clammy.
As for sounds, some are new, and many are old but more noticeable, or maybe I’m just becoming more sensitive.
Here are some highlights from the daily soundtrack:
From around midnight to 6:00 AM, a voluptuous silence wraps the city as far as I can hear. It is plush, it is profound. It’s so beautiful that I’m almost glad to wake up just to savor it.
At about 6:00, I hear a few random swipes of the ecological worker’s broom rasp across the paving stones. It must be exhausting work, because it lasts such a short time.
At 7:30 I begin to hear small children walking along the street just outside our bedroom window — you remember that only the depth of the wall itself separates my skin from theirs — on the way to school. Little mini-voices mingle with the bigger voices of whoever is accompanying the tykes up to via Garibaldi. If the day has started right, it’s a charming sound, though sometimes the voices make it clear that everybody needs to hit “reset” on their personal control panels.
Between 7:00 and 8:00 comes the thumping, clanking sound of the empty garbage cart bouncing down the 11 steps of the bridge just outside, guided by the ecological worker who sees no reason to fight gravity because he knows he’s going to face a serious battle with it on the return trip, his cart loaded beyond the brim.
This is the visual equivalent of the music of the carillon.
At 8:00 sharp we get the morning hymn played five times from the carillon in the campanile of San Pietro, just over the way. The piece is performed in several keys — mainly the key of flat — and the melody has worn itself into my mind so deeply that if the bells were ever tuned I think it would actually disturb me, like those people who lived along Third Avenue in New York who were so used to hearing the elevated train roaring past their windows that the day the train was removed, the transit company switchboard was overwhelmed with calls from panicky people crying, “What’s that noise?” It was the silence.
Around 9:00 there is a brief but savage skirmish between what sounds like three dogs. This struggle to establish supremacy will be repeated, again briefly, toward 8:00 this evening.
At 2:00 the middle school in via Garibaldi lets out, releasing flocks of young adolescents in a homeward swarm. These children do not go silently, meditating on the poetry of Giosue’ Carducci or the whims of the isosceles triangle. Engage feet, open lungs. You can hear their chaotic shouts all the way down the street. Lino says, “They’ve opened the aviary.”
At 7:30 PM the carillon rings a another out-of-tune hymn, only two times. It’s longer than the morning music, so somebody decided twice was enough.
For a while, the evening noises separate and recombine in various ways (children, dogs, etc.). But peace is not yet at hand. It’s almost 11:00.
11:00 PM is the Hour of the Rolling Suitcase. Actually, by now almost every hour, and half-hour, belongs to the rolling suitcase, whose grumbling across the battered masegni has become a sound more common than shutters scraping open or banging shut.
What is it about 11:00? Where is this person (or persons) coming from? The flight arrivals list for Marco Polo airport gives options such as London, Vienna, or Barcelona, and Treviso Airport might be sending us passengers from Brindisi or Brussels, but whatever the starting point might have been, I marvel every night to hear that some intrepid soul’s day has been spent coming to Venice, and now he or she is finally here. Every. Night. Maybe I should set up a little refreshment stand by the bridge and offer some kind of energy drink, like at a marathon.
And speaking of 11:00, some time around then I hear a vivacious small group come down the street, walking from the direction of Campo Ruga toward however many homes they belong to. You could imagine a bunch of friends meeting every once in a while, and even going home later than 11:00 (which often happens in the summer). But what kind of a group always breaks up at 11:00? In high spirits? Coming from the direction of Campo Ruga? A mah-jongg club? Tango lessons? Choir practice? A renegade chapter of the Loyal Order of Moose? I cannot conceive of what could be going on that would require a group to attend every night, especially in this neighborhood. And yet, they pass, and happily. This, too, perplexes me. Happy every night? Where do I sign up?
There might be a Loyal Order of Shoes, but the members here are meeting at the St. Regis Venice San Clemente Palace, not in our little backwater. I have nothing that would qualify me for membership, not even the feet.
But wait. The day isn’t over yet. Now we come to midnight — or almost.
For the past week or so, just as the day has drifted toward midnight, and every normal noise has faded away, and every normal person has shut the front door behind him or her, we’ve heard a sudden heavy metallic CLONNNNNGGGG from the other side of the canal. No, we don’t ask for whom the bell is tolling, because it’s not a bell. It’s the red metal stele which indicates the direction of the Biennale ticket booths; a local consumer of controlled substances evidently cannot physically tolerate, philosophically accept, or rationally justify its verticality. It must be horizontalized, immediately. Maybe it’s some prehistoric variation of hydrophobia.
And in the morning, another person or persons stands it upright again, our own lonely little menhir unknown to archaeology.
Lino discovered the culprit one evening, and pointed him out to me the next day. But what I still don’t know is who puts the signpost upright again the next morning.
Maybe it’s Sisyphus.
This is the signpost. I realize that puddles of water must be jumped into, but I wouldn’t have thought something like this required toppling. Wrong again.There. Somebody now feels SO much better.
The gondola bearing the casket from the church of San Zaccaria to the Lido was rowed by retired gondolier Vittorio Orio — known for his dedication to the New York firemen — and Franco Dei Rossi “Strigheta,” son of the deceased’s lifelong friend “Gigio, as well as Giampaolo d’Este and Ivo Redolfi Tezzat. The boat to the right is a 10-oar gondola belonging to the Francescana rowing club. The picture would have been better if I hadn’t snapped it from a moving vaporetto. The daily traffic stops for no man.
I’ve been noticing all sorts of interesting things around the city over the past few days, and while I regret to imply that a funeral qualifies as “interesting,” I will state that often the deceased is extremely interesting and makes me sorry I never knew him or her, and often never even heard of them until the dread news was published.
A case in point is Bruno Fusato Signoretti.
The “interesting thing” was his funeral cortege this morning, which didn’t completely surprise me when I saw it from the #1 vaporetto. I had only heard of him two days ago, when his obituary in the Gazzettino alerted me to the human behind a name with which I was familiar in exactly one way: Glass. That is, I knew that the name Signoretti was an important one on Murano, and that this company, or person, had begun (like many commercial ventures here) to sponsor some of the racers of the major Venetian regatas.
But there was much more to say about him, which I have learned now that he’s gone.
I have mashed up a few biographies, one written by Tullio Cardona in the Gazzettino, and the other by Maurizio Crovato on the website veneziaeventi.com. Here goes:
Bruno Signoretti (La Nuova Venezia).
Gondoliers and Murano are in mourning. On October 5, Bruno Fusato “Signoretti” passed away in his house on the Lido. He was 74 years old, and had been fighting a difficult disease since last March.
Fusato began working as a gondolier, son of a centuries-long tradition; his family was noted among gondoliers since 1600. In more recent times, his grandfather Vincenzo, nicknamed “Cencio,” was chosen by Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia for his excursions in the lagoon in 1907, and when Cencio got married, the Prince sent him a silver coffee service and 1000 lire. (The new gondola he was able to order cost 300 lire, to give some idea of the magnitude of this gift.)
Bruno’s father Luigi was the gondolier of Princess Margaret and Queen Elizabeth II.
When young Bruno began his career as a gondolier, he was known for being able to make six “murane” a day (roundtrips in his gondola from San Zaccaria to Murano). He became the substitute gondolier for Albino Dei Rossi, the legendary Venetian-rowing champion known as “Gigio Strigheta,” filling in while Gigio was training for the races. “Thanks to this young man,” Strigheta quipped, “when I’m not working, I make twice as much.”
What with his love for the gondola, and for the regatas, and for his city, Bruno began to diversify. He retired from gondoliering and began to organize tourist traffic to Murano. Then he opened stores in London, and finally, in 1986, he acquired an abandoned glass furnace on Murano and established an important center for glassmakers and designers.
He also lived a kind of parallel career of philanthropy and benefaction. As Crovato states, he always kept the “old gondolier” in him. There was not one racer, not one aged gondolier, alone and forgotten, who didn’t receive help from him in moments of need.
In 1991 he dusted off the abandoned tradition of the “disnar” (dinner) of the competitors before the Regata Storica. He sponsored difficult art restorations, and when La Fenice opera house went up in flames in 1996, he was a founding member of the reconstruction fund-raising initiative, and its first private contributor.
After September 11, 2001, he created the idea of the “Baptism of Venetian-ness” (battesimo di venezianita’). I can’t tell you how it worked, but it raised funds for the firemen of New York.
His last joy, as they put it, was the victory of Giampaolo d’Este and Ivo Redolfi Tezzat of the Regata Storica 2014, a team which he had sponsored.
In remembering him, Tezzat gave Signoretti the baptism of gold, at least in Venetian terms:
“What he said, he did.”
In a city where words outnumber deeds by an impressive margin, this is a statement whose brevity conceals a universe of meaning.
Racers are now permitted to wear a sponsor’s badge, and Signoretti’s name was on several champions’ backs — here, Ivo Redolfi Tezzat at the regata of Redentore 2014. Notice the addition of the link with the firemen of New York — “per non dimenticare” — to not forget.Last glimpse of the two gondolas rowing toward the Lido, and his final resting place.
