As you see, I have returned to my post and am tuning my brain to the Venetian frequency, which I pick up through the fillings in my teeth.
It’s been quite a while since I received a transmission from the exceptional “Cartolina,” who wanders the neighborhood in the morning doing his errands and exchanging greetings and comments with passing people, known or otherwise, and also to himself and the Great Unknown.
This brilliant, glistening morning, we were walking toward the vaporetto stop, less admiring the glory of the sunshine than wondering if there were going to be any vaporettos running. Because today — in honor of March 1? in honor of Thursday? in honor of dawn? — a transit strike was planned.
These are battelli, which were not, at the moment, on strike (sciopero: SHO-per-oh).
Cartolina had something to say about that. Of course we all had something to say, but our remarks were of the threadbare, generic sort that usually go with rain or the first day of school.
To understand his utterance, you need to know that the vaporettos are also called battelli (ba-TELL-ee), in Venetian pronounced bateli (ba-TAYee). But the sybil of via Garibaldi is also its Mrs. Malaprop.
So his muttered announcement was not “Sciopero dei bateli” (the vaporettos are on strike), it was “Sciopero dei bateri“: The bacteria are on strike.
Linguists know all about how letters, like “l” and “r,” switch places. But it takes Cartolina to turn a boat into a bacillus.
For all I know, though, that may be precisely what he meant, especially when you consider the contagion which thrives in crowded waterbuses.
No vaporettos, no bacteria. And yes, we have no bananas.
These are photosynthetic cyanobacteria, which bear almost no resemblance to battelli, except in the Grand Canal, where they (the battelli) form big clumps at almost every stop.
Venice used to be famous for cats, but they have somehow relinquished their mythic stature. When I came to Venice back in 1804, there were still scattered outposts where old ladies would leave food for the stray cats, near makeshift little huts. Now the only place I can be sure of seeing a feline is either roaming the cloister at the city hospital, or on or near a few windowsills in the neighborhood. The once-abundant freelancing cats have been rounded up and stowed in a pound on the Lido.
Instead of cats, there are dogs.
Arguably the most famous Venetian dog, here waiting for Saint Augustine to finish having his vision and do something fun. (Vittore Carpaccio).
When Lino was a lad, families were still large and didn’t have extra food to waste on a dog just to play with. The only dogs who were given room and board had to work for it, like retrievers or hounds. No need for a guard dog, that’s what grandmothers are for. Or, as Lino put it, “What was there for a dog to guard? Most people didn’t even have tears to cry with.”
Nor was there extra money to spend on trips to the vet, not to mention the wardrobe. Now not only are there dogs everywhere, many of them dress better than I do, though they tend to belong to people (often, but not always, women) who confuse them with human children. I once saw a woman on the vaporetto, holding her dog on her lap, cradling it like a baby. No, the dog wasn’t sick. I can’t remember if it was wearing a bonnet.
Probably the second-most famous dogs, in another painting by Carpaccio. This is a detail from a picture depicting the menfolk out hunting in the lagoon; hence, these ladies are waiting for them to return. Evidently even playing with the pets palls after a while -- everyone here is immobilized by boredom.
I amuse myself by tracking the changing fashions in the world of Fido and Rex (though here people tend to like the name Bobi). Like other fashions, it’s hard to discover a reason for it, but evidently either you can get tired of a dog faster than your nose-ring or skateboard, or you just really need to be like everybody else. Or you didn’t care about your dog in the first place.
First, there were Afghan hounds. It seems strange now, but this is true. Then all of a sudden everybody had boxers. They traded these in for beagles. Then came a rash of Jack Russell terriers. Now that I think of it, it’s been a while since I saw a beagle — they used to be everywhere. And the Jack Russells are mysteriously fading away too.
Now we have a mixed bag, with a few of the above (not the Afghans, those are long gone), joined by a few French bulldogs, an English bulldog, a couple of Rottweilers, Golden Retrievers, Labradors, a batch of Shih Tzus, assorted terriers, and a smattering of spaniels of various sorts. There are also plenty of mutts, I’m glad to note. They never go out of style.
There is an organization which seeks homes for abandoned dogs, and their notices taped on municipal surfaces are very touching and very repetitive. There is a photo of the dog, of course, with its name and a paragraph describing its sad past — and some of these dogs have been through torture — and a description of the dog and its character. This is the repetitive part. You’d be amazed how many dogs are “sweet.” Hulking, tiny, old, blind, their primary trait is sweetness. This is wonderful, especially if true, but it does make all these animals sound like animated stuffed toys. If you want to sell an apartment in Venice, the crucial word is “luminoso” (full of light). If you want to donate a dog, you’ve got to call it sweet. I realize that “cranky, demanding, and incontinent” won’t inspire many offers, but still.
Detail from "The Entourage of Cleopatra" by Giambattista Tiepolo.
This passion for dogs is far from being some new aberration, at least according to centuries of Venetian art. It’s pretty clear that the patricians have always been dog-crazy. Look at any number of Venetian paintings, even at random, and you’ll see that where two or more are gathered together, there will be at least one dog.
When I go to a museum or church or palace here, I don’t admire the brushwork or the color scheme, I play Find the Dog. It’s a very satisfying game because you know there is at least one, and often more. It’s like a treasure hunt.
Someone might tell me that the dogs are there in their purely symbolic capacity, like other animals in European art such as peacocks or bees. Dogs, as we all know, typically represent fidelity, obedience, protection, courage and vigilance. All excellent traits which would be valued here, as anywhere. Scholarly sources don’t mention its symbolizing sweetness but they are obviously not well informed.
But by the way most dogs are depicted, they don’t seem symbolic at all. Most of them have got more personality than many of the people around them — just like now.
"The Dinner at Emmaus," by Paolo Veronese. The grownups can eat and talk all night if they want, the kids have got the dogs to play with."Christ Washing the Disciples' Feet," by Tintoretto."The Last Supper," by Tintoretto (detail).
What started me on all these ruminations is the fact that, for however much the dog might be adored here, it remains the quintessential insult-figure. “I cani dita morti” (your beloved deceased family members are dogs) is absolutely the worst thing you can say to a person here, so bad that you don’t say it unless you intend to make that person your enemy forever.
This is occasionally modified to “ti ta morti,” which I think means that you have left a small window open for future reconciliation. Or at least haven’t branded yourself as irredeemably vulgar.
You can substitute “porceli” (pigs) for dogs, which is the only way you can make the insult worse.
This dog seemed perfectly happy in this position.
You don’t have to say it to the person, you can also merely say it about the person. “Why did your boss make you work last Sunday?” “Because she’s got morti cani.” If the situation warrants it but I don’t want to utter the death blow, I soften it by merely referring to the person and his or her behavior as having or being M.C. In any form, it’s such a useful expression that I wish there were a corresponding phrase in English, but I haven’t found it, or managed to invent it, yet.
"The Happy Union" from "Four Allegories" by Paolo Veronese.
I will have to pursue further research on the subject of insults because I am under the impression that the main force of the phrase doesn’t come from the dogs, but the fact that the insult is aimed at your family. In Rome, the corresponding vilification is “i mortacci tua” — again, an imprecation against your dead relatives.
Your typical insulting Anglo-Saxon doesn’t tend to invoke either death (unless it’s yours) or your relatives (unless it’s your mama). Therefore death and your family status appear to carry a freight of meaning here which must come from some extremely deep Mediterranean source. Perhaps the Phoenicians devised it, along with the alphabet.
I sometimes wonder what dogs say about each other. “Your dead relatives are humans,” probably.
Stay on the safe side and don’t ever refer to dogs or people in the same sentence. Especially not if you observe how much the animal and its owner resemble each other.
"Danae," by Tintoretto."Boy with Dogs in a Landscape," by Titian.
"Cupid with Dogs," by Paolo Veronese. I think it would be more accurate to call it "Dogs with Cupid." Or maybe he could have just left Cupid out of it altogether.
This splendid relief carving surmounts the main entrance to the church of San Giuseppe (Saint Joseph) in Castello. There are two especially good things here: First, Saint Joseph is, as always, in the background -- even on a church dedicated to him. He must have been a remarkable person. Second, the three shepherds are as accurate as artist Giulio dal Moro (early 1500's) could make them. The first one, kneeling, not only has a small barrel attached to his belt (brandy?), but his upraised right hand is holding sheep-shears.
Venice at Christmas — it sounds as if the entire city ought to be refulgent with gleaming and sparkling, as if every fragment of its shattered splendor should come together and shine in an unearthly and glorious way.
Yes, it does seem that it ought to be that way.
Instead, scattered efforts at decoration all around the city make bright flickers, some bigger, some smaller, that don’t come together in any coherent way. Venice is littered with Nativity scenes, in paintings, in sculpture, not to mention other aspects of the Christmas story — the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi, the Flight into Egypt, and even the Massacre of the Innocents –yet the general attitude toward Christmas is not excessively devout. It remains essentially a domestic holiday and I suppose that ought to translate, if depicted accurately today, into scenes of Mary in the kitchen wrestling with something heavy in the oven while Baby Jesus is busy trying to teach the cat how to swim, or of them looking desperately, not for a room at the inn, but for a place to park at the mall. Meaning no disrespect.
Punctually on December 1, the Christmas mailbox gets installed outside the tobacco/lottery/toy shop.
Little old people, as everywhere, are being wrangled into some extended-family configuration; and the children are, I think, essentially like children everywhere — eyes and spirits fixed, not on the Star, but on the imminent deluge of presents. And not brought by kings or wise men, but laid on by squadrons of adoring relatives, even in times like these.
Perhaps there are gala balls being held in palaces, but my sense is that anybody with a palace is probably already at Cortina.
Still, the framework remains the same, at least in our little hovel: Christmas Eve means risotto of go’ and roasted eel, the ripping open of the presents, midnight mass, the singing of “You Descend from Heaven,” and slicing the panettone at midnight and popping the prosecco.
Christmas Day means the big mass at San Marco, some fabulous meaty lunch, then either sleeping on the sofa or visiting relatives, then more eating, and more sleeping.
The day after Christmas — the feast of Santo Stefano — is another holiday. More gorging on food, this time with all of Lino’s family.
One quaint aspect of this holiday is that there are no newspapers for two days because the journalists and editors and printers don’t work on Christmas Eve and Christmas. This is an antiquated practice that is even more exotic than bearing in the boar’s-head and drinking wassail. Newspapers in the rest of the world come out as usual, but here, for some reason (and I do not believe it’s because the entire category wants to spend two whole days in church) the newspaper-producers just don’t work on Christmas.
To which I say: Who notices or cares? The broadcast journalists are working as usual, and the news continues to flow to us in an unbroken stream via the television and the Internet. But somehow print journalists feel themselves to be special, which, I presume, is fostered and sustained by the unions. And then they complain that readership is falling.
But this is normal.
This homemade Nativity scene was created by the family on Sant' Erasmo where we go to buy our vegetables. Who says there were no apples and squash in the stable?
What is going to be abnormal this year for the holidays is: Minimal garbage collection. Of any sort, whether recyclable (there’s a weekly schedule for the different types of material) or otherwise (clam shells, coffee grounds, orange peels, fishbones, half-eaten cupcakes, wine bottles, etc.). And this will last for two days: Christmas Day, and Santo Stefano.
Two days with no garbage collection — this is a startling innovation in the festal folkways, especially in a city which purports to be world-class, or somewhere near it, and during a period which could be described as garbage-intensive.
The Gazzettino conveys the explanation given by the garbage company, which is nothing more than an arm of the city government with a different name: The garbage collectors are all going to be too busy keeping the streets clean to have time also to collect the bags which are daily left outside the doors of houses and shops.
The very best part is that, given this fact, the garbage company respectfully requests the good citizens to refrain from putting their bags of refuse outside for two days. So the streets can be neat and tidy. And the interiors of the houses and stores can become kitchen middens.
This is only moderately annoying to us, but for families with children, it’s inconceivable. I can tell you right now, sitting here with my eyes closed, that the streets are going to be FULL of bags of garbage. Or maybe there will be a mass reversion to the Old Way, which involves a big splash.
To review: We are requested to not clutter the streets because the trash-teams are going to be busy keeping the streets clean. But if we’re not putting out trash, why do the streets need to be cleaned? It’s like the definition of chutzpah: First you kill your parents, then you plead for clemency from the court because you’re an orphan.
I tell you, sometimes life in the most beautiful in the world makes my head hurt.
But let us return to the reason for the season, as they say. Here is a small assortment of glimpses of Venice preparing for Christmas. But of course, the most beautiful scenes of all are arranged and decorated and illuminated where you’ll never see them: In each person’s heart. Compared to which glass angels and marzipan cake and all the strings of lights ever plugged in are as nothing.
Out on the eastern edge of Venice, the furthest bit of inhabited land, someone has chosen to put up a lighted little sleigh with one reindeer.
I'm still mystified by whatever is hanging on the fence below the sleigh, but it does seem merry and bright. Could it be an illuminated poinsettia?
The boathouse of the Generali insurance company's rowing club always has a Nativity scene of some sort. This year they made it float on the canal -- beautiful and evocative, though the waves from the endlessly passing motorboats during the day make it toss like a ship in a storm.An enterprising bakery and pastry shop hollowed out a chocolate panettone and put in little figurines of Mary, Joseph and Jesus made of marzipan.They also added a small light to represent the star. But if marzipan can be made to resemble real fruit and fish and so on, why did they make the Holy Family look as if it were carved out of soap? Lino says they already did plenty to make it look like this, and I should just zip it.
One of the innumerable variations on the Christmas cake. However they decorate it, the sentiment is always happily the same.The Nativity scene in a hut in via Garibaldi has all the necessary components, down to the empty manger. In a startling flash of logic, the Baby Jesus isn't installed until Christmas Day.
The glow of Christmas on via Garibaldi, silently and majestically and completely upstaged by the moon. And to all a good night.
Each day in each week in the so-called most beautiful city in the world often feels like a loaded coal cart which I am pulling along a rusty track. Instead of coal, however, which hasn’t been burned here for quite a few decades, my daily cart, so to speak, is loaded with the same detritus of which life is composed pretty much everywhere: appointments, shopping, cleaning, public transportation challenges, all enlivened by the occasional strike which makes the usual inconveniences even more complex and invigorating.
Still, I’d rather be here than in Fargo or Yazoo City.
While I’m hauling the daily freight, though, there is a steady supply of tiny events throughout the day, running on a sort of parallel track, which form their own little train of entertainment. I’ve finished with this metaphor now.
For example: Last Sunday morning I was walking across a nearby small campo which I was surprised to see embellished by an unusual arrangement of objects. It wasn’t a relic of the recently-closed Biennale (though it made a lot more sense than many of the putative works of art I’d seen). It was a token of the vox populi, or rather, the vox of one person, crying in the wilderness, a person who had suddenly snapped.
Little blue plastic bags and a strip of white paper. If you recognize the bags, you can guess what the paper's for. Spontaneous denunciations show up on walls and doors, decrying some behavior which has become intolerable. But this is the first time I've seen a sign on the ground.
The bags -- by now a neighborhood staple, though they're not always blue -- contain dog poop. If you think this is gross, you should know there are still plenty of people who deny that their dog ever eliminates. But this person has had enough: "Disgusting pigs," the writer begins: "Pick up your dogs' poop. Uncouth pigs."
Another voice recently made itself heard on the neighborhood notice-board at the Giardini vaporetto stop. This board, like all of them, is entirely improvised, a sort of stationary town crier which serves an obviously useful purpose, despite the fact that it is pretty much illegal.
Augusto Salvadori, the previous sub-mayor for tourism, as well as the self-appointed arbiter of decorum, civic uplift and general improvement of tone, made a stab at abolishing these little outposts by threatening to fine anybody who dared to tape or glue their humble advertisement on any public surface. Seeing that these notices always carry a phone number, this threat could have been scary, except that the snarling tiger had no fangs or claws, otherwise known as the power of enforcement. So the notices continue to bloom and, in my view, continue to serve a useful purpose. I happened to find a good, inexpensive seamstress this way, and I’ve also got the number of a computer geek stashed somewhere, which I took down off a strip of paper near the San Pietro vaporetto stop. So I’m glad they’re still there, even if they are ugly.
But the other day I came across a notice advertising a room for rent. This in itself isn’t noteworthy; since the city is awash in budget-restricted residents of every sort, from students to Eastern European women working as caretakers, accommodations are always eagerly sought — more eagerly sought than offered, may I say.
But this particular notice, on second reading, carried an unpleasantly different connotation.
It said: “Fifty-year-old will share with a girl or working woman an apartment which is sunny, near the Santa Marta vaporetto stop, a single bed in a small room available. The house is composed of an eat-in kitchen, small living room and two rooms of which one is occupied. Contact Francesco (followed by his cell phone number).”
I spent a lively five minutes telling Lino what I thought of a man offering his extra room explicitly to a female, and no nitpicking about age. My reaction could be summed up in one word: “Swine.”
Today, to my surprise, I came across the same skeezy announcement taped up at the vaporetto stop by the hospital. Why was I surprised? He must have put these up all over town. What struck me was that someone had written on it my very own thought: “Porco.” Pig. It made me feel a bond with someone I’ll never know. Maybe there are people all over the city who have thought, or written, this opinion. We should form a club.
But all the surprises aren’t so rank. There was a beautiful little bonus on the other side of the bridge as we left early this morning: A boat piled with fish.
Maybe you don’t care about fish, but any sign that somebody has gone out in the lagoon and come back with something finny is a great thing. It used to be as normal as learning how to swim by hanging onto your mother’s washboard in the canal (not made up). Now people go buy salmon and lobster at the fishmarket. You’ve heard this rant before.
They were grey mullet, which I’ve caught myself; sometimes an especially exuberant one jumps into the boat. But this was quite a haul, and there must have been at least 50 of these creatures all tangled up in a heap of net, against which most of them were still fighting, except for their brothers who had long since suffocated underneath everything.
Even the trash collector stopped to inspect the catch and discuss its finer points with Lino.
The few people who were out at 7:00 stopped, or at least slowed, to have a look. As a sign of the continuing deterioration of culture here, one woman asked if they were sea bass – this, in a neighborhood where people once knew their fish better than the multiplication table.
Another young woman’s sole remark was, “I wouldn’t take them if you gave them to me.” This is guaranteed to hit one of Lino’s most exposed nerves. “She grew up eating LOBSTER,’ he hissed sarcastically to me. People used to thank God on their knees for food, not to mention fresh fish; the idea that you could reject such bounty really fries his ganglia.
A little girl walked by on her way to school, with her little brother. She paused to look at this mound of goodness, then stretched out her closed umbrella and pushed the tip gently against the cheek of one fish. Then she turned to walk away. Her little brother thought it was funny. “What if the fish ate your umbrella?” he asked her, laughing. Maybe he had imagined the fish suddenly rearing up, like Jaws, swallowing her and her umbrella whole, never to be seen again. She didn’t reply.
If you pay attention, you will always see something beautiful. Perhaps you don’t think that beauty could qualify as unexpected here, but there are so many different kinds, at so many different moments, that some of them are bound to surprise you. Like the mountains at sunrise.
