At mid-afternoon, families and costumed kids began to roam around via Garibaldi, shaking down all the shop owners they could find. “Scherzetto dolcetto!” they cry (trick or treat), bouncing into shops and holding out bags or buckets or whatever container was available to receive some sort of placatory offering from the owner. I give a bonus point and a handful of bite-size Milky Ways to the kid who painted his soccer ball to resemble a pumpkin.
Over the past few years, Halloween has made inroads into the autumn-festival calendar here. I would say I’m at a loss to understand it, but then I realize that any excuse for a kid to wear a costume and score free candy is bound to be a success.
Venice had its own version of this sort of maneuver (without ghouls and skeletons) in the Saint Martin’s Day fun: Walking around the neighborhood banging on pots and pans and singing a doggerel song about St. Martin, annoying people and asking for handouts. So now the kids have managed to have two sugar-laden feste in the fall, and very close together. This shows either high intelligence or at the least, as a friend of mine used to put it, a form of low cunning.
Too much candy? How is that possible?The plastic bucket is the best.
The lady took so much time talking to the pharmacist that, hopeful as these marauders were, they finally gave up.The only thing more Halloweeny than fog in the daytime is fog at night ( here on the rio di San Piero). You totally expect to hear or see something creepy.On a brighter note, a morning row to our favorite farm on Sant’ Erasmo — “I Sapori di Sant’ Erasmo” — is a sort of orgy of autumnal goodness.
Checking out all the pomegranate trees lining the canal on Sant’ Erasmo. There were plenty, but mostly loaded with disastered fruit.As you see. Somewhere there is a bird asking itself “What was I thinking?”The best tree was at the farm. Looks like it’s practicing for Christmas.
Back in the depths of the summer heat, about the time when the sun began to set and the air to cool, we liked to go outside and sit on the edge of our little fondamenta and watch everyone going to and fro along Fondamenta Sant’ Ana on the opposite side of the canal.
Many were hurrying along carrying boxes of pizza from via Garibaldi, presumably going home; others were dressed in ways showing various degrees of effort, heading toward via Garibaldi. Tourist couples and families were undoubtedly going in search of somewhere to eat, but where the variously adorned teenage girls were going is something of a mystery. They were dressed for bars and clubs, and while we have plenty of bars, I have no idea where the nearest club might be. But obviously they knew, and they meant to get there.
There were homeward-bound mothers dragging strollers over the bridge, and old ladies (and sometimes men) dragging loaded shopping trolleys, either from the Coop (if they’re proceeding from right to left) or the Prix (left to right). Speaking of dragging things, there were also a few rolling suitcases somewhere in the mix.
This is the fondamenta Sant’ Ana; early in the morning there isn’t much to see. Watching this now would be like watching the color bars on TV at 3:00 AM.
And of course there are always people Lino knows, or who know him, which is almost the same thing. I thought of those early evenings sitting outside as watching LinoVision.
Example: A 30-ish man was walking briskly with his little girl, who appeared to be four or five years old. He stopped and waved to Lino. His daughter’s little voice asked him “Who’s that?” He replied, “He’s someone who taught me how to row when I was little.” Smiles and waves. It’s really nice. They move on. I ask Lino, “Who’s he?” He replies, “I have no idea.” He’s taught thousands, probably, to row. Can’t be expected to remember them all.
A middle-aged blonde woman goes by. “See that woman? She used to work in the bakery in Campo San Barnaba.” (“Bakery? You mean Rizzo?”) Of course that’s what he meant, but it wasn’t always Rizzo. I’m a latecomer on the scene. But she herself isn’t what he’s remembering.
He grew up two minutes away from the bakery, down Calle Lunga San Barnaba, and it was owned by a man by the name of Morasco. “I went to nursery school with his son,” Lino said. This is not a startling thing to hear; by now, the people we encounter generally are sorted into a few broad categories: Went to nursery school with, went to school with, was in Scouts with, worked with, and a couple of “I used to be in love with”s.
“The family lived over the shop — the bakery itself stretched the entire length of the building from the campo to the rio Malpaga. They had an enormous room upstairs and it was full of toys. We didn’t have toys, but this room was full of them.”
“Was he an only child?” I guessed.
“Yes, he was. Died young, too. I don’t know of what.” There you go: Your next novel all sketched out.
I would bet you that these two have known each other since birth. Anything they ever had to say, they said it long ago.
Another blonde woman, somewhat younger than the first, was going over the bridge. She’s a nurse in the blood-test department of the hospital; Lino used to go there occasionally for some intermittent checkups. Her technique with the needle would leave purple marks on his arm that looked like the Nile delta, and after the first two times he was sent to her station, he rebelled. He just said to another nurse nearby, “I’m not going to her.”
Why not? I didn’t hear his explanation, but it didn’t seem to surprise her. “Never mind, I’ll do it.” Maybe that’s why the blonde nurse never says hello.
Then there are the occasional individuals from his working life. For example, the silver-haired owner of the fish-stand, usually somewhere in the background cleaning fish. One day Lino noticed his resemblance to a long-gone colleague named Biagio.
“Are you Biagio’s brother?” he asked, as he was glancing casually at the array of fish.
“No, I’m his son,” was the reply. Discovering connections like this doesn’t strike anyone but me as wonderful. They evidently take it for granted.
You don’t have to tell me there’s somebody in here that Lino knows. I just take it as a given.
We pass two older guys on via Garibaldi. One of them is a man I see fairly often, mixed into the daily mashup of locals. Does Lino know him? Trick question: OF COURSE HE DOES.
He came to the Aeronavali as an adult, as opposed to Lino, who started as an apprentice there when he was 16. He was what Lino termed an “aeronautical adjuster,” specifically a first-rate welder, one of those mythically talented workmen from the days before machines came with instantly replaceable parts. “He was amazing,” Lino recalled. “He could put the legs on a fly.” Just an expression, of course, but a compliment of the absolutely highest order. If you needed to connect anything to anything else, he was your man.
“I don’t know where he came from,” Lino went on. “When the Arsenal closed in 1955, some of their workers came to the airport. Or he might have been with the ACTV” — then called ACNIL — “I can’t say.” He came aboard some years after Lino, so not much more biography is available except that at some point he left to change careers, leaving behind the fly’s legs to work as a garbage collector. “He probably made more money,” is Lino’s conclusion. Mine too. You don’t become a garbage collector for the glory or the fame.
Looks empty to me, but every place in Venice is swarming with memories. When tourists talk about how crowded Venice is, they’re only talking about people they can see. Anyone who’s Lino’s age sees hundreds more everywhere.
A few days ago this simple notice was stuck on the glass of the front door of the Trattoria alla Rampa del Piave. That’s the exactly joint three steps from the fruit and vegetable boat and, more to the point, is by the balustrade where Sandro Nardo would sell his fish.
“Sandro has been gone for a year,” it says; “Today he’s standing drinks to all his friends.” (Giorgio Nardo is his brother, Cristina is Giorgio’s wife.) I asked Fabio at the bar of the trattoria how many friends had showed up to drink to Sandro’s memory: “One hundred? Two hundred?” An amiable shrug meant “At the very least.” A free drink? He was my best friend! I apologize for the reflections on the image, but this is the best I could do.
He was no amateur just out making a little extra money — I don’t know that he had any other source of income. In any case, he was always out, night and/or day, depending on whatever conditions were most favorable for a reasonable haul.
And then he’d weigh and bag whatever he’d caught, and in the late morning he would come and pile the bags on the balustrade. He wasn’t there every day; it seemed kind of random. Monday was often a good day to find him, as the fish shop is closed on Mondays. And the balustrade was a prime spot, being at a sort of crossroads as well as a point where the street narrows dramatically. It slows people down enough to give them time to glance, at least, at what he had caught.
We didn’t often buy from him — his prices were no bargain — but we rarely resisted when he had seppie because it’s not easy to find them fresh.
The very useful balustrade at the bottom of via Garibaldi makes a fine temporary sales counter. The plaque is attached to the iron fence where it meets the marble.This extraordinary memorial appeared a few months after his demise, and is attached to the metal fence by the canal. “Here Nardo fisherman sold his fish and his history. Here we LAST Castellani will remember him with unaltered affection down to the very last one of us.” This likeness isn’t excessively accurate, but it does at least give him a lifelike aspect. My own few recollections of him at work focused on the toil involved in unsnagging the fish from the net. I speak from modest experience that a fish’s fins seem to have been created to get tangled up in filaments of nylon. As to “selling his history,” I have no idea what is meant by that, but considering how taciturn he was, anything verbal must have been really expensive.
We went to his funeral at the church of San Pietro di Castello. It’s a big place, but it was crammed; I’m sure the entire neighborhood must have been there. This was impressive, though not entirely surprising.
What truly surprised me was Nicola (probably not his real name, but the one he goes by). He’s a wiry, gristly bantamweight Romanian man who showed up in the neighborhood some years ago. At first he seemed to be just an anonymous mendicant who had installed himself between the fish shop and the vegetable boat. Tourists passing — there used to be lots, all aiming for the Biennale — would make their contributions.
Then gradually he wove himself into the neighborhood net, doing odd jobs, mopping boats, helping with the loading and unloading of the fruit/vegetable boat, and so on. By now everyone calls him by name, and he reciprocates.
But now we’re all at the funeral. The service is over, and the casket is being wheeled out to the canal where the hearse is waiting, rolling along a paved walkway lined with everybody from within the radius of a mile. Nicola is standing near us, all by himself, clutching his baseball cap, and he looks stricken. I have no idea what his interactions with Sandro ever were, but they must have been important because he is weeping. A lot of people are sad, but he seems to be the only person in tears.
Having nothing else, he wipes his eyes with his baseball cap.
You couldn’t make a memorial plaque big enough to match that.
As you know, just going outside and walking around here — as everywhere, probably — provides all sorts of opportunities to observe the strangeness of people and life.
Let’s take tourists. Yes, they’re back — not millions of them, but a choice assortment. The number is increasing as we approach the launch of the Venice Film Festival next Wednesday, September 2, but I don’t think that has anything to do with the glimpses I’ve had. This is not a screed about tourists, they’re just one part of the summer scenery.
It was nearing midnight when we boarded this vaporetto bound for home, and who should board but Hermann of the Teutoburg Forest, with his substantial wife and daughter (not visible here, but I can tell you she was feeling the heat and the trip, bless her heart).I turned the corner coming back from the supermarket and discovered visitors. The door facing them leads to an apartment rented to tourists, and we’ve just begun getting used to seeing them come and go again. But this was the first time I’d ever seen anyone imagine that they’d also rented the street, and its walls. (The green shutters to the left belong to our kitchen window.) There’s so much to wonder about here. Do they sprawl on the street back in their own city? I know that many men feel that the T-shirt is the emblem of freedom from the daily necktie. Street-sprawling is freedom from … chairs? I was wondering how to politely ask them to move, then realized that the sun would soon be taking care of that — it moves from right to left here, so before very long that refreshing shadow will have disappeared and the street will be broiling. When I glanced outside again, they had gone somewhere else.
Fun fact (that caption was already too long): I could only say “sprawl,” but there’s a great word in Venetian for what’s he’s doing: stravacar (strah-vah-KAR). It’s based on “vacca,” the Italian word for cow. Hence, lolling about like a cow in the field.
This bridge, which I cross many times a day because it’s the one nearest our house, exerts an occult force upon people, compelling them to stop at the bottom right corner. It’s usually three or four women, or a few men, with or without children, dogs, or shopping carts; they tend to cluster there for leisurely confabulations. Evidently this is a sort of intersection, but the fact remains that it’s pretty inconvenient for anyone trying to pass in either direction. Sure, I can make a wide turn, that’s not a problem. None of this is a problem (except for the really old people who need to hold onto the railing). But why a tourist would want to stop at that specific spot is a mystery. Photos — I understand that bridges are the perfect setting for photos of your girlfriend in Venice. But at the bottom of the bridge? Seated? In the shadow? And — may I repeat — at the corner where inevitably someone will be wanting to pass, or dogs to piss (not made up)? And if it has to be a corner, why not the other corner?
I know nothing about this situation; the clip was forwarded to me by a friend via WhatsApp. My friend says it’s not a joke, and frankly, it’s hard to tell anymore when people are serious and when they’re just fooling around (though the fact that her entire outfit is some shade of pink also deserves notice). It looks like the marinaio who is supervising the boarding is taking her seriously. Using both of his hands to indicate “The boat’s already full” means it’s seriously already full. Too bad we couldn’t have put her on the vaporetto with Hermann and his backpack. I could have taken bets, like at a cockfight.
This extraordinary boat was tied up here for a few days. I’ve seen boats in all the stages of life, but never one so gloriously unkempt and so proudly loved: “The most beautiful boat in Venice,” it says in Venetian. Its mother must have stuck that label on it one day as it was going to school.There’s something enchanting about this thing — it’s like it took a wrong turn on Reelfoot Lake and ended up here. The curious wooden seats fold outward in a cunning way to form a table, and the mini-motor is the perfect touch; normally, 40 horses are the fewest you’ll almost ever see on boats around here.Massimo and Luca have taken two weeks off, and they left their fruit and vegetable boat in a state of unprecedented order and cleanliness. The planter they keep on the bow contains some useful herbs, but this sturdy little sentinel rosebud seems to have been left on watch till they return. Perhaps on the night before they come back, all the petals will fall off, in a sort of “Mission accomplished” kind of way.This woman knows her cat. I would never have thought that you could just open a carrier in a public (i.e., not safe and familiar) place and know that the feline would do nothing more than glare at you all the way home. The creature might have been on some tranquilizing medication, but if that were the case it doesn’t explain the glare. Supposing that this is her pet’s natural expression makes me feel uneasy, but not as uneasy as noticing that they’re traveling in what appears to be the my-mask-refuses-to-cover-my-nose section of the vaporetto.Let me set the scene: This is a four-oar sandolo, which for reasons of safety Lino always positions on its little cart with the bow downward.This is the same boat before it was repaired, in the same position in its shed. The bow is down, protruding just far enough outside the roof that it caught the rain from a recent storm. Rain has visibly accumulated, but rain isn’t supposed to accumulate on your boat, especially if it’s made of wood. In fact, a simple solution was discovered centuries ago: A little hole called an ombrinale. As long as gravity is still working, the water will drain out all by itself.But as you see, the water is just sitting there, because as you can also see, in this case the ombrinale was drilled on the OPPOSITE side of the little piece of barrier wood — a piece of wood that was placed there specifically to compel the water to flow out through the ombrinale.I am obsessed with this; It’s a perfect example of “You had ONE JOB.” These boats aren’t mass-produced, they’re made by hand, one at a time. I have tried to find, or even invent, an explanation, but I guess it will just have to continue to speak for itself.But let’s forget about boats and go ashore. Here is a fondamenta near our house. You can see, reasonably far ahead, something in the center of the walkway. Old Venice hands recognize it as sawdust, and the same hands know it’s there for one specific purpose: To cover an unusual quantity of dog poop, thus preventing an unwary person from stepping in it. So far, so good.It’s pretty big, hard to miss. And there’s clearly plenty of room to walk around it.But maybe not. I understand the bicycle treadmarks, at least they’re around the edges and besides, only kids are riding them. It’s the grown-up footprint smack in the center that makes me reflect on the person who did not see it coming. No sarcasm here — if you don’t see this from half a street away, something way more important is going on in your life, and I can only be thankful that the sawdust-distributor got there first.Meanwhile, there’s always this…And this…And, of course, this.
