Venetian-ness | Venice: I am not making this up

Watching LinoVision

October 15, 2020 24 Comments

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.

Venetian-ness

Sandro: Here’s looking at you

September 27, 2020 9 Comments

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.

Venetian-ness

Life goes on

August 30, 2020 7 Comments

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.

Venetian-ness

The bridge to the graves

November 2, 2019 2 Comments

Today is the feast of All Souls, more informally called “I Morti” (the dead). Unlike Mexico and maybe some other countries, celebrating/commemorating the Day of the Dead in Venice is not a big holiday, in a festive sort of sense.

Here, one typically — if one is old-fashioned, as we are — eats a few “fave” on the night of All Saints, i.e. November 1. They’re so intensely sweet that I can manage only one or two before saying good-bye to these morsels for another year.

And this evening, one would typically roast chestnuts and drink torbolino, the first drawing-off of the new wine. (We skip the torbolino because naturally it isn’t as good now as it was in the old days.)

So much for the few remaining traditions observed on this day, but wait! This year a temporary bridge was assembled to connect the Fondamente Nove to the cemetery island of San Michele, reviving a custom that had been abandoned in 1950. It isn’t the old bridge, of course, which used to be set up on massive wooden boats called peate. What impresses me is that enough of these boats were taken out of service back then for a number of days, because 70 years ago they were still hard at work.

The bridge stretched — and still does — for 417 meters (1,359 feet). That is longer than the famous pontoon bridge set up for the feast of the Redentore across the Giudecca Canal (342 meters, or 1,123 feet).

Here’s something that’s just as exotic as the boats: no railings or any other protective barriers or devices. People either walked or thought differently back then.

This year, to general amazement, the city (mayor, basically, who is soon up for re-election — I’M NOT THE ONLY PERSON WHO HAS NOTICED THAT) decided to spend 450,000 euros ($502,776) on a pontoon bridge resembling the one set up for the feast of the Redentore in July. The bridge will be up until November 10, so there’s still time if any reader wants to stroll across it to the cemetery. There are vaporettos back to Venice if the gentle rocking motion of the bridge has lost its appeal.

We’re not big cemetery-goers, but we went to pay our respects to some of Lino’s family who have gone ahead, as the Alpine Regiment soldiers refer to their comrades at funerals. Obviously we’ve been before, though of course it was less oppressive going today than it was twice in the last two years, accompanying a coffin. I probably didn’t need to say that. The bridge was appealing, but not our main motive for the excursion.

The city had imposed a rule, enforced by numerous people in various uniforms, that the bridge could be used today and tomorrow only by residents, Venetians or otherwise (showing either their vaporetto pass or their I.D.), or anybody with the vaporetto pass, by which they mean the long-term one which would indicate some more than passing connection with the city. At first we thought this was extremely weird, even though people could certainly go via the free vaporetto today.

They were absolutely checking people’s passes or ID.

But a Venetian friend I met on the bridge explained that one reason for this rule was to squelch tour groups from swarming it (bridge and cemetery) for the novelty of it all, thereby ruining what is a very personal and often emotional experience for people who live here. She said that some tour operators had indeed publicized this event, so let me offer an unsolicited compliment to whoever thought up that rule. Gad. That’s all we need — tourists on the bridge to the cemetery today. They can go on Monday, and every day till next Sunday if they want to.

“The bridge of the saints and the dead” (defuncts).” Here are some rules: Thursday October 31 from 1:30 PM to 4:00 PM and from Friday November 1 to Sunday November 3 from 7:30 AM to 4:00 PM; from November 4-10 from 7:30 AM to 3:30 PM.

I was surprised to run into a good number of people we know, either on the traverse or wandering around the plots, looking for their deceased relatives, often holding bouquets or other flower arrangements. The place was absolutely bursting with flowers; it has never looked that good, and the colors were wonderfully welcome in what was a dank, gray, cold, rainy day. Perfect weather for the occasion, true, but after a while one’s thoughts wandered from the past to the very present cold, wet feet.

All told, several hours well spent. And thoughts and emotions dedicated to several exceptional people, starting with Lino’s parents, two sisters and a brother. The rest are interred in the cemetery in Mestre, where I wouldn’t have gone, though I wafted them a number of familial thoughts.

The cemetery as seen from above gives no hint at how maddeningly complicated it is to find the loculi you want amid what are mazes of concrete blocks. The interments aren’t much easier to deal with, either. People were wandering with maps in their hands — no telling what condition the people at the information booth were in at closing time.

On the tomb of the Nob. Famiglia Malfer (noble family Malfer). The only lion with a hammer I’ve ever seen — not the Venetian lion, obviously, but still. I’d always thought lions depended on their fangs and claws. More seriously, a quick search reveals that it’s a name to be found in northern Italy in the Trento, Trentino-Alto Adige or Lake Garda areas. In heraldry, the lion represents strength, courage and command; the hammer symbolizes exertion or endeavor, intelligence or ingenuity, and determination or constancy. But we were searching for Lino’s family, so we moved on.

Immediately entering the cemetery through the stately official portal (which I’d always seen closed), there was an information booth to the left, and a wooden ramp which I assume was to facilitate the passage of people in wheelchairs (we saw several), as well as strollers.

Small children, always so glad to be taken to incomprehensible places for profoundly uninteresting reasons, in the rain. Filial piety flickers faintly, but at least they’re now finally heading for the exit.

Astonishing quantities of flowers — the place has never looked this good. I think I heard somebody say that the city had ponied up for a good number of these. Maybe the bridge people said they’d throw in the flowers at cost.

In the section reserved for military graves — most of them ranging from old to extremely old — I was surprised to find two women putting flowers on a tomb. I didn’t ask them anything, although I was curious. But I did make a point of reading the tombstone.

BERTUZZI ALDO (typically, the family name is written first): “Tragico e fatale destino stroncava la giovine e generosa esistenza nel compiere un generoso atto altruistico inteso al salvataggio di due persone in procinto di annegare in fiume vi trovava tragica fine.” “Tragic and fatal destiny cut off the young and generous existence in executing a generous and altruistic act intended to save two persons in danger of drowning in a river there he found his tragic end.” (August 9 1946). Being in the military section, he was clearly a soldier who had made it through World War II, and then that.

This is something you don’t usually expect to see in a cemetery. It’s not new land, it’s recycled land. After ten years, Lino tells me, they dig you up. If you have relatives that will come take an interest in your remains, your bones (if that’s all that’s left) will be placed in a box and re-filed in a space in a columbarium. Otherwise, bones, tombstones, it all goes. The bones, I’ve been told, are burned; the marble, etc., is disposed of in some way. I don’t know if I’ll spend any time researching this further; I’m sure it’s quite fascinating but at the moment I’m aghast. PS: If nobody comes to account for you, you just disappear. If somebody comes looking for you later, for some reason, oh well. The weak link in this extraordinary system seems to be the postal system. If you move and change your address, the notice the cemetery administration sends you will never reach you. It happened to more than one person I know. I realize that this earth is not our home, but this is a bit much.

Walking back over the bridge toward the Fondamente Nove, hot drinks, home.

This is what the late morning looked like once we’d left the yellow chrysanthemums behind.

The ascent of the raised part of the bridge was only slightly demanding.

Homeward bound on the 4.2. Traffic lights on both sides of the bridge managed the two-way traffic, seeing that the boats have to alternate in order to pass through. Somewhat like those picturesque but slightly terrifying one-lane bridges leading to blind corners.

« Previous 1 … 3 4 5 6 7 … 49 Next »