Venetian-ness

Unpacking more memories

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Lino’s memories come in all shapes and sizes, though unpacking them is generally less cumbersome than dealing with appliances.

As you know by now, what looks to me like a random person on the vaporetto/street/high seas often carries a cargo of memories for Lino. I get to hear them all, not in any order whatsoever.  He seems to review the person’s biography from his mind horizontally.

A few mornings ago we got some seats on the #1 going up the Grand Canal.  So far, so surprisingly pleasant. “You see that man over there?” Lino asks.

“The one with the hat?”  He was pretty unremarkable, sitting by himself.  No hint that he could ever have bubbled like submerged lava with ill-will toward his fellow man.  Toward the fellow man sitting right beside me.

The year was sometime between 1965 and the Seventies, and the rio delle Torreselle — the canal behind the Guggenheim Collection — was still home to eleven gondolas.  (Now there are two.)  Naturally, where there are gondolas, there are gondoliers; Lino, who lived on a very near side-street, would hear them talking in the evening as they came home after work, putting the boats away for the night.  The canal was also where Lino kept his little wooden topetta, invisible in this view but up at the end of the row of boats on the left.  Idyllic.  I’m joking.  The story involves gondoliers.

The rio delle Torreselle in a tranquil moment some time in the Seventies; in the Sixties the gondolas were moored in pairs to the fondamenta on the right, and there were no boats on the left side. (mapio.net)

The man on the vaporetto (nickname beginning with “T”) was one of those gondoliers, and tied up his gondola just opposite Lino’s little boat.  One day T was seized with the conviction that Lino’s boat was presenting a clear and present danger to the health and well-being of his gondola.  Or potential danger.  The fact that both were the nearest to the 90-degree curve of the canal might have fomented this notion.  But Lino’s boat was about half the size of his, so I suppose if anyone were to be annoyed by its neighbors, it ought to have been the topetta.  In any case, NOTHING HAD EVER HAPPENED.

“So he made a formal complaint,” Lino told me.  “One day these papers arrive, I have to go to court.  He’s claiming one million lire in damage to his boat. I said ‘I don’t even know what a million lire are.’ (Note: It would have been $618 in today’s money, but back then it was way more than a month’s salary.) My lawyer friend saw me looking glum and I told him about all this, and he said ‘Give me all the papers, I’ll take care of it.'”

So a few days later the court sent a surveyor to measure the combatants (the boats, I mean, not the men).  “The surveyor is working away,” Lino went on, “and I was saying to T, ‘They’re just boats made of wood!  Don’t you have any bigger problems than this?  You’ve got your old mother at home to look after…’ And the surveyor is listening as he’s writing his notes.  And he turns to me and says, ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.'”

The case was dismissed, and T had to pay the costs.  “Then my lawyer friend said, ‘Now we’re going to go ahead and sue for moral damages.’ And I said ‘No, for the love of God, just let it go.'”

That would be enough to remember, but there’s more in the album.  “He had a sister, she was unbelievably beautiful.  I had such a crush on her when I was 15, I would just tremble when I saw her.  I’d stand beneath her window hoping to get a glimpse of her.  I never said a word to her, ever… His father was a gondolier too.  A big strong man (‘grande, grosso…’). Finished third in the Regata Storica, or maybe it was fourth, I can’t remember the year.  I’ve got some papers about it at home somewhere.”

So everyone lived happily ever after?  I guess so, in their Venetian way.  Lino went on with his life, and when T retired he took his precious gondola someplace and sawed it up into pieces.  “He could have sold it, but he had all the money he needed anyway, he owned houses, he wasn’t married.  But no, he just went and cut it all up.  That’s a normal person?”

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Venetian-ness

Menegazzo and his gold leaf

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Just when you think Venice can’t get any more amazing, you meet the last man in Europe who is beating gold leaf by hand. Of course he would be in Venice, and — why not? — he works in the old building where Titian lived. Nope, totally no need to ever make anything up.

https://craftsmanship.net/the-last-master-of-handmade-gold-leaf/

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Venetian-ness

The daily apothegm

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Not long ago, the Confartigianato (association of artisans) posted a too-brief series of advertisements for itself that bounced off Venetian sayings — written in Venetian, no less.  That was a clever and charming acknowledgment of the reality of actual Venetians artisans struggling to stay afloat (by which I mean that it wasn’t written in Italian, or even in English, as so many things increasingly are around here).  The refrain in the text reminds the reader that the Confartigianato “speaks the same language” as you, the artisan.  By this they mean not only Venetian, but artisan-speak.

I wish they’d done more of them.

“Anyway, it’s Pantalon who pays.” For the linguistically curious, “tanto” here doesn’t mean “much,” as it does in Italian — in Venetian it’s short for “intanto” (meanwhile or anyway).
The helpful explanation in red (translated by me): “Ancient saying that goes back to the comedy of masks (“Commedia dell’Arte”) in which Pantalone was the exemplar of the rich merchant who at the end always has to pay to put right the damage or the debts of others.”  The sign goes on to say: “For us that isn’t valid!  With us the management of personnel is never a trick or snare.  Choose competence, turn to our experience.”  They then add: “Speaking your language, we give concrete answers and support the needs of every small business.”
This is Pantalon in his classic costume, from goatee to slippers.  He’s always in red, with a black mantle, and often carries a sword or dagger.  Sometimes he’s allowed a potbelly, but it’s compensated for by a grotesquely long and skinny beard.  The merchant is always Venetian, and is always irascible, stingy, avaricious, and old; at the beginning of the comedy he prides himself on being sharper than everybody else, but is phenomenally easy to trick and to manipulate.  Therefore when all the convolutions of the comedy are finished, he’s always left holding the bag.  I’ve heard people use this expression in a way that implies that whatever they might normally have had to do/pay/account for doesn’t matter anymore because somehow it has been cleverly fobbed off onto some naive, unsuspecting somebody else.
This says “To not go in circles.”  A “torchio” is a screw of the heavy sort that’s used in pressing grapes or olives, as shown below.  If somebody is walking (or rowing) in a zigzag or random way that might recall going in circles, that would be going “a torzio.”  Lino quickly pointed out a grammatical error: In Venetian you say “no,” not “non.” They corrected this (not due to his remark) in other versions.
Here is a torchio that produces pasta.
A torchio in the Genoese style, used for pressing olive oil. (By Giovanni Stradano, 16th century, Museo Galileo).  Just to reinforce the concept of the going-in-circles nature of the screw.  If somebody says you’re going “a torzio,” it’s time to stop and review the situation.  If somebody has been put “al torchio,” it means they’ve been stretched on the rack and tortured.  Or called into the CEO’s office when that huge gap in the accounts is discovered and they want to ask you some questions.
“For the blind it’s never day.” (Meaning “daylight.”)  This saying shouldn’t need any exegesis, but file it next to “There’s nobody so blind (deaf) as one who doesn’t want to see (hear).”  The subhead here says “Tax and accounting consultation, specific competency and years of experience.  The guarantee for those who have eyes to see.”  I appreciate the irony of the photo being out of focus.  Obviously my own eyes weren’t at their seeing best that day, though I did notice another linguistic lapse — “giorno” is Italian, it should have been “zorno.”  Oh well.  Call it what you will, you can’t see if you’re not paying attention.
This is a new one to me: “Here we don’t embark cuchi” (pronounced KOO-kee).
The helpful explanation (translated by me): The word “cuchi” stands for “cuculi,” birds which deposit their eggs in the nests of other birds, monopolizing them.  For this the Cuculo (Cuculus canorus, or common cuckoo) is defined as the usurper par excellence.  The subtle message is ‘Here we don’t cheat or mislead anybody,’ referring in a figurative sense to the act of not embarking usurpers on your boat.”

 

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Uncategorized, Venetian-ness

Always looking

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I’m working on a new post, but meanwhile I thought I’d share some glimpses from the past few weeks:

On the last day of March we had an invigorating ten minutes of crashing hailstones. I’d have photographed the fabulous foam they raised in hitting the canal outside, but I was afraid that my little camera would suffer from the bombardment.
There were a few workmen nearby the morning I passed, so I very approximately assumed that these apples were part of their lunch menu. Though why the fruit seemed better on the ledge than in a bag will never be explained.
The next day, two apples were gone. And so were the workmen, though they hadn’t removed the floorboards, or whatever those wooden hatches are called that cover drying street-mortar. The only theory that completely explains this is aliens. Or the mentally precarious guy who lives in the house in the background. I was tempted to ask him about the apples, then decided I’d like to continue to enjoy the day.
And speaking of things sitting all alone with no reasonable context, there’s the can placed by an occult hand out in the middle of the innocent, unoffending street. If the Biennale had opened I’d know it was art. As it is, no telling.
Down a very short and narrow side street far across town I discovered a bolt that puts the average lock to shame. Count of Monte Cristo, anyone?
And why have I never noticed this unusual script before? One reason: I rarely pass through Campo San Zan Degola’. But this jumped out at me the other day. Gosh – the year the Order of Alexander Nevsky was founded.
Fog creates problems if you need to get to where the vaporetto isn’t going, but when the sun comes out there are all sorts of lovely surprises.

 

 

 

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