Venice: I am not making this up

Saga of the seven martyrs

August 3, 2009 1 Comment

Like the rest of the city, the long promenade along the lagoon from the Arsenal to the Giardini (public gardens) has experienced assorted mutations over the centuries.

This stretch of waterfront, some 100 years ago or more, was a tiny industrial landscape lined with boatyards sloping down muddy inclines into the water. Did I say “boats”? I also meant “ships.” This was a serious place where serious, unglamorous, important work got done.

But by the Thirties the boatyards were mostly moribund, and in 1937 they were demolished to make way for this corniche which was dubbed the “Riva dell’ Impero,” or “riva of the empire.” That would have been the one Mussolini intended to refound along the lines of the earlier Roman version.

But after the episode of August 3, 1944, the name was changed to the Riva dei Sette Martiri (the riva of the seven martyrs).

This is the beginning of the Riva dell'Impero, approximately at the point where the executions took place, and the small crowd is ready for the speeches.

It happened like this: The final phases of World War II in Venice were very tense, marked by an increasing number of events involving partisan resistance and reprisals. In this case, we skip almost immediately to the reprisal stage.

The Cronaca di Venezia recounted the story on July 1, 1945, on the eve of the first anniversary of the event in question. As with any story involving the word “martyr,” it’s not one that will make you smile.

Here is a transcript of the story, published in the Gazzettino a few years ago, translated by me:

“At dawn on 3 August 1944, a group of houses which extend from the beginning of the then-Riva dell’Impero to the limits of the Giardini was assaulted by the German soldiers. All of the inhabitants had to leap out of bed and let themselves be searched, mutely witnessing, astonished, the fanatical search for arms. Everything was thrown in the air, trampled, and often, in their rage, destroyed.

“Amazed, everyone asked themselves what could have happened, the reason for such a furor. They came to know later that that night [i.e., the night of August 1], the crew of a German torpedo ship moored at the Riva had abandoned themselves to an orgy and that the German sentinel had been offered, many times, wines and liquors. People overheard ‘evviva’ and other toasts exchanged between the crew and the sentinel.

“A few days later, it became known that the sentinel, drunk, had fallen in the water, and had been pulled out, and that no traces of any firearm or any other sign that could prove the cause of his death could be found on his body.

“But it was too late. The firing squad and the revenge had already taken place.

“That morning, 500 men of the neighborhood, after having been compelled to stand immobile for more than two hours on the riva with their faces against the walls of the houses along the left side of the via Garibaldi, were taken to the riva and made to watch the execution of seven hostages who had been taken from the prison of Santa Maria Maggiore.

“A little before the massacre, the Germans had erected two poles on the riva, between which a rope had been strung.

“The scaffold is ready. A motor launch from the prison arrives with the seven victims: Bruno Degasperi, 20; the brothers Alfredo and Luciano Gelmi, respectively 20 and 28, all from Trento; Girolamo Guasto, 20, from Agrigento; Aliprando Armellin, 23, from Vercelli but residing in Mestre; Alfredo Viviani, 36, born and living in Venice; Gino Conti, 46, from Cavarzere.

“The prison chaplain, mons. D’Andrea, hears their confessions and administers Communion. The butcher [executioner] offers them all a cigarette, which they accept. The few minutes which pass between lighting them and their disappearance seems eternal. How many people lining the riva or immobile at the windows are observing with terror the tragic scene.

“Now the seven unhappy ones are tied, with arms extended as if on a cross, to the rope stretched between the two poles. Their backs are toward the Lagoon. The sentence of death is read.

“A German official turns toward the 500 selected citizens and reads, in Italian: ‘During the night between August 1 and 2, by the hand of someone unknown, a sentinel of the German navy was assassinated during the fulfillment of his duty. The German Command has determined to apply the reprisal of war, for which in your presence these seven persons will be shot, guilty of terroristic acts; after which we will take from among you 150 hostages whose fate will depend on the outcome of the current inquest.’

“The chaplain extends the crucifix to each of the seven victims to kiss and the 24 rifles are aimed at their chests. Behind the firing squad the chaplain holds up the crucifix, on which the eyes of those who are about to die are fixed — and who give their last desperate cry, ‘Avenge us!’ A German officer raises his hand and then lets it fall, shouting ‘Fire!’

A rendering of the event is displayed to refresh the memory.

“The thunderous volley strikes even the rope itself, which breaks, leaving the poor bodies to fall heavily to the ground. A shot from the pistol to each temple, a few other shots to those who are in agony.

“The sacrifice is complete. In the light of the rising sun not even the echo of their last desperate appeal remains. The pavement of the riva is strewn with large bloodstains. All eyes are fixed on those vermilion stains, and from every heart arises a vow of revenge.

“The bodies of the Martyrs are placed on a boat and taken to the cemetery.

“To remove the clots of blood, teeth, and brain matter from the pavement, the Germans give brooms and buckets of water to the innocent children of the neighborhood.

“Then the selection is made from the 500 men and about 150 hostages are taken to the prison to await the results of the inquest.”

img_0786-martiri-10-comp1 — "The sacrilegious Fascist factionism wished, The barbaric Teutonic hand struck" (then the names); "May the light of your martyrdom illumine the way of the people reborn to liberty" (and the date). Evidently the candles were an afterthought, seeing as they effectively conceal the date being commemorated.

Later, they put up a very nice stone tablet, with seven symbolic electric candles, one for each sacrificial lamb, which are never illuminated. It’s true that they were unjustly condemned, but one also remembers that if they were in prison it’s possible that they were not, as they say here, the “shinbone of a saint.” Perhaps they were guilty of political crimes, or of homicide, or of resistance (which would cover both of the preceding misdemeanors).

But they definitely were not involved in the murder of any drunken German sentinel, and forming a cleanup squad of children has to be just about the worst thing in this entire appalling story. But then again, it wouldn’t be war without stupidity and death. It would just be another day in the most beautiful city in the world.

Now it’s today. Every year, on the anniversary of this event, the local Communist Party club organizes a commemorative ceremony. At six o’clock this evening they formed up their procession, and walked first to the monument outside the Giardini to the monument to the partisans to render homage.

Then they walked up the Riva dei Sette Martiri to the plaque and placed the large laurel wreath, and two large arrangements of scarlet roses, beneath it. There were banners, there were speeches.

A small mismatched group of onlookers/participants/curious bystanders watched and listened, and was photographed by various people, including me. (I apologize for the quality, I snapped these with my cell phone.)

Before the rituals begin, there's the hard work of setting up the accoutrements.

I turned around to look at the audience and there was a mountain of ship steaming ponderously past: the aptly named Costa Fortuna. I mean “aptly” considering the caliber of fortune which the seven martyrs (and the German sentinel, and the children) had been allotted. It looked as if the total passenger payload (2,716) was lined up on the brim of the topmost deck watching the panorama of Venice slip past as they headed out to sea. I suppose that we and our little banners looked as tiny to them as they did to me. I wonder if anybody but me happened to notice the empty silent space separating their moment here and that of the men whose last was spent at almost the same spot.

When thoughts like that begin to merge in my brain, it’s time to leave. So I headed down via Garibaldi toward home, just as the first gust of cold air hit my back. The wind had been rising all afternoon, but when I felt the temperature plunge suddenly I knew it was time to get going.

Ten minutes later I was inside, and it was raining hard outside. And that was undoubtedly the end of the Martyrs’ Moment until next year. I’m sorry it didn’t end better. But then again, it was also raining on the Costa cruise which at that point wasn’t even out of sight of land.

Speaking of martyrs and resistance and all, we were walking across the central piazza in Mestre this morning, the Piazza Erminio Ferretto. I casually asked Lino who Ferretto was, and he said, “He was a partisan in the Second World War. He was my sister-in-law’s brother.”

Excuse me? Yes, his oldest brother had married a girl from Gazzera, a town outside Mestre, by the name of Elvira Ferretto. Her brother was a full-bore freedom fighter who had spent part of the Thirties also fighting against Franco in Spain. He and his companions got caught by a Fascist patrol one night — they were hiding in a manger and got jabbed by the pitchforks the soldiers punched into the hay, testing to see if there was anybody under there.

I wonder if it’s good to dwell on these things or not. I’m thinking maybe not.

Problems, Tourism

“Besieged” — a word about tourism

July 31, 2009 2 Comments

Most of the journalism about Venice, either print or TV, points out tourism as Venice’s main defining characteristic, which is about as simple a discovery to make as that water fills the canals. Apparently the appeal is eternal to the average journalist and editor looking for a story which is immediately sensational and not at all hard to do. A story on tourism here practically writes and photographs itself.

In doing so the reporters universally bewail it, to one degree or another, in the same way one would bewail any uncontrollable natural disaster such as grasshopper swarms, tornadoes, avalanches. You’d almost think that tourists come to Venice deliberately to wreak havoc on an innocent, helpless, unsuspecting, undeserving victim. The lines in these stories are usually pretty clear: City Good, Tourist Bad.

Pictures of mass tourism at its most intense are the easiest images in the world to take, the journalistic equivalent of hitting the bull’s-eye from one foot away. Anybody can do it — I’ve done it myself. You don’t even have to open your eyes to take impressive pictures of the worst aspects of mass tourism. In fact it’s probably better if you don’t.

But there is much more to the situation than the simple outlines sketched by the just-passing-through journalists.

Catching some rays at the entrance to the church of San Zaccaria.

I am not defending the behavior of large segments of the mass tourist population. These are generically labeled “turisti da culo,” which literally means ass-tourists, but generally conveys a wide range of rude, thoughtless, generally sub-civilized behavior. There is never any lack of examples, especially in the summer. This race of tourist is horrifying, demoralizing, offensive, depressing. I could tell you stories. And yes, of course there are too many of them.

A bridge, the narrower the better, is always a useful place to have lunch.

But I want to pause for a moment in mid-cliche’ to regard the situation from two important points of view which are rarely addressed as everyone is busy wailing and gnashing their teeth.

And you bivouac the troops wherever you find a space.

First, the city officials who have been assigned the role of City Councilor for Tourism over the years are politicians. They are not trained in the industry of tourism, an industry as demanding and complex as making steel or developing drugs. Further, it is the nature of the political breed to be cautious and easily swayed by conflicting demands, which makes planning, and then executing any plan, hugely difficult. And unappealing. Politicians on the whole tend to avoid “difficult” and “unappealing.” So a lot of tiny, disconnected actions are undertaken to minimize, if not solve, whatever is the most pressing problem of the moment.

The current Councilor for Tourism, a native Venetian lawyer named Augusto Salvadori, is famous for his impassioned oratory on behalf of his beloved city, the need to protect her and defend her and nourish and cherish her. It’s like the wedding vow. He is often on the verge of weeping before he finishes. People have come to expect it.

But he has no program, he has only little temporary fixettes. My favorite was the recent day to promote Decorum (yes, that’s the word they use for clean, tidy and polite), one of whose more publicized aspects was that the city offered to donate geraniums to anybody who wanted them, in order to brighten up the windowsills. If he had thought of donating the same number of large trash bins to be distributed far and wide to mitigate the incessant leaving of garbage on said windowsills because no alternative is to be found, the city wouldn’t need flowers in order to look better. You can walk from the vaporetto stop at San Pietro di Castello as far as the Bridge of the Veneta Marina (a straight shot of about 20 minutes, if you dawdle) without finding one (1) trash bin of any size whatsoever.

Speaking of decorum, this little midden is two steps from City Hall. It's been here so long that cobwebs have begun to cover it.

There aren’t many people who are willing to walk around town indefinitely with their empty soda can, beer bottle, or plastic ice-cream cup in their hand, searching for a place to dispose of it.

So: Point One is that the persons in charge of tourism here are unprepared for anything other than Making Suggestions. Which isn’t the same as Having Ideas.

Tourism is Venice’s only source of income. Yet it is inexplicably and profoundly — even stubbornly — even proudly, it sometimes seems — mishandled. The individuals charged with managing this important, complicated, potentially destructive resource could be compared to a person hired as director of a mercury mine whose previous job had been, say, as the Judges and Stewards Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association.

“We need some truly visionary people,” professor Fabio Carrera told me the other evening. “There’s no long-range thinking. It’s very short-range.” A few months ago there was tremendous blowing of trumpets and waving of banners to publicize “VeniceConnected,” the next big step in tourism management here: One-stop online booking. Carrera snorts. “All these ideas that were good maybe five years ago, like VeniceConnected online. We should be doing ten times better in the future. But they think ‘We’re innovating’ by doing this crap.”

The fact that there is chaos at the top naturally leads to chaos all the way down to the poor bastard trying to find a place in the shade to have some kind of lunch that won’t cost a fortune. Bathrooms — can’t find them. Open late, close early. Vaporettos — confusing. Signage — random and often homemade. Street vendors — insistent and vaguely disturbing. Which leads to Point Two.

Point Two: Nobody ever takes the trouble to report on what is demanded of a tourist here. I see it every day and even as it repels me it also inspires something like pity. It must be the vacation equivalent of the Ranger Assessment Phase at Fort Benning, especially if you’ve got kids. I once stopped to help a family of three standing at the foot of a bridge with their eight suitcases (I counted them), unable to figure out where they were, much less how to get to their hotel. They had been standing there for a while.

Visiting Venice in the summer will almost certainly be hot, tiring, baffling, occasionally even upsetting, and it can cost far too much. A one-ride ticket on the vaporetto costing 6.50 euros ($9) is far too much. Two euros ($2.80) for a half-liter (two cups) bottle of water is far too much. Disposing of the result of the water you drank, if you avail yourself of one of the few but very clean municipal bathrooms costs 1.50 euros ($2), which is far too much. But cheaper than the original bottle of water, true.

I am not defending or excusing the type of tourist of which one sees way too many here: Oblivious, rude, loud, and often, yes, ugly. The garb, the behavior, the everything is impossible to defend. When people leave home, many evidently leave their manners at the kennel with the dog. (The fact that there can also be rude, loud, ugly Venetians is noted by the court, but doesn’t have any bearing on this case.) But to be a tourist here, enchanting as the city is, must be debilitating.

Still, that doesn’t explain why they have to shuffle around the narrow streets like wounded water buffalo, stopping with no warning and blocking your passage, or to ride the vaporetto with 60-pound packs on their backs, nonchalantly laying waste to everyone around them as they turn this way and that, admiring the view.

So let’s sum up the situation: The city puts up with aggravations and discourtesies and even damage, large and small, all day, every day, and also at night, but it gets money. And the tourist struggles around a bewildering, overloaded bunch of Baroque/Renaissance/Veneto-Byzantine-laden islands, but gets lots of pictures of canals and belltowers.

I don’t know. Something is definitely missing from these equations.

Venetian-ness

Laundry, one of the unsung wonders of Venice

July 30, 2009 4 Comments

Now I’m going to reveal something that I have confided in only a few people: my passion for laundry. Not just mine, everybody’s. It’s more than a mere passion, it’s more like a fixation, really. A mania.

Clotheslines, fluttering with their victorious domestic banners, are like daily bulletins, footnotes in the ongoing family story. Plenty of people walk around Venice snapping pictures of laundry, I suppose because by now it’s something you don’t see very often back home. I can tell you that when I see people photographing my laundry, it annoys me. I don’t regard it or myself as either quaint or picturesque.

But why do I love it so much, in my own secret connoisseur’s heart? It’s not the laundry itself, but the drying thereof, because that is the linchpin of the entire domestic enterprise. Not having a clothes dryer (I only know one person here who has one, and she uses it about twice a year, in the winter), you develop, quickly or slowly, a sense about the weather and its capacity to dry your garments that you’d never have imagined possessing in more appliance-laden towns. It’s a jungle-lore sort of skill.

This week is a case in point. We have been having a stretch of dream weather: breezy, sunny, dry, cloudless. It’s weather which inspires rational people — and there are more of them than I imagined, judging by the troop transports which are the overloaded vaporettos heading to the Lido — as I say, rational people to obey the seductive call, “Beeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaach.”

But I, and I think I’m not alone, look out the window and think “Laundry!!!” Because with this perfect concatenation of elements you feel invincible, capable of drying anything, and by the look of the clotheslines around this part of the neighborhood this weather inspires a sort of primal instinct (cue the voice of David Attenborough), an irresistible urge to wash heavy cotton terrycloth bathrobes, double-bed-size comforters, vast thick beach towels, all sorts of blankets. Mattress covers. Sweatshirts (Go Big Red!). Many pairs of jeans.

If you have ever tried to dry anything on a winter day of chilly fog, or even those few days when it’s so cold your underwear literally freezes solid (I did not make that up), you don’t need to be reading this, because you know. Also, I think laundry is beautiful.

So what happens is that I am not only in love with the texture and fragrance of the socks and T-shirts as I gather them in (is that really what sunshine smells like?), I can’t resist looking at other women’s laundry. How’s it going? What time did she start the washing machine to have it out already at this hour? How can one family have so many black undergarments? This is an irrefutable sign of going bush.

Speaking of mysteries, there was a person living in the top floor corner apartment on the west side of Campazzo San Sebastian who every day hung out a man’s medium-blue dress shirt. I became fascinated with this, not because it was happening but why. Does he have only one? And more to the point, where is the rest of his garb? In ten years I never saw any other item of clothing, for man, woman, or beast, hanging out there over the street. It almost reached the point where I was ready to ring his doorbell to find out. But then I realized that I was enjoying wondering more than I would knowing.

My friend, Cristina, who has the clothes dryer, told me this: When she and her husband and twins moved into their new apartment in a very unprocessed part of Dorsoduro called Santa Marta, she accepted that as newcomers they would be under round-the-clock surveillance by the other women in the neighborhood. Everybody pretends nothing is going on, but they see everything.

She already knew that a certain type of housewife — I use the term not in a sociological but technical sense, because here housewifery still a respected full-time occupation, as respected as being an airplane mechanic — cadres of such women inspect the hung-out laundry with a terrific list of parameters. They draw numerous conclusions about you, your mother, your ancestors, how many languages you speak, whether you’ve ever read Proust, not so much according to what you hang out to dry (there’s only so many items a family uses) but how you do it.

An excellent example of the Right Way to do it.

Socks hung out at random? Say, colors not matching, or thrown in with the briefs or bras? Bad. Do you hang your husband/son/uncle’s shirt out by the hem, or by the shoulder? (Ditto any kind of trouser — there are two distinct schools of thought on whether hanging them by the waistband or the leg-hems is more effective, aesthetically pleasing, appropriate, etc. Pantyhose also falls in this category.) Matching items grouped together in perfect sequence are what you want to aim for, as they bespeak scrupulosity, forethought, and a commitment to doing things the Right Way. (I am not making this up.)

But Cristina happened to be using her dryer in those early days and therefore not hanging out any laundry at all. The neighbor women couldn’t stand it. Eventually one of them stopped her on the street and asked her, point-blank, where her laundry was. “I don’t know what they were thinking,” she told me, “like maybe we never washed….”

All you need is sun, at least for a little while (we get it in our courtyard for approximately an hour), no humidity, and a certain kind of breeze — not so strong (though of course it’s gratifying to watch your laundry thrashing around outside), but steady. Today it’s perfect, a sturdy, efficient little zephyr that has kept going all day. I feel such a sense of triumph when I bring in the heavy stuff, all dry, that I have to remind myself that I get absolutely no credit for either the sun or the wind.

Daily trivia: The common word here for laundry is bucato. This literally means “holed,” as in, having holes in it. Not holes that it came with, holes that were caused by countless washings, which until not so long ago was still accomplished with a washboard and tub.

More trivia: The washboard was the perfect tool by which to teach your kid how to swim. Generations of Venetian children learned how to swim by hanging onto their mother’s washboard.

So all those people photographing laundry on the line might as well be photographing Neolithic rock art. They know what it looks like, but they have no idea what it means.

I am convinced that when the Last Trump blows on Judgment Day, there will be at least one woman in the world who is too busy hanging out socks to even hear it.

History

Those sticky little fingers

July 28, 2009 No Comments

One of the fundamental elements of Venice’s national mythology was that her government was just, equitable, and fair; that the law was equal for all, and that corruption, corner-cutting, re-interpretation of certain inconvenient clauses, and other such variations on the theme of smashing all ten commandments, would not only not be tolerated, they should be virtually unknown. Hence the elegant figure of Justice depicted in prominent places (including the campanile of San Marco; perhaps a little hard to appreciate from her perch atop two lions at 324 feet high, but all the more imposing for that), complete with blindfold, scales and sword.

However, human nature being what it is/was/and evermore shall be, there were occasional individuals who fell off the bandwagon. Self-interest is a powerful force, even when it turns out that whatever you did actually accomplished the opposite of your goal. Like poaching.

There are several plaques in the entryway to the Doge’s Palace. I don’t know if these were their original positions; on the one hand I’d tend to think so, because certain kinds of news really needed to be made public. That was part of the punishment, even though at the time everybody already knew the story, but seeing it there, incised in stone, must have added to the general unpleasantness. For the perp, I mean, not for the government (very pleased with itself) or his enemies and/or victims (glad to extremely glad). But the wear these plaques have suffered leads me to suspect they were placed outside, exposed to the elements for a longish time, which would have increased their publicity value.

You will notice that the commandment that has been smithereened at least four times in Venetian history is #8.

I will let them speak for themselves:

img_0686-lapide-1-comp — ANTONIO NONCIATA WHO EXERCISED THE OFFICE OF STEWARD OF THE EXTERNAL SECURITIES WAS CAPITALLY BANISHED DECEMBER 5, 1713 BY THE MOST EXCELLENT COUNCIL OF TEN FOR A CONSIDERABLE EMBEZZLEMENT OF THE SECURITIES TO GRAVE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PREJUDICE.

img_0687-lapide-2-comp — 1703 GIOVANNI PAOLO VIVALDI FORMERLY CASHIER OF THE OFFICE OF THE EXCISE OF WINE, AND GASPARO SALVIONI FORMERLY ACCOUNTANT OF THE SAME OFFICE, REMAIN BANISHED AS DISLOYAL MINISTERS AND MISDEMEANANTS FOR AN ENORMOUS EMBEZZLEMENT OF THE FUNDS OF THE OFFICE OF THE WINE EXCISE.

img_0688-lapide-3-comp1 — 1718 GIOVANNI GIACOMO CAPRA WAS THE CASHIER OF THE GREAT TREASURY OF THE MAGISTRACY OF PROVENDER BANISHED BY THE MOST EXCELLENT COUNCIL OF TEN ON SEPTEMBER 6, AS A DISLOYAL MINISTER AND GUILTY OF GRAVE EMBEZZLEMENT OF ITS FUNDS.

While we’re on the subject of Crime and Banishment, it wasn’t as heavy a penalty as it sounds, because it almost never lasted for very long. It certainly didn’t last forever. Like various family fights, it often became clear after a while that it would be better for all concerned just to get on with things. In the meantime, however, because they had been “bandito,” that is, banished, they were, in fact, bandits.

Provender: Otherwise known as biade, or biave. The biavaroli sold cereals and legumes — dried beans, split peas, chickpeas, spelt, and so on — and were subject to strict public regulation, to wit: First, the members of the guild had to swear an oath that they wouldn’t cheat by putting better wheat on top of inferior moldy skanky wheat. So far, so good.

Then, the product had to be registered before it could be sold, in the registry maintained in the public fondaco, or warehouse, at Rialto. The vendors were forbidden (of course, there’s nothing simpler than forbidding, but I’m just reporting here) to suggest to their retailers that they charge any price which would vary from the officially established figure. Their shops were state property. Those who sold wheat were forbidden to sell barley and NOBODY was allowed to keep merchandise acquired from two different suppliers.

But as we see by the plaques above, laws and decrees are only as good as the people who carry them out. Or not.

Before we move on, you should know that near the Doge’s Palace there was a garden; in Venetian, called a brolo. In Italian, broglio. Here the senators would find themselves before a vote in the Great Council, in order to do a little horse-trading with their votes. Hence the word “imbroglio,” which has about 30 different meanings nowadays ranging from bunko and chicanery and flimflam to fraud, hoax and swindle. These were the men who were making these dramatic decrees.

I’d like to write a book about human nature, if I could find the time. And if I could figure out what to say.