COVID-19 | Venice: I am not making this up

Onward to Phase 2

May 1, 2020 19 Comments

General Giorgio Emo Capodilista is following orders: If you go outside, you must wear a mask. This sort of frivolity would have been unthinkable two months ago, but maybe by now we’re all getting used to living with the virus.

There’s something in the air, and it’s not pollen — it’s the sensation of imminent liberation from lockdown, at least for some.

Even as the brain repeats the refrain put out by radio and newspaper and online news that “This is going to be a gradual process, programmed in stages over the entire month of May, subject to immediate revision or revocation if the numbers of infections begin to increase,” the atmosphere is quivering with anticipation.

It’s also quivering with confusion, because unlike two months ago, when all this began, not everybody seems to be on the same proverbial page. Information is coming from the federal government, the regional government, and the city, in the voice of its somewhat overwrought mayor. After eight weeks of only essential businesses being allowed to stay open, the owners and employees of the less-essential businesses have been driven to the edge. In fact, many small business owners are planning various protests for Sunday (in Mestre and elsewhere on the mainland) and in the Piazza San Marco on Monday, May 4.

The restaurant/bar/cafe’ owners are howling to reopen — at the moment, they must wait till June 1 — even though I don’t quite see how, at least in the Historic Center, they are going to begin to recoup their losses when there are no tourists to fill their seats, tables, and cash registers. And even if and when there are tourists, the new regulations require tables to be positioned two meters (6.5 feet) apart; this obviously will slash the number of customers being served. Hair salons are not to allow anyone in the shop without an appointment (no hanging around leafing through magazines), and stylists and clients will have to wear masks and gloves. Disinfecting the premises — chairs, tables, even floor, for all I know — will be a major daily undertaking.

But more on the business situation later.

Disinfection continues, leaving its mark. Frequent spraying goes on: pavement, campi, railings, and vaporetto docks.

The person in the white suit wields the spray-wand, in this case drawing from a large tank on a nearby boat.

The boat and men were working their way along from stop to stop.

The large white cube contains gallons of disinfectant.

Far from the boat, he carries his little tank with him as he walks his beat, spraying disinfectant on the railings of bridges and canals. I try to stay upwind.

Outside the pharmacy “Al Basilisco” (of Dr. Baldisserotto), just as you find at the entrance to the Coop, a bottle of hand sanitizer is ready for use. “Attention: Before entering, disinfect (hygienize) your gloves.” I’m all for it, but am waiting to see if somebody is going to say it would be advisable to then pull on another pair of gloves over the first pair, and so on….They say there’s no such thing as being too prudent, but we’ll see.

At the entrance to the second pharmacy in via Garibaldi (Dr. Polito) are more instructions that experience has evidently rendered necessary: “No more than two persons/clients inside. Enter the pharmacy equipped with mask and gloves. DO NOT remove the mask when you’re in the pharmacy. Respect the one-meter distancing. No more than 1 or 2 persons inside. Thank you.” Do not remove the mask when you’re inside? Do people still not grasp what the mask is for?

We are all trying to make sense of what we’re going to be allowed to do beginning on Monday, May 4. Here is what we know so far.

In no particular order, we can: Stroll or run or bicycle farther afield than the previous limit of 200 meters from your house, maintaining at least one meter of space between you and anyone else. No more than two adults, “and children” (number unspecified), are allowed to be out together. In other words, no coming out in herds.

You can visit friends or family without having to prove verifiable necessity — that’s quite a change — but the number of participants must remain small. It doesn’t help much that “family” is now defined as including “congiunti“; literally, it means “joined,” but indicates a second level of relative or relation. Your spouse is your spouse, your “congiunto” could be your boyfriend whom you haven’t seen in at least a month. There was an invigorating, if brief, exchange on the radio two days ago in which the speakers attempted to discern the boundaries of the congiunto: “If he’s your new boyfriend, how long will you need to have been together?” “Could somebody you met a week ago qualify?” “Is there a difference if I go to see him, instead of him coming to see me?” And so on. Madness.

Basically, the central concept remains: Groups are hazardous to everyone in them. Avoid them.

You can train or practice your individual sport, even at your club’s center, but no teams. No congregating.

Parks will be reopened, at the discretion of each town’s respective mayors, so children can get out and play. But no groups!

Residents who have a second home elsewhere in the Veneto (we’re allowed now to travel between towns, but it is still prohibited to cross regional borders) will be permitted to go there to check on its condition, just to make sure that the house isn’t about to collapse or rot away before your eyes. No, you can’t take your spouse and kids and dog; in fact, you can’t even stay overnight. No being clever and turning your little inspection trip into your family’s traditional ox-roast, clambake and Highland Games.

As I try to adjust ever so slightly to a normal view of life and the world, however tentative or experimental, I have become obsessed with the company that advertises on the radio every day at noon. It describes their fabulous kitchen redesign capabilities in the most soothing way (I guess they realize we’re all a little on edge), sprinkled with words like “hope” and “dream” that make it sound as if they are able and ready to make your life — they say “kitchen,” but they obviously mean “life” — so gorgeous and so wonderful that you will not believe you’re even still you.

And every time I hear these extravagant claims I ask myself if there is anyone who has time, or money, or desire, to think about their freaking kitchen right now. Apart from the cost, it would seem to me that after two months of being compelled to cook twice a day — no matter how thrilled you must be to have perfected your sourdough bread or Poulet Paul Gauguin Retour de Tahiti — the last place on earth you want to think about now is the kitchen. If I didn’t have Lino as the cook supreme here, I’d already have turned ours into a pinball arcade.

It’s 7:00 AM at Sant’ Elena and a seagull has already bagged at least one seppia. They’re coming in now, and they may be pleasantly surprised not to have to run the usual gantlet of fishermen along the waterfront. This one evidently had an entire winter’s-worth of ink stored up, ready for battle, but all his ammunition wasn’t enough. (How do I know it was a seagull? Because the seppia’s “bone” was lying a few feet away.)

Further up along the Riva dei Sette Martiri, more signs of epic struggle. At least the animals have enemies they can actually see.

So are we beginning to scent the breezes of freedom, comfort and joy? Not so fast. Even on the verge of Phase 2, warnings abound, and if infections begin to increase, back we go into lockdown. This has been made abundantly clear.

Even clearer than the now-world-famed water in the canals. I wish there were something interesting down there, now that we could finally see it.

Occasionally you can see an old tire, but I was dreaming of something more amazing. Anyway, the water’s kind of low this morning, which mitigates the thrill of seeing as far as the bottom.

REVIEW CHAPTER: If you’re not convinced that the risk remains, here is oncologist Dr. Paolo Ascierto speaking to overexcited readers of La Repubblica: “Unfortunately the virus is still circulating, and the levels of infection are identical to those of weeks ago. The numbers have improved only thanks to isolation….it’s clear that every day it’s possible to become infected, above all if you don’t use the mask and don’t maintain social distancing. We’ll be out of the emergency only when we have a vaccine that, however, won’t be here any sooner than a year. We still know very little about the virus. How long will someone who was infected remain immune? We don’t know. The mask doesn’t protect us but the others, so if we all wear it, we’re protected. A concert? Without a vaccine, we’ll watch it from home.”

Here is Dr. Angelo Pan, head of the infectious diseases department of the hospital of Cremona, one of the hardest-hit in the epidemic wave that began in Lombardy on February 21. “This virus is a schifezza (skee-FETS-ah — nastiness, disgustingness, filth) like I’ve never seen and never thought to see,” he told HuffPost (translated by me). “I never call it Covid-19, I call it schifezza…. This isn’t flu we’re facing … We have the sensation that this schifezza triggers new problems. The infection leaves traces that we still have to deal with….” (not only on the lungs, but the heart, liver, kidneys, and brain).

Ranieri Guerra, adjunct director of the WHO, defined it as “a monster.” “He’s right,” Dr. Pan agreed. “It’s a genius of evil, capable of having different faces and causing different problems. Its capacity to ‘put on makeup’ (disguise itself) and adapt itself to its environment makes it the worst we’ve had to deal with in decades. I don’t want this problem to be underestimated elsewhere, because it is still dramatic.”

End of review. Do not say that nobody told you.

On public transport, passengers must use mask and gloves and the maximum number of passengers will be limited to 30 persons on buses and 350 on trains. This rule has already caused excitement in Naples, because when the bus is carrying the maximum permitted, it is required to skip the next stops. But in one case, the driver continued to halt and let more people climb aboard. Other passengers rebelled, yelling at the driver that he isn’t allowed to do this. Astonished commentators could only say “In Naples?”

Limiting the number of passengers will obviously require more buses and vaporettos to be in service. Well, one would assume, unless everyone needs to plan an extra hour for transit in case they have to wait for the next one. (At the moment, the vaporettos run every 20 minutes, as opposed to every 12 minutes for the #1.) We saw a vaporetto pass this morning with about 20 people clustered in the central zone that is the entrance and exit combined. Public transport vehicles are now required to have one door for entering and a different one for exiting. Good luck with that with the vaporettos; I know from experience that there are people who perceive the boarding/disembarkation point as being exactly in front of me. Like on the subway, but somehow worse.

This morning I noticed that the impending easing of restrictions has been misinterpreted by some blithe spirit. No, sir. Don’t let anybody take off your mask until orders arrive to the contrary.

The reckless will undoubtedly continue to push the boundaries. A few weeks ago, a man was stopped at a checkpoint and asked where he was going in his car, and why. “I have to go visit my mother,” was the reply. Who could object to that? Nobody, except that he forgot about that verification process the officers have to conduct. They called the number he would have had to give them, and someone answered: “Who? She’s been dead for a month.”

On we go. A few days ago, a man was promenading along the Fondamenta degli Ormesini in Cannaregio, dressed in snowy-forest camouflage (to conceal yourself in Venice) but without a mask. The vigili (local police) stopped him and conversation ensued, as did a ticket for a 400-euro fine. The man lost his mind, yelling all sorts of abuse at them and repeatedly calling them “Ignorant!” because they fined him for breaking a city ordinance while “People are dying of hunger because they have no work!” There isn’t a discernible link between masks and hunger, but there is a good one between masks and insulting a public official, so in addition to the fine he now has been cited for a penal infraction.

This clip was forwarded to me from a friend via WhatsApp; I don’t know the source, but I think it has been circulating fairly widely.

Meanwhile, over in Milan, a man was driving along till he reached a checkpoint. The Carabiniere on duty asked his reason for being out, and the man replied “I’m a nurse and I’ve just gotten off a 20-hour shift in the hospital.”

The Carabiniere stood back, saluted, and said “Thank you for all that you’re doing.”

It would have been touching except that the man was not a nurse, and drove away giggling. You think that’s dumb? He video’d the whole thing. You think that’s dumb? He put it on his Facebook page. Probably many people saw it, but the most important viewer was a friend with a conscience, who reported the affair to the Carabinieri. See above: Fine and a citation for insulting a public official, which will almost certainly see him in court and, depending on how jauntily the man defends himself, perhaps even in the cooler for a while.

And so we trek onward toward the wonders of Phase 2, armed with four masks offered by the city government. A recorded phone call from the mayor alerted us that they would be on the way, and he took the opportunity to thank us for our cooperation. Two days later the package was in our mailbox. I wonder if a new mask will work the same magic as new shoes. Or kitchen.

The Comune of Venice has acquired 600,000 masks, which they are giving away to residents. This packet of four masks appeared in our mailbox two days ago; we’re already two months into daily mask-wearing, but as the old saying here goes, “I vovi sono boni anca dopo Pasqua” (eggs are also good after Easter). Never let it be said that I looked a gift mask in the mouth. And thank you, Mr. Mayor, for giving us this chance to remember that you are soon going to be running for re-election.

Written in English, stamped in Chinese. Good thing there are pictures.

Venetian Events

Life as she is lived

March 29, 2020 6 Comments

This isn’t our window. Could be anybody’s — or everybody’s — at this point, now that “out” has become “in.”

We are at the beginning of Week 4 of detention, and we are holding up remarkably well, all things considered. The memory of the way life used to be has begun to fade slightly, like an old fax on thermal paper, if anyone remembers those.

Our exercise regimen is simple: An early-morning walk ten times over the bridge outside our house (five minutes), and the same around 5:00 PM. I go up the street to get the Gazzettino. After lunch, if there’s sunshine, we sit on the edge of the fondamenta at the end of our little calle for a half-hour — not exercise, I know, but real-world air — replenishing our vitamin D stores and seeing humans passing on the other side of the canal at a very safe distance. Yesterday, being Saturday, there was a continual procession of people with shopping trolleys, sometimes one person even had two — it was like the migration of the wildebeest all headed toward the Prix supermarket. We heard the thudding of the overloaded trolleys on the return descent of the bridge all afternoon.

Sitting outside is like vacation; I call it “going to the beach.” As soon as the weather really warms up I anticipate doing this in my bathing suit. (I made that up, though shorts and a tank top could work.) Meanwhile, I make do with workouts via YouTube, like everybody. If I don’t get sick, I may come out of this in the best shape of my life.

Yesterday morning around 9:00 AM I was making my way down via Garibaldi from the pharmacy — finally scored some masks; they seem a little sketchy, but they’re certainly better than nothing. It was the last pack they had.

I counted 31 people in line (more than one meter apart) waiting to enter the Coop supermarket. In the Old Days I would have predicted that some enterprising individuals would have begun to offer their services as stand-in-line-for-you-ers, for a small consideration. But now I realize that the longer the line, the happier people probably are: More legally permitted time outside. Who needs to be in a hurry anymore? Hurrying is becoming a quaint, old-timey custom, like carving butter molds. Have to wait an hour to get into the store? Great! Who the hell wants to be rushing home?

(If anyone cares, I personally haven’t reached that point, after a lifetime of honing my skills to avoid lines. I went to the Prix supermarket at 8:00 AM on Friday specifically to avoid standing in an eternal line on Saturday — supermarkets closed Sunday again — and I went right in. Now that I’ve written that, it will never happen again.)

Doctors and nurses are beginning to die. Appeals have brought in extra doctors from Russia, from Cuba, from Albania. Thank God these countries had some extras available, but when it’s their turn to begin running short I have no idea what they’ll do. Call these people back home, I guess.

The nursing homes are on super-lockdown. We have two elderly relatives in the same facility, and nobody is permitted to enter the front door, not even the closest relatives (think: only son). If he’s bringing clean clothes to his ailing mother, the staff will open the door just enough to let him pass the bag to them, without touching anyone.

If you want to talk to your ailing mother and she doesn’t have a cell phone (not made up), you have to have found somebody on her floor who has a phone. I wanted to talk to Lino’s phoneless 91-year-old cousin on the ground floor, and my only option was to call her friend from a few rooms down the hall. At least now she understands why we’re not coming to see her anymore; she deserves to know we haven’t abandoned her en masse.

Robberies are down. No surprise there — everybody’s at home. Also: Let’s imagine you’re a thief on his way to break into somebody’s house. The police stop you and ask where you’re going. What are you going to say? “To work”? Try that and they will, as required, call to verify this. But instead of calling your boss at Universal Tool and Die Co., or whatever, they’ll have to call who? Your victim? There’s a funny sketch in here somewhere, but I’m not the one to find it.

Venetian Problems

Just stay home already

March 20, 2020 7 Comments

The headline this morning: “Virus, another two deaths, too many people are ignoring the prohibitions.”

I know I promised you the mayor of Delia first thing today, but I decided to post this first. Think of it as part of the overture before the curtain goes up.

There are so many facets to daily life in this extraordinary interval that it may be pointless to try to keep up. And I’m not sure a daily “Cyrano’s Gazette” would even be interesting after a while.

Still, a riffle through the newspapers today shows that too many people in the Veneto still haven’t grasped the basic concepts of quarantine. The first basic concept is “Do not exit your front door.” Second concept: “This is going to annoy and inconvenience you.” Third concept: “This isn’t just about you, buddyroe.” Yet too many people are clearly annoyance-and-inconvenience-intolerant, if not openly allergic.

This is what your world is supposed to look like, though maybe without the canal. No people.

As for the blithe spirits who continue to wander far from home and hearth in blatant contravention of the order (note: It’s not a request, it’s not a suggestion, it’s not an opinion) to stay home? We don’t have to look far to find them.

The Carabinieri of the province* of Venice have stopped some 30 wanderers to inquire why the hell they (the wanderers) are not only outside their house, but even outside their province? “My garden has immediate need of topsoil (terriccio).” (I realize people have to care for their animals’ needs, but you’ll just have to muffle the demands from the begonias.)

“I have to meet my lover near the stadium.” (Standard practice here would be that the Carabinieri immediately check on the whereabouts of the lover too. So two people are now in the soup.) This swain was not only outside his province, but outside his region — he lives in Friuli.

A bar in Favaro Veneto, six miles from Venice, was open at 9:00 AM (the hour is immaterial: it was open) serving drinks to a merry gathering of nine. All of them were reported — that’s the official denunciation, plus undoubtedly a fine — including the owner of the bar.

The same case in a bar in the town of Santa Maria di Sala, and also in Passarella, a little postage-stamp of a village outside San Dona’, whose complaisant owner opened his bar for some people (it’s a small town, they could even all be relatives) who were found playing cards. The classic excuse of “I wasn’t there, and if I was, I was sleeping” cuts no ice at all these days. All of them were fined, and the bars are now what the police mean by “closed.” In these cases the Carabinieri typically attach a notice to the door: “Sotto sequestro” — impounded. If you try to sneak into an impounded place to have a nightcap, this would indicate that your passion for gambling — not with cards, but with your next few years — has risen to a whole new level.

In other fragments of the hinterland, the respective owners of a pizzeria, a bar, and a pastry shop were all discovered to be conducting business as usual, and now they’re not. To paraphrase the song, what part of “closed” do you not understand?

Speaking of which, for the next two Sundays the supermarkets will be closed. Translation: Get your shopping done early, because that reason for being out has been removed. You will have no motive whatever, apart from relieving the dog, to be outside your house, or driving around in your car, on your unicycle, on waterskis, on your feet, on anything.

I feel sorry for the dog, though; he’ll be worn to a nub by how many times he’s going to be taken outside on Sunday. Now that I think of it, I’m waiting to hear that some clever dog owner (or ten) has offered to rent their pet for a small consideration. It will happen.

This morning I went to do some topping-up shopping in order to remove any necessity of going to the store tomorrow on the eve of the first supermarket closure. Too bad I can’t go out and photograph the lines, they ought to be considerable.

Our trash collection service has accelerated. The old routine was that two men (both adorable, I have to say), each with his big handcart, would arrive in our little side street between 8:15 and 8:25. Maybe 8:30. One cart was for kitchen garbage, the other for the recyclables of the day, either paper or plastic/glass/cans.

The past two days, though, the two have disappeared, and one new man (probably also adorable, but his mask makes it hard to tell) shows up at 8:00 or 8:05 with just one cart into which everything goes. And he doesn’t wait around.

I asked him why he’s suddenly passing by so early, and he said — in a rather rushed manner — “We’re short-staffed, and also we have to finish by 10:00.” First we were running low on doctors, now it’s garbage collectors. And coming up are the officers of the law — the Carabinieri, etc. are thinning out, which is one reason why the Army will be joining the quarantine control brigade.

This is to help me keep my smile in working order. I hope to use it again at some point.

The mayor of Conegliano is ready to take on his citizens who can’t resist (God, they’re everywhere!) going out walking or running or bicycling among the lovely vine-draped hills of the surrounding Prosecco-producing area. Starting tomorrow, the police are going to be sending up drones, three at a time, to surveille the landscape. The mayor’s pretty conscientious to have fired this warning shot. I’d have just sent the drones up and then hauled in the nets, full of thrashing quarantine-breakers.

It appears that there’s one thing we are never going to run out of, and that’s the special cases who are totally incapable of changing their routine, or hearing anything outside their own cranial cavity. These people remind me of the horses I used to ride in Central Park in New York, long years ago. They were so broken-down mentally from doing the same circuit all day that only by near violence could you make them respond to your commands and not those of their muscle memory. “At the second oak tree we’ll trot,” their inner voice said, and it would take a while for them to notice the outer voice, which was me, saying “Actually, no, WE WON’T.” I bet they talked about me once they were back in their stalls.

“Why doesn’t she want to trot at the oak tree? Does she want to wait till we reach the ginkgo? Why?”

“Boy, I’ve had some weird ones, but she was the worst.”

“She’s coming back tomorrow.”

“Maybe she’ll forget….”

A “region” in Italy (there are 20) corresponds roughly to the states of the United States. The Veneto is a region. The regions are sub-divided into provinces, a large area surrounding a major town, which gives the province its name. The Veneto is made up of 7 provinces, Venice being one of them.

Events

We have to laugh

March 17, 2020 4 Comments

I fully realize that the news from Italy is unrelentingly grim. Nobody has to remind me of that. But the old human spirit cannot be completely squashed; I mean, the human spirit whose biggest problem is boredom being stuck at home.

At least a week ago, bits of humor — snips of videos, photos, comments — began to circulate via the usual social media platforms, and friends have been sending them on to me (and everybody else they know, I assume). Here are my favorites so far.

This may be risky, in that the old crack “You really had to be there” is a crucial element; it may be that you can’t really feel how funny some of these are unless you’re already starting to be wound a little tighter than usual. Many of them are in some way about being housebound, or as I tend to call it, under house arrest.

But I’m sending them on just to let you in on this element of life in Venice these days. It’s not just empty streets and climbing contagion counts — there’s a guerrilla war being waged for hearts and funny-bones.

To do a “giro,” or “fare un giro” (JEE-roh) is the usual way of saying you’re doing out for a stroll, going to hang out, walk around the mall or the neighborhood. You usually say it with the “not really doing anything serious” tone of voice, as she does. Translation: “Oh Aly, where are you going?” “Oh, gonna take a walk around the kitchen.”

Translation: “Meanwhile, in a house in the Veneto there are already those who can’t endure the enforced companionship of their wife.” And the bedsheet, in Venetian, is clear enough on that: “I’m telling you, I’m gonna kill her.” (Italian scholars: Ve lo dico, la uccidero’).

“And then, are you really convinced that shutting up a husband and wife in their house for 15 days is really the solution for having fewer deaths?”

The rallying cry/hashtag has been #iorestoacasa (I’m staying home). Here we see how that’s working out.

He stopped too soon — he’s got to take up lacrosse, curling, sepak takraw, chess boxing… I’m afraid there’ll be plenty of time for all of that.