Ask any kid and naturally he or she is going to say that fish should be sold to buy all this.
Lino thinks I’m going deaf, but I think I still hear too much.
Example: Yesterday morning on the bus. To be precise, the CA bus on the Lido, which I had boarded with a suitcase full of laundry, bound for the laundromat. Useless details, but I like to set the scene.
A very old lady sat down in front of me. A young-middle-aged man sat down facing her. They began to talk. It wasn’t really what I think of as conversation — it was more like verbal badminton in which cliche’s are used in place of the shuttlecock.
It started with the usual sort of pleasantries (“Am I taking up too much room?” “No no, not at all,” and so forth).
Then they began to bat remarks back and forth.
“Unbelievable wind.”
“The bora.”
“Yes, the bora.”
“It will last for three days.”
“It always does.”
“Of course, now it’s cooler, which is good.”
“Yes, the heat has gone on too long.”
“We need rain, though.”
“Yes, the drought is bad now. I was at Jesolo yesterday and there were incredible sandstorms on the beach.”
“Still, what can you do?”
“The weather does what it wants.”
(How true.)
(Are you still with me?)
I must have drifted off for a minute because I lost the thread, if there was one. In any case, they left the weather and moved on to the History of Large Families. Perhaps there was a link somewhere. It might have been Weather in the Old Days. People here love to talk about the way it used to be, in their lives or the life of somebody else. The further back, the better, because then your listener can’t contradict you.
I checked back in at the point where the man was talking. “My grandfather had ten children,” he said.. (So we’re far back in the Olden Times when life was hard but people were honest and we were all better off when we were worse off. I’ve heard this so many times.)
“He used to go out fishing,” the man continued. So far, so normal. Lots of men did this to keep the family alive. “Then he’d take his catch and sell it, and buy steaks.”
He did what? I’m no genius of domestic economy, but even with only two kids this isn’t a scenario I’d ever have come up with. You take fish, which are free and are hugely nutritious, and you sell them — I’m good so far — and then you buy steak? Does the word “shoes” not come to mind? Books? The electric bill? I’d even accept “wine” before we got to steak.
Then I had to get off the bus with my dirty clothes, so I’ll never know what the old lady’s response was. Maybe everybody did that back in the old days. You were taught to sell fish for beef right after you learned how to knit a new heel onto an old wool sock, or shine the copper polenta pot using lemon and salt.
The world may be crazy now, but it doesn’t appear to have been much saner back then, either, no matter how honest and hardworking the people might have been.
Any parent knows that kids should be eating this, not steak. And certainly not fish.Or perhaps the father hoped to come home with something resembling the “Miraculous Draught of Fishes” (James Jacques Joseph Tissot, 19th century)….…while imagining them as a herd of stampeding buffalo in Nebraska (William Henry Jackson, 19th century).
Each day in each week in the so-called most beautiful city in the world often feels like a loaded coal cart which I am pulling along a rusty track. Instead of coal, however, which hasn’t been burned here for quite a few decades, my daily cart, so to speak, is loaded with the same detritus of which life is composed pretty much everywhere: appointments, shopping, cleaning, public transportation challenges, all enlivened by the occasional strike which makes the usual inconveniences even more complex and invigorating.
Still, I’d rather be here than in Fargo or Yazoo City.
While I’m hauling the daily freight, though, there is a steady supply of tiny events throughout the day, running on a sort of parallel track, which form their own little train of entertainment. I’ve finished with this metaphor now.
For example: Last Sunday morning I was walking across a nearby small campo which I was surprised to see embellished by an unusual arrangement of objects. It wasn’t a relic of the recently-closed Biennale (though it made a lot more sense than many of the putative works of art I’d seen). It was a token of the vox populi, or rather, the vox of one person, crying in the wilderness, a person who had suddenly snapped.
Little blue plastic bags and a strip of white paper. If you recognize the bags, you can guess what the paper's for. Spontaneous denunciations show up on walls and doors, decrying some behavior which has become intolerable. But this is the first time I've seen a sign on the ground.
The bags -- by now a neighborhood staple, though they're not always blue -- contain dog poop. If you think this is gross, you should know there are still plenty of people who deny that their dog ever eliminates. But this person has had enough: "Disgusting pigs," the writer begins: "Pick up your dogs' poop. Uncouth pigs."
Another voice recently made itself heard on the neighborhood notice-board at the Giardini vaporetto stop. This board, like all of them, is entirely improvised, a sort of stationary town crier which serves an obviously useful purpose, despite the fact that it is pretty much illegal.
Augusto Salvadori, the previous sub-mayor for tourism, as well as the self-appointed arbiter of decorum, civic uplift and general improvement of tone, made a stab at abolishing these little outposts by threatening to fine anybody who dared to tape or glue their humble advertisement on any public surface. Seeing that these notices always carry a phone number, this threat could have been scary, except that the snarling tiger had no fangs or claws, otherwise known as the power of enforcement. So the notices continue to bloom and, in my view, continue to serve a useful purpose. I happened to find a good, inexpensive seamstress this way, and I’ve also got the number of a computer geek stashed somewhere, which I took down off a strip of paper near the San Pietro vaporetto stop. So I’m glad they’re still there, even if they are ugly.
But the other day I came across a notice advertising a room for rent. This in itself isn’t noteworthy; since the city is awash in budget-restricted residents of every sort, from students to Eastern European women working as caretakers, accommodations are always eagerly sought — more eagerly sought than offered, may I say.
But this particular notice, on second reading, carried an unpleasantly different connotation.
It said: “Fifty-year-old will share with a girl or working woman an apartment which is sunny, near the Santa Marta vaporetto stop, a single bed in a small room available. The house is composed of an eat-in kitchen, small living room and two rooms of which one is occupied. Contact Francesco (followed by his cell phone number).”
I spent a lively five minutes telling Lino what I thought of a man offering his extra room explicitly to a female, and no nitpicking about age. My reaction could be summed up in one word: “Swine.”
Today, to my surprise, I came across the same skeezy announcement taped up at the vaporetto stop by the hospital. Why was I surprised? He must have put these up all over town. What struck me was that someone had written on it my very own thought: “Porco.” Pig. It made me feel a bond with someone I’ll never know. Maybe there are people all over the city who have thought, or written, this opinion. We should form a club.
But all the surprises aren’t so rank. There was a beautiful little bonus on the other side of the bridge as we left early this morning: A boat piled with fish.
Maybe you don’t care about fish, but any sign that somebody has gone out in the lagoon and come back with something finny is a great thing. It used to be as normal as learning how to swim by hanging onto your mother’s washboard in the canal (not made up). Now people go buy salmon and lobster at the fishmarket. You’ve heard this rant before.
They were grey mullet, which I’ve caught myself; sometimes an especially exuberant one jumps into the boat. But this was quite a haul, and there must have been at least 50 of these creatures all tangled up in a heap of net, against which most of them were still fighting, except for their brothers who had long since suffocated underneath everything.
Even the trash collector stopped to inspect the catch and discuss its finer points with Lino.
The few people who were out at 7:00 stopped, or at least slowed, to have a look. As a sign of the continuing deterioration of culture here, one woman asked if they were sea bass – this, in a neighborhood where people once knew their fish better than the multiplication table.
Another young woman’s sole remark was, “I wouldn’t take them if you gave them to me.” This is guaranteed to hit one of Lino’s most exposed nerves. “She grew up eating LOBSTER,’ he hissed sarcastically to me. People used to thank God on their knees for food, not to mention fresh fish; the idea that you could reject such bounty really fries his ganglia.
A little girl walked by on her way to school, with her little brother. She paused to look at this mound of goodness, then stretched out her closed umbrella and pushed the tip gently against the cheek of one fish. Then she turned to walk away. Her little brother thought it was funny. “What if the fish ate your umbrella?” he asked her, laughing. Maybe he had imagined the fish suddenly rearing up, like Jaws, swallowing her and her umbrella whole, never to be seen again. She didn’t reply.
If you pay attention, you will always see something beautiful. Perhaps you don’t think that beauty could qualify as unexpected here, but there are so many different kinds, at so many different moments, that some of them are bound to surprise you. Like the mountains at sunrise.
This is where we stopped, as Lino had already determined, passing here as we often do, that this terrain was going to be good.
While the rest of you were lolling amid the wreckage of flightless birds and tangled NFL teams last Thursday, we went for the mollusks. I suppose we could have gone fishing, but considering that the tide was going to be unusually low at a convenient time of day, plus the fact that a few calm, cool, golden days of St. Martin’s Summer had briefly wandered back to the lagoon, probably by mistake, it seemed to fly in the face of Providence not to take a boat and go clamming.
I refer to “we,” in the sense that an anesthetist might refer to “our” brain operation. Lino does the hunting and gathering of the submerged morsels, and I help him by rowing there and back and keeping quiet. I have dug clams in my life, so I know it’s possible. I also know that I do not have the (A) knack (B) patience (C) desire (D) interest in this endeavor. Perhaps if I were to actually find a clam occasionally, all of the above would increase, even if only a little.
But no.
He jams his finger into the sediment where there are NO SIGNS of bivalve habitation, and comes up with one after another. I jam my finger into the sediment where there are NUMEROUS signs, and come up with nothing or — worse — a little castanet full of mud where the clam used to be. This is the clam’s way of wreaking revenge, even though he wasn’t eaten by us but by some passing marine creature such as a sea snail. But if you can be fooled by the shut clamshell, you will happily claim it and throw it into the skillet with the others, where it will duly open up and distribute sandy mud all over its companions. Not a lot of sand. Just enough. So not wishing to risk being the agent of this unpleasant eventuality, I tend to sit in the boat and watch and breathe and listen. And take pictures, or read. Sometimes I even think, if there’s any time left over.
And he immediately gets to work. Summer clamming requires walking around in the water barefoot, but by November you need to switch to Plan B.
Rowing out in the lagoon when the weather is chilly (or cold, or very cold), but calm and sunny, is almost the best thing ever. The traffic has been slashed to the bone, the light is delicate yet rich, with shifting nuances that overlap in alluring combinations that set themselves on fire in celestial sunsets.
Watching the tide drop is also a beautiful and mysterious thing. Of course you can’t see it drop any more than you can see a leaf changing color, but you can notice it in phases and it’s a pleasant reminder of things that are bigger and even more important than you — I mean me.
Reverence for truth compels me to add, though, that the soundtrack isn’t nearly as seductive as the scene itself. I said there was less traffic — I didn’t say there was no traffic, because since the advent of the motor (or at least since the advent of me), I can tell you that there is no day or night, no season or location, in which you will find silence in the lagoon. There is always — I need to repeat that — always the sound of a motor coming from somewhere.
Whenever a boat goes by out in the channel, it thoughtfully leaves all sorts of waves behind.
Trying to imagine the lagoon without the sound of motors — and believe me, I do try to imagine it, on a regular basis — is like trying to imagine the Garden of Eden, or being Angelina Jolie, or even inventing some stupid little app that makes you five million dollars in six months. That is, your brain can’t do it. Because no matter how divine may be the velvety midnight sky, how nacreous the dawn, how resplendent the vault of heaven seared by the flaming rays of sunset, there will always be motor noise. Small, but steady and grinding, like a dentist’s drill, or deep and ponderous, or silly and busy and self-important. It’s the aural equivalent of the vandalage inflicted by The Society for Putting Broken Bedsteads into Ponds identified by Flanders and Swann. Only not so funny.
Back to clams. Lino was happy, I was happy, the clams — well, I try not to think about their mood. They were put in the lagoon to be consumed, not to write bi-lingual dictionaries or form a sacred harp choir. Apologies to any Catholic vegetarian readers, but I have to say that clams make a beautiful death. And broth.
The falling tide begins to reveal the world beneath. The lagoon, as one sees, is essentially a flooded alluvial plain.Two members of the Remiera Casteo club out for a spin, now heading home.
Not much later, another pair from the same club heads out for some more serious training on a gondolino.
As winter draws near, the lagoon begins more and more to resemble a sort of Zen garden. At least in parts.
The sun and water are both noticeably going down, but this does not deter our intrepid clammer.Your diehard clammer wants "just one more" even more fervently than six paparazzi want photos.And the fruit of all his labor. I'm certainly thankful for this little harvest.
We went out rowing the other afternoon, which is always a good thing but not exactly news. Other people might have been unenthusiastic — and in fact, we didn’t see anybody else out — but we don’t wait for the weather to sing its little Lorelei song. That’s a waste of valuable time especially in March, what with Lorelei being so skittish. We just go.
A nondescript March afternoon, soon to become much more descript with the gathering of the oysters.
For a while, the most notable thing about the excursion was the faintly hazy, vague color scheme of the part of the lagoon where we like to go. Then the breeze began to get to me. It wasn’t so strong, but it was raw and insistent, which began to be annoying, like a crying baby in the apartment at the end of the hall. Part of the effect of the crying baby, as with the wind, is that there’s pretty much nothing you can do about it. Things I can’t do anything about really, really annoy me. Just so you know.
But the situation became much more interesting when we ran the boat onto the exposed mudbank — the tide was out — so Lino could go exploring. I would have gone too, but wasn’t wearing shoes that would have made even the slightest effort to resist the squishy, waterlogged terrain.
And what he found were oysters. I knew they were out there because he’s brought them home before. Lagoon oysters on the half-shell were our antipasto for Christmas Eve dinner a few years ago, and they are delectable, not too large, not too small, and faintly sweet. One source states that this breed is known for its “unique tannic seawater flavor…and [is] considered excellent for eating raw on the half shell.” As I said.
To be precise, these unsung lagoon creatures are known elsewhere as the highly prized Belon oyster, the stuff of high-wattage chefs and cultivated feeders. Here, nobody cares about them anymore. Even less than not caring, nobody seems to even know they exist. Here the restaurants are fixated on clams…clams…clams…clams, like a stuck culinary record.
These animals (Ostrea edulis) go by various names, from the clearly appropriate "mud oyster" to the much"European flat oyster" to the much more glamorous Belon oyster. Too bad about the lone canestrello, or "lid scallop," that was forced to come along. Lino would gladly have brought a batch of friends for him, if he'd found them.
Oysters were once as common in the market as clams. A particularly Venetian habit, more firmly rooted than kudzu, is to exclaim “Ostrega!” (OSS-tre-gah) which means “oyster” in Venetian. (Italian: ostrica). It’s an all-purpose term that would instantly reveal you to be Venetian anywhere in Italy; in fact, it carries amusing overtones of charming quaintness to anyone not from here. It is one of those clever next-to words (like “hello” instead of “hell”) that people employ to avoid using a really serious and socially inadmissible word — in this case, “ostia,” which is the Communion wafer. Ostrega is close enough to get your meaning across without offense.
“Ostrega” is a flexible word which, depending on your tone of voice, can express a variously emphatic reaction from astonishment to agreement, disbelief, displeasure, wonder, delight, and so on. “Ostregheta” (OSS-tre-GHE-ta, or “little oyster”) is a gentler variation. I have a Venetian friend who will sometimes say “OO-strega,” which I think is adorable. I keep meaning to ask him if he invented this.
On the building at the corner of Campo San Pantalon is a small stone tablet where fish used to be sold. One of several that remain from the Venetian Republic, it shows a list of the fish for sale and the legal minimum size.
Back to the oysters themselves. One of the clauses in the numberless regulations governing fishermen (which began to be documented in 1270), as stipulated in 1765, stated that “To only the fishermen who personally exercise the laborious toil of fishing, should remain the usual freedom to go to the neighborhoods selling fish at retail such as eels, flounder, mullet, sardines….cuttlefish, clams and oysters in the permitted times.”
Another plaque with fish and sizes is in Campo Santa Margherita, here pleasantly accompanied by three stands selling fish.
But now, as with so many things (such as papaline), they have fallen out of favor and I’m not sure anyone can say why. There seem to be fashions in fish. It can’t be because oysters are difficult to collect, because they’re generally easier than clams. Clams lurk beneath the sediments, but oysters — like canestrelli — are often found lying there on the muddy/sandy bottom, right out in the open, not even trying to hide. You can just pick them up, like Lino does, though back when they had commercial value men would take them by means of a cassa daostreghe, more simply known as an ostregher (oss-treh-GHEHR).
A bragozzo in the lagoon, with an ostregher attached to each mast. (Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venezia.)
An ostregher was a sort of baggy net weighted with a strip of iron which was tied to the stern of your boat, and which you would drag along the bottom as you rowed or sailed. Something similar, called a “cassa da canestreli” or “scassa diavolo” was used to take canestrelli (Pecten opercularis), as Lino often did when he was a lad; he sometimes shows me where, along the edges of the Canale del Orfanello stretching from the Bacino of San Marco toward the island of San Servolo. Or in the Canale del Orfano, from San Servolo to the island of La Grazia. Lots of people did this, just for themselves. Even now, a few people might still joke, when the vehicle you’re in (say, the vaporetto) is slowing down for no apparent reason: “Are they dragging a cassa da canestreli?” I imagine that most youngsters have no idea what they’re talking about.
All the fish go by their Venetian names here; the ostrega is second from the bottom, with minimum length of 5 cm (1.9 inches).
Then the city outlawed this technique as damaging to the lagoon. You might say this was a good thing — it’s certainly fine as a concept, like peace on earth — except that it wasn’t damaging, and if it were, why was this method outlawed while illegal clamming continues, night and day, by people using a mechanized version of basically the same technique, leaving utterly barren, completely devastated tracts of lagoon behind?
Lino happily returned to the boat with a bag containing a batch of oysters and a lone canestrelo which he couldn’t resist.
All now frozen solid, awaiting their moment of glory in Lino’s next fish soup.
It turned out to have been, as the saying goes, an excellent day to die. For the oysters, I mean.
