pussy willow | Venice: I am not making this up

They’re only hints, mind you, but they brighten my outlook considerably.

You might not notice them if you weren’t looking for them, but I was. Violets are one of the earliest, rashest signs of spring. They ask no questions about long-term commitment from the first rays of warmth, they just bloom.

Leaves on the trees at Sant’ Elena are equally irrepressible, thank heaven.

At this fleeting stage they seem more like flowers than leaves, though of course I know that’s totally wrong, botanically speaking. But they aren’t going to be outdone by any mere blossoms.

Peach blossoms. They’re not from around here, but they are just as dependable a sign of primavera as some of the fish in the nearby market.

Ditto the pussy willows (Salix cinerea). The silvery sheath on each bud is at least as beautiful as sterling. When they bloom, these flowers — which don’t even look like flowers — are rock-star providers of nectar. And to think I always treated them as a curiosity that was just fun to play with.

An old German card shows the pussy-willow tradition at Easter and/or Palm Sunday in northern and eastern Europe, as well as Ukraine, Russia, and among the Ruthenian and Kashubian Catholics (I just threw that in.) Here in the sunny Mediterranean the pussy willows are long gone by Easter, but it’s a lovely thought.

This year the ever-faithful and -predictable forsythia has just been replaced in my pantheon by this bewitching shrub at the entrance to the Morosini Naval School. Its perfume captured me before I had even noticed its flowers.

If any reader can identify this marvel, I’d be grateful. Otherwise I’m just going to have to invent a name for it myself, and it will probably be a long one, like a champion dog. (The pink buds are just on their way to opening into cream-colored flowers, a magical moment which will undoubtedly occur tonight when nobody’s looking.)

I imagine it happening not long after sunset, which shades into night much too quickly. Tomorrow will almost certainly reveal some new wonder.

No matter how bundled up these little pixies still may be, they say SPRING to me.

We went shopping this morning. Nothing dramatic, nothing involving jewels or cashmere or lambskin. Just checking out the fish at the Pescheria this morning, and we struck paydirt twice.

One, we nabbed the first seppie of the season, a moment we’d been waiting for. They cost more than I’d have wanted to spend (as almost everything does), but we brought them home and Lino is dealing with their destiny as I write.

We couldn’t resist them — or rather, we didn’t resist most of them, except for the bigger one in the foreground, second from left, covered in sticky ink. The young man casually threw it into the paper in his hand along with two of the others, and I said, “I don’t want that one.” He said, “They’re all the same size.” I said, “I don’t care, I don’t want it.” He said, “They’re all the same size.” Lino said, “She doesn’t want it, put it back,” and so he did. What did size have to do with the fact that it was DEMONSTRABLY older — and with fish, that doesn’t mean wiser — than the others? ( And by the way, it was not the same size, it was bigger.) I realize that every hour that passed, the young man would have found it more of a challenge to casually throw it in with somebody else’s order, but I don’t care. We got the good ones.

Two, we ran into two friends of his, which is always what one hopes when wandering the market. M and C used to work at the Aeronavali with Lino, beginning as boys together (16 years old, more or less). They did a little catching-up, mainly about wildfowl hunting (M’s passion since boyhood, but he has relinquished his weapons due to increasing bureaucracy), fishing (still at it, like Lino), and some random remarks about nothing. Nothing is a very large and rich subject, and people can talk about it for quite some time.

I already knew M by name and by occasional sightings; I knew that he had been Lino’s favorite partner when they used to compete on pupparinos in the “interaziendali” races organized between different working groups (a team from the Gazzettino, say, and the ACTV, and other happy bands of working brothers). “He was a wonderful proviere” (rowing in the bow) — “he had a beautiful stroke, it just lifted the boat up and then I’d carry it forward.” Perhaps this makes more sense in Italian. Anyway, the perfect pair.

They also ran into each other out fishing, or at work with whatever catch they brought in to give away. “I’d have sole,” Lino said, “but M didn’t fish for sole, he went out for shrimp. So he’d ask me how much I wanted for my sole, and I’d say ‘You’re kidding, right?’ So we’d just trade. He loved sole.” Today M bought some sole, but it wasn’t for him. “It’s for my cat,” he said. “I also got some sardoni for me.” (Engraulis encrasicolus, or European anchovy).

Lino thought that was funny. “Give the sardoni to the cat, and you eat the sole!” he said.

“Nah…the cat won’t eat sardoni….”

Seppie ink trickling out from beneath the ice at the neighborhood fish vendor. It’s like a moment from some horror movie as you approach the closed door, rendered less horrible by its lack of human characteristics. But this is a tragic waste of precious ink. Maybe it was the creature’s last attempt at self-defense. Or somebody was just careless with his squashy fingers as he rang up the sale.

M worked “inside” at the airport on the Lido, where construction was going on; Lino worked outside, on repairs and maintenance. A young widow with a son set her sights on the even younger M, and the two married and have lived peacefully ever after, with the addition of a few daughters. She was happy for M to be training and racing, which many wives are not. Many a modest racer has been forced to give it up because the wife wants him at home. “At home,” if I understand Lino’s tone of voice, means something like “chained to the wall.”

C, however, was another case. No fishing, no hunting; always to be seen with his father for company. When his father died he latched onto M, and it may not need to be said that he never married. “But he always said ugly things about M’s wife,” Lino recalled with some distaste. M is a good guy and there was no known reason for anyone to say anything bad about her, either. Except maybe (I hypothesized) he might have made a move on her which was rebuffed. “I’ve thought that for years,” Lino replied.

When Lino left the company after some 37 years of service, C became head of the squad, a promotion that would have gone to Lino, but never mind, there it is.

I’m sure Lino could have told me more, but one can’t be writing Russian novels every day. It’s enough to get the highlights, which when they concern people you’ve known since you were 16 can be plenty high enough.

Hints of spring

Seppie and friends