My Venice and Other Essays (9780802194039)

by Donna Leon

  I do not for an instant mean to suggest that Italy, though it has one of the lowest percentages of immigrants of any European country, does not have a problem with illegal immigrants. Just look at the jails and prisons, where about 5 percent of the population represents more than 30 percent of the inmates. Look at the statistics on violent crime, for which immigrants (not Rom) are disproportionately responsible.

  But this is not 93 billion euros, and it is most definitely not almost a thousand murders in the past decade. Instead, I suggest that the Emergenza Immigrazione is the walnut shell, which, when turned over, is revealed to have nothing under it. Lose, lose, lose.

  Italian Bureaucracy

  There are times when life in Italy is the stuff of madness, when bureaucratic inertia or incompetence can drive a person to frenzy. There are times when it seems that nothing works or will ever work, and one comes to believe that one is in the presence of the miraculous, for no evidence exists that human intervention could or can effect change of any sort. Some days, officials of all sorts find their only joy in obstruction, and their attention to the smallest detail of rule or law is rigorous. Promises are made and not kept and progress seems an illusion.

  But then, as on a cloudy day when the wind suddenly sweeps in from the south and tears the clouds to pieces, the heavens clear and Italy flashes in all its disorderly, humane beauty. Moments like this remind me that, even with all its enormous problems, Italy is still the only place I want to live.

  Late in the fall I went to the States and, while there, airfreighted back to Venice a small desk of my late mother’s, a piece of furniture I’d grown up with, a slant-fronted, multidrawered chest of bird’s-eye maple, her sixteenth birthday present. A month later, when it arrived, I went out to the shipper’s office at the airport, where a secretary gave me the shipping papers and told me to take them to the customs office.

  There, a young officer with a Sicilian accent and a custom-tailored uniform glanced down at the invoices and bills of lading. When he saw that I’d declared—entirely for insurance purposes—a value of $300, he did a fast calculation and told me I’d have to pay 300 euros in customs duty. I explained that the declared value was an invention and that the desk had only sentimental value. He seemed uninterested in this and repeated the sum of 300 euros. I lowered my voice, put a sentimental throb into it, and tightened my eyes as if at the memory of great pain. “But it belonged to . . . mia madre.”

  He looked up as if startled to discover that someone who’d come to the customs office could have a mother.

  “Sua madre?”

  “Sì.”

  He glanced down again at the paper I held out toward him, but the figures were still there. I asked if it would help matters if I changed the declared value of the desk. All I had to do, I suggested, holding the paper toward him and pointing to the figures, was move the decimal point one place to the left and add a zero. That would change the $300 to $30.

  He studied the paper, considering what he’d just heard, looked up, then studied my face for an uncomfortably long time. Shaking his head, no doubt at the shocking boldness—to make no mention of the criminality—of my suggestion, he took the paper from me, excused himself, and went back into the office from which he had emerged, leaving me to wonder what the fine was for customs fraud and if they’d also get me for attempting to corrupt a government official.

  After a few minutes he emerged from the office, the paper still in his hand. I looked up, smiled weakly, fully convinced that I would have to pay the consequences, as well as the customs duties. He raised the paper in front of him and, with a gesture as gallant as it was elegant, ripped it in two lengthwise.

  “The chest belonged to your mother, Signora, and so there are no customs duties to be paid,” he said, arms spread, the two halves of the paper fluttering from his hands like the shredded flag of an enemy captured in fair battle.

  Diplomatic Incident

  Some years ago, still susceptible to the follies of youth, I accepted an invitation to a party organized to introduce the assistant consul of the United States, who was coming from Milan to Venice in order to select an associate consul to work in that city. Because an American friend of mine living in Venice would be, I thought, well suited to the job, I agreed to go along with her in the hopes of being able to recommend her. Besides, my invitation had carried a handwritten note at the bottom, stating, “Would you be interested in the job?”

  The party was held in a gallery on the Grand Canal and, when I entered, the place was filled with about fifty people, only one of whom I recognized. I accepted a glass of mineral water and had a look around. The women, like Caesar’s Gaul, were divided into three parts: the tall blondes, all with names like Muffy and Alison, all wearing silk scarves carefully draped over their left shoulders; older women, most of them with short gray hair and intense expressions that spoke of the ministrations of surgeons; and then there was the random lot of mountainously fat women of all ages. There seemed to be only two kinds of men: the scruffy type wearing running shoes and those wearing suits, in most cases apparently ones they’d worn before retirement and which now were either too large or too small.

  My friend was late in arriving, but someone had brought Benjy, a Norfolk terrier, so I didn’t feel completely isolated. From another room I heard applause, so I drifted over to the door. The consul, a young man with short black hair, began his presentation by reading us the president’s Thanksgiving Declaration. In it, our president praised the long history of racial harmony in the United States, something, he reminded us, that we all cele­brated. Because my thoughts ran to slavery and the extermination of the Indians, I decided not to celebrate. Our president also three times referred to God, and so I went back into the kitchen for more mineral water and a few words with Benjy.

  Proclamation finished, applause ended, the consul then began to explain the requirements of the job. The associate consul would have to help Americans who were robbed or who had trouble of any sort and he or she would have to deal with the Italian bureaucracy, perhaps ship back the occasional American who died in Venice. Sensing his audience’s response to this last one, the consul left his prepared script and admitted, voice filled with that warmth Americans use to indicate sincerity, that although the salary wasn’t great there were wonderful perks: lots of parties and the associate consul would get to take visiting senators and congressmen around Venice. This conjured up the need to explain to some beef-fed thug that, “No, Senator, it’s a church, not a shopping mall,” and so again I sought out Benjy, at least until the applause that greeted that last died down.

  Finally it was over, though my friend never showed up. I found my coat, draped my scarf over my left shoulder, and started toward the door. Politely, I thanked my hostess, said I was afraid I had to leave.

  “Aren’t you going to apply for the job?” she asked.

  I smiled with that warmth Americans use to indicate sincerity, said, “I’d rather set my hair on fire,” thanked her again, and went home.

  Non Mangiare, Ti Fa Male

  It was the orange that did it. A few nights ago, I was having dinner at the home of my oldest friend here in Venice, and after we’d eaten pasta and salad I reached for an orange.

  Eyes wide with horror, Roberta said, “You’re not going to eat that, are you?”

  With my subtle command of the nuances of Italian, I asked, “Huh?”

  “The orange,” she said, pointing a trembling finger at the offending fruit. “You’re not going to eat that.” I wondered if it was rotten or perhaps the last orange. But no, neither seemed to be the case, and so I asked, “Why?”

  “Because it’s lead,” she began and went on to explain that oranges are gold in the morning, silver at lunch, but, if eaten at night, after dinner, a sort of gastronomic alchemy will transform them instantly into lead. And there it was at last, the specific example that unveiled the fundam
ental mystery of Italian life and culture, the diamond-like clarification of a system that has eluded my understanding for more than four decades.

  For Italians, food is far more than something to be eaten. Or, more clearly put, all food, for Italians, has an added component beyond taste and nutritional value: it is either pesante or leggero, that is, heavy or light. I’m an American, citizen of the country that has contributed popcorn and the Big Mac to the cuisine of the world, and so this concept is confusing to me and has been so since I first arrived in Italy, more than forty years ago. Americans make little ceremony out of the daily business of eating, thus they regard it differently from the way Italians do. We do not observe the distinction between light and heavy food, hence our confusion when confronted with the fact that all Italians seem to divide all food into one or the other.

  With the ardor of a committed anthropologist, I sought to deepen my understanding of this belief system and asked Roberta to make it clear to me. After she had explained at great length, a few overriding principles emerged.

  Lightness or heaviness seem more related to one’s mother than to any quality of digestibility adhering to the foods themselves. If your mother cooked it, it is light, regardless of whether it is boiled zucchini or pasta with butter, cream, and parmigiano. This last can also be judged light, I think, because all of the ingredients are white, the certain color of lightness, as with chicken and veal.

  Anything you don’t like to eat is heavy. Also, anything you ate before you got a cold is heavy. Colds, it must be added, are gotten only as a result of un colpo d’aria, the germ theory not having much weight in the Italian belief system, and one of its effects is to render heavy any and all food consumed within six hours of the first symptoms.

  Pasta can be heavy or light, depending upon the sauce with which it is served. One would think that cauliflower sauce would be light (as it is white and hence light) but cauliflower is in the family of the cabbage, thus rendering it heavy. Tomato, being acid, is heavy, unless it is cooked a long time, whereupon it becomes light. Unless your mother didn’t like it, in which case it is doomed to eternal heaviness.

  Onions, like oranges, change according to the time they are eaten and tend to grow heavier as the day progresses. Fried food is always heavy, unless it is fried in a light oil, lightness here corresponding to how clean the oil is believed to be.

  Reading this over, I realize it still doesn’t make any sense to me and seems the product of a cloudy mind. Perhaps I’m getting a cold. Or perhaps I ate something heavy.

  Miss Venice Hilton

  Well, here we are in 2007, girls. We’ve come a long way, haven’t we, from the times when all we had to offer to the world of business was the ability to type, make coffee, and maybe show a bit of tits and ass once in a while, just to keep the boys happy? I tell you, it’s nice out here in the world of equality, where we’re respected for our intelligence, our industry, even for our wit and grace under pressure.

  Hmm, let’s take a look at an e-mail that’s just come in, shall we? An offer to be on the jury to help the administration of the new Venice Hilton select Miss Venice Hilton? Now, wait a minute, isn’t the new Venice Hilton opening in the old Molino Stucky, the abandoned flour mill, the one that was going to be, when plans for the restoration were first discussed, transformed into low-cost apartments for poor Venetians? Well, I guess they don’t want low-cost apartments, those feckless poor Venetians, for how else could a building that enormous be turned into a luxury hotel?

  Let’s see what’s on offer here. Asked to be part of a jury to help “eleggere la più determinata ed affascinante ragazza del Veneto.” Hmm, determined and charming, that’s certainly enough for a woman who wants a serious career in business, isn’t it? And what, pray tell, will this affascinante ragazza be asked to do? She’ll be sent to L’Hilton University, by God, a place that prepares the top managers of the Hilton chain, who are, I am assured, “considerati tra i migliori nel mondo.” So Hilton has its very own university now. Gee whiz, have they told Oxford? Do the provosts of Harvard know about this? And is Heidelberg worried?

  Let’s see what else they have in mind here. “Blah blah blah . . . Non bellezza fine a se stessa, ma voglia di fare e tanto entusiasmo.” Oh, I get it. Not just tits and ass, and she doesn’t only have to be pretty: she’s also got to be willing and filled with enthusiasm.

  Intelligence? Experience? Fluency in foreign languages? Are you kidding? Nope, it’s enough for a girl (they don’t want women, only girls, here) just to be willing and filled with enthusiasm. Presumably, female guests at the Hilton will not be required to be either determinata or affascinante, just rich.

  Unfortunately, I must turn down the offer to be on the jury. You see, the Hilton, unlike the Cipriani, doesn’t have a pool, so there could have been no bathing suit competition, and what’s the use of being on a jury to select a woman for a high-profile career in hotel management if you don’t get to see her in a bikini?

  New Neighbors

  A few months ago, as yet another side effect of the housing disaster that ruined two years of my life, I moved into a rental apartment not far from the one in which I’d lived for fifteen years. This new place is larger, brighter, and higher; in fact, it is quite wonderful, with a view of the bell towers of both San Marco and Santi Apostoli.

  The same window that lets me look at the bell tower of San Marco also allows me to look down into the courtyard of Pa­lazzo Boldù. So famous is this building that, to explain to Venetians where I live, I have only to tell them that I live near Palazzo Boldù and they pinpoint me exactly on the map of the city we all carry in our minds.

  Palazzo Boldù, you see, is the psychiatric center, the place where the various walking wounded of the city come each day to be given whatever drug, therapy, or counseling is necessary to get them through the day. The former madhouse on the island of San Clemente was closed years ago as the result of a law aimed at helping the mentally ill by reintroducing them into the community, thus reweaving them into the social fabric.

  Whether this works or not, I don’t know. Whether these poor souls are better or worse off for the closing of the madhouses, I have no idea. All I know is what I observe from the window of my study and what I hear from the windows of all of the rooms of the apartment.

  The doors of the palazzo open for patients at eight in the morning, though before that time staff members can let themselves in through the enormous wooden portals that close off the courtyard from the small campiello of Santa Maria Nova. They arrive, the first restless patients, at about five, at least in the spring and summer, and wake me every morning with their conversations and songs and wild, heated arguments. No matter how passionate or calm the discussions I overhear, no matter how angry the words, they are always scored for single voice, for they seldom talk to one another while they are outside the walls of Palazzo Boldù.

  Who they are or why they go there, I have no idea. Village gossip exists, and I’m sure I could learn whatever story is told about each one of them, but some sense of modesty keeps me from asking, even among my neighbors, who have lived around them for years. There is the dark-haired woman I’ve seen walking up and down Strada Nuova for thirty years now; strangely enough, she has aged while I, of course, have not. There is the woman who shifts from side to side with metronomic regularity, not to be confused with the woman who moves ahead with tiny robot steps. And there is Laura—robust, blonde, about forty. She sits in the courtyard all day, smoking endlessly, and I’ve never seen her speak to anyone.

  One day last week I overheard loud voices and, drawn to them, looked out the window and down into the courtyard. Two men and a woman had come to sit at the same table with Laura, who had placed on the table in front of her a tiny stuffed animal, too small in the distance for me to distinguish species. “Oh, Laura, che bella,” “Laura, fammi vedere, che bella.” For a few minutes, a silent Laura sat at the center of their loud
, genuine admiration, then she passed her tiny stuffed animal from hand to hand as all of them sang its praises and told her how lucky she was to have it. They handled it with great care and treated her with equal respect; they could not have been more careful with a relic or a baby.

  In the end, Laura took the stuffed toy and set it back down on the table in front of her. She offered one of the men a cigarette. He took it, and she lit it for him, and I turned away before I began to cry.

  The House from Hell

  It was love at first sight and, not for the first time, this was to prove my ruination. I’d been house hunting for two years, searching for the perfect Venetian home. I didn’t know what sort of place I wanted. I knew only that it had to be an upper floor and it had to have glorious views. I looked and looked, and much like the donkey in Winnie-the-Pooh, the more I looked, the more it wasn’t there. Estate agents had shown me palazzi, piani nobili, apartamenti, and nothing I’d seen had pleased me in any way.

  Until Mirto, the man in the grocery store on the corner, told me he’d heard that an apartment in the palazzo up the street, the freestanding one with the garden, was for sale privately. Three phone calls later I found the owner, and she agreed to show it to me.