by John Berendt
“I take it,” I said, “you are referring to such elite governments as that of the old Venetian Republic.”
“Ecco! Exactly! The ruling patriarchy. There are very few of us left. The Barbarigo family is extinct. So are the Mocenigos. The Pisanis, who built this palace, have died out, too. So have the Grittis, the Dandolos, the Faliers, the Sagredos, and the Contarinis—eight of the hundred and twenty doges were Contarinis.
“What doges’ families are left?”
“The Gradenigo family is still around—they are an old family, but not very important. And, let me see . . . the Verniers. And the Marcellos. You would find my book Nobility and Government interesting. I am now writing a book proving the existence of reality! It is already two thousand pages long.”
A book on the subject of reality written by a Venetian had curious possibilities. Loredan seemed on the verge of explaining, but his wife was tugging at his sleeve.
“Well . . . another time,” he said. “But I will send you a copy of my book explaining why democracy is a fraud.” As he shuffled away, his wife tugging and smiling apologetically, he raised his hand as if to wave good-bye. Instead he held up three fingers. “Three!” he said. “Three doges!”
We started walking toward the tall windows on the Grand Canal. Rose pointed out a couple looking in our direction. The man was corpulent and had a head of untamed, wispy red hair and a broad, gap-toothed grin. The woman was dark-haired, lithe, and younger.
“That’s Alistair and Romilly McAlpine,” she said. “Alistair is very tight with Margaret Thatcher. He was treasurer of the Conservative Party when she was prime minister. He collects things. Serious things like paintings by Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, and less serious things like shepherds’ crooks, rag dolls, and police truncheons—he ’s got about nine hundred truncheons by now, I think. Romilly has exquisite taste and a huge collection of Vivienne Westwood dresses. Anyway, the McAlpines aren’t so much living in Venice as hiding out here, because their house in London was fire-bombed by the IRA, and they’ve had to—Romilly! Alistair!”
The McAlpines exchanged jolly greetings with the Lauritzens and pronounced themselves pleased to meet me.
“How’s the collecting going?” Peter asked.
“I’ve sold everything!” Lord McAlpine trumpeted.
“That must be a wrenching thing to do,” said Peter.
“Not at all. I have the soul of a nomad and set little store by possessions: I am anxious in their pursuit and casual in their disposal. But I’ll admit I’m rather wistful about my collection of garden implements, especially the horse-drawn lawn mower with leather shoes for the horse’s hooves—to protect the lawn. I put all of it under the hammer.”
“Why all?” asked Peter.
“To rid myself of the chore of making a choice!”
“You haven’t given up collecting altogether, have you?” Rose asked.
“No, no. I’m always onto something new. I’ve become interested in neckties, in a small way. I’ve picked up a few good ones.”
“Oh, Alistair, why not just tell them,” said his wife. “He’s got about four thousand neckties at this point.”
I was fascinated by the McAlpines, but I could not help imagining the sounds of bombs and sirens going off in counterpoint to their small talk. The fact that they were wearing masks—his being a harlequin style, hers a mass of pink sequins—lent a touch of farce to the notion that they were on the run from the IRA. As soon as they moved on, I asked Rose what she had meant by “hiding out” from the IRA.
“That’s why they’re here. After the IRA bombed their house in London, they decided to move to Australia, but the London CID told them, ‘Don’t be silly. All the worst killers in the IRA hide out in Australia.’ So naturally they asked where it would be safe to go, and funnily enough the police told them Venice! And it’s true. In Venice you’re very likely to be swindled or have your pocket picked, but you almost certainly won’t be kidnapped or murdered.”
“What’s to stop someone from just shooting you?” I asked. “Or blowing up your house?”
“Nothing. That would be easy. Escaping would be the hard part, because the police can seal off all the escape routes within minutes. They can close the bridge to the mainland and alert the water taxis. And of course it would be sheer madness for anybody to try making a getaway in a boat by himself. The lagoon may look like a tranquil pond, but it’s really very treacherous. One has to know all about the currents, the channels, the sandbars, the tides, the speed limit, and the meaning of all the buoys and signal lights. Anyway, the boat would probably be noticed by all the boatmen in the lagoon—they all know every boat.
“And anyone who wanted to kidnap you would somehow have to drag you out of the house, down the calle or whatever, and into a boat without being seen. And that would be impossible, because everywhere in Venice the eyes are watching. And unless the kidnapper was an experienced Venetian boatman himself, he’d have to hire one as an accomplice, and that would complicate matters endlessly, so nobody bothers. Anyway, the murder rate in Venice is practically nil, and that’s why rich Italians took apartments here when the Red Brigades were marauding in the 1980s.”
“Rose has been reading too many mystery stories,” said Peter.
Just then, Count Girolamo Marcello walked past, engrossed in conversation with another man. “A disgrace,” he was saying with a curious smile, “a disaster! But, actually, it has not been all bad. Before the Fenice burned, my television reception was very poor. Now I get all the channels with perfect clarity.” Marcello had gained approval for the burial of his friend, the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, in the cemetery on San Michele, and that, too, had cheered him.
Within half an hour, the crowd began drifting toward the stairs and up to the second piano nobile, where waiters in white tunics stood behind two long buffet tables laden with food: platters of thinly sliced prosciutto and air-dried beef, tureens of vegetable-and-shrimp risotto, baked zucchini, and serving dishes heaped with an array of Venetian specialties, including calf ’s liver and onions, squid and polenta, and a creamy bacalà mantecato.
We found seats at a large round table for ten, the Lauritzens directly across from me. To my left, a man and a woman were talking about the Fenice. The man was saying, “It’s the only opera company in the world that kept the original scores of the operas it commissioned, signed by the composer. There were hundreds of them. La Traviata, Rigoletto, Tancredi. Today those handwritten scores are worth millions—if they still exist.”
“What do you think?” said the woman. “Burned to a crisp?”
“Nothing has been said about them, so I fear the worst.”
Seated on my other side was a man whose reddish brown hair had the too-solid look of a toupee. He exuded confidence and introduced himself as Massimo Donadon.
“I’m a chef,” he said, speaking to me and the woman sitting between us. “My cuisine is known around the world!”
“Really!?” the woman said. “Are you famous for a culinary specialty?”
“Yes,” he said. “Rat poison.”
The woman drew back. “You’re joking.”
“No, it’s true. I make the world’s best-selling rat poison. It’s called Bocaraton, ‘rat’s mouth’ or ‘mouse’s mouth,’ like the city in Florida. I never understood why anyone would want to live in a city with such a name. But it’s perfect for my specialty, which I sell all over the world—in Dubai, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Boston, South America, wherever there are rats. I have thirty percent of the international rat-poison market.”
“What’s your secret?” I asked.
“My competitors approach rat poison the wrong way,” he said. “They study rats. I study people.” Signor Donadon pointed at my plate with his fork. “Rats eat what people eat.”
I glanced down at my fegato alla veneziana and suddenly saw my dinner in a new light.
“Venetian rats would be very happy to eat what you have on your plate,” he said, “because they�
��re used to eating that kind of food. But German rats would not be interested at all. They prefer German cuisine—wurstel, Wiener schnitzel. So for Germany I make a rat poison that is forty-five percent pork fat. My French rat poison has butter in it. For America I use vanilla, granola, popcorn, and a little margarine, because Americans eat very little butter. I base my New York rat poison on vegetable oils and essential oils with orange fragrance to remind the rats of hamburgers and orange juice. For Bombay I add curry. For Chile, fish meal.
“Rats are very adaptable. If their hosts go on fad diets, the rats go on the diets, too. I maintain thirty research stations around the world so I can update the tastes and flavors of my poisons in order to make them consistent with the latest trends in human dining.”
“What’s in your Italian rat poison?” I asked.
“Olive oil, pasta, honey, espresso, green-apple juice, and Nutella. Especially Nutella. I buy tons of it. Rats love it. I told the Nutella company I would be happy to endorse it on television, and they said, ‘Oh, God, no! We beg you. Please tell no one!’ ”
The woman sitting on the far side of Signor Donadon put both of her hands flat on the table as if to steady herself. “I simply will not listen to a discussion of rats while I’m having dinner!” she said, and then, as much in the spirit of melodrama as anger, she turned her back.
Signor Donadon continued unperturbed. “Everyone is fascinated by rats. Even people who say they’re not. What they really mean to say is, ‘Oh, that’s disgusting, I can’t bear it, tell me more!’ ”
The couple on my left, I noticed, had stopped talking about the Fenice and were giving Donadon their full attention.
“But if a rat is hungry,” I said, “won’t it eat just about anything?”
“Absolutely,” said Signor Donadon, “but rats are better fed than ever, because there’s more garbage than ever. So they’ve become very choosy about what they eat. In the 1950s, people used to throw only one-half of one percent of their food into the garbage, and rats had to eat whatever they could find. Today seven percent of our food ends up in the garbage, and it’s a never-ending banquet for rats. The challenge, for me, is to make my rat poison more appetizing than garbage. Garbage is the real competition.
“Rats are smarter than men and better organized. They have instinctive rituals designed to ensure the survival of their species. For instance, whenever rats find something that looks like food, the oldest rats always eat it first. Other brands of rat poison cause immediate pain, a burning sensation, or dizziness. If the older rats display any ill effects, the younger ones won’t touch it. But Bocaraton outwits them. It causes no pain at all when it’s eaten. It takes four days to have an effect, and by then the younger rats have eaten it, too.”
“Tell me,” said the woman to my left, “how does a person decide to devote his life to the killing of rats?”
“Ah, signora!” said Donadon. “When I stood at my grandmother’s deathbed, she made me promise to make a contribution to humanity. Since I was a boy, I had always been interested in chemistry and medicine. I decided I would find a cure for cancer. I knew that DDT caused cancer, so I went into several butcher shops and told them I was representing an American company named Max Don Brasileira—I made up the name—and that we made insecticides without using DDT. I said, ‘I will get rid of your flies.’
“The first butcher said, ‘If you can do that, I’ll pay any price.’ Flies were depositing their eggs all over his meat. It was a disaster. I picked a number out of the air, and I said, ‘It will cost you thirty thousand lire [fifteen dollars],’ and he said, ‘Do it.’ By the end of the day, I’d picked up orders worth one hundred fifty thousand lire [seventy-five dollars], which was a lot of money in those days.
“I was overjoyed. But I didn’t have a product! Also, I was broke. So I stopped in at a bar in Treviso, where I live—that’s eighteen miles north of Venice—and I talked two friends into going into business with me. I immediately moved into the Carlton Hotel in Treviso, and with the help of the telephone operator and the hotel porter, I led clients to believe that this was the Italian headquarters of the American insecticide company.
“How did we kill flies? We used a phosphorus compound made by Montedison. If you used it today, you would probably go to jail. It’s too toxic. But it worked. Business grew. People heard about us.
“Then I got a call from Count Borletti, the sewing-machine king, and he asked me to rid his stable of flies. One day Borletti said to me, ‘Massimo, what are you going to do in the winter when there are no flies? Killing flies is a seasonal business. But rats are a pest all year. You should consider making rat poison.’
“What a brainstorm! That very night, I started experimenting in my bathroom sink at the hotel. I kneaded ten pounds of pork fat and coumarin with my bare hands, and in the morning I changed everything—my company, its name, and its mission. That was 1970. We were an immediate success, and we’ve only grown since then. I admit that killing rats may not be as noble a profession as curing cancer, but at least I’m making a contribution to humanity, and my grandmother can rest in peace.”
Donadon handed each of us his card. The company’s name was “Braün Mayer Deutschland.”
“I thought you were Italian,” I said.
“I am, but if I had given my company an Italian name, people would think, ‘This product was made in Italy? I don’t trust it.’ Italy has an image of being nothing but Mafia, tailors, and shoemakers. On the other hand, Germany is solid, scientific, and efficient. If anyone could be counted on to kill a rat, a German would be the one. So I chose a name that sounded very German. ‘Mayer’ is the German equivalent of Smith. ‘Braün’ reminds you of Wernher von Braun, the man who designed the rockets that took men to the moon, and that gives you confidence. The umlaut over the u shouldn’t be there, but it reinforces the Germanness of the name. And ‘Deutschland’ speaks for itself.”
“Very shrewd,” I said.
“My little company became part of the famous economic boom in northern Italy. Did you know that here in northern Italy we have the highest concentration of businesses in the world? It’s true: There’s one company for every eight inhabitants. They’re mostly small, family-run companies. Like mine, and like Benetton, which is run by my old friend Luciano Benetton. Luciano was born and raised in Treviso, like me, and we both have our world headquarters in Treviso.”
“The Two Titans of Treviso,” I said.
“Well . . .” Signor Donadon blushed. “Luciano has a genius for making money, and he’s very good at holding on to it, too. I’ve known him for more than thirty years, and I love him. But as rich as he is, he’s never so much as bought me lunch! He loves my cooking, though, so he comes to my house often for dinner. I cook for rats and for Luciano Benetton.”
“Have you and Benetton ever worked together?”
“No, but we’ve both used the same photographer for our ads—Oliviero Toscani, the guy who created the ‘United Colors of Benetton’ ad campaign and Colors magazine. I got Toscani to shoot an ad for my rat poison. It was based on The Last Supper. All the men had rat heads, even Christ. But I got talked out of using it.”
Signor Donadon began eating his dinner, and as he did a commotion erupted at the far end of the hall. A cluster of late arrivals had made a showy entrance involving a flowing white silk scarf and a great deal of glitter. The scarf belonged to a tall, lanky man in a dinner jacket and aviator-style horn-rimmed glasses. He was exchanging greetings with people at various tables. The glitter was his entourage: three beautiful women, one of whom was wearing a sequined body stocking.
“They’re models or actresses, probably,” the woman to my left said, having noticed I was watching. “He’s Vittorio Sgarbi, an art critic and one of Italy’s great seducers, self-proclaimed. He’s already written his autobiography, and he’s only forty-five—sees himself as a modern-day Casanova. He’s very smart and extremely glib. He has a daily commentary slot on television, so he’s a famous national figure.�
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