The Gondola Maker

by Morelli, Laura

  Along with my brother, my uncle, two cousins, and myself, Father employs a journeyman named Andrea, the son of a distant cousin. A grown man, Andrea is dimwitted and has not spoken a word since his parents died of the pestilence that befell our city when he was a small boy. Though completely mute, he is a genius with needle and thread. The man can sew and upholster leather, silks, and many other fabrics better than any professional. His skill is the only thing that saved him from living as an outcast in the streets. He sleeps in a spare room off the workshop and takes his meals with us or with my uncle’s family. Father had to make an appeal to the confraternity for approval to have upholstery completed within the confines of our boatyard, and since then, Andrea has worked as diligently and meticulously as any member of our workshop. Andrea silently fashions any parts of the boat to be adorned with fabric or leather, from the seats to the curtained enclosures, felze, of our more elaborate boats.

  Although I have watched boats being built since I was old enough to toddle from the house to the boatyard, I still find the gondola-making process part hard labor, part alchemy. Each gondola begins as nothing more than raw planks of wood but emerges from our boatyard transformed. Even though I am intimately familiar with each step, even though I have been present every day, each time the men heave open the doors of the workshop and release our latest creation into the daylight for the first time, easing the craft down the ramp and into the cool canal waters on its first voyage, the sight of it stops me in my tracks.

  Father boasts that his reputation for quality gondolas is thanks in part to the fact that he does not allow himself to be distracted by the same diversions of the other boatyards. Domenico does not tolerate anyone other than his own assistants and the occasional client into his squero. Ours is one of the few boatyards in the city that is not covered with loiterers: well-meaning friends, bossy relatives, curious guild members, bored boatmen, nosy neighbors. I have seen my father chortle with disdain every time we row past the Squero San Selvaggio on a neighboring canal, where gondoliers congregate to play cards, tell jokes, regale each other with tall tales, and cajole the boat makers through the workday and well into the night. Nothing but idle fools, Father assures us. It is shameful, but above all, no way to work.

  While I carry the wooden ribs from the storehouse to the workshop, aromas of my sister’s cooking waft into the boatyard. I salivate, thinking of the slimy, writhing handful of eels that the fishmonger had pressed into my satchel. Mariangela, though just a girl, is already an accomplished cook. She works alongside our mother every day, of course, but she also inherited our grandmother’s natural knack for flavor combinations, which is not the kind of thing that can be taught but only inherently understood.

  The bells ring from the tower of Santa Maria Assunta, and we break for the midday meal. The clanging bells are the only thing that I have ever seen stop our father in his tracks. No matter how much work we have before us in the boatyard, the meal hour is sacred. It is the only time when work can wait. My uncle Tino and his two young sons disappear around the corner to their home a hundred paces away, where I am sure my aunt has prepared cabbage stew or something else that is less inspired than what Mariangela has crafted for us.

  My brother sits beside my father on a narrow wooden bench while Mariangela serves our plates. I notice that my sister’s hair has turned blonde seemingly overnight, the result of pouring a foul-smelling concoction of white wine, saffron, urine, and lemon juice over her tresses, then sitting in our sun-filled vegetable garden until it turns a remarkable shade of gold. This small act of self-interest is the only one my sister allows herself, and we men know better than to comment on the subject.

  I sit alone on the other side of the table so that I can peer into the bedroom where my mother lies, moving in and out of sleep. The onions and eels taste just as good as they smell, and I inhale the vapors swirling up from my plate. The house is silent except for the sounds of spoons scraping against the plates and our father slurping from a tankard of warm beer that Mariangela brewed over the winter in the storage cellar. No one utters a word, and the air becomes heavy with our attention trained on the doorway to the bedchamber. I steal another glimpse of the back of my mother’s head, her hair tousled haphazardly over the blanket.

  After the meal, we return to the squero to continue our work on Signor Pesaro’s new gondola. While my brother and I begin to lay out the ribs to match the frame, Father sits at his workbench at the back of the shop, sketching on a piece of parchment. He fancies himself a draughtsman, and it is true that he possesses some natural skill. He draws each one of the boats he makes even though it is unnecessary—the man could build a fine gondola with his eyes closed. He does it for conceit but also because he enjoys it. Father squints his eyes and holds the drawing at arm’s length. Finally, he peels the piece of parchment from the table, rolls it up in his hands, and ties it closed with a thin leather strap.

  “I need for this to go to the remer,” he remarks curtly.

  I jump. “I’ll take it.” I scramble to my father’s workbench to grab the roll, slap my hat on my head, and walk out the door before he can send one of his apprentices instead.

  Chapter 4

  Anton Fumagalli, the oarmaker, is the oldest person I know. To those unacquainted, his appearance is misleading: his teeth are all gone, and his lips sink into his skull like a shriveled fig. He stoops when he walks, yet his hands are strong and able, and his body, though wiry, is muscular and solid as a rock. Deep creases mark his cheeks, and he pushes back wisps of gray hair with his tanned, strong hands.

  But Signor Fumagalli is more alive than most men my own age. As I scuff along the familiar paths to the oarmaker’s workshop, a smile crosses my lips. I relish my visits with the remero. Signor Fumagalli specializes in making fórcole, the rowlocks that secure the oar and allow a boatman to steer his gondola even in the narrowest and most crowded canals. Like my father, Signor Fumagalli is the undisputed master of his trade, a perfectionist who could imagine no other way to spend his days than using his hands to create a masterpiece from a humble block of wood. But the comparisons between the two men end there. Where my father behaves like a despot most of the time, Master Fumagalli possesses a generous soul. Instead of closely guarding his trade secrets, he shares his craft enthusiastically with everyone he meets. Not that anyone else on earth would have the skill to copy the master’s work. His studio teems with visitors, but somehow amidst the chaotic comings and goings, Signor Fumagalli finds the discipline to craft oars and rowlocks that the inspectors hold up to their guild members as examples of the best of their trade.

  As I cross the threshold of the remero’s studio, I see the master at his workbench, where he is inspecting a block of walnut, running his hands along the grain as if he were stroking a dog. His eyes are closed. “This is one of the best ones you’ve done so far,” he is telling an apprentice, “but it still needs work.” I watch the oarmaker run his palm down the side of the carved chunk of wood, reading it with his hand as if he were blind. His fingers explore its crevices. “Too thick on the aft side,” he explains, “and more carving is needed in the lower oar position. Signor Bondi is even shorter than I am, and he will need more leverage for reversing the boat.”

  When the oarmaker opens his eyes I am standing before him. Immediately he drops the block on his workbench and greets me with a gaping smile, a grip on the shoulder, and a slap on the back. The remero’s shop is much better than ours, full of light and flecks of sawdust, with a line of worktables along the right side and designs for some of the master’s fórcole tacked along the wall on the left. A wall of shelves houses a neatly arranged collection of handsaws, files, and scrapers. Near the front entrance, a table displays some of the master’s best works. Here, divorced from their boats, they appear like strange curvilinear beings rather than boat hardware, their elegant silhouettes smoothly sanded and polished with nut oils to a high sheen.

  The oarmaker’s
shop sits on a high embankment above the Sacca della Misericordia, the basin on the north side of Cannaregio, which affords an expansive view onto the canal and beyond to the island of Murano. Master Fumagalli counts some half-dozen apprentices in this studio he inherited from his father. These apprentices have the pleasure of watching boats pass while they work, and even glimpse naval ships in the distance headed to Corfu and Cyprus. All day, boatmen tether their gondolas at Master Fumagalli’s boat ramp, waiting in line to have their oars and rowlocks repaired, waxed, replaced.

  I hand over my father’s design for the spice merchant’s new gondola, for which he has charged Signor Fumagalli to make the rowlock and oars. The oarmaker rakes his sawdust-covered palms down the front of his leather apron and inspects the drawing through squinted eyes. My father and the oarmaker have never signed a written agreement; there is no need. Signor Fumagalli is like an extension of our family. Signor Fumagalli’s grandfather was once apprenticed to my great-grandfather, but the connections between the two families go back longer than that. The oarmaker has often told me the story of hearing my first cries from our boatyard when I came into the world. This is why, he says, he considers me his nephew even though we are not related by blood. My father laments that the oarmaker has no children; otherwise I am certain that he would have already arranged to marry me off to the oarmaker’s daughter instead of to Annalisa Bonfante.

  “I want you to meet my newest apprentice, Samuele.” Signor Fumagalli motions to a shy-looking boy of about ten years old, who is sweeping curls of beech wood beneath a worktable. “You know the Aragona family, no? Samuele is their youngest.” The boy averts his eyes but nods slightly, squirming under Signor Fumagalli’s grip on his shoulder.

  “And this,” Signor Fumagalli says to his young assistant, bowing dramatically and waving grandly toward me, “is Luca Vianello, the heir to the city’s greatest gondola-making enterprise. One day Luca, along with his many sons and grandsons, will make sure that every canal in the Venetian Republic is filled with their beautiful boats!” He laughs again, his mouth a gaping crescent, and the air reeks of spoiled apples.

  I shrug. “I wouldn’t go as far as that. Actually I was thinking that I might apprentice myself to a glassblower instead,” I joke.

  “What’s that you say? Madonna mia!” the oarmaker cries, chuckling. “A glassblower! Ha!” He screws up his face, spits on the floor, and pounds his fist on the table.

  Relieved to no longer be the center of attention, the young Samuele wriggles away and quickens the pace of his sweeping.

  “No!” cries Signor Fumagalli, and a serious expression crosses his face. “You will continue the legacy of your father, the greatest boat maker of the Vianello clan! A maestro, I swear it on my life. And you, my boy, you have it in your soul, too. Glass—ha! No, you work the wood like no other journeyman in the city. The three of us—you, your father, and myself—we make the most beautiful boats La Repubblica has ever known!” His voice booms through the workshop as he makes a grand gesture toward the canal beyond his studio window. Two of his apprentices exchange squelched smiles.

  “A glassblower like the lovely Donatella’s father,” he chuckles again, and his face softens. “What would you do if you were a glassblower, eh?” Signor Fumagalli slaps me mockingly alongside my head, causing a lock of black hair to swing across my cheek.

  “Well, for one thing, I wouldn’t have to work for a tyrant.”

  “Your father? Your father! My boy, your father is the greatest gondola maker in Our Most Serene Republic!” His mouth turns into a frown. “You don’t know how good your lot in life. No one else makes a boat like Domenico Vianello. As a draughtsman he’s not bad either,” adds Master Fumagalli parenthetically, tapping the piece of parchment with the back of his hand. “Anyway, my boy, it’s your destiny. Destino! Do you deny it?”

  “To be perfectly honest, remer, I might have made other plans for myself,” I reply, surprising even myself with my bravado. “But I respect my father’s wishes. What choice do I have?”

  “Speaking of destiny,” continues Signor Fumagalli, distracted now and ignoring the comment, “how is your dear mother? Any sign of the baby?”

  “Not yet,” I reply. Suddenly, I want to get home.

  I bid farewell with a smile and begin walking back toward the family workshop. When I reach the Misericordia canal, though, I hesitate. On a whim, I turn my heel and head toward the north instead.

  I know I am close when I reach the church of Sant’Alvise and begin to hear the ringing sound of hammering on metal. Members of the blacksmith’s guild, including the family of Annalisa Bonfante, cluster in the streets surrounding the squat old church.

  Annalisa’s father is a master of the ferro, the comb-shaped, pronged iron prows that decorate the bows and sterns of all but our more utilitarian gondolas. The apprentices and journeymen in Master Bonfante’s workshop forge standard models using templates that Signor Bonfante stamped years ago. Master Bonfante devotes himself to crafting elaborate custom ferri destined for ambassadorial boats and the crafts of patrician clients who can afford to pay the stiff fines for breaking the sumptuary laws.

  From a distance, I glimpse the Bonfante blacksmith’s foundry and its contents—tools, gates, raw metal, projects finished and half-finished—that spill out of its double doors onto the narrow walkway that borders the canal-side. Usually the door to the workshops stays flung open to let the heat escape as the men hammer copper and iron with their hulking forearms. From this jumbled dungeon of a workspace, Signor Bonfante crafts impressive decorations that are the crowning touches of each gondola that emerges from our boatyard. The ferri are deceivingly heavy: it takes two men to carry one, and at least three to mount it properly to the boat. When I was ten my Uncle Tino accidentally dropped one side of a ferro and it broke my toe; to this day I remember the pain.

  While Annalisa’s mother tightly manages the finances of her husband’s business, Annalisa and her two sisters spend the day cooped up in the house behind the shop as if imprisoned, kept busy with washing, baking, and sewing. Rarely is one of the three girls allowed to venture out of view of the hawk-like eyes of their mother. With a fluttering in my stomach, I recall how Annalisa cornered me against the wall at the market that day, and I wonder how she had managed to escape.

  Hearing the ear-splitting sound of hammering molten iron, I know that Annalisa’s father and his assistants are occupied. Avoiding the canal-side entrance to the shop, I slip down the alley leading to the back garden of the house. My pace slows and I peer through the ornate iron gate into Annalisa’s courtyard. There she is, pulling breeches from a basket on the ground and hanging them on the line. I stand unnoticed for a moment, watching her. Annalisa’s dress is simple but gathered around her narrow waist like a noble lady’s. Her apron is tied in a neat bow, and her light brown tresses are tidily braided under her simple white sheath. Her hands work quickly and ably, repeating gestures done thousands of times as she pins a tablecloth and a shirt to the line.

  I cup my hands to my lips and whistle like a bird. Annalisa spins around on her heels, a startled expression on her face. When she sees me through the bars, her face softens and she scampers to the gate, trying to keep her footsteps from being heard.

  She giggles. “My mother will murder you with her bare hands if she finds the two of us here without her!”

  “I live dangerously.” I grin.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks, gazing into my eyes.

  “I had an errand in the neighborhood, so I thought I would stop by and say hello.”

  “Hello, then.”

  “Annalisa!” Her mother’s voice.

  “Argh,” she whispers.

  “It’s fine. I just wanted to lay eyes on you.” I start to turn, but Annalisa reaches her hands through the iron gate and firmly grips my wrists. Startled, I look into her large brown eyes.

  “My mother will be
at the vegetable market before the marangona rings tomorrow morning, and I’ll be home alone. Come back then?” Her mother calls again. Annalisa’s eyes search my face. “Promise?” I nod. Annalisa releases my wrists, then turns and runs into the house.

  I swagger down the alley toward home, listening to the echoes lifting upward and reverberating off the stone walls. Something inside of me stirs as I think about this next meeting with Annalisa, and my mind searches for an excuse to leave the boatyard in the morning. Our brief physical encounter in the market has left me hungry for more. I wonder if that desire will ebb once we are married. I am old enough to understand that marriage seems to have the effect of dampening a man and a woman’s desire for one another. I have seen it happen with my aunt and uncle, who, after fifteen years of marriage, seem more likely to kill each other than sleep in the same bed. It is true that I desire Annalisa, but if I am honest with myself, I am not sure that I desire to be married to her, to settle into the life so clearly laid out before me.

  I decide to travel the quayside of the Misercordia canal, observing the variety of boats docked there as I walk: rowboats covered with tarps, several plainly outfitted gondolas, and many rafts. I recognize a particularly fancy gondola as a product of Gianlorenzo Venin, my father’s archrival. I would never admit this to my father, of course, but I pause to admire the carving that the Venin brothers employ on the keels of their boats, a large emblem of a fishtailed siren with a fierce expression on her face.

  “Luca! Luca!”

  The sound of a familiar voice breaks my trance. Then I see my brother Daniele rowing one of our smaller boats through the canal, slicing the water in his quick approach. His chest heaves and beads of sweat line his brow.