The Gondola Maker

by Morelli, Laura

  “In that case I’d better get to work,” I smile, tipping my hat to her as I exit the kitchen for the boathouse.

  “Don’t forget your vest, caro,” Signora Amalia cries from the kitchen. Her voice echoes down the stairs and into the depths of the boat slip. “The clouds are collecting above the Giudecca, and that means we’ll have rain today for certain.”

  I thank her as I push the artist’s gondola out of the gates and moor it to Trevisan’s canal-side dock so I have enough light to work. If there is to be rain later, I’d better make as much progress as I can in polishing the wood on the foredeck and the metal prow. By candlelight the night before, I mixed up an old familiar concoction that I feel sure will remove the grime and oxidation on the metal fittings. I get to work and soon find myself engrossed.

  Every time a gondola makes a turn into the canal outside Trevisan’s studio, my heart leaps, then falls when I realize that I do not recognize the gondola. In my heart, I know I am waiting for the girl to reappear.

  Chapter 21

  My room in the boardinghouse is little more than a monk’s cell, four sparse stucco walls with a barred window framing a swath of coral clouds. The bed frame is fashioned of raw pine planks, on top of which sits a straw-filled mattress pressed hard from years of use. A table and chair stand against the far wall. My sole possessions in life—a straight razor and a comb I purchased after working for a few weeks in the traghetto—lie on the table. One leg stands shorter than the others, and the table wobbles when I place my implements on it.

  The only thing my housemates have in common is poverty. Every last one of them is a poor wretch with no home and no hope. One man, Stefano, tells me that he is a tailor but has few clients, perhaps as a result of the sad expression seemingly frozen on his face. He is a droopy-eyed dog of a man, permanently cast into melancholy. Another fellow introduces himself as Bardo, and I am told he spends his days begging in the streets of Dorsoduro. Others have physical woes on top of their economic ones. Signor Paduca, a ham seller, suffers from severe stomach ulcers that keep him from regular work, and I have witnessed him vomit into the canal on two occasions. Another man, whose dialect I cannot place, suffers from an appalling itch, his skin raw and scaly. A particularly poor soul, Michele, is afflicted with a condition so painful that he defecates loudly on his chamber pot, alternately cursing and calling out the names of a litany of saints.

  From the front door of the boardinghouse, we enter a shadowy common room with a few pieces of rickety furniture clustered around the hearth. Signora Monti, a sour-faced woman in a shapeless dress, presides over this space. From her post behind a bar in the back of the room she doles out watered-down beer and stale bread to a steady crowd of unfortunate souls who spend part of their day in this room. Whether I want to hear it or not, my new housemates regale me with their stories as I take my breakfast. Two of the men seem permanent fixtures at Signora Monti’s bar, as immovable as the table in the center of the room. They play dice games and solve all the affairs of the Venetian state. I am thankful that my room stands on the third floor, which affords some fresh air and light from the small window.

  As I lay on my mattress at night, I am aware of something crawling beneath me. Insects in the mattress are unavoidable of course, and apart from tolerating this minor inconvenience, I resolve to distance myself as much as possible from the boardinghouse. I return there late at night after closing up Trevisan’s boat slip. By dawn, I am already walking through the fog to the artist’s house as my housemates sleep, my breath visible in the damp air. I stop taking my breakfast in the common room, preferring to wait for the hearty lunch that Signora Amalia will have prepared for me at midday in Trevisan’s kitchen. I will not let the fate of the men in the boardinghouse become my own. I throw myself into my new role, ferrying the artist to his many appointments, taking responsibility for caring for the boat slip and the gondola. I feel it is my duty, my calling.

  My destiny.

  “YOU WORKED UP QUITE an appetite cleaning that boat,” says Signora Amalia. She stands at the chopping table in the center of the kitchen, hacking lamb feet into chunks with an impressive-looking blade. Blood streaks the front of her apron.

  At a small wooden table in the corner of the kitchen, I devour a bowl of fish soup. I shovel mouthfuls of broth, cabbage, and fish meat into my mouth. My mind is elsewhere. In fact, the only place my mind has been for days is on the mysterious beauty from the painting, the one whom I saw emerge in person from my own master’s house. She is real, flesh and blood, not just a figment of Master Trevisan’s imagination. I have trouble focusing on the details of my daily life—working, eating, sleeping. My mind struggles to remember every detail of her face: her eyes, her nose, the curve of her lips.

  “Thank you for the soup,” I say, finally snapping out of my dream-state to pick a thin sliver of fish bone from the stew and place it on the table. “Fantastic, as usual.” I smile gratefully at Trevisan’s maid. Earlier, a client’s boatman arrived to fetch Trevisan for a private party, so I am free for the evening. I enjoy a few moments to savor the meal and the warm fire in the hearth.

  Signora Amalia wipes her hands on her apron, then removes it and hangs it on the back of a side door. “I’m off to my chores in the bed chambers. Rinse out your bowl and leave it on the table for me, caro.” She gestures to the large basin where she pours the buckets of water she collects each morning from the communal well in the nearby square. She exits the kitchen through a narrow door on the opposite side of the room.

  I run my hand over the knots and cracks of the tabletop. Suddenly, a noise catches my attention. I hear the door to Trevisan’s studio close; his young apprentice, Biondino, is finishing work for the day. The house falls silent. I rise, inexplicably drawn toward the door that leads from the kitchen to the artist’s studio. At the threshold, I pause and put my ear to the door. All is quiet except for Signora Amalia’s humming on one of the upper floors. I crack open the door to the artist’s studio and peer inside.

  The soft light of dusk filters through the leaded diamonds of the canal-side windows. One of the window panels is cranked open, ventilating the strong smells of the studio and letting the sounds and dank odors of the canal enter Trevisan’s workspace. I drink in the sights that so impressed me on my first visit to the artist’s studio: the carpets, the mantelpiece, the paintings hanging floor to ceiling, the candelabra, the easels. Several large pictures are propped along the walls. Two of them are portraits, a man and a woman in left and right profiles; they look like they have been made to hang together. The paint is still moist and glistens in the light filtering into the giant room.

  All the while that I take in the sights and sounds of the studio, I feel compelled to look at Trevisan’s easel. If discovered, I will have little excuse for being in his studio. My heart begins to pound, but I cannot stop myself. Driven by an irresistible force, I tiptoe across the wide floor planks and approach the picture. Carefully, with a thumb and forefinger, I lift the corner of the velvet drape that covers the painting.

  My heart leaps—the girl from the boat. There is the face again, the face that obsesses my mind and fills my body with tingling. I drink in the flush of her cheeks, the delicate shape of her chin. Trevisan has begun to sketch out the background now, and I can make out leaded windows in the back, as if she is seated in some kind of interior space similar to the artist’s studio. I recognize that the artist has begun to replicate in paint the velvet-upholstered divan in the corner, with its fine, cloth-covered buttons and trim. He has even captured the way that the light streaming through the leaded glass panes makes soft shadows on the cushions. The rest of the painting remains vague. Only the face has been carefully conceived. I feel compelled to reach out and touch her cheek, but as I bring my hand to the canvas, I stop myself, not wanting to leave a trace of my visit.

  The sound of a male voice makes me jump. “Come, let me show you the progress made so far on the portrait
s of you and your wife. I think you’ll be very pleased, missier, with Master Trevisan’s work.” I recognize the voice of Trevisan’s journeyman Valentin coming from down the hall. I let the drape fall back into place, then scamper out of Trevisan’s studio and back into the safety of the kitchen as quickly and quietly as possible. My heart is thundering in my chest.

  I hear Valentin and another man enter the studio from a hallway that leads to the studio from the land-side entry of Trevisan’s house. The two men seem unaware of the soft latching of the kitchen door as it closes.

  IN MY NEW POSITION as Trevisan’s gondolier de xasada, no two days are the same. The artist’s home is a beehive of activity. From dawn until dusk, a stream of personal messengers delivers invitations to parties, balls, galas, and festivals. The incessantly ringing bells and loud rapping at the canal-side and land-side doors are enough to drive Signora Amalia into a state of exasperation. Private boatmen drop off contracts, supplies, and their own masters, who have commissioned the artist to paint them. I begin to recognize the subjects of Trevisan’s portraits among the patricians and dignitaries who alight from their expensive boats. I make the acquaintance of their boatmen, who wait at Trevisan’s studio-side dock while their masters sit for the esteemed artist to capture their likeness in paint.

  While Trevisan is working in his studio, usually in the mornings, the artist charges me to ferry Signora Amalia to the market for her daily shopping. I wait for her at the quayside, enjoying the bustle of the market, the artfully arranged pyramids of pears, oranges, and figs. I come to recognize the faces of individuals in the neighborhood: an attractive housewife, a rotund fruit and vegetable seller, a vendor of fuzzy-headed chickens in crates, a beggar, a man with a stump instead of an arm. Some days, Signora Amalia delegates the entire task of marketing to me, dispatching me with a stack of empty baskets for bread, carrots, and turnips for her stew, or for a sack full of rice. I relish the chance to climb out of the gondola and take in the sights, sounds, and smells of the market, which make me nostalgic for my sister’s cooking.

  After a short time, I have become so adept at launching and docking Trevisan’s gondola that opening and closing the great iron gates of the boat slip is second nature. Some days, the errands and appointments are so closely spaced that it isn’t worth storing the boat in the slip at all, and I dock the boat in the sunlight before Trevisan’s studio door. While waiting for my master, I take advantage of the light to brush a coat of varnish on the boat’s decks, to polish the fórcola with oil, and to beat the seats with a rag, sending puffs of dust rising into the air. At dusk, if the artist is not attending a party, concert, or other gala, I take time to dismantle all the trappings on the gondola and carefully store them in wooden chests lining the boathouse wall, a process my grandfather used to call “putting the boat to sleep.”

  Trevisan pays my salary every Saturday. The sum would be considered a pittance compared to what some boatmen earn, but in truth, I have not yet found any reason to spend anything beyond my boardinghouse rent. The artist is more than generous with meals, prompting Signora Amalia to prepare enough food for me as well as his own workshop assistants. With a roof over my head, my stomach full, and my days filled with work, I want for nothing. My little salary, paid in heavy coins, collects in a burlap bag that I store in the rear of a shelf in the boathouse.

  The artist’s time is filled with a host of professional and social obligations that take us across the city. Within the first three weeks, I judge that I have ferried the artist to several dozen of the city’s most elegant residences, either for an afternoon appointment with a patron or an evening celebration. Each time I moor Trevisan’s gondola at one of the canal-side entrances of one of the city’s great palaces, servants appear as if out of thin air to greet the artist, catering to his every need. A flutter of domestic servants rush to help him alight from the boat, take his cape, and offer him food and drink as if he were the Doge himself. Trevisan views all of his appointments as opportunities to gain new patrons and cultivate existing ones. The artist makes no distinction between his business and social engagements. The man and his work are one in the same.

  Trevisan never emerges from his home without being dressed in the most luxurious fabrics and colors—burgundy velvet breeches, a waistcoat with puffy sleeves lined in golden silk, matching stockings and meticulously polished shoes. I have never seen him wear the same thing twice, and I come to realize that Signora Baldi, the proprietor of the costume-rental shop, regularly refreshes Trevisan’s wardrobe. At first glance, it is hard to believe that Trevisan is not officially part of the patrician ranks. He engages in what is, after all, manual labor, little different from how any Venetian glassblower, ironsmith, carver, or other artisan spends his day. The time and effort Trevisan spends on his appearance helps raise his social status to the point where the artist is considered an equal among his elite Venetian clientele.

  I wait for hours for Master Trevisan outside the Scuola Grande. Because of the boatmen who like to chat while we wait for our masters, I have learned that Trevisan is a devoted patron of the institution’s charitable activities. The artist has contributed toward founding a hospital for the poor, to dowering painters’ daughters, and to supporting boardinghouses for the homeless, including, I discover, the one where I myself am lodged amongst a crowd of poor souls. Some years ago, I learn, the scuola engaged Trevisan to paint a series of wall paintings for its chapter room. I have not been invited inside the building, so I have no idea what it entails, but I imagine that it must be an impressive project based on the number of supplies I ferry to the site and on how much time the artist’s assistants spend there. Often I ferry Valentin, Trevisan’s highest-ranking journeyman, to the scuola, and when I pick him up hours later, his hands and smock are covered in plaster dust and splatters of paint. At the end of each day that Valentin spends there, I ferry Trevisan himself to the scuola to inspect the work.

  As I ferry the artist and his assistants around the city, my eyes scan the landscape. Subconsciously, I am hoping to catch a glimpse of the girl from the painting. She is clearly a patrician, and if I linger at the city’s great homes with the artist long enough, I am bound to see her again. I want to know her name, where she lives, what she eats for breakfast, what the back of her neck smells like, how her hair would feel against my cheek.

  Most of the time, my mind flickers with these fantasies of the dark-haired girl, but during my periods of idle time at Trevisan’s house, I begin to formulate another dream: restoring the old boat—most likely crafted by the hands of my own grandfather—that now lies neglected in Trevisan’s boathouse. Restlessness rises inside me, an inner urgency that will not be quelled.

  Chapter 22

  I struggle to build up the nerve to broach the subject of the old gondola with Master Trevisan. The artist is busy, wrapped up in his commissions, in his social engagements, and in managing his workshop. Clearly he does not care enough about that old boat or he would have already taken it himself to any one of the city’s four dozen squeri and paid a squerariolo to have it repaired. But when I regard the dilapidated gondola, my mind’s eye sees what it could be: a boat worthy of any craft on any canal today, a fine antique, a beauty. As I carry out my chores around the artist’s boat slip and dock, I keep the old Vianello gondola ever in the corner of my eye. I imagine myself removing the cover, flipping it over, and repairing the ribs. In my mind, I reform the prow, sand the decks, refine its decorations, scrape and varnish the hull—tasks I carried out every day of my life up until the calamitous day of the fire in my father’s boatyard. I utter a deep sigh.

  Finally, one moment as I wring out a rag in the canal waters, I feel myself inexorably drawn to the gondola, as if it were calling to me. I approach its familiar curvilinear form outlined by the drape of its canvas cover. Carefully, I push back the dusty cloth, just for a look. I run my palms along the hull, feeling a rush of warmth, the same feeling one gets when caressing a dog or emb
racing a friend. The canvas cover slips off the boat hull, falling into a heap on the cold stones.

  Flipping a gondola over on trestles normally necessitates the strength of at least two men. The boat stretches the length of some five men laid head to toe and can weigh equally as much. But on this day, to my surprise, the energy coursing through my body gives me the force to complete this task on my own. I corral my strength into propping the boat into a tilt, then awkwardly I flip it right-side-up on top of the wooden trestles. It is the first time that I have had the chance to examine the interior of the old boat. The seat upholstery, which once comfortably seated two passengers, is ripped, its stuffing rotted, no more than a rat’s nest. The boards of the aft deck are split open; the boat has been involved in a significant crash. A gaping hole mars the hull, its boards splintered up into the boat itself. I open the aft deck to find a few stiff rags and an empty green-glass wine bottle. Two large spiders scuttle out, and I recoil.

  The ferro that adorns the gondola’s prow is measurably smaller than the ones being made now. I think of the hulking iron forks that Annalisa’s father turns out, as much a measure of the man’s bravado as of current taste in gondola ornamentation. This old one is still heavy, though, its short prongs decorated with delicate swirls and swags incised into the metal. Although this old boat was made before the era when the Doge began handing down decrees against ostentatious decoration on gondolas, I judge that this understated prow could pass muster against any sumptuary law currently in force. I admire the serpentine shape of the iron fork as I run my fingers over its cool, pitted surface.