Wednesday, afternoon
“Ciao, ragazze,” Roberto circled their table with feline grace.
Why didn’t I leave before he got here? Anna wondered as Roberto kissed the cheek of each woman in turn. It would be easier not to see him, to be placid and untouched. But surely she could resist his allure by sticking close to Margo and Angela. When he came to Anna, he gazed into her eyes with fresh innocence, lips parted. She offered a frozen smile and pretended nothing had happened. She was good at that.
“Avete finito?” he asked them, his eyes lingering on Anna.
“Yes,” said Margo, springing up.
“Well then, andiamo,” Roberto told them. “It takes long to get to Torcello, and the fog might come later.”
“I forgot to ask you, Anna, if you got my message about the weather?” Margo said.
“I put my shawl in my tote bag. I could hardly read the writing of that odd desk clerk. You know, the one who wears the crooked wig.”
“Giuseppe never fails to make an attractive impression,” Roberto said.
“Do you know everyone here?” Anna asked him.
“I told you. Venice is a small town.” He glanced at their table. “Let me pay. Ecco Mario, per Lei.” Roberto’s light blue eyes appeared amused as he nodded to the nearby waiter and handed him a hundred-thousand-lire note, with its image of the artist Caravaggio.
“Molte grazie, Signor Cavallin.”
“My boat is beyond La Fenice, so follow me.” Roberto bounded across the piazza, then past a watery cul-de-sac of bobbing gondolas. A smell of the sea whirled around them, filling their lungs with distilled brine, as heady as the grape residue lining Nonno’s wine barrels, Anna thought. As a child, she would descend to the cellar sometimes, just to sniff them.
Roberto veered left near the Alitalia office and led them through a tangled course. Anna rubbed the back of her neck. Twisted lanes, jutting balconies, the outline of Roberto’s hips, elevated wooden walkways suspended over wet tumult, the bold blue and white stripes of his shirt, snatches of alleys, arched windows, the memory of kissing his lips, rioterra signs for streets reclaimed from the sea. They all became parts of a Byzantine puzzle.
At the end of a dank passageway, he opened an immense cream-colored metal door, revealing the Grand Canal like a monumental magic trick. But the palazzo and the water were real. La Vittoria was printed in large gold letters near the prow of a sleek black motorboat tied to one of the gaily painted poles dotting the canal. Victory, what a name, she thought, hardly surprising for an investment banker, a species not known for modesty. Anna climbed aboard after the other women, and joined them on the navy canvas bench cushions at the stern.
The motor purred as Roberto coaxed the boat from its slip. The harsh noonday sun exposed the caked and flaking faces of the nearby palazzos. Though their window eyes were blank, many were decorated with colorful, luxuriant drapes, like harlots’ false eyelashes, seductively winking at passersby.
The paint had been peeling badly on Anna’s home, too, and Jack had steadfastly refused to help repaint it. “You don’t understand,” he had said. “My hands are my livelihood, like a pianist’s. I can’t subject them to that kind of abuse. Can’t you do it?”
And so she did, pulling the brush across the dry wood year after year, occasional birdsong her only companion. The corner of her yard held a feeder and birdbath. In late winter, the cedar waxwings perched in the juniper, making their high-pitched calls; in the spring, robins and mockingbirds took up the song; in the fall, the migrants, like the chirping white-crowned sparrows, flew in from the far north of Alaska, each just an ounce of feathers on wings, using the stars—Orion and other constellations, rising and setting in a celestial rhythm in the turning sky—for their nighttime migrations. Anna sensed the threads connecting the world.
“I hope no one minds,” Roberto shouted to them as they overtook a lumbering vaporetto, “but I thought we would take a piccolo detour before we go to Torcello. It might be interesting for Anna Lucia to pass by Saint Geremia, where her namesake, Santa Lucia, is buried.”
“Oh, fer Chrissakes,” Margo blurted out.
“Please don’t do anything on my account,” Anna said.
“We just passed the Rialto Bridge,” Margo said against the hum of the engine. “Did you know, Anna and Angela, that Michelangelo and Andrea Palladio entered a competition to design it? Instead, a man named Antonio da Ponte won. How could you go wrong with that last name—Bridge? I wonder if he changed it for the competition.”
“Now, now, Margo. This is not Hollywood on the Adriatic, after all,” Roberto said with a proprietary air. “Do not get cynical.”
The Grand Canal was teeming with helter-skelter life. Boat wakes nudged La Vittoria as vaporettos, engorged with passengers like orcas with salmon, pulled away from their stops. Brave gondolas, some adorned with oriental carpets, darted in and out of the crushing traffic. “But the wonderful energy Venice had at that time eventually declined,” Margo went on, ignoring him. “New ocean trade routes meant less commerce, and by the seventeen hundreds, the wealthy families were borrowing money from the convents.”
“I can’t imagine nun bankers,” Anna said.
“That’s the first thing that Napoleon stopped—”
“Do not speak to me about the French!” Roberto snorted, and he jerked the throttle back. The engine hiccupped and died as he glared at Margo. “He did nothing—nothing for Venice. Stole our art treasures, oversaw architectural disasters, wiped out the lion sculptures on our buildings, terrorized the citizens . . . before bankrupting us and selling us to the Austrians.”
So much for European unification, Anna thought.
After a quiet minute, Margo said, “We’re at the School of the Dead.”
How fitting, Anna thought. No one seemed at all concerned that they were stalled and floating like a dead fish in front of the plaque for the Scuola dei Morti, with the sounds of claxons and boat motors besieging them. She imagined the next day’s headlines: “Venetian Financier and Three Americans Killed in Fiery Boat Accident.” To her astonishment, the other boats simply glided around them, as if following directions from an invisible choreographer.
“How the heck do the dead go to school?” Angela asked.
“This was a school for professional mourners at funerals, like a Greek chorus,” Roberto explained. “Venetians believe in doing things correctly.” He glanced at his watch. “We do not have time to stop, but you should return here, Anna. Lucia is in a lovely chapel, transported from the church demolished for the train station.”
“If we could sneak into Palazzo Labia, nearby, you’d see some real treasures, like the Tiepolo frescoes. I can’t believe Sergio inherited it,” Margo added.
“Too much for his own good,” Roberto said in a firm tone and restarted the engine.
Guiding the boat into a wide U-turn, he headed down the canal. “We will pass through Cannaregio now, near the Madonna dell’Orto Church, where Tintoretto is buried, then out to the lagoon and Torcello.”
Margo approached Roberto, putting her hand on his shoulder. “We’d like to go out on the prow, like Angela and I did last time, if it’s okay. Just don’t go crazy with the speed.”
“Not to worry. You know you can trust me.” He idled the boat in the middle of Rio di San Marcuola.
“For some things,” she winked.
“Remember, I can’t swim,” said Angela, squeezing Margo’s hand as they gingerly made their way forward.
“Pregnant women float better,” Margo said. “Anna, why don’t you come with us?”
A gold locket dangled from Angela’s neck, the filigree catching the sun’s rays. She probably has a picture of her husband in there, and a perfect spot for the baby, Anna thought, seized by yearning for a home and family. Would her turn never come?
“Two forward is the limit,” Roberto said. “Do not leave me all alone,” he said to Anna as they got under way again. “How about sitting in the first mate’s chair? The w
indshield will protect you from any gusts.”
She hesitated before saying, “Oh, all right” and moving up beside him.
Outside the old ghetto, as they headed toward a graceful arched bridge, Margo pointed and raised her voice. “Look. Let’s wave.”
Dudley and Pablo were strolling near a streetlamp, Dudley looking almost chic in a plaid beret. Margo and Anna waved. Angela held up a limp wrist. Roberto saluted. The duo stopped and waved back before continuing along.
“I know so few people here, it’s funny that we bump into two of them,” Anna said.
“In Venice, everyone walks, or takes public boats,” Roberto said. “They’re not hidden in their cars. Our highway is as wide as a hallway. You see every little thing.”
“How do you know Dudley?” Anna asked.
“Investments.”
“They seem an odd couple, Dudley and Pablo.”
“How you say, something about the uccelli, the birds? Ah, yes. Birds of a feather.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Right now they are in serious discussions about the shape of the doge’s cap, and Pablo is saying how it resembles the Inca emperor’s.” He laughed. “I am sure they and their culture council would like to bring back the past.”
“That sounds pretty extreme.”
“But very nice if you can be doge.”
As they cut into a rio and Roberto edged the boat past the corners of water-worn palazzos, it seemed impossible to Anna that in such tight quarters he avoided striking the algae-cloaked walls. He steered in small and constant movements, sensing each curve and what lay beyond. This city holds few secrets for him, Anna realized. He could navigate it with his eyes closed.
Stretching out her hand as they were crawling along a tiny canal, Margo grabbed a cherry tomato from a produce boat. She held her bounty in the air, displaying her hunting prowess to Angela’s applause, before popping it into her mouth.
“Non toccare niente, Margo,” Roberto yelled. “You might hurt yourself. And you didn’t pay.” He reached into his pocket and tossed a five-hundred-lire coin onto the barge deck before continuing through the maze of canals.
“Over there,” Roberto indicated a solitary pink house facing the open water, “they used to have great parties. It is a palazzo with a long history and a wonderful, secret garden. D’Annunzio and others visited. They say the Casino degli Spiriti was filled with ghosts.”
“You don’t believe that, do you, Roberto? I mean you work with math and projections and models. How do you prove a ghost?”
“I did not say that I believed. Yet I do not disbelieve, either. The funeral processions to San Michele sail right by almost every day. Back in the fifties, a prostitute was killed, cut into little pieces, put into a metal box, and sunk in the water near that palazzo. Years later, some boys hauled the box out, covered with crabs. They thought it a treasure chest and eagerly opened it.”
The images flooded Anna’s brain, and she covered her eyes with her hands.
“I see I upset you by that gruesome tale,” Roberto said, touching her arm. “I am sorry.”
They emerged into the sudden immensity of the lagoon, where the winds of the Laguna Morta blew in their faces. Stretching to the horizon, the water was olive silk. The reflections on its glimmering surface transformed the channel markers into coiling snakes, their mouths grasping the bottom of the lagoon. Anna pictured the antique Venetian maps she had seen in a store near San Fantin, the drawings in each corner of curly-headed gods with puffed cheeks personifying the four winds. Other ancient maps of varied provenance traced geographies of known worlds beyond Venice, eventually meeting the terra incognita of each age, where rationality gave way to imagination and terror.
Roberto shifted and brought the boat to a standstill, its engine barely puttering. He turned to Anna and said, “Come and let us see how you can steer, now that we have reached the other side.”
She rose slowly, curious as to how the boat would perform for her.
Roberto peered at her foot. “Are you all right?”
“Only being careful. I almost fell on my walk last night.”
“Sitting is best, then.”
“I haven’t done this since I was a kid, on my grandfather’s lap on his sailboat. We’re not on the Great South Bay, after all,” Anna said, recalling the Long Island shoreline. But it came close, with grassy little islands in the distance, heads barely poking above the level of the tide. What a contrast to the bay near her California home, ringed by hills, wind-whipped, beset by currents, and, even in summer, its bone-chilling water unswimmable. She hadn’t dared to sail there.
“If you need help, I’ll take over, just like your Nonno would have done.”
“You’re already using my words against me.” Anna gave him a shy smile. “As long as it’s daytime, I’m okay. We can go in any direction, hopefully not into a sandbar. The sea, after all, is freedom topped by danger.”
“Don’t dawdle. We’re getting hungry again up here,” Margo shouted from the prow.
Anna moved closer, and Roberto placed her hands on the shining mahogany wheel. “Look at that faro, that lighthouse ahead, and always aim toward it. Make sure you stay in between the bricole, the wooden channel markers.”
Anna could feel the warmth of his breath on her hair as he spoke.
“And this is to accelerate.” He took her right hand and tapped the throttle. “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll stand right behind your chair.”
Anna settled into the upholstered seat. “Buckle up,” she shouted as she threw the gears forward. The engine rumbled with low-pitched glee, and the boat slapped the frothy waves. Margo and Angela looked at each other, laughing. Wrapped in a cocoon of wind and noise, they clung to the ropes circling the bow.
Anna glanced over her shoulder. Venice was shrinking, as if it had been a mirage.
“Look.” Roberto leaned against Anna and pointed to haze shrouding the thin line separating sea from sky. “That horizon reminds me of going fishing as a boy. My mother would pack me a frittata. I would row my boat to one of the valli, the fishing grounds, where I would cast my net. The sea was thick with sardines back then. I would put my hand into the water and their shimmering bodies would touch my fingers before gliding past.”
He started to trace the widely cut armholes of Anna’s sleeveless blouse, making circle after languorous circle until Anna lost count. “When I could wait no longer, I would haul in my net and it would be alive with silver.” His hand audaciously wriggled its way inside her blouse. “Madonna, sei squisita,” he said in an undertone as he explored her hidden cleavage with a delicate touch. “You forgive me for last night?” he asked, and nuzzled her neck.
His sonorous voice, his hands, his warmth, this dream.
Anna murmured, “Sì.”
“I would place the sardines in a barrel of water. By the late afternoon, the fog had crept in, isolating me in a white world, like a dream world, really, so confusing. I imagined tall ghost ships, their decks empty, their crews gone forever. Or floating icebergs—at ten, my imagination was very strong. I heard the thundering of ferries and large boats, all magnified in the mist. Were they bearing down on me or sailing by? I could not tell. Sometimes their wakes almost capsized my little boat.”
He softly touched her shoulders.
“I never knew if the next moment would bring calamity or calm, danger or beauty. Then the fog would clear, and I would see the rural cabins with their tall fireplaces and thatched roofs, or the colorful island homes that we are passing now. I would always depend on the bricole to keep me from getting lost.”
“Do you think you can slow it down?” Margo screamed, hugging Angela, her hair flying. “We’re getting drenched! What are you two doing back there, anyway?”
“Talking about . . . Roberto’s . . . fishing exploits,” Anna managed to shout over the roar of the engine as she cut back the power. She licked salt spray from the corner of her mouth before turning her head toward the bright b
uildings, not realizing how close Roberto’s face was. Fearful of having no choice but to kiss him if they locked eyes, she averted her gaze and quickly resumed her steering.
“I can still return to those cabins and valli of my youth,” Roberto said. “I know all the reeds. The sea breeze that rustles them is mine. But I cannot go back to when I saw everything for the first time.”
In the rear-view mirror, she saw his luminous orbs veiled with aching. She didn’t know why and didn’t feel comfortable asking him. All she knew is that she had fallen for him, even though she had sworn she wouldn’t do exactly that. Afraid of where this would end, she realized that she had made it infuriatingly easy for him.
Roberto took the controls. They threaded their way through the sandbar-strewn approach to Torcello, and into an overgrown canal where several swans were paddling. He docked the boat to one side of an arched brick bridge with no railings, and they disem-barked onto a walkway.
“Torcello looks so lonely,” remarked Anna. She glimpsed pillars collapsed in tall grass, a few buildings dotting the green landscape, a campanile in the distance. “It’s nothing like I imagined, and hard to believe that a city was ever here.”
“Once Torcello had more than fifty churches,” Roberto said. “It was very beautiful. Like the rest of Venice, it rose from the sea, the swamp, and the mud. Those fishermen on the mainland who fled here came because of fear. Fear can make you do desperate things.”
Anna considered what she had done, and not done, out of fear. Her successes in scientific, male-dominated fields took talent and gumption. But in the tally of her life, fear had won—the years of childhood worries stoked by Nonno’s warnings, the years she’d stayed with Jack because she was too timid to leave—squeezing her into constricting circles, taking shallower breaths, until she was hardly moving at all, like the victim of an anaconda. The four days with Sergio in Milan had helped her break free: to feel again, to start divorce proceedings, to take this trip. She hoped the price would not be too high.
“What were they runnin’ from?” Angela asked.
“The killings, the sackings, Attila the Hun, waves of invasions starting back in the five hundreds,” Roberto said. “One night the Bishop of Altino saw a low-lying star over Torcello, and thought here they’d be safe from the barbarians, who had no concept of the tides and currents.”
Venetian Blood Page 16
