We waved and met up with them by the canal that ran in front of our place.
“Looks like we have an adjustment to our plans for the evening,” Sam said. “We just connected with a friend of Bruce’s, and we’ve been invited to take a picnic out on an evening boat ride.”
“Oh,” Sue said. I guessed she was calculating quickly how to change the planned evening’s meal into sufficient picnic food for the men to take with them.
“The boat ride isn’t only for us,” Bruce said. “You two are invited to come as well, if you would like.”
I’m sure my expression lit up. “Yes. Thanks for including us.”
“We’ll have to hurry to the grocery store to buy some food,” Sue said.
“Buy more food? You won’t have time,” Sam said. “We’re planning to meet Marcos at the dock in fifteen minutes.”
Sue looked panicked. “But we don’t have picnic food ready. We were planning on soup for tonight, and we can’t take that with us, so we’ll have to go to the store.”
“No.” Sam held up his hand before Sue went any further. “I’m sorry I didn’t make myself clear. Our host is providing the picnic. All we have to do is show up.”
Sue started to breathe normally again. I smiled as yet another gift of hospitality was presented unexpectedly to us.
With a quick chance to run up to the apartment and grab a sweater, we were back out the door. Sue, me, and seven bodyguards. Who needed a gondola when we had a private boat coming for us?
Our grand procession tromped to the Fondamenta Nuove, which was the same area where Sue and I had eaten at the waterfront restaurant our first afternoon here. We arrived a little early and waited at a small dock. Dozens of boats bobbed and scuttled their way across the lagoon. One of them, a long, open-seated boat with an elevated prow, pulled into the dock. The young man steering the boat into the narrow parking spot greeted Bruce with loud shouts. Bruce grinned back at his enthusiastic friend.
As soon as Bruce was on board, the young man embraced him soundly, and the two of them shared a rousing reunion. Bruce introduced all of us to Marcos. Greeting us by looking us each in the eye, Marcos shook hands all around.
The seating was tight for the nine of us. Sue and I were barely in our spots when Marcos backed up the boat and motored out onto the chopped-up water. It felt like we were anchovies being thrown into a mixed salad. All of the men leaned back, smiling and taking in the salt spray on their faces, as if they had waited a long time for this experience. Sue and I sat close in our new skirts, feeling the goose bumps race up and down our bare legs.
Sue’s hair began to dance. She tried to pull it back, tie it up, tame it in any way she could, but it turned into a fiery octopus sitting on her head, taking over. She gave up trying to control the friendly monster and laughed as the sea spray misted her face.
Bruce stood next to Marcos at the helm. The two shouted their conversation. It was in English, and I picked up enough to understand that Marcos’s father owned a jewelry store in Venice. They were talking about a mutual friend, Todd, who lived in California. I’d done plenty of pondering lately on how large the world was outside my small life, yet here was a smallness. A small circle formed by a man from South Africa who knew a young man from Venice because they both knew someone from California. That sort of close-knit circle was only possible to create inside the borders of a large life.
Sam’s earlier comment, when he explained that the picnic had been provided for us this evening, came back to me. He had said, “All we have to do is show up.”
I hoped I could remember that thought later because I wanted to write it down and think some more about it. All I had to do was show up.
When I was twenty, I led a large life. I was in Venice now because of a friendship formed when my life was wide open to endless possibilities. After so many years of smallness, now I wanted to see the borders of my life expand once again, as they had so many years ago.
We cruised past a small boat with two young boys who weren’t happy about the wake Marcos’s boat caused. I watched them over my shoulder, and they made sure I saw their lewd gesture.
The boat continued around the perimeter of the main island. To our left, land stretched for as far as I could see.
“Lido,” Marcos shouted to Sue and me, pointing to the island. “It’s very long and narrow. This island protects the lagoon from being swallowed by the sea. Venezia, she is married to the sea, you know. They have lived in harmony for fifteen hundred years. That is a good marriage.”
I smiled to myself at Marcos’s comment. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought of Venezia as a woman.
She was stunning that evening. The sun’s golden light across the waters reflected Venezia’s best attributes and dimmed her flaws.
“Are you saying people have lived here since the fifth century?” Sue shouted into the wind so Marcos could hear.
“Si. When Attila the Hun invaded Northern Italy, people from the mainland came to these islands. This is a good place for defense. For more than twelve hundred years the Venetians lived here undefeated as an independent republic.”
“Then what happened?” Sue asked.
“Napoleon. Venezia surrendered to Napoleon in the late 1700s. She had no choice. Fifty years after that Venezia gave herself to Italy for protection, and here we are. Still she remains the devoted partner of the sea. And still we are her devoted children, floating in this lagoon on petrified logs.”
“I read something about the petrified logs that hold up parts of the island,” Sue said. “Isn’t there a church built on a million logs cut on the mainland and sunk into the lagoon?”
Marcos didn’t hear Sue’s question because he was busy at the moment, maneuvering our low-riding vessel into an expanse of water that was thick with other boats. We must have been heading west because the setting sun was now in front of us.
To the left, across the water, another island lay close at hand. The domed church and tall tower that dominated the island were constructed with the same red-tile roofs and the same wheat-colored walls as many of the buildings in the neighborhood we were staying in. But these structures, set against the primrose sky, seemed to soak in the evening sun, warming by degrees as the sun slipped lower. It was the kind of scene often shown in movies or painted in oils. It made me feel as if I had seen it before.
On the right side of the boat, San Marco Square came into view, resplendent in the golden light. I held my breath. She was so beautiful.
The pale stone of the Doge’s Palace along the waterfront took on the rosy glow of a young woman’s complexion. The symmetrical, arched windows of the long palace appeared to gaze at their reflection in the dimming waters. At the entrance to San Marco Square, a row of ebony gondolas lined up between tall poles, looking like eager piggies nudging their way closer at dinnertime.
This was the image of Venice that graced tour books and calendars. Piazza San Marco. This was the face of Venezia, and she was magnificent. Still proud. Still unspeakably beautiful after all these years.
Thirteen
“Look at that! Just look at that!” Sue said, expressing the admiration I was feeling as we gazed upon Piazza San Marco at sunset. “I have to start taking pictures.” She reached into her shoulder bag for her camera while I stared, trying to sear the image on my memory.
I doubted any camera in the world could capture the way the evening light shrouded Venezia’s face in beguiling mystery.
“That must be the bell tower.” Sue pointed her camera at a terra-cotta-colored structure that rose from the open square on our right. The narrow building was topped with what looked like a triangular-shaped hat that gave it the appearance of being ready to make a rocket shot to the moon.
“I read about the bell tower in the tour book,” Sue said. “It collapsed a hundred years ago, but they rebuilt it.”
From the boat we could just catch a side view of the entrance to San Marco Basilica. The great rounded domes of the eight-hundred-year-old
church caught the evening light like a cluster of low, rising moons.
Sam leaned over and pointed out the partial view of the basilica to Sue and me. “San Marco is the best example of Byzantine architecture you’ll see this side of Istanbul. Are you planning to take a tour?”
“Definitely!” Sue answered for both of us.
“What church is that?” I pointed to a huge, white-domed church rising from a peninsula to the left at the opening of the Grand Canal.
Sam didn’t know, so he called on Marcos to fill us in. We were motoring slowly in this high-traffic area, which made it easier to hear Marcos and easier for Sue to snap dozens of pictures.
“La Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute,” Marcos said, the words rolling off his tongue. “This one is only four hundred years old. It was built in thanks to God after the plague came on Venezia. Not so many of the Venetians died as in other parts of Europe. To offer thanks to God for so many survivors, they built this church.”
“Is it the church that’s built on a million petrified logs?” Sue asked.
Marcos looked at Sue with admiration. “Si. Very good. Yes, a million. Maybe a million and one. They say the builder drank too much vino, and he lost count. Could be a million and two.”
I was the first to smile at Marcos in acknowledgement of his joke. He turned to me with a chin-up sort of grin and gave me an appreciative wink. I smiled, thinking how adept every Venetian man was at flirting, regardless of the woman’s age who received the benefit of his charms.
Without warning, a pervasive sadness came over me. The sharp sting of this melancholy was familiar, but I hadn’t felt its forceful pull in a long time. Yet it didn’t matter that I had put those emotions far away from me. The feelings were elemental. The longings were easily recognizable.
I wanted to be loved. I wanted to be married. I wanted to be married to a man who loved me and wouldn’t leave me.
There, I admitted it. In such a place as this on such a night as this, I wish I didn’t have to be alone. I wish I weren’t so alone. I wish my life hadn’t gone the way it did.
The tears came before I could stop them.
Turning my head as far away from the others as I could, I pretended to carefully examine the water and the distant island. I actually was deep inside myself, standing on the edge of an emotional precipice. These feelings nearly had overpowered me more than once in the past. I knew what it meant to look down into such darkness.
An evening breeze skimmed across the lagoon and dried my tears as quickly as I shed them. For a few moments I let myself wish that a wonderful man would fall from the sky into my life. I wished he would find me irresistible, sweep me up in his arms, and love me forever.
I blinked back the self-pity tears and tried to remember what I had taken away from those counseling sessions so long ago. The counselor had given me a potent weapon to use in moments like this: thankfulness, a grateful spirit.
I tried to think of one thing for which I was thankful. I knew that, with a handful of darts forged from a spirit of appreciation, I could take down dragons of doubt and vultures of self-pity.
It took a moment before I was composed enough to pick up the first dart and throw it at the target of my deep longing.
“This,” I whispered. “All of this. I’m thankful for this—the travel, the experiences, the people.”
“Jenna, you okay?” Sue touched my arm.
I nodded and gave her a smile I almost meant.
She didn’t look convinced. What she did next was tender. However, I appreciate it more now than I did at the time. She moved closer to me on the seat. That’s all. She just snuggled closer. We already were sitting close, but she moved closer, like a pillar, sitting up straight and offering her steadiness, if I wanted to lean on her for a while.
Then she went on interacting with the others as if no one else needed to know that I was having a “moment,” as she called it when we talked about it later that night.
But there on the boat, she sat close, and I leaned into her just enough until the emotional flash of loneliness dissipated.
The boat entered the Grand Canal at a dawdling pace. None of the men seemed to have noticed my brief tears. Marcos turned over the steering of the boat to Bruce.
Motioning for several of the men to stand, Marcos lifted one of the seats and pulled out our picnic. We all assisted in passing around the bountiful supply of provolone cheese, thin-sliced ham, tiny sweet tomatoes, and huge green olives in a canning jar.
As we ate, Marcos, with lots of hand motions, launched into a personalized tour of all we floated past. He told us how Venezia had been a main center of trade between the East and the West. His favorite hero was Marco Polo, the invincible explorer who left Venezia at the age of seventeen.
“He was gone for twenty years. When he returned, he brought to his Venezia silks and spices from China. This made her the wealthiest city in Europe for hundreds of years.”
As Marcos went on, I found it difficult to discern what was fact and what was Marcos’s fiction. He seemed to enjoy putting his own spin on every story associated with the famous and infamous Venetians.
We heard about the notorious spy and statesman, Casanova; the brilliant composer, Vivaldi; and Tintoretto, the painter whom Marcos considered the most underappreciated artist of the Renaissance. Marcos even had a recommendation for where we could see the best collection of Tintoretto’s paintings.
“The Frari Church,” he said with an authoritative air. “Magnifico!”
“I need to write that down.” Sue pulled out her notebook. “We saw one of his painting at the Accademia. The painting showed some men stealing a man’s body. Do you remember that painting, Jenna?”
I did remember the painting. It seemed as if the grave robbers were about to run right off the picture.
Marcos once again was impressed with Sue’s familiarity with his beloved Venezia’s history. “Si, Tintoretto. Do you know whose body they were stealing?”
We shook our heads.
“I will give a hint. Whose bones are enshrined at Basilica di San Marco?
“The Apostle Mark,” Sam said.
“Si. Of course. San Marco. This is a famous story, in the Tintoretto painting, and it is true. Some Venetians, they sailed to Alexandria and stole San Marco from his grave. The men smuggled his remains out of Egypt in a barrel. Across the top of the barrel they put the word pork. You know why they do this?”
Without waiting for us to speculate, Marcos supplied the answer. “The Muslims in Alexandria would not touch pork. It is unclean to them. They would not touch the barrel. And then the men, they wrap the holy relic in the sail of their ship and return to Venezia. They present this great gift to the Doge, who is the ruler of all Venezia, and he built the church, the Basilica di San Marco to honor the relic.”
“Really?” Sue seemed to be trying to determine if Marcos was exaggerating. “You’re saying the actual bones of Mark, one of Jesus’ disciples, are buried inside that big church?”
“Si. Of course. This is why you see so many of the lions in Venezia. The lion with wings is the symbol for San Marco. For Saint Mark. This is all true, what I am telling you.”
Sue glanced at Sam, and Sam nodded at Sue. “According to tradition, yes, Mark’s remains are buried here.”
“You can also see a Tintoretto at San Giorgio Maggiore.” Marcos seemed to have no end to his knowledge—or at least his stories—about sites in Venice. “The Benedictine monks are there. They have been at this church for centuries.”
Fikret leaned forward and asked if the Benedictine monks still were active at San Giorgio Maggiore.
“Si. Some say the good lives of the monks are what has kept the … how do you say cattiveria? The bad, very bad, from destroying Venezia. Capisce?
“Yes,” Sam answered. “We know what you mean. The prayers of a few have often been known to spare the many from destruction.”
Fikret asked if the Benedictine monks held regular prayer times at the ch
urch and if the services were open to the public.
Marcos shrugged and looked chagrined that he was stumped by a question. He replied with a line of thought familiar to him. “San Benedicto was Italiano, you know.”
Fikret turned to the other men. “This is what I brought up at lunch today. The four rules of the Benedictine order: prayer, community, work, rest. Are these not the fundamentals by which each of us still structure our lives of ministry?”
An agreeable discussion followed as Marcos maneuvered the boat into the same docking area at Ca’d’Oro where Sue and I had disembarked from our first vaporetto ride Sunday morning. Only this time we had traveled up the Grand Canal from the opposite direction of the train station.
The dark, silky shroud of night was being pulled around the city. I felt as if now we had encircled the roundness of Mama Venezia and had seen a few more of her many moods. She was amazing. Unmovable. Resilient and determined, despite her age.
“This is the final story for you,” Marcos said after he eased his father’s boat into the narrow dock. “You see this building with all the decoration? This is the finest Gothic building in Venezia, the Ca’d’Oro. Gold is oro, si? This is the Gold House because the outside was once covered with so much gold. The gold is gone now. Who knows? Maybe the gold has washed with the rain back into the canal. Maybe it has gone into the air. Maybe all of us Venetians breathe this gold and drink of it a little every day for many years, and this is how we come to have our good looks.”
We all grinned, and a few of the men applauded Marcos for his final story. I found myself involuntarily drawing in a deep breath, as if some of those gilded flecks might find their way into me.
Our merry band said our good-byes with strong hugs and respectable kisses on the cheek for Sue and me. We headed down the dark alleyway and came out on the better-lit Strada Nuova. I had the feeling again that goodness and mercy were following us. I turned around once, quickly, as if I could catch them before they hid from view, but they were fast. Really fast. I just wanted to tell them I liked having them around, and I wanted them to stay close all the days of my life.