Provoked in Venice: The Rider Quintet, vol. 3

Venice Less and Less

VENICE LESS AND LESS The prison movieyourson, stricken with homesickness for his native city and language, was dying to see en Inglese never arrived at the theater,andyou stoodin the box office staring at the byzantine schedules to secure the other possible days and times of day other American and English films would be shown in original language, joined by two equally desperate teenagers and one glamorous black-haired woman in a blacksilk dress and heels who exclaimed she was also "dying "to see it, consoled herself with ("impossibletoget!") ticketsfor the concertat 8, and now had to decide "howto kill the next threehours. " I'd rather watch kids eel fishing and diving into the lagoon than fight for tickets to hear a piece I've heard played with brio on vinyl and—unforgettably—on celluloid in Monuchkine's epic film where she choreographed Moliere's death scene to the Allegro as he took one step and then another up the red carpeted stairs, spitting blood in agonizing slow motion. But what about the spectacle itself, thepiazza in black and white, luminous, transparent, the imaginary chandelier of the sky, and then all around you on an earthly level, thefireflies,fireworks,and lanterns perched on the facades. 88 And the Tomahawks whistling toward Destination Bosnia, a day's ride from Venice. And why didyou abandon Torcello soquickly? From thereyou could have seen the marshlands nearthe mainland, the Lido. In passing . . . there wasn't time. Maybe there was something else you chose to visit over Torcello on your last day. A choice I regret, but won't lament. There isn't much to see, but after all, Venice was builtfrom the stones of Torcello. They poled barges almosttoo heavy to float through the marshand across the lagoon. And a local boysmuggled St. Mark's putrefyingflesh out of Byzantium by hiding it under a loadoffresh pork toget itpast the customs inspector. And now you can't escape the shadow of the Campanile named after him and, sequestered in the shadows, the five-headed shell of the Cathedral. Didyou go to theghetto? I knew you'd ask. I can hear you asking. Ijust asked ifyou went. I resented the idea of a guide. But the danger of defacement! They seemed to time the time when they would point to the gilded six-pointedstars. 89 So it wasn'ta rote recitation . . . I fought back tears. These visits to the old and abandoned synagogues set my thoughts on a downward course. I like that "downward course. "You think I don't weep . . . When I asked the guide if the much maligned, misunderstood and therefore almostJewish Tintoretto lived in the ghetto he barked out absolutely not while several blocks from the interior a sign for the Hotel Tintoretto reared up (while bells clanged antiphonally across the city) and I stopped in to ask the question: Did He live around here? "Oh yes, there's a plaque somewhere on the next street. . ." So: not strictly in the ghetto but more or less in the Jewish quarter. Because as the odd man out, whose work was sometimes applauded and sometimes reviled—criticized for haste. . . the loose white lines he drew to outlinefigures, to illuminatewhere there was no light in the dusky chapels fought like a demonfor commissionsand perfection to him was the opposite of, say Veronese's. . . . Only 25Jewish families remain in Venice proper; 50 if you count the outskirts. The families who escaped during the Holocaust never came back: they didn't want to live in a place where such things can happen . And yet that night along the canal I forgot about it all, even the lousy squid in its own ink you never tired of trying, thepolenta deserved to be called 90 —don't say it!— and I was swept away by the lights streaking the black water and the light wind lifting the sheets like sails in the rooms above the canal and I thought of Moroni's bronze horseman who lives outside the Peggy Guggenheim museum with an erection that will never die down, arms and legs outstretched in a wide V, riding on, however still he might appear to the naked eye—that registers only the husk, the shell, the semblance; the cellulite instead of the soul. Yet sometime in the eighteenth century theJews brokedown and hired a Christian sculptor to renew the temple. I can neither defend nor condemn, and since...