Botticelli Blue Skies: An American in Florence

21. The Fire, the Wedding, the Gondoliers

We are scheduled to meet at the museum, the Accademia—a huge, imposing structure guaranteed to be replete with treasures. But I can’t go in. Why would I (just now) want to enter a dark museum when all about me is the life of Venice, the crowds, the canals, the pigeons, the gleaming ceramic masks in the windows of the shops? Museums are an acquired taste. To step inside one, you must be willing to suspend the rhythm of travel, to interrupt the pace of adventure , to slow down to a crawl. You must be willing to walk solemnly and silently (whispering, if at all, as in a funeral home) along a directed pathway, be willing to pause and inspect (often without comprehension ) objects of art that are so famous you are shamed into appreciation . There is far too much to see at once. Everything on display is out of its original context—but still you feel the obligation to be awed, or, if not, to consider yourself ignorant and insensitive. Today I am not up to that challenge: I elect to forgo my prepaid ticket. I tell Joe I will meet him outside the museum in a couple of hours. The rain is coming down hard; I open my umbrella and merge with all the tourists who have opened theirs. In fact, an entire congregation of multicolored umbrellas is massed on the Rialto Bridge, where some84 21 The Fire, the Wedding, the Gondoliers thing is happening—perhaps something great. An emergency horn is blaring the Italian SOS—a bleating sound that could wake the dead. I hurry along behind the line of umbrella crowns moving up the stairs of the bridge and, peering between umbrella spokes, see a red fire boat (“Vigili del Fuoco” is written on the side) rushing along the Grand Canal to where a boat is noticeably on fire. The firemen—at least six of them— are dressed in red jackets and are poised for action on the speeding boat. Smoke is issuing skyward in a black plume from another boat some distance away. All the tourists are frozen on the bridge like a great clump of colored mushrooms. We begin to talk to one another as people do during emergencies (as neighbors in California do after an earthquake). Here we speak in a great variety of languages; everyone is asking, “What happened?”—some in German, others in French, Italian , Hebrew—other languages, also. No one knows what happened; we simply look outward to where the smoke is being damped down to a spiral of gray . . . and then it’s over. The fireboat circles around and comes back in our direction, the Botticelli Blue Skies 85 Fire on the Grand Canal smoke settles over the water like a low-lying rain cloud, and the day is saved. A great cheer goes up from the crowd on the bridge—a cheer to the brave firemen as their boat passes beneath us. As if this much real life has not been enough of a show, the crowd barely begins to move away from the edge of the bridge when a long black enamel gondola comes gliding toward us. A bride and groom sit in a carved and gilded throne-chair; flowers bedeck the gondola, and two handsome gondoliers stand on red velvet carpets, guiding their charges along what was a moment ago a river of fire but is now a river of love. The bride and groom turn from side to side, waving like royalty to the onlookers on the bridge and all along the Grand Canal. The bride’s veil blows in the wind, and her face gleams with raindrops. We all wave and cheer this wonderful tableau before us. There—going in one direction—are the courageous firemen, and there—sailing off in the other—are the beaming newlyweds. The tourists still massed on the bridge look around; we smile at one another. We Merrill Joan Gerber 86 Wedding gondola on the Grand Canal have somehow, in these few moments, become a family. Waving and murmuring good-byes, we slowly part from one another and go our separate ways. I am grieved to have to leave them. I wander the city in the rain, savoring my time alone till I’m to meet Joe at the Accademia. At a vendor’s stand, I examine figures of blown Venetian glass; for each of my...