Read Online The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Berendt
Ads: Link
forty percent less than they do.”
And not only at restaurants, apparently. It would be worth my while, Rose pointed out, to make myself known to various shopkeepers, especially the fruit-and-vegetable vendors. “You’re at their mercy,” she said. “ They select the tomatoes or whatever for you. There’s no self-service. And if they know you—and like you—they won’t slip anything damaged or overripe into your bag.
“And you should remember: Everything is negotiable in Venice. I mean everything: prices, rents, doctors’ fees, lawyers’ fees, taxes, fines, even jail terms. Everything! You should even get to know a taxi driver, too, because otherwise the rates can be horribly expensive. That white water taxi parked over there belongs to my pet driver, Pino Panatta, who’s very nice. The taxi is always immaculate, and he’s terribly convenient, because he lives on the other side of the canal, just above the Communists.”
Having shown me all there was to see, Rose invited me to join her and Peter upstairs for a drink. I accepted, and as I turned away from the window, I asked why, in addition to having iron bars, the windows had been fitted with wide-mesh wire screens. The screens would keep bees and butterflies out, I said, but mosquitoes and gnats could fly right through.
“Oh, the screens!” she said as we left the apartment. “They’re not for mosquitoes. They’re for . . . i ratti!” Never had I heard the nearness of rats alluded to in such a lighthearted way. Rose’s laughter echoed in the double-height entrance hall as she led the way up a long, broad flight of stone steps.
THE SPACIOUS, HIGH-CEILINGED CENTRAL HALL, or portego, served as the Lauritzens’ living room. At one end, a bay of tall, arched windows opened through French doors onto a balcony that overlooked the same stretch of Misericordia Canal I could see from water level two floors below. A clear northern light poured into the room, setting the creamy yellow walls aglow. Doors led to rooms on either side of the living room in the classic symmetrical layout of Venetian palaces, as described in Peter Lauritzen’s book The Palaces of Venice.
Lauritzen himself emerged from his study issuing hearty greetings and carrying a bottle of chilled prosecco, the sparkling white wine of the Veneto region. He was wearing a quilted black velvet smoking jacket over a white shirt and patterned tie, and his hair was combed straight back. A neatly trimmed mustache and Vandyke beard framed his words, which, although he was from the American Midwest, he spoke in a crisp, headmaster’s English accent. His manner was, if anything, even more spirited than his wife’s.
“Well!” he said. “You’ve certainly chosen a dramatic moment to arrive in Venice!”
“Pure coincidence,” I said. “What have you been hearing about the Fenice?”
“The usual rumors,” he said. “The most common, as always, involve the Mafia.” He handed me a glass of prosecco. “But no matter what the investigation turns up, the general expectation is that we’ll never really know what happened. Nor, finally, does it matter that much. What does matter is the tragedy of losing the Fenice. And I should think the key question would be ‘Will it ever be rebuilt? ’ rather than ‘Who did it?’ Now, that may surprise you, because of all the talk about rebuilding it. In Venice, if you want to fix a crack in a wall, you must get twenty-seven signatures from twenty-four offices, and then it takes six years to fill the crack. I’m not exaggerating. How can anyone build an opera house with that sort of foolishness going on? No, no, Venice’s real Achilles’ heel is not fire and it’s not high water. It’s bureaucracy! I’ll grant you, bureaucracy has prevented a lot of disasters from happening in Venice, like the scheme to demolish all the buildings along the Grand Canal near Piazza San Marco
And not only at restaurants, apparently. It would be worth my while, Rose pointed out, to make myself known to various shopkeepers, especially the fruit-and-vegetable vendors. “You’re at their mercy,” she said. “ They select the tomatoes or whatever for you. There’s no self-service. And if they know you—and like you—they won’t slip anything damaged or overripe into your bag.
“And you should remember: Everything is negotiable in Venice. I mean everything: prices, rents, doctors’ fees, lawyers’ fees, taxes, fines, even jail terms. Everything! You should even get to know a taxi driver, too, because otherwise the rates can be horribly expensive. That white water taxi parked over there belongs to my pet driver, Pino Panatta, who’s very nice. The taxi is always immaculate, and he’s terribly convenient, because he lives on the other side of the canal, just above the Communists.”
Having shown me all there was to see, Rose invited me to join her and Peter upstairs for a drink. I accepted, and as I turned away from the window, I asked why, in addition to having iron bars, the windows had been fitted with wide-mesh wire screens. The screens would keep bees and butterflies out, I said, but mosquitoes and gnats could fly right through.
“Oh, the screens!” she said as we left the apartment. “They’re not for mosquitoes. They’re for . . . i ratti!” Never had I heard the nearness of rats alluded to in such a lighthearted way. Rose’s laughter echoed in the double-height entrance hall as she led the way up a long, broad flight of stone steps.
THE SPACIOUS, HIGH-CEILINGED CENTRAL HALL, or portego, served as the Lauritzens’ living room. At one end, a bay of tall, arched windows opened through French doors onto a balcony that overlooked the same stretch of Misericordia Canal I could see from water level two floors below. A clear northern light poured into the room, setting the creamy yellow walls aglow. Doors led to rooms on either side of the living room in the classic symmetrical layout of Venetian palaces, as described in Peter Lauritzen’s book The Palaces of Venice.
Lauritzen himself emerged from his study issuing hearty greetings and carrying a bottle of chilled prosecco, the sparkling white wine of the Veneto region. He was wearing a quilted black velvet smoking jacket over a white shirt and patterned tie, and his hair was combed straight back. A neatly trimmed mustache and Vandyke beard framed his words, which, although he was from the American Midwest, he spoke in a crisp, headmaster’s English accent. His manner was, if anything, even more spirited than his wife’s.
“Well!” he said. “You’ve certainly chosen a dramatic moment to arrive in Venice!”
“Pure coincidence,” I said. “What have you been hearing about the Fenice?”
“The usual rumors,” he said. “The most common, as always, involve the Mafia.” He handed me a glass of prosecco. “But no matter what the investigation turns up, the general expectation is that we’ll never really know what happened. Nor, finally, does it matter that much. What does matter is the tragedy of losing the Fenice. And I should think the key question would be ‘Will it ever be rebuilt? ’ rather than ‘Who did it?’ Now, that may surprise you, because of all the talk about rebuilding it. In Venice, if you want to fix a crack in a wall, you must get twenty-seven signatures from twenty-four offices, and then it takes six years to fill the crack. I’m not exaggerating. How can anyone build an opera house with that sort of foolishness going on? No, no, Venice’s real Achilles’ heel is not fire and it’s not high water. It’s bureaucracy! I’ll grant you, bureaucracy has prevented a lot of disasters from happening in Venice, like the scheme to demolish all the buildings along the Grand Canal near Piazza San Marco
Similar Books
