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not possibly have been aware of my existence, but she departed from San Marco’s in a way that almost seemed intended to discourage pursuit. Moving more swiftly and adroitly than I could have done even if chased by a sbiro, she flickered through the crowd in the atrium and vanished from my sight. Marveling, I went all the long way around the basilica’s outside, then up and down all the arcades surrounding the vast piazza. Mystified, I several times crisscrossed the piazza itself, through clouds of pigeons—then the smaller piazzetta, from the bell tower down to the two pillars at the waterfront. Despairing, I returned to the great church and looked in every last chapel and the sanctuary and the baptistery. Desolated, I even went up the stairs to the loggia where the golden horses stand. At last, heartbroken, I went home.
    After a tormented night, I went again the next day to comb the church and its environs. I must have looked like a wandering soul seeking solace. And the woman might have been a wandering angel who had alighted only the once; she was not to be found. So I made my mournful way to the neighborhood of the boat people. The boys gave me a cheery salute, and Doris gave me a glance of disdain. When I responded with a forlorn sigh, Ubaldo was solicitous and asked what ailed me. I told him—I had lost my heart to a lady and then lost my lady—and all the children laughed, except Doris, who looked suddenly stricken.
    “You have largazze on your mind these days,” Ubaldo said. “Do you intend to be the cock of every hen in the world?”
    “This is a full-grown woman, not a girl,” I said. “And she is too sublime even to be thought of as …”
    “As a pota!” several of the boys chorused.
    “Anyway,” I said, in a bored drawl, “as regards the pota, all women are alike.” Man of the world, I had now seen a grand total of two females in the nude.
    “I do not know about that,” one boy said ruminatively. “I once heard a much-traveled mariner tell how to recognize a woman of the most utterly desirable bedworthiness.”
    “Tell us! Tell!” came the chorus.
    “When she stands upright, with her legs pressed together, there should be a little, a tiny little triangle of daylight between her thighs and her artichoke.”
    “Does your lady show daylight?” someone asked me.
    “I have seen her the once, and that was in church! Do you suppose she was undressed in church?”
    “Well, then, does Malgarita show daylight?”
    I said, and so did several other boys, “I did not think to look.”
    Malgarita giggled, and giggled again when her brother said, “You could not have seen, anyway. Her bottom hangs down too far behind, and her belly in front.”
    “Let us look at Doris!” someone shouted. “Olà, Doris! Stand with your legs together and raise your skirt.”
    “Ask a real woman!” Malgarita sneered. “That one would not know whether to lay eggs or give milk.”
    Instead of lashing back with some retort, as I would have expected of her, Doris sobbed and ran away.
    All the chaffering was amusing enough, and maybe even educational, but my concern was elsewhere. I said, “If I can find my lady again, and point her out to you fellows, perhaps you could manage to follow her better than I did, and tell me where she lives.”
    “No, grazie!” Ubaldo said firmly. “To molest a highborn lady is to gamble between the pillars.”
    Daniele snapped his fingers. “That reminds me. I heard that there is to be a frusta at the pillars this very afternoon. Some poor bastard who gambled and lost. Let us go and see it.”
    And so we did. A frusta is a public scourging and the pillars are those two I have mentioned, near the waterfront in Samarco’s piazzetta. One of the columns is dedicated to my namesake saint and the other to Venice’s earlier patron saint Teodoro, called Todaro here. All public punishments and executions of malefactors are carried out there—“between Marco and Todaro,” as we say.
    The