For It Was The Shop Of A Dry Cleanser And
The Blouse Belonged To Some Patron And Was Being Displayed As A
Sample Of The Work Done Inside; But Undoubtedly Such A Thing Never
Before Happened In Paris And Probably Never Will Happen Again.
In Venice not only the guides and the hotel clerks and porters but
even the simple gondolier has a secret understanding with all
branches of the retail trade.
You get into a long, snaky, black
gondola and fee the beggar who pushes you off, and all the other
beggars who have assisted in the pushing off or have merely
contributed to the success of the operation by being present, and
you tell your gondolier in your best Italian or your worst pidgin
English where you wish to go. It may be you are bound for the
Rialto; or for the Bridge of Sighs, which is chiefly distinguished
from all the other bridges by being the only covered one in the
lot; or for the house of the lady Desdemona. The lady Desdemona
never lived there or anywhere else, but the house where she would
have lived, had she lived, is on exhibition daily from nine to
five, admission one lira. Or perchance you want to visit one of
the ducal palaces that are so numerous in Venice. These palaces
are still tenanted by the descendants of the original proprietors;
one family has perhaps been living in one palace three or four
hundred years. But now the family inhabits the top floor, doing
light housekeeping up there, and the lower floor, where the art
treasures, the tapestries and the family relics are, is in charge
of a caretaker, who collects at the door and then leads you through.
Having given the boatman explicit directions you settle back in
your cushion seat to enjoy the trip. You marvel how he, standing
at the stern, with his single oar fitted into a shallow notch of
his steering post, propels the craft so swiftly and guides it so
surely by those short, twisting strokes of his. Really, you
reflect, it is rowing by shorthand. You are feasting your eyes
on the wonderful color effects and the groupings that so enthuse
the artist, and which he generally manages to botch and boggle
when he seeks to commit them to canvas; and betweenwhiles you are
wondering why all the despondent cats in Venice should have picked
out the Grand Canal as the most suitable place in which to commit
suicide, when - bump! - your gondola swings up against the landing
piles in front of a glass factory and the entire force of helpers
rush out and seize you by your arms - or by your legs, if handier
- and try to drag you inside, while the affable and accommodating
gondolier boosts you from behind. You fight them off, declaring
passionately that you are not in the market for colored glass at
this time. The hired hands protest; and the gondolier, cheated
out of his commission, sorrows greatly, but obeys your command to
move on. At least he pretends to obey it; but a minute later he
brings you up broadside at the water-level doors of a shop dealing
in antiques, known appropriately as antichitas, or at a mosaic
shop or a curio shop. If ever you do succeed in reaching your
destination it is by the exercise of much profanity and great
firmness of will.
The most insistent and pesky shopkeepers of all are those who hive
in the ground floors of the professedly converted palaces that
face on three sides of the Square of Saint Mark's. You dare not
hesitate for the smallest fractional part of a second in front of
a shop here. Lurking inside the open door is a husky puller-in;
and he dashes out and grabs hold of you and will not let go, begging
you in spaghettified English to come in and examine his unapproachable
assortment of bargains. You are not compelled to buy, he tells
you; he only wants you to gaze on his beautiful things. Believe
him not! Venture inside and decline to purchase and he will think
up new and subtle Italian forms of insult and insolence to visit
on you. They will have brass bands out for you if you invest and
brass knuckles if you do not.
There is but one way to escape from their everlasting persecutions,
and that is to flee to the center of the square and enjoy the
company of the pigeons and the photographers. They - the pigeons,
I mean - belong to the oldest family in Venice; their lineage is
of the purest and most undefiled. For upward of seven hundred
years the authorities of the city have been feeding and protecting
the pigeons, of which these countless blue-and-bronze flocks are
the direct descendants. They are true aristocrats; and, like true
aristocrats, they are content to live on the public funds and grow
fat and sassy thereon, paying nothing in return.
No; I take that part back - they do pay something in return; a
full measure. They pay by the beauty of their presence, and they
are surely very beautiful, with their dainty mincing pink feet and
the sheen on the proudly arched breast coverts of the cock birds;
and they pay by giving you their trust and their friendship. To
gobble the gifts of dried peas, which you buy in little cornucopias
from convenient venders for distribution among them, they come
wheeling in winged battalions, creaking and cooing, and alight on
your head and shoulders in that perfect confidence which so delights
humans when wild or half-wild creatures bestow it on us, though,
at every opportunity, we do our level best to destroy it by hunting
and harrying them to death.
At night, when the moon is up, is the time to visit this spot.
Standing here, with the looming pile of the Doge's Palace bulked
behind you, and the gorgeous but somewhat garish decorations of
the great cathedral softened and soothed into perfection of outline
and coloring by the half light, you can for the moment forget the
fallen state of Venice, and your imagination peoples the splendid
plaza for you with the ghosts of its dead and vanished greatnesses.
You conceive of the place as it must have looked in those old,
brave, wicked days, filled all with knights, with red-robed cardinals
and clanking men at arms, with fair ladies and grave senators,
slinking bravos and hired assassins - and all so gay with silk and
satin and glittering steel and spangling gems.
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