"The dramas of memory are always Hamlet in modern dress" ---Aldous Huxley
It was already late September when I arrived in Venice, and until then, my vacation trip had been hot and boring. I'd wandered through several cities, prying into their secrets and exploring the night spots where sweat glistened on bared skin beneath varicolored strobe lights. I'd observed and marked time.Very few people had spoken to me.
(...perhaps I'd had my New England frost turned up too high against the heat?...)
I was nerved and jumpy, yet always hesitating to take the leap from observer to participant.
I arrived in Venice at sunset.
Until that evening, tourists' meccas had never failed to disappoint me. They'd been imprinted on my mind in pastel poster views, photographed from angles inaccessible to mere mortals. I had learned to lower my expectations. This time I found it had been unnecessary.
Boarding a vaporetto that travelled the length of the Grand Canal to Piazza San Marco, dusky light seemed to shimmer in the air, made my surroundings romantic, the colours delicate. The basilica Santa Maria della Salute at the mouth of the harbour sparkled phosphorescent white looking like a fantastical marble wedding cake, and when I disembarked and strode into the square, the lights in the arcades came on. I felt like I'd seen my first Christmas.
Soon I was drawn to the narrow streets in the centre. They seemed to pulsate with a secret life. I strolled along numerous canals, over bridges that arched like the backs of angry cats. I studied the details of the gondolas, facades; observed the gondoliers, who were bantering too loudly on the marble piers. The season was over; they had little to do. Stray cats slinked along the buildings stalking nesting pigeons. A fat man leaned at a second story window, filing his fingers with a rasp.
(...I can't imagine why...)
Outside a trattoria, a waiter bearing veal cutlets in white wine sauce sneezed and barely missed the plate. He nonchalantly set it before a tired-looking American couple then walked jauntily into the resaurant, whistling the march from Aida.
Further on, the sounds I heard came from unseen sources. Voices laughed, shouted, whispered and whined from darkened windows overhead. Footsteps echoed in parallel alleyways, or just out of sight. Further still, and the streets were empty save for a stray feline or an occasional silent, nesting gull. The city struck me as being rather ghostly, and as I turned a blind corner, I saw one.
The stranger was leaning on a filigreed iron bridge railing, staring at his reflection in the black water of the canal below. He was lit from an overhead street lamp, giving the impression of a lone performer on an empty stage. It was the man's extroadinary paleness that impressed me. His hair was dark brown, as was his beard, but in the space between the two, his face was a luminous white.
Although he was leaning, I could tell he was tall. His figure was lean and athletic. His profile seemed to be clearly defined against the dark facade of the building behind him. It was a fine-boned, ascetic face; strong-featured, its' lines almost too sharp, somewhat pained. From where I stood, I could see his reflection in the water. The swaying street lamp and the moving current distorted the form, and threw back that unnatural whiteness.
(...if his face were a mask, there'd be a deaths' head beneath it...)
It was at that point that the song began.
An accordion swelled, and a very mellow voice came from the darknesss downstream. The stranger straightened and squinted into the night. His eyes were deep-set and dark. Sensing my scrutiny, he turned and looked at me.
(...a perfect death mask, muschles lax, devoid of expression yet something so intense about it...)
I shivered perceptibly and he turned and looked downstream again. It was not an action of dismissal, but rather a channeling of my attention to that point where his interest lay. As the music grew louder, I walked onto the bridge, standing downstage right, so to speak. And from there I could see the candle. It was a votive candle, and it was affixed to the prow of a gondola. It flickered yellowly as the vessel, ebony against the velvet night, glided toward us. The song grew in clarity and tone, a primal scream that had been choked back and re-structured into a thing of terrible beauty. It ripped at the heart as, one by one, four gondolas emerged from the night. They took on the quality of a funereal procession. I glanced at the stranger to observe his reaction. I thought his eyes flickered red as he intently watched the scene below. Startled, I soon caught the same effect again.
(...trick of light???...)
Then the gondolas were directly beneath us, and I could see the passengers. They were tourists in evening dress. They sat in meditative, dream-like poses, looking as though their thoughts were light years away. They too seemed waxy pale, although they did not have the eerie translucent glow of the stranger. Their paleness was opaque. Even their jewelry seemed dulled, somehow. The gondoliers worked silently, their faces hidden in shadow beneath the brims of their hats.
In the last boat, a man in overalls sat in a straight-backed chair, playing an accordion. Across from him, another sang-head thrown back, chest thrust out, right hand held palm-upward before him. They hit a dead spot beneath us, and the voice seemed to have been swallowed by the mouth of some dread beast. Then it sprang back into being as if by the telepathic command of some lesser god. We watched until the night claimed them again. And as the last flickering votive candle went out...
(ite missa est)
...the song and the music ended.
Some three dozen unseen hands applauded from various points along the quay. I let out my breath, not remembering when I'd begun to hold it. I turned to look for my ghost. He was gone. Stunned, I found my way back to Piazza San Marco and reflected upon what I had seen. My first impression was that the stranger had played the role of spectral guide, presenting me with images of the city's living death; a half-world of floating visions. I decided to give him a name, and recalled a lecture I'd once attended:
"Tadzio is the main death symbol of the novella. He is beautiful, and seems perfect, but he is not. You will have noted, I am sure, that he is often described as having bad teeth. They are decayed. And that is one of the main points of it, the decay beneath the perfection."
'Tadzio?' I asked myself. Perhaps, but one who had matured as this Aschenbach had grown younger. I felt as if I had been challenged with a symbol of my own living death in my role as only an observer.
(are his teeth decayed? He didn't smile....)
I chided myself for being morbid, and decided I'd let my imagination run away with me. And I would have put the incident out of mind if I hadn't seen him again. It was in the Piazza San Marco on Sunday night. Throughout history, the square had been the scene of much pomp and ceremony.
(the pigeons were sacred, the seagulls were mute...)
I'd seen paintings of processions of be-robed bishops, their carriage proud, their expressions full of self-importance and power. But that night there seemed to be a parade of fools who frolicked and gaped.
There were the Blue-Haired Ladies from Duluth, who bought wind-up plastic pigeons in front of the procuratie vecchie. They were dressed in polyester pant suits which couldn't quite conceal the bulges resulting from too little exercise and too much food. They wore harlequin-framed glasses with rhinestones set in them. They crowed over the nifty gifts they were going to bring home. Their husbands were fat and absent-minded, watching the young local girls on the square with an appreciative eye. They wore loud plaid sports-jackets and otherwise looked as if they'd been blown over from Miami in the last hurricane.
(Ruth! Commere, I wanna takeya piktcha!)
In the cafés, combos played 'Strangers In the Night' as envisioned by Liberace on a bum trip.
("Ohmigawd, he's playing way off-key Harry, Listen!"
"Well it wouldn't be Italy if he weren't, dear. Wonnerful, in'it?")
The waiters exuded contempt for all and sundry. The clientele were of every nationality and stripe: Locals, tourists, young kids on the hustle. A drunken local was refused service and threw his money at a bartender in Café Quaddri.
"Animale!"
"TU sei animale!"
"Vi via, vecchio, Lei!"
Overworked tour-group leaders shepherded their charges from one end of the square to the other, looking as though they would be ill if they had to quote Mark Twain's description of the cathedral one more time. Lines of artists' easels were set up before the cafés in rows. There were caricaturists, profile cutters, three-minute portrait painters, rows of abstract and romantic city kitsch. Vendors stood in the cathedral doorway, hawking flourescent green yo-yos and necklaces that looked radioactive.
"Yo-yo, yo-yo?"
(The first word's an offer, the second an insult.)
Men cruised other men in the arcades on the outskirts of the crowd, their black eyes penetrating. I cruised for a while as well, observing the hustlers in particular. They were beautiful, yet I always detected a hunger beneath the surface bravado, a need to hurt and control. When they weren't aware of being observed, there was always a moment when they looked despairing.
(...and do I ever look like that in a crowd?...)
At midnight the campanile tolled, and the combo in the Café Lavena began to play 'The Blue Danube' waltz. Two women excitedly got up and began to waltz in the center of the square; they were well over sixty. They gracefully swirled and dipped, bony be-jeweled hands resting lightly on one another's wraps.
A third woman approached them.
She was a walking ruin, site of interest for an archaeologist of the soul. She wore an evening dress of some stiff exotic material and was wrapped in a full-length mink despite the heat. Her sunken face was lined and powdered a ghastly white. Her lips were a smear of deep red. Her hands were liver-spotted and skeletal, weighed down by jewelry so gaudy it was obviously authentic. She cut in on the women and waltzed with one of them several times around, clutching at her partner as she tottered, trying to keep her balance and her head from shaking uncontrollably at the same time. Her eyes were feverishly bright, and she gave the impression of some wind-up toy desperately holding back to prevent the last unwinding snap of its' mainspring. Then she sank into a nearby seat, shaking and decrepit; dowager empress.
Only then did I notice that she had sat down next to 'Tadzio'. He looked as ghostly as ever in the brighter lights of the square, and was leaning towards the old woman with that gaze of detached intentness I'd seen the first evening there. It seemed as though he were giving off waves of energy which she was absorbing. She straightened up and then he turned and looked at me; coldly, clinically. Slowly standing, he gave me one last long look then headed for the quay. I followed, for he had now become one mystery I was determined to solve.
"Pagare, Signori, pagare! L'ultima sera a Venezia! L'ultima sera!"
Two young boys leaned on the harbour railing dressed in tight gondolier shirts, jeering at the passers-by and laughing when they got an occasional dirty look. They were good-looking and animally alive, I observed.
(...and who pays for their last night in Venice?...)
I caught a glimpse of Tadzio as he boarded a vaporetto, cutting through the crowd like Moses parting the waters. I swore, felt bad that I wouldn't catch him now. But I needn't have worried.
Throughout the week I ran into him constantly. But I only saw him once in the daylight. There was a boat strike, and lots of people were sunning on the harbourside. He was lying on the grass in a small park, hiding every part of his body from the sun beneath the trees. As I passed, he looked up and watched me as I strolled.
(...and there were gulls, but they were mute....)
Twice we met on the quay at night where there were always several men cruising and occasionally disappearing behind the shuttered vendors' stands. I deliberately cruised him, being one step short of obnoxious, but he always gave me that detached look and didn't seem to know what I was up to. I puzzled over what nationality he might be, but came up with no answer. I wondered if he had been in jail, thus was so white.
(...no, he hides from the sun....)
I decided to stick with my myth of Tadzio, death symbol and observer, guide to my own lethargy.
I visited an extensive exhibition on photography. There were the usual landscapes and portraits
(... of those who once were and will never be...)
and an odd series that depicted mankind as freakish; all of us tattooed and contortionists. There were transvestites. There were lovers in embraces who looked uncomfortable and pathetic. There were close-ups of someone's naked passion.
"I hate portraits. They're like so many crucifixions."
The rich were depicted as being insufferable prigs, the poor as being oppressed by society, and all as victims of their own cruelty and desires.
(...The artist committed suicide. But is it all so simple?...)
Suddenly I was very tired, and decided to leave. And as I left the gallery I saw Tadzio. He'd been watching me.
(...all right, all right! I get the point!....)
I fled.
On my last day in Venice I met Giles. We quickly found that we got on well together. We laughed about the same things, such as the bartender in Harry's Bar. and tried to out-do one another in bad taste, picking out especially hideous pieces in the glass shops.
Young girl tourist: "Is that a real marble baar?"
Bartender: "Yes, the bar is of marble. The walls and floors are of marble. And our hearts.... they are of marble, too."
and at the tourists in general.
"leurs Bijoux!"
We visited the Doge's palace, examined a room full of paintings by Hieronymous Bosch
(...who always made Heaven and Purgatory very small and Hell very large...ora pro nobis...)
As night set in and the city grew mysterious, we set out for Giles' hotel. On the way, we stopped to make love in the doorway of a closed trattoria, feeling sudden need. We could hear a private party going on behind the rolled-down shutter. There were constant footsteps echoing, unseen walkers in a city where it was impossible to be alone. The air smelled of sea and fish and kelp and salt. Our toungues and hands explored. A cat yowled nearby. We performed a wildly desperate symphony in the night, every fibre and nerve of our being stretching and vibrating with life and passion. And when that tension snapped and the blood roaring in my ears drowned the world about me, I knew my days of observing were over. I would grab for life like the woman who waltzed in the Piazza San Marco. I came back to the world and smiled at Giles.
("Tu es gentil..")
We embraced, and then I felt him stiffen. A tall ghostly figure was standing across the street watching us. I cried out. But then he smiled, and his teeth were perfect. Overhead, a gull cried, its' voice as rusty and as un-used as the smile on Tadzio's face.
Laughing, I drew Giles away from the entryway, and we went on to the hotel.
Graz, 1980
