Part 6
But there is still another and a larger fishing trade, a trade not exactly Venetian, although Venice is its best market. To this belong the fishermen of Chioggia and the islands farther down the coast. These men own and man the heavier seagoing craft with the red and orange sails that make the water life of Venice unique.
Every Saturday a flock of these boats will light off the wall of the Public Garden, their beaks touching the marble rail. These are Ziem’s boats--his for half a century; nobody has painted them in the afternoon light so charmingly or so truthfully. Sunday morning, after mass, they are off again, spreading their gay wings toward Chioggia. On other days one or two of these gay-plumed birds will hook a line over the cluster of spiles near the wall of the Riva, below the arsenal bridge, their sails swaying in the soft air, while their captains are buying supplies to take to the fleet twenty miles or more out at sea.
Again, sometimes in the early dawn or in the late twilight, you will see, away out in still another fishing quarter, a single figure walking slowly in the water, one arm towing his boat, the other carrying a bag. Every now and then the figure bends over, feels about with his toes, and then drops something into the bag. This is the mussel-gatherer of the lagoon. In the hot summer nights these humble toilers of the sea, with only straw mats for covering, often sleep in their boats, tethered to poles driven into the yielding mud. They can wade waist-deep over many square miles of water-space about Venice, although to one in a gondola, skimming over the same glassy surfaces, there seems water enough to float a ship.
These several grades of fishermen have changed but little, either in habits, costume, or the handling of their craft, since the early days of the republic. The boats, too, are almost the same in construction and equipment, as can be seen in any of the pictures of Canaletto and the painters of his time. The bows of the larger sea-craft are still broad and heavily built, the rudders big and cumbersome, with the long sweep reaching over the after-deck; the sails are loosely hung with easily adjusted booms, to make room for the great seines which are swung to the cross-trees of the foremast. The only boat of really modern design, and this is rarely used as a fishing-boat, is the _sandolo_, a shallow skiff drawing but a few inches of water, and with both bow and stern sharp and very low, modeled originally for greater speed in racing.
Whatever changes have taken place in the political and social economy of Venice, they have affected but little these lovers of the lagoons. What mattered it to whom they paid taxes,--whether to doge, Corsican, Austrian, or king,--there were as good fish in the sea as had ever been caught, and as long as their religion lasted, so long would people eat fish and Friday come round every week in the year.
A GONDOLA RACE
TO-DAY I am interested in watching a gondolier make his toilet in a gondola lying at my feet, for the little table holding my coffee stands on a half-round balcony that juts quite over the water-wall, almost touching the white _tenda_ of the boat. From this point of vantage I look down upon his craft, tethered to a huge spile bearing the crown and monogram of the owner of the hotel. One is nobody if not noble, in Venice.
The gondolier does not see me. If he did it would not disturb him; his boat is his home through these soft summer days and nights, and the overhanging sky gives privacy enough. A slender, graceful Venetian girl, her hair parted on one side, a shawl about her shoulders, has just brought him a bundle containing a change of clothing. She sits beside him as he dresses, and I move my chair so that I can catch the expressions of pride and delight that flit across her face while she watches the handsome, broadly-built young fellow. As he stands erect in the gondola, the sunlight flashing from his wet arms, I note the fine lines of his chest, the bronzed neck and throat, and the knotted muscles along the wrist and forearm. When the white shirt with broad yellow collar and sash are adjusted and the toilet is complete, even to the straw hat worn rakishly over one ear, the girl gathers up the discarded suit, glances furtively at me, slips her hand into his for a moment, and then springs ashore, waving her handkerchief as he swings out past the Dogana, the yellow ribbons of his hat flying in the wind.
Joseph, prince among porters, catches my eye and smiles meaningly. Later, when he brings my mail, he explains that the pretty Venetian, Teresa, is the sweetheart of Pietro the yellow-and-white gondolier who serves the English lady at the _Palazzo da Mula_. Pietro, he tells me, rows in the regatta to-day, and these preparations are in honor of that most important event. He assures me that it will be quite the most interesting of all the regattas of the year, and that I must go early and secure a place near the stake-boat if I want to see anything of the finish. It is part of Joseph’s duty and pleasure to keep you posted on everything that happens in Venice. It would distress him greatly if he thought you could obtain this information from any other source.
While we talk the Professor enters the garden from the side door of the corridor, and takes the vacant seat beside me. He, too, has come to tell me of the regatta. He is bubbling over with excitement, and insists that I shall meet him at the water-steps of the little Piazzetta near the _Caffè Veneta Marina_, at three o’clock, not a moment later. To-day, he says, I shall see, not the annual regatta,--that great spectacle with the Grand Canal crowded with tourists and sight-seers solidly banked from the water’s edge to the very balconies,--but an old-time contest between the two factions of the gondoliers, the Nicoletti and Castellani; a contest really of and for the Venetians themselves.
The course is to begin at the Lido, running thence to the great flour-mill up the Giudecca, and down again to the stake-boat off the Public Garden. Giuseppe is to row, and Pasquale, both famous oarsmen, and Carlo, the brother of Gaspari, who won the great regatta; better than all, young Pietro, of the Traghetto of Santa Salute.
“Not Pietro of this _traghetto_, right here below us?” I asked.
“Yes; he rows with his brother Marco. Look out for him when he comes swinging down the canal. If you have any money to wager, put it on him. Gustavo, my waiter at Florian’s, says he is bound to win. His colors are yellow and white.”
This last one I knew, for had he not made his toilet, half an hour before, within sight of my table? No wonder Teresa looked proud and happy!
While the Professor is bowing himself backward out of the garden, hat in hand, his white hair and curled mustache glistening in the sun, an oleander blossom in his button-hole, Espero enters, also bareheaded, and begs that the Signore will use Giorgio’s gondola until he can have his own boat, now at the repair-yard next to San Trovaso, scraped and pitched; the grass on her bottom was the width of his hand. By one o’clock she would be launched again. San Trovaso, as the Signore knew, was quite near the _Caffè Calcina_; would he be permitted to call for him at the caffè after luncheon? As the regatta began at three o’clock there would not be time to return again to the Signore’s lodging and still secure a good place at the stake-boat off the Garden.
No; the illustrious Signore would do nothing of the kind. He would take Giorgio and his gondola for the morning, and then, when the boat was finished, Espero could pick up the Professor at the _Caffè Veneta Marina_ in the afternoon and bring him aboard Giorgio’s boat on his way down the canal.
Giorgio is my stand-by when Espero is away. I often send him to my friends, those whom I love, that they may enjoy the luxury of spending a day with a man who has a score and more of sunshiny summers packed away in his heart, and not a cloud in any one of them. Tagliapietra Giorgio, of the Traghetto of Santa Salute, is his full name and address. Have Joseph call him for you some day, and your Venice will be all the more delightful because of his buoyant strength, his cheeriness, and his courtesy.
So Giorgio and I idle about the lagoon and the Giudecca, watching the flags being hoisted, the big _barcos_ being laden, and various other preparations for the great event of the afternoon.
After luncheon Giorgio stops at his house to change his _tenda_ for the new one with the blue lining, and slips into the white suit just laundered for him. He lives a few canals away from the Calcina, with his mother, his widowed sister and her children, in a small house with a garden all figs and oleanders. His bedroom is next to his mother’s, on the second floor, overlooking the blossoms. There is a shrine above the bureau, decorated with paper flowers, and on the walls a scattering of photographs of brother gondoliers, and some trophies of oars and flags. Hanging behind the door are his oilskins for wet weather, and the Tam O’Shanter cap that some former padrone has left him, as a souvenir of the good times they once had together, and which Giorgio wears as a weather signal for a rainy afternoon, although the morning sky may be cloudless. All gondoliers are good weather prophets.
The entire family help Giorgio with the _tenda_--the old mother carrying the side-curtains, warm from her flat-iron, and chubby Beppo, bareheaded and barefooted, bringing up the rear with the little blue streamer that on gala days floats from the gondola’s lamp-socket forward, which on other days is always filled with flowers.
Then we are off, picking our way down the narrow canal, waiting here and there for the big _barcos_ to pass, laden with wine or fruit, until we shoot out into the broad waters of the Giudecca.
You see at a glance that Venice is astir. All along the Zattere, on every wood-boat, _barco_, and barge, on every bridge, balcony, and house-top, abreast the wide _fondamenta_ fronting the great warehouses, and away down the edge below the Redentore, the people are swarming like flies. Out on the Giudecca, anchored to the channel spiles, is a double line of boats of every conceivable description, from a toy _sandolo_ to a steamer’s barge. These lie stretched out on the water like two great sea-serpents, their heads facing the garden, their tails curving toward the Redentore.
Between these two sea-monsters, with their flashing scales of a thousand umbrellas, is an open roadway of glistening silver.
Giorgio swings across to the salt warehouses above the Dogana and on down and over to the Riva. Then there is a shout ahead, a red and white _tenda_ veers a point, comes close, backs water, and the Professor springs in.
“Here, Professor, here beside me on the cushions,” I call out. “Draw back the curtains, Giorgio. And, Espero, hurry ahead and secure a place near the stake-boat. We will be there in ten minutes.”
The Professor was a sight to cheer the heart of an amateur yachtsman out for a holiday. He had changed his suit of the morning for a small straw hat trimmed with red, an enormous field-glass with a strap over his shoulder, and a short velvet coat that had once done service as a smoking-jacket. His mustachios were waxed into needle points. The occasion had for him all the novelty of the first spring meeting at Longchamps, or a race off Cowes, and he threw himself into its spirit with the gusto of a boy.
“What colors are you flying, _mon Capitaine_? Blue? Never!” noticing Giorgio’s streamer. “Pasquale’s color is blue, and he will be half a mile astern when Pietro is round the stake-boat. _Vive le jaune! Vive Pietro!_” and out came a yellow rag--Pietro’s color--bearing a strong resemblance to the fragment of some old silk curtain. It settled at a glance all doubt as to the Professor’s sympathies in the coming contest.
The day was made for a regatta; a cool, crisp, bracing October day; a day of white clouds and turquoise skies, of flurries of soft winds that came romping down the lagoon, turned for a moment in play, and then went scampering out to sea; a day of dazzling sun, of brilliant distances, of clear-cut outlines, black shadows, and flashing lights.
As we neared the Public Garden the crowd grew denser; the cries of the gondoliers were incessant; even Giorgio’s skillful oar was taxed to the utmost to avoid the polluting touch of an underbred _sandolo_, or the still greater calamity of a collision--really an unpardonable sin with a gondolier. Every now and then a chorus of yells, charging every crime in the decalogue, would be hurled at some landsman whose oar “crabbed,” or at some nondescript craft filled with “barbers and cooks,” to quote Giorgio, who in forcing a passage had become hopelessly entangled.
The only clear water-space was the ribbon of silver beginning away up near the Redentore, between the tails of the two sea-monsters, and ending at the stake-boat. Elsewhere, on both sides, from the Riva to San Giorgio, and as far as the wall of the Garden, was a dense floating mass of human beings, cheering, singing, and laughing, waving colors, and calling out the names of their favorites in rapid _crescendo_.
The spectacle on land was equally unique. The balustrade of the broad walk of the Public Garden was a huge flower-bed of blossoming hats and fans, spotted with myriads of parasols in full bloom. Bunches of over-ripe boys hung in the trees, or dropped one by one into the arms of gendarmes below. The palaces along the Riva were a broad ribbon of color with a binding of black coats and hats. The wall of San Giorgio fronting the barracks was fringed with the yellow legs and edged with the white fatigue caps of two regiments. Even over the roofs and tower of the church itself specks of sight-seers were spattered here and there, as if the joyous wind in some mad frolic had caught them up in very glee, and as suddenly showered them on cornice, sill, and dome.
Beyond all this, away out on the lagoon, toward the islands, the red-sailed fishing-boats hurried in for the finish, their canvas aflame against the deepening blue. Over all the sunlight danced and blazed and shimmered, gilding and bronzing the roof-jewels of San Marco, flashing from oar blade, brass, and _ferro_, silvering the pigeons whirling deliriously in the intoxicating air, making glad and gay and happy every soul who breathed the breath of this joyous Venetian day.
None of all this was lost upon the Professor. He stood in the bow drinking in the scene, sweeping his glass round like a weather-vane, straining his eyes up the Giudecca to catch the first glimpse of the coming boats, picking out faces under flaunting parasols, and waving aloft his yellow rag when some gondola swept by flying Pietro’s colors, or some boat-load of friends saluted in passing.
Suddenly there came down on the shifting wind, from far up the Giudecca, a sound like the distant baying of a pack of hounds, and as suddenly died away. Then the roar of a thousand throats, caught up by a thousand more about us, broke on the air, as a boatman, perched on a masthead, waved his hat.
“Here they come! _Viva_ Pietro! _Viva_ Pasquale!--Castellani!--Nicoletti!--Pietro!”
The dense mass rose and fell in undulations, like a great carpet being shaken, its colors tossing in the sunlight. Between the thicket of _ferros_, away down the silver ribbon, my eye caught two little specks of yellow capping two white figures. Behind these, almost in line, were two similar dots of blue; farther away other dots, hardly distinguishable, on the horizon line.
The gale became a tempest--the roar was deafening; women waved their shawls in the air; men, swinging their hats, shouted themselves hoarse. The yellow specks developed into handkerchiefs bound to the heads of Pietro and his brother Marco; the blues were those of Pasquale and his mate.
Then, as we strain our eyes, the two tails of the sea-monster twist and clash together, closing in upon the string of rowers as they disappear in the dip behind San Giorgio, only to reappear in full sight, Pietro half a length ahead, straining every sinew, his superb arms swinging like a flail, his lithe body swaying in splendid, springing curves, the water rushing from his oar blade, his brother bending aft in perfect rhythm.
“Pietro! _Pietro!_” came the cry, shrill and clear, drowning all other sounds, and a great field of yellow burst into flower all over the lagoon, from San Giorgio to the Garden. The people went wild. If before there had been only a tempest, now there was a cyclone. The waves of blue and yellow surged alternately above the heads of the throng as Pasquale or Pietro gained or lost a foot. The Professor grew red and pale by turns, his voice broken to a whisper with continued cheering, the yellow rag streaming above his head, all the blood of his ancestors blazing in his face.
The contesting boats surged closer. You could now see the rise and fall of Pietro’s superb chest, the steel-like grip of his hands, and could outline the curves of his thighs and back. The ends of the yellow handkerchief, bound close about his head, were flying in the wind. His stroke was long and sweeping, his full weight on the oar; Pasquale’s stroke was short and quick, like the thrust of a spur.
Now they are abreast. Pietro’s eyes are blazing--Pasquale’s teeth are set. Both crews are doing their utmost. The yells are demoniac. Even the women are beside themselves with excitement.
Suddenly, when within five hundred yards of the goal, Pasquale turns his head to his mate; there is an answering cry, and then, as if some unseen power had lent its strength, Pasquale’s boat shoots half a length ahead, slackens, falls back, gains again, now an inch, now a foot, now clear of Pietro’s bow, and on, on, lashing the water, surging forward, springing with every gain, cheered by a thousand throats, past the red tower of San Giorgio, past the channel of spiles off the Garden, past the red buoy near the great warship,--one quick, sustained, blistering stroke,--until the judge’s flag drops from his hand, and the great race is won.
“A true knight, a gentleman every inch of him,” called out the Professor, forgetting that he had staked all his _soldi_ on Pietro. “Fairly won, Pasquale.”
In the whirl of the victory, I had forgotten Pietro, my gondolier of the morning. The poor fellow was sitting in the bow of his boat, his head in his hands, wiping his forehead and throat, the tears streaming down his cheeks. His brother sat beside him. In the gladness and disappointment of the hour, no one of the crowd around him seemed to think of the hero of five minutes before. Not so Giorgio, who was beside himself with grief over Pietro’s defeat, and who had not taken his eyes from his face. In an instant more he sprang forward, calling out, “No! no! _Brava Pietro!_” Espero joining in as if with a common impulse, and both forcing their gondolas close to Pietro’s.
A moment more and Giorgio was over the rail of Pietro’s boat, patting his back, stroking his head, comforting him as you would think only a woman could--but then you do not know Giorgio. Pietro lifted up his face and looked into Giorgio’s eyes with an expression so woe-begone, and full of such intense suffering, that Giorgio instinctively flung his arm around the great, splendid fellow’s neck. Then came a few broken words, a tender caressing stroke of Giorgio’s hand, a drawing of Pietro’s head down on his breast as if it had been a girl’s, and then, still comforting him--telling him over and over again how superbly he had rowed, how the next time he would win, how he had made a grand second--
Giorgio bent his head--_and kissed him_.
When Pietro, a moment later, pulled himself together and stood erect in his boat, with eyes still wet, the look on his face was as firm and determined as ever.
Nobody laughed. It did not shock the crowd; nobody thought Giorgio unmanly or foolish, or Pietro silly or effeminate. The infernal Anglo-Saxon custom of always wearing a mask of reserve, if your heart breaks, has never reached these people.
As for the Professor, who looked on quietly, I think--yes, I am quite sure--that a little jewel of a tear squeezed itself up through his punctilious, precise, ever exact and courteous body, and glistened long enough on his eyelids to wet their lashes. Then the bright sun and the joyous wind caught it away. Dear old relic of a by-gone time! How gentle a heart beats under your well-brushed, threadbare coat!
SOME VENETIAN CAFFÈS
EVERY one in Venice has his own particular caffè, according to his own particular needs, sympathies, or tastes. All the artists, architects, and musicians meet at Florian’s; all the Venetians go to the _Quadri_; the Germans and late Austrians, to the _Bauer-Grünwald_; the stay-over-nights, to the Oriental on the Riva; the stevedores, to the _Veneta Marina_ below the Arsenal; and my dear friend Luigi and his fellow-tramps, to a little hole in the wall on the _Via Garibaldi_.
These caffès are scattered everywhere, from the Public Garden to the Mestre bridge; all kinds of caffès for all kinds of people--rich, not so rich, poor, poorer, and the very poorest. Many of them serve only a cup of coffee, two little flat lumps of sugar, a hard, brown roll, and a glass of water--always a glass of water. Some add a few syrups and cordials, with a siphon of seltzer. Others indulge in the cheaper wines of the country, Brindisi, Chianti, and the like, and are then known as wine-shops. Very few serve any spirits, except a spoonful of cognac with the coffee. Water is the universal beverage, and in summer this is cooled by ice and enriched by simple syrups of peach, orange, and raspberry. Spirits are rarely taken and intemperance is practically unknown. In an experience of many years, I have not seen ten drunken men,--never one drunken woman,--and then only in September, when the strong wine from Brindisi is brought in bulk and sold over the boat’s rail, literally by the bucket, to whoever will buy.
In the _ristoranti_--caffès, in our sense--is served an array of eatables that would puzzle the most expert of gourmands. There will be macaroni, of course, in all forms, and _risotto_ in a dozen different ways, and soups with weird, uncanny little devil-fish floating about in them, and salads of every conceivable green thing that can be chopped up in a bowl and drowned in olive oil; besides an assortment of cheeses with individualities of perfume that beggar any similar collection outside of Holland.
Some of these caffès are so much a part of Venice and Venetian life, that you are led to believe that they were founded by the early Doges and are coëval with the Campanile or the Library. Somebody, of course, must know when they first began setting out tables on the piazza in front of Florian’s, or at the _Quadri_ opposite, or yet again at the _Caffè al Cavallo_, near _San Giovanni e Paulo_, and at scores of others; but I confess I do not. If you ask the head waiter, who really ought to know (for he must have been born in one of the upper rooms--he certainly never leaves the lower ones), he shrugs his shoulders in a hopeless way and sheds the inquiry with a despairing gesture, quite as if you had asked who laid out San Marco, or who drove the piles under Saint Theodore.