Part 7
There is, I am convinced, no real, permanent, steady proprietor in any of these caffès--none that one ever sees. There must be, of course, somebody who assumes ownership, and who for a time really believes that he has a proprietary interest in the chairs and tables about him. After a while, however, he gets old and dies, and is buried over in Campo Santo, and even his name is forgotten. When this happens, and it is eminently proper that it should, another tenant takes possession, quite as the pigeons do of an empty carving over the door of the king’s palace.
But the caffè keeps on: the same old marble-top tables; the same old glass-covered pictures, with the impossible Turkish houris listening to the improbable gentleman in baggy trousers; the same serving-counter, with the row of cordials in glass bottles with silver stoppers. The same waiters, too, hurry about--they live on for centuries--wearing the same coats and neckties, and carrying the same napkins. I myself have never seen a dead waiter, and, now I happen to think of it, I have never heard of one.
The head waiter is, of course, supreme. He it is who adds up on his fingers the sum of your extravagances, who takes your money and dives down into his own pocket for the change. He and his assistants are constantly running in and out, vanishing down subterranean stairs, or disappearing through swinging doors, with the agility of Harlequin; you never know where or why, until they pop out again, whirling trays held high over their heads, or bearing in both hands huge waiters loaded with dishes.
The _habitués_ of these caffès are as interesting as the caffès themselves. The Professor comes, of course; you always know where to find _him_. And the youthful Contessa! She of the uncertain age, with hair bleached to a light law-calf, and a rose-colored veil! And here comes, too, every distinguished or notorious person of high or low degree at the moment in Venice; you have only to take a chair at Florian’s and be patient--they are sure to appear before the music is over. There is the sister of the Archduke, with the straight-backed, pipe-stem-legged officer acting as gentleman-in-waiting; and he does _wait_, standing bolt upright like a sergeant on dress parade, sometimes an hour, for her to sit down. There is the Spanish Grandee, with a palace for the season (an upper floor with an entrance on a side canal), whose gondoliers wear flaming scarlet, with a crest embossed on brass dinner-plates for arm ornaments; one of these liveried attendants always dogs the Grandee to the caffè, so as to be ready to pull his chair out when his Excellency sits down. Then there are the Royal Academician, in gray tweed knickerbockers, traveling _incognito_ with two friends; the fragments of an American linen-duster brigade, with red guide-books and faces, in charge of a special agent; besides scores of others of every nationality and rank. They are all at Florian’s some time during the day.
You will see there, too, if you are familiar with the inside workings of a favorite caffè, an underground life of intrigue or mystery, in which Gustavo or Florio has a hand--often upon a _billet-doux_ concealed within the folds of a napkin; not to mention the harmless distribution, once in a while, of smuggled cigarettes fresh from Cairo.
Poor Gustavo! The government brought him to book not long ago. For many years he had supplied his patrons, and with delicious Egyptians, too! One night Gustavo disappeared, escorted by two gendarmes from the Department of Justice. Next morning the judge said: “Whereas, according to the accounts kept by the Department of Customs, the duties and expenses due the king on the cigarettes unlawfully sold by the prisoner for years past aggregate two thousand three hundred and ten _lire_; and whereas, the savings of the prisoner for ten years past, and at the moment deposited to his individual credit in the _Banco Napoli_, amount to exactly two thousand three hundred and ten _lire_; therefore, it is ordered, that a sight draft for the exact amount be drawn in favor of the king.” This would entitle Gustavo to the pure air of the piazza; otherwise?--well, otherwise not. Within a week Gustavo was again whirling his tray--a little grayer, perhaps, and a little wiser; certainly poorer. Thus does a tyrannical government oppress its people!
These caffès of the piazza, with their iced carafes, white napkins, and little silver coffee-pots, are the caffès of the rich.
The caffè of the poor is sometimes afloat. No matter how early you are out in the morning, this floating caffè--the cook-boat--has its fire lighted, and the savory smell of its cuisine drifts over the lagoon, long before your gondola rounds the Dogana. When you come alongside you find a charcoal brazier heating a pan of savory fish and a large pot of coffee, and near by a basketful of rolls, fresh and warm, from a still earlier baker. There are peaches, too, and a hamper of figs. The cook-boat is tended by two men; one cooks and serves, and the other rows, standing in the stern, looking anxiously for customers, and calling out in stentorian tones that all the delicacies of the season are now being fried, broiled, and toasted, and that for the infinitesimal sum of ten _soldi_ you can breakfast like a doge.
If you are just out of the lagoon, your blood tingling with the touch of the sea, your face aglow with your early morning bath, answer the cry of one of these floating kitchens, and eat a breakfast with the rising sun lighting your forehead and the cool breath of the lagoon across your cheek. It may be the salt air and the early plunge that make the coffee so savory, the fish and rolls so delicious, and the fruit so refreshing; or it may be because the fish were wriggling in the bottom of the boat half an hour earlier, the coffee only at the first boiling, and the fruit, bought from a passing boat, still damp with the night’s dew!
The caffè of the poorest is wherever there is a crowd. It generally stands on three iron legs under one of the trees down the _Via Garibaldi_, or over by the landing of the Dogana, or beneath the shade of some awning, or up a back court. The old fellow who bends over the hot earthen dish, supported on these legs, slowly stirring a mess of kidneys or an indescribable stew, is cook, head waiter, and proprietor all in one. Every now and then he fishes out some delicate tidbit--a miniature octopus, perhaps (called _fulpe_), a little sea-horror, all legs and claws, which he sprawls out on a bit of brown paper and lays on the palm of your left hand, assuming, clearly, that you have all the knives and forks that you need, on your right.
Once in a while a good Bohemian discovers some out-of-the-way place up a canal or through a twisted _calle_ that delights him with its cuisine, its cellar, or its cosiness, and forever after he preëmpts it as _his_ caffè. I know half a dozen such discoveries--one somewhere near _San Giorgio degli Schiavoni_, where the men play bowls in a long, narrow alley, under wide-spreading trees, cramped up between high buildings; and another, off the Merceria, where the officers smoke and lounge; and still another, quite my own--the _Caffè Calcina_. This last is on the _Rio San Vio_, and looks out on the Giudecca, just below San Rosario. You would never suspect it of being a caffè at all, until you had dodged under the little roof of the porch to escape the heat, and opening the side door found yourself in a small, plainly furnished room with little marble-top tables, each decorated with a Siamese-twin salt-cellar holding a pinch of salt and of pepper. Even then it is a very common sort of caffè, and not at all the place you would care to breakfast in twice; that is, not until you had followed the demure waiter through a narrow passage and out into a square _patio_ splashed with yellow-green light and cooled by overlacing vines. Then you realize that this same square patch of ground is one of the few restful spots of the wide earth.
It is all open to the sky except for a great arbor of grape leaves covering the whole area, beneath which, on the cool, moist ground, stand half a dozen little tables covered with snow-white cloths. At one side is a shelter, from behind which come certain mysterious noises of fries and broils. All about are big, green-painted boxes of japonicas, while at one end the oleanders thrust their top branches through the overhanging leaves of the arbor, waving their blossoms defiantly in the blazing sun. Beneath this grateful shelter you sit and loaf and invite your soul, and your best friend, too, if he happens to be that sort of a man.
After having congratulated yourself on your discovery and having become a daily _habitué_ of the delightful _patio_, you find that you have really discovered the Grand Canal or the Rialto bridge. To your great surprise, the _Caffè Calcina_ has been the favorite resort of good Bohemians for nearly a century. You learn that Turner painted his sunset sketches from its upper windows, and that dozens of more modern English painters have lived in the rooms above; that Whistler and Rico and scores of others have broken bread and had toothsome omelets under its vines; and, more precious than all, that Ruskin and Browning have shared many a bottle of honest Chianti with these same oleanders above their heads, and this, too, in the years when the Sage of Brantwood was teaching the world to love his Venice, and the great poet was singing songs that will last as long as the language.
ON THE HOTEL STEPS
IF you drink your early coffee as I do, in the garden under the oleanders, overlooking the water-landing of the hotel, and linger long enough over your fruit, you will conclude before many days that a large part of the life of Venice can be seen from the hotel steps. You may behold the great row of gondolas at the _traghetto_ near by, ranged side by side, awaiting their turn, and here and there, tied to the spiles outside the line, the more fortunate boats whose owners serve some sight-seer by the week, or some native padrone by the month, and are thus free of the daily routine of the _traghetto_, and free, too, from our old friend Joseph’s summoning voice.
You will be delighted at the good-humor and good-fellowship which animate this group of gondoliers; their ringing songs and hearty laughter; their constant care of the boats, their daily sponging and polishing; and now and then, I regret to say, your ears will be assailed by a quarrel, so fierce, so loud, and so full of vindictive energy, that you will start from your seat in instant expectation of the gleam of a stiletto, until by long experience you learn how harmless are both the bark and bite of a gondolier, and how necessary as a safety-valve, to accused and accuser as well, is the unlimited air-space of the Grand Canal.
You will also come into closer contact with Joseph, prince among porters, and patron saint of this Traghetto of Santa Salute. There is another Saint, of course, shaded by its trellised vines, framed in tawdry gilt, protected from the weather by a wooden hood, and lighted at night by a dim lamp hanging before it--but, for all that, Joseph is supreme as protector, refuge, and friend.
Joseph, indeed, is more than this. He is the patron saint and father confessor of every wayfarer, of whatever tongue. Should a copper-colored gentleman mount the steps of the hotel landing, attired in calico trousers, a short jacket of pea-green silk, and six yards of bath toweling about his head, Joseph instantly addresses him in broken Hindostanee, sending his rattan chairs and paper boxes to a room overlooking the shady court, and placing a boy on the rug outside, ready to spring when the copper-colored gentleman claps his hands. Does another distinguished foreigner descend from the gondola, attended by two valets with a block-tin trunk, half a score of hat-boxes, bags, and bundles, four umbrellas, and a dozen sticks, Joseph at once accosts him in most excellent English, and has ordered a green-painted tub rolled into his room before he has had time to reach the door of his apartment. If another equally distinguished traveler steps on the marble slab, wearing a Bond Street ulster, a slouch hat, and a ready-made summer suit, with yellow shoes, and carrying an Alpine staff (so useful in Venice) branded with illegible letters chasing each other spirally up and down the wooden handle, Joseph takes his measure at a glance. He knows it is his first trip “_en Cook_,” and that he will want the earth, and instantly decides that so far as concerns himself he shall have it, including a small, round, convenient little portable which he immediately places behind the door to save the marble hearth. So with the titled Frenchman, wife, maid, and canary bird; the haughty Austrian, his sword in a buckskin bag; the stolid German with the stout helpmate and one satchel, or the Spaniard with two friends and no baggage at all.
Joseph knows them all--their conditions, wants, economics, meannesses, escapades, and subterfuges. Does he not remember how you haggled over the price of your room, and the row you made when your shoes were mixed up with the old gentleman’s on the floor above? Does he not open the door in the small hours, when you slink in, the bell sounding like a tocsin at your touch? Is he not rubbing his eyes and carrying the candle that lights you down to the corridor door, the only exit from the hotel after midnight, when you had hoped to escape by the garden, and dare not look up at the balcony above?
Here also you will often meet the Professor. Indeed, he is breakfasting with me in this same garden this very morning. It is the first time I have seen him since the memorable day of the regatta, when Pasquale won the prize and the old fellow lost his _soldi_.
He has laid aside his outing costume--the short jacket, beribboned hat, and huge field-glass--and is gracing my table clothed in what he is pleased to call his “garb of tuition,” worn to-day because of a pupil who expects him at nine o’clock; “a horrid old German woman from Prague,” he calls her. This garb is the same old frock-coat of many summers, the well-ironed silk hat, and the limp glove dangling from his hand or laid like a crumpled leaf on the cloth beside him. The coat, held snug to the waist by a single button, always bulges out over the chest, the two frogs serving as pockets. From these depths, near the waist-line, the Professor now and then drags up a great silk handkerchief, either red or black as the week’s wash may permit, for I have never known of his owning more than two!
To-day, below the bulge of this too large handkerchief swells yet another enlargement, to which my guest, tapping it significantly with his finger-tips, refers in a most mysterious way as “a very great secret,” but without unbosoming to me either its cause or its mystery. When the cigarettes are lighted he drops his hand deep into his one-buttoned coat, unloads the handkerchief, and takes out a little volume bound in vellum, a book he had promised me for weeks. This solves the mystery and effaces the bulge.
One of the delights of knowing the Professor well is to see him handle a book that he loves. He has a peculiar way of smoothing the sides before opening it, as one would a child’s hand, and of always turning the leaves as though he were afraid of hurting the back, caressing them one by one with his fingers, quite as a bird plumes its feathers. And he is always bringing a new book to light; one of his charming idiosyncrasies is the hunting about in odd corners for just such odd volumes.
“Out of print now, my dear fellow. You can’t buy it for money. This is the only copy in Venice that I could borrow for love. See the chapters on these very fellows--these gondoliers,” pointing to the _traghetto_. “Sometimes, when I hear their quarrels, I wonder if they ever remember that their guild is as old as the days of the Doges, a fossil survival, unique, perhaps, in the history of this or of any other country.”
While the Professor nibbles at the crescents and sips his coffee, pausing now and then to read me passages taken at random from the little volume in his hands, I watch the procession of gondolas from the _traghetto_, like a row of cabs taking their turn, as Joseph’s “_a una_” or “_due_” rings out over the water. One after another they steal noiselessly up and touch the water-steps, Joseph helping each party into its boat: the German Baroness with the two poodles and a silk parasol; the poor fellow from the Engadine, with the rugs and an extra overcoat, his mother’s arm about him--not many more sunshiny days for him; the bevy of joyous young girls in summer dresses and sailor hats, and the two college boys in white flannels, the chaperone in the _next_ boat. “Ah, these sweet young Americans, these naïve countrywomen of yours!” whispers the Professor; “how exquisitely bold!” Last, the painter, with his trap and a big canvas, which he lifts in as carefully as if it had a broken rib, and then turns quickly face in; “an old dodge,” you say to yourself; “unfinished, of course!”
Presently a tall, finely formed gondolier in dark blue, with a red sash, whirls the _ferro_ of his boat close to the landing-steps, and a graceful, dignified woman, past middle life, but still showing traces of great beauty, steps in, and sinks upon the soft cushions.
The Professor rises like a grand duke receiving a princess, brings one arm to a salute, places the other over his heart, and makes a bow that carries the conviction of profound respect and loyalty in its every curve. The lady acknowledges it with a gracious bend of her head, and a smile which shows her appreciation of its sincerity.
“An English lady of rank who spends her Octobers here,” says the Professor, when he regains his seat. He had remained standing until the gondola had disappeared--such old-time observances are part of his religion.
“Did you notice her gondolier? That is Giovanni, the famous oarsman. Let me tell you the most delicious story! Oh, the childish simplicity of these men! You would say, would you not, that he was about forty years of age? You saw, too, how broad and big he was? Well, _mon ami_, not only is he the strongest oarsman in Venice, but he has proved it, for he has won the annual regatta, the great one on the Grand Canal, for five consecutive summers! This, you know, gives him the title of ‘Emperor.’ Now, there is a most charming Signora whom he has served for years,--she always spends her summers here,--whom, I assure you, Giovanni idolizes, and over whom he watches exactly as if she were both his child and his queen. Well, one day last year,” here the Professor’s face cracked into lines of suppressed mirth, “Giovanni asked for a day’s leave, and went over to Mestre to bid good-by to some friends _en route_ for Milan. The Brindisi wine--the _vina forte_--oh, that devilish wine! you know it!--had just reached Mestre. It only comes in September, and lasts but a few weeks. Of course Giovanni must have his grand outing, and three days later Signor Giovanni-the-Strong presented himself again at the door of the apartment of his Signora, sober, but limp as a rag. The Signora, grand dame as she was, refused to see him, sending word by her maid that she would not hear a word from him until the next day. Now, what do you think this great strong fellow did? He went home, threw himself on the bed, turned his face to the wall, and for half the night cried like a baby! Think of it! like a baby! His wife could not get him to eat a mouthful.
“The next day, of course, the Signora forgave him. There was nothing else to be done, for, as she said to me afterwards, ‘What? Venice without Giovanni! _Mon Dieu!_’”
The Professor throws away the end of his last cigarette and begins gathering up his hat and the one unmated, lonely glove. No living soul ever yet saw him put this on. Sometimes he thrusts in his two fingers, as if fully intending to bury his entire hand, and then you see an expression of doubt and hesitancy cross his face, denoting a change of mind, as he crumples it carelessly, or pushes it into his coat-tail pocket to keep company with its fictitious mate.
At this moment Espero raises his head out of his gondola immediately beneath us. Everything is ready, he says: the sketch trap, extra canvas, fresh siphon of seltzer, ice, _fiasco_ of Chianti, Gorgonzola, all but the rolls, which he will get at the baker’s on our way over to the Giudecca, where I am to work on the sketch begun yesterday.
“Ah, that horrid old German woman from Prague!” sighs the Professor. “If I could only go with you!”
OPEN-AIR MARKETS
SOMETIMES, in early autumn, on the lagoon behind the Redentore, you may overtake a curious craft, half barge, half gondola, rowed by a stooping figure in cowl and frock.
Against the glow of the fading twilight this quaint figure, standing in the stern of his flower-laden boat, swaying to the rhythm of his oar, will recall so vividly the time when that other
“Dumb old servitor ... went upward with the flood,”
that you cannot help straining your eyes in a vain search for the fair face of the lily maid of Astolat hidden among the blossoms. Upon looking closer you discover that it is only the gardener of the convent grounds, on his way to the market above the Rialto.
If you continue on, crossing the Giudecca, or if you happen to be coming from Murano or the Lido, you will pass dozens of other boats, loaded to the water’s edge with baskets upon baskets of peaches, melons, and figs, or great heaps of green vegetables, dashed here and there with piles of blood-red tomatoes. All these boats are pointing their bows towards the Ponte Paglia, the bridge on the Riva between the Doges’ Palace and the prison, the one next the Bridge of Sighs. Here, in the afternoons preceding market days, they unship their masts or rearrange their cargoes, taking off the top baskets if too high to clear the arch. Ponte Paglia is the best point of entrance from the Grand Canal, because it is the beginning of that short cut, through a series of smaller canals, to the fruit market above the Rialto bridge. The market opens at daybreak.
Many of these boats come from Malamocco, on the south, a small island this side of Chioggia, and from beyond the island known as the Madonna of the Seaweed, named after a curious figure sheltered by a copper umbrella. Many of them come from Torcello, that most ancient of the Venetian settlements, and from the fruit-raising country back of it, for all Torcello is one great orchard, with every landing-wharf piled full of its products. Here you can taste a fig so delicately ripe that it fairly melts in your mouth, and so sensitive that it withers and turns black almost with the handling. Here are rose-pink peaches the size of small melons, and golden melons the size of peaches. Here are pomegranates that burst open from very lusciousness, and white grapes that hang in masses, and melons and plums in heaps, and all sorts of queer little round things that you never taste but once, and never want to taste again.
These fruit gardens and orchards in the suburbs of Venice express the very waste and wantonness of the climate. There is no order in setting out the fruit, no plan in growing, no system in gathering. The trees thrive wherever they happen to have taken root--here a peach, here a pear, there a pomegranate. The vines climb the trunks and limbs, or swing off to tottering poles and crumbling walls. The watermelons lie flat on their backs in the blazing sun, flaunting their big leaves in your face, their tangled creepers in everybody’s way and under everybody’s feet. The peaches cling in matted clusters, and the figs and plums weigh down the drooping branches.