last day in Venice

But first.

The rea­son I will nev­er have a Kin­dle. (There are many rea­sons, but here is just one GOOD one).

I picked up a book to read tonight, and on the fly­leaf, com­plete­ly ruin­ing any resale val­ue, I know, is a nota­tion, dat­ed Octo­ber 25, 1999. Avery was just shy of three years old. It runs like this.

*******
I close her bed­room door.

“Wait, wait, “Avery says, “don’t close it yet. I have to say ‘sleep well’ to you.”

I open her door again.

“Sleep well, dar­ling,” Avery says. “Good night, darling.”

****************

Tell me what Kin­dle will ever have THAT writ­ten on its fly­leaf, for me to find on a chilly Lon­don night, and you’re sold. Until then, I’ll stick with my book­shelves full of trea­sures, unsaleable to be sure, heavy to lug around yes, and all the more LOVED for that. Gro­cery lists for birth­day par­ties, ideas for exhibits at my old gallery, nota­tions of night­mares (involv­ing raw chick­en and futons?? don’t ask), mem­os to thank some­one for a din­ner par­ty. I could not live hap­pi­ly with­out this flot­sam and jet­sam of my past, thank you, not even for a slim, con­ve­nient plas­tic thing full of words.

Speak­ing of jot­tings, I’ve sim­ply got to jot down the adven­tures of our last day in Venice before they are all per­ma­nent­ly replaced in my brain by by the flur­ry of activ­i­ty here: a very late-night, lux­u­ri­ous din­ner out with a girl­friend vis­it­ing from the States, “Cin­derel­la on Ice” at the Roy­al Albert Hall (pro­duc­tion closed now, but look out for it next year: mag­nif­i­cent!), John’s birth­day, and my obses­sion with home­made piz­za! Isn’t this the most gor­geous piz­za you’ve ever seen?

It’s kind of a garbage, clean-out-the-fridge din­ner, with home­made crust (the eas­i­est thing in the world to make) toma­to sauce from a jar (my only require­ment: no sug­ar!), pesto, left­over arti­chokes, half a left­over red pep­per, sliced real­ly thin, left­over Gig­gly Pig sausages, some slight­ly shriv­el­ly baby toma­toes, red onions, moz­zarel­la, a hand­ful of olives stolen from John’s mar­ti­ni stash, and after it’s all cooked, a hand­ful of rock­et scat­tered on top…

Heav­en. The dough recipe makes more than twice what you need for two piz­zas, but trust me, you want that left­over dough. Noth­ing makes Avery and John as hap­py as that dough, rolled out super-thin, baked on a red-hot piz­za stone for 10 min­utes with some slices of buf­fa­lo moz­zarel­la and a sprin­kle of pars­ley and gar­lic salt. The most won­der­ful, cheap­est, eas­i­est lit­tle slice of par­adise, per­fect lit­tle side dish for pasta.

So Venice, Day Three. We start­ed out at sim­ply the most beau­ti­ful mar­ket I have ever seen: the famed Rial­to Mar­ket of all the guide­books and nov­els. I thought all the descrip­tions were com­plete­ly over the top: how won­der­ful could it be? Well, as you see. And dear read­ers, the tragedy was that I could not buy any­thing! Nev­er again will I stay in a hotel in Venice; we need a flat with a kitchen. The crispest look­ing fen­nel, the firmest onions, beau­ti­ful baby arti­chokes (I adore them now, want to put them on every­thing but ice cream), and the fish? Don’t even get me start­ed! I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly love squid, but it was mag­i­cal-look­ing. And cut­tle­fish and live prawns (these creeped Avery out, “Some­body get a bowl of water for these poor gasp­ing fish!”) and scal­lops in the shell… I did buy two heart-shaped salamis from a gor­geous char­cu­terie (or what­ev­er the word is in Ital­ian), reluc­tant­ly leav­ing behind the salame in the shape of a dinosaur, seriously.

And there was a horse butch­er. I mean, horse meat, not a butch­er who was a horse. Don’t ask Avery about that, either. The Rial­to Mar­ket is not for the faint of heart.

From there, we hopped on the vaporet­to and head­ed for the Peg­gy Guggen­heim Muse­um, and there, I saw my entire career as an art his­to­ri­an flash before my eyes. My field was inter­na­tion­al art from 1900–1940, and that… is the Guggen­heim Col­lec­tion. Boc­cioni, Bran­cusi, Kandin­sky, Duchamp, Mon­dri­an… I found myself smil­ing like a sil­ly ass as the mem­o­ries of my teach­ing days came back: my lec­tures link­ing the ear­li­est Mon­dri­an paint­ings of light danc­ing on water, through the clas­sic red, blue, black and yel­low geo­met­ric works, to the ulti­mate, Broad­way Boo­gie-Woo­gie, that paean to New York city culture…

We played our usu­al “what would you buy” game, and I came down unable to decide between Bran­cusi’s Bird in Space and Boc­cioni’s Devel­op­ment of a Bot­tle in Space. John fell in love with a Gia­comet­ti group of walk­ing men, or maybe a Joseph Cor­nell box, and Avery went back over and over to a draw­ing by an artist I’d nev­er heard of, a British doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er named Humphrey Jen­nings. A love­ly lit­tle Sur­re­al­ist piece.

An unfor­get­table place.

From there we wan­dered to lunch at the near­by Al Vechio Forner, a tiny oste­ria devot­ed to… lasagne! Of every descrip­tion. It was­n’t the most bril­liant lasagne I’ve ever had, but it was homey, warm and tasty, and the staff were love­ly to us, let­ting me speak my slow, basic Ital­ian. I had scal­lop and arti­choke lasagne (I know, arti­chokes again), John had rad­di­chio and Fonti­na, and Avery had what we decid­ed was the best, a sim­ple bolognese.

We stum­bled upon the world’s best mar­bled paper shop! Alber­to Valese Ebru, tucked away, just wait­ing for Avery to relin­quish her gela­to to John and slip in with me to find presents for Anna whose birth­day is com­ing, I get a pho­to album for the hun­dreds of pho­tos I’ve man­aged to get print­ed but not put in albums… I also man­age to say “Thank you so much, no, we don’t need a bag, we can put every­thing in this one I have HERE!” Total­ly thrilling.

As we stood on the Accad­e­mia Bridge, admir­ing the view, sud­den­ly there was a flur­ry of boats below, all con­tain­ing peo­ple in black bran­dish­ing enor­mous cam­eras with tele­pho­to lens­es. “It’s the paparazzi,” John said wise­ly, “Let’s wait to see who it is.” And it was the ulti­mate, if you like that sort of thing: Brangeli­na! Stop­ping at a gor­geous palaz­zo, Brad emerg­ing first, then reach­ing down into the boat to hand out child after child after child! Final­ly, Angeli­na stepped up to the dock and they rushed inside, not even stop­ping to give their ador­ing fans, who had gath­ered in the dozens on the bridge, a smile. Ah well, our brush with fame was sort of fun, in a shame-faced way.

We crossed the bridge final­ly and went into the Isti­tu­to Vene­to where there was an exhi­bi­tion of the paint­ings of Venet­ian artist Zoran Music. I am not even nor­mal­ly very enthu­si­as­tic about fig­u­ra­tive art, but this man’s work was over­whelm­ing. A sur­vivor of the Holo­caust, he paint­ed land­scapes, self-por­traits and Venet­ian cityscapes for 25 years before his expe­ri­ences resur­faced and demand­ed to be expressed… and the result­ing series of paint­ings was very, very dif­fi­cult to look at. I can only imag­ine if one had actu­al­ly expe­ri­enced the Holo­caust one­self, what it would be like to look at those paintings.

Strange­ly, John had decid­ed ear­li­er in the day that he want­ed to vis­it the Jew­ish ghet­to and muse­um, so, our minds still filled with Zoran’s work, we went off to drop our parcels at the hotel and head off on foot. Such an inno­cent-look­ing lit­tle square, hous­ing the syn­a­gogue (which was closed) and the muse­um, under ren­o­va­tion. So hard to believe there was ever a mass exo­dus, a round­ing up of all the Jews in the quar­ter, only 8 of whom ever returned. Chil­dren were rac­ing around the square in a burst of ener­gy after school, I sup­pose, and a tiny wet dog raced with them, chas­ing a ten­nis ball. How bizarre to think what the place had been like 70 years before.

The most last­ing result of our vis­it to the ghet­to was our dis­cov­ery of the restau­rant where we had the best meal of our stay in Venice! And it was kosher. Gam-Gam, down a tiny, dark street off the ghet­to square, where we passed the only man I saw in Venice wear­ing a yarmulke. Oh, the food! An Israeli tapas (weird fusion name, that) plat­ter of house­made pita bread with at least 8 salad‑y bits: hum­mous, cucum­bers in oil, beet­root roast­ed and cubed with pars­ley, a sort of egg sal­ad with papri­ka, roast­ed red pep­pers, a mixed bean dish. Avery had mat­zo-ball soup and it was the absolute best we’ve had since we left New York. I had mous­sa­ka, love­ly with vel­vety aubergines and a creamy bechamel sauce. John had wiener schnitzel which was sort of aver­age, but then we all shared a love­ly plat­ter of latkes. Just gor­geous. And the staff were beyond friend­ly and help­ful, speak­ing to each oth­er in Hew­brew and to us in Ital­ian and English.

And that was Venice. Well, except for our hor­rid depar­ture. We got up ear­ly to take the water bus to the bus sta­tion, and stood at the stop, chat­ter­ing about our adven­ture and watch­ing the rain begin to fall. And we wait­ed, and wait­ed and wait­ed. Final­ly a woman stand­ing near­by answered her phone and said, “Sci­opera!” Oh no! A bus strike! Just going in the direc­tion we want­ed to go, just announced that moment. What to do! We walked.

And walked, and walked, in the pour­ing rain, pour­ing so hard that when we got home, five hours lat­er, the clothes and books INSIDE the suit­cas­es were wet! Just awful. We attached our duf­fel to Avery’s wheeled lug­gage (we may nev­er again be able to make fun of her for suc­cumb­ing to func­tion over form: John usu­al­ly hates wheeled lug­gage! but it saved our life), and sim­ply ran and walked the 40 min­utes or so to the bus sta­tion. Jumped on for the wildest ride of our lives, at exces­sive speed through mas­sive throw­ings-up of pooled rain water at the side of the road. Avery sim­ply closed her eyes. A freez­ing cold air­plane ride in our soak­ing wet clothes, and home.

Well, my friends, I must close because we have a con­cert at Avery’s school to go to, and then guests for din­ner, and I’ve com­mit­ted that sin that peo­ple always warn me nev­er to com­mit: I’ve cooked some­thing I’ve nev­er cooked before, to offer to guests, and it’s real­ly scary-look­ing. I’ll tell all when the worst is known.