16 — I alway hope for interesting or arresting neighbours on the plane. The last time this happened I was fifteen, she was 60, and a professor of literature. She gave me a very neat lecturette on Stella Gibbons — I was reading Cold Comfort Farm. No luck this time, both my neighbours are playing candy crush or something. Always. I listen to Rosalia for most of the flight, mostly ‘Bizcochiko’ on repeat, then switch to An Italian Journey, a collection of Bach’s harpsichord transcriptions of Vivaldi’s Venitian music etc.
From the air the Venito is marked by little mounds, ant-mounds, stand-alone hills or mountains. Around them all is flat, partitioned into English fields. Have we turned around? Then we are barrelling through thick clouds, bucking and rocking. Terror, almost, more exhilaration, the plane now dark. A passenger throws her hands in the air as if on a rollercoaster. We are on a boat crossing rapids. Then the lagoon — a mass of grey, looking like the estuary near Inverness, muddy, uninhabitable, little islands. This is a place of desperation. Why else would one try so hard to chisel life out of so little? A refugee city. From the air the lagoon is not the past but dystopian future — climate collapse, fear. Which other cities will look like this? Then terracotta roofs, then a terracotta city, and small boats and grey water.
Feel odd, a little grumpy — arriving by bus is the worst way, in the rain, tipped out onto the Piazzale Roma which is like a scummy transport hub anywhere, and then a confusion about which way to go, working it out, stomping with backpacks hot and damp, Lo raising our moods with fluttery words. Along a canal which slowly becomes a canal rather than a stream, the clouds break apart — the famous light. Nowhere else has this light. And outside a simple church with old worn white stone plaques: two pheasants beneath a cherub and as I point it out Lo’s already looking, as always.
Take the Vaporetto, sitting at the back, outside, above the engine which is a barrel of rocks, juddering and furious at its labour. We cannot talk. Through industrial scrubland, like any other industrial scrubland aside from canals, so perhaps like Birmingham? The boat is full of grumpy older Venetians with shopping bags who don’t look at the water. More speed, a leftward swing and the city is behind us and the boat is complaining as it jogs through the lagoon beside Giudecca, the mirror-city, which seems so like a mirage late and night drunk stumbling along the seafront. Venice goes on infinitely, recurring, dreamscape.
Signs everywhere for art, behind us an English woman — West-London-y, gallery-y — walks with an Italian. “That’s where X is exhibiting.” “Wow, beautiful. How did X get the space?” “Long story.” They walk in silence a while and pass us as we look at the terrapins and large carp in Garibaldi’s fountain, calling to them as if they were small dogs. Onto the V Garibaldi — quite Venetian to shove the brigand to the east of the city. Feeling now in Venice passing a little canal and then we’re beside the Communist Party Offices — outside the hammer and sickle and the rainbow flag, a picture of Jesus — and sitting in the new sun waiting for P. to come out, watching hairy men drinking little bottles of beer beneath Lenin.
“Let’s get a drink” so we walk off and, as often in Italy I hear my name — often it’s because of a misheard Italian word, a soft j — and turn and Lo’ spots P and we run to meet them, their toy poodle Gravity jumping around, running to us, yipping, chasing Lo’. Bags in the flat and P telling us about the install. “Sugarcane from Spain wasn’t ready, so we had to get some from Italy.” Their trousers are covered in mud. Run out to get spritz ingredients and the hell of a small urban Italian supermarket — shaped like a maze — with a queue snaking around the whole shop, everything moving slowly, and no changing one’s mind here — forget ice and can’t go back.
Water taxi with P to dinner, we snake around then through the city and take pictures of each other and, of course, the feeling is of cinema, some belle epoch, the dolce vita of it. Pass another taxi with another small dog and hold Rainbow aloft but he doesn’t make friends. At Da Arturo is S. sitting reading theory, drinking red wine. P & S order and we sit with them drinking. I ask S if she speaks Arabic, she does, so tell her the waiter’s Egyptian. He has worked here for forty years. They exchange a few words and she says he’s friendlier now, says what a charming thing to do. We eat a little aubergine with white raisin, delicious, then leave to find Do Spade where I’d promised myself my first dinner. A confusion with meeting S & I — they are staying at the palazzo of some Venetian aristo and were ambushed on the way out, shoes in hand. He demanded they wore shoes in his house, then pointed them in the direction of dinner.
Unimaginable happiness when the manager says “Hey! My friend! You’re back!” and we shake hands and grin. Affirmation of constant exuberant friendliness. We eat simply — half a litre of prosecco, some chiccetti of speck, half an egg with an anchovy, scallop and we share a plate of gnocchi. After drink Amaro Lucca, a little drunk, overexcited, a city-consuming urge coming over me. My friend lends me his ID card to use the cigarette machine round the corner. Life is friendly. We walk toward where we think P will be and run into them with a tall young woman, another artist, and together walk across the city which is so quiet now. Falling asleep I think today I’ve been in a car, on a plane, two kinds of boat, a train, a bus.
aubergine and white raisins so lovely xx