Laura made her way carefully to the back of the Sophia and took the tiller from Xerxes. The dog let out a grateful growl before perching on the rear platform of the vessel, where he lifted a leg and let loose a lively stream of liquid over the side. Then Xerxes stared balefully at Laura until he realised she had no intention of letting him regain the tiller. The animal shuffled amidships, placed its muzzle tenderly in Piero’s groin, and closed its eyes.
Three sleeping drunks and a dog called Xerxes. And a strange, intriguing woman staring at him from the back of the boat, carefully directing them towards the city. In his head Daniel Forster had played the scene of his entry to the city on many occasions. None of these imagined arrivals came close to matching the reality.
Nor could he have predicted what occurred next. As the ancient boat made a slow but steady passage along the Cannaregio waterfront, they were joined by a long, sleek police speedboat which came alongside, then slowed to match their speed. Laura sat in the helm, unmoved by the vessel’s presence. In the rear of the speedboat stood a thin woman with short blonde hair. She wore a two-piece blue suit with a tightly cut jacket and a skirt that stopped just above the knee. In her hand was a megaphone. Daniel looked at the three sleeping men, as did the policewoman. Then the police officer stared at Laura, who merely smiled back at her and shrugged her shoulders.
It was too noisy and too distant to be certain, but Daniel felt sure that the policewoman had sworn at this point, then barked an order to the officer at the wheel of the launch. The boat lurched under a surge of power, then raced off, buoyed on its own seething platform of foam.
“See,” Laura noted. “Even the police come out to greet you, Daniel.”
But he scarcely heard her words. The Sophia had veered sharply and was now headed for the mouth of what he surmised was the Cannaregio canal. It was busy with small boats. A ’52 vaporetto chugged towards them. They passed beneath the odd, geometrical outline of the Tre Archi bridge, Laura dodging the traffic expertly, and then the Sophia set off along the straight haul to the Grand Canal. To his left, Daniel knew, lay the older part of Cannaregio, with the original Jewish ghetto hidden somewhere in its midst. To the right was the busy commercial and tourist quarter around the station.
“You know why you are here?” Laura asked, unflustered by the multitude of vessels of all shapes, sizes, and colours around her.
“To catalogue Signor Scacchi’s library,” he said, speaking loudly over the sound of the canal.
“Library!” She laughed out loud, and it made her seem much younger, he thought. “He called it that!”
The junction with the Grand Canal was ahead of them. The Sophia bobbed on the swell from the throng of boats milling in the busy waterway.
“Then why am I here?” he yelled, not knowing where to look.
She beamed at him and said something that was lost in the angry horn of a vaporetto shooing a gondola of Japanese tourists out of its way. Daniel was unsure, and did not want to ask, but wondered if she had answered: To save us. There was no time for introspection. They had turned, abruptly and with a sudden burst of speed, and were now midstream of the Grand Canal. Nothing — no photograph, no painting, no words on the page — had prepared him for this sight. The city’s beating jugular lay before him. Great buildings rose on both sides, Gothic and Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical, a startling juxtaposition of styles in which the centuries tripped over each other’s feet. Vaporetti and water taxis, haulage boats and gondolas bustled across the water like insects skating over a pond. It was a world which appeared to live in multiple dimensions: on every side, above in the towering palaces and churches, and below in the shifting black waters of the lagoon.
“And one thing we all forgot to say,” Laura added.
“What was that?” he asked.
She removed the sunglasses, and a pair of warm green eyes appraised him. “Why,” she said with a thoughtful smile that briefly made him forget the view, “welcome to Venice, Mr. Daniel Forster.”
5
A boy’s new home
Our uncle gives me a sideways look when I call this place the “Palazzo Scacchi.” Strictly speaking, it is a house, in Venetian parlance Ca’ Scacchi, but anywhere else in the world this would surely be regarded as a palace, albeit one in need of a little care and attention.
We live in the parish of San Cassian, on the border of the sestieri San Polo and Santa Croce. Our house is by the side of the little rio San Cassian (which any but a Venetian would call a canal) and small campo of the same name. We have the usual door which leads onto the street, and two entrances from the water. One runs under a grand, rounded arch into the ground floor of the house, which, as is customary in this city, is used as a cellar for storage. The second belongs to the warehouse and printing studio, which represents the Scacchis’ contribution to the world of commerce. This is situated in an adjoining building, some three storeys high (our home is four!), attached to the north side, towards the Grand Canal.
Finally, there is yet another mode of exit: a wooden bridge with handrails runs from the first floor of the house between the two river entrances straight over the canal and into the square itself. Consequently I can wander over it in the morning and find fresh water from the well in the centre of the campo while still rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Or I may hail a gondola from my bedroom window, find it waiting for me by the time I get downstairs, and, but a single minute later, be in the midst of the greatest waterway on earth, almost slap opposite the magnificence of the Ca’ d’Oro! And this does not deserve the name “palace”?
The house is almost two hundred years old, I am told, with weathered brickwork the colour of chestnuts that have lain on the ground all winter and handsome arched windows, most with their own miniature Doric columns which frame green-painted shutters designed to keep out the cruel summer heat. I live on the third floor in the third room to the right (things always come in threes, they say). When I lie in bed at night, I can hear the lapping of the water, the chatter and songs of the passing gondoliers, and, in the square, the occasional bawdy chatter of the local whores. The neighbourhood has something of a reputation for the latter, I’m afraid (but this is a city, remember — I am sure you have the same in Seville). Nevertheless, I understand why Uncle pursues his trade here. The prices are not so steep. The location is central and easy for our clients to find. Furthermore, the printing trade has many roots in this area. Scotto and Gardano, Rampazetto and Novimagio all made their homes hereabouts at some time. The quarter has the spirit of a community of bookmen about it, even if some of the old names are now nothing more than fading title pieces on the shelves of the Rialto antiquaries.
Oh, sister! I pray for the day when I can show you these things instead of struggling to describe them in a letter which may take Heaven knows how long to reach you in Spain! Venice is like a vast simulacrum of our old library at home, one that stretches forever, unfathomed, full of dark corners and random wonders, some on my very doorstep. Last night, while rooting around in the jumbled corners of the warehouse cellar, I found behind a pile of unsold (and, frankly, inferior) cantatas a single copy of Aristotle’s Poetics, published in the city in 1502 by Aldus Manutius himself. The imprint of the Aldine academy is on the title page — that famous colophon of the anchor and dolphin which our father told us about! I raced to Uncle Leo with my discovery and — now, here’s a victory— something very close to a smile broke the thin, flat line of the Scacchi lips. “A find, boy! You’ll pay your way yet. This’ll fetch good money when I hawk it down the Rialto.”