But since I know that you know that what you have been pleased to ask of me is impossible, and yet that you have asked it neither lightly nor cruelly, all I can do is answer; knowing that you know that my answer, in all its words, may mean nothing in the end beyond: Forgive me.
A moment ago as I glimpsed from the tail of my eye the enormous task that awaits me, like a mountain range to be climbed, it occurred to me that there may be an ulterior motive to your request. In asking me to describe my world to you, you may not be seeking information about my world at all. You may not plan to listen to my words, but only to the silences between the sentences, from which you will learn a good deal about your own world. If this is the case, I have no objection; indeed I prefer the arrangement. My job then is not to describe my world in general terms such as apply to all worlds, the language of astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, etc., but rather to dwell upon the individual and transient, the fortuitous and peculiar; not to describe the class of flowering plants, but to mention the acrid odor of a Cecile Bruner rose full-blown on a balcony overlooking a great bay encircled by the lights of cities on a mild, foggy evening of September; not to give an outline of the evolution of intelligence or the course of human history, but to tell you, perhaps at considerable length, about my great-aunt Elizabeth. No general historical narrative, not even a close examination of the westward migration of the white peoples as it culminated and ended in the treks of the pioneers across the Great Plains, the Rockies, the Sierra, to the Pacific Shore, would give you an honest conviction of the necessity of the existence of my great-aunt Elizabeth. Even if I carried the narrative into such details as the fortunes of the individual families of the settlers of Wyoming, the existence of my great-aunt would continue to appear fortuitous. Only if I were to describe her, her life, her death, might you gain some understanding of the absolute necessity of her existence, and, through that, perhaps some comprehension of that millennial movement to the west which ended on the beaches of an immense fog-breeding sea; and, through that, perhaps a new understanding of some ancient migration of your own people, or the lack of any migratory movements in the history of your people; or of the nature of failure, or the character of your own great-aunt, or your own soul.
My lord, I see that instead of apologising and procrastinating I should simply thank you for the utterly unexpected and welcome opportunity to talk about my great-aunt, and begin at once to do so. It is not an opportunity often given to the Second Officer of a ship of the Terran Interstellar Fleet. But I do not think I will begin with my great-aunt. She is a difficult subject, and it has occurred to me, as I gain the courage to take a few quick glances directly at the appalling mountains which I am to climb (and from whose summits what fog-bound ocean will I see?), that it does not matter where I begin, and that I need not even stick precisely to the facts. Whatever I tell you, if you are listening to the silences between the sentences, you will hear the truth. As in music, when one has caught the rhythm, the pattern of the sounds and silences, then one hears the tune. There is, after all, only one tune I can sing. So I shall begin with a fairy tale.
Once upon a time there was a city. All other cities of all times and places were alike in many ways. This city was unlike them all, in many ways; and yet it manifested more fully than any of the others the Idea of a city. It was populated by birds, cats, people, and winged lions, in roughly equal proportions. The lions were all literate. Seldom did one see a lion without a book in its paw. The cats were illiterate, but highly civilised. Observing a large family group at ease in the shrubbery of a shady garden fenced from all intrusion, or a ritual confrontation of toms on the moonlit stones of a city square, or the leisurely progress from roof to roof of a silken and silvery maiden, one might well conclude not only that the city had been built for, but that the art of living in it had been brought to perfection by, the cats. But as soon as one looked at a lion one would have to question this; for, with all their resemblances to the cats in form and feature, the complete tranquillity of the lions, their universal expression of benevolent pride and conscious mastery, surely indicated a state of mind transcending mere happiness, approaching joy. You might see the corpse of a cat floating under a bridge along with soft-drink bottles and rotten oranges, but looking up from that sorry sight you would see by the steps of the bridge a lion frowning beatifically through his mane, his stone wings folded; for what better place could he ever fly to?
It is easy to assume that the birds were the least happy inhabitants of the city. Many of them lived in cages. These prisoners certainly did not appear to be unhappy, singing ornate cadenzas in the style of Vivaldi from dawn to evening across the narrow ways, pecking at their birdseed and staring rapt at their little yellow reflections in the Christmas-tree ornaments hung in their airy cages. But all the same, they lived in cages. The pigeons lived free, but only as sturdy beggars. Daily they answered the summons of the bells for their handout, and in between handouts they pestered the tourists for more handouts. Perhaps it was their resentment at being thus reduced to the status of dependents, disenfranchised, their obscure anger at having been given few trees to perch in and few dangers to flee from, that made their excrement so corrosive. Whatever their motive, the pigeons were destroying some of the most exquisite elements of the city’s fabric, by shitting persistently and ruinously on the perishable stone of cornices, pinnacles, carvings. Not even the lions could escape the pigeons. In this work of destruction the pigeons were, however, surpassed by the people, whose factories on the nearby mainland emitted vapors far exceeding the corrosive powers of the most class-conscious pigeon, and whose motorboats were furiously engaged in trying to sink the city before it crumbled.
For the quality in which Venice differed most clearly from all other cities and yet in which it exemplified and described them all, every one, most exactly, was its fragility.
A city, a splendid, old, crowded, active city full of thousands of busy lives, that might be destroyed by a pigeon—or a motorboat—or a wisp of gas? Ridiculous!
But then what is it that destroys cities? Why have the mighty fallen? Look, and you find a toy horse; a brass key; a couple of men chatting over wine; a change in the weather; the arrival of a few Spaniards. Nothing at all. A pigeon, a motorboat, a click on a Geiger counter.
The first lesson of Venice, then, is mortality.
Misread by Germans and other barbarians from the north (the city has always been besieged by Germans, and was in fact founded out in the deepest part of its lagoon in an effort to remove itself from the compulsive visitations of Langobard tourists—an effort which failed, in the long run), this perfectly straightforward message has been interpreted, with all the magnificent obtuseness of Teutonic thought, to mean that because Venice is more than usually mortal therefore Venice is a city of death, of dying, of disease, decadent, a city without healthy business, surviving like its pigeons as a parasite on visitors, a fever-dream city of morbidity, a place where aging pederasts go to die. This is, of course, rubbish. What is most mortal is most alive. There is no place in the world where the green beautiful murky tides of life run so high, where one is so vividly aware of the presence of living birds, cats, lions, and people walking, talking, singing, quarrelling, rolling metal shop blinds up and down, cooking dinner, eating breakfast, getting married, holding funerals, transporting Coca-Cola and zucchini from place to place in Coca-Cola and zucchini boats, making speeches, playing radios and musical instruments, selling electrified yo-yos that glow like fireflies as they roll up and down their strings in the dusk before the doors of the great cathedral, playing truant from school, kicking soccer balls, fighting, fishing, kissing, throwing tear gas at demonstrators, demonstrating, shortening their life expectancy by blowing incredibly fragile baubles of colored glass, etc., etc.—in other words, living. It I were an aging German pederast with a death wish, I should feel a terrible fool in Venice. Right out of my depth.