o you never know as you move through these labyrinths whether you are pursuing a goal or running from yourself, whether you are the hunter or his prey. Surely not a saint, but perhaps not yet a full-scale dragon; hardly a Theseus, but not a maiden- starved Minotaur either. The Greek version rings, though, a better bell, since the winner gets nothing, because the slayer and the slain are related. The monster, after all, was the prize's half brother; in any case, he was half brother to the hero's eventual wife. Ariadne and Phacdra were sisters, and for all we know, the brave Athenian had them both. In fact, with an eye on marrying into the Cretan king's family, he niight have accepted the murderous commission to make the family more respectable. As granddaughters of Helios, the girls were supposed to be pure and shining; their names suggested as much. Why, even their mother, Pasiphae, was, for all her dark urges,
Blindingly Bright. And perhaps she yielded to those dark urges and did it with the bull precisely to prove that nature neglects the majority principle, since the bull's horns suggest the moon. Perhaps she was interested in chiaroscuro rather than in bestiality and eclipsed the bull for purely optical reasons. And the fact that the bull, whose symbolism-laden pedigree ran all the way back to cave paintings, was blind enough to mistake the artificial cow Daedalus built for Pasiphae on this occasion is her proof that her ancestry still holds the upper hand in the system of causality, that Helios' light, refracted in her, Pasiphae, is still—after four children (two fine daughters and two good-for-nothing boys)—blindingly bright. As far as the principle ofcausality is concerned, it should be added that the main hero in this story is precisely Daedalus, who, apart from a very convincing cow, built—this time on the king's request—the very labyrinth in which the bull-headed offspring and his slayer got to face each other one day, with disastrous consequences for the former. In a manner of speaking, the whole business is Daedalus' brain child, the labyrinth especially, as it resembles a brain. In a manner of speaking, everybody is related to everybody, the pursuer to the pursued, at least. Small wonder, then, that one's ineanderings through the streets of this city, whose biggest colony for nearly three centuries was the island of Crete, feels somewhat tautological, especially as light fades—that is, especially as its pasiphaian, ariadnan, and phaedran properties fail. In other words, especially in the evening, when one loses oneself to self-deprecation.
n the brighter side there are, ofcourse, lots oflions: winged ones, with their books opened on "Peace upon you, St. Mark the Evangelist," or lions of regular feline appearance. The winged ones, strictly speaking, belong in the category ofmonsters, too. Givenmy occupation, however, I've always regarded them as a more agile and literate form of Pegasus, who can surely fly, but whose ability to read is somewhat more doubtful. A paw, at any rate, is a better instrument for turning pages than a hoof. In this city the lions are ubiquitous, and over the years I've unwittingly come to share this toteni to the point of placing one of theni on the cover of one of my books: the closest a man gets in niy line of work to having his own fac;ade. Yet monsters they are, if only because they are products of the city's fantasy, since even at the zenith of this republic's maritime might it controlled no territory where this animal could be found even in its wingless state. (The Greeks were more on the dot with their bull, its neolithic pedigree notwithstanding.) As for the Evangelist himself, he of course died in Alexandria, Egypt—but of natural causes—and he never went on a safari. In general, Christendom's truck with lions is negligible, as they could not be found in its domain, dwelling solely in Africa, and in deserts at that. This of course helped toward their subsequent association with desert fathers; other than that, the Christians could have encountered the animal only as its diet in Roman circuses, where lions were imported from African shores for entertainment. Their unfa- miliarity—better to say, their nonexistence— was what would unleash the ancients' fantasy, enabling them to attribute to the animals various aspects of othenvorldliness, including those of divine commerce. So it's not entirely wild to have this animal sitting on Venetian faqades in the unlikely role of the guardian of St. Mark's eternal repose; if not the Church, then the city itself could be seen as a lioness protecting its cub. Besides, in this city, the Church and the state have merged, in a perfectly Byzantine fashion. The only case, I must add, where such a merger turned out—quite early on—to be to the subjects' advantage. No wonder, then, that the place was literally lionized, that the lion itself got lionized, which is to say humanized. On every cornice, overnearly every entrance, you see either its muzzle, with a human look, or a human head with leonine features. Both, in the final analysis, qualify as monsters (albeit of the benevolent sort), since neither ever existed. Also, because of their numerical superiority over any other carved or sculpted image, including that of the Madonna or the Redeemer Himself. On the other hand, it's easier to carve a beast than a human figure. Basically, the animal kingdom fared poorly in Christian art—not to mention the doctrine. So the local pride of Felidae may regard itself as their kingdom's way of getting even. In winter, they brighten one's dusk.
nee, in a dusk that darkened gray pupils but brought gold to those of the mustard-cum- honey variety, the owner of the latter and I encountered an Egyptian warship—a light cruiser, to be precise—moored at the Fondamenta dell'Arsenale, near the Giardini. I can't recall its name now, but its home port was definitely Alexandria. It was a highly modern piece ofnaval hardware, bristling with all sorts of antennae, radar, satellite dishes, rocket launchers, antiaircraft turrets, etc., apart from the usual large-caliber guns. From a distance you couldn't tell its nationality. Even close up you could be confused, because the uniforms and general deportment ofthe crew aboard looked vaguely British. The flag was already lowered, and the sky over the lagtma was changing from Bordeaux to dark porphyry. As we marveled at the nature of the errand that brought this man-of-war here—a need for repairs? a new courtship between Venice and Alexandria? to reclaim the holv relic
stolen from the latter in the twelfth centurv?
·
—its loudspeakers suddenly came to life and we heard, "Allah! Akbar Allah! Akbar!" The muezzin was calling the crew to evening prayer, the ship's t\vo niasts momentarilyturning to minarets. All at once the cruiser was Istanbul in profile. I felt that the map had suddenly folded or the book of history had shut before my eyes. At least that it had become six centuries shorter: Christianity was no longer Islam's senior. The Bosporus was overlapping the Adriatic, and you couldn't tell which wave was which. A far cry from architecture.
n winter evenings the sea, welled by a contrary easterly, fills every canal to the brim like a bathtub, and at times overflows them. Nobody runs up from downstairs crying, "The pipes!" as there is no downstairs. The city stands ankle-deep in water, and boats, "hitched like animals to the walls," to quote Cassiodorus, prance. The pilgrim's shoe, having tested the water, is drying atop his hotel room's radiator; the native dives intohis closet to fish out his pair of rubber boots. "Acqua alta," says a voice over the radio, and human traffic subsides. Streets empty; stores, bars, restaurants and trattorias close. Only their signs continue burning, finally getting a piece of the narcissistic action as the pavement briefly, superficially, catches up with the canals. Churches, however, remain open, but then treading upon water is no news to either clergy or parishioners; neither to music, water's twin.