many years he had supplied his patrons, and with delicious Egyptians,
too! One night Gustavo disappeared, escorted by two gendarmes from the
Department of Justice. Next morning the judge said: “Whereas, according
to the accounts kept by the Department of Customs, the duties and
expenses due the king on the cigarettes unlawfully sold by the prisoner
for years past aggregate two thousand three hundred and ten _lire_;
and whereas, the savings of the prisoner for ten years past, and at
the moment deposited to his individual credit in the _Banco Napoli_,
amount to exactly two thousand three hundred and ten _lire_; therefore,
it is ordered, that a sight draft for the exact amount be drawn in
favor of the king.” This would entitle Gustavo to the pure air of the
piazza; otherwise?--well, otherwise not. Within a week Gustavo was
again whirling his tray--a little grayer, perhaps, and a little wiser;
certainly poorer. Thus does a tyrannical government oppress its people!
These caffès of the piazza, with their iced carafes, white napkins, and
little silver coffee-pots, are the caffès of the rich.
The caffè of the poor is sometimes afloat. No matter how early you are
out in the morning, this floating caffè--the cook-boat--has its fire
lighted, and the savory smell of its cuisine drifts over the lagoon,
long before your gondola rounds the Dogana. When you come alongside
you find a charcoal brazier heating a pan of savory fish and a large
pot of coffee, and near by a basketful of rolls, fresh and warm, from
a still earlier baker. There are peaches, too, and a hamper of figs.
The cook-boat is tended by two men; one cooks and serves, and the
other rows, standing in the stern, looking anxiously for customers,
and calling out in stentorian tones that all the delicacies of the
season are now being fried, broiled, and toasted, and that for the
infinitesimal sum of ten _soldi_ you can breakfast like a doge.
If you are just out of the lagoon, your blood tingling with the touch
of the sea, your face aglow with your early morning bath, answer the
cry of one of these floating kitchens, and eat a breakfast with the
rising sun lighting your forehead and the cool breath of the lagoon
across your cheek. It may be the salt air and the early plunge that
make the coffee so savory, the fish and rolls so delicious, and the
fruit so refreshing; or it may be because the fish were wriggling in
the bottom of the boat half an hour earlier, the coffee only at the
first boiling, and the fruit, bought from a passing boat, still damp
with the night’s dew!
The caffè of the poorest is wherever there is a crowd. It generally
stands on three iron legs under one of the trees down the _Via
Garibaldi_, or over by the landing of the Dogana, or beneath the shade
of some awning, or up a back court. The old fellow who bends over the
hot earthen dish, supported on these legs, slowly stirring a mess of
kidneys or an indescribable stew, is cook, head waiter, and proprietor
all in one. Every now and then he fishes out some delicate tidbit--a
miniature octopus, perhaps (called _fulpe_), a little sea-horror, all
legs and claws, which he sprawls out on a bit of brown paper and lays
on the palm of your left hand, assuming, clearly, that you have all the
knives and forks that you need, on your right.
Once in a while a good Bohemian discovers some out-of-the-way place
up a canal or through a twisted _calle_ that delights him with its
cuisine, its cellar, or its cosiness, and forever after he preëmpts it
as _his_ caffè. I know half a dozen such discoveries--one somewhere
near _San Giorgio degli Schiavoni_, where the men play bowls in a long,
narrow alley, under wide-spreading trees, cramped up between high
buildings; and another, off the Merceria, where the officers smoke and
lounge; and still another, quite my own--the _Caffè Calcina_. This last
is on the _Rio San Vio_, and looks out on the Giudecca, just below San
Rosario. You would never suspect it of being a caffè at all, until you
had dodged under the little roof of the porch to escape the heat, and
opening the side door found yourself in a small, plainly furnished
room with little marble-top tables, each decorated with a Siamese-twin
salt-cellar holding a pinch of salt and of pepper. Even then it is a
very common sort of caffè, and not at all the place you would care to
breakfast in twice; that is, not until you had followed the demure
waiter through a narrow passage and out into a square _patio_ splashed
with yellow-green light and cooled by overlacing vines. Then you
realize that this same square patch of ground is one of the few restful
spots of the wide earth.
It is all open to the sky except for a great arbor of grape leaves
covering the whole area, beneath which, on the cool, moist ground,
stand half a dozen little tables covered with snow-white cloths. At one
side is a shelter, from behind which come certain mysterious noises of
fries and broils. All about are big, green-painted boxes of japonicas,
while at one end the oleanders thrust their top branches through the
overhanging leaves of the arbor, waving their blossoms defiantly in the
blazing sun. Beneath this grateful shelter you sit and loaf and invite
your soul, and your best friend, too, if he happens to be that sort of
a man.
After having congratulated yourself on your discovery and having
become a daily _habitué_ of the delightful _patio_, you find that you
have really discovered the Grand Canal or the Rialto bridge. To your
great surprise, the _Caffè Calcina_ has been the favorite resort of
good Bohemians for nearly a century. You learn that Turner painted his
sunset sketches from its upper windows, and that dozens of more modern
English painters have lived in the rooms above; that Whistler and Rico
and scores of others have broken bread and had toothsome omelets under
its vines; and, more precious than all, that Ruskin and Browning have
shared many a bottle of honest Chianti with these same oleanders above
their heads, and this, too, in the years when the Sage of Brantwood was
teaching the world to love his Venice, and the great poet was singing
songs that will last as long as the language.
ON THE HOTEL STEPS
IF you drink your early coffee as I do, in the garden under the
oleanders, overlooking the water-landing of the hotel, and linger long
enough over your fruit, you will conclude before many days that a large
part of the life of Venice can be seen from the hotel steps. You may
behold the great row of gondolas at the _traghetto_ near by, ranged
side by side, awaiting their turn, and here and there, tied to the
spiles outside the line, the more fortunate boats whose owners serve
some sight-seer by the week, or some native padrone by the month, and
are thus free of the daily routine of the _traghetto_, and free, too,
from our old friend Joseph’s summoning voice.
You will be delighted at the good-humor and good-fellowship which
animate this group of gondoliers; their ringing songs and hearty
laughter; their constant care of the boats, their daily sponging
and polishing; and now and then, I regret to say, your ears will be
assailed by a quarrel, so fierce, so loud, and so full of vindictive
energy, that you will start from your seat in instant expectation
of the gleam of a stiletto, until by long experience you learn how
harmless are both the bark and bite of a gondolier, and how necessary
as a safety-valve, to accused and accuser as well, is the unlimited
air-space of the Grand Canal.
You will also come into closer contact with Joseph, prince among
porters, and patron saint of this Traghetto of Santa Salute. There is
another Saint, of course, shaded by its trellised vines, framed in
tawdry gilt, protected from the weather by a wooden hood, and lighted
at night by a dim lamp hanging before it--but, for all that, Joseph is
supreme as protector, refuge, and friend.
Joseph, indeed, is more than this. He is the patron saint and
father confessor of every wayfarer, of whatever tongue. Should a
copper-colored gentleman mount the steps of the hotel landing, attired
in calico trousers, a short jacket of pea-green silk, and six yards
of bath toweling about his head, Joseph instantly addresses him in
broken Hindostanee, sending his rattan chairs and paper boxes to a room
overlooking the shady court, and placing a boy on the rug outside,
ready to spring when the copper-colored gentleman claps his hands. Does
another distinguished foreigner descend from the gondola, attended
by two valets with a block-tin trunk, half a score of hat-boxes,
bags, and bundles, four umbrellas, and a dozen sticks, Joseph at once
accosts him in most excellent English, and has ordered a green-painted
tub rolled into his room before he has had time to reach the door of
his apartment. If another equally distinguished traveler steps on
the marble slab, wearing a Bond Street ulster, a slouch hat, and a
ready-made summer suit, with yellow shoes, and carrying an Alpine staff
(so useful in Venice) branded with illegible letters chasing each other
spirally up and down the wooden handle, Joseph takes his measure at a
glance. He knows it is his first trip “_en Cook_,” and that he will
want the earth, and instantly decides that so far as concerns himself
he shall have it, including a small, round, convenient little portable
which he immediately places behind the door to save the marble hearth.
So with the titled Frenchman, wife, maid, and canary bird; the haughty
Austrian, his sword in a buckskin bag; the stolid German with the stout
helpmate and one satchel, or the Spaniard with two friends and no
baggage at all.
Joseph knows them all--their conditions, wants, economics, meannesses,
escapades, and subterfuges. Does he not remember how you haggled over
the price of your room, and the row you made when your shoes were mixed
up with the old gentleman’s on the floor above? Does he not open the
door in the small hours, when you slink in, the bell sounding like
a tocsin at your touch? Is he not rubbing his eyes and carrying the
candle that lights you down to the corridor door, the only exit from
the hotel after midnight, when you had hoped to escape by the garden,
and dare not look up at the balcony above?
Here also you will often meet the Professor. Indeed, he is breakfasting
with me in this same garden this very morning. It is the first time I
have seen him since the memorable day of the regatta, when Pasquale won
the prize and the old fellow lost his _soldi_.
He has laid aside his outing costume--the short jacket, beribboned
hat, and huge field-glass--and is gracing my table clothed in what he
is pleased to call his “garb of tuition,” worn to-day because of a
pupil who expects him at nine o’clock; “a horrid old German woman from
Prague,” he calls her. This garb is the same old frock-coat of many
summers, the well-ironed silk hat, and the limp glove dangling from
his hand or laid like a crumpled leaf on the cloth beside him. The
coat, held snug to the waist by a single button, always bulges out
over the chest, the two frogs serving as pockets. From these depths,
near the waist-line, the Professor now and then drags up a great silk
handkerchief, either red or black as the week’s wash may permit, for I
have never known of his owning more than two!
To-day, below the bulge of this too large handkerchief swells yet
another enlargement, to which my guest, tapping it significantly with
his finger-tips, refers in a most mysterious way as “a very great
secret,” but without unbosoming to me either its cause or its mystery.
When the cigarettes are lighted he drops his hand deep into his
one-buttoned coat, unloads the handkerchief, and takes out a little
volume bound in vellum, a book he had promised me for weeks. This
solves the mystery and effaces the bulge.
One of the delights of knowing the Professor well is to see him handle
a book that he loves. He has a peculiar way of smoothing the sides
before opening it, as one would a child’s hand, and of always turning
the leaves as though he were afraid of hurting the back, caressing
them one by one with his fingers, quite as a bird plumes its feathers.
And he is always bringing a new book to light; one of his charming
idiosyncrasies is the hunting about in odd corners for just such odd
volumes.
“Out of print now, my dear fellow. You can’t buy it for money. This is
the only copy in Venice that I could borrow for love. See the chapters
on these very fellows--these gondoliers,” pointing to the _traghetto_.
“Sometimes, when I hear their quarrels, I wonder if they ever remember
that their guild is as old as the days of the Doges, a fossil survival,
unique, perhaps, in the history of this or of any other country.”
While the Professor nibbles at the crescents and sips his coffee,
pausing now and then to read me passages taken at random from the
little volume in his hands, I watch the procession of gondolas from
the _traghetto_, like a row of cabs taking their turn, as Joseph’s
“_a una_” or “_due_” rings out over the water. One after another they
steal noiselessly up and touch the water-steps, Joseph helping each
party into its boat: the German Baroness with the two poodles and a
silk parasol; the poor fellow from the Engadine, with the rugs and an
extra overcoat, his mother’s arm about him--not many more sunshiny days
for him; the bevy of joyous young girls in summer dresses and sailor
hats, and the two college boys in white flannels, the chaperone in the
_next_ boat. “Ah, these sweet young Americans, these naïve countrywomen
of yours!” whispers the Professor; “how exquisitely bold!” Last, the
painter, with his trap and a big canvas, which he lifts in as carefully
as if it had a broken rib, and then turns quickly face in; “an old
dodge,” you say to yourself; “unfinished, of course!”
Presently a tall, finely formed gondolier in dark blue, with a red
sash, whirls the _ferro_ of his boat close to the landing-steps, and a
graceful, dignified woman, past middle life, but still showing traces
of great beauty, steps in, and sinks upon the soft cushions.
The Professor rises like a grand duke receiving a princess, brings one
arm to a salute, places the other over his heart, and makes a bow that
carries the conviction of profound respect and loyalty in its every
curve. The lady acknowledges it with a gracious bend of her head, and a
smile which shows her appreciation of its sincerity.
“An English lady of rank who spends her Octobers here,” says the
Professor, when he regains his seat. He had remained standing until
the gondola had disappeared--such old-time observances are part of his
religion.
“Did you notice her gondolier? That is Giovanni, the famous oarsman.
Let me tell you the most delicious story! Oh, the childish simplicity
of these men! You would say, would you not, that he was about forty
years of age? You saw, too, how broad and big he was? Well, _mon ami_,
not only is he the strongest oarsman in Venice, but he has proved it,
for he has won the annual regatta, the great one on the Grand Canal,
for five consecutive summers! This, you know, gives him the title of
‘Emperor.’ Now, there is a most charming Signora whom he has served
for years,--she always spends her summers here,--whom, I assure you,
Giovanni idolizes, and over whom he watches exactly as if she were both
his child and his queen. Well, one day last year,” here the Professor’s
face cracked into lines of suppressed mirth, “Giovanni asked for a
day’s leave, and went over to Mestre to bid good-by to some friends
_en route_ for Milan. The Brindisi wine--the _vina forte_--oh, that
devilish wine! you know it!--had just reached Mestre. It only comes in
September, and lasts but a few weeks. Of course Giovanni must have his
grand outing, and three days later Signor Giovanni-the-Strong presented
himself again at the door of the apartment of his Signora, sober, but
limp as a rag. The Signora, grand dame as she was, refused to see him,
sending word by her maid that she would not hear a word from him until
the next day. Now, what do you think this great strong fellow did? He
went home, threw himself on the bed, turned his face to the wall, and
for half the night cried like a baby! Think of it! like a baby! His
wife could not get him to eat a mouthful.
“The next day, of course, the Signora forgave him. There was nothing
else to be done, for, as she said to me afterwards, ‘What? Venice
without Giovanni! _Mon Dieu!_’”
The Professor throws away the end of his last cigarette and begins
gathering up his hat and the one unmated, lonely glove. No living soul
ever yet saw him put this on. Sometimes he thrusts in his two fingers,
as if fully intending to bury his entire hand, and then you see an
expression of doubt and hesitancy cross his face, denoting a change of
mind, as he crumples it carelessly, or pushes it into his coat-tail
pocket to keep company with its fictitious mate.
At this moment Espero raises his head out of his gondola immediately
beneath us. Everything is ready, he says: the sketch trap, extra
canvas, fresh siphon of seltzer, ice, _fiasco_ of Chianti, Gorgonzola,
all but the rolls, which he will get at the baker’s on our way over to
the Giudecca, where I am to work on the sketch begun yesterday.
“Ah, that horrid old German woman from Prague!” sighs the Professor.
“If I could only go with you!”
OPEN-AIR MARKETS
SOMETIMES, in early autumn, on the lagoon behind the Redentore, you may
overtake a curious craft, half barge, half gondola, rowed by a stooping
figure in cowl and frock.
Against the glow of the fading twilight this quaint figure, standing in
the stern of his flower-laden boat, swaying to the rhythm of his oar,
will recall so vividly the time when that other
“Dumb old servitor ... went upward with the flood,”
that you cannot help straining your eyes in a vain search for the
fair face of the lily maid of Astolat hidden among the blossoms. Upon
looking closer you discover that it is only the gardener of the convent
grounds, on his way to the market above the Rialto.
[Illustration: PONTE PAGLIA ... NEXT THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS]
If you continue on, crossing the Giudecca, or if you happen to be
coming from Murano or the Lido, you will pass dozens of other boats,
loaded to the water’s edge with baskets upon baskets of peaches,
melons, and figs, or great heaps of green vegetables, dashed here and
there with piles of blood-red tomatoes. All these boats are pointing
their bows towards the Ponte Paglia, the bridge on the Riva between
the Doges’ Palace and the prison, the one next the Bridge of Sighs.
Here, in the afternoons preceding market days, they unship their masts
or rearrange their cargoes, taking off the top baskets if too high to
clear the arch. Ponte Paglia is the best point of entrance from the
Grand Canal, because it is the beginning of that short cut, through a
series of smaller canals, to the fruit market above the Rialto bridge.
The market opens at daybreak.
Many of these boats come from Malamocco, on the south, a small island
this side of Chioggia, and from beyond the island known as the Madonna
of the Seaweed, named after a curious figure sheltered by a copper
umbrella. Many of them come from Torcello, that most ancient of the
Venetian settlements, and from the fruit-raising country back of it,
for all Torcello is one great orchard, with every landing-wharf piled
full of its products. Here you can taste a fig so delicately ripe that
it fairly melts in your mouth, and so sensitive that it withers and
turns black almost with the handling. Here are rose-pink peaches the
size of small melons, and golden melons the size of peaches. Here are
pomegranates that burst open from very lusciousness, and white grapes
that hang in masses, and melons and plums in heaps, and all sorts of
queer little round things that you never taste but once, and never want
to taste again.
These fruit gardens and orchards in the suburbs of Venice express the
very waste and wantonness of the climate. There is no order in setting
out the fruit, no plan in growing, no system in gathering. The trees
thrive wherever they happen to have taken root--here a peach, here a
pear, there a pomegranate. The vines climb the trunks and limbs, or
swing off to tottering poles and crumbling walls. The watermelons lie
flat on their backs in the blazing sun, flaunting their big leaves
in your face, their tangled creepers in everybody’s way and under
everybody’s feet. The peaches cling in matted clusters, and the figs
and plums weigh down the drooping branches.
If you happen to have a _lira_ about you, and own besides a bushel
basket, you can exchange the coin for that measure of peaches. Two
_lire_ will load your gondola half full of melons; three _lire_ will
pack it with grapes; four _lire_--well, you must get a larger boat.
When the boats are loaded at the orchards and poled through the
grass-lined canals, reaching the open water of the lagoon, escaping
the swarms of naked boys begging backsheesh of fruit from their
cargoes, you will notice that each craft stops at a square box, covered
by an awning and decorated with a flag, anchored out in the channel,
or moored to a cluster of spiles. This is the Dogana of the lagoon,
and every basket, crate, and box must be inspected and counted by the
official in the flat cap with the tarnished gilt band, who commands
this box of a boat, for each individual peach, plum, and pear must help
pay its share of the public debt.
This floating custom-house is one of many beads, strung at intervals
a mile apart, completely encircling Venice. It is safe to say that
nothing that crows, bleats, or clucks, nothing that feeds, clothes, or
is eaten, ever breaks through this charmed circle without leaving some
portion of its value behind. This creditor takes its pound of flesh the
moment it is due, and has never been known to wait.
Where the deep-water channels are shifting, and there is a possibility
of some more knowing and perhaps less honest market craft slipping past
in the night, a government deputy silently steals over the shallow
lagoon in a rowboat, sleeping in his blanket, his hand on his musket,
and rousing at the faintest sound of rowlock or sail. Almost hourly
one of these night-hawks overhauls other strollers of the lagoon in
the by-passages outside the city limits--some smuggler, with cargo
carefully covered, or perhaps a pair of lovers in a gondola with too
closely drawn _tenda_. There is no warning sound to the unwary; only
the gurgle of a slowly-moving oar, then the muzzle of a breech-loader
thrust in one’s eyes, behind which frowns an ugly, determined face,
peering from out the folds of a heavy boat-cloak. It is the deputy’s
way of asking for smuggled cigarettes, but it is so convincing a way as
to admit of no discussion. Ever afterward the unfortunate victim, if he
be of honest intent, cannot only detect a police-boat from a fishing
yawl, but remembers also to keep a light burning in his lamp-socket
forward, as evidence of his honesty.
When the cargoes of the market boats are inspected, the duties paid,
and the passage made under Ponte Paglia, or through the many nameless
canals if the approach is made from the Campo Santo side of the city,
the boats swarm up to the fruit market above the Rialto, rounding up
one after another, and discharging their contents like trucks at a
station, the men piling the baskets in great mounds on the broad stone
quay.
[Illustration: THE FRUIT MARKET ABOVE THE RIALTO]
After the inhabitants have pounced upon these heaps and mounds and
pyramids of baskets and crates, and have carried them away, the market
is swept and scoured as clean as a china plate, not even a peach-pit
being left to tell the tale of the morning. Then this greater market
shrinks into the smaller one, the little fruit market of the Rialto,
which is never closed, day or night.
This little market, or, rather, the broad street forming its
area,--broad for this part of Venice,--is always piled high with
the products of orchard, vineyard, and garden, shaded all day by
huge awnings, so closely stretched that only the sharpest and most
lance-like of sunbeams can cut their way into the coolness below. At
night the market is lighted by flaring torches illumining the whole
surrounding _campo_.
As for the other smaller stands and shops about the city, they are no
less permanent fixtures, and keep equally bad hours. No matter how late
you stroll down the Zattere or elbow your way along the Merceria, when
every other place is closed, you will come upon a blazing lamp lighting
up a heap of luscious fruit, in its season the comfort and sustenance
of Venice.
Then there are the other markets--the wood market of the Giudecca, the
fish market below the Rialto bridge, and the shops and stalls scattered
throughout the city.