That Winter in Venice

by Ciji Ware

  She felt herself smiling at departing passengers as the boat pushed away from the Ca d’Oro stop—signaling she was close to her destination.

  Snow was beginning to fall in earnest as Serena made her precarious way down Ruga Ravano with her unwieldy suitcases in tow. Her map indicated it was a main thoroughfare leading from the Rialto Mercato boat stop, via a few smaller passageways, toward a large square known as the Campo San Polo. Fortunately, this major landmark was adjacent to the address of the lodgings that Allegra Benedetti’s office manager had secured for her stay.

  Serena was grateful, now, that her feet and calves were clad in warm socks and that she had on her knee-high, rubber boots, given that water sloshing from nearby canals was now coated with a thickening layer of icy white powder. She breathed a sigh of relief at the absence of step-up-step-down bridges along the route Allegra’s assistant had recommended she walk along. A pastry shop she’d been told to keep an eye out for on her left suddenly appeared, her signal to turn left down a narrow passageway with a street sign, “Calle del Forno,” painted in black letters on the wall. A quick right turn, twenty feet further on, and she dragged her two suitcases and carry-on bag over uneven square stone pavers to the entrance to Ca’Arco Antico, the ultimate destination where she would finally rest her head this night, and for two months to come. From an alley branching off to her left that led back to the Grand Canal, several inches of water were flowing alarmingly toward the front door.

  Out of breath from her exertions, she paused and gave a backward glance to the passageway she’d just traversed. All was silent. The nearby courtyard glistened in a city floating under a blanket of crystalline snow.

  For some unaccountable reason, the stranger in Venice felt as if she’d come home.

  Jack slumped against the back of his uncomfortable folding chair. He watched as the attendees to the panel of wetlands experts he’d just moderated—”Remediation of Coastal Areas Threatened by Storm Surge”—quietly filed out of the auditorium.

  The session had been standing room only, but Jack feared the audience and his colleagues must feel as discouraged as he was about what they’d heard. Each panelist, whether scientist or journalist, testified to the chronic intransigence on the part of both politicians and certain corporations about the issue of restoring wetlands and barrier islands. Neither group, they reported unanimously, would agree to make the hard decisions, coordinate their efforts, nor provide the funds required in various countries to protect against their coastal cities being inundated by future changes in sea levels.

  Near the end of the session, the microphone was passed back to Jack for his concluding remarks.

  “In Louisiana, post-Katrina, the state has more than 150 hurricane risk reduction projects from its multi-billion dollar master plan underway. Two billion of that money is earmarked for ecosystem restoration to bring land back to wetland areas that are disappearing at the rate of a football field an hour,” he emphasized to his audience. “But progress is far too slow. And why is that, given the obvious threat of climate change that NASA tells us is real?” he asked rhetorically. “Here’s why: heavy opposition by certain industries and the politicians that answer to them through campaign contributions. Add to that, certain unwise, manmade flood control projects, along with natural forces that every second of the day eat away at Louisiana’s land masses. The question becomes, can we do enough, fast enough, to hold back walls of water certain to sweep in again?”

  Jack noted the grim expressions on the faces of various bureaucrats and policy makers sitting in the audience with headsets clamped to their ears.

  “So it would appear, ladies and gentlemen,” he’d said, glancing at his notes summing up the previous hour’s presentation, “that what is being done so far might... might provide cities like mine with a ‘hold’ on the status quo if—and this is a very big if—in the meantime we don’t get another catastrophic weather event that destroys the efforts made so far to save our coastal cities by saving the wetlands and barrier islands. Perhaps the most important question of all to ask ourselves is: will the worlds’ leaders simply fiddle while Rome burns... or in this case, while Venice and New Orleans and other irreplaceable coastal cities drown? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Goodnight.”

  As the last person left the auditorium, Jack leaned forward in his chair and flicked the “off” button on his mic. He abruptly stood up, desperate to escape to the bar.

  Shit! What’s the point to all of this?

  Restless, Jack soon abandoned his colleagues and their drinks, donned his down-filled stadium coat, and emerged into the bitingly cold air outside the large, modern building that housed the Rising Waters convocation. Snow had continued to fall and he noticed that the nearby canal water was lapping perilously close to the raised boardwalks called passerelle that had been erected earlier that day and stretched from the entrance to the nearest vaporetto stop. These temporary “remediations” for the periods of acqua alta inundating Venice were installed to allow pedestrians to walk above the flood tides. The waters were washing in from the wintery Adriatic outside the lagoon and past a string of low-lying, ineffectual islands that didn’t prevent the sea from pouring into the city’s narrow canals.

  Jack’s thoughts drifted to his fellow New Orleanian, Serena, working in Venice for the legendary creator of Venetian costumes and the glamorous carnival ball. He wondered how Signorina Antonelli was faring in the city she was named for during this rather alarming spate of bad weather?

  Doing an about face, he marched back into the building and sought out an official in the Press Room.

  “Signorina,” he demanded of the PR flack at the desk in the corner, “Prego... can you get me the phone number and directions to Allegra Benedetti’s costume workshop? The establishment where the clothes are actually sewn, not her retail shop?”

  A puzzled look clouded the woman’s brow, as if she found his request quite odd for a man concerned with the inundation of swamps and wetlands, but it was quickly replaced by her professional smile.

  “Certainly, sir,” she replied in perfect English.

  “Grazie,” he said shortly and waited for her to hand him a piece of paper with the information he’d requested. He then turned, shoved it into his pant’s pocket, and headed in the direction from which he’d come. Once outside again, he paused on the elevated boardwalk and stared at the sheets of snow falling steadily onto the water surrounding him.

  Maybe I should give this some more thought...

  He stuffed his hands more deeply into the pockets of his down jacket and headed back to his nearby hotel to lodgings that were so sterile in their design, the place could have been a branch of Courtyards by Marriott.

  Serena looked up from the expansive cutting table positioned in the center of the low-ceilinged workshop in a wood and plaster building that had to be at least four-hundred-years-old.

  “Buona notte, signorina,” Rosa called as she and the five seamstresses she supervised filed, one by one, out the door at the top of stairs that led down to a walkway not far from the San Tomà vaporetto stop.

  “Buona notte,” Serena replied. “A domani...”

  In English, Rosa said, “Serena... don’t stay too late... you must eat!”

  The American apprendista professionale—the “professional apprentice” as her colleagues teased her—straightened to her full height and stretched her arms over her head.

  “Si... Mamma...” Serena replied with a smile.

  Allegra’s team of seamstresses had been as warm and welcoming as their patroness. Rosa Garafola, especially, had made it her mission to be sure the visiting designer was well taken care of, particularly when it came to remembering to get the nutrition and rest she needed to sustain herself over the long hours of work as Il Ballo di Carnevale grew ever closer.

  The iron grill beyond the door clanged shut. Serena glanced through the second-story window overlooking terra cotta tiled roofs that were blanketed in a mantle of snow, a sticky, w
et powder that had been falling, nonstop, since the day she’d arrived. Even in her rubber boots, she wondered if she’d be able to safely slosh back to her living quarters in such wretched weather?

  Was she hungry? She couldn’t decide. For hours, she had been completely focused on interpreting Allegra’s sketches and its resulting paper pattern for an elaborate eighteenth century gown due an important female client attending the ball. It was Serena’s job to cut inexpensive muslin dress pieces from the patterns that interpreted Allegra’s drawings. Once the pieces were sewn together, Serena would then drape them on a mannequin to make sure the physical rendering for the gown was true to the designer’s original vision before any pair of scissors touched the luxurious silks and satins from which the costumes would ultimately be made. The atelier’s customers paid an astounding amount of money for the costumes they commissioned, along with pricey tickets to the elegant masked ball and supper scheduled for Valentine’s Day—and the results had to be spectacular.

  On the floor above the ancient building that housed not only the workshop, but also a storage room wedged adjacent to a small apartment Allegra also owned, Serena could hear her employer moving heavy fabric bolts along the rough wood beamed floor overhead. The designer was seeking silk yardage of an appropriate weight to take the elaborate beadwork that would be part of the costume’s front bodice. Soon, her mentor’s steps sounded on the stairway and her sleek, blond head peered around the door.

  “Perfetto!” Allegra exclaimed, entering the workshop. She leaned the bolt of gold satin near Serena’s drafting table. “And how is my American shadow doing after her first week in Venice?”

  “Perfetto,” she replied with a laugh.

  “Molto bene!” Allegra chortled. In English she continued, “Tomorrow I want to make a tour with you of the palazzo where the ball is to be held. I am able to rent it this year for two days, only, so we have many things to discuss about how you can help me that night, si?”

  “Shall we get an early start? Say... nine o’clock?”

  “Molto bene... and now, I must leave you for a dinner engagement with the technical supervisor for the entertainment at Il Ballo. You will leave here soon, yes? You work very hard, Serena... and I most appreciate it, but I do not want you to overtire yourself so soon. We must preserve our strength for the hard days in February, yes?”

  Serena had seen from the first day that Allegra’s demeanor was as friendly and supportive as it had been when they’d met in Las Vegas. She had been saddened to learn from Rosa earlier in the week that la Signora’s beloved husband had died of cancer recently following one of her most successful annual Carnival balls. Perhaps that accounted not only for the empathy, but la tristezza—the sadness—Serena had detected in her mentor’s gray-blue eyes, luminous behind her stylish, square rimless glasses.

  “Have a lovely dinner,” Serena said, “and I promise, I’ll leave soon.”

  She heard the iron gate on the landing close and the second gate at the bottom of the stairs shut as well. A peacefulness descended on the room filled with mannequins clad in spectacular ball gowns in various stages of completion. The hush of silently falling snow outside the windows overlooking the tile roofs turned her world opaque, cocooning her in a tunnel of concentration while she carefully cut lengths of muslin into the proper shapes dictated by the paper patterns. At length, Serena inhaled a deep breath, made a few more adjustments to her project, and sank into a nearby chair.

  Only in these quiet moments alone did she allow her thoughts to drift to her seatmate on the flights from New Orleans. She found herself wondering how the Rising Waters Conference had gone, and whether Jack Durand had given the slightest thought to his Air France companion since waving goodbye when her vaporetto pulled away from the dock the day they arrived.

  As if in response to her musings, a voice rang out in halting Italian at the bottom of the stairs, startling her out of her reverie. Someone with a distinct southern accent had broken the cottony silence by asking a passerby if this was the atelier of the costumer Allegra Benedetti?

  Shocked that her contemplation seemed to have summoned Jack in the flesh, Serena sprang from her seat, ran to the door, opened it and the iron gate next to it that offered the shop extra security. She peered down at a tall, broad-shouldered figure, a blurry outline seen through the snow. Jack stood at the foot of the exterior stone stairs where the second metal gate guarded the entrance to the building.

  “Buona sera, signorina,” he drawled, his two hands clutching the metal bars like a man in a jail cell. “I guessed you’d be working late.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Jack was bundled against the cold and wet, clad in a three-quarter-length parka with a woolen muffler wrapped around his neck. He sported a pair of the same high, rubber boots of a style that sat under Serena’s workspace.

  “Have you eaten already,” he called to her, “or can I take you to a trattoria nearby?”

  “You certainly can! Let’s go to Antiche Carampane. Io sono molto affamato.”

  “You lost me there,” Jack called up to her, his booted foot resting on the step ten feet from the landing where Serena tried not to shiver from cold or the shock of seeing him, large as life. “Translation?”

  She laughed. “‘I’m starving.’ But come on up, first,” she invited, descending the stone stairs to let him in the lower gate and then instructing him to follow her cautiously, as the treads leading to the next level were slick with snow. “I have to close up shop here.”

  She ushered him into the work area and swiftly reached to relieve him of his muffler and coat, anxious that no water clinging to his clothing would splash on the mannequins.

  “Jack, this is so wild!” she said, hanging his things on pegs recently vacated by the team of seamstresses. “I was just thinking about you and wondering how your conference went when I heard your voice downstairs.”

  “You were thinking about me?” he repeated with a surprised expression. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to call that Serendipity Number Five and Six, ’cause I was wondering since I last saw you how you were getting along, especially given this nasty weather.”

  “How did you find me here?”

  “I have my ways,” he said with a wolfish grin, looking around the room with curiosity. He moved toward a mannequin draped in muslin. “This is the spot where you work?” he asked, studying the elaborately styled gown made of plain, beige cloth that she’d been slaving over.

  Serena explained that eventually, that same gown would be made of gold satin that cost a hundred and forty dollars a yard. She then went on to describe her other current projects and the various worlds that working on Il Ballo di Carnevale had been opening up to her.

  “Tell me more at dinner,” he said. “We can’t have you faint with hunger.”

  Serena locked the shop’s doors and led the way downstairs and through the second gate into the swirling snow.

  “So the weather hasn’t gotten you down?” he teased, taking her arm as they carefully made their way in the direction of the nearby restaurant. He held the door and once free of their coats, they were directed to a quiet table in the corner of the room.

  “As long as I’m in a nice, warm restaurant, or at my B and B, or at Allegra’s shop... no, this disgusting weather doesn’t bother me, but I can’t deny that I’ve been frozen to the bone every second I’ve stepped outside!”

  After a swift perusal of the menu, Serena placed their orders in Italian with the waiter.

  “So it’s not been exactly like New Orleans, right?” Jack joked.

  “Not exactly,” she said, smiling, “especially since there’s talk that the Grand Canal might freeze over! I don’t think that’s ever happened to the Mississippi, has it?”

  “Actually it did—once—in February of 1899. The entire length of the river became a block of ice all the way down to the Gulf in what was dubbed The Great Cold Wave’.”

  “Well, speaking of which... what do the people at your conference th
ink of this extreme weather here, given it’s been snowing in Venice, nonstop, for weeks?”

  “They’re worried, but we don’t seem to be getting through to the policy makers very well.”

  Serena regarded him closely.

  “You look a bit... down,” she observed. “Discouraged, I guess, is a better word.”

  He nodded.

  “I am tired,” he admitted. “I’m tired and depressed and wondering why I keep up the fight to try to get know-nothing politicians and government bureaucrats on our planet to implement policies that have a chance—mind you—of saving our coastal cities from a destruction that is beginning to look inevitable. The others on the panel I just chaired today are running into the same issues all over the world. The Know-nothings and Do-nothings are in charge everywhere, it looks like.”

  “And we just thought New Orleans was bad,” she said, amazed by the melancholic vulnerability he’d revealed.

  “Yeah... that’s what made the conference, so far, such an absolute downer. That—and a few other things I learned today that I don’t want to spoil our dinner discussing. Let’s just enjoy ourselves, shall we?” he asked, summoning a thin smile that didn’t alleviate the pessimism radiating in her direction from across the table.

  Serena studied his tight jaw and the pained look in his eyes as Jack took his first sip of the Tuscan Rosso di Montepulciano their waiter had recommended.

  “C’mon, Giovanni,” she asked quietly, using the Italian version of his name. “Why not tell me about the other things that have got you down? I told you my troubles the other day... and you were a good listener. I can be the same.”