To get to the pensione we had to cross a small wooden bridge over a narrow canal. The water beneath the bridge shimmered in the sunlight. Halfway over we stopped to admire the dappled patterns moving across the water.
“This reminds me of the bridge over the water gardens at Giverny,” I said. “Only there, we watched water lilies floating by. Do you remember?”
Naohiro took my hand. “I remember.”
“And what else do you remember?” I asked.
“That you wore a black dress to dinner that night.” He stopped and smiled. “And that I learned Laredo is not concrete but a city in Texas.”
Why this moment should make me as happy as it did was a mystery to me. But I accepted it as one accepts the arrival of an unexpected windfall: with complete pleasure and no questions as to its origins.
Over the next two days, Naohiro and I rose early and retired late. After all, there weren’t that many hours in a weekend; we didn’t want to waste too many of them sleeping.
Our favorite time was early morning, when Venice was just waking. On the first morning, with no map or destination, we walked holding hands through the quiet streets, changing direction if a certain square or canal path attracted us. Gradually, as we walked, the city came to life. Men and women appeared on their way to work. Smells of breakfast cooking, of bacon and coffee, floated from windows into the narrow streets. Dogs pranced along the sides of narrow small canals, their noses to the ground, sniffing. Sleepy-eyed children, carrying books, entered the church school on the Campo San Agnese. Shopkeepers could be seen moving around inside their still-closed establishments.
We stopped at a caffè bar to have espresso. We sat there for an hour, exchanging news of our children and detailed information about what we’d been doing since our meeting in London. Once again, I was struck by the immediacy of our relationship, by how much it was set in the present. I felt no need to retrace in detail Naohiro’s life before he met me, and Naohiro, it seemed, shared this feeling. It was as though we recognized that the past—and the roles we had played with others in that past—had no dominion over who we were to each other.
By the time we crossed the bridge to have a proper breakfast near the Piazza San Marco, we were both quite hungry. It was while walking through one of the narrow, mazelike streets leading into the piazza that Naohiro and I were met by Death. He approached us slowly, a tall, gaunt figure dressed in a voluminous black cape and three-cornered hat, his face covered by a skeletal white mask. In one gloved hand he carried a scythe; in the other a cardboard tombstone.
He drew close, close enough for us to read what was written on the tombstone: Fugit hora, memento mori.
“What does it mean, I wonder, the words on the tombstone?” Naohiro said.
“You’ve come to the right person,” I said, thinking about all the days I had spent studying tombstones with my grandmother. “It’s a Latin phrase often inscribed on tombstones. It means, ‘Time flies, remember you must die.’ ”
We watched as the spectral figure continued on, in the direction of two women studying a window display of expensive leather bags.
“I suppose he’s a walking advertisement for some mask shop,” I said. There were many such shops in Venice, where mask-making is an art form, one whose origins go far back in the city’s history.
Naohiro said nothing. But a look passed across his face, one I couldn’t identify. Was he offended by the tombstone admonition? I realized how little I knew about death and burial traditions in Japan. It was something I would ask him about, I decided, over breakfast.
It was a little after nine when we arrived at the terrace café in the Hotel Monaco. In a perfect setting overlooking the Grand Canal we ordered cereal and fresh fruit, a basket of sweet rolls, and strong coffee. Just as I started to ask Naohiro about the ceremonies and customs associated with death in Japan, he asked me a question.
“I have been thinking,” he said. “Why do they say on their tombstones that ‘Time flies, remember you must die’? Would it not be more useful to say that ‘Time flies, remember you must live’?”
It was such a simple observation. But profound, I thought. It reminded me of the way children think; of how they try to understand the world by asking the obvious or naive question. It was a great gift, I thought, to retain such directness as an adult.
I looked at Naohiro and felt a tenderness usually reserved for my sons. “You are right,” I said. “It is more useful to remember that we must live.”
On Sunday afternoon we boarded the Number 1 vaporetto for a leisurely ride along the length of the Grand Canal. It was a quiet time along this watery thoroughfare. Quiet enough for Naohiro and me to hear the soft lapping sounds of water meeting land and the echoes of children playing in the narrow calli near the canal. On Sunday afternoons there was none of the early-morning commerce of boats delivering fresh produce or the sight of rubbish barges picking up refuse. Nor any of the midday rush of tourists, many of whom had already left after spending a weekend in Venice. The vaporetto that Naohiro and I boarded was almost empty.
For the next hour we sat mesmerized by the changing light, by the white palazzo steps that disappeared into the canal, and the tethered gondolas riding up and down on the water like restless black steeds.
Naohiro was the first to spot the silver-haired gentleman standing on the balcony of his grand palazzo, an elegant greyhound by his side. Later it was I who called to Naohiro’s attention the gauzy fabric covering the palazzi being renovated; it was as though the artist Christo had come to Venice and wrapped the buildings in thin white nets.
Later that night we walked back to our pensione under a moon that glowed silver through the fog, like a light shining through ice. Giddy with happiness we crossed bridge after bridge, turned down one narrow street after another, walked along the quays of small canals. And then it dawned on us: we were lost.
We ducked into a piano bar on the Zattere to ask for directions. After listening to directions given in a combination of Italian and English by a very kind patron, Naohiro and I still had no idea of how to get back to the pensione.
“Maybe we should have left a trail of bread crumbs, so we’d be sure to find our way back,” I said, forgetting that Naohiro probably was not familiar with the fairy tale about Hansel and Gretel.
“Or perhaps we should not try to find a way back,” he said. “Perhaps the answer lies in finding a way to go ahead.”
As I sat on the terrace in Asolo remembering all this, the phone in my room rang. I ran inside and picked it up.
“This is Jack Upton,” the voice said. “I do hope it’s not too late to call. But Mrs. Spenser and I were wondering if you’d like to drive with us tomorrow to the Villa Barbaro.”
The call startled me somewhat. I was still back in Venice. But after a few seconds of readjustment I accepted his offer. It was just what I needed, I decided, turning out the light and climbing into bed.
The drive to Villa Barbaro took less than fifteen minutes. On the way there, Jack Upton explained that only a portion of the sixteenth-century villa was open to the public.
“The present owners—the Volpe-Buschetti family, I believe—reside there and do not open up their private quarters to visitors. But what is open is magnificent.” This was his second visit to the villa, he said.
“Have you been to the villa before?” I asked Mrs. Spenser.
“Not inside. But we have driven by and, I must say, the façade is quite breathtaking. But it’s the Veronese frescoes I’m longing to see.”
Suddenly, the Villa Barbaro appeared through the car window. None of the photographs of the villa had prepared me for the real thing. Set on a slope, the graceful building stood at the end of a long gravel pathway surrounded by manicured lawns. The perfect symmetry of its long arcaded façade and pillared entrances, so pure and simple, made the villa one of the most beautiful structures I had ever seen.
Across the road was another glorious sight: a rounded building with three cupolas protrudi
ng from its dome. I asked Jack about it.
“That is the round temple,” Jack said, “also designed by Palladio.”
We drove off the main road and into a parking lot adjacent to the villa. From there we walked across gravel pathways to the front of the building, where we purchased tickets and put felt scuffs on over our shoes to protect the highly polished floors.
Inside the villa we climbed to the top of a staircase and were met by a young woman leaning through an open door. She was dressed in a green silk gown, her blond hair pulled back from her fresh-scrubbed, cherubic face. It took me a second to realize I was seeing not a real woman but one of Veronese’s witty trompe l’oeil frescoes. We were in fact surrounded by such painted women: courtiers dressed in taffeta peered down from a balcony; women flirted from behind fans; naughty winged Cupids teased a love-struck woman.
Across the room I saw Jack and Mrs. Spenser standing before a large painting, engaged in animated conversation. They seemed to have forgotten me. Which was fine. I liked wandering about on my own.
I was about to take a stroll outside when I came across an out-of-the-way alcove. Looking in, I saw it was empty except for a trompe l’oeil of an elegant room as seen through a glass door. I stepped in and walked over to the painted door, which this time turned out to be the real thing: a real door leading into a real room. Reverting to my reporter’s habits, I tried to open the door. It was locked.
I peered through the glass. Inside was an elegant, comfortable room, furnished with large, soft chairs and antique rugs. Glass vases filled with flowers and silver-framed photographs sat on top of gleaming wooden tables. A soft light fell from tall floor lamps, revealing an upturned book left behind on the arm of a chair. Beyond the room was a hallway; I could see umbrellas protruding from a stand carved in the shape of an exotic bird.
I decided I liked the people who lived here. The Bolpe-Vuschetti or Volpe-Buschetti—or whoever they were—seemed to have made a home out of what easily could have become a museum. Signs of real life were everywhere: in the books and flowers and pictures and umbrellas and lamps that someone forgot to turn off.
As I was thinking this, a woman appeared in the hallway beyond the glass door. She seemed to see me. Embarrassed, I turned and quickly retreated to one of the public rooms. Then, after checking to see that Jack and Mrs. Spenser hadn’t left, I turned in my felt scuffs and went outside to take a walk.
I stood on the front veranda and looked down the long formal walkway and across the Veneto plains that ran off into the distance. How beautiful this is, I thought. This view, this house, the ravishing frescoes inside.
But a part of me already knew that my most vivid memory of Villa Barbaro would not be the vanishing perspective of the Veneto plains or the trompe l’oeil or any other “trick of the eye.” No, what I would remember most would be the sight of that one private room so redolent with real life.
The rain started to fall just as we began the drive back to Asolo. Jack and Mrs. Spenser were eager to exchange views of the villa.
“Well, I’ve not seen its likes before,” Mrs. Spenser said. “It certainly was a treat, wasn’t it?”
“You really have to return again and again to a place like this to fully appreciate it,” Jack said. “What did you think of the Veronese?”
“Splendid, simply splendid,” Mrs. Spenser said.
It seemed to be my turn, so I said, “I was surprised to see how witty Veronese was. His work seemed more contemporary than I expected.”
“Well, yes, in a way, I suppose you could say that,” Jack said. I could see that Jack didn’t agree but was too gallant to say so.
I changed the subject, asking them where they were off to next.
“To Montreux. To a spa near there to rest and relax,” Mrs. Spenser said. “And you? Are you off to someplace interesting?”
“Yes. I’m going home.”
When I arrived at the Venice airport the next day I learned my flight was delayed by two hours. It annoyed me, this glitch in the schedule. But it annoyed me more that such a minor event had the ability to annoy me. Where was all that laid-back mellow outlook I thought I’d cultivated during my travels?
I bought a newspaper, thinking it would take my mind off the delayed plane. Instead I found myself wondering what was going to happen when I returned to my job at the newspaper. Did I still have the skills to report a story or write a column? Or had I lost my edge, maybe even my drive, when it came to newspaper work?
Don’t do this to yourself, I thought. Don’t spend your last minutes in Italy worrying about the future.
So I did what I’d done so many times while traveling: I spent a few minutes with Freya. I leafed to a passage that had to do with reaching one’s destination. She wrote it from Persia:
“This is a great moment, when you see, however distant, the goal of your wandering. The thing which has been living in your imagination suddenly becomes a part of the tangible world. It matters not how many ranges, rivers or parching dusty ways may lie between you; it is yours now for ever.”
It occurred to me that nowadays there was no such place as Persia; it had become a country named Iran. But whatever its name, Freya at least had a moment in which she reached a tangible destination and made it hers. Forever.
I had no such tangible destination. There was no goal to my wandering and nothing that I could claim as mine forever. But Freya’s words still spoke to me.
There was an hour left before departure. I stepped outside, onto the pier where travelers to and from Venice catch water taxis to the city. I walked to the spot where Naohiro and I had last stood together. As I watched the boats arrive and depart with their cargo of passengers and luggage, rain began to fall. The raindrops bounced lightly off the water between the boats.
In the distance a mist was gathering. Slowly the white vapor moved like a ghostly presence toward the pier, enveloping everything but the tethered boats bobbing up and down. I stood at the pier and watched a departing vaporetto penetrate the misty curtain and then disappear.
This is mine, I thought suddenly. This is what I will have forever. The memory of this moment, of rain falling on Venice.
I began to imagine other rains that would be mine forever. I saw the rain streaming down the Spanish Steps. Blowing beneath the awning of a café in Paris. Sweeping through the piazza in Siena. Splashing against the shop windows along Sloane Street.
I glanced at my watch. It was time to go. I took one last look in the direction of fog-shrouded Venice and then hurried inside to catch my plane.
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
The photographs in the book are reproduced courtesy of those listed below.
Le petit déjeuner devant Nôtre Dame de Paris
R. Deschayes, Éditions du Pontcarré, France
Colette et son chat
Roger-Viollet
Propriétaire
Magnolia, Délphine de Largentaye
Les Escaliers de Montmartre
H. Veiller (Explorer)
Île Saint-Louis, Paris, 1975
Edouard Boubat/Agence TOP
Patrick Branwell Brontë: The Brontë Sisters
The National Portrait Gallery, London
Your Britain—Fight for It Now
The Imperial War Museum, London
William Hogarth: Marriage à la Mode: IV. The Countess’s Morning Levée
The National Gallery, London
View from All Souls College, with Spire of St. Mary’s Church and Dome of Radcliffe Camera
James Allen Shuffrey, BWS
The Golden Pheasant Hotel, Burford, Oxon.
Old English Pub Company
Brasenose College, Oxford, from the Bodleian Library
Chris Andrews Publications
Milano: Teatro alla Scala
Teatro alla Scala, Milan, Italy
Sorrento: View and Harbor
Interdipress
Venezia: Canal Grande—Ponte di Rialto
M. Romboni
Siena—
il Palio
Plurigraf
Paolo Veronese (1628–88): La Moglie di Marcantonio Barbara e Nutrice. Stanza dell’Olimpo, Villa Di Maser
Villa Barbaro
A CONVERSATION WITH ALICE STEINBACH
Would you describe your book as a travel book or a memoir? Or both?
I would describe Without Reservations as a combination of both, a sort of travel memoir, if you will. But I really think of it this way: It’s the true story of a woman who decides to take a break from the routines of her daily life in order to see more clearly who she is when separated from all the labels—mother, journalist, ex-wife, single woman—that have come to define her. And she decides to do it by traveling alone in foreign countries, where, operating as an independent woman, she might learn something about who she has become over the last thirty years. That woman, of course, is me.
What were you hoping to learn from such an undertaking?
I think it was more that I was hoping to relearn certain things that were a part of me when I was younger. I wanted to relearn how to be spontaneous, to have more fun, to live in the moment, and to take chances. It’s easy to lose this sense of yourself as you become more obligated to family, work, and the demands of routines and responsibilities.
And were you successful in achieving these goals?
Yes, I was. Traveling—particularly traveling alone—forces you to be spontaneous and take chances. If you don’t, you’ll be lonely and bored. But I think the most valuable lesson I learned during my travels was this: Once all the old baggage and labels were discarded, I was able to respond more honestly to the world around me. It’s a rare person, I think, who knows what really pleases her in life and what does not. But traveling alone—if you’re willing to be open—can teach you what is essential to your true nature. Sometimes, you are surprised to find out what interests you. Who would have guessed, for instance, that I should find the architectural history of the Paris métro stops so fascinating? It’s become an ongoing interest of mine.
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