Sisterchicks in Gondolas!

by Robin Jones Gunn

  Instead of taking our usual straight route back to the palace, Sue did a quick study of the map and led us a long way around, through a neighborhood that had beautifully restored buildings along a canal. So much of Venice was dilapidated and past due for repairs, but this area had received special attention and care. Colorful geraniums cascaded from planters on the balconies. I captured a picture of the flowers clashing with Sue’s hair as she stood in the foreground.

  We more or less circled Venice by foot, shooting pictures every few minutes along the way. At Sue’s suggestion, we avoided San Marco Square. It was the middle of the afternoon, and if all we had heard was correct, the crowds would be at their thickest.

  “We’ll make tomorrow our San Marco day,” Sue said. “We’ll start early and have time to take it all in.”

  That plan was fine with me.

  We came upon a sunny piazza with a corner bookstore that looked inviting. At the outdoor café across the way, a small man was playing a large accordion while diners ate under widespread café umbrellas.

  Sue and I looked through the books displayed on the table in front of the bookstore. Many of them were in English. I picked up one of the books of photographic studies of Venice. The text was printed in English along with Italian, French and German. For most of the pictures, though, a written description in four language wasn’t necessary. The photos spoke for themselves.

  “That’s gorgeous,” Sue said, looking on with me.

  An aerial view of Venice made it easy to see all the canals as well as the tops of the sienna buildings.

  “How much is this book?” she asked.

  I turned it over so she could see the price of 20 euros. Sue thought it was a little high, so we looked through other books. Even though quite a few photography books of Venice were on the table, none of the volumes seemed to overlap. Venice wore so many masks and had so many facets that each book covered different locations. The common themes repeated in a variety of ways in each book were the gondolas and the pigeons at San Marco Square.

  “We’re going to have to take a gondola ride.” Sue gazed at one of the pictures. She had gone back to the original book with the higher price tag. All her attention was on a picture of a craftsman who was hand-polishing a long, upside-down, black gondola balanced on a sawhorse inside a workshop.

  “It says here that two hundred years ago Venice had ten thousand gondolas, but now there are less than five hundred. Each one is handmade, and they’re painted black with six coats of special paint.”

  I quietly reached for the camera. Stepping back, I took a picture of Sue looking at the book about Venice while standing in Venice.

  “Did you just take my picture?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? I wasn’t looking.”

  “I know. But you’re going to buy that book. I know you are. Jack is going to ask where you bought it, and now you’ll be able to show him.”

  “You are a better salesperson than the man at the glass display room. What makes you so sure I’m going to buy this?”

  “Because you’re going to get home and try to tell Jack all these details like how much a gondola weighs—”

  “A half a ton, it says here.”

  I gave Sue a pretend flustered look for the way she cut me off.

  “I’m sorry. You were saying?”

  “You’re getting that book, Sue. And now you’ll have a picture of you looking at the book before you bought it.”

  She looked at it again, this time with her chin slightly elevated and her profile tilted toward the best light. “Go ahead and take another shot, then. Just in case the first one doesn’t turn out.”

  I think it’s fun to periodically support a friend’s fleeting moment of vanity. We spend too much time tearing ourselves down and keeping mental lists of our flaws. When the chance comes to nurture each other’s finer points, I’m all for it.

  That must explain why it didn’t bother me to keep taking shots of Sue as she posed this way and that. She could be strikingly photogenic when I caught her in just the right light and position.

  Sue bought the book, of course, and we continued our walking tour, eyes open, camera snapping, drinking it all in. Whenever we found ourselves in a passageway thick with tourists, we went another route. Sue’s sense of direction was extraordinary.

  My sense of smell was what impressed Sue. I sniffed out something delectable and led us to a pizzeria where the most enticing fragrance of garlic and artichoke wafted out its open door.

  We stepped inside the small, dimly lit pizzeria and saw the wood oven where the pizzas were having the garlic breath baked out of them. A couple of Italian words, a thumb and finger visual for “due,” and a couple of euros bought us huge slices of flat-crusted pizza that we walked outside with to enjoy.

  “How strange that there’s no cheese,” Sue said. “It’s all tomato sauce and a garden of vegetables.”

  I didn’t respond. I was too busy sliding the pointed end of my Italian vegetable garden into my happy mouth. “Mmm.” As soon as I swallowed, I said, “A ten. Definitely a ten. Do you realize this is our first taste of Italian pizza?”

  “It’s okay.” Sue dabbed the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “Okay? Just okay?”

  She nodded. “It’s no tiramisu gelato.”

  “Therein lies the difference in our choices of comfort food. I am a bread woman rather than a sugar mama.”

  “That’s because you’re a Midwestern born-and-bred baby. I, on the other hand, was raised on sweet tea.”

  Sue had heard more than once how I felt about her Texas sweet tea. I called it “hummingbird brown beverage” and avoided it.

  We had been walking while we ate. I think our legs were on autopilot. Across from us was a narrow canal spanned by an unusually wide bridge. The edge of the bridge was wide and low enough to sit on without fear of falling backward.

  I led the way, and we sat down to finish our late afternoon snack. A lone gondolier floated down the canal in our direction, as if he had been summoned. I grabbed the camera and snapped his picture.

  “Gondola?” he called out with a welcoming smile.

  “No thanks,” I said.

  He floated on. I took a picture of his back to catch the motion of the wide ribbons fluttering from his straw hat. The sunlight sliced through a gap between the buildings and illuminated his form.

  “It’s remarkable the way they stand at the back of the gondolas, isn’t it?” Sue said. “Do you know how they stay balanced?”

  “No, but I’m guessing you know.” I snapped another shot.

  “I read it in this wonderful book that my sister-in-law talked me into buying.”

  “See? You’re glad already, aren’t you?”

  Ignoring me, she pushed ahead with her lesson in gondola structure. “They don’t have keels or rudders. The bottoms are fairly flat to move over sandbars. They’re designed so the prow curves to the left. That offsets the gondolier’s motion with the oar and keeps the gondola from going in circles.”

  I watched the gondolier’s steady movements as Sue talked. He did a poetic sort of dance, a smooth and soundless waltz across the shallow waters of the glassy canal.

  “The oars are curved in a special way as well,” Sue continued. “The balance between the prow and the oar is what makes the gondola go straight without the gondolier’s having to switch the oar from side to side with each stroke.”

  “Amazing.”

  “Do you really mean that, or are you teasing me and I just can’t tell the difference anymore?”

  “No, I’m serious. That is amazing.” Putting down the camera I turned to Sue, who still was nibbling on her pizza. “Does it seem like I’m teasing you too much?”

  “No. I like the teasing. I like the way you’ve been having so much fun on this trip and including me in everything. At home we’re both so much more serious. I like it the way it’s been.”

  “Me, too.”

  “In th
at case, do you want to hear one more little-known fact about gondolas?”

  “Yes.”

  “Really really?”

  “Yes, really really. Tell me.”

  “This piece of info is actually about the gondoliers, not the gondolas. When a gondolier dies, the license to operate a gondola is passed on to his widow.”

  That tidbit didn’t seem spectacular, so I waited for Sue to continue.

  “Don’t you see? It means that the gondola trade has stayed within the same families for hundreds of years. It’s like Steph was saying about Paolo’s café. These gondoliers are all from long lines of gondoliers.”

  Again, as if on cue, another gondolier came our way and called out, “Bella donnas! Beautiful ladies! You are waiting for me, no? You are ready for a gondola ride.”

  “No thanks,” I called back.

  “Wait!” Sue countered, turning and facing the young man in his tight-fitting striped shirt and black pants. He used the long oar to stop the gondola and direct it to the landing located a dozen stone-carved steps down from the bridge. As he looked up at us from beneath his straw hat, I realized he was the most suave gondolier we had encountered yet.

  “Si, bella donna. What is your wish? I am at your servizio.”

  I was thinking, Oh, brother!

  Sue still was solving puzzles and collecting data. “How much do y’all charge for a gondola ride?”

  “Depends. Where do you want to go?”

  Sue paused, seeming uncertain.

  The gondolier jumped in and made it easy for her by listing prices by the hour and the half-hour. He added some of the sights we could see in those time frames.

  Sue looked at me, as if waiting for my approval to part with a whole lot of money for what I’m sure would be a memorable experience.

  “Fine with me,” I said. “We could split the cost and just go for half an hour.”

  “Okay. Good. I’m sure he’s going to ask for cash. Do we have enough cash on us, or do we need to find an ATM?”

  “I might still have enough.” I pulled out my wallet and did a quick inventory of my diminishing euros. “If you have twenty euros on you, we should have enough.”

  Sue smiled at our patient gondolier and called down, “Just a minute!”

  “It is not a problem, bella donna. Take all the time you need. I will wait for you.”

  “He’s smooth,” Sue muttered to me under her breath.

  “No kidding.”

  “I have thirty euros left,” Sue said. “That should be plenty.” She glanced down one more time and asked, “Do y’all charge more if you sing for us on the ride?”

  He cupped his hand behind his ear, as if he hadn’t heard her. My guess was that he had heard but he couldn’t quite understand her drawl.

  “You ask him, Jenna.”

  I broke down the question into the key words and spoke them slowly and loudly, “What is the price if you sing?”

  The young man removed his straw hat and dramatically held it over his heart. Looking up at us with a Romeo-like expression, he said, “Bella donnas, you must understand. There are gondoliers who sing and there are gondoliers who make love.”

  With a passionate pause he added, “I do not sing.”

  Nineteen

  Okay, yeah. We didn’t go for a gondola ride that evening.

  Sue turned a lovely rosy shade and called out to the “romantic” gondolier something along the lines of, “You better watch your mouth, young man! Don’t y’all realize we’re old enough to be your mother?” She said something else about how he had a proud heritage to uphold.

  We picked up our belongings and left.

  I wanted to laugh so hard. Sue still was fuming, so I kept my lips together and didn’t look at her. She had been hoping for a face-to-face encounter with a gondolier ever since my slightly embarrassing contact at the bakery. Now that she had a chance to see how smooth these professional tourist-pleasers could be, her opinion seemed to have changed.

  By the time we returned to our apartment, her indignation was diffused, but she still wasn’t ready to laugh about it the way I was.

  We unlocked all the doors and found the lights on in the entry room. A note from Steph waited for us on the table.

  “Hi! I’m guessing you’re out having a good time. I stopped by this afternoon because my uncle asked me to do an odd favor for him. He told a friend of his that he could come by at nine o’clock tonight and pick up the two extra mattresses in the storage closet. I know it’s a strange time and a strange thing to loan a friend, but welcome to the Venetian way of doing things!

  “I told my uncle I’d put the mattresses down in the wooden trolley cart along the side wall on the lower level. But when I went to pull out the mattresses, I couldn’t find them. Who knows where they ended up. My uncle probably loaned them to another friend and forgot all about it.

  “Anyway, I just wanted you to know that when a man named Pietro shows up at nine o’clock tonight, please give him the other note on the table that I wrote in Italian. It explains that the mattresses aren’t here. You don’t have to do anything except hand him the note.

  “I’ll call later this evening to check in. You have my mobile phone number, so please call me earlier if you have any problems.

  “Again, I’m so sorry for the inconvenience. I hope you’re having a great time.

  “Ciao,

  “Steph”

  Sue and I looked at each other. We wore matching “uh-oh” expressions.

  “Those are the mattresses we hauled up to the roof,” Sue said. “That’s why she couldn’t find them. What should we do?”

  “I think we should take them down to the cart in the entry area,” I said. “When Pietro comes at nine, we can just point to the cart and off he goes. I’ll call Steph and explain why she couldn’t find them.”

  Sue didn’t appear enthusiastic about my suggestion. “That’s going to be a lot of work, hauling two mattresses down three flights of stairs.”

  “It won’t be as hard as it was to haul both of them up those narrow stairs to the roof. We’ll be going downhill, with gravity on our side. Plus the marble stairs are nice and wide. I think we can do it.”

  Sue reluctantly agreed. We went into the kitchen so I could call Steph while Sue checked on Netareena. The nest was empty. I put down the phone’s receiver.

  “Do you think she managed to fly out the window?” Sue asked, looking around the kitchen to make sure Netareena wasn’t perched on a counter or hiding under the table.

  “There she is.” I pointed through the open doorway into the dining room. She had roosted on one of the elegant glass arms of the chandelier over the table, causing the light fixture to tilt to one side.

  “Oh, Netareena!” Sue hurried toward her and waved her arms. “You shouldn’t be up there! Do you have any idea how much that light costs?”

  Netareena took the cue and fluttered haltingly over to the top of the china cabinet.

  “She’s flying,” I said. “Good for her!”

  “She needs to be outside, though. She can’t stay cooped up in here.”

  “Tell her that.”

  “I’m trying. Come on, girl. The window is just over that way. You keep going. That’s it.”

  Netareena made a swoop of the dining room and fluttered back into the kitchen where she perched on the spigot in the sink. She bent her head and caught a drop of water in her beak.

  “Smart bird,” I said. “Now, if she could only figure out where the window is. How can she miss it? It’s wide open. Try to coax her in that direction. I’m going to call Steph.”

  I dialed the number and received a recorded message in Italian. The voice sounded like Steph’s, so I left a message in English, telling her we knew where the mattresses were and that we would move them to the cart. I apologized to her for the inconvenience and ended with “ciao.”

  Sue and I spent the next twenty minutes flapping our arms at Netareena as much as she was flapping her wings around the
apartment. We chased her in and out of nearly every room before we finally gave up.

  “She’ll leave when she’s ready to,” I concluded.

  “I hope she decides she’s ready to leave by tomorrow because we’re leaving the next day. Who’s to say the housekeeper or the next batch of tenants will be as understanding as we’ve been?”

  “Let’s leave Netareena for the time being and attend to those mattresses,” I suggested. “I feel bad that we didn’t break up our rooftop hideaway this morning when we were cleaning the rest of the apartment. That way Steph would have found the mattresses in the closet where they belong.”

  “And we wouldn’t have to be the ones hauling them down the stairs.”

  “Come on. How hard can it be? We’ll figure out how to make a merit badge out of it. You would like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Don’t try to cheer me up,” Sue said. “I’m too tired. And I’m still mad at the gondolier. I was looking forward to that gondola ride more than you can imagine.”

  “So we’ll go tomorrow. Domani. We’ll find a respectable, pudgy, middle-aged, gondolier, and we won’t even ask if he sings.”

  Sue managed a half smile. “Okay. We’ll go tomorrow. It’ll give us something to look forward to on our last night.”

  “And we’ll make sure we have enough cash on us so we can go for the hour tour. I mean, if we’re going to do this, we should do it right.”

  “I agree. You’ve heard my motto before, haven’t you?”

  “I’m not sure. Which motto?”

  “‘Buy the best and cry about it once.’”

  My expression didn’t change.

  “Don’t you get it?”

  I shook my head.

  “It means, if you’re going to buy something worthwhile, go ahead and pay for the best. You may cry about having to spend so much up front, but that’s better than buying something cheap or inadequate and then crying about it when it breaks or doesn’t work. You end up having to go back and purchase the best one later just so you have one that works.”