The Gods of Venice

Before the tourists came, it wasn’t such a smelly city. No, it was the tourist boats, the big hotels, the crowds and all that that made the city stink. It was her favorite time of the day, the early, quiet hours of dawn when the city was still waking up. When she was a child, living out on Murano, they’d had chickens and mornings were always marked by their soft clucking. She would lie in bed while the broad sky outside the window slowly took shape, glowing purple, pink, orange and red. Her bedroom sat above the kitchen and she could always smell coffee in the mornings, wafting through the floorboards and heating grate. So it was only natural that she came to love the beverage at an early age, long before her mother thought it natural or proper. “It will stunt your growth,” she chided. “It’s not right for a little girl to drink coffee.” And her father would laugh. “Better she drinks coffee than grappa, no?” Her mother clucked her tongue like one of the chickens, frowning with resignation. And whether it was coffee or moving to the larger quarter of Cannaregio in Venice proper, Constanza always seemed to get her way. Her mother never approved, always wanting to drag her to church to see the priest. “I pray for you,” her mother used to say. And she did. But then, she prayed for everyone. Constanza learned the art of praying from her mother, praying constantly and in earnest, like a nun or old woman. She prayed about little things and big things, and she prayed that her life would turn out the way she wanted, not the way her mother wished it to. And for the most part, she had gotten her way—except for those few, unforeseeable happenings that had transformed her life completely. And in ways neither she nor her mother could ever have guessed. In those days, Constanza believed, too, that prayer made a difference, that it could help determine fate, tip the scales in a person’s favor. So she would pray even harder against her mother, praying that she would find a job using her hands, that she would move to Cannaregio, that she would fall in love. And she prayed, too, that she would be forgiven for disrespecting her mother, for praying her mother’s wishes wouldn’t be realized. But there were too many prayers to be said; life was too complicated. And if you missed one little overlooked aspect of your life, maybe something unanticipated looming on the horizon, you suffered the consequences. It was as if this God of Prayers expected you to know the future, guess what was around the corner or in someone’s heart, so that you could gauge your prayers accordingly. She came by this attitude through her mother, who used to say “God will reveal all to you, if you only ask the right questions.” A tragedy or dilemma was the simple result of a lack of or heartless prayers, in her opinion. The way her mother taught it, a person was responsible for the bad that happened in life; God brought the good. And constant, fervent prayer made the latter a possibility, and the former less likely So, she used to try to think of the right questions, and then pray in earnest for good grades, honor, a kiss from Giacomo Puglia, and later a date to go see a movie with Pietro Agostino. And that’s when things changed for her, when life opened up. And eventually swallowed her. “Be careful what you pray for,” her mother had also warned. She should have remembered her own advice. In those days, Cannaregio still had Jews in it, though only a few. Their bizarre, Byzantine temple stood in a small piazza, looking somehow abandoned and forlorn. “You shouldn’t live so close to the Jews,” her mother complained. “There aren’t so many there. And they don’t seem evil to me,” she’d countered, not knowing that eventually they would all be gone. “I’ll pray for you. Pray for them,” she’d said, nodding vigorously. “They’re not saved,” she muttered. “I know, mamma,” she said dispassionately. They seemed nice enough, good enough to her. Why should they go to hell for having a different God? Did her mother come to believe that her prayers were answered because eventually the Jews left? By the time they’d disappeared from the neighborhood, though, her mother had greater things to pray for then the salvation of Jews, or her daughter’s move to another quarter. Piero Agostino had grown up in Murano, too, where his father ran one of the oldest glass-making shops, a small medieval-looking store with the workshop in back. In those days, few tourists ever bothered to visit the island, so except for the heavy smell of molten glass and the coals that fired the furnaces, there wasn’t much of anything on the islet. While as a young girl Constanza had liked the feel of living on a sleepy island that felt almost country-like in some ways, when secondary school started she and her friends began taking the vaporetti to Venice. They would hang out of the sides of the boats, staring at the tourists, and particularly at the glamorous women from Paris or London who wore designer clothes. The tourists stared back, and sometimes even took their photographs, a bunch of schoolgirls in dark blue uniforms and hats. Did she look as exotic and unusual as they did to her? Her mother didn’t like her constant trips to the city, but her father encouraged her. “Be careful,” her mother warned. “And if you must go, never go alone. Every time you go I say a prayer for you, for your safe return. And that you don’t do anything to shame me or your father.” Constanza shook her head, but not too hard or her mother would accuse her of showing disrespect. She would kiss the woman, and head for the door. If she turned to steal one more look at her mother, she would see her already whispering prayers under her breath, massaging her crucifix between thumb and fingers, bent over them as if in study. “I’m too old to fall into a canal and drown,” she reassured her once, knowing that was her mother’s worry, the unspoken fear of every Muranese and Venetian mother. Some days she thought of moving back, to live in the small house she’d grown up in. She liked seeing her friends and acquaintances, though, and liked her role in the city as its conscience, a constant reminder of how praying got you nowhere and the god of Venice was a farce. She enjoyed seeing people whisper, casting their sad gazes in her direction. Maybe they would realize that they, too, could fall prey to the vicissitudes of life and when that happened, all the prayer or religion in the world wouldn’t help a whit. The small bakery she worked in, one she would eventually purchase, had a reputation for making the best breads in the neighborhood. She’d been fortunate to have a mother who baked bread as well as she prayed. Constanza liked to think her mother became such a good baker because she needed to do something with her nervous hands. And kneading dough, a tiresome task, could take the energy right out of your hands, and even distract you. Was the yeast good? Did it smell right? Was there enough heat to make the dough rise properly? Her mother hovered over the loaves, peeking under the thin cotton cloths she draped over them, and moving the fragrant pillows of dough closer to the oven if they weren’t rising. She tended them in their bowls like a row of newborn babies. When Constanza thought of that house and Murano, she remembered the smells of coffee—and fresh bread—rising from the kitchen below. When she was asked by the aging couple who ran the bakery how she’d started baking bread, she’d told them she didn’t have a chance. Her bedroom sat above the kitchen and her mother was an avid bread-baker. She left out the part about her being an avid prayer, too, but the two had become intertwined in her mind. Living in the Cannaregio quarter seemed like a dream. She would rise at 4:00 so that the first loaves of bread came out of the oven by 7:00.