Gondola days

by Francis Hopkinson Smith

THE CATCH OF THE MORNING

Up at the farther end of the Pallada and under another wooden bridge, where two slips of canals meet, there is a corner that has added more sketches to my portfolio than any single spot in Venice. An old fisherman lives here, perhaps a dozen old fishermen; they come and go all the time. There is a gate with a broken door, and a neglected garden trampled down by many feet, a half-ruined wall with fig-trees and oleanders peeping over from the garden next door, a row of ragged, straggling trees lining the water’s edge, and more big fish and crab baskets scattered all about,—baskets big as feather-beds,—and festoons of nets hung to the branches of the trees or thrown over the patched-up fences,—every conceivable and inconceivable kind of fishing plunder that could litter up the premises of a pescatore of the lagoon. In and out of all this débris swarm the children, playing baby-house in the big baskets, asleep under the overturned boat with the new patch on her bottom, or leaning over the wall catching little crabs that go nibbling along a few inches below the water-line.

In this picturesque spot, within biscuit-throw of this very corner, I have some very intimate and charming friends—little Amelia, the child model, and young Antonio, who is determined to be a gondolier when he grows up, and who, perhaps, could earn a better living by posing for some sculptor as a Greek god. Then, too, there is his mother, the Signora Marcelli, who sometimes reminds me of my other old friend, the “Grand Duchess of the Riva,” who keeps the caffè near the Ponte Veneta Marina.

The Signora Marcelli, however, lacks most of the endearing qualities of the Duchess; one in particular—a soft, musical voice. If the Signora is in temporary want of the services of one of her brood of children, it never occurs to her, no matter where she may be, to send another member of the household in search of the missing child; she simply throws back her head, fills her lungs, and begins a crescendo which terminates in a fortissimo, so shrill and far-reaching that it could call her offspring back from the dead. Should her husband, the Signor Marcelli, come in some wet morning late from the lagoon,—say at nine o’clock, instead of an hour after daylight,—the Signora begins on her crescendo when she first catches sight of his boat slowly poled along the canal. Thereupon the Signora fills the surrounding air with certain details of her family life, including her present attitude of mind toward the Signore, and with such volume and vim that you think she fully intends breaking every bone under his tarpaulins when he lands,—and she is quite able physically to do it,—until you further notice that it makes about as much impression upon the Signore as the rain upon his oilskins. It makes still less on his neighbors, who have listened to similar outbursts for years, and have come to regard them quite as they would the announcement by one of the Signora’s hens that she had just laid an egg—an event of too much importance to be passed over in silence.

When the Signor Marcelli arrives off the little wooden landing-ladder facing his house, and, putting things shipshape about the boat, enters his doorway, thrashing the water from his tarpaulin hat as he walks, the Signora, from sheer loss of breath, subsides long enough to overhaul a unique collection of dry clothing hanging to the rafters, from which she selects a coat patched like Joseph’s of old, with trousers to match. These she carries to the Signore, who puts them on in dead silence, reappearing in a few moments barefooted but dry, a red worsted cap on his head, and a short pipe in his mouth. Then he drags up a chair, and, still silent as a graven image,—he has not yet spoken a word,—continues smoking, looking furtively up at the sky, or leaning over listlessly and watching the chickens that gather about his feet. Now and again he picks up a rooster or strokes a hen as he would a kitten. Nothing more.

Only then does the Signora subside, bringing out a fragment of polenta and a pot of coffee, which the fisherman divides with his chickens, the greedy ones jumping on his knees. I feel assured that it is neither discretion nor domestic tact, nor even uncommon sense, that forbids a word of protest to drop from the Signore’s lips. It is rather a certain philosophy, born of many dull days spent on the lagoon, and many lively hours passed with the Signora Marcelli, resulting in some such apothegm as, “Gulls scream and women scold, but fishing and life go on just the same.”

There is, too, the other old fisherman, whose name I forget, who lives in the little shed of a house next to the long wall, and who is forever scrubbing his crab baskets, or lifting them up and down, and otherwise disporting himself in an idiotic and most aggravating way. He happens to own an old water-logged boat that has the most delicious assortment of barnacles and seaweed clinging to its sides. It is generally piled high with great baskets, patched and mended, with red splotches all over them, and bits of broken string dangling to their sides or banging from their open throats. There are also a lot of rheumatic, palsied old poles that reach over this ruin of a craft, to which are tied still more baskets of still more delicious qualities of burnt umber and Hooker’s-green moss. Behind this boat is a sun-scorched wall of broken brick, caressed all day by a tender old mother of a vine, who winds her arms about it and splashes its hot cheeks with sprays of cool shadows.

When, some years ago, I discovered this combination of boat, basket, and shadow-flecked wall, and in an unguarded moment begged the fisherman to cease work for the morning at my expense, and smoke a pipe of peace in his doorway, until I could transfer its harmonies to my canvas, I spoke hurriedly and without due consideration; for since that time, whenever this contemporary of the original Bucentoro gets into one of my compositions,—these old fish-boats last forever and are too picturesque for even the little devils to worry over,—this same fisherman immediately dries his sponge, secures his baskets, and goes ashore, and as regularly demands backsheesh of soldi and fine-cut. Next summer I shall buy the boat and hire him to watch; it will be much cheaper.

Then there are the two girls who live with their grandmother, in one end of an old tumble-down, next to the little wooden bridge that the boats lie under. She keeps a small cook-shop, where she boils and then toasts, in thin strips, slices of green-skinned pumpkin, which the girls sell to the fishermen on the boats, or hawk about the fondamenta. As the whole pumpkin can be bought for a lira, you can imagine what a wee bit of a copper coin it must be that pays for a fragment of its golden interior, even when the skilled labor of the old woman is added to the cost of the raw material.