So Giorgio and I idle about the lagoon and the Giudecca, watching the flags being hoisted, the big barcos being laden, and various other preparations for the great event of the afternoon.
After luncheon Giorgio stops at his house to change his tenda for the new one with the blue lining, and slips into the white suit just laundered for him. He lives a few canals away from the Calcina, with his mother, his widowed sister and her children, in a small house with a garden all figs and oleanders. His bedroom is next to his mother’s, on the second floor, overlooking the blossoms. There is a shrine above the bureau, decorated with paper flowers, and on the walls a scattering of photographs of brother gondoliers, and some trophies of oars and flags. Hanging behind the door are his oilskins for wet weather, and the Tam O’Shanter cap that some former padrone has left him, as a souvenir of the good times they once had together, and which Giorgio wears as a weather signal for a rainy afternoon, although the morning sky may be cloudless. All gondoliers are good weather prophets.
The entire family help Giorgio with the tenda—the old mother carrying the side-curtains, warm from her flat-iron, and chubby Beppo, bareheaded and barefooted, bringing up the rear with the little blue streamer that on gala days floats from the gondola’s lamp-socket forward, which on other days is always filled with flowers.
Then we are off, picking our way down the narrow canal, waiting here and there for the big barcos to pass, laden with wine or fruit, until we shoot out into the broad waters of the Giudecca.
You see at a glance that Venice is astir. All along the Zattere, on every wood-boat, barco, and barge, on every bridge, balcony, and house-top, abreast the wide fondamenta fronting the great warehouses, and away down the edge below the Redentore, the people are swarming like flies. Out on the Giudecca, anchored to the channel spiles, is a double line of boats of every conceivable description, from a toy sandolo to a steamer’s barge. These lie stretched out on the water like two great sea-serpents, their heads facing the garden, their tails curving toward the Redentore.
Between these two sea-monsters, with their flashing scales of a thousand umbrellas, is an open roadway of glistening silver.
Giorgio swings across to the salt warehouses above the Dogana and on down and over to the Riva. Then there is a shout ahead, a red and white tenda veers a point, comes close, backs water, and the Professor springs in.
“Here, Professor, here beside me on the cushions,” I call out. “Draw back the curtains, Giorgio. And, Espero, hurry ahead and secure a place near the stake-boat. We will be there in ten minutes.”
The Professor was a sight to cheer the heart of an amateur yachtsman out for a holiday. He had changed his suit of the morning for a small straw hat trimmed with red, an enormous field-glass with a strap over his shoulder, and a short velvet coat that had once done service as a smoking-jacket. His mustachios were waxed into needle points. The occasion had for him all the novelty of the first spring meeting at Longchamps, or a race off Cowes, and he threw himself into its spirit with the gusto of a boy.
“What colors are you flying, mon Capitaine? Blue? Never!” noticing Giorgio’s streamer. “Pasquale’s color is blue, and he will be half a mile astern when Pietro is round the stake-boat. Vive le jaune! Vive Pietro!” and out came a yellow rag—Pietro’s color—bearing a strong resemblance to the fragment of some old silk curtain. It settled at a glance all doubt as to the Professor’s sympathies in the coming contest.