LETTER FROM VENICE
681
carried a sack. Always empty. At intervals he uttered a few glottal
sound's. A few days ago, however, my wife saw
him
trundling off
with some loot, the battered and rusty remains of a stove. Only
when every alternative has been explored, is there something called
junk.
We sometimes
think
we have some, but it never reaches the
junkman. Dora, the cleaning woman, sees to that. We have been
trained to salvage paper, bottles and cigarette butts. She doesn't smoke
herself, but she knows people who do. Until one knows the Dora's of
Venice the economy is something of a mystery-so few people seem to
do
anything, or have anything to do. One thing they do is never throw
anything out. When my wife discovered that the
Yz
liter bottle cost
her more than the milk it contained, she too became a Dora: we now
save everything. One of our prized possessions, recently lost, was a
sardine can for storing grease. Dora nabbed it. So why don't we buy
some more sardines? That's the easy way out, and we don't want
Dora to think we're soft.
The native is not. This is seen most plainly in the conspicuous
absence of beggars. There are a few. They are part of the Venetian
community. Begging, without question, is a last resort, and as a last
resort the community accepts it. In our quarter a few such men pass
themselves off as entertainers. A joke. An openly countenanced joke.
A moment of tuneless singing, a few plucked chords, then the passing
of the hat. The most talented member of these sad deceivers has the
least talent. No voice at all. He can play nothing. He cannot dance.
He wears a pressed suit, shirt and tie, and looks for all the world like
a respectable merchant. Two or three times a day, on the Zatere,
depending on the turnout, he will take from his pocket a sheet of
paper, place it before his nose, wag his head from side to side, and
sing. Godot would love it. It would give him ideas. On occasion he
says, "Now I'll sing," or mutters at the end, "That's that." Unhappily,
this comical performance costs him much pain. He broods for hours.
He smokes away his profits. He is under great strain. The effort it costs
him would seem to exceed the handful of lire he ekes from his fans–
which is what they become. No man in Venice, to our eyes, works so
hard for what he gets.
The Venetian who wonders what the world is like can go to the
Lido, or the thirty-first showing of the Biennale. The boat ride is
beautiful, and costs him about ten cents. The Lido resembles a going
resort on the Cape, the Jersey shore, or anywhere but Venice:
electrified buses, quaint horse-drawn cabs, Fiats, Vespas, and Lincoln
