Without Reservations (39 page)

It confirmed my belief that restraint is often more exciting than unbridled emotion. Up to a point, anyway.

The small boat entered the Grand Canal, moving past the glorious white-domed church of Santa Maria della Salute to Ponte dell’ Accademia, the bridge connecting the San Marco section of the city to Dorsoduro. After getting off on the Dorsoduro side, we walked to the
pensione
where I was staying. This was my favorite part of Venice.

To get to the
pensione
we had to cross a small wooden bridge over a narrow canal. The water beneath the bridge shimmered in the sunlight. Halfway over we stopped to admire the dappled patterns moving across the water.

“This reminds me of the bridge over the water gardens at Giverny,” I said. “Only there, we watched water lilies floating by. Do you remember?”

Naohiro took my hand. “I remember.”

“And what else do you remember?” I asked.

“That you wore a black dress to dinner that night.” He stopped and smiled. “And that I learned Laredo is not concrete but a city in Texas.”

Why this moment should make me as happy as it did was a mystery to me. But I accepted it as one accepts the arrival of an unexpected windfall: with complete pleasure and no questions as to its origins.

Over the next two days, Naohiro and I rose early and retired late. After all, there weren’t that many hours in a weekend; we didn’t want to waste too many of them sleeping.

Our favorite time was early morning, when Venice was just waking. On the first morning, with no map or destination, we walked holding hands through the quiet streets, changing direction if a certain square or canal path attracted us. Gradually, as we walked, the city came to life. Men and women appeared on their way to work. Smells of breakfast cooking, of bacon and coffee, floated from windows into the narrow streets. Dogs pranced along the sides of narrow small canals, their noses to the ground, sniffing. Sleepy-eyed children, carrying books, entered the church school on the Campo San Agnese. Shopkeepers could be seen moving around inside their still-closed establishments.

We stopped at a caffè bar to have espresso. We sat there for an
hour, exchanging news of our children and detailed information about what we’d been doing since our meeting in London. Once again, I was struck by the immediacy of our relationship, by how much it was set in the present. I felt no need to retrace in detail Naohiro’s life before he met me, and Naohiro, it seemed, shared this feeling. It was as though we recognized that the past—and the roles we had played with others in that past—had no dominion over who we were to each other.

By the time we crossed the bridge to have a proper breakfast near the Piazza San Marco, we were both quite hungry. It was while walking through one of the narrow, mazelike streets leading into the piazza that Naohiro and I were met by Death. He approached us slowly, a tall, gaunt figure dressed in a voluminous black cape and three-cornered hat, his face covered by a skeletal white mask. In one gloved hand he carried a scythe; in the other a cardboard tombstone.

He drew close, close enough for us to read what was written on the tombstone:
Fugit hora, memento mori.

“What does it mean, I wonder, the words on the tombstone?” Naohiro said.

“You’ve come to the right person,” I said, thinking about all the days I had spent studying tombstones with my grandmother. “It’s a Latin phrase often inscribed on tombstones. It means, ‘Time flies, remember you must die.’ ”

We watched as the spectral figure continued on, in the direction of two women studying a window display of expensive leather bags.

“I suppose he’s a walking advertisement for some mask shop,” I said. There were many such shops in Venice, where mask-making is an art form, one whose origins go far back in the city’s history.

Naohiro said nothing. But a look passed across his face, one I couldn’t identify. Was he offended by the tombstone admonition? I realized how little I knew about death and burial traditions in Japan. It was something I would ask him about, I decided, over breakfast.

It was a little after nine when we arrived at the terrace café in the Hotel Monaco. In a perfect setting overlooking the Grand Canal we ordered cereal and fresh fruit, a basket of sweet rolls, and strong coffee. Just as I started to ask Naohiro about the ceremonies and customs associated with death in Japan, he asked me a question.

“I have been thinking,” he said. “Why do they say on their tombstones that ‘Time flies, remember you must die’? Would it not be more useful to say that ‘Time flies, remember you must live’?”

It was such a simple observation. But profound, I thought. It reminded me of the way children think; of how they try to understand the world by asking the obvious or naive question. It was a great gift, I thought, to retain such directness as an adult.

I looked at Naohiro and felt a tenderness usually reserved for my sons. “You are right,” I said. “It is more useful to remember that we must live.”

On Sunday afternoon we boarded the Number 1 vaporetto for a leisurely ride along the length of the Grand Canal. It was a quiet time along this watery thoroughfare. Quiet enough for Naohiro and me to hear the soft lapping sounds of water meeting land and the echoes of children playing in the narrow
calli
near the canal.
On Sunday afternoons there was none of the early-morning commerce of boats delivering fresh produce or the sight of rubbish barges picking up refuse. Nor any of the midday rush of tourists, many of whom had already left after spending a weekend in Venice. The vaporetto that Naohiro and I boarded was almost empty.

For the next hour we sat mesmerized by the changing light, by the white palazzo steps that disappeared into the canal, and the tethered gondolas riding up and down on the water like restless black steeds.

Naohiro was the first to spot the silver-haired gentleman standing on the balcony of his grand palazzo, an elegant greyhound by his side. Later it was I who called to Naohiro’s attention the gauzy fabric covering the palazzi being renovated; it was as though the artist Christo had come to Venice and wrapped the buildings in thin white nets.

Later that night we walked back to our
pensione
under a moon that glowed silver through the fog, like a light shining through ice. Giddy with happiness we crossed bridge after bridge, turned down one narrow street after another, walked along the quays of small canals. And then it dawned on us: we were lost.

We ducked into a piano bar on the Zattere to ask for directions. After listening to directions given in a combination of Italian and English by a very kind patron, Naohiro and I still had no idea of how to get back to the
pensione
.

“Maybe we should have left a trail of bread crumbs, so we’d be sure to find our way back,” I said, forgetting that Naohiro probably was not familiar with the fairy tale about Hansel and Gretel.

“Or perhaps we should not try to find a way back,” he said. “Perhaps the answer lies in finding a way to go ahead.”

As I sat on the terrace in Asolo remembering all this, the phone in my room rang. I ran inside and picked it up.

“This is Jack Upton,” the voice said. “I do hope it’s not too late to call. But Mrs. Spenser and I were wondering if you’d like to drive with us tomorrow to the Villa Barbaro.”

The call startled me somewhat. I was still back in Venice. But after a few seconds of readjustment I accepted his offer. It was just what I needed, I decided, turning out the light and climbing into bed.

The drive to Villa Barbaro took less than fifteen minutes. On the way there, Jack Upton explained that only a portion of the sixteenth-century villa was open to the public.

“The present owners—the Volpe-Buschetti family, I believe—reside there and do not open up their private quarters to visitors. But what is open is magnificent.” This was his second visit to the villa, he said.

“Have you been to the villa before?” I asked Mrs. Spenser.

“Not inside. But we have driven by and, I must say, the façade is quite breathtaking. But it’s the Veronese frescoes I’m longing to see.”

Suddenly, the Villa Barbaro appeared through the car window. None of the photographs of the villa had prepared me for the real thing. Set on a slope, the graceful building stood at the end of a
long gravel pathway surrounded by manicured lawns. The perfect symmetry of its long arcaded façade and pillared entrances, so pure and simple, made the villa one of the most beautiful structures I had ever seen.

Across the road was another glorious sight: a rounded building with three cupolas protruding from its dome. I asked Jack about it.

“That is the round temple,” Jack said, “also designed by Palladio.”

We drove off the main road and into a parking lot adjacent to the villa. From there we walked across gravel pathways to the front of the building, where we purchased tickets and put felt scuffs on over our shoes to protect the highly polished floors.

Inside the villa we climbed to the top of a staircase and were met by a young woman leaning through an open door. She was dressed in a green silk gown, her blond hair pulled back from her fresh-scrubbed, cherubic face. It took me a second to realize I was seeing not a real woman but one of Veronese’s witty trompe l’oeil frescoes. We were in fact surrounded by such painted women: courtiers dressed in taffeta peered down from a balcony; women flirted from behind fans; naughty winged Cupids teased a love-struck woman.