Travel. Food. They go together like, well, like Ike & Mike sitting on, or at least near, the Steps of San Marco munching on cannolis. One does not diet on holiday.
Alas, I am not in Venice. But I hear that even those living in Venice may not wish to be in Venice, so perhaps the company I keep is well and just enough.
Still, I miss the Italianate presence of the bridges and the cafes and the churches with their adornments and statues and paintings. And the boatmen singing their mournful Venetian show tunes.
I decide to get into my very own gondola and row--there being no suitable gondolier about willing to navigate for me--to the nearest Italianate eatery, a ristorante owned and operated by a first generation Italian family worthy of the Doge’s kitchen itself.
It was not far, merely a push off into the canal seated beside our upstate New York home and into the general waterways. Several paddles later we--companion having an affinity to Italian penne rustica managed to enter a local regatta with a spirited gondolier and thus arrived in advance of my own skiff--as I say, we tied up our boats at the lagoon’s dock and heaved our heft onto the waterside bar & grill. Though we might as well have been tourists for all they knew, the locals greeted us with Ciao bella and so forth.
Yet, no room at the inn, all the stools were occupied at the bar, which I should note was curved with an ogee rim (quite nicely done, I pondered). But, like Jesu in the City of David a spot opened up for companion and I, and after a wink and nod toward the barmaid, we chose our aperitifs and appetizers.
There needs be said some few words concerning the Italian method of receiving guests. I don’t speak of greeting, of the reception, which is all well and good and gracious for all that. I speak of a kind of familiarity, as if the guest is not a guest but a family member long lost to the vagaries of time and place, a cousin back from the wars, a brother if not in blood then in life...the gusto della vita quotidiana! As such we received the welcome of cousins (cugini) and padri, nephews (nipoti) and mamacitas.
We drank the wine--what else were we to do with it? Bathe? Perhaps later. It was a spacious if slightly too chirpy chianti that served us admirably--I will note that its little straw basket seemed more than a bit of a fiasco (a pun I could not resist--the barmaid gave me a wink at least, for fiasco is Italian for “bottle”). The notes were melodic, and contrapuntal rhythms rhymed with the canal’s lapping against the marble foundation: I thought of the Palazzo Grassi.
Two signorinas sat beside companion and affirmed that we should attempt the Ali di pollo (chicken wings), and so, unable to dissent, we shouted into the kitchen--la cucina-- “Abbiamo bisogno di così ali per volare alle donne! (Loosely translated as “Get us some wings for to fly to the women!”)
As we drank our vino the escenario rose and sank to our eyes, the waters of the quasi-Venetian canals that wound their way about the place casting a spell--and even it smelling of tomato and oregano--a lustrous but mirage-y aspect to the entire surroundings. All seemed untethered as even the skiff upon which we sat--and drank--became unmoored.
We were adrift, both in body and mind. Were we to receive a vision as Dante received, which some aver was purchased after a plate of too-far-gone gabagool (capicola), the heavens opening up to allow us entrance?
The barmaid, introduced as Michelle, came undone only to re-doubled herself as a Madonna clone. Was this Raphael’s Madonna with a Book? (Was this a menu, or the Bible of Venetian culinary lore?) Were we to answer her query? What were we to speak to this paragon of virtue? I could not. I was as speechless as the deeper denizens of the waters beneath us, who also, I note, gazed upwards towards her in adoration.
But companion had no qualms. He ope’d his mouth as if to merely order chicken parm, but instead the spirit of Casanova, perhaps the most Venetian of Venetians, overtook him and he began to sing songs of such fervor that the fish themselves began to jump aboard his little boat. (He requested them fried with garlic and lemon.)
O Solo Mio, indeed. The Madonna wept, the cooks--cuochi--ran to the bar (well, a mixture of swimming and running was involved) their hands clasped to their lips, slack-jawed as they were, and his companion--myself--joined in with the bass notes suitable for the harmony of a 16th century polyphonic chant during the measure of exorbitant display by the tenor section of Te Deum exhibited by certain Gregorian choirs in 16th century Italy...or so I imagine.
But then we were interrupted by the chicken wings. O was there a crispier tang upon a bird’s flesh? Neanche per sogno! (No way!) These wings seemed not of aviary origen, but that of heaven, full of angels ascending like chickens which now remembering the flight of ancestors catch sight of the celestial firmaments and reach the Gate of St Peter as easily as Casanova woos the waitstaff.
And speaking of Casanova.
With the vino well dispersed by the chicken flesh companion had had to cease his oratorio, which allowed the Madonna to run off to pursue the other clientele, performing no doubt the tasks which Madonnas are oft commissioned: the drawing of beer, the tallying of bills, and the slapping of faces when off-putting comments are proffered.
The night was winding down. The waters even seemed receding. Televisions appeared before us...televisions? In Venice? It seems that the tourism industry has taken a toll on our Guiseppe’s, which the vino had hidden from our eyes. The Madonna now could no longer be seen. Companion forgot the lyrics. The fish swam to depths unrecorded.
It was time to go home. Or would have been had we found our oars. Ah, bless us, we had lost them to the sea’s behest. But no fear, for before us we had dozens of our little bony carcasses which did not only seem to be as large as a gondolier’s rèmo (oar) but was in fact larger and fit quite nicely into the forcola (oar lock). We were as fit as a fiddle played by Venice’s native son Vivaldi.
Yet, after the bill was paid, after the salutes made, bows to curtsies, our Madonna reappeared as she seemed to wish us well on our way and say her good-byes. Companion’s glass rose--nearly empty though it was-- “Cin Cin” he blubbered, evoking the traditional Italian toast. I am quite certain that Madonna teared up. I also endeavored to rise, not an easy task as I was of course straddling the oar (now a chicken wing) and hadn’t recovered my sea legs. My mind reeled, and I attempted to grasp hold of some concept, some phrase, that might conjure up the night’s savory aroma of oregano and crispy chicken flesh. I thought of the Doge. I thought of the Steps of San Marco, the canals, the water lapping against the ancient marble. The paintings by Raphael, the brilliance of the Renaissance. The Madonnas. How to compass it all within the reach of a few words? I wished to sing, I wished to shout out--in Italian--the admiration I had for the place, for its food, for its people, for the language, a language of love, amore and friendship.
I made a motion with my oar, in order to move closer to the maiden. I kissed the air of her left cheek and then the right, moving my right hand around her waist as pasta winds its way around a fork. Ciao, bella, I said, though it may not have come off quite as I like (companion later said I had a bit of chicken between my teeth). But with a flourish I made off, quite skillfully considering the chicken leg oar, in my skiff.
Turning our heads back, we both of us sighed a Venetian sigh, emotional but eloquent, and exclaimed in our best vernacular, King to all!
'O sole mio
Sta 'nfronte a te!
'O sole, 'o sole mio
Sta 'nfronte a te!
Sta 'nfronte a te!
