Free A Thousand Days in Venice by Marlena de Blasi Page B

with Fernando. He herds us out onto the terrace into the luster of a slow-ripening evening. He brings us cold wine and says,
“Guardate
. Look,” pointing with his chin at the mezzotint, the Canaletto, live before us in the rosy leavings of the sun. His everyday tableau delights him, surprises him. Paolo can never be old in my eyes.
    Across the canal sits a low-slung building, the maritime customshouse of the republic’s later days. The promontory is raised up above the lagoon on a million wooden pilings, and at the summit of the building’s stone tower twin Atlases bear up a great golden sphere, a perch for Fortuna, goddess of all fates. She is beautiful. A timid wind tries to dance with her now. And slim shards of light become her.
“L’ultima luce
. Last light,” we say to each other like a prayer. “Promise me we’ll always be together at last light,” Fernando says, needing no promise at all.
    If I could give Venice to you for a single hour, it would be this hour, and it would be in this chair that I would sit you, knowing Paolo would be close by, clucking about over your comfort, knowing that the night that comes to thieve that lush
last light
would also make off with your heartaches. That’s how it would be.
    â€œLet’s walk as far as Sant’Elena,” he says. We cut through the piazza and head toward the Ponte della Paglia, past the Ponte dei Sospiri, onto the Riva degli Schiavoni, past the Danieli and another bridge, past a bronzed Vittorio Emmanuele on horseback, and another bridge in front of the Arsenale.
    â€œHow many more bridges?” I want to know.
    â€œOnly three. Then a boat from Sant’Elena to the Lido, a kilometer on foot to the apartment and we’re there,” he says. Nothing about this life is for the fainthearted.

    After two days, Fernando goes off to the bank. I am kithless, my language is sparse and often contorted, and my groundings are only two: a kind of philosophic composure, that sense of “portable sanctuary,” and my sweet stranger. I am free to begin coloring in that
crisp, new, just unrolled space
that appears to be my life.
    Our joint plan is to confront a fundamental restoration of the apartment after the wedding. We will resurface walls and ceilings, hang new windows, completely reconstruct the bathroom and the kitchen, find furniture we love. For now, a swift ambient transformation with hard scrubbing and lots of fabric. Fernando tells me to rely on Dorina, his
donna delle pulizie
, cleaning woman.
Cleaning woman? What did she clean?
    Dorina arrives at eight-thirty on my first morning alone. Large, and long unbathed, she is a sixty-something woman who changes from her striped pinafore into another striped pinafore, which she carries in a wrinkled red shopping bag along with a pair of stacked-heel shoes, whose backs have been carved away. She moves about with a bucket of murky water, room to room with the same bucket of murky water and the same vile sponge. I ask Fernando if we might be able to find someone with more energy, but he refuses, saying Dorina has been with him for too many years. I like this loyalty to Dorina. The trick is only to keep her away from her bucket,to find something else for her to do, shopping, mending, ironing, dusting. I can finish the baptismal cleaning before she is due to return. I have thirteen days, and it’s not exactly the
earth
I’m going to scrub. I can finish it in four, perhaps five. I think back to my evening chant in Saint Louis,
Weed, scrub, and dig clear down to China
.
    Fernando helps by demonstrating the floor-polishing machine. More a prototype for an upright motor scooter, it seems to me. Though its weight is light, I can’t control its speed, and it has its way with me, jolting me about until I ask if a helmet is required to operate it. He doesn’t think I’m funny. That neither he nor Dorina has ever had occasion to use it does not diminish the