Free Permanence by Vincent Zandri Page A

beginning to run off his brow, down his face, and onto his beard.
    “Look for a pedestrian bridge that spans the river,” he insists.
    But I locate nothing; doctor locates nothing.
    Doctor begins walking toward a dock occupied by two empty gondolas and a gondolier. He drops the luggage.
    “Will you take us across the canal?” poses doctor to this young gondolier. “I hope you speak English.”
    The gondolier turns to doctor, smiles, and shakes his head as if to say, “Yes.” He laughs a wry laugh as doctor places our suitcases into the black, ornately sculpted gondola and steps inside, extending a helping hand for me.
    I step into the narrow boat and quickly take a seat.
    “How much?” doctor inquires to the gondolier, whose smile has grown wider.
    There is the unsteady rocking of the boat so that I hold to the sides for balance.
    “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?” I ask, but doctor ignores me.
    The gondola begins moving across the canal.
    Doctor produces a stack of lire from his pocket and holds it in the air as this gondola moves slowly forward and bounces in the wake from the canal. “How much?” he repeats.
    “Thirty,” says the gondolier in a low but firm voice. He poles the gondola over the water with one hand and looks away from us, over us, and at the dock approaching on the other side of this canal.
    Without an argument, doctor peels the money away from his already dwindling stack and hands it to the gondolier. With his free hand, the gondolier quickly deposits the money inside the pocket of his black trousers.
    But we are only halfway across the canal when doctor spots a pedestrian bridge a few dozen feet away, hidden by the abrupt comer of a stucco building facade where the canal banks sharply to the left.
    Listen: we could have walked over the canal for free.
    “My God,” doctor says. “I don’t believe it.” I can hear the laughter coming from this gondolier. But I say nothing. I merely maintain my forward focus, pretending not to notice anything. Doctor, I imagine, must be thoroughly embarrassed. Perhaps he is humiliated. But if he is anything like me, he is too exhausted to care.
    But one thing is for sure, as we bob in the Grand Canal toward an approaching stone embankment: doctor is not in a laughing mood.
    Once on the other side of the canal, doctor gathers our suitcases and we begin walking away from the gondolier, who is still laughing.
    I am dead tired from carrying this luggage around in the unusual (according to doctor) Venetian heat.
    “I don’t understand it,” doctor repeats over and over. “Venice is only so large.”
    Hopelessly lost
    We are hopelessly lost in romantic Venice.
    Doctor and I have nowhere to turn for help in this, the lovely ancient city of dark canals, brown and gray stucco buildings, and clay-tiled roofs.
    I remember the placards from my travel office—VENICE, they read, THE ADRIATIC CITY OF ROMANCE AND MYSTERY.
    We’ve crossed an endless array of pedestrian bridges and walked for miles, or so it seems, along cobbled roads and alleyways in search of our hotel, but have managed only to become more lost.
    This city certainly is a mystery.
    Now I am sitting on top of my luggage at the entrance to an open bar along a Venetian side street. Doctor has gone inside in the chance that someone in there might know of our hotel. This is a bar that does not have a front door but a barricade made from chain link that, I assume, is pulled up when open and down when closed.
    The unusual Venetian heat is exhausting; I need water.
    Hordes of tourists stream by, along with the native Venetians. You can tell the natives apart from tourists by the way they push tourists aside as they move through the crowd. The native expression in general seems angered and impatient. Tourists move at a snail’s pace. I sit in the heat of the afternoon and stare at these people. I check the time. Two-thirty, Italian time. I have not slept properly in nearly thirty hours. I have