Free The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt

in order to make way for a crystal palace. Still, the bureaucracy is an infuriating irritant.”
     
     
    “Maddening,” said Rose, “absolutely maddening.”
     
     
    “And now we have this sloganeering,” said Peter, “this Com’era, dov’era, meaning ‘As it was, where it was.’ It’s impossible to rebuild the Fenice exactly as it was, because the old structure was made of wood, which was essential for the acoustics, and the new one will have to be made of concrete. Can you imagine how a Stradivarius would sound if it were made of concrete?”
     
     
    “Hideous,” said Rose. “I mean really hideous!”
     
     
    “And what does ‘as it was’ really mean?” Peter went on. “Does it mean ‘as it was’ in 1792, when Giannantonio Selva’s original Fenice opened?
     
     
    “Or ‘as it was’ in 1808, when Selva redesigned the interior and built an imperial box for Napoleon?
     
     
    “Or ‘as it was’ in 1837, after fire destroyed the Fenice the first time and it was rebuilt by the Meduna brothers significantly changed, because the original Selva plans had been lost?
     
     
    “Or ‘as it was’ in 1854 . . . or in 1937 . . . ?”
     
     
    With each new name and date, Peter’s voice increased in urgency, in the manner of a prosecuting attorney enumerating a series of ever more serious charges. He stood in the center of the room clutching a lapel with one hand and gesticulating vigorously with the other. His Vandyke jutted out as he spoke, as if to reinforce the assertiveness of his pronouncements.
     
     
    “There’ve been at least five Fenices in two hundred years,” he said, “not counting dozens of minor alterations in between.”
     
     
    As Peter spoke, Rose went right on interjecting her own brand of commentary. “Faulty wiring,” she said. “That’s probably what it was. In Venice electricity travels through cables that lie in the muck at the bottom of the canals—worn out, threadbare, corroded. Then they snake up into old buildings, where they were never meant to go, and come right back down into the water in the form of grounding wires. So if your toaster has a short circuit, you’ve probably electrocuted your neighbor.”
     
     
    But Peter steered the main conversation. “You must keep in mind,” he said, “that Venice is a very Byzantine city. That explains a lot of things. For example: If you are a property owner, you are responsible for making certain repairs to your property. But before you make those repairs, you must get a permit, and permits are very difficult to come by. You find yourself having to bribe city officials to give you a permit so you can make repairs that those very officials would fine you for not making, or for making without a permit.”
     
     
    “Bribery is a way of life in Venice,” said Rose. “But you can’t really call it bribery. It’s accepted as a legitimate part of the economy.”
     
     
    “The Anglo-Saxon mentality simply does not exist in Venice,” said Peter. “The Venetian concept of law, for example, is certainly not Anglo-Saxon. A few years ago, two hundred forty-seven people were indicted for various crimes in the lagoon. What happened? All two hundred forty-seven were absolved. The penal code is still the one set up by Mussolini. There have been fifty or sixty governments in Italy since the Second World War, and none has been in power long enough to effect a change.”
     
     
    “There are laws that have been on the books for centuries,” said Rose. “If you added up all the taxes and fees you supposedly owe, you’d have to pay something like one hundred forty percent of your income.”
     
     
    Peter noticed that my glass was nearly empty and moved quickly to refill it. “I trust,” he said, pausing to allow the bubbles to settle, “that we’re not giving you the wrong impression—i.e., that we don’t love Venice.”
     
     
    “We adore it,” said Rose.
     
     
    “We wouldn’t live anywhere else,” said Peter.