Free The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt Page A

“Apart from the obvious attractions, we live in Venice because it has the cleanest air of any city in the world. Not only does Venice have no cars—and you’d be surprised how many people don’t realize that—there’s no burning of fossil fuels at all, because Venice outlawed the use of heating oil in 1973 and switched to methane gas, which burns clean.”
     
     
    I could not let that remark pass without comment.
     
     
    “But what about the industrial smokestacks belching smoke just across the lagoon in Marghera and Mestre?”
     
     
    “What about them?” said Peter, his smile broadening in anticipation of scoring a point. “The prevailing winds blow inland,” he said, “just as they do in all port cities. So the pollution you see coming out of those smokestacks on the mainland blows away from us, not toward us.”
     
     
     
 
IT MADE SENSE TO ME that people who lived in Venice would talk a lot about Venice, the business of Venice being, after all, Venice itself. But I doubted that many Venetians were as vociferous on the subject as the Lauritzens were. Peter held forth in a manner more in the nature of oratory than conversation—informed, didactic, fiery, confrontational—his discourse punctuated by the occasional “whilst” or “shedule.” Rose, speaking in verbal italics, evoked a Venice of wild extremes—horrific and blissful, ghastly and exquisite, hideous and enchanting. Whether they realized it or not, both Lauritzens presented themselves as beleaguered, like the city itself—but gamely, almost proudly beleaguered, in love with Venice despite its shortcomings. In their eagerness to explain Venice to me, they occasionally overlapped each other, both speaking at the same time without seeming to notice. At such moments, I found myself looking from one to the other, my head nodding and swiveling, as I tried to avoid making the social gaffe of listening to one and ignoring the other.
     
     
    Peter, for example, was saying, “Venice is not for everybody. To live in Venice, you must, first of all, like living on an island, and you must like living near water. . . .” And Rose, at the same time, was saying, “It’s exactly like an Irish village where everybody knows everybody else. . . .” Oblivious, Peter went right on, “And to live in Venice, you must be able to do without much greenery, and you must not mind walking a great deal.” I heard this over Rose’s, “You’re always running into people you know, because the only way to get around in Venice, whether you’re a countess or a shopkeeper, is to walk or take the vaporetto. You can’t move about unseen in a private car, and in that respect Venice is terribly democratic.”
     
     
    Keeping up with the Lauritzens at these moments was like listening to stereo with each of the speakers playing a different tune. In one ear, I heard Peter say, “Now, those are very unusual circumstances, and a lot of people who say they love Venice eventually discover they do not.” With the other ear, if I understood correctly, I heard Rose saying, “. . . When I’ve come back from having gone out shopping, Peter doesn’t ask me what I bought. He asks who I saw.”
     
     
    “The key word is ‘claustrophobic,’” said Peter. “I listen for it. Because whenever I hear ‘claustrophobic’ mentioned in connection with Venice, I know that the person who said it would never be happy living here.”
     
     
    “Funnily enough, I like it that Venice is a village,” said Rose simultaneously.
     
     
    The Lauritzens displayed the fervor of converts. Venice had been their chosen home. They had not simply been born in it and stayed. Their spirited defense of the city was, it seemed to me, partly a defense of their decision to live there, in self-imposed exile.
     
     
    Peter had been born in Oak Park, Illinois. His arrival in Venice had been by way of the Lawrenceville School, Princeton, and a Fulbright Scholarship to Florence, where he studied the