Free Casanova in Bolzano by Sándor Marai Page A

anticipating a handout, or looking around with an eye to a bargain, and you imagine yourselves to be Venetians! Leave Venice alone, do you hear! You are not to lay a finger on her! What can you possibly know of her, what can you see of her, what can you hear of her? Do not dare to speak of Venice, you have nothing to say about her. Worms will be feeding on your fat belly, which is the legacy of Venetian bakeries and Venetian pots and pans, before you are ready to say anything on the subject! You will keep your mouth shut about Venice as the Jews of the Diaspora do about their God. You will keep silent if you value your life and if you ever hope to see Venice again! How could you know Venice? . . . You have seen only the paving stones, the iron feet of the casseroles, the heels of Venetian women, the thighs of Venetian servants and the indifferent sea that carried you to Venice along with all the rest: with the French and their verses, their diseases, and their fine manners; with the Germans, who wander through our squares and gaze at our statues with such anxious looks on their faces, as if it were not life that were the important thing but some lecture they sooner or later had to give; with the English, who prefer warm water to red wine and are capable of staring through their glasses for hours at one or other altarpiece, not noticing that the model for the painting is the marriageable daughter of a nearby innkeeper and that she is praying right next to them on the steps of the altar, recalling her sins, sins that are the talk of all Venice but which Venice has long since forgiven. Because Venice is not the doge or the
messer grande,
not the round bellied canons, nor the senators who, given a bag of gold, are anybody’s. Venice is not only the bell ringer in the Piazza San Marco, the doves on the white stones, the wells built by Venetian masons, by the ancestors of my mother and father, and stamped with their genius; Venice is not just the rain glinting in narrow streets or the moonlight falling on the little footbridge, nor is it just the bawds, drovers, gamblers, and fallen women whose numbers the procurators register in their musty offices: Venice is not simply what you see. Who knows Venice? . . . You have to be born there to know her. You have to taste her damp, sour, stale smell in your mother’s milk, smell the noble scent of decay which is like the breath of the dying or the memory of happy times without fear of either life or death, when the spell of the moment, the dizziness of reality, the enchanted consciousness of living here and now in Venice, filled each fiber of your body and every nook and cranny of your intellect. I bless my fate and I go down on my knees in gratitude to the destiny that decreed I should be born in Venice. I thank heaven that my first earthly breath was of the rotten wisdom that lingers in the scent of the lagoon! I was born a Venetian and that means everything is mine, that everything that makes life worth living has been given to me as a gift: the sense of freedom, the sea, art, manners . . . and, having been born there, I know that to live is to struggle, and that to struggle is to be a true, noble Venetian! Venice is happiness!” he cried, letting go of the friar’s purple neck and spreading his arms, staring about him with a pale face and a glazed expression like a priest announcing the miraculous news that the light of heaven was to be found here among us mortals. “It is a source of pride and delight to me that Venice exists, that over and above reality, which is flat and dull, there floats something whose stones are suspended between the sky and the water, that is supported not only on columns but on the souls of my forefathers. It delights me that the streets and squares where the nations of the world remove their shoes and go about on bare feet, their faces purple with devotion, were simply places where I played as a child, where I took the part of policeman or