Leaving
Venice, 2013
Long before the sun rose
to cast its golden mantle across St. Mark’s square igniting the
incredible iridescent mosaics on the facade of the cathedral and
illuminating the winged lion on top of his pilaster I couldn’t
sleep. A deep dark storm front filled with torrential rain blew in
from the Adriatic. It stifled and smothered the faint glow from the
small lights adjacent to the fog covered canals that filtered through
the watery passage where we waited, by a perfectly arched bridge
adjacent to our now almost invisible hotel. I felt as though we were
in a 1942 film noir starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall with
Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and other actors in long black trench
coats where something sinister was afoot. Our party had been awakened
at 3:15AM from fitful sleep by calls from the night clerk at the
Columbiana Hotel in Venice in order to meet a Venetian taxi boat
driver who would ferry us to the airport across the distant bay
through the fog and rain.
The first and last plane from the Venice
airport that day we could not miss! The airport seemed an eternity
away beyond an impenetrable black unknown watery distance through a
curtain of rain! The expected intense rains were certain to flood the
St. Mark’s Cathedral, the square and many of the shops surrounding
the area. The conundrum is that while you can push the flooding
waters out of the shops, churches and other areas, it runs directly
back into them. The water in Venice has no place to go but up,
becoming a tragedy of monumental proportions that will continue to be
magnified in the near future, the very near future. It is in all
probability too late all ready to be averted. Venice is doomed. The
magnificent murals in the Doge’s palace, the churches, the palazzos
and everything else in the city will soon be as lost as Atlantis.
Currently platforms have been constructed in order to be able to
traverse St. Marks Square and gain access to the cathedral during
elevated water periods like high tides and excessive rainy seasons.
We all waited in a dimly
lit room of the hotel lobby anxiously waiting for the taxi speed boat
to arrive and arrive it did, at exactly 4:00 AM. The driver loaded
the luggage into the front of boat while the six of us were closed in
the covered space behind the driver. He expertly ferried us through
the inland canals of Venice, abutted by tall Renaissance buildings
soaring skyward like two poised hands ready to clap.
It was silent as
a tomb except for the humming of the boat’s motor. We didn’t
talk. By the time we reached the Grand Canal and the more open
waters of the Venetian lagoon it was still really too dark to see
anything except the lights across the water and their glistening
reflections on the inky surface. The Italian driver pressed the
throttle and the boat exploded forward. The speed was apparent by the
lunging and skipping of the speed boat, at times almost leaving the
water’s surface sailing through the air as we flew across the murky
water propelled through the darkness. We would obviously make it on
time if we weren’t killed in some fiery crash in the bay with some
other boat also speeding through the night headed God knows where. We
did however make it on time and after dragging our luggage across a
paved walkway for a mile or so we came to the airline counter with
time to spare. Checking in at Lufthansa’s counter, I wondered just
who I was in my imaginary scenario; “Humphrey Bogart”, I hoped
but probably Sidney Greenstreet. Linda was Lauren Bacall, maybe but
just who would the others have been? Let me think……
