Ruth Ann Dandrea

“I love steps, she said.  The speedy relocation they allow. 

One minute you’re down, the next you’re up, in a totally different place.” 

                                                                                  —Hanne Ostravik, The Pastor

I dragged the suitcase and carted the backpack 2,473 steps from the vaporetto stop on the Zattere Quay, up and down five short and one long flights of steps, into and out of stone campi, over and around small bridges to the walk up apartment in Dorsoduro, where I left the suitcase on the landing and dropped the backpack four flights up in the apartment’s small living room, pausing only to look out the windows in the stairwell every time the steps took a turn, then continued, up one more flight to the tiny patio on the roof.  Stood.  And looked.  Just looked.  Breathing Venetian air with Venetian birds, seeing the city, this city of water and steps.  My city now.  I turned a complete, slow circle, viewing Venice from every direction.  Fields of terra cotta rooftops in sundry geometric shapes, veins of water coursing in all directions, lines of laundry stretched like welcoming flags, wrought iron designs of fence and staircase.  And color.  Baked clay, dusky gold, persimmon and blue gray.  It was everything I needed. 

          I had come here to forget how to talk.

          I figured it would be easier in a place where the language was not my own.

          And besides—all those steps. 

          I left the roof, climbed down into my new rooms, then further down to retrieve my luggage from the entry way, steps losing, as I lugged it back up, only a bit of their allure.  Unpacked.  Stuffed some Euros in my pocket grabbed my journal and my book, and down I went again.  Down and out.  Followed the stone walkway along the canal to the closest cafe, took a seat at an outdoor table, ordered my coveted cappuccino and chocolate croissant.  Sat, soothed and sated. 

          Sat watching morning sun glitter golden on water, on the stone steps of the bridge passing over the calle, on me.  Oblivious to passersby, the other patrons.  I sat long into the morning, not reading, not writing, but thinking.  It was for just this I’d come to just this place.  I wanted to learn my own mind.  I had spent seven decades molding it to the ideas and demands of others—parents, teachers, friends, writers, television and movies.  I put myself to sleep ever since I’d been a child by imagining myself someone else.  Playing the story of her life in my mind’s theater whenever I was bored or tired or needed escape.  I spent so much time erasing whatever me there was, I woke up one morning seventy years old with no idea who this person, Olivia Santone, was, what she believed in, what mattered.  Death, of course, its imminence and inevitability, spurred concern.  I wanted to know me before I lost me. 

          Silly old woman, I thought. 

          But at least I thought. 

          I thought about Italy, and how some of the things of me, started right here.  Ancient ancestors I knew but little about.  A grandmother who stole a cigar from the tobacco factory where she worked to give to her sweetheart, who was later stopped by authorities who demanded to see if appropriate tax had been paid but seized to check the legal cigar from his pocket, not the gift that stood tucked beside it.  What luck!  Those lovers must have laughed about it afterward.  Maybe the man who would become my grandfather puffed the cigar, smoke forming hearts in the air above them, while he gazed at that woman who would become my grandmother.  Maybe the start of me started right then, in a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke and some smoldering looks. 

          But there I went, telling stories again. 

          I came for the here and now.  I couldn’t have the there and then.  It  was over, and no one who might’ve known the truth of them was alive now.  The walkway bustled with students, sketchbooks clutched, scurrying to the Accademie in a campo beyond.  I paid for breakfast, ambled back to the little apartment.  Slept some by an open window, awash in Venetian air, dreaming Venetian dreams. 

          I told myself giving up words meant giving up books. 

          I knew no one in Venice, spoke little Italian, so giving up conversation was easy.     

          But books.

          I’d been a reader since I could read, an only child carting books to the kitchen table to read during meals.  Still alone, or alone again, I read poetry during breakfast, nonfiction during lunch and novels at tea and dinner.  Thinking other people’s thoughts.  Living other people’s lives.  I was seventy years old.  I didn’t have much time, I reasoned, to live this one life of my own.  To learn who this Olivia Santone really was, what she really thought, believed and knew.  So I banned my books.  I didn’t burn them, it wasn’t that kind of banning.  I just didn’t open them. 

          But like my mother when she was quitting smoking but needed the feel of that cigarette between her fingers, I still carried with me, always, a book.  Though I did start choosing them by size, not story.  A little one about Picasso written by Gertrude Stein I’d found at a used book store was my go-to volume for traipsing around Venice.  It fitted in my small purse, weighed almost nothing, was reassurance against loneliness, boredom, worry.  Like the piece of satin from his blanket I tucked into my son’s pocket in kindergarten when he feared the mean teacher.  Just touch this when he yells, I’d urged, and you will be brave.  I can accomplish anything, I thought, with a book in my hand.  Plus the added weight was worth it to not experience that sudden desolation, that shiver of abandonment that came upon me, bookless. 

          I loved the way sunlight lay on open water, Giudecca waves plashing against the Zattere.  I made my way up steps and down steps, into and out of neighboring campi, nodding at passersby who nodded at me.  One white-haired woman in a faded housedress, sweeping her stoop, watched me walking by with purpose and called out, “Buon passeggiata.”  I smiled and waved.  It made me happy.  I spent the rest of the walk to the canalside wondering why greetings from a stranger carried such power to please. 

          I walked the mile or so along the Giudecca, passing the Chiesa dei Gesuati in favor of beginning my prayer, if it was prayer I was seeking, at the Santa Maria del Salute, that church built to thank the Virgin for rescuing Venice from the plague.  Third year into a pandemic made this appropriate, necessary even.  I knelt halfway down the aisle, admired “The Queen of Heaven Expelling the Plague,” in all her marble beauty on the altar, calm, sure, knowing, and wondering if I’d ever feel calm, sure or knowing again.  I prayed.  I tried to pray.  I said all the words before remembering I’d given them up.  So then I just sat there, on the hard wooden pew, in the cavernous cathedral, opened my mind and let go my fears, my thoughts of what should be, my ideas.  Just waited.  Without my knowing it, my feet climbed into the seat, crossed themselves underneath me.  My arms drifted down, resting on my thighs, palms up, that sign for come to me, give me, feed me.  Deep breaths in, tracing a straightening spine.  Long, slow breaths out, expelling worry, concern, confusion.  This was all.  I sat in an ancient church in an ancient city.  Breathing.  And it was enough. 

          I took the steps of the church slowly, leaving.  I felt as if I should turn, should bow, somehow, and so I did.  An older gentlemen, dressed in a worn suit, wearing shiny shoes, saw me.  My eyes found his and he nodded, reached a gnarled hand up to tip the fedora he wore.  Such gesture!  It meant a world to me.  I wanted to bow again, to him, but instead I looked up at the cool Venetian sky, a coolish shade of blue gray, spread my arms wide and spun, three times in one direction, three times in the other.  Winding up the charm. 

          I tried to follow the map.

          Maps meant less than nothing in Venice.

          I let my feet carry me in the direction of my desire.  The last state-owned lace shop in the city.  Not far from St. Mark’s.  I finally found it.  But walked away to a nearby bench to rest before wrapping myself in its snowy embrace.  Yards and yards of lace—tablecloths, bridal veils, baby dresses, tiny handkerchiefs, long mantillas for covering the heads and faces of mourners. 

          When I finally climbed the small step, walked inside, some tour or other was in progress.  Bunches of people with bags listening to the proprietress tell how each lace maker learns each of six stitches, but once she has mastered them all, whichever she tats best becomes hers.  The only stitch she will sew from then on.  So that each piece of lace we see was worked on by as many lacemakers as there were different stitches.  Strange fact.  One I’d never need, never forget.  I fingered a small cloth, counted three separate stitch patterns, held it to my face, feeling the fingers of three different lacemakers caress me. 

          I burst into tears. 

          People in the shop looked at me, looked away. 

          A particularly old woman, not with the tour, placed her withered hand on my bare arm, asked, with a tilt of her head, the concern of her deep dark eye, if I were okay.  I nodded, still blubbering, but not knowing why, and let myself be led outside, down the stone step, back to my bench.  The old woman sat with me, petting my arm, until I stopped crying, wrangled a tissue from my purse, blew my nose, smiled at her, reassuring, assuring, nodding that I was fine, that she could go. 

          She did.  Tired old woman.  A bundle of bones in a black dress.  Left.  Just like that.  I looked away and when I looked back, she was gone.  Some sort of strange angel lifted, levitated, left the winding Venetian street.  I was alone on a bench beside the last state-run lace shop in Italy holding a swath of lace I had not paid for.  I’d tried, in some fumbling way, on my way out the door, but the proprietress simply pushed the piece into my pocket, pushed me along.  No one wants a sobbing woman in her shop. 

           Sadness sparked hunger. 

          I walked in ever widening circles, up and down steps and over bridges until I found a quiet cafe.  Seated myself at a table, tucked the lace I clutched yet into my purse.  It was too late for cappuccino, too early for wine.  I ordered wine.  Some middle of the day macaroni.  Reached for my book and remembered.  I wasn’t seeking solace in story any more.  I was searching for something deeper and more real.  What? 

          I was a crazy woman at an Italian cafe drinking wine in the middle of the day.

          I didn’t know what the world meant, what I was about, what I should do next.       

          I saw the Italian adage, “Who eats alone, dies alone,” written in steam over my spaghetti.  Ran my hand through it, erasing the words.  But the idea lingered.  I felt it ooze into my bones.  Alone. 

          Other people came. 

          They came in twos and threes and fours.

          Tables filled.

          At last there were no more.  Tables, I mean.  The last group of people to enter included two people more than there were chairs at their table.  At mine, two chairs sat unused.  I thought to offer them to the two young men.  To encourage their taking away of my emptinesses.  To share my chairs. 

          But when I stood and caught their eyes, my hand, indicating the chairs, instead invited.  Did not say take away, but add.  Not go, sit. 

          So they did. 

          Smiled at me, as they slid chairs from the table, seated themselves, ordered a bottle of wine from which they refilled my glass, and waited, chatting in Italian, for their lunch.  Only, strangely, amazingly, the strangers were not speaking Italian.  It was French.  French I remembered from my many years of studying French in high school and college.  French I could speak. 

          Would I?  Should I? 

          Had I forsaken words in another language?

          I had my “Comment allez-vous, aujourd’hui?” already in my mouth, felt it rolling around there like a cool, smooth grape.  I was just about to spit it out, I looked at the two men and they looked at me.  Waiting.  Then the thought—what could my textbook French possibly add to this afternoon? 

          I swallowed the grape.  Smiled at the men as in lack of understanding, ability, but not desire.  And so they made every effort to include me, saying slowly, clearly, “pain?” when they passed their bread basket to me.  I took a slice.  Slipped it into tomato sauce and savored its softness.  “Une autre?” raising their bottle.  I nodded.  We dined, slowly, pleasantly, satiatingly.   The young men talked; the old woman listened, attentively.  Without adding words of her own, the recipe needed nothing more.  A perfect meal. 

          Afterwards, after bidding the men au revoir with a wave of my hand, after losing the cafe in the calle behind me, after ascending and descending a hundred more steps, finding my way back to the apartment in Durosduro, long spine of the city, only sestiere in Venice built on solid ground, I stood a moment, looking out, I stood several moments looking in.  I tried to feel the flow of the canal in front of my building in the flow of the blood in my body.  I tried to stand still enough to sense the turn of the earth in the rock under my feet.  To breathe slowly and deeply to maybe hear the pulse of people near me, around me, surrounding me, to live, truly live, the lives of others. 

          Darkness was falling.  As much as darkness can fall in a city. 

          I turned to go inside. 

          When I went to open the door, I saw the cat.  Smallish, grayish, just a small shadow in an evening of shadows.  Shooing her away would cost less than nothing.  She was skittish enough to want to scoot of her own accord.  I could see this in the little bristling of her fur. 

          I crouched, offering an index finger for sniffing.  When she approved it, I let the finger stroke her head, trace a caress down her soft, soft back. 

          I sat beside her on the stoop.  Saw life from a single step.  Eventually slid her onto my lap to linger and mix, my fingers in her fur, her purr agitating my palm.  Cat woman.  Woman cat.  Her belly swollen still, teats enlarged.  A break from the babies, from the demands of motherhood, from the world.  Time to sit and soothe.  To be only a shadow in someone else’s sight.  I knew.  Just how she felt. 

          So we two passed the evening.  This Venetian cat and me. 

          Contact.  Connection.  Communion. 

          If there were a god, this, I suddenly knew, was what she wanted. 

          I wasn’t to stay in Venice. 

          I knew this going in.  And maybe that is what made it possible, this solo adventure of the soul, knowing it wouldn’t, couldn’t last.  But then, nothing can, so how to translate that appreciation of the transitory to our ordinary, every day?  I’d come to Venice to surrender language in favor of thought.  To trade motion for stillness.  To figure out who I was under the skin of the world.  I probably still didn’t know. 

          It may have been the incipient farewell that forced me forward on one of the last days to do the things I’d so assiduously avoided.  It may have been an unwillingness to return-world to family and friends, who, when they asked, What did you do in Venice? would never understand my answer—I breathed and thought and looked and walked, climbing and descending steps to see another side, other sides.  So on one of my last days in the city, I trod toward St. Mark’s Square.  I’d been there, of course, traipsed through on my way to some place else.  Avoiding crowds with cameras.  But today, I lingered.  Listened to the bells.  Climbed the three hundred and twenty-three steps to the top of the Campanile and looked at the city around me.  Saw all.  All you are supposed to see, ships and islands in the lagoon, the onion domes of the basilica, more, all of the rooftops of Venice, that sea of terra cotta floating on the Adriatic Sea.  That coppery world in the blue sea mist.  It was beautiful; it was perfect; it was every tour book's destination.  St. Mark’s Square, itself a rectangle, tiny and precise, and filled, filled with people, specks of separate colored clothes, as fundamental as the flocks of pigeons who shared the square.  Wind blew hard through the balcony of the campanile.  My hair whipped across my face into my eyes.  Strands of it intermittently blinding me.  But when I could see, I could see everything, and it looked like I’d imagined it when I was a child.  One enormous soul, connected.  Each person’s piece tucked in, touched by, another, other people’s soul’s edges.  Some bits triangular, those people tightly bound to only three others; some so multi-dimensional, they seemed to touch everyone.  I used to think that when you were unhappy for no reason, it was because some pinpoint of your soul, that reached a pinpoint of someone else’s soul, someone in China maybe, or Venice, sensed that something sad had happened to that other.  The crazy-quilt of humanity below proved this childhood theory right before my tearing eyes.  Said, you knew this all along.  Coming to Venice to find what you’d mislaid. 

          I took the steps slowly down.  Out of the wind, into the sunny stone square.  Walked home through neighborhoods of people, belonging there, belonging to them.  

I spoke to all of them, called Buon Giorno to every stranger in the every street. 

          When I finally gave up giving up words, when I spoke again, sounds from my mouth came slowly.  Words followed thoughts, not the other way around.  Each one waiting until it was fully formed, like a pearl in an oyster shell.  Each one given as a gift. 

A step to somewhere else.