Venice Fantasy has five minutes left.

Author: Zhang Yao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-03-01
Features: A book about time. Six hundred years ago, this city had forty thousand sailors, Venice experienced one hundred and twenty doges, and aged. In November, Venice, time is above, water is below. In the ancient palaces by the Grand Canal, an English poet wrote: If you open my heart, you will see an old grave inside, Italy! Venice is good at acting, good at being sentimental. In the old days, many nobles wore magnificent masks during the carnival and draped huge cloaks that no one could recognize their identities. Men dressed as women, and women disguised as men—it was the ultimate decline, the beauty of destruction, even the was astonishing. Venice doesn’t care if you come, leave, or never come at all. It’s all just a fleeting story. Venice goes about its own business. A book about time. Six hundred years ago, this city had forty thousand sailors, Venice experienced one hundred and twenty doges, and aged. In November, Venice, time is above, water is below. In the ancient palaces by the Grand Canal, an English poet wrote: If you open my heart, you will see an old grave inside, Italy! Venice is good at acting, good at being sentimental. In the old days, many nobles wore magnificent masks during the carnival and draped huge cloaks that no one could recognize their identities. Men dressed as women, and women disguised as men—it was the ultimate decline, the beauty of destruction, even the was astonishing. Venice doesn’t care if you come, leave, or never come at all. It’s all just a fleeting story. Venice goes about its own business.
November? What kind of season is it? An expert who knows a little about Venice would frown and ask that. Sorry, November Venice is nothing. No film festival on Lido Island, no carnival, and no self-important biennale either. November Venice leaves you speechless, even unsure which season it belongs to. The brilliant autumn days have passed, yet winter snows linger, and the sunset hasn’t yet taken on the deep gold of midwinter. The romance isn’t strong enough, nor is the cold. The tourism board’s slogan for “Winter in Venice” won’t even be unveiled for a few more weeks. Now is the pause between the high points of travel all year round—the absolute low point. The entire city lies low, resting, not doing anything special. November Venice is tired of summer and autumn and doesn’t want winter either. This month, Venice is a bit lazy, the sunlight is soft, and passersby’s faces are all indifferent. Only this time of year do you see a few locals out sunbathing—if there are still locals in this city. This month is also when the tides are highest, and St. Mark’s Square is most threatened, sometimes flooding ten times in a row. At this time, the number of visitors in the city is few, shops and hotels are mostly closed, so that the remaining ones can continue to charge high prices—and of course, no experts are around.
In November, the nights around the full moon bring high tides. Facing the winds from all sides, the water surges up in the Laguna Bay, cresting waves, flooding the steps, and rushing toward the city’s ancient squares and churches. Water fills the arcades below, and the coffee chairs that couldn’t be moved are left with only their backs exposed—you know the sea is raging, retaliating, wanting to return to its place. St. Mark’s Square has already been raised five or six times, yet it’s flooded more and more each year. Someone calculated that if this continues, Venice will be gone by the mid-20th century. Maybe, on some November night, Venice’s endless old buildings, old walls, and small bridges will collapse and sink silently. The city’s rooftops will slowly fall into the waves, leaving only the tall tower on the square standing alone in the bay, with the tower of San Giorgio across the way.
Places like Venice will eventually leave. At 2:30 in the afternoon, the sun’s shadow had already slanted across the top of the cathedral door, casting long shadows from the colonnades that gradually moved eastward, like water spreading across the entire square. Only the last few coffee tables against the wall remained in the warm slanting light. It had just past three yesterday, and the women’s shadows had already all gone; today they’d be even shorter. Sitting there, I already felt the chill creeping up from the stone floor beneath me, and the coffee in my cup had grown cold. On the square, besides the flocks of flying pigeons, there was no one else. They had been flying here for centuries, but only in November does it become this lonely, with only one or two children feeding them.
Facing the cathedral door on the square, a visitor is pointing between the four bronze horses to his companions below, showing them how to take his picture. He keeps changing poses, putting on and taking off his hat. Without the usual noisy crowds, the small details around all become striking, absurd. These bronze horses are just a worthless copy—the real ancient four horses are long in the museum. Because they couldn’t stand the pollution from the nearby mainland port of Mestre and the oil refinery, the blackened grime on the walls of all Venice’s palaces comes from the air there. These four bronze horses are older than Venice itself. They traveled the world, from ancient Egypt to ancient Rome, and were then shipped all the way to Constantinople. Only when a Venetian doge led Crusaders to raid the city were they brought back here as a symbol of the city’s pride. Napoleon took them away and put them on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and they only returned to this square in the 19th century.