Then they still went slowly until the great lantern that was on the right of the entrance to the Grand Canal where the engine commenced its metallic agony that produced a slight increase in speed.
Now they came down and under the Accademia between the pilings where they passed, at touching distance, a heavily loaded black, diesel boat full of cut timber, cut in chunks, to burn for firewood in the damp houses of the Sea City.
“That’s beech, isn’t it?” the Colonel asked the boatman.
“Beech and another wood that is cheaper that I do not recall, at this moment, the name of.”
“Beech is, to an open fire, as anthracite coal is to a stove. Where do they cut that beech?”
“I’m not a man of the mountains. But I think it comes from up beyond Bassano on the other side of the Grappa. I went there to the Grappa to see where my brother was buried. It was an excursion that they made from Bassano, and we went to the big ossario. But we returned by Feltre. I could see it was a fine timber country on the other side as you came down the mountains into the valley. We came down that military road, and they were hauling lots of wood.”
“In what year was your brother killed on Grappa?”
“In nineteen-eighteen. He was a patriot and inflamed by hearing d’Annunzio talk, and he volunteered before his class was called. We never knew him very well because he went so quickly.”
“How many were you in the family?”
“We were six. We lost two beyond the Isonzo, one on the Bainsizza and one on the Carso. Then we lost this brother I speak of on the Grappa and I remained.”
“I’ll get you the God-damned jeep complete with handles,” the Colonel said. “Now let’s not be morbid and look for all the places where my friends live.”
They were moving up the Grand Canal now and it was easy to see where your friends lived.
“That’s the house of the Contessa Dandolo,” the Colonel said.
He did not say, but thought, she is over eighty, and she is as gay as a girl and does not have any fear of dying. She dyes her hair red and it looks very well. She is a good companion and an admirable woman.
Her palazzo was pleasant looking, set well back from the Canal with a garden in front and a landing place of its own where many gondolas had come, in their various times, bringing hearty, cheerful, sad and disillusioned people. But most of them had been cheerful because they were going to see the Contessa Dandolo.
Now, beating up the Canal, against the cold wind off the mountains, and with the houses as clear and sharp as on a winter day, which, of course, it was, they saw the old magic of the city and its beauty. But it was conditioned, for the Colonel, by his knowing many of the people who lived in the palazzos; or if no one lived there now, knowing to what use the different places had been put.
There’s Alvarito’s mother’s house, he thought, and did not say.
She never lives there much and stays out at the country house near Treviso where they have trees. She’s tired of there not being trees in Venice. She lost a fine man and nothing really interests her now except efficiency.
But the family at one time lent the house to George Gordon, Lord Byron, and nobody sleeps now in Byron’s bed nor in the other bed, two flights below, where he used to sleep with the gondolier’s wife. They are not sacred, nor relics. They are just extra beds that were not used afterwards for various reasons, or possibly to respect Lord Byron who was well loved in this town, in spite of all the errors he committed. You have to be a tough boy in this town to be loved, the Colonel thought. They never cared anything for Robert Browning, nor Mrs. Robert Browning, nor for their dog. They weren’t Venetians no matter how well he wrote of it. And what is a tough boy, he asked himself. You use it so loosely you should be able to define it. I suppose it is a man who will make his play and then backs it up. Or just a man who backs his play. And I’m not thinking of the theatre, he thought. Lovely as the theatre can be.