In real life, I’m much more private than I am in print. While hidden
behind an ink-filled page, there is no downside to divulging one’s innermost
reflections. But ask me what I ate for dessert last night and I’ll fidget about
chocolate being far too personal to put out there. My relatives think I’m a
turtle-retreat is the one thing I do fast.
Nonetheless, my isolationist attempts to curb others’ curiosity never
take me further than the nearest bridge. In this country, privacy is considered
a pathology, and when you’re related to most of your neighbors, games of ‘catch-me-if-you-can’
inevitably end in ‘can’.
Living so close to my extended family makes for free affection, great
block parties and easy borrowing. It has also led me to believe that all of
Murano’s well-meaning micromanagers populate my neighborhood. And our blood
ties are why they try to manage me.
Taxes are due, my laundry’s going grey on the line, half my shutters
won’t shut and there’s a letter from the Comune on my front doorstep. Do I know
all this, they ask-just to be sure. Of course I know it. That’s precisely the
reason I’m trying to ignore it. Why their hawk eyes can’t see that is altogether inexplicable.
But, then, there are tons of inexplicable things in Italy. My latest
question is why one’s landlady would commission a carpenter to build six new
doors for the flat although the ones in place already open and close quite
nicely. And I wonder why the carpenter feels free to use my living room as
storage space during the three weeks it takes to make those doors actually hang
on hinges. The situation worried me from day one.
‘Are you going to come in while I’m not here?’ I asked him.
‘I hope so. With all the dust you’d need a mask.’
‘I’m not big on giving out my house keys.’
‘’Fraid that mice are going to dance when the cat’s not home?’ he joked.
Something of that sort, yes. Even the most sociable of turtles have
terrible fears of dancing mice, careless workmen and aunties who are tempted to
check if your toilet roll needs changing. Thus, whenever possible, I shy away
from handing out spares.
The falegname, however, didn’t
give a fig about my hang-ups. He took my keys and claimed my flat as it were
the moon he meant to plant a flag on. Only the weekends were mine. That’s why I
was more than disgruntled when I came back from an early cappuccino run on Sunday
to find that ‘someone’ had used that same half hour to unhinge two supposedly
completed doors.
‘What kind of a criminal is this guy, anyway?’ I thought, punching the
carpenter’s number into my phone.
‘Pronto?’ he answered.
The sleep in his voice did nothing to curb the accusation in my
question, ‘Did you come into my house just now?’
‘It’s a Sunday, Signora.’ he
replied, and from his sigh, ‘signora’ may as well have been ‘stupid’.
‘Yes, I know. But there are now two detached doors lying in my hallway.’
‘Beh. I don’t know what to tell you. It wasn’t me.’
Uffa. While it’s true that I’m prone to believing myriad things that end up
being only figments of my imagination, this particular figment was scaring me
more than a little. Do Sunday morning burglars usually unhinge hallway doors
before stealing one’s expensive heirloom teacups? Luckily, before I had time to
formulate an answer, the carpenter found the culprit. Unbeknownst to either of
us, his son had stopped by my house on his way home from the discothèque-apparently
he’d needed to apply some silicon that had to dry before Monday.
Ah. Perfetto. I’m sane.
It’s the 18-year-old woodworker with my keys who’s a kook.
Someone really should tell that fellow that he’s living in a country
where one has to wait three months for an Internet connection and nearly nine
for a doctor’s appointment. If you’re a foreigner up for residency, eleven
moons must pass before they even consider granting you a Questura waiting room
seat. For God’s sake, send the kid an sms: silicon
can wait for a weekday.
Good things come from small worries, of course. That unannounced Sunday
visit shamed the falegname into
finishing the doors quicker than promised, and in no time at all, his temporary
toolshed turned back into my living room. And the spare keys became mine again.
Last week, four or
five days after the doors were done, Venice’s usually silent canals seeped onto
the streets and raged in waves around our ankles. Waves, I tell you. Nonetheless, I went to work on the mainland
that morning, certain my house would be safe. It was much too far back in the corte to really be at risk.
At mid-day, my cousin Elisabetta called. The tide had reached a record
160 centimeters. Luckily, her Sardinian friend, Simone, who had crashed on my
couch the night before, had brought her my spare keys before breakfast. ‘So,
don’t worry,’ she said, ‘Someone will go.’
Betti told me the full story later, when the water finally receded,
leaving most of the city’s citizens to go to bed early with backs that ached
from carrying buckets. Her brother had donned his knee-high galoshes and met
her on the steps of the Experimental School of Glass where she was stranded for
hours. Andrea waited ‘til the tide turned and then swept inches of water out of
my kitchen and bedroom before abandoning my broom to catch a boat to
night-school. To him, acqua alta is
inconvenience, not tragedy, and life must continue as usual. The keys he
dropped into my landlady’s slot were caught by signora Sofia, Emma’s careful
Polish maid, who quickly got her permission to drag my books to salvageable
heights and scrub the algae from the stained floors. It was probably safe to
clean, she’d thought: the high water was not supposed to return.
I arrived home that night to find the flat slightly
tattered, but dry. Since then, it’s been above-water and the furniture has not
rotted. Even the new doors stayed healthy. And, I, a pathologically private
person, am safe. There are people I love dancing on every corner-and one of
them, surely, has my spare set of keys.
