In venice, the night of 5 June, the wails of the water were heard as we walked, barefoot, through the waterlogged plaza of high water in June. Strange message, water doesn't grow like this “never” in these dates, of a city that did not understand for decades that was dying of success. He got sick and discovered that the disease was more profitable than the cure. That 5 June was the first Friday of reopening to other regions of a city that was created, in the 5th century, to flee from the conquests of the barbarians, and that was closed three months ago for fear of the virus and its shadows.
Ago 1500 years, with the arrival of the invaders from the north, they all left, the inhabitants of then, to dwell in a swampy lagoon covered with algae and flies. And planted trees, and on them they built houses with the idea that there, in the wetlands, the world would forget them and no one would go looking for them. His descendants did not understand that man only flees from disease and hunger, and in the war of defeat. In victory the rear is sterile and Venice, with its poets and lovers, their carnivals and their long dresses, his smell of sex, its palaces with one-eyed balconies and its marble fish, gradually became a victorious brothel. Had to go, and repeat, and repeat again, to confirm that there was no choice but to always want to return to immediately want to flee.
man only runs away from disease and hunger, and in the war of defeat
And there we were, again, wrapped in the labyrinth of the most beautiful city that man has created, reviewing the hours we had left to enjoy the privilege of seeing quiet Venice. Nothing was heard and it seemed to us when we saw our fingers drowned under the Basilica of Saint Mark, where more than walking we sailed, that yesterday stumbled over tomorrow. We feel happy, happy, and we decided to go to follow the path of defeats and the jogging of the empty and lame night. There was a centipede in the bell tower and a seagull, with white hair and a stiff head, that landed on the still timbers of a gondola.
Everything was so beautiful, so serene, that we understood that Venice returned to belong to the water and that it was imperative not to awaken it. We slept that night at The Palace 5613, next to a large terrace, a canary and a wave cement path that no one passed, neither the wind nor the rain, nor the arcades of drunkards. The dream of seeing the city without people was so strange that before, at dinner, the men broke into applauding the passage of six hands and three suitcases, Like in the old days when nothing was true in this rotten tub of money. I remember three years ago, A family Christmas from when we lived far away, in which I promised myself not to return to this place where we were not able to walk among the hordes of tourists who did not look at facades but at navels. City, suddenly, they gave it back to their people who, now, they are clueless not knowing what to do with it.
nobody was passing, neither the wind nor the rain, nor the arcades of drunkards
Why Massimo, who sells glass in Murano, in a store next to the main channel, complains about the loneliness of lifting the blind of his business and not finding anyone on the other side. "I have sold zero, zero and nine euros the last three days ", says a nice and sad man, because silence costs money to merchants. Anna, however, the owner of the house where we stayed, points out that "we are your first customers in three months", and then, as you open a blind that lights up a library, some paintings and armchairs escaped from a Tiepolo painting, whispers to us: "It was fantastic to hear the silence", and when I say it I notice that nothing is heard in his eyes.
Hamid is different. He is an architect, tells us, that makes 30 years he fell in love with Venetian masks and parked the bevel and became an artisan. He has crazy hairs, and he tells us that he is also a poet, and everything makes sense when he opens his workshop to us and we see that he dedicates himself to making crazy things and poems of cardboard paper. And then he paints them and hangs them on a wall until someone takes them away. "In 30 years we had never stopped producing masks. Now we make them, we sell the ones in stock. Why make new ones when no one is coming?”. And the question makes us restless because Hamid is sad and we are happy.. Because Hamid needs people and we want no one to come who is not us, because travelers are so selfish and we always believe that those who are left over are the others. We were in the middle of a strange carnival, sad, where the masks covered the mouths and not the eyes.
All this happened while we were going to Burano or Lido in the vaporetto. And we camouflaged ourselves as neighbors, and we asked questions, and we looked, that's what the journalist and traveler trade is all about. And on Saturday we have some wines and tapas (cicchetti) in the Cannaregio neighborhood, along with hundreds of Venetians who took to the streets and some visitors, from the surrounding villages, they remembered the city on the other side of the mainland, over the channels. That night the water grew again, and palaces and streets were flooded, as if before the hasty return of all, before the end of the truce of the people, the city would like to remember that all this belongs to the water, not men. And they don't listen and they come back, and they come back.
