Charlie looked out the port window of the 747. Alitalia does a flyover after leaving the airport, and looking down he could see the lagoon, the piazza, and the campanile. He tried to see the new hotel and Julietta's apartment on the left bank, but he could see neither. As the jet gained altitude, the butter yellow of the ancient stucco walls and the red tile roofs blended to pink in the afternoon sun. A moment later the pink had mixed with the blue haze of the Adriatic and a small patch of lilac was all that could be seen of Venice. It was time to read the letter.
Dear Carlo, You will pardon me if I cannot say goodbye at the airport. I am emotional about such things. It is good you are going home. Home is where you belong, dear Carlo. In your bag is my present. It is the magic doorknob made in Murano. You remember how it caught the sun in the first light of morning? How it showed pictures on the ceiling? I thought it might do the same for you in Santa Francesca. You can say you took it from your hotel. Your life is in your wallet, Carlo. io tamo, Julietta
A letter short enough to be remembered. He read it twice more, got up and found an empty wash room, and reluctantly flushed it away. "Your life is in your wallet, Carlo." She meant Davy and Louise. The pictures were almost a year old now. Louise would be eleven and Davy nine. He was going home to them, for their sake more than Joyce's.
How can two people fall out of love after two children, a good job, and a beautiful house on a hill overlooking Oakland Bay? You do it one day at a time, that's how. One forgotten thing leads to another forgotten thing and soon you find yourself with nothing to say and taking a field engineer's job for the hotel "Habitat" in Venice. The time apart might serve to strengthen the roots. That's what Julietta meant.
"You cannot give up your roots, Carlo. Listen to me -- what we have will pass. It cannot put down roots; it will turn bitter. In Italy we have a saying for what we have. "Digestivo," Carlo, "Digestivo." After the best and clearest of the wine is made, then comes Digestivo. It is from the stems, the seeds and the skins."
Julietta! If only he could have started over again with her! Olive skin and soft brown eyes, as brown as a pony's eyes. With the blond hair that so many of the women of northern Italy are blessed with. "To keep us from showing the gray," she said.
The gray hairs were there, of course; if you looked carefully you could find them. They searched for them in the mornings after the passion was spent. Then Charlie would get up and make coffee. As strong as he could make it, it was never strong enough for Julietta. Then she would kick him out. "Get off to your job ... go! You are building a hotel, no? People are waiting for you out there. Besides, I must have time for myself ... you think I have no responsibilities?"
Charlie looked out the port window again. They were passing over the Pyrenees ... Spain, then the Bay of Biscay, and finally the broad cold Atlantic. It would be the longest day, night would never come. A stop in New York and then on to San Francisco ... Santa Francesca. Would he ever forget her?
It began after his hasty emergency return when Davy turned up at the police station in Oakland after disappearing for two days. It scared the hell out of Charlie, and for a short time it brought the four of them back together again. They spent a week camping in the Muir woods, and even Joyce, who hated camping, seemed to be having a good time. When he returned to finish the job in Venice, they parted with the unspoken agreement that they would give it a go again when the job was done. That understanding was in the back of his mind when he sat in the Cafe Florian and noticed Julietta sitting alone.
She looked familiar, and he tried to imagine where he had seen her before. It was at the building site -- she would stop by in the afternoon to watch the action. So few new buildings were built in Venice that the hotel project usually drew a crowd. He must have stared at her longer than he realized, because she suddenly returned his look with an expression of annoyance.
He learned from the waiter that her name was Julietta Koslov. "Signora owns a pension on Campo San Bartolomeo -- the Left Bank, Signor." The Left Bank of Venice bore the same reputation as the Left Bank in Paris...a place for artists and artistes who live under conditions not much different from what they were in the days of Titian and Caravaggio.
"Bella Signora, eh Signor. Blond Italiano ... very rare. The lady is married to a Russian gentleman I believe. He is no longer here, back in mother Russia I believe."
Charlie let it pass. He and Joyce had patched things up, and when the job was done, he'd be going back with a better chance for making things work again. At least for the kids' sake. Still ... there was something about this Julietta. Her look of annoyance, perhaps? It contained an element of challenge, which had aroused him. The second time, her look of annoyance broke into a broad smile, and he walked her back to her pension. They stopped on the San Bartolomeo bridge to watch the gondolas. He told her about home -- showed her the pictures of Davy and Louise. He did not show her the picture of Joyce, and Julietta was worldly enough to realize that this was a part of his life he did not wish to share with her. It meant only one thing.
Venice has always been the third party in a love affair. It stands in the background, opens doors, loosens tongues and inhibitions. Its thousand-year history has seen all there is to see and heard all there is to hear. Charlie from San Francisco became Carlo from Santa Francesca. Before the week was out they were as close as two people can be.
"Where did that name come from, that Koslov? Was he your husband?" They had given up having dinner at the Florian, and Charlie was cleaning shrimp in Julietta's kitchen.
"He is my husband, Carlo. He goes to reclaim property in Leningrad now that democracy has come." She counted on her fingers. "It's been now two years. They are slow in Russia. He writes -- funny -- he writes the Inglese. I do not read or speak Russian and he has no knowledge of Italian.
"Will you go back to him?"
"My Carlo, so much a man. You live in the future; you live in the past. It is better you and I live today." For the first time she looked at him as a woman might look at a child. "Your future is in your wallet, Carlo. It will come quick enough."
"Too quick," he said to himself as he drew the curtain on the port window and looked down. Clouds. Nothing but clouds.
Julietta stood on the San Bartolomeo bridge and looked upwards at the dwindling image of the silver jet. It always passed over the city on its way west. She stared without blinking as long as she could. She knew if she blinked she would lose it and never see it again. When she could stand it no longer, she blinked, and when she opened her eyes again, it could no longer be seen.
"That's it, Carlo ... God go with you to Santa Francesca."
Early afternoon. What to do 'til dinnertime? The apartment, yes, she should check on the things to be done. She must find Gobbo the handy man -- there was the toilet in Signor Falco, the broken window at Madam Jordan, and the doorknob in her bedroom. A wooden one this time, or maybe porcelain. Something that wouldn't cast pictures on the ceiling when it was caught in the early morning sun. She had enough to forget.
Then there was confession -- "Forgive me, Father, for I have ..." "...Forgive me for living, Father, forgive me for loving, forgive me for sending him away."
What would the rest of her life be like, she wondered? To eat at Florian's once a month when the rents came due? To feed the pigeons with Signora Alioto at one end of the bench and she at the other, hoping that her husband would never return and praying that ... some day Carlo would?
He would not. His life was in his wallet.
(Copyright 1999 by Harry Buschman - No reproduction without express permission from the author)