As I have a theory that you can eat almost anywhere in France or Italy and the food will be fine, that first lunch-time we picked a place at random. (Never try this in London.)
Opening a door into an almost deserted small place near the Rialto, we came across two old, frail women taking their morning cappuccino. Immediately they began to talk to us, telling us through gestures that our son Kier was both a genius and beautiful. Later, we learned what an impressive and relaxed café society there was in Venice: that local people, particularly older ones, gathered with their shopping in cafés in the morning, to gossip.
We had been anxious about whether our son would be sufficiently distracted during these few days in a drowning museum of a city. Fortunately he soon began to hop about happily in his Crocs. Since Venice combines shopping with water and boats, and in St Mark’s Square the pigeons will still sit on a child’s head, he adored it; and everyone in Venice seemed to adore him. Strangers on the water-buses — the vaporettos — and in the streets and cafés touched him and stroked his head as soon as they saw him. They wanted to give him stuff: roses, sweets, paper planes, pens, kisses.
What better company in the world is there than that of a ten-year-old boy who is curious and lively, retaining the charm and affection of a child without the sullen aggression of a teenager? He and I went to Harry’s Bar for more conversation, where they took Kier’s coat and brought him chips and ice-cream immediately. The bar was still chic and busy, with classic food, and it remains famous for the writers who like it. But these days a writer had better be accompanied by his publisher if he wants to afford it.
Years ago, a friend with incomplete English appeared to believe that there existed a useful book called Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venice. But the women from Venice mostly appeared to be old women, widows probably, in fur coats, often with little dogs. There were babies too, but otherwise the city seemed bereft of young people or teenagers. While it can be a mercy to be free of the young and their exultation and hope, it was strange too. But without them what future could there be for a city which made a good living out of eternal decline? However, graffiti provided evidence that there were kids around. It wasn’t until later that night that I saw them.
My friend, the painter Serena Nono, lives on the mainly residential Venetian island of Giudecca in the apartment her father, the composer, Luigi Nono wrote in. If St Mark’s is crowded and claustrophobic, as it is for most of the year, it is easy to take a boat Giudecca, just ten minutes away. Serena intended to show us a different side of Venice. She had said, pointing at the ground and then at the buildings, ‘Never forget that everything is crooked in Venice; nothing is straight.’ As Muriel Spark wrote, ‘Venice is a city not to inspire thought but sensations.’
That night, at her urging, Kier and I took two vaporettos from the hotel to the Giudecca canal. It hadn’t taken us long to get into the vaporetto thing. You can buy a limitless use twenty-four-hour ticket, and the boats are regular, run all night and are fun to ride on — you are on a bus on the water and the view is of ancient floating palaces.
But tonight it was dark, cold and desolate; the city tunnels were rancid and dripping, and Kier and I began to wonder if there really could be anything going on here particularly when the only person around was a desperate Pakistani who jumped out of a doorway and sold us a laser pen and glasses which lit up. Still, at least I could see my son. And anyway, although Venice gives off a sense of menace and death — and one of the best things to do there is get lost — it is not violent.
At last, near the Zattere vaporetto stop, we came to a freezing toiletless squatted warehouse on the edge of the water. Venetians in overcoats were drinking mulled wine, smoking, feeding their dogs and playing table football. When a tight band began to do Elvis covers people slowly began to get up to do the twist, elegantly, while 1950s black and white movies were projected on a screen behind. My son in his woolly hat and gloves, wandered to the front and stood and stared. I guess it was probably the first time he’d heard ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ and ‘Hound Dog’, and what better circumstances could there be?
Later, Serena’s work was projected on to the screen, and a Venetian ska band started up. It had been so long since I’d heard a Venetian ska band complete with a Rasta saxophonist and trombonist as good as this, that I started to dance on the concrete floor, though without moving my feet. Kier was still at the front of the crowd, which was jumping now, and a teenage girl took his hand and twirled him around. Just before midnight I had to drag him out of there; as I watched him watching those devil musicians I feared he’d been seduced for life.
Giudecca, once home to Michelangelo and Alfred de Musset, and now to Elton John, was beautiful in the day too. Serena took us to see her studio in a converted brewery, where a month before she had found her paintings floating. Now they were dry and stacked neatly against the walls.
Venice is expensive as everyone knows, particularly as all goods have to be transported by boat. But you can get by on a hot chocolate with whipped cream if you walk past the bleak woman’s prison to the almost deserted Hilton Hotel, where you can sit on the roof while contemplating the best view in Venice. From here you can confirm Jan Morris’s remarks in her magisterial Venice, published in 1960, ‘This is not a large city. You can see it all easily, from one end to the other. It is about two miles long by one mile deep, and you can walk from end to end of it, from the slaughter-house in the north-west to the Public Gardens in the south-east, in an hour and a half — less, if you don’t mind shoving.’
It was important for us to get to know where the best pizza was. Fortunately ten minutes walk from our hotel was the Campo Santa Margherita, in Dorsoduro, one of Venice’s six sestieri, or districts. This square or piazza is lined by trattorias and shaded by trees; in the morning there’s a fish market.
In a bar we ran into an actor, a man with the dignity of the great Fernando Rey. Though he didn’t speak English nor I Italian, he invited Serena, and us, to his family house the next night, New Year’s Eve.
We pondered this for some time. It seemed a little weird going to a generous stranger’s house on the last night of the year. But what else would we do at midnight in a strange city? There was a dinner in the hotel, but it seemed a little impersonal. So we bought Prosecco and turned up at ‘Rey’s’.
It was a lovely, welcoming fish dinner; there were other children there, and we all sat around a small table. For entertainment we felt the bumps on the top of each other’s heads. The actor and I couldn’t speak to one another so he pulled out his albums from the 60s, put on a scratchy record by the Rolling Stones and we two strangers danced together. Later we found Kier outside, standing on the edge of the canal with sparklers in his fist, enraptured by a long-haired Italian girl.
As I got drunker, Serena Nono’s Berkeley-born mother Nuria, whose father was the composer Schoenberg, told me stories of her childhood: of Thomas Mann making the children stay outside in the garden when her father went for supper, and the long wait for Brecht to visit — she was at school with his daughter Barbara.
Then, as though this had been staged for us, around 11.30 it started to snow. At midnight the fireworks in St Mark’s Square began, and we had a perfect view from the other side of the city, the rockets firing into the snow, which was heavy now. Couples in the house began to dance and embrace — I don’t mind hugging strangers if they’re Italian. It was like a scene from Fanny and Alexander.
By now drenched and with white heads, we shoved into the loaded vaporetto, all the bells of the city ringing out at once. At the hotel bar I saw a waiter I knew hurrying towards me carrying a tray on which was a two-decker chocolate cake and a huge glass of vodka. After turning fifty, pleasures are harder to come by than at an earlier age; but they are more appreciated. I like to believe I woke up in the morning, still holding that glass of vodka.