I went into the cemetery in the spirit of an impromptu outing (Oscar Wilde on my side, like in that Smiths song). After strolling around the tombs of the men who forged the perpetually crumbling Mexican nation, I found a quiet corner and opened my book. It was perhaps in a moment of distraction from my reading that I raised my head and saw the inscription on the gravestone in front of me: Joaquín Ramírez (1834–1866). “The late-lamented, distinguished, but overlooked artist left this world to go to his true country.” I can’t think of a more simultaneously elegant but cruel way to predict someone’s entry into hell. Terrified, I imagined what might become of me at thirty-two, the age when poor Ramírez — whoever he was — had shuffled off this mortal coil, and what my relatives could write about me on my grave if I were to die within ten years.
At that time, I’d just returned from a long trip to Italy, where I’d been researching an improbable future book on the periods Joseph Brodsky spent in Venice. I’d visited the poet’s grave in San Michele cemetery, the hotels where he’d stayed, the cafés he’d frequented; I’d interviewed his Venetian acquaintances, doormen, waiters, stall holders, and had even found a grand-niece of Boris Pasternak, who initially promised to show me the letters that had passed between the two Russians but, in the end, could — or would — only offer me coffee and good conversation. When the trip was over and I reread my notes, I swore I’d never write anything about Venice, simply because there’s nothing more vulgar and futile than encouraging the production of even one more page about the city, perhaps the most frequently cited place in the world of books. Writing about Venice is like emptying a glass of water into the sea.
However, that day, in the San Fernando cemetery, sitting before the grave of Joaquín Ramírez, I thought I heard the voice of my conscience, as if from beyond the tomb, condemning me to the fate of all the late-lamented if I didn’t leave my last wishes in writing. So, I shall dare to write these final Venetian paragraphs.
Carlo Nordio (1904–1929)
I arrived on the island in the least poetic and most economical manner: under a blazing midday sun, slightly ill, and by bus. I crossed the bridge from the Piazzale Roma car park to the district with cheap pensions: not a single vacant room. I was beginning to feel a sharp pain in my lower abdomen. On the recommendation of a very kind Venetian receptionist — a rare combination — I ended up knocking on the door of the Convento delle Suore Canossiane. I paid a lot of euros for a room like a cell, left my suitcases under a gigantic crucifix, washed my face, and went out to give the pain the slip.
Getting lost in Venice is a cliché from which I should have been saved by my good sense of direction. But something must have gone wrong. When I finally found my way back to the convent, the clocks were striking midnight and the great wooden portal protecting the nuns from the secular outer world was already locked. There was no bell to press or ring so that I could demand of the Canossian sisters my right to a reserved, dearly bought room.
I took this defeat in good spirits. I thought I could spend the night reading Brodsky on a bench until I fell asleep — or died. Whatever malady I had, it was undoubtedly terminal, and I was destined to die on that island. What’s more, it all fit: the book I had with me was the Italian version of Brodsky’s Watermark, entitled Fondamenta degli Incurabili (Street of the Incurables). My time had come and I ought to devote those last moments to taking stock of my life and not continue to put off thinking about things that really mattered. It would be a kind of sudden, triumphal death in Venice.
Achille Beccari (1860–1893)
When people gifted with at least a little intelligence repeatedly think about the problems of identity, life, or death, sooner or later they’re likely to arrive at reasonable, even original conclusions. I’ve never been able to spend very much time mulling over such topics: I get distracted after a couple minutes, odd places in my body start to itch. And so I’ve never arrived at any truly interesting conclusion about myself.
Although it might seem paradoxical, growing up in a family of liberal-minded atheists, committed but never militant, tends to have devastating consequences. Being raised without a rigid backdrop of religious, political, or spiritual beliefs makes it hard to have a real crisis later in life. There is no way forward if your point of departure is the comfortable passivity of someone who has been a self-professed agnostic since the age of twelve, without ever having considered those important — one might say grave — matters, such as God, death, love, failure, or fear. For a precocious agnostic, the virtues offered by skepticism become terrifying hands that strangle and suffocate the already rare capacity of an individual to question things. Conversely, intelligent people who grow up thinking one thing and, on reaching a certain age, realize that everything they believed is open to doubt — stark, brutal doubt — can truly enjoy a profound crisis that, in the worst cases, leads them to know themselves a little better. As T. S. Eliot contends, the spirit of belief is impossible to separate from the demon of doubt.
Sergei Diaghilev (1872–1929)
Unfortunately for me, I never had any major crises. And I had even fewer qualms about assuming a national identity. Although we almost never had a fixed residence anywhere and, thanks to a nonno from Lombardy, my family and I have Italian nationality, I always knew that Mexico was my country. This was not through some authentic act of faith, but rather a sort of spiritual laziness. In contrast to many of my contemporaries, in my childhood I was even dressed up in the traditional Mexican china poblana costume for the Independence Day celebrations on September 15 and I put up no resistance nor displayed the least sign of rebellion (if I had a child like that, without a trace of rebellious spirit, I’d be worried). From my infancy, I accepted the whole ethno-cultural package of Mexicanness, as others accept baby food.
My only crisis lasted fifteen or twenty minutes one summer afternoon on the Periférico, Mexico City’s — formerly orbital — expressway. At the Altavista exit, there’s a small, scrubby garden in the shape of a lozenge — a piece of land that may have been left over or was perhaps simply missing when they finished mapping out the junction of the access road with the avenue leading to the San Ángel flower market. A few years earlier, for some reason I’m not aware of, my father had managed to persuade someone to donate three palm trees and a bit of grass to beautify this neglected, leftover corner, this relingo. When the restoration of the garden had been completed, my father declared — in a private act of paternal love that, had it been public, would have been a very Mexican gesture of tremendously cringeworthy nepotism — that each of the trees was to be named after one of his three daughters. Time passed and one Sunday he finally convinced us to go with him to visit the spot. When we arrived, he lined us up on the sidewalk of the access road and said: Look, girls, give me your hands (when he gets emotional, my father asks us to give him our hands). Here are the three of you — Daniela, Mariana, Valeria — heroic palm trees growing, undaunted, in this asphalt desert, this shadowy underworld of the elevated section of the Periférico.