Across The Bridge Of Sighs More Venetian Stories

RESTORATION Winter settles down in Venice like it means to make friends and stay forever, feeding the sea with rain, gusting attention on listless canals, and wrapping all wetness in a companionable mist. Even in April when everyone is wishing it would take its leave Winter lingers on like a gloomy guest with nowhere to go until all of a sudden brash, insouciant Spring blows in and sends it packing, leaving a trail of puddles in its wake. The campos still shine under scattered pools, when the first harbingers of renewal ring out over rooftops and echo down the canals--tock-tock! bam-bam! pink-pink! and the piercing ffffffwwwwinnng of a saw cutting through marble. These are the sounds of Spring in Venice, when workmen swarm over palace after palace weaving scaffolds like webs, up and up, until it seems that half of Venice is lost behind dust sheets and the only things left to look at are signboards describing building permits. Architetto Fallon stood in the campo behind Palazzo Patristi watching one of his men in a hard hat swing onto the scaffolding. He could hear him climbing behind the dust sheets. A signboard slipped out through a gap and wiggled into position. The man looked out from beside it. "How's this, Architetto?" The workman held the sign in place. "I think it's a little too far up, Beppe; I can hardly read it. Let's try it down one level where it's easier to see." The sign retreated into the dust sheeting and appeared a minute later ten feet below. Beppe peeked out beside it. "Okay?" "That's perfect, Beppe. As soon as you get it secured, come down. I want to take everyone over to the bar to celebrate their fast work on the scaffolding." As he waited in the campo, Vittorio Fallon looked at the signboard. He had decided against putting up the standard sheet of ready-printed enameled tin with the blanks filled in by hand with a felt-tipped pen. Instead, he had gone to some expense to make it match in elegance the amplitude of the project as well as the dignity and symbolic significance that Venetians attributed to the building. This house and its family were so woven into the history and pride of Venice that the restoration had even been reported in the newspapers and mooted as the largest private restoration in the city for many years. The works, the signboard announced, had been commissioned by the owner, Dottore Barone Edmondo Patristi, whom all Venetians knew as the scion of one of the founding families of Venice and whose house was unique in being still owned and occupied by direct descendents of the family who built it. The sign also said that the works were being directed by Architetto Vittorio Fallon, the most sought after of the up-and-coming Venetian architects. For the man or woman in the street, this sign was a nice document of modern Venice: the old and the new working in harmony for the betterment of the city. For the man or woman about town, however, it touched on something far more interesting: the Baronessa Patristi, the heiress who with her husband the Barone had launched the project four years earlier, and the new Signora Fallon, who with her husband the architect was overseeing the project, were one and the same person. Venetian society had gradually come round to viewing this development in the Patristi story with a single mind and two points of view. Everyone agreed that Scandal and Rumor should let this woman pass unscathed, while at the same time maintaining that Edmondo, with all his faults, was a charming instance of his class. She was in the right, but he was in a category of his own. Of course even Venetians had to admit that Edmondo's inveterate philandering gave ample cause for a wife to decamp, and they were impatient with Sofi because she had let him go on with his adventures for so lRylands, Jane Turner is the author of 'Across The Bridge Of Sighs More Venetian Stories', published 2005 under ISBN 9780375423413 and ISBN 0375423419.