Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - fogged in

Fog looks good on Venice. I took a boat trip through the Grand Canal to get a better look at this peeling, blackened, decaying city. As we glided past steps covered in algae that disappear into oily waters, I tell myself I am in a city that was old in Shakespeare’s time and never have to convince myself that what I say is true. Docks are rotting and sinking as the lagoon waters rise. Or maybe it’s because the land is sinking. Either way, Venice is slowly becoming one with the sea and no one can stop it. Fatality. Destiny. I find these concepts oddly comforting.

The loss of a coastline seems such a dramatically unimaginable thing. More than the filling in of a lake, the leveling of a mountain, the loss of fields turned into cities. Maybe it’s because of our map heritage. Coastlines defined first, then interiors. The loss of a coastline is the loss of definition. There are days when I think I am losing my own coastline. I went to the Biblioteca Marciana to see Fra Mauro’s map from the 15th cenutry, the one that had south at the top, like Islamic maps. I’m pleased it’s here in Italy instead of in Portugal, despite it having been originally commissioned by the Portugese court. That was the way back then: Portugal paid, Spain explored and Italy made the maps. I must look out for Amerigo Vespucci’s birthplace when I get to Florence. Now why is it that Columbus is so famous and Vespucci is not? And A.V. was by far the more talented, acute and able of the two. Columbus found the new world, but didn’t know he had, and never did. Vespucci was the man who saw it for what it was. I hope I can find a copy of Waldseemuller’s map in Florence, too. His map of Vespucci’s voyage is one of the most intriguing and enigmatic stories in the history of cartography. Vespucci, the geographer of the New World. The first person to identify the New World of North and South America as separate from Asia. I wonder why Waldseemuller didn’t call them North and South Vespucciland. Thank goodness he didn’t. I wouldn’t have put it past him. Waldseemuller always did like to make up names; he even made up his own. Of course he tried to change his mind but by then it was too late. Everyone was using the word ‘America’ and there was no way anyone would countenace a change. Gerardus Mercator's 1538 world map sealed the deal, from then on all maps included ‘North America’ and ‘South America’. And yet Amerigo still remains viturally unknown while everyone goes on and on about Columbus, whose diaries didn’t sell nearly as well, who was a poor adminstrator and who died thinking he had successfully reached Asia.

Renaissance maps are so fascinating, disregarding reality in favour of fabulous disillusion and imagination. Lands shifted when necessary to make room for new information as it came in, however incorrect both the old and new details might be. Mapmakers had the power to decide which tiny island, bay or peninsula was important enough to merit being drawn, then mixing them up in a bizarre game of chance that went on even through the age of science when maps really were symbols of knowledge. Where known and unknown collide, science and fantasy sharing equal billing. Travel then was motivated by trade and conquest, but I’d like to think there was curiosity too. Especially by the mapmakers, who documented wonders they never saw themselves. Neither Waldseemuller, Ribero, Ortelius nor Fra Mauro went on any voyage, but such documents they produced! Living plans of the earth that shaped the growth of nations.

Later this afternoon I went into the Jewish ghetto, its buildings even more decrepit and decayed, with eroded brickwork, ragged laundry hanging from windows, and garbage everywhere. There was a bronze plaque in a little square remembering the Jewish deportation and consequent slaughter during the Second World War:

Men, Women, children march for the gas chamber

Advancing toward horror beneath the whip of the executioner

Your sad holocaust is engraved in History

And nothing shall purge your deaths from our memories

For our memories are your only grave.

I have never known war or torture or anything like the real pain and problems of those who lived here or elsewhere during times of strife. But I guess the effectiveness of a monument is the meaning it gives its viewers, each person’s own experiences subscribing to the feeling that emerges.

I thought of you there. Of your life. I had never met anyone who was an orphan, who had to leave high school early to look after a little brother, who worked at anything to earn food money. Busking for coins. Serving in restaurants and bars. Pumping gas. Working 18 hours or more every day of the week, just to survive. When I met you you’d just decided to go back to school, studying and writing essays in coffee and lunch breaks, working overtime to pay for night classes. I was so proud of you. You never wanted any help.

Remember…what was his name? The owner of the bar downtown. ‘The Crazy Fox’. Larry. Wasn’t it Larry? I think I’m losing my memory. One month Larry said, “Sorry Andrew, I can’t pay you this month. I got too much going on and not enough cash coming in.” Without giving you even a hint of this before payday! I was indignant, and tried to give you the money, even lend it to you, but you wouldn’t take it, saying your course would still be offfered the next term. You smiled and said, “Aw babe, (you always called me ‘babe’. I hate that word but for some reason I loved it that you called me ‘babe’) he’s really in a bind. I’ll help him out a bit to get him on his feet again. He’ll pay me when he can.” Of course he never did and you had to miss an entire semester because of it. You even threw his wife an impromptu birthday party because he said he couldn’t afford a present. Using his own wife to scam you! I was furious, but it never bothered you.

You deserved so much and asked for so little. I always wished I could have offered more, but you always said my love was enough to make you happy. Obviously not now. All the fighting I was willing to do for you I must do for myself to live without you. How ironic.

Shit.

What a way to feel on the last day of the year.