What I Did on My Summer Vacation


First of August . . . I am walking, but it is not me. It is memory walking. Memory leading my limbs through these twisting calle as if it were only yesterday. As if it weren't only two hours since I landed, two years since I last searched these stones for a pattern, a path. This is how time works--one foot in front of the other, one breath after another--passage. There is no other choice, is there? One may only advance by degrees here. You never can tell what's around the next corner, can't rely solely on your eyes nor what you've come to trust of perspective . . . Up ahead, the stalls of Rialto, empty crates stacked along the fondamenta. The smell of fish, cheeses. A shopkeeper nods at me. The one who once sold me my asiago and gorgonzola, my mascarpone. He remembers, too. Steps back for the moment, riddles his brow. Winks at the world moving on with or without us. At the streets and the tides, the carrots, the onions . . . Venice. La Serenissima. Thousand year empire. Refuge from the Huns. Shimmer floating between sea and sky. Mirage. Dream. Yet even here, in this shrine of a city, there is a date. A clock steadily ticking. Even here . . .

      This was not the first time I'd returned to Venice. In fact, hers were shores I couldn't keep from returning to, a place where I could always come to float and disappear for a while--half labyrinth, half harbor, safely buffetted from both tides and time. Adding up all the days and months, I'd passed nearly three years of my life there, though of course it's ridiculous to quantify time in Venice. To try and fix a number to a page or talk in terms of calendars. Drift along any of her murmuring canals late of an evening and you'll see what I mean. Aside from the occasional light bulb, you could be in any century.
      But this was a different trip. One of brief duration and even briefer purpose. A Venice of sudden limits and hesitation. A Venice I'd returned to in order to see an ailing friend before he died.
      Alessandro was the first Venetian I'd ever befriended. Early on, he'd taken me on little expeditions, revealing niches only a native would know--secret shortcuts and tiny candlelit shrines, dark doorways where opera divas slipped away from their adoringfans, abandoned docks where the dead were once piled high during the plagues. He was also the first friend I'd ever had who was zero positive.
      Perhaps this is why our friendship blossomed so quickly, so urgently. Or perhaps this is also why I'd delayed returning for so long. At times denial is a powerful ally. At times the eye prefers not to see what's around the corner.
      For the first two days I walked the streets and bridges half-dazed by the brightness and swelter, the mass of moving bodies. I'd never actually been in Venice during the crest of its tourist season, and the very city seemed strained under the weight of the crowds. As I boarded a vaporetto, I could literally feel the boat shudder as it shunted from the dock. I was heading out toward the beach at Lido to lie in the sun, gradually reacquainting myself with the sea-like rhythms of the city--afternoons at the beach ebbing into sunset, evening strolls along canals, wet moonlight lapping against stone.
      At least that's what I kept telling myself.
      On the third day I faced the fact that I was sleeping past midday, then gorging myself on bread and cafe latte, then wandering till I could again sleep. This wasn't reacquaintance nor ritual nor jet lag, but pure avoidance. That afternoon I finally dialed Aless's phone number.

      "Pronto?''
      "Si, si pronto. It's me . . . Marc.''
      "Ah, finalmente,'' said Aless's sister.
      "Si. Sono arrivato. Sono stato . . .'' I started to make an excuse, but she cut me off.
      "No, it's good the time. Aless returned yesterday from hospital.''
      I wondered if that was good or bad news. As far as I knew, he'd only lost most of his eyesight thus far, but that information was already weeks old.
      "Si, e a casa,'' she said. "He is home. Now he sleeps, but . . .''
      I recognized a tiny tremor in her voice. The same as in the message recently left on my phone machine across the ocean. "Things are falling apart,'' she'd said, "if you're coming, then come fast.'' I tried to formulate a decent question in my mind. Does he know I'm coming? Will he recognize me? Can he see at all? Leave bed? All around me young bodies were sunning themselves, running across the beach, eating gelati. The telephone clicked and I deposited another coin.
      "Ma dove sei?''
      "Me? Uh, here, on the street.''
      "But where do you stay?''
      "With a friend. I'm OK. I'm OK,'' I said, then with embarassment added, "I'm just here, at the Lido.''
      "Ah, Lido . . .''
      I waited for her to say more, then just blurted it out. "Look, can he see me? I mean, can I see him?''
      But she didn't respond, her mother at that moment taking the receiver away.
      "Vieni da mangiare con noi,'' she said. "Va bene? Stasera. Vieni e basta.''
      "OK,'' I said. "OK,'' and hung up.
      A meal, I thought. Una cena. Good idea. Something to divert the attention, something simple. Yes, I was making this much too complex. Enough with all these questions and preparations. A simple dinner with my friend and my friend's family, that's all.
      I went back and sat on the beach. I watched the people along the shoreline. A mother being splashed by her daughter. Long-waisted men. German tourists, Japanese. Grains of sand.
      Before the sun began to sink I walked back to the other side of the island toward the boats. Across the lagoon I could see the outline of Venice's horizon of steeples--particularly the great curving cupola of the Salute, built as a votive to the Virgin for ending the great plague of 1630. Beneath her foundation a million pilings held her fast and afloat. Wasn't Venice still a city of miracles? A survivor of catastrophes, flood, contagion? I stopped into a shop and bought a trayful of pastries to bring for dessert, selecting ones I knew Aless liked. Then I went next door and set the package on the bar. I ordered a wine, then drank a second.

      I remember one of the last times I went to visit my father before he died. Finally died, I should say, since he lay in a coma for three weeks prior. I remember the evening's weather was raw and raining, and when the commuter train finally stopped, its doors opened onto a deep grey mist. I could hardly see my hands let alone the platform, and in that moment of taking that blind step I knew he would not survive. I stood immobile on that cement platform for several minutes, the air thick, suffocating. I imagined this was how it might feel to be in a coma. How dying itself might be. Finally a rush of wind came, a glowing train speeding by in the opposite direction and off to my left a glimpsed stairwell.
      Alessandro's family lived on the top floor of an apartment building not far from Venice's bus and train stations. In its courtyard stood an old stone well, covered over centuries ago. I rang the bell and looked up. The last of the sun still shone on the fourth floor, bathing Alessandro's sister's face orange when she momentarily leaned out the window. A buzzer sounded and the outer door unlocked.
      The stairwell beyond that door possessed the same precise quality of grey as had that train platform. Its walls and its dust, thick and suffocating. It was as if all the fading dusk had been sucked toward the upper floors like the last light draining from a room just before the candle expires.
      "Marc? Marco, is that you?''
      "Yes, yes I'm coming.''
      I climbed the stairs, flight after flight, growing heavier and breathless with each step. Finally I reached the upper floor, where their apartment door stood ajar. The thought raced through my head that I could still run. I could still . . . the sound of utensils from within, whispers. I pushed open the door and stepped inside. An umbrella leaned against the wall, a pair of shoes nearby without laces. In the kitchen, bowls of minestrone sat steaming on the table beneath upturned faces.
      "We waited, but . . .''
      "Oh no, of course. I'm late. I'm . . .''
      Across the table sat Alessandro silhouetted before the still bright window. I couldn't see his face, only the outline of his head--the hair much shorter than I remembered, the ears pointed, his neck and shoulders drawn. He wasn't wearing a shirt. As I grew accustomed to the light I noticed his whole body was listing, his right arm bent at an odd angle. He was seated in a wheelchair. A yellow wheelchair.
      "Siediti. Siediti,'' said his mother, and placed a bowl before me.
      I set down my backpack and reached for a chair back. Broken bread lay on the table. A bottle of wine. Salt. I sat down and inched my chair forward. No one spoke for a full minute, then Alessandro's father pushed a spoon into his son's hand. I watched my friend blindly struggle to find the edge of his soup bowl. After several clinking attempts, he succeeded and awkwardly raised his spoon. Somehow the right side of his mouth wouldn't respond. Half the liquid ran down his cheek and splashed the tablecloth.
      Aless's sister quickly dabbed her napkin to his face, and said, "Look who came to see you, Aless?''
      "Si,'' said his father. "Il tuo amico Americano.''
      Aless tilted his head to the side like a bird trying to see something before him. I suddenly realized I hadn't gone to embrace him.

      4 Agosto. Morning after, and remembering one can again wake however begrudgingly to the vertical. To the living. To soft voices and footsteps outside the shuttered window. To notice the slice of sun between the shutters and go out and buy a handful of apricots and bread and walk along a street shaded by hanging laundry and cypress, and sit by an open window with a hot cup of coffee. And that there is even music. And yet . . .
      After one visit, gone is all my anxiety, my romanticism of a mission here. And what's left? Barely what? A household going through the motions. End time. It seems I am already too late. Oh, he's still alive, but . . . there's no will left, no friction. Beyond blindness, beyond paralysis, a kind of dementia. Doing only what he is told now. Operating purely on reflexes. To eat, to drink, to bring whatever's placed in his hand to his mouth--the sugar container, the ashtray--to not even realize that he is or isn't drinking. I sat there hardly able to move, to speak, to place nor extract myself. I fear my presence only makes things worse. The tension in that room, like that moment after dinner, after his father lit a cigarette and placed it in his fist. That silence, the whole room's focus on the lengthening, dangling ash.

      4 Agosto. Evening. Went back today. Forced myself to try again and harder. Sat alone with him in his childhood room for most of the afternoon and it seemed more bearable. The two of us just passing time, like brothers. He kept drifting in and out, but there were tiny moments of awareness. A sudden frustration that he couldn't remember something. A smile, a genuine response. A shared moment from out of our past. I think that's the hardest part. This mooring of memory. The weight of it, the sheer and sudden beauty of it compared to what now sat in the room. I somehow can't connect the two. Can't accept such decay. I sat and read to him from a book I found on the shelf--The Little Prince. His one good hand in mine, his palm sweating as he fell asleep. The tattoos on his fingers, the fan banking back and forth, the stifling heat . . .
      No, I take it back. The hardest part is coming back out into the world. To recall that there is another world going on at the same time--and that I could enter it at will. The sensation for the moment--culpevole. I don't think I can go back there again.

      I had a brother once, or almost did. He came and went before I was born, so we never actually met. Never shared any actual time together face-to-face in a room. Indeed I didn't even learn about him until I was nearly eleven, when my mother sat me down in the kitchen one evening. I remember our dirty dinner plates were still on the table. I remember carrots, too. The kind that came cubed in a can. The way they still sat in a clump at the edge of my plate, pushed aside and cold.
      He was born with a broken heart. Literally. A hole down its center, the pulmonary veins and arteries transposed and twisted on themselves--its beating irregular, choked. My mother paused before speaking. I remember that, too. The way she slid the tag from the tea bag between her teeth like a toothpick. The way her words came out, slow and deliberate. The very sparseness of those words, those details: that he was born with a full head of hair, that he slept in an oxygen tent, and that the box he was buried in was very, very small--more like the size of something you'd expect to put in the ground to grow.
      What I remember most, however, is how it all made sudden sense. This shadow that had always hovered over our home, this ever-stalking presence behind me, finally explained. It is to this that I trace the source of my full-fathomed fear of loss.

      5 Agosto. Lido. Out here floating in the Adriatic like a piece of driftwood. The sky a marble of blue and cloud veins. Is this how it will be, to die to float to release to currents. To know no difference between sea and sky?

      6 Agosto. OK, enough of this self-bemoaning. Sure you're tired, sapped, but what of him? What of his fear, his exhaustion, the amount of energy necessary just to hold up his head. Imagine what he can and can't stop thinking . . . Fine, so you'll make your little trip. You'll come and give your little handshakes and hugs, your little comforts . . . and then you'll leave. Leave them to sweep up the mess. To collect the piss pots and dishes and tears and finally, the body. Leave them the weight of having to call you with the ultimate news. That awkward silence, that utter silence. You'll pack and go back to your little life having saved nothing, changed nothing. Risked nothing but the price of plane fare . . . All these things you wanted to discuss, to bridge, your so-called closure--all too late. You comfort only yourself, and cheaply.

      There are over one hundred forty bridges in Venice--and most of them, no matter how small, with their own popular names and yarns. Amidst the maze of islands and alleyways that comprise the city they are your only hope of getting anywhere. Yet the bridges of Venice span not only space, but time as well. Touch their railings or worn steps and you are tracing ages of iron, of wood, of stone. But don't be too sure of yourself, of that which you're touching being solid, of history. For Venice above all is not about bridges but about water, and water is a dream, an illusion. The murky womb we never ever leave. It is not ashes and dust that we return to, but water. There is no land in Venice, only pilings. Only more illusions. There is nowhere to get to in Venice, at least not in any hurry. A mere walk to the market can take a decade. Venice reveals how we often move, as if in a maze. Setting out with a goal, a destination, then somehow finding we've circled back to where we began. There are no straight canals nor streets in Venice. Like rivers they meander because that is the path of least resistance. The path I'd chosen my whole life.
      I was staying at the same friend's apartment where I'd once lived for several months. Its back windows overlooked an adjoining yard belonging to the Frari, one of two major monastic churches in Venice. Each morning, I used to open the window shutters and listen to the bells calling mass and watch the church gardener rake his rows of radicchio and fennel. He had a dog, a German shepherd, who would sometimes bay for days in heat. Afternoons, a certain monk would pace the circumference of the yard, his arms clasped behind his brown robe. At dusk the gardener would stand by the open back door and stare at the next day's work.
      Standing at the window again, I remembered how one day my friend had come into the room to retrieve laundry from outside the window.
      "Good morning,'' she'd said.
      "Giorno.''
      "It is beautiful morning, no?''
      "Si, una bella giornata.''
      We traded each other's languages, part of our rental agreement.
      "How do you say il contadino?''
      "Gardener,'' I said.
      "Yes,'' she said, "you watch the gardener?''
      "Are you watching the gardener? Si, lo guardo.''
      "It is fascinating, no, how he works with one arm?''
      "Cosa?''
      "With one arm. You see? He has one arm only.''
      I looked down and noticed the way the rake handle was wedged under one shoulder, the opposite arm hanging limp at his side. I suddenly realized why he always leaned his tools against his chest to toss a ball to his dog, to wave. My friend gathered her sheets and napkins and clothespins.
      "It is better for you to close the windows, is very humid. You come take a cafe?''
      "Huh? Oh yes, yes,'' I said, but did not move.
      I heard her slippers shuffle away behind me, cupboards opening and closing in the kitchen. The gardener moved toward the far end of the yard and checked his grapevines. I noted the slight slant to his left shoulder as he walked, the frozen fingers of his prosthesis pointing to the earth. For months I had watched him. For months.
      There are all kinds of amputations and oversights in this world. All kinds of cripples. The water accepts them all without reservation, yet the solid world has little tolerance. Even Venice. At some point in the past that gardener must have been careless, inattentive. Just as Alessandro had been in that moment he shared a needle. Just as I was being careless by way of being too careful. Careful in friendships, love, you name it. Always keeping my measured distance, staving off not only loss, but life in the process.
      No doubt Venice is forgiving in her shadows, and the lame may well be sheltered within her church walls and courtyards, but we can't stay there forever. The world turns, with or without us. Outside the window, there was no longer any gardener nor dog and the rows of vegetables lay overgrown with weeds. Bridges or no bridges, it was time to move forward. Wheelchairs or no wheelchairs, my friend was lying in a bed awaiting me and each and every moment the tide was turning. My chance was now. Now.

      7 Agosto. Near midnight. Spent the evening with Alessandro and his family. Today, his birthday. Thirty-five. His mother cooked all his favorites: risi e bisi, sarde in saor, peoci--a fish fest. Aless's brother was there too, all joking and laughing, and it wasn't a nervous laughter either. No, he was choosing to be upbeat. True he isn't there day to day sustaining it, but still . . . It makes me think this is how I should be for the rest of them too, how I could be reacting. And yet . . . Every day Aless loses something; a word, a phrase, the capacity to blow his nose. And today? The chance for another birthday. Looking across the table at Aless's brother, a thought crossed my mind--that he too will soon be a brother left behind. The two of us, brothers in loss. And it occurred to me that in a way Aless had become the brother I never had. The brother I would once again never have.

      8 Agosto. Worse today. He kept falling forward in the chair. Trouble drinking, too. He'd breathe in, causing hiccups. So self-disgusted today, apologizing when wheeled back from the bathroom. I found myself losing it at the kitchen table. His sister, too. A nurse came this afternoon with shots, his arm already a pin cushion of bruises. Usually I'm OK once I get inside the apartment, but somehow just couldn't bear it today. That sad, half smile of his--the paralysis hideous, mocking. That smell of ammonia, of death lurking. I can't do this. I can't do this.

      The next day I opted for visiting another friend, an old retired stevedore--Rico delle Scimmie, or Rico of the Monkeys as he was called. He lived with over twenty of them, not to mention a hundred or so exotic birds, a few turtles, dogs, dozens of cats, and the odd broken seagull or two which he'd nurse back to health. To many, Rico himself was an odd species, but to me he was only a rare one.
      We spent most of the day repairing some of the outdoor cages and feeding the animals, which is how we usually passed our time together--sharing more work than words. Toward dusk we went indoors. I'd always thought of Rico as a grandfather, yet that day in a moment of handing me a hammer I realized he was closer to my father's age and that I, in effect, could be his son. Could follow in his footsteps--a thought that more than once had crossed my mind in the past. A life of full time hermitage and retreat from the pains and progress of man.
      Toward dusk we went indoors to feed ourselves. Meals with Rico were always simple--cooked whole potatoes or rice, handfuls of clementines and dried figs, bananas, dates--food plucked from the same crates that fed his animals. Rico ate with fingers half bent, like the monkeys themselves. A 27-inch television sat beside the table, which Rico kept constantly playing for a voice. Usually we'd sit together and watch, now and then Rico talking back to the screen, cursing at all the politicians, the commercials, the Pope. That evening though, I got a hold of the remote control and found the mute switch.
      "Rico,'' I said, "Have you ever been afraid?''
      He looked at me, swallowed some fruit, and after a moment said, "No . . . Not much. Not even during the war when they were bombing.''
      I knew his stories of the war--of Tunisia and of the Americans' mistaken bombing of Treviso nearby, the sky overhead black with planes. I also knew he had once worked side by side with Alessandro's father at the port. With Alessandro.
      "But death? What about death?''
      "Ooh, I saw many dead during the war here. The first one to have to carry them was always me.''
      "But now I mean, do you think of death?''
      "No. I'm not ready.''
      He said this matter of factly, and I had to laugh.
      "But if I ever do feel something, I say ai.''
      "Ai?''
      "Yes. Ai! And it goes away.''
      On the television, soccer players ran across a field. Some were dressed in red, some in yellow.
      "What do you think happens after our death?''
      "Ah, the big question,'' said Rico. "If you ask me, when you lose your senses you no longer exist. Heaven, hell? What the priests tell you? I don't believe it, not in the least what they say.''
      He reached for another clementine and broke its skin.
      "However, I'm convinced that if they place you in the ground there'll be worms born. Little worms, without eyes or legs. Who knows what kind of life they lead, underground the way they are. You see them, you don't see them. There are machines that can sense such things, but I don't know . . . but I am certain that if someone could follow such a worm that one day a bird would come and eat it and then shit you back down to the ground to fertilize the trees. Or else carry you back to their nest and feed their young so that one day you can fly. Either way, you join all the rest. The animals, the trees, the air, the water . . . this is another thought, more than death.''

      One night while my father lay in a coma--and as it turned out, his last night--I took photographs of him. Something about the act seemed obscene to me even as I was doing it, yet I continued; literally leaned over his bed or backed myself into the corner of the room to compose the images. Pulled back the covers on the bed. It was a roll of slide film I shot, which about a week after the funeral I received in the mail in a small, square box. I never opened it, yet it, too, sits in some old shoebox alongside my childhood photographs. In some basement.
      As a youngster, I remember how each year on the first day back to school the teacher would scratch the words "what i did on my summer vacation'' onto the blackboard, then promptly hand out construction paper. There would always be colorful pictures drawn, filled with cars and swimming pools, watermelons, flowers. Yet as we grew older, all the crayons and magic markers turned into No. 2 pencils or ballpoints, into penmanship, essays.
      Thinking about all the novels and novellas set in Venice, what I envision above all else is a theme of morbidity. Stories plagued by the macabre or decadence or, at the very least, intrigue. Certainly a sadness. The colors mostly white on white, blacks, greys. Maybe a deep red here or there. A midnight blue. Meanwhile, the painters of Venice, who must carry the same doubts and longings as writers, can't deny themselves a wider palette. Their garret studios, howsoever remote, must let in light and its prism of colors. They cannot enclose themselves nor their work within. At worst, there is chiaroscuro.
      For years, in one form or another, I have been writing about my father, or by extension, my brother. About all that went unspoken, unbridged. All that we've carried. All that remained in the dark. To some extent all writing is about the past. All writing, a shrine. Painters too record, and yet . . . I would never think of trying to paint that grey stairwell. Never. I should have been a painter.

      10 Agosto. Aless seemed a little better today. Moments of clarity. Presence. Noticed how his long-term memory seems more intact. And in effect, this is what we have to share, more past than present. As for the future? Well, less than two days till I leave. Strange, now wishing there was more time. We're still only halfway through The Little Prince.

      11 Agosto. He was sleeping when I visited this morning, so I just sat beside the bed. Started sketching his body--the lost tone, the dead right arm . . . the wheelchair and the room . . . his old schoolbooks on the shelf, wooden pull toys, boxes of medicine on the night table . . . "What is essential is invisible to the eye,'' the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
      Later in the kitchen, stood beside his mother at the window, handing her clothespins. One by one she attached the wet sheets and bedclothes then pulled on the pulley to release them to the wind. Outside shone ceramic rooftops and steeples. I wondered if she knew Alessandro wanted to be cremated and have his ashes spread into the lagoon. Out onto the water.

      That last afternoon, I took a ferry out past the Lido where the string of long littorals protecting the Venetian lagoon gradually thinned, and the shoreline became a great jetty of stone boulders buttressing three tiny fishing villages from the sea. Among these random rocks rested huge trunks of driftwood, long beached and bleached by the waves. And old wooden crates and cork buoys, strands of fishing nets, small bottles, vials, shells. Things left behind, forgotten. I fell asleep on one of those rocks and when I awoke the sun had moved and the tide receded. Hours had passed me by, the day already dimming. The near waves were the color of bruises, yet out in the distance floated a boat. Its sails a shimmer of white, appearing and disappearing among the crests and troughs. So remote. Intangible.
      Still, it struck me that despite the distance there was a bridge between the boat and my eye. I could see it and it could see me, or if not me specifically, at least the shore. For though a vessel's prow may yearn for the open waves its stern must watch the shore recede. And even if it were to drift out beyond sight, I still knew it was there just as the boat would still be connected to the shoreline, for there is no being at sea without a shore. There is no amputation then. Memory, not only a shipwreck, but a harbor to return to again and again. A shoebox. A photograph. A face frozen in time. A crippled heart waiting to beat anew. There is no loss without gain, I thought. There is no loss in truth, only gain.
      I sat on the shore's edge and watched the distant boat among the waves. Both its comings and its goings were a beautiful thing, and one no less natural than the other. No less natural than night and day. I gathered my belongings and walked toward one of the villages, where the streets were quiet and the fishing boats gently rocked in their moorings. Dusk descended and to the west the lagoon played its age-old trick of light. I'd seen it many times before, the water's surface glowing both green and rust, a phosphorescent dance of cellophane and eternity. And as I stood there, a memory washed up to shore, a day Alessandro had once taken me out rowing among the canals. He'd taught me some of the varied oar strokes and where and when to shift my weight, when and where to stop for vino. Taught me how within a maze I needn't feel lost so much as liquid--flowing forth, seeking my own level, trusting the tides to lead me where they will.
      Soon the evening sky offered up its constellations, its black holes, its worm holes. Night fell and in the far distance tiny lights were turning on one by one all over Venice. The jewel of the Adriatic igniting her palaces and bell towers, her stone white bridges. Her Bridge of Sighs. And standing there, I swear I felt something rise up out of my chest. Something that broke free and let go. Unconsciously, I took a step toward the edge of the water.

      The following morning I packed my bags for the train station and spent my last half hour in Venice at Alessandro's bedside. He was more himself, more conscious than at any other time during my visit. This was good, yet had its disadvantages as well. He was more aware of his condition and its weight. Aware that I was there and that I'd be leaving.
      He asked me to help place him in his wheelchair so I could see him sitting upright. Carefully I slid him off the bed, yet stepping back noticed he was wincing.
      "What's wrong?'' I asked.
      He struggled to swallow, clutched at the arm of the wheelchair. I could see his shoulders quivering against the pain. When the shaking finally subsided, he raised his head and whispered, "I'm so afraid.''
      I wanted to scream. Scream so fucking loud that time itself would stop. I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. I wanted to hold him in my arms and somehow explain everything I'd felt out on the rocky shore. About the sailboat and the tides and the dusk and the stars. I wanted to make my words all add up to that glowing moment at the water's edge, but when the words came all I managed was, "Yes. I know, Aless. I am, too.''
      I knelt down before the wheelchair and took his hands in mine, first the good one and then the bad. On his fingers were little tattoos--a small round dot in the crevice between one thumb and forefinger, two on a pinkie, six in all. I knew each mark represented a specific old friend, each of whom shared a similar mark on their own hands. For the last year or so I'd been wanting to ask him if we could do the same, but was always too afraid. I rubbed the little marks on his fingers.
      "You know, I've been thinking about getting a tattoo,'' I said. "For us.''
      Aless looked toward me, though his eyes could not see.
      "Here,'' I said, and pressed three of his fingers against the place on my wrist where I'd mapped out the space. "Three dots right here. What do you think?''
      Alessandro's fingers slid from my wrist to my palm and pressed of their own will.
      "You don't need to do this,'' he said, "mark yourself for me.''
      "No, but I want to.''
      I wished I could explain my reasons. How they weren't to make a shrine to the past anymore, but to celebrate it. Celebrate what was still in that room between us.
      "I want to,'' I repeated, "I will, when I get back to the States.''
      Aless pulled back his good hand and lay it in his lap.
      "You have to go now, no?'' he said.
      Outside the window several pigeons reeled in flight. I heard others steadily cooing from the near rooftops.
      "Yes. The train's leaving soon.''
      In my mind I could see it already waiting at the station. Could see it pulling away, like that tiny white boat out in the waves. I looked at Alessandro, a mere foot or two between us. I lunged forward and embraced him.
      I could feel the breathing in his chest. His words, pushing out.
      "Thank you,'' he said, "for coming.''
      Thank me, I thought, thank me? Then I started to shake.
      "You have to go now,'' he said. "Please, go.''
      I pulled away and reached for my bags.
      "Why three,'' he asked. "Three dots?''
      "One for you. One for me. And one for what is and will always be between us.''
      "Oh,'' he said, then a moment later smiled and added, "Be careful of the needle.''

      Joseph Brodsky has written that to leave Venice always feels as if you are leaving it forever: "For leaving is a banishment of the eye . . . And to the eye, for purely optical reasons, departure is not the body leaving the city but the city abandoning the pupil . . . A tear is the anticipation of the eye's future.''
      I stumbled down that grey staircase and out into the twisting calle. Stumbled toward the train station.