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DRIFTING ON THE TIDES
India is obsessed.
She had me up every morning before the hotel’s doors were unlocked, tapping her foot waiting to be set free to get out into the streets. By dint of walking what felt like a thousand miles a day, wearing out our shoes, finding hundreds of little dead-end streets, somnolent little piazzas, and getting to know a Venice the hordes of tourists never see, we finally found an unfurnished apartment with altana (roof terrace) on Dorsoduro.
We started to learn the neighborhood between the Academia bridge and the Zattere, shopping in little hole-in-the-wall stores, waiting in long lines, discovering the beautiful produce, who had what and what the Italian names were. If we got discouraged by the wait and turned to leave, a stout donna would chase us down the street and bring us back, giving instructions on how to cook anything we bought, always starting with “olio!, aglio!”.
These were impressive women, possessed of much warmth and a commanding life force. India was very touched by how solicitous they were, always serving every last person in line no matter how long it took, in contrast to the French who closed their stores on time regardless who was waiting, even refusing to retrieve a sales item off a high shelf because it was too much trouble.
There were other hopelessly romantic Americans there who had fallen in love with the image…
