The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Chapter 82

Train, Nîmes — Venice. At Marseilles I bought an armful of local newspapers and a new mobile phone, and spent the rest of the journey to Nice scanning headlines and poring over the internet. I had supper in a restaurant over a little river that ran down to the sea, where once I’d eaten with a beautiful timber merchant from Turin to the sound of little green frogs hiccupping beneath our feet, whose car I stole after he refused to pay the bill.

The train from Ventimiglia to Genoa hugged the sea to the right, the Alps to the left. Hard to work, surrounded by such sights, hard to stay focused when cliffs plunged into cobalt-blue water and towns crawled up towards snowy peaks. By the time the train turned towards the dull industrial flatlands of Milan, I was exhausted from gaping, and at Milan station, a monument to Fascist architecture and imperial ambition, all huge ceilings and marble floors, I broke my journey to have a triangle of pizza in a greasy piece of paper.

“Fold it!” exclaimed the man who served me my dish. “Don’t peck at it like a little bird, you wrap it over and eat it properly, like a woman!”

I stared at this indignant chef, tomato sauce down his apron, and for a moment tottered between a tourist’s enthusiasm for local ways, and a traveller’s resentment of intrusion. He had a silly watch which he wore beneath his blue latex gloves, and had left his mobile phone balanced unwisely by the till. I didn’t need either, but the temptation to inconvenience him, the satisfaction of knowing he was robbed and I was gone, bristled against my brain but no

No.

Not today.

The lagoon was dark and disturbed, when I crossed it. The lights of Mestre behind, chimneys and cranes, empty warehouses and slumbering ships. Ahead, Venezia, a tourist paradise, spires and towers, canals and over-priced dinners. Wonder of the world, step from the station and immediately behold the Grand Canal. Walk through a city where cars never go, stones worn smooth by hundreds of years of passing pedestrians, smell the sometimes less than fragrant aroma of the lagoon, swat the mosquitoes, stand in San Marco’s square and feel the ghosts of the traders and the whores, soldiers and assassins, the shadows of doges dressed all in gold, and lesser men who whispered in corners. Pigeons fly away from a child who delights in chasing them; a group of tourists photograph themselves with a camera held on a telescopic stick, the doge’s palace behind, hawkers selling Manchester United and Barcelona T-shirts crossing in and out of the frame. The gondoliers don’t bother to market their services; anyone foolish enough to pay so much for a slow ride through the canals of Venice (opera singer optional extra) will come to them of their own accord. Gondoliers have survived plague and fire, conquest and decay; they’ll survive tourism too.

I tried a couple of hotels, and despite the tourists, found a room easily enough. The woman behind the counter looked askance at the cash I offered, but money is money, winter coming on, so all right, a small room up a tight stair, a floor that moans, a roof that slants, duck onto a little metal balcony that creaks alarmingly beneath your feet. I asked her directions to the nearest supermarket, and she looked sideways at me, despairing of this lone woman who paid cash and didn’t indulge in the over-priced, under-interesting Venetian dining experience.

“Try Cannaregio,” she tutted, and managed to stop herself before adding, no eating in your room.

In Cannaregio I found a supermarket, automatic door and bright green logos grudgingly wedged into a sixteenth-century guildsman’s house. I picked up fruit, a couple of pairs of socks, a bar of chocolate, a loaf of bread, and as I went to pay, discovered that my wallet was empty, only a few coins left, and looked at the woman behind the till and said apologetically, “Sorry,” and grabbed my goods and ran.

“Police, police!” she screamed, but no one followed and after a few streets I slowed to a walking pace, and wandered on quietly to the foot of a church — saint someone, raised up by someone in honour of something, in Venice these things began to blur — to eat my purloined goods.

I needed money, but the only casino in town was a poor venue for card counting. Ten euros to enter, low stakes, an atmosphere that suggested you should be grateful to be here, the oldest casino in Europe — perhaps.

I tried picking a couple of pockets in the crowded, twisting streets around San Marco, but had only pulled two wallets before a rival team, a boy and a girl, barely teenagers, made a bad pass in a nearby alley and someone called out thief, thief, thief, and the police came running, damn amateurs getting in my way.

I crossed the waters to the Lido instead, newer, cars and yachts, resort hotels, beaches in summer, a place for the wealthy who have surfeited on too much Renaissance art, too many Titians, bodies bursting with muscles, sheets of white and blue slung across breasts and penises, strategically blown there by a modest breeze.

I robbed the first hotel I came to, a grand monolith of white walls and rectangular windows. Stole a master key from a boy in the foyer, stole cash and a few clothes from the luxury suites on the top floor.

Worthy: to do the most righteous thing available to you, under a difficult set of circumstances.

I considered whether these words rang true, as I returned across the waters to Venice.