Fiction: Aqua Alta

Josh Parker
University of Paris I
Sorbonne
E-mail: Parkerjm71@hotmail.com

When we arrived at the Marco Polo airport my bank card wouldn't work in the machines, and you said you wanted to look at the colored pastas in the gift shop, so we didn't notice the weather at first. It wasn't until after we paid for our bus tickets and were standing out on the platform that you said, "Oh, it's raining," and I looked out and hesitated a long time before answering. It was dark, and sure the street was wet, but, I said, it was probably a sprinkler system.
        It was still raining on the vaporetto, and you sat inside under the bare yellow bulbs among the passengers with your face pressed against the glass. I went to the back of the boat and stood getting soaked and looking out as the Grand Canal receded behind us. We walked to the hotel in a slight drizzle. You wanted to see the Piazza San Marco, so we went back out again and stood for a few minutes in front of the cathedral. There were puddles in the square.
        "Is it true that Venice is sinking?" you said.
        "It was, I think," I said. "They've built things out in the bay to save it now. But eventually it has to go down. The world is getting hotter, ice melts, and, some day. Our grandchildren will have had grandchildren by then, though."
        We walked until we came to a kind of platform laid across the square in front of the cathedral, made of wide boards and scaffolding.
        "Isn't this what they put up when it floods, for people to walk on?" you said.
        We stepped up onto the platform and looked into the bay.
        "It can't be that," I said. "It's some kind of stand for music, or a concert or a play."
        "It doesn't look real," you said, looking out across the bay at the facade of San Giorgio Maggiore. "It looks like it's made of cardboard."
        "Like a stage set," I said.
        "It's slippery," you said a minute later as we walked, and I put out my arm. Then a rose vendor walked by us, and you put your head away and shook it, but I noticed you smiled at him at the same time.
        We walked around the side of the cathedral and found a trail through the streets, following the lit restaurants, until we had passed them all, and came to a bridge, where you stood a minute, and I almost didn't make out what you said. You said something like, "When I was small" and "Can you imagine?" and "To be standing here - all I need is a rose in my hand."
        We waited for our food in near-silence, and when it came, and we had eaten a few bites, we were both talking. Then we wanted to go to the big café on the square and sit and look around. The restaurant was closing, and we were the only customers.
        We had already walked once around the square under the arcade. Two hours before it had been damp - now there were definite rivulets running between the stones. A trio of tourists plashed through them and came toward us, wet up to their ankles. We did the same. We had drunk a bottle of wine, and didn't care.
        But the cafe was closing. Three Americans came out, tweedy and smiling, with umbrellas over their arms. We looked at the clock behind the gilded bar and read midnight. Turning back under the shadows of the arcade, the stones of the square themselves seemed to be undulating. In the center, the surface of the square wasn't even anymore. Water had gathered in the low points, and the whole shimmering plane looked like a sea rocked with still waves. The wooden platforms we had stood on hours before had become inarguably useful. We made it under the arcade, and you put your face up to mine, or maybe you were just taking a last look at the sky.
        You wanted to avoid the only open bar because it was full of French, you said, and they were singing from their tables. But the bar at the hotel was a nice enough place. We hung up our coats, and you sat by the radiator with drops of rain still on your cheeks, drinking a syrupy drink, and I had another glass of port.
        At one o'clock we decided to have a last march to the square before bed. Venice was empty and dead silent. The surface of the square was now undulating with waves. A tide rolled crosswise across the square, washing the feet of the columns. We stood and stared, thinking we were hallucinating, until it rose to wet the tips of our shoes. The city seemed blacker still for its lights.
        By the time we got back to the hotel the rain had let up a little. You fiddled with unscrewing light bulbs until the room was dim enough. When I came near you, you smelled of wet wool.
        Evidently, I had turned up the radiator too high before we went to bed, and some time in the night, I had to open the window, so we woke up early to the sound of bells. You lay on the far side of the bed, and when we reached the square after breakfast it was dry. The sky was a mottled pink, but we could see blue through the pattern of the clouds, and we knew the aqua alta was finished.
        We took the plane back, and in Paris it was raining, too. My boyfriend met us at the airport and dropped you off at your place. Neither of you said a word to each other in the front seat.
        "Is she your lover," he said. The blue light from the radio shone across the seat. Outside everything was black with rain and signs that went by.

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