imprinting of habit on body and brain. She remembered a scornful joke of Emerson's about the poor blockheads in Paris who had to do the best they could, even though they had never seen Bateman's Pond or Nine Acre Corner or Becky Stow's swamp.
Homesickness was the worst kind of provincial chauvinism. What, all you've got are a hundred magnificent churches and a thousand painted masterpieces and scores of pretty bridges and a fleet of charming gondolas on canals the color of jade? Where are your muskrats? Where's your purple loosestrife? Where's VanderHoof's Hardware Store?
It would pass. Mary knew it would pass. The delight in this extraordinary place would return. It was like being seasick for a few days on a ship.
The vaporetto was coming. It was a lumbering water-bus, turning up to the Accademia stop and crashing into the floating dock. She waited with the others for the passengers to disembark, then hurried aboard, slid open the door to the seating compartment, and found a place beside a window.
Sitting with her canvas bag between her knees, she extracted her map of the city and decided to get off at the Rialto and follow her nose, obeying her maxim to take pictures of everything.
Push the button, push the button.
In the meantime there was the whole panorama of the Grand Canal to gawk at, with its changing parade of palaces. Mary glanced back and forth between her map and the view, and held her camera up to the window, taking pictures of one palace after another—Loredan, Rezzonico, Foscari, Papadopoli. Then she transferred her attention to the lively craft on the water—the vaporetti going and coming and the working boats bringing everything necessary for life from the mainland. One carried bottles of acqua minerale gassata , another a load of plastic chairs. The men at the tillers hailed each other and raised clenched fists in greeting. Quick, push the button. Then she turned her camera lens on a floating pile driver that was smashing thick poles into the water with heavy hammer blows. A red speedboat of the Vigili del Fuoco came along, throwing up a bow wave, and then a blue one of the polizia, roaring by in the other direction.
But it was the gondolas that were the most delectable subjects, as though they had survived from ages past merely to have their pictures taken. Mary could see that they were no good as transporters of human cargo from place to place, certainly not in competition with this clumsy water-bus. You didn't hire a gondola to get somewhere. It was strictly an aesthetic experience.
They were irresistible. Mary took picture after picture through the window of the vaporetto, trying to capture the grace of the gondoliers as they stood in the stern, shifting gently from one foot to the other, rocking slightly forward and back.
She was almost too late to get off at her stop. The Rialto Bridge loomed up before she was ready. The vaporetto was already scraping the floating dock.
Mary jumped out of her seat and crowded forward, just managing to get off before the next crowd of passengers surged on board. The floating dock swiveled and rocked. Mary staggered and collided with a dignified-looking man. "O, mi dispiace, signore," she gasped, recovering her balance.
What news on the Rialto? That was from The Merchant of Venice. And it was what Henry Thoreau had called the Milldam, "Concord's Rialto," where the old men sat gossiping outside the shops, where Henry had to run the gauntlet. The word meant busy , it meant commercial , it meant this bustle of people going and coming. It meant cries of Gondole, gondole from gondoliers in straw hats, it meant tourists dragging baggage up the long ascent of the bridge, it meant places for cashing traveler's checks, it meant scarves and fanciful carnival masks for sale, and kiosks selling postcards and T-shirts and Il Gazzettino and La Gazzetta dello Sport .
There was another paper with a heavy black headline about a wife who had killed her husband and run away.
Homesickness was the worst kind of provincial chauvinism. What, all you've got are a hundred magnificent churches and a thousand painted masterpieces and scores of pretty bridges and a fleet of charming gondolas on canals the color of jade? Where are your muskrats? Where's your purple loosestrife? Where's VanderHoof's Hardware Store?
It would pass. Mary knew it would pass. The delight in this extraordinary place would return. It was like being seasick for a few days on a ship.
The vaporetto was coming. It was a lumbering water-bus, turning up to the Accademia stop and crashing into the floating dock. She waited with the others for the passengers to disembark, then hurried aboard, slid open the door to the seating compartment, and found a place beside a window.
Sitting with her canvas bag between her knees, she extracted her map of the city and decided to get off at the Rialto and follow her nose, obeying her maxim to take pictures of everything.
Push the button, push the button.
In the meantime there was the whole panorama of the Grand Canal to gawk at, with its changing parade of palaces. Mary glanced back and forth between her map and the view, and held her camera up to the window, taking pictures of one palace after another—Loredan, Rezzonico, Foscari, Papadopoli. Then she transferred her attention to the lively craft on the water—the vaporetti going and coming and the working boats bringing everything necessary for life from the mainland. One carried bottles of acqua minerale gassata , another a load of plastic chairs. The men at the tillers hailed each other and raised clenched fists in greeting. Quick, push the button. Then she turned her camera lens on a floating pile driver that was smashing thick poles into the water with heavy hammer blows. A red speedboat of the Vigili del Fuoco came along, throwing up a bow wave, and then a blue one of the polizia, roaring by in the other direction.
But it was the gondolas that were the most delectable subjects, as though they had survived from ages past merely to have their pictures taken. Mary could see that they were no good as transporters of human cargo from place to place, certainly not in competition with this clumsy water-bus. You didn't hire a gondola to get somewhere. It was strictly an aesthetic experience.
They were irresistible. Mary took picture after picture through the window of the vaporetto, trying to capture the grace of the gondoliers as they stood in the stern, shifting gently from one foot to the other, rocking slightly forward and back.
She was almost too late to get off at her stop. The Rialto Bridge loomed up before she was ready. The vaporetto was already scraping the floating dock.
Mary jumped out of her seat and crowded forward, just managing to get off before the next crowd of passengers surged on board. The floating dock swiveled and rocked. Mary staggered and collided with a dignified-looking man. "O, mi dispiace, signore," she gasped, recovering her balance.
What news on the Rialto? That was from The Merchant of Venice. And it was what Henry Thoreau had called the Milldam, "Concord's Rialto," where the old men sat gossiping outside the shops, where Henry had to run the gauntlet. The word meant busy , it meant commercial , it meant this bustle of people going and coming. It meant cries of Gondole, gondole from gondoliers in straw hats, it meant tourists dragging baggage up the long ascent of the bridge, it meant places for cashing traveler's checks, it meant scarves and fanciful carnival masks for sale, and kiosks selling postcards and T-shirts and Il Gazzettino and La Gazzetta dello Sport .
There was another paper with a heavy black headline about a wife who had killed her husband and run away.
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