OPEN-AIR MARKETS
S
SOMETIMES, in early autumn, on the lagoon behind the Redentore, you may overtake a curious craft, half barge, half gondola, rowed by a stooping figure in cowl and frock.
Against the glow of the fading twilight this quaint figure, standing in the stern of his flower-laden boat, swaying to the rhythm of his oar, will recall so vividly the time when that other
“Dumb old servitor ... went upward with the flood,”
that you cannot help straining your eyes in a vain search for the fair face of the lily maid of Astolat hidden among the blossoms. Upon looking closer you discover that it is only the gardener of the convent grounds, on his way to the market above the Rialto.
PONTE PAGLIA ... NEXT THE BRIDGE OF SIGHSPONTE PAGLIA ... NEXT THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS
PONTE PAGLIA ... NEXT THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS
PONTE PAGLIA ... NEXT THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS
If you continue on, crossing the Giudecca, or if you happen to be coming from Murano or the Lido, you will pass dozens of other boats, loaded to the water’s edge with baskets upon baskets of peaches, melons, and figs, or great heaps of green vegetables, dashed here and there with piles of blood-redtomatoes. All these boats are pointing their bows towards the Ponte Paglia, the bridge on the Riva between the Doges’ Palace and the prison, the one next the Bridge of Sighs. Here, in the afternoons preceding market days, they unship their masts or rearrange their cargoes, taking off the top baskets if too high to clear the arch. Ponte Paglia is the best point of entrance from the Grand Canal, because it is the beginning of that short cut, through a series of smaller canals, to the fruit market above the Rialto bridge. The market opens at daybreak.
Many of these boats come from Malamocco, on the south, a small island this side of Chioggia, and from beyond the island known as the Madonna of the Seaweed, named after a curious figure sheltered by a copper umbrella. Many of them come from Torcello, that most ancient of the Venetian settlements, and from the fruit-raising country back of it, for all Torcello is one great orchard, with every landing-wharf piled full of its products. Here you can taste a fig so delicately ripe that it fairly melts in your mouth, and so sensitive that it withers and turns black almost with the handling. Here are rose-pink peaches the size of small melons, and golden melons the size of peaches. Here are pomegranatesthat burst open from very lusciousness, and white grapes that hang in masses, and melons and plums in heaps, and all sorts of queer little round things that you never taste but once, and never want to taste again.
These fruit gardens and orchards in the suburbs of Venice express the very waste and wantonness of the climate. There is no order in setting out the fruit, no plan in growing, no system in gathering. The trees thrive wherever they happen to have taken root—here a peach, here a pear, there a pomegranate. The vines climb the trunks and limbs, or swing off to tottering poles and crumbling walls. The watermelons lie flat on their backs in the blazing sun, flaunting their big leaves in your face, their tangled creepers in everybody’s way and under everybody’s feet. The peaches cling in matted clusters, and the figs and plums weigh down the drooping branches.
If you happen to have aliraabout you, and own besides a bushel basket, you can exchange the coin for that measure of peaches. Twolirewill load your gondola half full of melons; threelirewill pack it with grapes; fourlire—well, you must get a larger boat.
When the boats are loaded at the orchards and poled through the grass-lined canals,reaching the open water of the lagoon, escaping the swarms of naked boys begging backsheesh of fruit from their cargoes, you will notice that each craft stops at a square box, covered by an awning and decorated with a flag, anchored out in the channel, or moored to a cluster of spiles. This is the Dogana of the lagoon, and every basket, crate, and box must be inspected and counted by the official in the flat cap with the tarnished gilt band, who commands this box of a boat, for each individual peach, plum, and pear must help pay its share of the public debt.
This floating custom-house is one of many beads, strung at intervals a mile apart, completely encircling Venice. It is safe to say that nothing that crows, bleats, or clucks, nothing that feeds, clothes, or is eaten, ever breaks through this charmed circle without leaving some portion of its value behind. This creditor takes its pound of flesh the moment it is due, and has never been known to wait.
Where the deep-water channels are shifting, and there is a possibility of some more knowing and perhaps less honest market craft slipping past in the night, a government deputy silently steals over the shallow lagoon in a rowboat, sleeping in his blanket, his hand on his musket, and rousing at the faintestsound of rowlock or sail. Almost hourly one of these night-hawks overhauls other strollers of the lagoon in the by-passages outside the city limits—some smuggler, with cargo carefully covered, or perhaps a pair of lovers in a gondola with too closely drawntenda. There is no warning sound to the unwary; only the gurgle of a slowly-moving oar, then the muzzle of a breech-loader thrust in one’s eyes, behind which frowns an ugly, determined face, peering from out the folds of a heavy boat-cloak. It is the deputy’s way of asking for smuggled cigarettes, but it is so convincing a way as to admit of no discussion. Ever afterward the unfortunate victim, if he be of honest intent, cannot only detect a police-boat from a fishing yawl, but remembers also to keep a light burning in his lamp-socket forward, as evidence of his honesty.
When the cargoes of the market boats are inspected, the duties paid, and the passage made under Ponte Paglia, or through the many nameless canals if the approach is made from the Campo Santo side of the city, the boats swarm up to the fruit market above the Rialto, rounding up one after another, and discharging their contents like trucks at a station, the men piling the baskets in great mounds on the broad stone quay.
THE FRUIT MARKET ABOVE THE RIALTOTHE FRUIT MARKET ABOVE THE RIALTO
THE FRUIT MARKET ABOVE THE RIALTO
THE FRUIT MARKET ABOVE THE RIALTO
After the inhabitants have pounced upon these heaps and mounds and pyramids of baskets and crates, and have carried them away, the market is swept and scoured as clean as a china plate, not even a peach-pit being left to tell the tale of the morning. Then this greater market shrinks into the smaller one, the little fruit market of the Rialto, which is never closed, day or night.
This little market, or, rather, the broad street forming its area,—broad for this part of Venice,—is always piled high with the products of orchard, vineyard, and garden, shaded all day by huge awnings, so closely stretched that only the sharpest and most lance-like of sunbeams can cut their way into the coolness below. At night the market is lighted by flaring torches illumining the whole surroundingcampo.
As for the other smaller stands and shops about the city, they are no less permanent fixtures, and keep equally bad hours. No matter how late you stroll down the Zattere or elbow your way along the Merceria, when every other place is closed, you will come upon a blazing lamp lighting up a heap of luscious fruit, in its season the comfort and sustenance of Venice.
Then there are the other markets—thewood market of the Giudecca, the fish market below the Rialto bridge, and the shops and stalls scattered throughout the city.
The wood market, a double row of boats moored in mid-stream and stretching up the broad waterway, is behind the Salute and the salt warehouses: great, heavy, Dutch-bowed boats, with anchor chains hanging from the open mouths of dolphins carved on the planking; long, sharp bowsprits, painted red, and great overhanging green rudder-sweeps swaying a rudder half as large as a barn door. Aft there is always an awning stretched to the mainmast, under which lies the captain, generally sound asleep.
When you board one of these floating wood-yards, and, rousing the Signor Capitano, beg permission to spread your sketch-awning on the forward deck out of everybody’s way, you will not only get the best point of view from which to paint the exquisite domes and towers of the beautifulSanta Maria della Salute, but, if you sit all day at work, with the deck wet and cool beneath your feet, and listen to the barter and sale going on around, you will become familiar with the workings of the market itself. You will find all these boats loaded under and above deck with sticks of wood cut about the size of an axe-handle,tied in bundles that can be tucked under one’s arm. These are sold over the ship’s side to the peddlers, who boat them off to their shops ashore. All day long these hucksters come and go, some for a boat-load, some for a hundred bundles, some for only one. When the purchase is important, and the count reaches, say, an even hundred, there is always a squabble over the tally. The captain, of course, counts, and so does the mate, and so does the buyer. As soon as the controversy reaches the point where there is nothing left but to brain the captain with one of his own fagots, he gives in, and throws an extra bundle into the boat, however honest may have been the count before. The instantaneous good-humor developed all around at the concession is only possible among a people who quarrel as easily as they sing.
Wood is really almost the only fuel in Venice. Coal is too costly, and the means of utilizing it too complicated. What is wanted is a handful of embers over which to boil a pot of coffee or warm a soup, a little fire at a time, and as little as possible, for, unlike many another commodity, fuel is a bugbear of economy to the Venetian. He rarely worries over his rent; it is his wood-bill that keeps him awake nights.
Above the fruit market near the Rialto is the new fish market, a modern horror of cast iron and ribbed glass. (Oh, if the polluting touch of so-called modern progress could only be kept away from this rarest of cities!) Here are piled and hung and spread out the endless varieties of fish and sea foods from the lagoons and the deep waters beyond; great halibut, with bellies of Japanese porcelain, millions of minnows, like heaps of wet opals with shavings of pearl, crabs,fulpe, mussels, and the spoils of the marshes. Outside, along the canal, are ranged the market boats, with their noses flattened against the stone quay, their sails clewed up, freeing the decks, the crews bending under huge baskets.
Fish is the natural flesh-food of the Venetian, fresh every morning, and at a price for even the poorest. If there is not money enough for a clean slice cut through the girth of a sea-monster, for a broil, less than asoldowill buy a handful of little nondescripts like fat spiders, for soup, or a pint of pebble-like mussels with which to savor a stew.