Portrait of a Lady
We caught the Number Five from Marco Polo to Piazzale Roma for the waterbus.
Bellini, Tintoretto, Tiepolo slumbered nearby. The cold affected us, a raw low-season haar rising like ague from the swamp to clutch our throats.
As if in bird-beaked masks against the plague, some shivering locals, shrouded in fur coats and sooty capes, tricorned and sinister, sat sullen as the tomb. Lost in the dark, we drifted by each creaking, shadowy pier till, at San Zaccaria, we disembarked, with Calle della Rasse still to come through which we found our home away from home.
Snow fell like feathers into the lagoon. The bell-tower stood accused of cowardice. We watched the obliteration of the moon as side-canals slowly filled up with ice. A white-out blizzarded across the square, veiling from view the horses and the domes. The streets fell silent. There was no one there and all the gondolieri stayed at home. We looked outside to witness at first light this shining pearl, the Adriatic queen, resplendent and unsullied, virgin-white, La Serenissima grown ever more serene the old seductress putting on a show and rising like a phoenix from the snow. Norman Bissett
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