The Chapel Read Online Free Page A

and led me around the side of the huge, squat train station. “Everybody in Venezia is not speaking just like you, right? See?” He pointed to a herd of elderly tourists ahead of us. Each of them was wearing a yellow baseball cap. “ Tutti in ferie! ” Pietro turned to me for confirmation.
    I understood nothing he’d said, but I was not happy about those yellow hats. “Does my tour come with a uniform?”
    â€œYou see now? Si, si, there she is for you.”
    We were perched at a railing, about ten feet above a busy dock at the edge of a dark, deep canal with a profound current churning up waves along the stone wall. “Is this the Grand Canal?”
    Pietro proudly said, “ Canalasso .”
    â€œSo—not the Grand Canal?”
    â€œWe say here Canalasso .”
    Here at the train station? Here in Italy? Here in Venice? Our conversation had ping-ponged like that from the moment we met. We were both trying to be good sports, but we were whacking these balls at two different tables.
    Staring deep into the center of the canal, Pietro said, “E’ bella, no? ”
    We had seen the canals from the car, and I had brought with me many memorable descriptions from novels, and images from the movies, but everything else was eclipsed by this first true glimpse of the watery world. From where I was standing, the dark sea surging through the city seemed ancient, and unnerving, and fantastical, like a dragon’s tail on a medieval map.
    Very softly, Pietro said, “ Canalasso .”
    I said, “ Canalasso ,” which made me cry, as if Mitchell were streaming by below me, just beyond my reach.
    Pietro kindly let a lot of water pass beneath us before he moved. Calmly, he led me out of the sun to the shelter of an open café table outfitted with a red-and-blue Cinzano umbrella. He insisted on buying me my first coffee in Italy, and I insisted on paying. Actually, he said, “ Café? ” and after he paid, and wagged his hand dismissively while I dug out my wallet, I put a fifty-euro note under his espresso cup, and then he took off without a word for just long enough to make me wonder if that was the end of him. When he returned, he presented me with three accordion-pleated postcard collections. The top card on each stack was a view of the Grand Canal from just about the spot where we’d stood in silence together, but when Pietro spread the cards out across our table, what followed from Venice was unpredictable—the Tower of Pisa, a mosaic church ceiling in Ravenna, a sheep on a Tuscan hillside, the Colosseum.
    â€œOh, they’re all different. From everywhere,” I said. “So now I have to choose one set?”
    Pietro said, “Okay.”
    â€œI can’t choose,” I said. “I really can’t. Which one is the best?”
    Pietro smiled at me, at the umbrella, at the canal.
    I tried again. “Really. You choose, Pietro. Please.”
    â€œ Tutto ,” he said. “Choose everything.”

II

    T he bus ride from Venice to Padua was a little less than an hour long. The trip was slightly longer if you counted the fifteen-minute wait at the Venice train station for the widow from Cambridge, who was already famous for going AWOL at airports. At least eight of my twelve fellow passengers on the EurWay minibus counted the wait time against me, and so did the driver, an American college kid. As he crammed my red wheelie into the overhead luggage rack, he advised me of my obligation to be present at designated pickup locations fifteen minutes before departures.
    I thanked him and apologized for not knowing the routine.
    Somebody—one of the five men—shouted, “Read the contract.”
    â€œSit here, if you like.” This offer came from a woman seated directly behind the driver. She pulled a skein of ivory yarn from the unoccupied seat beside her and skewered it with her two-foot-long bronze knitting needles. She