I remember the most wonderful day of my life, the day I proposed to my wife. After days of indecision about where in Venice to get on my knee, after rubbing the ring in my left pant pocket for days, it would wait no longer.
We were on the island of Torcello, one of the locations where, fleeing Attila the Hun, Romans landed in the marsh. They were on the East coast of the Italia province, hoping for relief from the attackers. Those who managed to save their lives only had a wet future to look forward to. We now know that wet future as "The Most Serene Empire."
The origin of Venice can only be seen through a haze of myth and conjecture, and it was really the later invasion of the Lombards that give some of the actual historical details. Nonetheless, there is a "throne" of Attila on the island of Torcello. Some say it is a re-purposed Bishop's chair drafted into the service of an origin story. Dutifully, my now wife and I sat on it and took our pictures.
The island in winter is a muddy experience. When you do not live there, all a tourist can really do is take a brick path down a canal to the main church, which you can see from the vaporetto stop. On our walk, one of the highlights -- the Locanda Cipriani -- was closed. This hotel has welcomed an array of characters, from Hemingway to Lady D, and apparently, the food is quite good, though I'll have to take people's word for it.
The Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta is the quiet center of the island. It was founded in 639 A.C.E., though that date might have the same plausibility as the Attila's throne. The structure you can visit comes much later. The interior is raw, glass-free medieval slits for widows, and has two of the most arresting mosaics.
Behind the main altar is the Virgin Hodegetria, and she has the tender, calm eyes of a doe. In its soft solitude, in its minimalism, I find it to be one of the most moving mosaics I've encountered. There is a remoteness in the Madonna's beauty, and the infant in her arms has seemingly lived far far beyond his years, a small version of a full sized man.
The Last Judgement is across the church from the Madonna on the back wall. Satan's throne is made of consuming mouths, teeth engorging the torsos of unknown victims. Around Satan, like terrible pixies, his dark angels torture heads in a sea of blood. Furthermore, two sentinel angels make sure there is no escape (these angels, dressed in white, seem to get their mandate from God).
After we toured the campanile of the Basilica, took in the arresting views of the rough place to which the Roman fled, I proposed. The details belong to my wife and I, but I will confess that Torcello seemed the right place, a place where love can assert itself against the full contrast of darkness. On the island, I felt that the terms of life were clear and I was ready to move forward, choosing happiness.
I've thought of that day often. I would go on to study Venice, even write a manuscript of a book about it (as of right now, dormant). And as I have thought about that day, I realize I've failed to see the true clarity of the terms, that I saw but a few of the changes and horrors that that marsh had absorbed, that that marsh still thinks of to this day.
Jan Morris's book about her travels around the marsh in a small boat gives a few of these terms. Striking among them are accounts of Italians hiding in wind-swept, flooded, and very cold houses, waiting out World War II. She speaks of the plague, of course, with its quarantine islands, and the island where someone (probably by accident) fired a shot at one of Napoleon's ships. The corpse of the Most Serene Empire gasped its last breath as the ships casually invaded, meeting virtually no resistance.
That day on Torcello, without knowing it, I looked out at one of the worst islands in all of Venice, in all of the world, one where even Morris was unable to land. It was at the boneyard of Sant Ariano where anonymous corpses of the plague were buried. It has been totally forgotten. No one goes there and only the most curious inquire.
I later found Ariano in my photos, taken innocently during the happiest moment of my life. Out from the campanile, in a bad photo, I can follow an orchard of orderly trees towards the open Adriatic and see Ariano, very distant, overgrown out there in all that swamp. It was sleeping over there, waiting there, that day. It sleeps there now.
The thought of that island has been awoken in me over these last weeks. It is time to write of those travels, those good days. For inside those days, the future was written, and in this horrible present, the past remains.