Re-den-to-re!

I'm back in the states but the story continues.

Jesolo Beach was calm, yellow umbrella-d, spattered with German tourists dripping Gelato and beer onto the sand. It was dirty, I'm talking about the water littered with trash, but mostly dark and seaweedy. It was warm, the sky was hot, the air was wet, the water was bubbly with the sun on the surface.

The Feast of the Redentore pumps more blood, more life, into Venice. With that comes more tourists, more cigarette butts dropped on the ground, still burning, more discarded water bottles. With that come the boats, meant for fruits and vegetables, but this time, overloaded with people. They circle the canals, charged up with speakers blaring electronica. There are the oddly familiar faces from all sides of the same world, some bright, some sunburned, some jetlagged, some lost behind a folded map. These people. Their clothes are wilted, welted over with sweat in the least flattering places: breasts, armpits, the small of the back.

Along the Zattere docks were hundreds of boats, lined with tables, chairs, amplifiers playing traditional Veneto music, and crowds of eating, drinking, dancing, swearing Veneti enjoying themselves despite the unbearable humidity.

The sun had gone down by 9. But the cobbly paths along the waterfront were lit by strings of bobbly yellow lanterns. Blankets and towels stretched down the fondamenta, covered in people holding beer bottles and bags of chips from the local grocery store.

The fireworks soared up from the church of the Redeemer like red and green plumes of ink. They rolled in bright gold across the canal and exploded over the heads of those lucky enough to have reserved a boat for the feast. The fire shuttled up directly above us, flashed and crashed over the rows of craned necks and bare arms -- and then, dust and paper, bits and pieces of firework packaging, drifted onto our shoulders, our heads, while the next wave wailed skyward.

There was only one train returning to Treviso: 2:42 am. A sweaty, thirsty, worn-out crowd of all ages swayed back and forth in the station, eyes half-open, waiting for the platform number announcement. At 2:39, it came. And the sunken limbs sprung to life, the faces lit up with panic, determination to be on that train. It was an instantaneous transportation lottery.

The next morning I awoke to a swirl of debris and upturned chairs and potted plants. A storm had swept the Veneto, dragging branches, stripping leaves off trees and flipping over trash cans. But the water continued to trickle down the roadside acqueduct; the campanile still stood tall over the sleepy town of Villorba.

-a