DEATH IN VENICE
Cypress trees shivered in the warm wind; seagulls wept. Before us stood blocks of 20th-century resting places for the beloved dead: vaults sealed with stone plaques and adorned with plastic blooms. Some had images of husbands and fathers and grandmothers affixed to the lost ones’ titles. In this sunbaked place, with watering cans and gardening trolleys abandoned on the gravel, we stood and gazed at the past, at people who had walked the streets of the city across the water. And yes, at the type: perfect engraved script in the fonts of the times. Venice’s cemetery island of San Michele holds appeal for many – even typography fans.
It was high summer 2019 and La Serenissima was in the grips of a heatwave. Temperatures in our attic room never dropped below the high 30°Cs. Nights were long and punctuated by church bells and churring motor launches. Ambulances in Venice float, and they are driven as if Ferraris round a track, leaving water sloshing out of canals behind them. The exquisite streets were sticky, the tourists sunburned.
Trekking from the Biennale across white-hot stone piazzas, all the way back to Cannaregio, required sharp attention as to the whereabouts of water fountains.
So we got on a vaporetto, and took to the lagoon, in search of breezes. San Michele is a brooding presence just a gull’s cry away from Fondamenta Nove. The ticket inspector, obviously not encumbered by thoughts of the hereafter, charged us double without blinking, then dropped us at the gates. A few solemn-faced Italians disembarked and trotted rapidly down the stone paths and out of sight to their assignations with the departed. There were few other sounds – except, every so often, a peculiar, carrying cry from the unknown sky, high-pitched and eerie.
After the vaults and their touching (and perfectly kerned) messages, there were older sections where gravestones were less legible and a lot more overgrown. These were not nearly as old as the Renaissance-era church, built in white Istrian stone, but came after the cemetery was inaugurated in the 1800s. We saw two young men consulting an app to lead them to the resting place of composer Igor Stravinsky; his grave was dotted with coins and notes of admiration. A troupe of ballet shoes sat decomposing upon the grave of Sergei Diaghilev. And Ezra Pound was said to be buried in one walled garden. Known to have inspired TS Eliot, he penned such lines as When you came out in the magazines/ You created considerable stir in
Chicago/And now you are stale and worn out/You’re a very depleted fashion/A hoop-skirt, a calash…
In search of Pound, round and round the garden we went, peering at weathered crosses, deciphering scratches in stone. Mosquitoes drew blood, again and again. The poet’s grave eluded us. There was an unexplored corner, however, where suddenly a hissing, yellow-eyed griffin kept us at bay.
Signs saying “beware of seagulls” may appear quaint to South Africans, but Venetian royal gulls have bad reputations. They have learnt predatory behaviour (including pigeon murder), and we’d seen locals twitching in disgust at their mere presence, sending children to chase them off. I love birds, but we backed away from the “griffin” as soon as we saw a fuzzy ball of baby seagull scuttle behind a tombstone, the adult poised to divebomb intruders. Another strange scream rent the air – but no, it wasn’t the parent gull.
On the way back, another faded notice explained the aural mystery. Spirits may well be present on San Michele, but the “screaming” we kept hearing, Google translate explained, was designed to see off the gulls in a “bloodless removal”. Solar-powered loudspeakers had been set up here and there, and the soundtrack was of predators and prey – unpalatable to a gull in search of a nest. We jumped on the next vaporetto, leaving the cries of “alarm, attack and pain” behind. How I wish I could speak seagull and find out what name they’d bestowed on this echoing isola.