The colorful houses of Burano, photographed by me
NB: while I did get on a boat in Venice a few years ago, I have embellished and exaggerated most of this story. However, my grandmother has now written the book she talked about here. Not that I needed it, but writing reminded me of just how proud of her I am, and how much I love her and spending time with her.
Like most of my friends of a certain age, I met Jeannette through my grandmother. We were attending one of her acquaintances’ 90th birthday party, who had inexplicably mustered up the clout to host it in the Met’s Egyptian wing, when mamie pulled me away from my canapé chase to introduce me to the grooviest woman I’d ever seen. A little hunched over, she looked at the party through a pair of huge, round, lime green glasses, rouged lips pursed in the attitude of one who had clearly seen better, knew that you knew she’d seen better, but hoped you also realised just how inelegant it might have been to say that out loud.
As the party raged on, Jeannette took us on an improvised trip of the wing. She had been there so many times, and with so many people, that she had a story for almost each item behind the museum glass. She pointed to a gold beetle brooch:
“This one inspired Damien Hirst’s latest Biennale collection. Well - that, and the insane amounts of acid he dropped before coming here, you know Damian, don’t you.”
I only knew Damien from his work, but that was because he was an internationally acclaimed artist whose Biennale collection was only displayed across the Punta della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi, and whose gallery in London was so impossibly edgy that it made my chest tighten when I walked in.
All this to say: Jeannette was cool. The kind of cool who remembered partying at Harry’s Bar with Peggy Guggenheim in the 60s, and whom the bar remembered, too, the owner rushing to greet her when we came in, but also cool enough that she pointed to a tiny hole-in-the-wall for the best tramontano sandwiches in all of Italy (or so she claimed).
She was the ultimate jet setter, splitting her year between London, Singapore and Venice like it was normal.
In London, she hosted cultural evenings with special guests amongst which Yo-Yo Ma and Tracey Emin (who was an absolute bitch, if you asked her). In Singapore, she hunkered down in a skyscraper flat from which she walked to the National Gallery, one of the organizations she patroned, and cut the entire queue to the bistro for a slice of apfelstrudel. As for Venice, she lived in what was maybe not exactly a palazzo, but also maybe kind of a palazzo, if you know what I mean.
Jeannette didn’t just have great taste: she had the kind of unencumbered curiosity that led her to travel the world, try new things - foods, drinks, arts, you name it, and thus amass an encyclopedic knowledge of the world that allowed her to size every new thing up for itself first, then place it within its necessary context, before presenting it to the world exactly as it needed to be.
My grandmother and I had planned a summer trip to Venice that year, which Jeannette promptly invited herself to, suggesting we stay with her for our long weekend. I was secretly upset - I had found a cute little hotel in Ca d’Oro for mamie and I to stay in and I had no idea what her house might look like.
Despite my reservations, off we went to Ca Rezzonico and into an unsuspecting building, then up three flights of stairs and through to an unassuming entryway, which led to a slightly fancier-looking corridor, which ended in an absolutely regal living room.
A little ‘oh, putain’ passed my lips - I couldn’t stop myself. Mamie heard it, slapped my hand.
The four days we spent in Venice felt like being catapulted into a different world. I had never spent time with my grandmother’s friends, and, although I knew she frequently travelled with people, mamie being every bit as much an inveterate explorer as I was, I’m not sure I could have ever imagined quite how good they had it.
If you were somewhere between seventy and eighty years old, retired after a long and prosperous career, and still had a drive for adventure, how would you spend a four-day break in Venice? In Jeannette and my grandmother’s case, they cruised around the museums and galleries with their VIP passes, stopping to eat alternatively at the fanciest trattorias around and at Grom, when all they felt like was a really, really good strawberry sorbet.
And so it was that, on our last full day in Venice, I found myself embarking on a little cook’s boat called Nobody’s Perfect with mamie, Jeannette and several of their closest friends for an escapade to the open sea.
I met our cruise companions as we stepped onto the boat. Agnès and Louis, impossibly famous retired antiquarians whose last sale had been a full five-day affair in their château, and which people still talked about as one of the most incredible moments in furniture; Julia, a plump, friendly Spanish woman wearing a bathing suit, a pareo and more jewelry than I thought possible on her neck and face, an heiress who had dedicated most of her life to philanthropy and turning down every man who had ever tried to own her well-adorned hand; and Sarah and Mark, a couple of comically different proportions, she tall, lanky and frowning, he short, round and bustlingly good natured.
Given how young I am, and the fact that this happened a few years ago, I don’t think I can be faulted for not realising that a getaway between friends was very different once you reached a certain age. But still, the way they interacted startled me: after a little apéro as we left the harbor they each went about their own occupations, mamie and I on the sundeck (my obsession with sun a constant throughout my life) with Julia, who entertained us with stories of her summer excursions.
Sarah was splayed out outside of the boat’s technically available spaces, on that area at the back of the boat used to go down into the water. She looked a little forlorn, although none of us knew exactly why. Mark, ever her opposite, was sat with Agnès, Louis and a bottle of Limoncello they occasionally dipped into, laughing and pitching each other book ideas for Louis’ editing house, because of course after retirement he had started one of those alternative houses that only published the kinds of books written by rich, retired 80-something year olds with an exquisite writing style that I, shamelessly, still love.
“I have an idea”, mamie said.
Everybody perked up: my grandmother’s ideas were always magical.
I’m biased, of course, and have spent most of my life looking up to the woman, but it must be said that mamie is an extraordinary person - a fact which escaped nobody on our raft. She had the kind of success story people dream about: starting off as one among few women accountants in her firm, she had broken pretty much every boundary in her way to exceed any expectations the world might have had. She had become an entrepreneur and then, once she’d gotten over that, she’d passed a competitive exam to become a French judge - not once but twice, because she wasn’t happy with her grade the first time round. She had retired, too, but only to become an IMF independent expert and mediator. She’d been the backbone of our family for as long as I, her oldest grandchild, had been alive. She’d taught each and every one of her seven grandchildren to ski, but honestly that’s so far down the list of things she taught us that it doesn’t really do her justice to only bring that one up. Mamie was one of those women who were unafraid of their own success and accepted praise not out of pride, but out of the knowledge that she deserved it, point blank.
I was - am - her biggest fan, so witnessing others benefitting from her wisdom elicited a sort of pack pride that I basked in for the rest of the afternoon.
“I want to write a book about mediation”, she said.
Eyebrows went up. They didn’t really know what she meant. She explained:
“Mediation is an art for life - the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and understand where they might be coming from whenever you get into a situation of conflict. I mean, I only got accredited as a legal mediator last year, but I’ve been doing it with my grandchildren my whole life.”
Agnès pointed out that Louis’ editing house mainly dealt with poems and fiction, but he smiled faintly:
“Let’s talk about it in Paris.”
Conversations carried on; Mark, a concerned look on his face, got up and walked over to his partner. He crouched down next to her and I was too nosy not to keep an eye on them as they talked, she propped up on one elbow, he leaning forward, arms on legs. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. After a minute of conversation Sarah shrugged, despondent, and let herself fall back down onto the deck. Mark sighed, patted her shoulder, and made his way back to our group.
“Is everything okay?”, asked Agnès
He opened his palms wide, almost comically, a figure of powerlessness: Sarah suffered from severe arthritis and had forgotten her medicine in Paris. There was nothing for her to do but grit her teeth and let it pass.
Everybody checked their bags for medication. When they came up empty-handed, Mark smiled and fixed Sarah the only available remedy: the strongest martini he could make.
An island eventually came into sight, each house a different color: Burano. Somebody explained it was a way for fishermen to recognize their homes from afar; we watched as they unfurled, keeping a semi-religious silence.
The odd serenity of that moment stayed with us for close to an hour after we’d passed the island, all of us lying about in a sun-drunk daze.
The boat eventually stopped in the middle of nowhere. There was a patch of weeds to our left but apart from that - nothing but sea.
Our driver, whom I hadn’t yet seen, came out from the driving booth. I hadn’t thought about who was driving the boat until now but, had you asked me to describe him earlier, I would have conjured up the image of a slim, handsome young man with black hair, an impeccably pressed white-and-blue uniform with a cap and large, square sunglasses.
I could not have been more wrong. A portly, bald man walked out, already semi-laughing as if he’d heard something hilarious on his way to the boat deck. He was in shorts and one of those tourist t-shirts you can get anywhere in Venice, one of those city logo t-shirts that looked that much weirder on a local.
He introduced himself to us: he was Giancarlo, our driver, but also our cook, and he’d stopped the boat because it was time for us to have a little more than limoncello and wine.
As we waited, Mark, mamie and I dove into the water as the others watched, amused. Mark entertained the group, his belly protruding from the water and the floatie he’d taken with him. Mamie and I took a lap around the boat. I was keen to cool myself down and, although I didn’t know it yet, I had a violent sunburn forming on my back.
By the time we got back on the boat, Giancarlo had prepared a salad for starters and was grilling some fish on a plancha that had been hidden underneath one of the deck’s tabletops. We sat around a makeshift table, listening to Agnès and Louis’ tales of decorating their house in Paros, then one in Formentera, and their plans for the next house, this time in Essaouira. Honestly, I was completely and utterly dazzled - not by the houses so much as the absolute tranquility with which they jumped into every project, the absence of that kind of creation anxiety that led me to writing this piece a full three years after it happened. It wasn’t that their ideas were valuable: it was that they were happy about them, and that was the only thing that mattered - although I had no doubt that each of those houses probably looked more beautiful than the previous one. The rest of the afternoon flew by in a blur, probably because the combination of sun, food, wine and sea put all of us into a mildly comatose state. I sat with Julia, whose Spanish-tinted French was as melodic as the soft Venetian waves.
I basked in the sun and her stories. She had just finished fundraising for a charity that helped children with learning disabilities find learning methods that suited them, which had led her to travel the world in search of each culture’s approach to teaching. The most disappointing part, she said, was that our modern world only recognised learning under a single form: a rigid academic setting that provided no opportunities for play or creativity, unless you were rebellious enough to go against society’s expectations. I wished I had more energy to agree with her, but the inexorable pull of the mid-afternoon nap was tugging at me and I fell into a sun-infused coma as Julia and mamie discussed the benefits of alternative educational methods, mamie’s hand stroking my hair just like when I was a kid.
You know as a child, when you were in the car with your parents and they started speaking with that faraway quiet voice, and you dozed off completely and only woke up once you had arrived wherever it was you were going? I hadn’t felt that in probably 15 years, but I was shaken awake by mamie’s gentle embrace: we had arrived ashore.
We got back to Jeannette’s house, quietly trudging along Ca’ Rezzonico until we all collapsed in our respective beds.
We woke up early the next day, packed, and left. As I struggled to close my suitcase, I caught my own back’s reflection in the mirror: it was a startling red. My grandmother walked in, gasped when she saw it. I would spend the next three weeks with Biafine sticking to me, desperately trying to appease the burn and promising everyone I would never again forget sunscreen.
For the moment, though, we took a ferry boat back to the airport. I couldn’t stop smiling. It had been the best Venetian weekend of my life.
With thanks to Mamie, Golda and Neil for editing help!
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