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Venice Drowned

Kim Stanley Robinson

I remember Kim Stanley Robinson as one of the best writers in quite an impressive group of

students I taught at the Clarion science fiction writing workshop in the mid-seventies. He was not

the one who dismantled the ceiling, though, nor the one who carried around a small bale of

marijuana and a glazed expression, nor the one who supposedly had shacked up with one of the

instructors, nor the one who liberated the fire hose . . . unfortunately for me, Stan was just a

pleasant, hardworking guy who was mainly thereto write, and write well. Which makes it difficult

to do a racy introduction for him. Doubly difficult because he pleads modesty and will only reveal

the following information:

1. He did his Ph.D. thesis on the novels of Philip K. Dick (whether in the department of

English, theology, philosophy, or pharmacy, he does not say).

2. He teaches at the University of California at Davis.

3. His first novel, The Wild Shore, came out from Ace in 1984.

"Venice Drowned" is a nearly flawless exemplar of a kin of writing that can only be done in

science fiction. I don't know if it has a name-in academic jargon I suppose it would be something

like "refractive mimesis"-but it's that creepy kind of double-vision writing where an imagined

world, similar to ours b~ different in some dramatic particular, is described with such

painstaking authority that it becomes absolutely real, to such c extent that the world ceases to

be simply background for the story; in a curious way, it becomes the story. Philip Dick was the

master of this kind of invention, of course, which doesn't detract from Stan's achievement.

Rereading it gives me goosebumps.

By the time Carlo Tafur struggled out of sleep, the baby was squalling, the teapot whistled, the

smell of stove smoke filled the air. Wavelets slapped the walls of the floor below. It was just

dawn. Reluctantly he untangled himself from the bedsheets and got up. He padded through the other

room of his home, ignoring his wife and child, and walked out the door onto the roof.

Venice looked best at dawn, Carlo thought as he pissed into the canal. In the dim mauve light it

was possible to imagine that the city was just as it always had been, that hordes of visitors

would come flooding down the Grand Canal on this fine summer morning .... Of course, one had to

ignore the patchwork constructions built on the roofs of the neighborhood to indulge the fancy.

Around the church San Giacomo du Rialto-all the buildings had even their top floors awash, and so

it had been necessary to break up the tile roofs, and erect shacks on the roof beams made of

materials fished up from below: wood, brick lath, stone, metal, glass. Carlo's home was one of

these shacks, made of a crazy combination of wood beams, stained glass from San Giacometta, and

drain pipes beaten flat. He looked back at it and sighed. It was best to look off over the Rialto,

where the red sun blazed over the bulbous domes of San Marco.

"You have to meet those Japanese today," Carlo's wife, Luisa, said from inside.

"1 know." Visitors still came to Venice, that was certain.

"And don't go insulting them and rowing off without your pay," she went on, her voice sounding

clearly out of the doorway, "like you did with those Hungarians. It really doesn't matter what

they take from under the water, you know. That's the past. That old stuff isn't doing anyone any

good under there, anyway."

"Shut up," he said wearily. "I know."

"I have to buy stovewood and vegetables and toilet paper and socks for the baby." she said. "The

Japanese are the best customers you've got; you'd better treat them well."

Carlo reentered the shack and walked into the bedroom to dress. Between. putting on one boot and

the next he stopped to smoke a cigarette, the last one in the house. While smoking he stared at

his pile of books on the floor, his library as Luisa sardonically called the collection; all books

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about Venice. They were tattered, dog-eared, mildewed, so warped by the damp that none of them

would close properly, and each moldy page was as wavy as the Lagoon on a windy day.- They were a

miserable sight, and Carlo gave the closest stack a light kick with his cold boot as he returned

to the other room.

"I'm off," he said, giving his baby and then Luisa a kiss. "I'll be back late; they want to go to

Torcello."

"What could they want up there?"

He shrugged. "Maybe just to see it." He ducked out the door.

Below the roof was a small square where the boats of the neighborhood were moored. Carlo slipped

off the tile onto the narrow floating dock he and the neighbors had built, and crossed to his

boat, a wide-beamed sailboat with a canvas deck. He stepped in, unmoored it, and rowed out of the

square onto the Grand Canal.

Once on the Grand Canal he tipped the oars out of the water and let the boat drift downstream. The

big canal had

always been the natural course of the channel through the mudflats of the Lagoon; for a while it

had been tamed, but now it was a river again, its banks made of tile rooftops and stone palaces,

with hundreds of tributaries flowing into it. Men were working on roofhouses in the early-morning

light; those who knew Carlo waved, hammers or rope in hand, and shouted hello. Carlo wiggled an

oar perfunctorily before he was swept past. It was foolish to build so close to the Grand Canal,

which now had the strength to knock the old structures down, and often did. But that was their

business. In Venice they were all fools, if one thought about it.

Then he was in the Basin of San Marco, and he rowed through, the Piazetta beside the Doge's

Palace, which was still imposing at two stories high, to the Piazza. Traffic was heavy as usual.

It was the only place in Venice that still had the crowds of old, and Carlo enjoyed it for that

reason, though he shouted curses as loudly as anyone when gondolas streaked in front of him. He

jockeyed his way to the Basilica window and rowed in.

Under the brilliant blue and gold of the domes it was noisy. Most of the water in the rooms had

been covered with a floating dock. Carlo moored his boat to it, heaved his four scuba tanks on,

and clambered up after them. Carrying two tanks in each hand he crossed the dock, on which the

fish market was in full swing. Displayed for sale were flats of mullet, lagoon sharks, tunny,

skates, and flatfish. Clams were piled in trays, their shells gleaming in the shaft of sunlight

from the stained-glass east window; men and women pulled live crabs out of holes in the dock,

risking fingers in the crab-jammed traps below; octopuses inked their buckets of water, sponges

oozed foam; fishermen bawled out prices, and insulted the freshness of their neighbors' product.

In the middle of the fish market, Ludovico Salerno, one of Carlo's best friends, had his stalls of

scuba gear. Carlo's two Japanese customers were there. He greeted them and handed his tanks to

Salerno, who began refilling them from his ma

chine. They conversed in quick, slangy Italian while the tanks filled. When they were done, Carlo

paid him and led the Japanese back to his boat. They got in and stowed their backpacks under the

canvas decking, while Carlo pulled the scuba tanks on board.

"We are ready to voyage at Torcello?" one asked, and the other smiled and repeated the question.

Their names were Hamada and Taku. They had made a few jokes concerning the latter name's

similarity to Carlo's own, but Taku was the one with less Italian, so the sallies hadn't gone on

for long. They had hired him four days before, at Salerno's stall.

"Yes," Carlo said. He rowed out of the Piazza and up back canals past Campo San Maria Formosa,

which was nearly as crowded as the Piazza. Beyond that the canals were empty, and only an

occasional roof-house marred the look of flooded tranquillity.

"That part of city Venice here not many people live," Hamada observed. "Not houses on houses."

"That's true," Carlo replied. As he rowed past San Zanipolo and the hospital, he explained, "It's

too close to the hospital here, where many diseases were contained. Sicknesses, you know."

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"Ah, the hospital!" Hamada nodded, as did Taku. "We have swam hospital in our Venice voyage

previous to that one here. Salvage many fine statues from lowest rooms."

"Stone lions," Taku added. "Many stone lions with wings in room below Twenty-forty' waterline."

"Is that right," Carlo said. Stone lions, he thought, set up in the entryway of some Japanese

businessman's expensive home around the world .... He tried to divert his thoughts by watching the

brilliantly healthy, mask like faces of his two passengers as they laughed over their

reminiscences.

Then they were over the Fondamente Nuova, the northern limit of the city, and on the Lagoon. There

was a small swell from the north. Carlo rowed out a way and then stepped forward to raise the

boat's single sail. The wind was from the

east, so they would make good time north to Torcello. Behind them, Venice looked beautiful in the

morning light, as if they were miles away, and a watery horizon blocked their full view of it.

The two Japanese had stopped talking and were looking over the side. They were over the

cemetery of San Michele, Carlo realized. Below them lay the island that had been the city's chief

cemetery for centuries; they sailed over a field of tombs, mausoleums, gravestones, obelisks, that

at low tide could be a navigational hazard .... Just enough of the bizarre white blocks could be

seen to convince one that they were indeed the result of the architectural thinking of fishes.

Carlo crossed himself quickly to impress his customers, and sat back down at the tiller. He pulled

the sail tight and they heeled over slightly, slapped into the waves.

In no more than twenty minutes they were east of Murano, skirting its edge. Murano, like

Venice an island city crossed with canals, had been a quaint little town before the flood. But it

didn't have as many tall buildings as Venice, and it was said that an underwater river had

undercut its islands; in any case, it was a wreck. The two Japanese chattered with excitement.

"Can we visit to that city here, Carlo?" asked Hamada.

"It's too dangerous," Carlo answered. "Buildings have fallen into the canals."

They nodded, smiling. "Are people live here?" Taku asked.

"A few, yes. They live in the highest buildings on the floors still above water, and work

in Venice. That way they avoid having to build a roof-house in the city."

The faces of his two companions expressed incomprehension.

"They avoid the housing shortage in Venice," Carlo said. "There's a certain housing

shortage in Venice, as you may have noticed." His listeners caught the joke this time and laughed

uproariously.

"Could live on floors below if owning scuba such as that

here," Hamada said, gesturing at Carlo's equipment.

"Yes," he replied. "Or we could grow gills." He bugged his eyes out and waved his fingers

at his neck to indicate gills. The Japanese loved it.

Past Murano, the Lagoon was clear for a few miles, a sunbeaten blue covered with choppy

waves. The boat tipped up and down, the wind tugged at the sail cord in Carlo's hand. He began to

enjoy himself. "Storm coming," he volunteered to the others and pointed at the black line over the

horizon to the north. It was a common sight; short, violent storms swept over Brenner Pass from

the Austrian Alps, dumping on the Po Valley and the Lagoon before dissipating in the Adriatic . .

. once a week, or more, even in the summer. That was one reason the fish market was held under the

domes of San Marco; everyone had gotten sick of trading in the rain.

Even the Japanese recognized the clouds. "Many rain fall soon here," Taku said.

Hamada grinned and said, "Taku and Tafui, weather prophets no doubt, make big company!"

They laughed. "Does he do this in Japan, too?" Carlo asked.

"Yes indeed, surely. In Japan rains every day-Taku says, `It rains tomorrow for surely.'

Weather prophet!"

After the laughter receded, Carlo said, "Hasn't all the rain drowned some of your cities

too?"

"What's that here?"

"Don't you have some Venices in Japan?"

But they didn't want to talk about that. "I don't understand .... No, no Venice in Japan,"

Hamada said easily, but neither laughed as they had, before. They sailed on. Venice was out of

sight under the horizon, as was Murano., Soon they would reach Burano. Carlo guided the boat over

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the waves and listened to his companions converse in their improbable language, or mangle Italian

in a way that alternately made hum want to burst with hilarity or bite the gunwale with

frustration.

Gradually, Burano bounced over the horizon, the campanile first, followed by the few

buildings still above water. Murano still had inhabitants, a tiny market, even a midsummer

festival; Burano was empty. Its campanile stood at a distinct angle, like the mast of a foundered

ship. It had been an island town, before 2040; now it had "canals" between every rooftop. Carlo

disliked the town intensely and gave it a wide berth. His companions discussed it quietly in

Japanese.

A mile beyond it was Torcello, another island ghost town. The campanile could be seen from

Burano, tall and white against the black clouds to the north. They approached in silence. Carlo

took down the sail, set Taku in the bow to look for snags, and rowed cautiously to the edge of

town. They moved between rooftops and walls that stuck up like reefs or like old foundations out

of the earth. Many of the roof tiles and beams had been taken for use in construction back in

Venice. This happened to Torcello before; during the Renaissance it had been a little rival of

Venice, boasting a population of twenty thousand, but during the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries it had been entirely deserted. Builders from Venice had come looking in the ruins for

good marble or a staircase of the right dimensions . . . . Briefly a tiny population had returned,

to make lace and host those tourists who wanted to be melancholy; but the waters rose, and

Torcello died for good. Carlo pushed off a wall with his oar, and a big section of it tilted over

and sank. He tried not to notice.

He rowed them to the open patch of water that had been the Piazza. Around them stood a few

intact rooftops, no taller than the mast of their boat; broken walls of stone or rounded brick;

the shadowy suggestion of walls just underwater. It was hard to tell what the street plan of the

town would have been. On one side of the Piazza was the cathedral of Santa Maria Ascunta, however,

still holding fast, still supporting the white campanile that stood square and solid, as if over a

living community.

"That here is the church we desire to dive," Hamada said.

Carlo nodded. The amusement he had felt during the sail

was entirely gone. He rowed around the Piazza looking for a flat spot where they could stand and

put the scuba gear on. The church outbuildings-it had been an extensive structure were all

underwater. At one point the boat's keel scraped the ridge of a roof. They rowed down the length

of the barnlike nave, looked in the high windows: floored with water. No surprise. One of the

small windows in the side of the campanile had been widened with sledgehammers; directly inside it

was the stone staircase and, a few steps up, a stone floor. They hooked the boat to the wall and

moved their gear up to the floor. In the dim midday light the stone of the interior was pocked

with shadows. It had a rough-hewn look. The citizens of Torcello had built the campanile in a

hurry, thinking that the world would end at the millennium, the year 1000. Carlo snuled to think

how much longer they had had than that. They climbed the steps of the staircase, up to the sudden

sunlight of the bell chamber, to look around; viewed Burano, Venice in the distance . . . to the

north, the shallows of the Lagoon, and the coast of Italy. Beyond that, the black line of clouds

was like a wall nearly submerged under the horizon, but it was rising; the storm would come.

They descended, put on the scuba gear, and flopped into the water beside the campanile.

They were above the complex of church buildings, and it was dark; Carlo slowly led the two

Japanese back into the Piazza and swam down. The ground was silted, and Carlo was careful not to

step on it. His charges saw the great stone chair in the center of the Piazza (it had been called

the Throne of Attila, Carlo remembered from one of his moldy books, and no one had known why), and

waving to each other they swam to it. One of them made ludicrous attempts to stand on the bottom

and walk around in his fins; he threw up clouds of silt. The other joined him. They each sat in

the stone chair, columns of bubbles rising from them, and snapped pictures of each other with

their underwater cameras. The silt would ruin the shots, Carlo thought. While they cavorted, he

wondered sourly what they wanted in the church.

Eventually, Hamada swam up to him and gestured at the church. Behind the mask his eyes were

excited. Carlo pumped his fins up and down slowly and led them around to the big entrance at the

front. The doors were gone. They swam into the church.

Inside it was dark, and all three of them unhooked their big flashlights and turned them on. Cones

of murky water turned to crystal as the beams swept about. The interior of the church was

undistinguished, the floor thick with mud. Carlo watched his two customers swim about and let his

flashlight beam rove the walls. Some of the underwater windows were still intact, an odd sight.

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Occasionally the beam caught a column of bubbles, transmuting them to silver.

Quickly enough the Japanese went to the picture at the west end of the nave, a tile mosaic. Taku

(Carlo guessed) rubbed the slime off the tiles, vastly improving their color. They had gone to the

big one first, the one portraying the Crucifixion, the Resurrection of the Dead, and the Day of

Judgment: a busy mural. Carlo swam over to have a better look. But no sooner had the Japanese

wiped the wall clean than they were off to the other end of the church, where above the stalls of

the apse was another mosaic. Carlo followed.

It didn't take long to rub this one clean; and when the water had cleared, the three of them

floated there, their flashlight beams converged on the picture revealed.

It was the Teotaca Madonna, the God-bearer. She stood against a dull gold background, holding the

Child in her arms, staring out at the world with a sad and knowing gaze. Carlo pumped his legs to

get above the Japanese, holding his light steady on the Madonna's face. She looked as though she

could see all of the future, up to this moment and beyond; all of her child's short life, all the

terror and calamity after that . . . . There were mosaic tears on her cheeks. At the sight of

them, Carlo could barely check tears of his own from joining the general wetness on his face. He

felt that he had suddenly been transposed to a church on the deepest floor of the ocean; the

pressure of his feelings threatened to implode him, he could

scarcely hold them off. The water was freezing, he was shivering, sending up a thick, nearly

continuous column of bubbles . . . and the Madonna watched. With a kick he turned and swam away.

Like startled fish his two companions followed him. Carlo led them out of the church into murky

light, then up to the surface, to the boat and the window casement.

Fins off, Carlo sat on the staircase and dripped. Taku and Hamada scrambled through the window and

joined him. They conversed for a moment in Japanese, clearly excited. Carlo stared at them

blackly.

Hamada turned to him. "That here is the picture we desire," he said. "The Madonna with child."

"What?" Carlo cried.

Hamada raised his eyebrows. "We desire taking home that here picture to Japan."

"But it's impossible! The picture is made of little tiles stuck to the wall-there's no way to get

them off!"

"Italy government permits," Taku said, but Hamada silenced him with a gesture:

"Mosaic, yes. We use instruments we take here-water torch. Archaeology method, you understand. Cut

blocks out of wall, bricks, number them-construct on new place in Japan. Above water." He flashed

his pearly smile.

"You can't do that," Carlo stated, deeply affronted.

"I don't understand?" Hamada said. But he did: "Italian government permits us that."

"This isn't Italy," Carlo said savagely, and in his anger stood up. What good would a Madonna do

in Japan, anyway? They weren't even Christian. "Italy is over there," he said, in his excitement

mistakenly waving to the southeast, no doubt confusing his listeners even more. "This has never

been Italy! This is Venice! The Republic!"

"1 don't understand." He had that phrase down pat. "Italian government has giving permit us."

"Christ," Carlo said. After a disgusted pause: "Just how long will this take?"

"Time? We work that afternoon, tomorrow: place the

bricks here, go hire Venice barge to carry bricks to Venice--"

"Stay here overnight? I'm not going to stay here overnight, God damn it!"

"We bring sleeping bag for you-"

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