cioiis as we feared. The waiters served excellentrnfood, the customs officials cooperatedrnin their laborious fashion, the truckrndriver stopped to help, the mechanicrnfixed our Volkswagen. One policemanrngave us gas, another allowed me to escapernafter bashing a car. In a bizarre sortrnof way, our tensions and fears enhancedrnour travels. The bad moments werernmore vivid and memorable than thernpleasant ones.rnJeffrey Meyers, biographer of Hemingway,rnFitzgerald, and Frost, and a Fellow ofrnthe Royal Society of Literature, willrnpublish a life of Orwell with Nortonrnnext September.rnLetter From Venicernby Andrei NavrozovrnLiving SoulsrnLast spring, in one of my early lettersrnfrom Venice, I promised that I wouldrnwrite in greater detail about Baron F—,rnwho liberated me from Florentinernbondage by letting me the attico at CorternTron, with its lifesaving terrace lookingrnover the courtyard of the Palazzo Volpirnand beyond, to the motionless cranesrnover the ruined Fenice. Almost a yearrnhas passed, and we are still fast friends;rnlast week I improvised a dish, along therngeneral lines of Louisiana gumbo, withrnsome mallards he had shot on a remoternislet in the lagoon; moreover, MichaelrnPalin has now exposed him as a publicrnfigure in a television series about Hemingway,rnhi short, in print as in life, I canrncall him by his Christian name.rnIt is quite the first time, incidentally,rnthat this business of calling a person byrnhis given name has any significance inrnmy life, and I want to put that new sensibilityrnin a broader context. The otherrnnight, I was talking to a young womanrnabout a dinner party in Porto Ercole wernhad both attended in the summer, wherernshe and her friend the hostess were thernonly Italians. The other guests, with arnwhole pashmina of marriageable girlsrnamong them, belonged to the broad, fast.rnFirst World that is New York, Paris, andrnthe new London. Ordinarily, in my formerrnsocial hypostasis, I would have rememberedrnwith perfect clarity who theyrnall were, especially the girls, by name andrnsurname, stated occupation, last knownrnaddress, and mobile phone number, asrnwell as whose jokes they laughed at, whatrnshoes thev wore, whom they were likelyrnto marry in the end, and whether it wouldrnbe worth the trouble to get invited to thernwedding. This time, nothing. A sociopath’srnblank.rnI realized just how much I had beenrnspoiled by Venice in the intervening period,rnby Venice where the person withrnwhom one is speaking is by definition arnpublic figure, a permanent feature of therncivic landscape, who has been here, perhapsrnin the form of his ancestors yet inrnthis ver’ armchair opposite, for 200, 800,rn1,200 years. One’s awareness of one’s interlocutor,rnin such circumstances, maturesrngradually, progressing in small incrementsrnfrom the superficial andrnritualized to the covert and coveted, andrnthe privilege of addressing a person by hisrnChristian name comes with the socialrnterritory that is painstakingly, but abovernall slowly, explored. This habit of socialrnslowness, which is really a kind of waryrnsloth, is in vivid contrast with the mannersrnof the First World and even of thernSecond, which in Italy would includernMilan and to some extent the newrnBerlusconi-Murdoch, television-executive,rnwheel-of-fortune Rome.rnThere, in those newer, more intoxicating,rnless maigre worlds, the very firmamentrnis in ferment, with human particlesrnborne by diverse currents appearing andrndisappearing from view like snowflakes inrna storm, with the effect that your interlocutorrnat a dinner party—all the more sornif she is a pretty girl looking over yourrnshoulder in no fewer than three directionsrnat once —must be apprehended,rnappraised, fixed, and charmed all of anrninstant, whereupon the trauma of transience,rndislocation, and accident isrnmomentarily allayed and social life reacquiresrna semblance of meaning. Quickness,rnrapidity, rapacity are the jabs of thernanesthetic that makes it all possible there,rnjust as reticence, or perhaps dignity, isrnwhat you have to inject yourself with inrnVenice “if you want to have a good time.”rnIt is interesting that the bit of hackworkrnaired on the BBC made the same point,rnalbeit in a somewhat more politicallyrntremulous key. The presenter noted Alberto’srnmanifest “lack of urgency,” andrneven murmured that “the word languidrncould have been coined” for him. “I askrnwhat I should call him,” Palin went on,rn”should it be Signor Franchetti, or perhapsrnAlberto? He purses his lips gently,rnas if acknowledging some distant, unspecificrnpain.rn”Terhaps Boro;?e?’ he suggests.”rnAlberto may not be Venice, but he is asrnclose to it as you can get without buildingrna bridge of fine Istria stone between yourrnpancreas and your liver. He is somethingrnmore than a good old boy, he is anrnarchetype, one of a tiny handful of eminentrnVenetians who are to their nationrnwhat Cogol’s “old world landowners”rnwere to the Russia of his day. The authorrnof Dead Souls never finished his “poem,”rnwhich he had envisioned as a variationrnon Dante—only the part correspondingrnto the Inferno survives, and half of thernPurgatorio—and thus the modern chroniclerrnof Venice can plunge directly intornthe sort of book that might have beenrnGogol’s Paradiso, without at any timernfeeling that he is treading on hallowedrnground. And, insofar as what he aims torncapture are the living souls of Venice, hernmust begin with Alberto.rnAs our landlord and neighbor, Albertornused to arrive on the terrace with a messrnof dinner invitations for us in his pockets,rnand naturally we always wanted to acceptrnall of them. A truly social foreigner inrnLondon would consider himself an outcast,rnperhaps a prisoner, if all of a suddenrnhe had to limit himself to 300 dinner partiesrna year. Alberto would clear his throat,rnadjust a loose vine, fiddle with the ashtray.rn”No, but you know, you are goingrntoo fast. You cannot be so fast in Venice.rnYou will burn out. You must be vervrncareful. Why not have drinks with thernM— on Tuesday, and then perhaps werncan dine with G— on Friday, which willrnbe very nice for yon because they have arnpleasant garden. But tomorrow I wouldrnlike to suggest that you stay at home, andrndo nothing. No . . . thing at all. You willrnsee, it would be much better.”rn”Can we go somewhere with vourrnboat?”rn”I do not think we should this week,rnno. No, we had better not. There is a terriblernvirus going round, you see. It is inrnthe newspaper. I know many people whornhave it already.”rnPalin approached him to be the guidernto Hemingway’s haunts in Venice despiternthe fact that, when the Americanrnwriter came here and was befriended byrnhis family, Alberto was ten. But what Irnfind so remarkable is how the BBC’s Virgil,rnor rather my Beatrice, gradually up-rnMARCH 2000/37rnrnrn