The boatman declined to sing a love song despite being offered more money for the gondola ride. So, the old man hummed the first tune that came into his mind. He hummed in a sonorous tone and with much emotions the romantic melody of Oh Sole Mio, because he didn’t know the Italian lyrics and didn’t know what the song was about.
But there’s no other sun
More beautiful
My sun
Is upon your face
The sun, my sun,
Is upon your face.
The sun was indeed caressing her face. Eva looked sweetly into James’ eyes and tenderly touched his face as if to check that he wasn’t just in her dream but real and strong, the masculine and heroic head of their family. The gondola ride was less romantic than she had imagined; the old man and his Mrs should not have boarded with them. A gondola shouldn’t be crammed with four people, least of all two old people who looked odd and unbalanced and liable to capsize the boat at any moment.
“Say baciami to him,” the old man said to Eva, as he snapped a few photos of her and her hero.
Tell him he’s your hero, your idol, your everything. “Kiss me. Oh, kiss me,” she implored.
The late afternoon sun bathed on them now. The old man looked at James who was tilting his head oddly, quite clearly unlike a real James Bond. Bond would never look clownish but James seemed shy and awkward to be kissed by Eva.
A retired merchant holidaying in Venice, James had allowed for no expenses to be spared. Their suites at Belleview@Canoletta Suites overlooked St Mark’s Square. The suite on the highest level, the fifth floor, had a sauna and the other, one level below, had a jacuzzi and a huge balcony that Eva and her sister practised their royal wave to the ordinary people down below.
James generously made himself responsible for all expenses during their three-week Italian holiday, including that for the old man and his Mrs. The exact opposite character of Shylock in the Merchant of Venice, there was no demand for a “pound of flesh” nor was there any requirement exacted on the old man to pay for taxi fares or gratuities for the tour guides. Flights were on business class and train rides were either in club or executive coaches and boat rides were private.
“Exacto! Please let me pay for everything-ah,” he insisted, adopting the accent of their Italian tour guide.
“Perfecto! Let me look after the bill,” he told the barman.
“Free Prosecco for you and your friends today,” the barman replied.
The old man wondered if Shakespeare was describing the antisemitism sentiments of Antonio, the Venetian merchant, against Shylock the Jew in the late 16th century in The Merchant of Venice. Sadly today, the Zionist state of Israel is invoking the claim of antisemitism on anyone who is voicing their opposition to the genocide happening in Gaza. Islamophobia, Russophobia or Sinophobia does not have much impact on the public’s abhorrence of unfair treatment to the people concerned but somehow a claim of antisemitism is politically powerful to the claimant and damaging to the accused.
“Senile is the root word for senators,” the tour guide said. Venice was a maritime powerhouse for about four hundred years up to the 14th century. The seat of power laid in Venice before the Renaissance. The senators were not elected by the people but appointed by those in power. They were old men who didn’t have much time left on earth and therefore did not need to be elected for multiple terms. Perhaps the American system of electing a senile Joe Biden would not be so strange to a Venetian today.
James almost disembarked at the wrong train station on the mainland instead of Venice Santa Lucia. It would have been another debacle just like the one in Como where the old man’s Mrs had her nightmarish incident of being the only one stranded on the wrong train station. Eva didn’t ever raise her voice at James who seemed foggy with Covid. She merely placed her hand on his lap to tell him to remain seated. But, he wasn’t as fogged up as the old man who hailed a car marked ‘carabinieri’ to stop in Napoli.
“It’s not a cab,” James shouted.
James left Venice a day earlier than the others. He had a mission to attend to, somewhere in Asia. The old man sighed with relief upon the news. Now he could go back to his regime of intermittent fasting and restricted calorie control. When James was around, he made sure they ate well, too well. His taste buds went haywire from Covid in Naples and Florence. Suddenly, he had an affinity for McDonald’s and Chinese food. But the Chinese were mainly from Wenzhou. Their dishes weren’t to his liking either. Everything was either too salty or too bland. The virus transformed him into a Goldilocks.
The old man particularly liked to try the local favourites wherever they went. In Bologna, they tried Bolognese lasagne. In Venice, they went for spaghetti in squid ink and pasta vongole. But it wasn’t yet time for the dolce! Si, no desserts until the secondi is polished off with bread. One lobster? No, make it two. T-bone steak must be ordered by the kilogram. After that, it’s dolce time. Eva did not deviate from panna cotta everywhere she dined. The panna cotta was simply perfecto for her. Eva turned out to be a Goldilocks too, but the virus was not responsible for that. She loved her sweets but not too sweet and not too rich, not too cold and not too hot.
“The limoncello is on the house, sir.” the waiter said to James, who was so pleased with the service. It was to cost him a great deal more, so impressed was he with the ristorante. He tipped them more than the limoncello would have cost him. Much more! But, James had the style and class of a Bond.
But, the old man wasn’t at all surprised. He half expected a freebie everywhere he went, such lofty expectations he had. In Rome, they were offered free Prosecco, by the man outside the restaurant whose job was to encourage passers-by to go in. Rome. Ancient, noisy, crowded, chaotic. The travellers had their first traffic accident in Italy as they approached Rome from the airport. One man decided to walk straight into the side door of the Mercedes van they were in as the taxi crossed a major intersection. The man remarkably dusted himself as he picked himself up from the road, grabbed his smashed glasses, and limped to the window of the car to apologise to the old man. Hand signals conveyed clearly what words couldn’t.
They say all roads lead to Rome but no one told the old man all roads to Rome were jammed with tourists and traffic and peppered with eardrum-breaking screeching a from wailing ambulances and loud unending sirens from the polizia escorts that flanked fleets of black limousines rushing everywhere and going nowhere it seemed.
“Alora!” Magdalena greeted them in Roma with her favourite sentence opener. She was the one who taught the old man how to tell if a marble statue was drunk. From Roman times to the Renaissance and from Mannerism to Gothic, smiling statues depicted people imbued with wine.
“Was Mona Lisa drunk too?” The old man asked Magdalena.
Urghhlings 