Young Writers Society

San Michele was one place where I knew I could be alone early in the morning as all of the people, living and dead, were still asleep in the tombs they had hid themselves in the night before. Many would tell me to stay far from San Michele at night because the dead enjoyed dancing and dipping their feet in the water when no one could see them fall apart. This is why, now that I look back on it, no one spit in the canals that surrounded San Michele. It could have been respect or fear that kept them from it, though I, being French, could not understand either of these emotions.

San Michele was beautiful in the early morning, as many people reassured me after I returned and informed them of my activities. One woman, my landlady, told me how the sun burnt the soil and warmed her husband’s feet from where he lay, six feet underground.

“His eyes, when touched by sunlight, were marvelous. Not many people possess eyes that turn from silver to gold as the earth turns,” she continued telling me, crying a little bit and handing me an Italian poppy from the flowerbox that hung over the balcony of the apartment that a young writer owned. It was red and I thought of blood, although that was probably the wrong idea.

“Take this to him for me when you go again, I can’t make the journey anymore,” she said as the turned to enter the apartment building, dragging a straw broom and a full bucket of water behind her with her rough and calloused hands. I was told that they were the same that had covered the mouth of a Jewish girl who watched her mother shot into a canal almost 70 years ago. I examined the poppy wondering what kind of strength it took to travel to San Michele.

The next day I chose to walk to San Michele, passing by the Gondolier who I had turned down the day before as well. He raised his eyebrow at me as I walked by but I shrugged and held the poppy aloft.

“Going the Isle of the Dead again are you? Well I’m glad you’re walking again, I’m tired of going there, it makes me feel like Charon, you know?” He yelled out, winking at me. I didn’t understand what he meant and so I left him standing in his boat. I regretted my decision almost instantly, missing the company of a living person as I entered the cemetery.

I looked around for the name of the man who was to receive the poppy.

“I made his bed in the plot that is half covered by a weeping willow. Such an unhappy tree should never be left completely alone with such an unhappy man,” my landlady had explained. She wrung her hands at the thought, revealing chipped fingernails that reminded me of chipped teacups. They must have belonged to beautiful hands once.

It took me awhile to find the right stone. The light of the morning decomposed everything and left the barest of colors for me to find my way by. The only two shades I could see where the brightest of lights and the darkest of darks, which were cast as a result of the first. I was so confused that I ran into someone as I walked towards a shape that looked like giant crying woman with a breaking back, which I assumed was the tree. The someone caught me as I fell and when I collected myself, I found that I was more disoriented than before.

“How lucky for me to stumble upon you, I believe that is my flower?” the person said in broken French that made me question the clarity of my own tongue.

“Are you Rinaldo di’Angelo? This is his,” I told the person, whose voice I couldn’t distinguish as dominantly male or female.

“Rinaldo di’Angelo. That is a beautiful name. Perhaps I’ll collect it with the others.” The person guided me to the shade cast by the willow, and as the sun removed itself from my eyes, I found that I could see. The speaker was a thin, hollow looking man whose large brown eyes smiled for his mouth that evidently could not.

“You’re the writer who lives in the apartment with the flowers.” I met his eyes and separated myself from his arm which no longer had to support me. I offered him the poppy which he turned down, indicating for me to place it on the grave that was indeed Rinaldo di’Angelo’s.

“I’m collecting names,” he started suddenly, when we realized we were standing in silence. “I use them for my stories or my poems. Every name I see or hear goes in this notebook.” He patted his breast pocket briskly and revealing that it contained a small leather bound book and a ballpoint pen. “First, middle, last…it doesn’t matter. As long as it sounds right, I collect it.”

“Do you use all of them?” I asked, my curiosity mounting when he pulled the notebook out of his pocket and flipped to one of the last pages in order to write down Rinaldo’s name.

“Only the ones that mean something to me.”

“Then it is the meaning you remember, the name is irrelevant,” I replied, if only to test the strength of his beliefs.

“I suppose,” he answered, to my surprise. He offered me a small smile, shut his notebook, and stared intently at the name on the gravestone in front of him.

We parted ways at San Michele, and, like always, it was rare that I saw him outside of his apartment. When my days in Venice came to an end and I moved back to Bordeaux, I thought nothing of him. However, an excerpt from an Italian novel that I read by an unnamed author made me remember him and my time in Venice. It was about San Michele and the people who would visit its shores.

I couldn’t remember her name. Only that she never smiled or thought of beautiful things. She walked to the Isle of the Dead herself, instead of letting herself be taken there. Some days she would lie down next to a grave as if she were lying next to someone in bed. She made me forget about names, even my own.

~ Isle of the Dead, Unknown