Sisterchicks in Gondolas! (10 page)

P
icking up the pace,
Sue confidently led the way through the alleys and over the bridges. She successfully brought us back to our palace where the men were now all awake and gathered in the sitting room for morning devotions.

The late-night arriver to the group, Malachi, was standing by the wall tapestry, reading from the Psalms. His deep voice boomed through the air. “From the end of the earth I will cry to You.… For You have been a shelter for me, a strong tower from the enemy.… I will trust in the shelter of Your wings.”

Sue and I slipped around the back way to the kitchen. We set to work, trying to figure out the percolator coffeepot. Eventually we placed it on the stove over a medium flame, and soon the rich Italian-roast fragrance filled the air.

Malachi’s echoing words continued in rich, amber
tones. The cadence of his speech made it sound as if he were chanting the verses with a tribal sense of untamed authority. “The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside.… As for me, I will call upon God, and the LORD shall save me. Evening and morning and at noon I will pray, and cry aloud, and He shall hear my voice.… O God, You are my God; early will I seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You.… I will praise You, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing to You among the nations. For Your mercy reaches unto the heavens, and Your truth unto the clouds. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; let Your glory be above all the earth.”

Sue and I both stopped our breakfast preparations and stood in reverence, not daring to make a sound while Malachi read. Never had I heard anyone read God’s Word as if he believed every syllable. Without seeing Malachi’s face, I still could sense that this man depended on the truth of every word as much as he depended on air, food, and water to sustain him.

Malachi ended with a crescendo of praise as he read, “Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise You. Thus I will bless You while I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips.… For You are my hope, O Lord GOD; You
are my trust from my youth.… Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart fail; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Forever and ever, amen and amen!”

“Amen,” I responded in a soft voice.

The peace that surrounded us and filled up my senses at that moment was a peace so thick I felt that I could slice into it, chew it, and swallow it slowly.

Sue smiled at me. Her eyebrows were raised as she formed the word, “Wow.”

I smiled back and nodded. “Yeah, wow,” I whispered. “I didn’t want him to stop.”

“I know. But we need to get the rest of the food ready. Is there any jam or butter for the rolls?”

I opened the refrigerator. To my surprise, a dozen brown eggs in a bowl had appeared since last night.

Motioning for Sue to come see, I whispered, “Did you know about these?”

“No. Where did they come from?”

“I don’t know. Do you think they were there before but we just didn’t see them?”

“No, I would have remembered eggs. I’m very sure they weren’t there.”

I picked up one of them and shook it.

“What are you doing?” Sue whispered.

“It’s hard-boiled. Let’s serve these. Did you see those
fancy eggcups in the china cabinet? The painted glass ones? We could use those and serve the eggs with the rolls.”

“Okay. Have you seen the salt and pepper?”

“Over there, on the shelf above the stove.”

The fragrance of the percolating coffee filled the air, and the most wonderful sound filled the palace. The men were singing.

Sue paused to listen and then softly sang the old hymn along with them. I drew my shoulders back, hummed along, and placed the rolls for the continental feast on the dining room table. As I was filling the cups with coffee, the men entered and took their places.

Sue and I retreated to the kitchen and broke bread together. We ate in silence, each examining what the bread stood for in the full light that shone in our hearts.

The coffee was the best I ever had drunk. Sue said the same thing. She said the reason it tasted so good was because a stranger had given it as a gift.

“Hmmm,” I said.

“Hmmm, what?”

“Showing love to a stranger. That’s the definition of hospitality.”

“It’s humbling,” Sue added a few minutes later.

“Humbling and beautiful,” I said.

Sam entered the kitchen with an empty coffee cup in his hand. “Any chance we might have some more coffee? It’s very good.”

Sue and I smiled at each other and went to work, making more coffee and serving the men. On our side of this equation, it was a humbling and beautiful thing to show love to the strangers gathered around the table in the next room.

I carried the coffeepot into the dining room and filled the empty cups.

“Lovely breakfast,” one of the men said as I poured the coffee for him. “Particularly the eggs.”

“The eggs were a gift,” I said. I noticed that Malachi lowered his eyes, as if trying to keep a secret.

When he came into the kitchen a short time later with several plates in each hand, I introduced myself and said, “Thank you for the eggs.”

He looked surprised at my comment. I wondered if I had misjudged the situation. He lowered his eyes. “My wife was not favorable to my bringing the whole chicken.”

I laughed. Malachi looked surprised again, as if what he had said wasn’t meant to be humorous. I quickly sobered my expression and my spirit, realizing that Malachi probably had little to give. The eggs may have represented a great gift; he might have given the group the equivalent of a day’s worth of food for his family in Kenya.

In an effort to cover at least some of my missteps, I said, “Please tell your wife we appreciate the sacrifice of the eggs.”

Malachi looked at me as if I still hadn’t grasped the situation. “The eggs were not a sacrifice. They were an offering. The chicken—now the chicken would have been a sacrifice.”

His deep voice and unique use of English were fascinating.

“Well, then thank you for the offering,” I whispered.

Malachi bowed to me honorably and left the kitchen.

In a sweet-to-the-spirit sort of way I felt as if I’d been in the presence of greatness.

Within an hour the men were in the midst of their strategy meeting, and Sue and I were back out the door on our way to the market. The morning was warming up, and the streets were filling with pedestrians.

Along the canal floated a sight that made Sue and me stop on the bridge and watch. A young man was paddling along in a raft. The two-person, blue-and-yellow raft held the man and two boxes of what looked like office supplies. He paddled up to a building across the canal from our palace and rapped his paddle on a small, low window about three feet above the water level.

The window opened, and another man reached out and received one of the two boxes. The deliveryman in the raft held up a clipboard for the man to sign a paper. The two exchanged friendly sounding words, and the deliveryman went on his way down the canal.

Neither of us commented on what we had just witnessed.
The scene made complete sense. It was like the first time I saw a young man in a movie deliver a parcel in downtown San Francisco by riding his bicycle into an office building.

With a growing sense of comfort in our surroundings, Sue and I walked back to the panetteria first and returned the silver bowl with smiles and many mixed “grazies.” Sue was the one who suggested we buy several loaves of the fresh-from-the-oven
ciabatta
bread to accompany the main meal. It smelled so good I wanted to tear into it before we left the bakery. Again the bread was wrapped in brown butcher paper, and we carried it across the way to the grocery store.

As soon as we entered the
mercato
, I felt strangely at home. The grocery store I worked in was two or maybe three times the size of this store, but the layout was similar. Checkout stands by the front door, produce on the right side. Using handheld baskets instead of wheeled carts, shoppers easily navigated the narrow aisles. Sue and I effortlessly figured out the basics like eggs, butter, milk, cheese, chicken, and of course, coffee.

But Sue had a short list with several items that I argued we didn’t need. She insisted she had plans for them and picked up fresh garlic cloves, a bunch of fresh basil, a small block of Parmesan cheese, whipping cream in a small bottle, and more olive oil.

While standing in the checkout line, we realized we
were facing a small challenge. We hadn’t brought our own shopping bags like the locals had. Apparently when one shops in Venice, one brings her own bags. Now I understood why the store didn’t provide large, wheeled carts for shoppers to fill. Everything that was purchased had to be carried home.

Improvising, Sue and I loaded our shoulder bags with the items. What we couldn’t fit in our purses, we loaded in our arms.

A young woman, observing our balancing act, pointed to a peg at the front of the store from which hung netted bags. They looked like colorful macramé beach bags. We soon found that the netting weave allowed the bag to expand and to hold various-shaped items. We gladly bought four of the bags and filled them with our groceries. It was the only time during our stay in Venice that we arrived at a market without those indispensable bags.

“Are you willing to have a little adventure?” Sue asked as we exited the store.

“That depends. Does it involve carrying these groceries very far?”

“Not much farther. I want to try another route home. I think the next street over takes us straight home, but we’ll see a different street.”

“Okay,” I said. “You’re the navigator. Go ahead. Impress me with your sense of direction.”

Sue led the way. We passed a shoe store and a TV
repair shop and then came to a shaded corner where a bar occupied one side of the street. Directly across from the bar was an open-air fruit stand displaying a beautiful array of summer fruits under a dark blue canopy.

We walked up and admired the variety and freshness of the fruit.

“Look,” Sue said. “Apricots. Your favorite. Let’s get some. We could fit a few into these grocery bags, don’t you think?”

“Sure. They look so good. And look at these tomatoes.”

The older man behind the stand seemed to sense my admiration for the fruits and vegetables. He picked up one of the regally purple eggplants and polished it with a cloth, glancing up at me in a flirtatious way to see if I noticed the extra care he gave to his produce.

“Jenna, I think we should load up with all we can manage to fit in our bags, don’t you? We have room.”

“Four zucchini, please,” I said, easily catching the man’s attention by holding up my thumb and three fingers. It seemed like a good idea to start with the item that had the same name in English as it did in Italian.

“Quattro
zucchini,” he repeated briskly, ready to assist me.

“Si.”

Sue pointed to the nectarines. “Could you ask him for five of these?”

I gave her a funny look. “You can ask him as easily as I can.”

“He’ll understand you better.” She gave me a pitiful look that seemed to say, “Please don’t make me drawl in public again.”

Turning to the merchant of Venice, I held up five fingers and pointed to the nectarines with a big smile. He said something in Italian and placed the nectarines on the scale.

“See, Sue? I didn’t say a word, and he understood. You could have done that.”

“Uh, I think maybe you should have used some words. He’s up to nectarine eight and counting.”

“No.” I briskly moved my hand back and forth and held up five fingers. “Only five. No more. Only five.”

“Si,
cinque chilli.”

“Kee-lay?”
Sue repeated.

“Are you saying ‘kilos’?” I asked. “No, not kilos. Just five nectarines. How do you say ‘only’?”

“Don’t ask me,” Sue said.

“Solo?” I questioned the merchant, taking a stab at the word for ‘only.’ “Solo five nectarines. Solo cinque …”

“Solo?” he repeated, appearing amused.

In what I’m guessing was her idea of on-the-spot assistance, Sue sang, “O
solo
mio!”

The produce merchant burst into laughter.
“Gondolier!”
he called out to the other man in the booth, pointing at Sue.

“No, she’s not trying to imitate a gondola driver,” I said. “We want only five nectarines, okay?”

Now both of them were talking to us and about us, I’m sure. They were grinning and elbowing each other as they watched us wilting under the intense Italian dialogue. The older one tilted his head back and imitated Sue, singing, “O
solo mio.”
He actually was pretty good.

The younger man leaned over as the concert continued and said something to me that included the phrase, “cinque chilli.”

“Fine,” I said, giving up. “Si. Cinque chilli.”

He looked proud of himself, as if he had solved the language problem between all men and women and every warring nation since the beginning of time. Nothing is as mesmerizing as the face of a proud Venetian. Sue and I watched as he jubilantly weighed out five blessed kilos of ripe nectarines while his pal sang.

I didn’t dare try to add apricots to our order.