"Kim Stanley Robinson - Venice Drowned (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

"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