Excerpt: 'City of Falling Angels' by John Berendt

Sept. 28, 2005 — -- In his first book, "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," John Berendt brought readers into the beauty and eccentricities of Savannah, Ga. Eleven years after that book hit The New York Times best-seller list, Berendt delves into the complicated world of Venice, Italy.

"The City of Falling Angels" begins with Berendt's investigation into the fire that destroyed Venice's famed opera house, the Fenice. By the time the Fenice is rebuilt and reopened, Berendt has created an intricate picture of modern Venice.

You can read an excerpt from "The City of Falling Angels" below.

The air still smelled of charcoal when I arrived inVenice three days after the fire. As it happened, the timing ofmy visit was purely coincidental. I had made plans, months before,to come to Venice for a few weeks in the off-season in order to enjoythe city without the crush of other tourists.

"If there had been a wind Monday night," the water-taxi drivertold me as we came across the lagoon from the airport, "therewouldn't be a Venice to come to."

"How did it happen?" I asked.

The taxi driver shrugged. "How do all these things happen?"

It was early February, in the middle of the peaceful lull that settlesover Venice every year between New Year's Day and Carnival.

The tourists had gone, and in their absence the Venice they inhabitedhad all but closed down. Hotel lobbies and souvenir shops stoodvirtually empty. Gondolas lay tethered to poles and covered in bluetarpaulin. Unbought copies of the International Herald Tribune remainedon newsstand racks all day, and pigeons abandoned sparsepickings in St. Mark's Square to scavenge for crumbs in other partsof the city.

Meanwhile the other Venice, the one inhabited by Venetians, wasas busy as ever--the neighborhood shops, the vegetable stands, thefish markets, the wine bars. For these few weeks, Venetians couldstride through their city without having to squeeze past dense clustersof slow-moving tourists. The city breathed, its pulse quickened.Venetians had Venice all to themselves.

But the atmosphere was subdued. People spoke in hushed, dazedtones of the sort one hears when there has been a sudden death in thefamily. The subject was on everyone's lips. Within days I had heardabout it in such detail I felt as if I had been there myself.

It happened on Monday evening, January 29, 1996.

Shortly before nine o'clock, Archimede Seguso sat down at thedinner table and unfolded his napkin. Before joining him, his wifewent into the living room to lower the curtains, which was her longstandingevening ritual. Signora Seguso knew very well that no onecould see in through the windows, but it was her way of enfoldingher family in a domestic embrace. The Segusos lived on the thirdfloor of Ca' Capello, a sixteenth-century house in the heart ofVenice. A narrow canal wrapped around two sides of the buildingbefore flowing into the Grand Canal a short distance away.Signor Seguso waited patiently at the table. He was eightysix--tall, thin, his posture still erect. A fringe of wispy white hair andflaring eyebrows gave him the look of a kindly sorcerer, full of wonderand surprise. He had an animated face and sparkling eyes thatcaptivated everyone who met him. If you happened to be in his presencefor any length of time, however, your eye would eventually bedrawn to his hands.

They were large, muscular hands, the hands of an artisan whosework demanded physical strength. For seventy-five years, SignorSeguso had stood in front of a blazing-hot glassworks furnace--ten, twelve, eighteen hours a day--holding a heavy steel pipe in hishands, turning it to prevent the dollop of molten glass at the otherend from drooping to one side or the other, pausing to blow into itto inflate the glass, then laying it across his workbench, still turningit with his left hand while, with a pair of tongs in his right hand,pulling, pinching, and coaxing the glass into the shape of gracefulvases, bowls, and goblets.

After all those years of turning the steel pipe hour after hour,Signor Seguso's left hand had molded itself around the pipe until itbecame permanently cupped, as if the pipe were always in it. Hiscupped hand was the proud mark of his craft, and this was why theartist who painted his portrait some years ago had taken particularcare to show the curve in his left hand.

Men in the Seguso family had been glassmakers since the fourteenthcentury. Archimede was the twenty-first generation and oneof the greatest of them all. He could sculpt heavy pieces out of solidglass and blow vases so thin and fragile they could barely be touched.He was the first glassmaker ever to see his work honored with an exhibitionin the Doge 's Palace in St. Mark's Square. Tiffany sold hispieces in its Fifth Avenue store.

Archimede Seguso had been making glass since the age ofeleven, and by the time he was twenty, he had earned the nickname"Mago del Fuoco" (Wizard of Fire). He no longer had the staminato stand in front of a hot and howling furnace eighteen hours a day,but he worked every day nonetheless, and with undiminished pleasure.On this particular day, in fact, he had risen at his usual hour of4:30 A.M., convinced as always that the pieces he was about to makewould be more beautiful than any he had ever made before.

In the living room, Signora Seguso paused to look out the windowbefore lowering the curtain. She noticed that the air had becomehazy, and she mused aloud that a winter fog had set in. Inresponse, Signor Seguso remarked from the other room that it musthave come in very quickly, because he had seen the quarter moon ina clear sky only a few minutes before.

The living room window looked across a small canal at the backof the Fenice Opera House, thirty feet away. Rising above it in thedistance, some one hundred yards away, the theater's grand entrancewing appeared to be shrouded in mist. Just as she started to lower thecurtain, Signora Seguso saw a flash. She thought it was lightning.Then she saw another flash, and this time she knew it was fire.

"Papa!" she cried out. "The Fenice is on fire!"

Signor Seguso came quickly to the window. More flames flickeredat the front of the theater, illuminating what Signora Seguso hadthought was mist but had in fact been smoke. She rushed to the telephoneand dialed 115 for the fire brigade. Signor Seguso went intohis bedroom and stood at the corner window, which was even closerto the Fenice than the living room window.

Between the fire and the Segusos' house lay a jumble of buildingsthat constituted the Fenice. The part on fire was farthest away,the chaste neoclassical entrance wing with its formal receptionrooms, known collectively as the Apollonian rooms. Then came themain body of the theater with its elaborately rococo auditorium, andfinally the vast backstage area. Flaring out from both sides of the auditoriumand the backstage were clusters of smaller, interconnected buildings like the one that housed the scenery workshop immediatelyacross the narrow canal from Signor Seguso.

Signora Seguso could not get through to the fire brigade, so shedialed 112 for the police.

The enormity of what was happening outside his windowstunned Signor Seguso. The Gran Teatro La Fenice was one of thesplendors of Venice; it was arguably the most beautiful opera housein the world, and one of the most significant. The Fenice had commissioneddozens of operas that had premiered on its stage--Verdi'sLa Traviata and Rigoletto, Igor Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress,Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw. For two hundred years, audienceshad delighted in the sumptuous clarity of the Fenice 'sacoustics, the magnificence of its five tiers of gilt-encrusted boxes,and the baroque fantasy of it all. Signor and Signora Seguso had alwaystaken a box for the season, and over the years they had beengiven increasingly desirable locations until they finally found themselvesnext to the royal box.

Signora Seguso had no luck getting through to the police either,and now she was becoming frantic. She called upstairs to the apartmentwhere her son Gino lived with his wife and their son, Antonio.Gino was still out at the Seguso glass factory in Murano. Antonio wasvisiting a friend near the Rialto.

Signor Seguso stood silently at his bedroom window, watchingas the flames raced across the entire top floor of the entrance wing.He knew that, for all its storied loveliness, the Fenice was at this momentan enormous pile of exquisite kindling. Inside a thick shell ofIstrian stone lined with brick, the structure was made entirely ofwood--wooden beams, wooden floors, wooden walls--richly embellishedwith wood carvings, sculpted stucco, and papier-mâché, allof it covered with layer upon layer of lacquer and gilt. Signor Segusowas aware, too, that the scenery workshop just across the canalfrom his house was stocked with solvents and, most worrisome of all,cylinders of propane gas that were used for welding and soldering.Signora Seguso came back into the room to say she had finallyspoken with the police.

"They already knew about the fire," she said. "They told me weshould leave the house at once." She looked over her husband'sshoulder and stifled a scream; the flames had moved closer in theshort time she had been away from the window. They were now advancingthrough the four smaller reception halls toward the mainbody of the theater, in their direction.

Archimede Seguso stared into the fire with an appraising eye. Heopened the window, and a gust of bitter-cold air rushed in. The windwas blowing to the southwest. The Segusos were due west of the theater,however, and Signor Seguso calculated that if the wind did notchange direction or pick up strength, the fire would advance towardthe other side of the Fenice rather than in their direction.

"Now, Nandina," he said softly, "stay calm. We 're not in anydanger."

The Segusos' house was only one of many buildings close to theFenice. Except for Campo San Fantin, a small plaza at the front of thetheater, the Fenice was hemmed in by old and equally flammablebuildings, many of them attached to it or separated from it by onlyfour or five feet. This was not at all unusual in Venice, where buildingspace had always been at a premium. Seen from above, Veniceresembled a jigsaw puzzle of terra-cotta rooftops. Passages betweensome of the buildings were so narrow one could not walk throughthem with an open umbrella. It had become a specialty of Venetianburglars to escape from the scene of a crime by leaping from roof toroof. If the fire in the Fenice were able to make the same sort ofleap, it would almost certainly destroy a sizable swath of Venice.The Fenice itself was dark. It had been closed five months forrenovations and was due to reopen in a month. The canal along itsrear façade was also closed -- empty -- having been sealed off anddrained so work crews could dredge the silt and sludge from it andrepair its walls for the first time in forty years. The canal betweenthe Segusos' building and the back of the Fenice was now a deep,muddy gulch with a tangle of exposed pipes and a few pieces ofheavy machinery sitting in puddles at the bottom. The empty canalwould make it impossible for fireboats to reach the Fenice, and,worse than that, it would deprive them of a source of water. Venetianfiremen depended on water pumped directly from the canals toput out fires. The city had no system of fire hydrants.

THE FENICE WAS NOW RINGED BY A TUMULT OF SHOUTSand running footsteps. Tenants, routed from their houses by the police,crossed paths with patrons coming out of the Ristorante AnticoMartini. A dozen bewildered guests rolled suitcases out of the HotelLa Fenice, asking directions to the Hotel Saturnia, where they hadbeen told to go. Into their midst, a wild-eyed woman wearing onlya nightgown came stumbling from her house into Campo San Fantinscreaming hysterically. She threw herself to the ground in frontof the theater, flailing her arms and rolling on the pavement. Severalwaiters came out of the Antico Martini and led her inside.Two fireboats managed to navigate to a water-filled canal a shortdistance from the Fenice. Their hoses were not long enough to reacharound the intervening buildings, however, so the firemen draggedthem through the kitchen window at the back of the Antico Martiniand out through the dining room into Campo San Fantin. Theyaimed their nozzles at flames burning furiously in a top-floor windowof the theater, but the water pressure was too low. The arc ofwater barely reached the windowsill. The fire went on leaping andtaunting and sucking up great turbulent currents of air that set theflames snapping like brilliant red sails in a violent wind.Several policemen struggled with the massive front door of theFenice, but to no avail. One of them drew his pistol and fired threeshots at the lock. The door opened. Two firemen rushed in and disappearedinto a dense white wall of smoke. Moments later they camerunning out. "It's too late," said one. "It's burning like straw."