I’M SORRY FOR your loss. The words echo so vividly in Jessica’s mind, it almost feels like she said them out loud. She passes the kneeling olive-skinned figure whose grief-stricken gaze is glued to a name etched in the white stone. The man lowers his head, sobbing quietly, and rubs his tear-dampened eyes with the heel of this thumb. A tattooed neck is visible under the black ponytail, and the loose collar of his T-shirt reveals muscular sun-bronzed shoulders. Then his gaze returns from his knees to the words on the stone, and his fingertips touch the flower-decorated door behind which the deceased rests, now ash. Jessica noticed the man from a distance as she meandered down the paved path between the urn vaults, but only now, as she approaches him, does she see how handsome he is.
I’m sorry. The words catch in her throat again, and Jessica steps past the man without him noticing her, let alone turning to look at her. Jessica quickly glances over her shoulder and is relieved she ignored the impulse to stick her nose where it doesn’t belong. It would have been inappropriate. And yet she finds herself yearning for something. The man’s eyes. As refined and beautiful as the man’s profile had been, she did not see his eyes. They must be brown and mournful.
The air is hot, oppressively so; Jessica can feel the electricity in it, a moist touch on her skin. The black clouds looming in the distance portend a thunderstorm. Twenty minutes earlier, Jessica had leaned against the railing of the vaporetto, gazed out at the inky horizon, and reflected that the rain made the city of a hundred islands even cozier.
Jessica’s trip from Murano to the historical center of Venice was interrupted when the vaporetto stopped at San Michele. On a whim, she stepped off the boat and onto the dock of the cemetery island sheltered by a brick wall and cypresses.
Now Jessica is walking unhurriedly between the massive tombs, marveling at all she sees. At San Michele, the dead rest on top of one another in aboveground catacombs reaching up as many as nine stories, just like the residents of concrete apartment buildings. The overall effect is stunning: almost every vault is adorned with bouquets of flowers and photographs of the dead embedded in the stone. In many of the pictures, the faces are stern; the black-and-white shots in particular emanate severity, but there are plenty of smiling faces as well. Occasionally a corny, forced shot has been chosen for the grave, making for a final resting place that’s vaguely embarrassing, even sad. But loved ones presumably choose a picture in memory of the deceased that shows them the way they want their kin to be remembered. Maybe some people simply don’t have enough photographs to choose from.
The first rumble of thunder bursts and Jessica feels a warm breeze on her face. She climbs a few stairs to a sand path running past a semicircular row of tombs and gazes at the trees rising amid it, their leaves dancing in the gusts of wind. Jessica loves the cypresses and the pines and especially the palms reaching heavenward; they remind her of her father, mother, and little brother. The sand crunches under her sneakers, but when Jessica stops, perfect silence falls over the little plaza. Even the dove that was cooing a moment ago, somewhere hidden from view, has fallen silent.
Jessica remembers the signs at the cemetery entrance: Vietato fotografare, bere e mangiare. She glances around, but there’s not a soul in sight. She would wait to eat the snacks she packed in her shoulder bag in the vaporetto to Venice, but she wants to record some personal memento of this one-of-a-kind island. She raises the camera hanging around her neck and snaps a few pictures of the charming clearing and the vaults surrounding it. Then she lowers the camera and lets it dangle from its strap, slowly circles the curving building, and carefully peers into the open mausoleums. Everything is tasteful and well tended, graced with time’s beautiful patina.
Jessica steps into a doorway and her gaze strikes upon a female figure, life-sized, a crown of thorns visible under the hands clasped to her breast. The figure has trained her wistful gaze down and to the side, as if pondering a difficult question; there’s something compelling about the ghostly eyes. Jessica is burning with desire to step into the chamber, to touch the Virgin Mary’s cheek and feel the contrast between warm thought and cold reality. She enters warily, registering that the air inside the thick stone walls is cooler than it is outside. Jessica pulls her thin jacket more tightly around her and approaches the wall of white marble where the names of the dead have been carved in gilded lettering. Some of the dates of death are recent, while for others no date has been marked. People have reserved places next to their loved ones. The thought feels simultaneously beautiful and macabre.
Jessica extends a hand and lets her fingertips lower to the knuckles of the statue, carefully so her painted fingernails don’t accidentally scrape the holy woman’s paper white skin. For a fleeting moment, she feels some sort of sense of belonging, as if two totally different worlds and times have come together, the sort of comfort only shared sorrow can provide. Now Jessica wraps her fingers around the statue’s, and the marble fingers do not feel cold; they are exactly what she has been longing for. The support they offer is frank and unadorned. The intimate moment with Mary is like a drug; it punches full force into her consciousness, its rush like the lightning of the storm rolling in the distance. No one can understand what it feels like. No one can comfort her. Everything is here and now.
Jessica lets out a deep sigh, gradually releases her grip on Mary’s fingers, and runs the back of her hand across the smooth cheek. Thank you. And forgive me for intruding.
At that moment, Jessica hears an ominous blaring from outside. She hurries out but doesn’t see anyone. Then she hears an angry, shuddering voice speaking Italian. Jessica tries to understand where it’s coming from. Then she realizes: the cemetery speakers. There’s something spine-chilling about the message echoing from them; it reminds Jessica of World War II movies, soldiers marching in formation, hands raised in the Nazi salute. Jessica glances around in a panic; maybe she has broken the rules by entering the tomb. But after listening she understands that the message blasting from the speakers is a recording: the cemetery is closing. The next vaporetto must be the last one.