Appointment in Venice [antikvár]

: T''' he images in tliis book are those of a dream I had three months after the death of my father. The setting was Venice, a city I had visited twice— many years apart—once in the summer and once in the fall. The sum-H mer visit, a long time ago, impressed me deeply, but it appeared to me I as a city full of transients, people on the way to somewhere else. I was ^^^^ struck by a sense of carnival and decided to come back at a more sober time, perhaps in the fall or winter. Years later I fulfilled that promise and returned to Venice in October. It was a melancholy time of life for me and this extraordinary city suited my temperament at that moment. I had a chance to savor it alone, without the interference of summer crowds. It rained most of the time, and this fog-enveloped place had a mesmerizing effect. I would wake up by five a.m. and start exploring an hour later. The city was still asleep except for a few street sweepers at St. Mark's Place. I could barely see their moving silhouettes emerging from the morning mist. By seven o'clock the city was beginning to come to life, the fog began to lift, and the spell was broken. The hour between six and seven a.m. was hypnotic—it was not of this world, and it belonged to me, powerful and soundless, forever burned into my subconscious. Now, years later, these haunting moments emerged in the form of a dream. The locale was Venice; the time, that magic time in the fall. The dream emerging from the Venice fog, appearing and disappearing like the fog, was a full scenario in the same