The above is the title of a genius old film, but its suggestions are misleading. The gondolas of Venice are black, it’s true. Because it’s the color of elegance and luxury of all ceremonies held in medieval Venice state.
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The real ships of death, in which all Venetians are making their last trip across the Laguna today are bright blue, and are half open motorboats.
More often than not they start their journey at the jetty in front of the city-hospital right across – with a wreath on top of the coffin, and it ends at the famous cemetery island San Michele. Surrounded by high cypress-trees and the brick wall from neo-gothic ages, you could call this one of the most suggestive and eerie places of this world. But, only those registered in old Venice or one of the Laguna islands – or those who die there, is entitled to a grave in San Michele.
Speaking with the director you hear his greatest worry: when the coffins are opened after 20 years or so, the soulless bodies are in a surprisingly good condition still. That’s why they have to be brought to the bathing island Lido in an aerated coffin and put into an "anonymous" grave there and left to really decompose properly, before they can return into their grave on San Michele. Some scientists have gone into these phenomena as to why decomposition is practically not happening on San Michele and put it down to its special air quality. The director, however, holds the opinion it’s due to modern hygiene and the sealed coffins in which the bodies are brought here. In old times, the bodies were laid out at home, mostly in warm weather, for a couple of days, and the flies were all over, and so opened the circle of decomposition.
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San Michele is indeed an interesting – if eerie place to travel to and one of the secrets of a Venice trip never to be forgotten, even if you go there on your honeymoon. You’ll find the grave of such prominent people like Igor Stravinsky and his wife Vera in the orthodox section, and not far from there you ll stumble upon that of the dancing genius Serge Diaghilev, and on top of his grave there are always some little pink ballet-shoes in different stages of decomposition.
I’m not just after the graves of prominence, like those of the composer family Wolf-Ferrari or the widow of the Greek king – Aspasia, but rather more interested in the neglected graves of more anonymous people, forgotten by the world. Like that of the American Alice Harriet Hare- it’s bible text hewn into the stone half sunken into the earth, or the moss-covered stone of the Russian Countess Trubetzkoy, ne (born) Puschkin. All of them have lived in Venice and found a light death there? There remains the question, how Brodsky or Stravinsky have made it to San Michele although they have never lived in Venice nor have died there? The director, master over all the dead in Venice says with a smile on his face, while the Vaporetto is already approaching to take me back: "you’ll understand, cara, also in death, not all men are equal."
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