Chapter 9

Partner

I certainly knew that Hemingway was writing a book about Veneti and Venice, with a colonel who loved a girl and then died, my brother Gianfranco said. Why didn't I try drawing a cover design? 

Cover? But what would Hemingway do with it if the book hadn't come out yet? "In the meantime you begin to draw... you never know" and he went away smiling mysteriously. He was often mysterious, Gianfranco.

All in all it was a good idea, an opportunity to make a kind of farewell gift to Papa, who perhaps would have been happy to have a memory of Venice and me. 

Where to start? Perhaps from the mulberry trees, as I had seen them on my way to the Valley. Black against the sky. Two black and bare mulberry trees against the green of the lagoon and, in the distance, the profile of Torcello. Yes, this was really Veneto. Good. Now I had to do Venice too.

I was lost in many a Venetian countryside and just as many of Venice when Francesca entered the room. "Hemingway is coming soon, will you help me finish?" I told her. "Do you see this scribble? It looks like a synthesis of Venice." The scribble - Campanile, Basilica, Palazzo Ducale, a Gondola under a bridge - became pretty, under the skilled hands of Francesca. But the colors didn't convince me: they were too right, too much like a picture postcard.