Imagine, if you will, a scale model of Venice. Not a huge city by any means, not much larger than Reading, but more intricate and with clearer boundaries. Now imagine two figures, also to scale, turning left and right at random in that maze for twelve hours like mice in, well, a maze. The maze is not regular; wide streets and immense squares alternate with narrow alleys and bridges that act as funnels. Allowing for constant movement over, say, fourteen hours, what is the probability of the two figures coming within sight of each other?
I’m not a statistician, but instinctively I knew the chances were small. They were by no means inconceivable, however, and I would be aided by the fact that footfall in Venice tends to correspond to certain well-trodden paths, from the Ferrovia to St Mark’s, from St Mark’s to the Pescheria, to the Accademia, back to the Ferrovia. Much as we’d like to imagine ourselves free-spirited explorers, visitors walk around Venice in the same way that we walk around a supermarket, an airport or an art gallery, channelled by all kinds of factors, conscious and unconscious; should I walk down this dark, urine-stinking alley or towards that charming little bakery? Studies have been made of this sort of behaviour. We think we have independence and imagination, but we have no more freedom to roam than trams on rails.
So the labyrinth was smaller than it first appeared, and factor in the assumption that I was probably looking for two people, that they were unlikely to be constantly on the move and that the sound of an accordion would be hard to ignore, and I felt mildly confident that I could find them. In fact, I don’t mind admitting that I was rather excited about the project as I settled down to a two-star Italian breakfast of sponge cake, orange squash and the world’s hardest pineapple. My mission had an element of espionage to it, and I was enjoying planning my route with a water-soluble felt-tip pen on the very same laminated map that I’d brought along all those years ago, allowing me to annotate then wipe it clean at the end of each day.
‘That is a very good system you have there,’ said the room’s sole other occupant, a smiling woman, German, Scandinavian perhaps.
‘Thank you,’ I replied. I had barely opened my mouth in twenty-four hours and my own voice sounded unfamiliar.
‘If ever a city demanded a map, it’s this one,’ she said.
I smiled, not wishing to be rude. ‘It is important not to skimp on a good-quality map,’ I said, intriguingly.
She sipped her tea. ‘Do you know the city well?’
‘I’ve been here once before. More than twenty years ago now.’
‘It must have changed enormously since then,’ she said.
‘No, it’s pretty much the— oh, I see. Yes, beyond recognition! All these new buildings!’ It had been a good joke on her part, and I thought perhaps I could run with it, riff on the idea in some way. ‘In those days, the streets weren’t even flooded!’ was the best that I could do, but she looked confused, and so I slipped the much-scrutinised map, a stolen banana and a sachet of dried toast from the buffet into my bag and left. Oh yes, Cat, I was quite the outlaw now.
But first I would need to equip myself. As island-dwellers, Venetians face limited choices in menswear, but I bought three pairs of identical socks, three pairs of underwear, three T-shirts in pale blue, grey and white and, for evening wear, two button-down shirts and a thin jumper in case of a chill. To protect my vulnerable scalp from the sun, I bought a baseball cap, the most neutral I could find and the first I had ever owned, though perhaps it wouldn’t be necessary in the shady canyons of San Paolo and Santa Croce. Because I would be walking for most of the day, I bought some rather natty running shoes in moulded plastic, absurd outsized things that promised to mould themselves to my feet in a very space-age way. I bought some moistened toilet tissue and a single bottle of water that I would refill. Returning to the Pensione Bellini, I organised my purchases and caught sight of myself in the mirror once again.
Sleep had repaired some of the damage. I still had not shaved, and now sported the beginnings of a rather fetching beard, flecked with white and grey, the kind Hollywood actors grow when required to appear less handsome than they are. I rather liked it. I looked … unfamiliar. I put on my new sunglasses, pulled down the baseball cap and hit the canals.
Imagine time as a long strip of paper.
This is not the shape of time, of course. Time has no shape, being a dimension or conceivably a direction or vector, but imagine for the purposes of the metaphor that time can be represented as a long strip of paper, or a roll of celluloid, perhaps. And imagine that you are able to make two cuts in the strip, joining those ends to form a continuous loop. This strip of paper can be as long or as short as you wish, but that loop will roll forever.
