The Minotaur at Calle Lanza by Zito Madu

Author:Zito Madu
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Belt Publishing

10

I only went to San Marco a handful of times, once to meet Simon, another time with a second friend, Ethan, a photographer from the States who was also doing a residency at the time, and a few more times to buy cheap bottles of wine or to sit on the stairs of the Venice Santa Lucia station, which were much larger than the ones in front of the Salute but much less intimate. Both sets of stairs looked out onto the water, but even during the time when so few people were traveling, the train station was full—understandably, even more than the international airport.

When I wasn’t walking around the basilica or on the path to Piazzale Roma, I went toward Santa Margherita. On the way was a grocery store at the juncture, I believe, of Rio Terrà Foscarini and Calle Nuova Sant’Agnese. I remember it being at some point before the gallery that had an ATM on the side of it. The grocery store quickly became my rest point on the way back from the walks to either Santa Margherita or toward Piazzale Roma. The first time I went in, I bought a few bottles of Gatorade, a bottle of Fanta, vanilla wafers, frozen sandwiches—mainly tuna and a few others I wanted to be adventurous with and immediately regretted—and two bottles of prosecco. At the register was an Asian man, who I would later find out ran the store with his wife. He was watching a show on his phone, something he would repeat each time I encountered him at the store. He hardly ever glanced up from the show or the football match that had his attention, though he was always cordial and quick in his process.

Naturally, he spoke to me in Italian after scanning my items. He told me the price, which I didn’t understand, but thankfully, I could read the amount on the cash register display. Then, as I was getting my card out, he said, “Sacchetto?” And just like the pizza man asking me how many slices I wanted, I was frozen by ignorance. After some silence, he repeated it again, probably thinking I hadn’t heard his question. I had, I just had no idea what he was asking. So I stood there again as I had in front of the man at the pizza shop until he glanced up and, reading the silence, pulled out a bag from under the counter and repeated the word again. I nodded my head yes. He bagged everything and handed it to me, and with the groceries in hand, I tried to pay with my card. The machine processed and processed and processed the card, with the same familiar dots on the screen lighting up one by one, asking me to wait for what seemed like an eternity, and the longer it took, the more the terror grew. I stared as if I could will it to approve the payment, as if I could convince it to have some compassion and mercy to save me from embarrassment.

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