{"product_id":"across-the-bridge-of-sighs-isbn-9781400079513","title":"Across the Bridge of Sighs","description":"From the author of the acclaimed \u003ci\u003eVenetian Stories\u003c\/i\u003e, a captivating new collection about Venice from the perspective of its residents. A professor writes lectures on Venetian literature for American millionaires. A baroness falls in love with the architect restoring the ancient palazzo of her husband’s family. An ambitious gallery owner sells a young artist’s work faster than he can paint it. A salesman finds a way to trip up a narcissistic race car driver who seems to be able to get away with anything. As her characters negotiate the conflict between tradition and a rapidly changing city, Jane Turner Rylands draws us deep into a society all but unknown to outsiders.“A welcome spin on such a famous and well-documented setting....Wonderful.... Rylands's crisscrossing of narratives, characters and references is dense enough to give her book the feel of a loosely jointed novel.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e“A witty and gratifying literary tour.... Rylands creates characters as memorable as the sights of Venice itself.” —\u003ci\u003eMore\u003c\/i\u003eRylands’s stories are like a teaspoon of grated Parmesan washed down a swallow of hearty red wine.  They’re a discreet indulgence.”—\u003ci\u003eSalon\u003c\/i\u003eJane Turner Rylands is the author of the collection \u003ci\u003eVenetian Stories\u003c\/i\u003e and has lived in Venice for more than three decades. She is married to Philip Rylands, the director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.RESTORATION    Winter settles down in Venice like it means to make friends and stay   forever, feeding the sea with rain, gusting attention on listless   canals, and wrapping all wetness in a companionable mist. Even in   April when everyone is wishing it would take its leave Winter lingers   on like a gloomy guest with nowhere to go until all of a sudden   brash, insouciant Spring blows in and sends it packing, leaving a   trail of puddles in its wake. The campos still shine under scattered   pools, when the first harbingers of renewal ring out over rooftops   and echo down the canals--tock-tock! bam-bam! pink-pink! and the   piercing ffffffwwwwinnng of a saw cutting through marble. These are   the sounds of Spring in Venice, when workmen swarm over palace after   palace weaving scaffolds like webs, up and up, until it seems that   half of Venice is lost behind dust sheets and the only things left to   look at are signboards describing building permits.        Architetto Fallon stood in the campo behind Palazzo Patristi watching   one of his men in a hard hat swing onto the scaffolding. He could   hear him climbing behind the dust sheets. A signboard slipped out   through a gap and wiggled into position. The man looked out from   beside it.    \"How's this, Architetto?\" The workman held the sign in place.    \"I think it's a little too far up, Beppe; I can hardly read it. Let's   try it down one level where it's easier to see.\"    The sign retreated into the dust sheeting and appeared a minute later   ten feet below. Beppe peeked out beside it. \"Okay?\"    \"That's perfect, Beppe. As soon as you get it secured, come down. I   want to take everyone over to the bar to celebrate their fast work on   the scaffolding.\"    As he waited in the campo, Vittorio Fallon looked at the signboard.   He had decided against putting up the standard sheet of ready-printed   enameled tin with the blanks filled in by hand with a felt-tipped   pen. Instead, he had gone to some expense to make it match in   elegance the amplitude of the project as well as the dignity and   symbolic significance that Venetians attributed to the building. This   house and its family were so woven into the history and pride of   Venice that the restoration had even been reported in the newspapers   and mooted as the largest private restoration in the city for many   years. The works, the signboard announced, had been commissioned by   the owner, Dottore Barone Edmondo Patristi, whom all Venetians knew   as the scion of one of the founding families of Venice and whose   house was unique in being still owned and occupied by direct   descendents of the family who built it. The sign also said that the   works were being directed by Architetto Vittorio Fallon, the most   sought after of the up-and-coming Venetian architects. For the man or   woman in the street, this sign was a nice document of modern Venice:   the old and the new working in harmony for the betterment of the   city. For the man or woman about town, however, it touched on   something far more interesting: the Baronessa Patristi, the heiress   who with her husband the Barone had launched the project four years   earlier, and the new Signora Fallon, who with her husband the   architect was overseeing the project, were one and the same person.    Venetian society had gradually come round to viewing this development   in the Patristi story with a single mind and two points of view.   Everyone agreed that Scandal and Rumor should let this woman pass   unscathed, while at the same time maintaining that Edmondo, with all   his faults, was a charming instance of his class. She was in the   right, but he was in a category of his own. Of course even Venetians   had to admit that Edmondo's inveterate philandering gave ample cause   for a wife to decamp, and they were impatient with Sofi because she   had let him go on with his adventures for so long--long after   everyone had concluded that she should have put her foot down, if not   the first time, at least the second or third. In the end, she filed   for divorce but agreed to continue to pay for the restoration of the   family palace, with the proviso that it would be entailed to their   fifteen-year-old son, Matteo, just as the Patristi Villa in the   country, which she had a few years before bought back into the   family, would be entailed to their seven-year-old daughter,   Esmeralda. The long-term agreement was that she would in due course   go back to the restored Palazzo Patristi and live there with the   Patristi children until Matteo married. Edmondo would maintain as his   primary residence the Patristi Villa near the Euganean Hills. Edmondo   was not very happy about the outcome. On the other hand he could see   that it achieved more or less what he had hoped to gain from his   fortunate marriage.    As a young woman, Sofi had been looking forward to a stint as an   Italian career girl, but she hadn't had time to decide what she   wanted to do before she found herself making the Venetian marriage of   the century. Now that the marriage was over, she found herself rather   happily taking up a role in an interesting project. It was what she   needed. She threw herself heart and soul into the restoration of   Palazzo Patristi and discovered that some of her ideas were not so   bad. She was keeping pace with the architect, marching through the   project point by point by point, when they both noticed that they   were perfectly in step. Before they realized where they were going   they had turned the corner and started finishing each other's   sentences and ringing each other to share idle thoughts and funny   instances. Meanwhile, Sofi and Edmondo's son, Matteo, who by this   time was in his last years of liceo, became so interested in the   restoration that he did a project on the house and decided to become   an architect himself. His sister Esmeralda, who was eight, followed   his example and designed her own room in art class, then submitted   the sketch as a point of reference to hang in the office of the   architectural firm. The two children, their mother, and the architect   were all so happy in each other's company that it wasn't long before   Sofi and Vittorio saw no point in trying to hide the fact that they   were madly in love, so they shared their secret with the world and   married. The whole of Venetian society claimed to have seen it coming   a mile away and indulged in a pleasant flurry of   self-congratulation--which in Venice was as close to an outright   cheer of approval as such an unusual match could ever hope to merit.    Before the divorce, Edmondo and Sofi had summoned Vittorio many times   to lay out the plans for the restoration. During their first tour of   the house Edmondo told Vittorio the story of the infamous broken arch   over the landward entrance.    The front door of Palazzo Patristi from the campo was tall and   handsome like the family it served, and its ceremonial presence   stemmed not from its bulk but from its elegance. Of white Istrian   marble, the doorposts were decorated with slender rope pilasters   supporting a lintel with a central medallion bearing the Patristi   arms. The lintel was overarched with a tall ogee, like a crown. The   soffit had always been bricked in and had once probably been   decorated with polychrome marble, long since disappeared. Instead, in   the soffit's upper right quadrant, there was a small square window   that looked as though it had been thrust with such force against the   curve of the arch, just below the point, that the marble had given   way like meringue and let the corner cut the curve in two. Most   people found the window disconcerting. It was almost like an eyeball   rolled toward the heavens in dread.    Edmondo wanted to share with the architect the privilege of knowing   the story as he had heard it himself from his grandmother, Moceniga   Dan. The whole business stemmed from her sympatico habit of passing   the mornings, in the manner of those days, making lace with her old   mother-in-law in the long mezzanine room overlooking the campo, a strange corridor-like space that ran the whole width   of the palace. The room had two small square Gothic windows at each   end, but only one had good light. The other was blocked by a stately   magnolia that was hundreds of years old and the subject of a local   pride that had grown up over the generations right along with it.   Moceniga was a woman of decision. If she couldn't cut down the tree,   she could at least do something to improve the situation. She called   the handyman to the lace room and told him to get his tools; she   wanted a window directly in the center to match the two at either   end. She pulled her worktable away from her mother-in-law's at the   far window and positioned it in the center. \"There,\" she said,   pointing at the wall above it. \"Put the window there.\"    In those days the owner of a house could do virtually what he liked   with it, short of tearing it down. So old Antonio the handyman   measured the two existing windows and traced the outline on the wall   above Moceniga Dan's worktable. By that afternoon, he had the stone   pieces cut to measure for the sill and frame and had already made a   small hole opening out into the campo. When Moceniga Dan went down to   see how the work was coming, she found the room transformed and   congratulated herself. The light was going to be wonderful. As she   watched, Old Antonio took out brick after brick. The wall was four   bricks deep. She went away and came back several hours later to find   the hole almost finished and a pile of white stones on the floor   beside the bricks.    \"What on earth is that?\" she asked.    \"It's marble,\" said old Antonio. \"I had a terrible time breaking   through it. But I've done it now. I'll go and fetch the window from   the carpenter.\" When he came back that evening with the window,   Moceniga Dan was in a state.    \"Antonio! Didn't you see as you came in? The window cuts through the   arch above the great portal just underneath the point!\"    When she had positioned her worktable in the center of the room, she   failed to take into account that the front door of the palace was not   quite centered in the facade, or that the rooms on one side of the   androne, the entrance hall, were a little larger than those on the   other.    She said the arch had to be put right at once, but the handyman said   it was already late so he would install the window for the night and   then come back as soon as he could to put it right and move the   window to the center of the arch.    His grandmother gathered up the pieces and stowed them safely away in   the great press where the Patristi women stored the precious fruits   of their labors, the wedding veils and trains, the christening robes   and banqueting cloths. Fate decreed that Antonio had an urgent   roofing job, so he asked if he could come a bit later. This reminded   his grandfather that there was something to be done on their roof,   too. While Antonio was working on the roof he noticed that the   altana, the roof deck, was a bit shaky so that took precedence, and   in the meantime his grandmother moved her table under the new window   and worked there until he could get back to correct it. Winter came   and they decided to wait until summer. Then his grandmother was   working on a lace tablecloth that she wanted to finish before moving   away from the window. Winter came again. Then Antonio got too old.    Over the years, various stone pieces were pressed into service as   doorstops, paperweights, and spools for winding thread--one piece   even found its way into a goldfish tank as an underwater ruin. The   smallest chips were harbored in a pin box in his grandmother's   worktable. Not a single piece had been lost because the work to   correct this ridiculous mistake was always imminent. Rocco Zennaro,   Vittorio's old stonemason, had with Edmondo's help tracked the pieces   down to the smallest chip within a matter of days. Edmondo laughed   that after so many years it had fallen to him and Sofi to put it   right. Vittorio had to warn him that in today's Italy an   architectural mistake, no matter how horrendous, once it was   established had as much moral right to stay put as an illegal   immigrant who's landed a job. The prospects were not improved by the   fact that there was hardly a soul in Venice who didn't think that the   ravaged arch should be repaired: civil servants, on principle, do not   support their political bosses by attending to public opinion, unless   somehow encouraged.    Sofi hated the broken arch. The first time she had walked under it on   Edmondo's arm, she had been unnerved by a flash that made her start   and look up straight at the ruined stone. Perhaps the maid had opened   or closed the window so it winked in the rays of the setting sun.   Whatever the cause, the flaming light triggered her memory. When she   was a child, the captain of her father's yacht had sent up a flare   because a man had fallen overboard and they couldn't find him.    All through the dinner with Edmondo's parents, Sofi's heart was   heavy. It was their first time together in famiglia, before they were   officially engaged. She apologized to Edmondo afterwards for being so   dull. She told him that somehow the broken arch had made her sad, but   she couldn't explain why. He said he didn't think a broken arch was   bad. A broken column, for example, could stand for fortitude. Anyhow,   the arch didn't harm the building's stability. On the other hand,   tearing out the walls in the room behind the arch to make an indoor   bocce court in the eighteenth century probably did. And of course it   was the absence of those walls that led his grandmother into the   mistake about the placement of the window. He thought it might be a   good idea one day to put the walls back again. Sofi wasn't   interested. It was the arch that had flagged her like a warning.   Edmondo made a joke: Instead of the curse on the Casata di Atreo, the   House of Atreus, his family had a curse on the atrio della casa--the   atrium of the house. Sofi stopped talking about the arch, but after   they were married she came to believe that it had to do with the   ever-mounting Patristi pride leading up to some crushing blow that   she would have to be very lucky to escape.","brand":"Anchor","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305503641829,"sku":"NP9781400079513","price":14.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400079513.jpg?v=1767721032","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/across-the-bridge-of-sighs-isbn-9781400079513","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}