The Measure(69)

A motley assortment of backpackers had lingered across from her, overstuffed duffels strapped to their bodies, sleeping bags and yoga mats rolled under their arms. A few overheard morsels led Maura to believe they were heading to the Himalayas, which wasn’t so surprising. Droves of Westerners had reportedly been drawn to the same corners of Asia since the boxes’ earliest arrival.

Back in April, when the crisis was fresh, a few Buddhist monasteries opened their doors to foreign visitors seeking guidance, but they underestimated the sheer number of souls searching for enlightenment. By the summer, some regions of Bhutan and India were so overrun that the governments imposed new limits on the number of travelers they could accept. Areas that once lay undisturbed were now covered in tourists’ prayer flags, entire Tibetan fields crisscrossed with lines of mesmerizing rainbow cloths.

And many of the world’s most holy places were drawing millions more than usual, pilgrims carrying their boxes and strings to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, to the Kaaba in Mecca, to the Grotto of Massabielle in Lourdes, some pursuing a return to their spiritual origins in a time of immense confusion, others praying for a miracle.

Maura had attended plenty of climate rallies and protested overtourism. But she couldn’t really blame these nomads for wishing to explore while they still could. For wondering if some far-off land might hold the answers they couldn’t find at home.



Like those sacred sites, Venice, too, was rife with visitors, but as soon as Nina and Maura boarded the airport ferry, watching the city rise from the waters around them, and then as they struggled to roll their luggage along the bumps in the street, up and down the small bridges that spanned the canals, they could feel it in each breath they took, their lungs filling with the exhilaration of being someplace new. Their minds gleefully tried to accomplish a thousand tasks at once, taking in the sights and sounds and scents, every element of awareness heightened, knowing that this was special, a bold and bracketed moment in time, something that must be remembered.

Though it was October, and the infamous summer crowds had already dispersed, families and large clusters of tourists still filled the wide piazzas, baking under the heat of the sun, so by their second day Maura and Nina had learned to turn away from the main squares and venture down the narrower, shaded alleys, some the width of just two pairs of shoulders, following the maze of the city with no particular end point in mind.

Flanked by crumbling stone walls, these smaller lanes were surprisingly insulated from the surrounding noise. Nearly everywhere else they had walked, the echoes of jackhammers and faint clanging sounds served as constant reminders of the city’s fragility, its inevitable demise. Venice, it seemed, was perpetually repairing itself—attempting to ward off its fate.

One afternoon, Nina and Maura stumbled upon a particularly scenic juncture, where one of the empty alleys gave way to a wooden pier by a thin canal, far from the larger waterways where pricey gondolas ferried tourists.

Maura walked down to the dock, wanting to dip her toes in the water, but Nina objected, citing an article she read about the pollution in the canals and the infrequency with which they were cleaned. So they settled for simply sitting alongside the softly lapping water, Maura resting her head on Nina’s shoulder.

Maura looked down at the water below, green and opaque as it drifted slowly past. It looked cloudier than she had expected, as if a painter had just rinsed off his brushes in the canal.

“We’re lucky we got to see it while it still looks like this,” she said. “A part of me can’t even believe they built this city. A world on top of the water.”

“I read an article about it on the plane,” Nina said. “They actually dug wooden stakes into the mud and clay under the water, and then built wooden platforms on top of the stakes, and then stone platforms on top of that, and then finally the buildings themselves.”

“But the wood didn’t rot?” Maura asked.

“The wood they used was water-resistant, and since it was underwater and not exposed to the air, it never decayed,” Nina said. “It’s been standing for all these centuries.”



Though the streets occasionally smelled like a fishing port, the city was bewitching, unlike any other place they had seen. The colorful pastel buildings, whose Gothic arches melted into the scintillating water, and the rows of gondolas out front, bobbing in wait, looked exactly the way they appeared on postcards and in daydreams.

Particularly amusing were the curious faces they encountered around every corner. Sculptures perched on rooftops, figures painted in ceiling frescoes, facades adorned with small busts, even doorknobs carved in the shape of heads—everywhere they went in the city, the eyes of saints and artists peered back at them.

Once, Maura almost jumped at the sight of a dozen painted faces staring at her through haunting, empty eyes from the window of a small shop.

Nina followed her inside, where every inch of the walls and ceiling was covered with traditional Venetian masks, hundreds of porcelain visages, each with their own personalities. There was the jester, with his fool’s cap and bells. The ominous plague doctor, with his lengthy beak. There were masks in every color of the artist’s palette. Some had ribbons and feathers and intricate gold leafing. Others wore pained expressions or mischievous grins. Maura stepped closer to admire a white mask adorned with delicate music notes.

A woman soon emerged from the shop’s back room, one arm leaning on a mahogany cane, and nodded at Nina and Maura. Her dark, wavy hair, bestrewn with strands of gray, was twisted into a loose bun, and she wore her red-rimmed glasses like a necklace.