We advance to the Salizzada di S. Lio. This is a completely normal way with many shops that overlook, known that the color typical of Rialto stalls is missing.
It is an elegant road that leads to Piazza S. Marco.
Just before the Calle delle Bande we take a long narrow street on the left that leads to a right angle on the small foundation full of children.
Just a dozen children accompanied by their mothers to create a crowding.
The narrow entrance that opens on the right does not allow a quick access in the entrance hall of the Institute.
My mother was a student of the Institute's nuns.
It is an obligation for me to follow this family tradition.
The children entered immediately because it is impossible to wait outside: the foundation is too small.
The nun in charge of the concierge greets us with a smile that tries to hide her gruff and a little grumbling air, softening her angular face; tells us to get up to the first floor.
A courtyard opens up next to it.
The wisteria climb up the wall that borders the canal. I've never seen such beautiful flowers in the city.
"That's the courtyard where you're going to play," he mutters in a tone that is intended to be captivating by the nun door.
I notice immediately that the Institute does not speak in the Venetian language.
Come on, come on! the staircase seems to me an impassable climb; at the end we come out into a large room where there are many children with a black apron and a white collar.
Someone is happy. Second and third school children laugh and joke with their friends.
Those of fourth and fifth class are group apart. They feel like veterans and do not mix with the little ones.
Others cry. They are the first grade students who still have to digest the first day of school and can not get away from their mothers' skirts.
There is a great noise.
"I do not want to be here" sobbing a little girl shaking her head and swinging the blonde braids.
She, like me, obviously did not attend kindergarten, she is not used to leaving her mother's protective skirts and has not yet socialized with her peers.
The smile and the maternal caresses can not cheer her up, but the consolation can only be found after she leaves.
That's why the nun tries to push the woman out of the door to break that umbilical connection.
I too would have preferred to stay home.
Get around playing with toy soldiers.
Talking from the balcony with Mrs. Emma or going upstairs to keep company with Uncle Pasquale and Aunt Nina.
From today I have to go to school every day.
How boring! What's up for giving up my favorite games, not seeing my best friends, skip the midday meal, maybe to Uncle Pasquale's kitchen, to be there nailed to a wooden bench to make auctions.
The auctions that do not even come too straight: what a disaster!
It is an injustice because I am only five years old and compulsory schooling begins at six if you do not choose to attend a private institute of nuns.
I would like to protest, but no one listens to me in the family and I have no chance with the nuns to make me feel because their discipline does not admit replies. I have to stay there and give up my little pleasures.
Enough dry pasta, I have to be content with what passes the convent.
Above all, vegetable soup. The soup nightmare is constant every day. There is only the hope of a miracle that sustains me: one day, I am sure, the long-awaited dry pasta will come.
I hate vegetables: always cooked vegetables that fills a stale building with a nauseating smell!
The intense smell of the vegetable soup dominates every possible good smell of the nuns' kitchen.
Fortunately, the second I bring it home: today octopus, tomorrow cutlet with the inevitable sweet bun with raisins. A bit 'of goodness between so despised vegetable soup. Eating there is a torture that makes you forget every pleasure of the table even for a palate not as refined as that of a child.
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