The Brenta River enters the novel as both a working waterway and a landscape bound to memory. Its water feeds a canal on the approach to Venice, while its banks evoke elegant estates and a place where Richard Cantwell imagines belonging even after death. For Renata, however, a villa on the river is inseparable from the violence that took her father and destroyed her family home.

Waterway and Approach to Venice

As Richard Cantwell travels toward Venice, he passes fishing boats moored along a slow canal carrying water from the Brenta River. The river is thus present not only as scenery but as part of the water infrastructure of the approach to the city. The boats, nets, and traps along the canal give this passage a settled, working character, distinct from the industrial landscape he has just passed.

Villas, Gardens, and Imagined Burial

Thinking of the Brenta River, Richard recalls a long stretch lined with great villas, lawns, gardens, plane trees, and cypresses. The cultivated grounds become more than a picturesque view: he considers asking Alberto whether he might be buried on an estate there. He imagines a grave at the edge of the grounds, within sight of the house and trees, near places where children might play and horses train. His thoughts turn the river landscape into a possible resting place and a way of remaining part of the living world.

Family Loss and the River's Other Memory

The Brenta River also marks a place of personal loss for Renata. She recalls that her father was killed and the family villa on the river burned. Her memory gives the same landscape a meaning opposed to Richard's pastoral recollection: where he sees gardens and a possible home in the earth, she remembers the destruction of a home and the violence inflicted on her family. The river therefore gathers two incompatible attachments—one shaped by chosen belonging and mortality, the other by inherited grief.