But then something quite unexpected happens. The winged monster dips and swerves erratically as though confused or blinded by the snow and (are its eyes crossed?) heads straight for the bell tower — or else the bell tower, which has been floating treacherously in and out of the whirling snow, sways suddenly and leans into the storm; from the stricken traveler's position in the nauseous pit of the orchestra, so to speak, it is hard to tell. The lion lifts its paws and spreads its wings, but too late: there is a thunderous earth-shaking ear-splitting clangor, followed by a frantic scattering of astonished pigeons, fleeing groggily from they know not what, the light fall of stone teeth and feathers upon the little campo, and a series of mighty reverberations that sound and resound through the frosty night as though a giant cymbal has been struck, a throbbing metallic clamor that seems to set all the bells in Venice ringing.
Behind the repercussions rippling out into the night, the professor can hear, up in the campanile where the din was launched, a great moaning and puling and thick-tongued cursing in the Venetian dialect: ''You turd! Rotto in culo! Oh! Ah! I'm dying! You head of a prick! I piss in your mother's cunt! Oh, my head! My ears! Shut up, will you, sfiga di cazzo? By the leprous cock of Saint Mark, you asshole of God, I'll have you melted down and turned into souvenir gondolas! Where are my teeth — ?! Oh, you whore! I come on you, you sack of shit, on you and all your dead!" And then, head in its paws, tail adroop, the pale beast goes flapping off sorely into the night, growling its oaths and imprecations, disappearing into the blowing snow and the fading tintinnabulation of tolling bells.
Left alone, the abandoned wayfarer, huddled miserably against the wall, accepts this melancholy tolling as his own knell. To be poised against fatality, to meet adverse conditions gracefully is more than simple endurance, he knows, it is an act of aggression, a positive triumph, but he also knows such triumphs are now beyond him. He just wants to cry. There are always endings, but there are not always conclusions. If you're out of candles, as his father used to say with a tired shrug, enh, you'll go to bed in the dark. These simple truths come to him, along with all the memories. But what is it he remembers? His own life or the film of it, the legends? This life of his: it has been like a kind of dream — but who was the dreamer? He cannot think. His brain is frozen. He tries to remember his own famous dream, the one that made him what he is today, that might warm him up; but all that comes to him there under his helmet of iced scarf is what he saw that awesome day when she spread her knees as though to reveal to him his fate. Ah, dear lady, and where are you now? He looks up, hoping for another miracle, even another flying lion, company at least. But there's only a ghastly white all around him as in the house of the dead. Except for the wall itself: a flaking ochre red softly reminiscent of the Trecento masters like Paolo Veneziano. It encourages him that he can remember Paolo Veneziano. I'm not dead yet, he thinks, or perhaps says, his cheeks pressed against the wall, I can still remember Paolo Paolo What's-his-name. What was I thinking about? Already gone. Over his head, he sees now, there is something written. It seems to say "JESU." He's a sucker for words, he'll read anything, afraid of missing something if he doesn't. Might be a message, a final message (all my life, he thinks, I've been waiting for a message). He clutches at the snow-rimmed bricks of the wall, dragging himself up. Not "JESU," but "JUVE." And, yes, he brushes away the snow, here's the "VIVA," written like two birds in flight, their wings crossed in happy omen, and next to it the other one: "ABBASSO LARIN METICA!" — "Down with Larin Metica!" "Viva abbasso!" he cries. He laughs. He knows where he is now. He's almost there!
He scrapes the crust of ice and snow off his glasses, glances round. Right! There's the bridge, there's the narrow underpass! The joints of his knees are locked up, frozen solid, he has to totter ahead stiff-legged, rocking from side to side, his eyes watering, his nose running: but, yes, through here and turn right — and there it is! The long fondamenta, now a ghostly white and daintily pricked out with cat tracks, the stately palazzo rising through the eddies of swirling snow, the blackened doorway! He scrambles over the last bridge, more or less on all fours, volere č potere, his mind thawing now with glowing anticipations of pillows and eiderdowns and his own flannel nightshirt, his liniments and antacids (his stomach, he realizes, is in a ferocious turmoil), his computer, his books, his Mamma (he will find that climactic metaphor, maybe in fact he has already found it!), his earplugs and blindfold and sleeping pills and his hot water bottle. The thought of a hot water bottle alone propels him down the last stretch from the bridge to the door.
But it is all dark, the door is locked, they have given up on him! "I'm here! I'm here!" he cries into the howling wind. He bangs on the door. He is so weak he can almost not hear it himself. There should be a doorbell somewhere, but he cannot find it. He rattles the rusted wrought-iron grills at the windows, shaking the snow off them, shouting through the broken glass. "My friends! Open up!" He can hear cats prowling around, yowling, chasing one another. Overhead, the windows are all shuttered or broken. "Wake up! I'm here!" He wants to throw something at the windows, but all he can find is a plastic cat dish. "Help! Help!" he screams. They cannot leave him out here! He has already paid! There is one pane left whole in the window just above his head: he flings his watch through it. There is a soft splintering tinkle and the cats stop yowling for a moment, then start up again. He is beginning to cry. He thinks he might be going crazy. He is still screaming, but there are no words now, he sounds like one of the cats. He is getting sick. His screams have become groans. His insides seem to be exploding and collapsing at the same time. He must squat somewhere, and quick. He could use the canal but he is afraid of falling in. There is a walled garden, he tries the gate, it is locked. No time for alternatives. He presses into the shallow sill of the gate, under a wild rough tangle of overhanging thornbrush and dead vines, fumbles feverishly with his trousers, ripping them down as far as his knees. But his coat is in the way. Struggling with it (he is already too late, much too late), he falls facefirst into the snow. He rises to his knees and elbows, can rise no further. Behind his ears, there are terrible eruptions. He feels like he is dying. Like the time when he was sick and lame and tethered, heart broken, to a stinking stable. Only now no one would want him, he is not even worth flaying. "I'm sorry!" he weeps, pulling his coattails over his head. "I'm so sorry "
And so it is that il gran signore, the distinguished emeritus professor from abroad, the world-renowned art historian and critic, social anthropologist, moral philosopher, and theological gadfly, the returning pilgrim, lionized author of The Wretch, Blue Repose, Politics of the Soul, The Transformation of the Beast, Astringent Truth, and other classics of Western letters, native son, galantuomo, and universally beloved exemplar of industry, veracity, and civility, not a child of his times, but the child of his times, is discovered on this, the night of his glorious homecoming, head buried and ancient fulminating arse high, when the police come cruising up in three sleek sky-blue motor launches, spotlights glaring, and arrest him ("What are you doing there on the ground?!" they cry) for indecent exposure, disturbing the peace, suspected terrorist activities, polluting the environment, and attempting to enter a public building without official written permission. "Avanti, you rascal! And step lively! Or so much the worse for you!"