5. ALIDORO'S RESCUE
Oh, he knows about the vagaries and terrors of the law. For years now he has lived a life of the utmost propriety, decent and law-abiding, crossing the street only when the light was green, avoiding swindlers and idlers and evil companions, speaking the truth with unflagging courage, and contributing annually to the policemen's ball. But it has not always been so. Once he got his own father sent to prison with a mere tantrum, then received a bit of his own back when, as the victim of an infamous fraud, he'd appealed to a judge for justice and got hauled off to jail instead ("This poor devil has been robbed of four gold pieces," the senile old ape told the police guards; "seize him therefore and put him immediately in prison!"), there to spend four of the worst months of his life, months of harsh deprivation, loneliness, and brutal abuse. In those lamentable days, all his worst crimes went unpunished, he's the first to admit that, yet when he tried to give help, for example, to his dear friend Eugenio, cruelly struck down by their own classmates, he was again dragged away as the main suspect in the case, and by police no more threatening than these. Oh, be sure of it, he knows full well the danger he's in! The abuse he suffered in prison was meted out by fellow prisoners and guards alike, he got it from both bells, as they say, they hated him on all sides of the law. His very existence seemed an affront to them, who and what he was, as though he demeaned them somehow merely by being in their midst, it was a kind of racism. In their merciless loathing, they used him as a nutcracker and knocked splinters off him for toothpicks and stuffed lighted matches up his rectum, hoping to get rid of him once and for all and toast their bread and sausages over him at the same time. And if anything, this lot tonight is even more violent, more heavily armed. Yet he can't stop himself. He has his father's pride and temper. And now, alas, his father's age, and then some. Long ago, when they'd tried to arrest him for Eugenio's injuries, he was able to run away, belly to the ground, so fast he stirred a dust storm; now he couldn't beat that old snail who took a week to serve him breakfast, there's no running left in him. Just helpless fury and terror and bitter indignation, his mind is literally reeling with it.
But how they've toyed with him, provoked him, how they've mocked and taunted him! "A stinking joss stick," they've called him, and "a twisted little twig," "shit with ears," and "a purulent polecat with a beanful of crickets." He's screamed back at them, threatening them with lawsuits and high-level investigations and public denunciations and even popular uprisings: "When the world hears what you've done — !" Which has not been easy, of course, with his pants around his knees and full of the ghastly ruins of his night at the Gambero Rosso. "Foo! What a puzzone!" the officers exclaimed when they first grabbed him. "Someone get a lid on that pot!" "But that's my hotel!" he shrieked then. "I've already paid! My bags are in there! My manuscript — ! My precious Mamma — !" "The disgusting old thing wants his mamma!" they laughed, pulling his pants up as they wrestled him toward their patrol boats, but failing to wipe him, leaving him feeling hot and sticky and chilled to the bone, so to speak, all at once. He was still blustering, so they picked him up by the scruff to watch him kick. They dropped him to watch him sprawl. They threw snow in his face to listen to him splutter. They tossed him from one to another in the glaring spotlights, shouting out vulgar jokes and proverbs about excreta and old age. They've threatened him with a hiding. They've threatened to take him out to the prison at Santa Marta and throw him in with their current catch of Red Brigade terrorists: "They'll know how to cook him!" They've rolled him in the snow. "You fools!" he blusters, spitting snow. "Don't worry, old man! It's always a consolation to fry in company!" they laugh and dangle him on high.
One of them reaches into his pocket to pluck out his billfold with two fingers and says: "Empty. Some American, looks like. The little prigger must've snatched it." And, seething, stamping his feet in space, he storms right back at him: "That's my wallet, you imbecile! I'm an American professor, an emeritus professor, do you hear me? Everybody knows me! This is an outrage! An atrocity! An — oh! Ah!" He's choking now, gasping, he wonders if he's having a heart attack. They set him down, standing around laughing with hands on hips, kicking his feet out from under him whenever he tries to stand. "It's a — I'm — I've been — ! Stop! You can't — ! I know the Pope!" He is shrieking, bawling, his nose is inflamed (he doesn't know the Pope), he's completely out of control. He can't help it. His masterpiece! All he's worked for all his life — "Please — !" It's like when his father was beating him and he was crying for it to stop. Hugging the old man's knees as the strop came down. "You must open up! For pity's sake! You must let me — !"
"Here, here, you scummy old tart, stop that!" The young gendarme whose knees he's grabbed swats him across the noggin with his leather gloves and boots him away, while the others make sport about this, saying not to be hasty, it's the best offer any of them has had all night. The professor howls and fumes and crawls about in the tumbling snow and bright lights, demanding, pleading, explaining, chastising, but it's as though the language has lost its referents and is only good for the noise it makes. "My computer! My life! My entire career — !" "Ha ha! Don't give us that to drink, you miserable little blister!" they jeer. "You pezzo di puzzo! You piece of garbage! You shrunken scrotum! You stinking smoke salesman! You gangrenous turd!" They seem to be having a great time. "Look at that beak! Last time I saw one like that it was being used as a billiard stick!" "And bald as a cueball on top of it, the little freak's a whole game in himself." "Idiots!" he screams. "Scoundrels!" "But not a very amusing game " "Delinquenti!" "To tell the truth, the little asswipe is starting to get up my nose." "Assassini!" "Basta! Enough and period! Someone go wake Lido up! Let him have a gnaw on this old tramp! If there's less of him, there might be less noise!"
"Get up here, Lido! We got a live one for you!"
"Or almost live!"
One of the police launches sloshes about in the water as a huge ugly mastiff rises from it, growling throatily, so evil and monstrous in his appearance that even the hysterical scholar is momentarily silenced by awe. It's like some kind of hideous apparition, like a creature long dead rising grotesquely from the Venetian lagoon, pale and deadly, and the very sight of the dreadful thing makes the old professor's knees rattle. If he hadn't already emptied his bowels, he would probably be doing so now. "You're in bad waters now," an officer mutters sinisterly in his ear. "Lido hates presumptuous shitters like you."
"Some he eats straightaway," murmurs another as the beast slouches ashore, "some he promises."
"Eh, Lido, what do you think? One bite or two?"
"The little testa di cazzo even claims to be a professor! That should whet your appetite!"
"He certainly stinks like one! Dress him for the party, Lido!"
"Give him a little holy reason!"