"Yes, yes, as requested, signore, thank you very much!"
"What do you mean, thank you very much — ?! I gave you all my money! You haven't taken me anywhere yet! This is robbery!"
"Now, now, lower the comb," cautions the gondolier, glancing over his shoulder. "No sense drowning in a glass of water, as the I saying goes, professore, so don't make an affair of state out of it!"
"But, see here, you — Stop! What are you doing — ?!" The oar has caught him by the collar again, and once more he finds himself helplessly treading air, his coattails flapping soggily, over the murky brown waters of the snow-scummed canal. "Help! Thief! He stole my money!" he cries, appealing to the people in the square, even as he dangles from the gondolier's pole, but they only laugh and cheer, as though he were part of the daily entertainment.
"Look at him!" mocks the gondolier, waving a few soggy lire at the crowd. "Il gran signore!"
"Che bestiola!"
"He's too small! Throw him back!"
"Put me down! This is an outrage!"
"People who wear small shoes," the scoundrel declares portentiously, easing him down onto the snowy paving stones beside a little fat man, broader than he is tall, who seems, like everyone else, greatly amused by it all, "should not try to live on a large foot, dottore!"
"Foot dottore!" a blind beggar echoes, waving his white cane with the only hand he has.
"You!" he gasps, recognizing his old enemy at last. "You stole my baggage! You stole my computer, all my work! You stole my life — !"
"Ah well, that was long ago," rumbles the masked villain, dipping his head between his shoulders and leaning heavily on one foot. The fat man gives the rogue something, money probably, though the gesture is so fleetingly subtle as to be all but imperceptible. "Temporibus illis, and all that, dottore, if you please, let's pass the sponge over it, let's put a stone on it, as they say over on San Michele, let bygones be — "
"Bygones!" cries the beggar, and rattles his tin cup. "If you please!"
"It's La Volpe! Don't let her get away!" the old scholar wails, as the devilish creature pushes away with a tip of her tatty straw boater, slipping deftly up the waterway and out of sight. "Help! Police!" His voice is all that's left him, he cannot move, he cannot even point his finger. "She's the one! She stole everything I had! Stop her!"
But the police, not far away, have other things to do, and the gathered crowds seem merely amused, waiting to see what will happen next. What does happen is that the strange little fat man, his round rosy face split with a gleaming smile, turns to the water-logged professor, takes him tenderly in his arms, and squeezes him as though to wring him dry. "Pini, Pini, my love!" he gushes with a soft old voice full of loving kindness. "Safe at last!"
16. THE LITTLE MAN
The low sky's sullen light is ebbing, as though swept up into the clouds of mothlike snow now blowing around the melancholy lilac-tinted lamps along the waterfront, by the time the rapidly sinking emeritus professor is lifted out of the rocking motor launch and onto his old friend's private dock on the Molo, the landing stage and promenade near the Piazzetta of San Marco. The ancient traveler is dimly aware, ravaged by illness and cruel abuse though he is, that he is making, at last, his proper entrance into this "fairy city of the heart," as Eugenio has just called it, quoting one or another of the city's agents, and it does not fail to occur to him, as his porters bear him ceremonially between the Piazzetta's two eccentric gallows posts as though through a turnstile, deep-throated bells ringing out their somber consent overhead, that had he somehow landed here last night, as so many who have preceded him to this city through the centuries have advised, the mortal disasters that have befallen him this past night and day might never have happened, a thought that, far from easing his despair, merely deepens it, reminding him once again of his deplorable ingrained resistance to all advice, no matter how noble and well meaning its source. He is that proverbial impetuous fool, who, rushing in, gets, over and over again, trod upon.
"Now, now," says Eugenio gently, sidling up and tucking his blankets more tightly about him, "stop carrying on so, my angel, take your courage in both hands, we'll be there soon."
"There" is Eugenio's palace, the Palazzo dei Balocchi, "my humble abode," as his old school chum called it, "my little capanna in the Piazza," which has been offered to the professor, not merely for the night, but for so long as he is able to remain, which, under the grave circumstances, may be, alas, the shorter span of time. He has been offered a suite of his own, centrally heated and "fitted out in full rule" with built-in bar, medieval tapestries, a billiard table, marble bathroom with its original frescos, sauna, Byzantine mosaic floors, and an advanced electronic wraparound sound system, along with a staff of servants, doctors, nurses, cooks, priests, pharmacists, tailors, secretaries, and cellarmasters at his disposal, and more: a curative herbal risotto on arrival, silk pajamas, a new electric toothbrush, satin sheets and breakfast in bed, if he should last that long, even a personal hot water bottle and all the credit he might need during this emergency. "Indeed the whole city shall be laid at your feet, my exalted friend," Eugenio had exclaimed while still embracing him back there on the little exposed campo where La Volpe had deposited him, "you'll be sleeping between two pillars, as they say here, pillows, I mean, so long as I have anything to do with it, trust me — to the laureate his guerdon, the master his meed! Eh? So come along, contentment awaits, dear boy, but hurry now, the night is cold and the way is long! Andiamo pure!"
But, soaked to the core from his fatal dunking and fast icing up in the bitter wind, he could no longer even speak, much less move, and hurrying was like a forgotten dream. He could only lift his chin creakily an inch or two and sneeze: "Etci! Etci!" Whereupon, with a snap of Eugenio's fingers, two servants appeared with a kind of sedan chair or litter, strapped him into it, bundled him up snugly in cashmere blankets, and hoisted him aboard the gleaming motor launch, which had all the while been growling impatiently alongside them at the foot of the bridge.
There was much, as the launch lurched away like a runner breaking out of the starting block and went roaring, right through a red light, down the narrow rio, darting in and out among the slower gondolas, barges, and the honking express vaporetto, snow-thickened spray flying from the bounding prow and water slapping stone and wood along the sides, that was troubling the dying scholar, the smoke in the air, for example, the remarks of that infernal Fox and then the money that had passed hands, the very coincidence that had brought Eugenio to just that little square beside the water at just such a moment on such a day and made his rescue possible, but all of this was far at the back of his bruised and water-soaked head, and it disappeared altogether when Eugenio, declaring how sweet it was to go simply mad over a lost friend found again, proceeded to recite, as proof of his uninterrupted love and devotion to his old prepubescent pal, all of the grants, awards, fellowships, degrees (earned and honorary), prizes and publications, chairmanships, medals, titles, professional and honorary society memberships, special commissions, anthologizations, trusteeships, presidential citations, distinguished visiting professorships, biographies, eulogies, monuments, festschrifts, film credits, book and children's park dedications, and every single Who's Who entry of the professor's long and illustrious career, even mentioning the establishment, in his honor, upon the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first edition of The Wretch, of "The Annual 'Character Counts' Award" by Rotary International, and his more recent (politely refused) nomination as honorary president of the national "Nuke the Whales" campaign.