Simon is perplexed.
It seems possible that Sollers failed to realize that the seventh function didn’t work. But Kristeva?
“Difficult to say. I’d have had to read the document.”
Why would she have betrayed her husband? And, from another perspective, why not use the function herself to compete?
Bayard says to Simon: “Maybe she was like us. Maybe she wanted to see if it worked before she tried it?”
Simon watches the crowd of tourists leaving Venice as if in slow motion. Bayard and he are waiting for the vaporetto with their little suitcases and, as Carnival is coming to an end, the line is long, with hordes of tourists heading to the train station and the airport. A vaporetto arrives, but it’s not the right one; they must wait a little longer.
Simon is pensive, and asks Bayard: “What is reality, for you?”
As Bayard obviously has no idea what he’s talking about, Simon tries to be more specific: “How do you know that you’re not in a novel? How do you know you are not living inside a work of fiction? How do you know that you’re real?”
Bayard looks at Simon with genuine curiosity and replies indulgently: “Are you stupid or what? Reality is what we live, that’s all.”
Their vaporetto arrives, and as it draws alongside, Bayard pats Simon’s shoulder: “Don’t ask yourself so many questions, son.”
The vessel is boarded in a disorderly scramble, the vaporetto guys herding the stupid tourists who climb on board so clumsily, with their bags and their children.
When it is Simon’s turn to get in the boat, the head-count man brings down a metal barrier just behind his back. Stuck on the dock, Bayard tries to protest, but the Italian replies indifferently: “Tutto esaurito.”
Bayard tells Simon to wait for him at the next stop. Simon waves goodbye, as a joke.
The vaporetto moves away. Bayard lights a cigarette. Behind him, he hears raised voices. He turns around and sees two Japanese men yelling at each other. Intrigued, he goes over to them. One of the Japanese men says to him, in French: “Your friend has just been abducted.”
It takes Bayard a second or two to process this information.
A second or two, no more, then he switches into cop mode and asks the only question a cop must ask: “Why?”
The second Japanese man says: “Because he won, the day before yesterday.”
The Italian he beat is a very powerful Neapolitan politician, and he did not take defeat well. Bayard knows about the assault after the party at the Ca’ Rezzonico. The Japanese men explain: the Neapolitan sent some henchmen to beat Simon up so he couldn’t compete, because he was afraid of him. Now that he has lost the duel, he wants vengeance.
Bayard watches the vanishing vaporetto. He quickly analyzes the situation, then looks around: he sees the bronze statue of a sort of general with a thick mustache, he sees the fa?ade of the Hotel Danieli, he sees boats moored at the dock. He sees a gondolier on his gondola, waiting for the tourists.
He jumps in the gondola, along with the Japanese men. The gondolier does not seem overly surprised and welcomes them by singing to himself in Italian, but Bayard tells him:
“Follow that vaporetto!”
The gondolier pretends not to understand, so Bayard takes out a wad of lire and the gondolier starts to scull.
The vaporetto is a good three hundred yards ahead, and in 1981 there are no mobile phones.
The gondolier is surprised. It’s strange, he says: that vaporetto is not going the right way. It’s headed toward the island of Murano.
The vaporetto has been hijacked.
On board, Simon has not realized what is happening, since almost all the passengers are tourists with no idea where they should be going, and apart from two or three Italians who protest to the driver, no one notices that they are headed the wrong way. Besides, Italians complaining loudly is nothing new; the passengers simply think it is part of the local color. The vaporetto docks at Murano.
In the distance, Bayard’s gondola is attempting to catch up. Bayard and the Japanese men exhort the gondolier to go faster, and they yell Simon’s name to warn him, but they are too far away and Simon has no reason to pay them any attention.
But he does suddenly feel the point of a knife in his back and hears a voice behind him say: “Prego.” He understands that he must get off the boat. He obeys. The tourists, in a rush to catch their plane, do not see the knife, and the vaporetto is on its way again.
Simon stands on the dock. He feels almost certain that the men behind him are the same three who attacked him in masks the other night.
They enter one of the glassblowers’ workshops that open directly onto the docks. Inside, a craftsman is kneading a piece of molten glass just removed from the oven, and Simon watches, fascinated, as the bubble of glass is blown, stretched, modeled, taking shape with only a few touches of a plunger as a little rearing horse.
Next to the oven stands a balding, paunchy man in a mismatched suit. Simon recognizes him; his opponent from La Fenice.
“Benvenuto!”
Simon faces the Neapolitan, surrounded by the three thugs. The glassblower continues shaping his little horses unperturbed.
“Bravo! Bravo! I wanted to congratulate you personally before you leave. Palladio—that was well played. Easy, but well played. And Portia. It didn’t convince me, but it convinced the jury, vero? Ah, Shakespeare … I should have mentioned Visconti … Have you seen Senso? The story of a foreigner in Venice. It doesn’t end well.”
The Neapolitan approaches the glassblower, who is busy shaping the hoofs of a second little horse. He takes out a cigar, which he lights with the incandescent glass, then turns to Simon with an evil grin.
“Ma, I can’t let you leave without giving you something to remember me by. How do you say it? To each his due, yes?” One of the henchmen immobilizes Simon with an arm around his neck. Simon tries to free himself, but the second punches him in the chest, winding him, and the third grabs his right arm.
The three men push him forward and pull his arm over the glassblower’s workbench. The little glass horses fall and smash on the floor. The glassblower takes a step back but does not seem surprised. Their eyes meet, and Simon sees in this man’s expression that he knows exactly what is expected of him and he is in no position to refuse. Simon starts to panic. He struggles and yells, but his yelling is pure reflex, because he is certain that he cannot expect any help. He doesn’t know that reinforcements are on their way, that Bayard and the Japanese are arriving in a gondola and that they have promised the gondolier they will triple his fee if he gets them there in record time.
The glassblower asks: “Che dito?”
Bayard and the Japanese use their suitcases as oars to make the boat move faster and the gondolier puts his all into it because, without knowing what exactly is at stake, he has gathered that it is serious.
The Neapolitan asks Simon: “Which finger? Do you have a preference?”
Simon kicks like a horse, but the three men hold his arm firmly on the workbench. He no longer wonders if he is a character in a novel; his reactions are pure survival instinct, and he tries desperately to free himself, but in vain.
The gondola finally reaches land and Bayard throws all his lire at the gondolier and jumps onto the dock, along with the Japanese, but there is a whole line of glassblowers’ workshops and they have no idea where Simon was taken. So they rush into each of them randomly, calling out to the craftsmen and salesmen and tourists, but no one has seen Simon.
The Neapolitan takes a drag on his cigar and orders: “Tutta la mano.”