The Seventh Function of Language

And he sees. Not the slightly kitsch “son et lumière” show and the boats disguised as warships with their actors in their Sunday best. But the collision of armies: the six galleasses rising from the sea like floating fortresses, destroying everything around them; the two hundred galleys divided between the left wing, yellow banner, commanded by the Venetian provveditore-generale Agostino Barbarigo, who is shot in the eye with an arrow and dies at the start of the battle; the right wing, green banner, led by the timorous Genovese Gian Andrea Doria, transfixed by the agile maneuvers of the elusive Euldj Ali (Ali the convert, Ali the one-eyed, Ali the renegade, a Calabrian by birth who became the Bey of Algiers); in the center, blue banner, the high commander, Don John of Austria, for Spain, with Colonna, commander of the pope’s galleys, and seventy-five-year-old Sebastiano Venier, severe of face and white of beard, future doge of Venice, to whom John no longer says a word, at whom he never even glances since the incident with the Spanish captain. In the rearguard, in case things go badly, is the Marquis of Santa Cruz, white banner. Facing them, the Turkish fleet, commanded by Sufi Ali Pasha, kapudan pasha, with his janissaries and his corsairs.

And on board the galley La Marchesa, sick with fever, midshipman Miguel de Cervantes, who has been ordered to remain lying down in the hold but who wants to fight and begs his captain, because what will people say of him if he doesn’t take part in the greatest naval battle of all time?

So the captain agrees, and when the galleys ram into each other and collide, when the men fire their arquebuses at point-blank range and start to board the enemy ship, he fights like a dog, and in the fury of the sea and in the storm of war he chops up Turks like tuna but is shot in the chest and in the left hand. He continues to fight. Soon there will be no doubt that the Christians have won their victory—the head of the kapudan pasha is mounted on top of the mast on the admiral’s ship—but Miguel de Cervantes, the brave midshipman under the orders of his captain, Diego of Urbino, has lost the use of his left hand in the battle, or maybe the surgeons did a bad job.

Either way, from now on he will be known as the “one-armed man of Lepanto,” and some will mock his handicap. Incensed and wounded in body and soul, he will make this clarification in his preface to the second volume of Don Quixote: “As if the loss of my hand had been brought about in some tavern, and not on the grandest occasion the past or present has seen, or the future can hope to see.”

Amid the crowd of tourists and masks, Simon, too, feels feverish, and when he feels a tap on his shoulder, he half expects to see the doge, Alvise Mocenigo, burst into view along with the Council of Ten, who are out in force, and the three state inquisitors, to celebrate this dazzling victory of the Venetian lion and Christianity, but it is simply Umberto Eco, who smiles pleasantly and says to him: “There are some who went off in search of unicorns, but found only rhinoceroses.”

91

Bayard lines up outside La Fenice, the Venetian opera house, and when his turn comes and his name is found on the list, he feels that universal relief of getting past an official barrier (something he’d forgotten in his line of work), but the guard asks him in what capacity he is invited and Bayard explains that he is accompanying Simon Herzog, one of the competitors. But the guard insists: “In qualità di che?” And Bayard doesn’t know how to respond, so he says: “Uh, coach?”

The guard lets him in and he takes his place in a gold-painted theater box furnished with crimson chairs.

On the stage, a young woman confronts an old man over a quotation from Macbeth: “Let every man be master of his time.” The two opponents speak English and Bayard does not use the headphones providing simultaneous translation that are available to the audience, but he has the impression that the young woman is getting the upper hand. (“Time is on my side,” she says graciously. And she will indeed be declared the victor.)

The room is full. People have come from all over Europe to attend the great qualifying tournament: tribunes are challenged by duelists of lower ranks, the vast majority peripateticians, but also some dialecticians and even a few orators ready to risk three fingers in a single match to be granted the right to witness the meeting.