The Seventh Function of Language

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.”

The glassblower changes his tongs for a bigger pair and seizes Simon’s wrist in the cast-iron jaws.

Bayard and the Japanese burst into a workshop, where they have to describe the young Frenchman to Italians who do not understand them because they are talking too fast, so Bayard leaves the workshop and goes into the one next door, but there, too, no one has seen the Frenchman. Bayard knows perfectly well that rushing around in a panic is no way to carry out an investigation but he has a policeman’s intuition of urgency, even though he is not aware of exactly what is happening, and he runs from one workshop to the next, and from one shop to the next.

But it’s too late: the glassblower again closes the cast-iron jaws around Simon’s wrist and crushes the flesh, the ligaments, and the bones, until the latter break with a sinister cracking noise and his right hand is detached from his arm in a fountain of blood.

The Neapolitan contemplates his mutilated adversary as he collapses, and seems to hesitate briefly.

Has he obtained sufficient compensation, yes or no?

He takes a drag on his cigar, blows a few smoke rings, and says: “Let’s go.”

Simon’s screaming alerts Bayard and the Japanese, who find him at last lying inanimate on the floor of the glassblower’s workshop, bleeding profusely, surrounded by little broken horses.