Then a cry rings out in the line. “Thief! Thief!” A tourist runs after a pickpocket. Instinctively, Sollers puts his hand in his inside jacket pocket.
But he pulls himself together instantly: “Ha, did you see? A Frenchman, obviously … The French are always easily taken in. Be careful, though. The Italians are a great people, but like all great peoples they’re bandits … I should leave you, I’ll be late for Mass…”
And Sollers walks away, his sandals slapping against the Venetian cobbles.
Simon says to Bayard: “Did you see?”
“Yes, I saw.”
“He has it on him.”
“Yes.”
“So why not take him now?”
“First we have to check it works. That’s why you’re here, remember.”
An undetectable smile of pride flickers on Simon’s face. Another round. He has forgotten the Japanese men behind him.
84
Two hundred galleys pass through the Straits of Corfu and head toward the Gulf of Corinth. Among them is La Marchesa, commanded by the Genovese Francesco San-Freda, carrying Captain Diego of Urbino and his dice-playing men, among them the son of a debt-ridden dentist also here to seek glory as well as riches, a Castilian hidalgo, an adventurer, a penniless sword-wielding nobleman: the young Miguel de Cervantes.
85
On the fringes of the Carnival, private parties proliferate in Venice’s palazzos, and the one currently being held in the Ca’ Rezzonico is among the most popular and the most private.
Drawn by the voices coming from the building, envious passersby and vaporetto passengers look up toward the ballroom, where they can glimpse or imagine the trompe-l’oeil artworks, the massive chandeliers in multicolored glass, and the magnificent eighteenth-century frescoes decorating the ceiling, but invitations are strictly by name only.
Logos Club parties are not exactly announced in the newspaper.
And yet the party does take place, in the heart of the Floating City. A hundred people rush in, their faces uncovered. (Evening wear is required, but this is not a masked ball.)
At first glance, there is nothing to distinguish this party from any other chic gathering. But listen closely and you will hear the difference. The conversations are of exordiums, perorations, propositions, altercations, refutations. (As Barthes said: “The passion for classification always appears byzantine for those who do not participate in it.”) Anacoluthon, catachresis, enthymeme, and metabole. (As Sollers would say: “But of course.”) “I do not believe Res and Verba should be translated simply by Things and Words. Res, says Quintilian, are quae significantur, and Verba: quae significant; in other words, in terms of discourse, the signified and the signifier.” Of course.
The guests also talk of past and future duels. Many are veterans with severed fingers or young guns of the debates, and most have memories of glorious or tragic campaigns, which they like to dwell on below Tiepolo’s paintings.
“I didn’t even know the author of the citation!”
“And then, he came out with a line by Guy Mollet! That killed me.”
“I was there for the legendary duel between Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber and Mendès France. I don’t even remember the subject now.”
“I was there for the one between Lecanuet and Emmanuel Berl. Surreal.”
“You French people are so dialectical…”
“So, I draw a subject … botany! I thought I was screwed, and then I remembered my grandfather in his allotment. Grandpa saved my finger!”
“And then he says: ‘We must stop seeing atheists everywhere. Spinoza was a great mystic.’ What an idiot!”
“Picasso contra Dalí. Categoría historia del arte, un clásico. Me gusta más Picasso pero escogí a Dalí.”
“And the guy starts talking about soccer. I don’t know a thing about it, but he won’t stop going on about the Reds and a cauldron…”
“Oh no, I haven’t been in a duel for two years. I’m back down to being a rhetorician. I don’t have the time or the energy anymore, with the kids, work…”
“I was ready to give up when suddenly, a miracle: he comes out with the biggest pile of crap, the worst thing he could have said…”
“C’è un solo dio ed il suo nome è Cicerone.”
“I went to Harry’s Bar (in memory of Hemingway, like everyone else). Fifteen thousand lire for a Bellini, seriously?”
“Heidegger, Heidegger … Sehe ich aus wie Heidegger?”
Suddenly, a frisson spreads across the room from the staircase. The crowds open to welcome a new arrival. Simon enters, accompanied by Bayard. The guests gather around, and at the same time they appear almost intimidated. So this is the young prodigy everyone is talking about, who has risen from nowhere to the rank of peripatetician incredibly quickly: four promotions in three consecutive sessions, in Paris, when progress like that usually takes years. And perhaps five, soon. He is wearing a charcoal Armani suit, a grayish pink shirt, and a black tie with violet pinstripes. As for Bayard, he didn’t think it was worth bothering to change out of his usual crumpled suit.
Around the prodigy, people grow bolder and soon they are pressing him to talk about his Parisian exploits: with what ease, by way of warming up, he first crushed a rhetorician on a subject of domestic politics (“In the end, is an election always won at the center?”) by citing Lenin’s What Is to Be Done?
How he brushed aside an orator on a fairly technical philosophy question (“Is legal violence still violence?”) by recourse to Saint-Just (“No one can reign innocently” and, above alclass="underline" “A king must reign or die.”)
How he battled a pugnacious dialectician over a Shelley quotation (“He hath awaken’d from the dream of life”) by delicately manipulating Calderon and Shakespeare, but also, with exquisite refinement, Frankenstein.
With what elegance he dueled a peripatetician over a line by Leibniz (“Education can do anything: it can make bears dance”) by allowing himself the luxury of a demonstration founded almost entirely on quotations from de Sade.
Bayard lights a cigarette while looking through the window at the gondolas on the Grand Canal.
Simon answers his admirers with good grace. An old Venetian in a three-piece suit hands him a glass of champagne:
“Maestro, you know Casanova, naturalmente? In the account of his famous duel with the Polish count, he writes: ‘The first advice one gives someone who is taking part in a duel is to convince one’s adversary as quickly as possible of the impossibility of harming you.’ Cosa ne pensa?”