Madame d’Ortolan looked at Mrs Siankung, who watched Bisquitine with anxious concentration. Bisquitine appeared dishevelled already; hair awry, her businesswoman’s jacket removed as an annoyance, her blouse hanging half out, buttons undone at the bottom, tights laddered, shoes discarded. She brought her head back, and stuck her jaw out, lowering her voice to something close to a man’s as she said, “Blinkenscoop, why, you silly man, what do you call this? A fine to-do, to do, to-do, to-do, to-do-oo-oo. I can’t see with you in the way. Begone, you tea urchin!”
“She will need one of the other blockers to be sure,” Mrs Siankung announced.
Madame d’Ortolan and Mr Kleist exchanged glances. They were out of character, in a sense. He was too young, wiry and blond, she too fat and awkward, with badly dyed grey-black hair and a loud orange velour trouser suit. Mrs Siankung was similarly wrong, manifesting as a massive, robustly built woman in a voluminous yellow dress who needed a three-pointed aluminium stick to walk. They’d had no time to find body types closer to their own, especially as they’d all had to transition together with Bisquitine and her handlers, who had been similarly randomised in physiques.
Madame d’Ortolan frowned. “A blocker? You’re sure?”
“I think you mean a spotter,” Mr Kleist suggested.
“No, a blocker,” Mrs Siankung said, reaching out to flick an unruly lock off her charge’s forehead. “And it has to be one of those who was here earlier, with the first intervention team.”
Madame d’Ortolan glanced at Mr Kleist and nodded. He left the room. Bisquitine made as though to slap Mrs Siankung’s hand away, then started pulling at her long, brown, still mostly gathered-up hair, tugging a thick length of it free and putting the end of it in her mouth and starting to chew contentedly on it. She looked at a distant painting with an expression of great concentration.
“What will happen to the blocker?” Madame d’Ortolan asked.
Mrs Siankung looked at her. “You know what will happen.”
Mr Kleist returned with one of the two blockers a few minutes later.
The young man had been dried off after his dunking in the canal beside the palace’s landing stage. His dark hair was slicked down, he was dressed in a towelling robe and he was smoking a cigarette.
“Put that out,” Mrs Siankung told him.
“I work better with it,” he said, glancing to Madame d’Ortolan, who remained expressionless.
He sighed, took a final deep draw, found an ashtray on the broad desk and stubbed the cigarette out. He took a frowning look at Bisquitine as he did so. She was in turn obviously fascinated by him, staring wide-eyed and still holding the hank of hair to her mouth while she chewed noisily at it.
A slight, bald man hurried through the study doors, came up to Madame d’Ortolan and kissed her hand.
“Madame, I am at your disposal.”
“Professore Loscelles,” she replied, patting his hand. “A pleasure, as ever. I am so sorry your lovely home has been made such a mess of.”
“Not at all, not at all,” he murmured.
“Please stay, will you?”
“Certainly.”
The Professore stood at the rear of Madame d’Ortolan’s chair.
The sheet-covered table was moved back and the young man who was employed as a blocker was sat on a chair immediately in front of Bisquitine, almost knee to knee. He looked a little nervous. He pulled the robe tighter, cleared his throat.
“She will take your wrists,” Mrs Siankung told him.
He nodded, cleared his throat again. Bisquitine looked expectantly at Mrs Siankung, who nodded. The girl made a noise like “Grooh!” and sat forward quickly, grabbing at the young man’s wrists and encircling them as best she could with her own smaller hands while she thudded her head against his chest.
The reaction was immediate. The young man bowed his back, jackknifed forward and as though doing so deliberately vomited copiously over Bisquitine’s head, hair and back before quivering as though suffering a fit and starting to slump backwards in the seat and then slide forwards out of it, legs splaying as he lost control of his bladder and bowels at the same time.
“Dear fuck!” Madame d’Ortolan said, standing so suddenly that she knocked her chair over.
Professore Loscelles put a handkerchief to his mouth and nose and turned away, bowing his head.
Mr Kleist did not react at all, save to glance briefly, as though concerned, at Madame d’Ortolan. Then he walked over and carefully set her chair upright again.
Mrs Siankung moved her feet away from the mess.
Bisquitine didn’t seem to have noticed, still cuddling into the young man and pulling him to her as he spasmed and jerked and voided noisily from various orifices.
“Who’s a bad boy, then?” they heard Bisquitine say over the noises of evacuation coming from the young man, her voice muffled as she hugged his shaking body and they collapsed together onto the floor. A thick, earthy stink filled the air. “Who’s a bad boy? Where’s this? Where’s this, then? You tell me. Ay, Ferrovia, Ferrovia, al San Marco, Fondamenta Venier, Ay! Giacobbe, is that you? No, it’s not me. Ponte Guglie; alora, Rio Tera De La Madalena. Strada Nova, al San Marco. Alora; il Quadri. Due espressi, per favore, signori. Bozman, who said you could come along? Get back, get away, get thee to your own shop, if you have one!… Euh, yucky.” Bisquitine seemed to notice the mess she was lying in. She let go of the young man, who flopped lifeless on the rug, streaked with his own excrement. His eyes – wide, almost popping – stared up at the biblical scene depicted on the ceiling.
Bisquitine got to her feet, smiling brightly. She stuck the length of hair in her mouth again, then made a sour face and spat it out. She continued to spit for a few more moments before holding her arms out to Mrs Siankung as a child would, straight, fingers spread. “ Bath time!” she cried out.
Madame d’Ortolan looked to Professore Loscelles, who was dabbing at his lips with his handkerchief. He nodded. “It would sound,” he said hoarsely, “as though the person is heading from Santa Lucia – the railway station – towards the Piazza San Marco. So it would seem, given the names of the thoroughfares mentioned. Or they may already be there, at the Quadri. It is a café and rather fine restaurant. Very good cake.”
Madame d’Ortolan looked at the other man standing nearby. “Mr Kleist?”
“I’ll see to it, ma’am.” He left the room.
Bisquitine stamped one foot, messily. “ Bath time!” she said loudly.
Mrs Siankung looked to Madame d’Ortolan, who said, “Shower.” She glanced distastefully at Bisquitine. “And don’t tarry. We may need her again, soon.”
I make my way through the slow bustle of tourists on the main route leading towards the Rialto and beyond towards both the Accademia and Piazza San Marco, moving as quickly as I can without actually throwing people aside or trampling small children. “Scusi. Scusi, scusi, signora, excuse me, sorry, scusi, coming through. Scusi, scusi…”
At the same time I’m still trying to monitor what’s going on just across the Grand Canal. What a stew of conflicting talents and abilities are massed around the Palazzo Chirezzia! There are blockers and trackers and inhibitors and foreseers and adepts with skills I barely recognise, many of them recently arrived. I think I can identify individual presences now, too. That one there would be Madame d’Ortolan, this one here might be Professore Loscelles. And at the centre of them all that bizarre presence, that strange, guileless malignity.