Tom Foran Clark

Pike and Emery entered Venice on the Lido Bridge. Pike was cheerful when they got to the youth hostel, the Ostello, which he immediately dubbed the Flotilla della Vagabondiers. He leaned Emery up against the registration desk like a sack of potatoes and told the fellow at the front desk they'd soared into Venice on their bikes, coasting across the Adriatic waters and Venetian lagoon via the Lido, their coats functioning as sails.

“We are the Zeno Brothers, from the eastern United States. My poor brother Emery has taken a wicked spill and he is not of a piece, as you see for yourself. We are in need of considerable and immediate attention."

Assorted other Vagabondiers, idly hanging around the Ostello, overheard Pike's declamations and drew in closer. Pike repeated, “We are the Zeno brothers from New England, Pike and Emery. We have crossed the ocean -- and the Lido Bridge -- in search of adventure, treasure, and romance. As you see, my brother, he is not of a piece -- he is not himself.”

Emery knew he had to pull himself together. "We just need a cot,” he said. “A bed -- to sleep -- that’s all.”

The two newcomers wer now led graciously to their bunks, accompanied by half dozen curious Vagabondiers.

"What was all that about us flying over the Lido?” Emery asked Pike angrily. "And me not being of a piece? And who the hell are the Zeno brothers?"

"The two Zenos were wealthy brothers who'd ventured out, in the 1390s, to new lands in the northern seas, traveling due west from Iceland, returning to Italy with amazing maps and tales that now make evident they must have visited not only Greenland and Newfoundland, but also the coast of Maine - a hundred years before Columbus ventured out."

"How do you come to know all this so suddenly?" Emery demanded.

Pike showed him a pamphlet in which all this was written down. He'd just been holding it to the side, and was simply reading from it. "It was free, at the front desk," Pike clarified. "While you were telling people to back off and mind their own business and all that, I had a quick look at this literature."

"Who did I tell to back off? I didn't tell anyone to mind their own business," Emery insisted.

"Oh Emery," Pike said, "You are in a bad way. Lie down. Your whole body must be infested. Are you sure you don't want to go to a hospital?"

"I never said I didn't want to go to a hospital."

"Your mind's on fire, Emery. You have a fever. You're boiling. Lie down and close your eyes. Last night, in your sleep, you were screaming, 'I don't want to see a doctor! I don't need surgery! Leave me alone!'"

"I had a fever."

"I just said that, Emery."

Emery closed his eyes. When he opened them, a beautiful young woman was hovering over him.

"Are you an angel?"Emery asked. "Have I died? Am I in heaven?"

"I am Frida Christensen," she said. "You are at the Venice Ostello. You are having a fever like you are being hit by Thor's hammer, I am thinking. You must keep staying to being warm and lying down," she said. She sat down next to Emery and put her lovely hand on his anguished forehead. "Your friend is asking about a doctor and I am telling him I am studying for being a nurse, so I am coming here to you."

This Frida had long blonde hair and high cheekbones. She was porcelain-pale, but cheerfully red-cheeked. Emery, boiling in delirium, asked her outright, "Are you actually this beautiful in reality?"

"You're nicely speaking -- it is sounding very sweet," she said, blushing slightly. "But now you must be resting."

"Are you ready?" Pike called into the room. "Let's get this show on the road."

"I am leaving now, but we are to be coming again soon," this Frida said gently, and stood to go.

Frida did not return to the ailing martyr's bedside that night, because Pike kept her out past the hostel's curfew, and with only the greatest reluctance did the night clerk let him and her and the others in their group back in. Certainly Frida was not allowed back into the men's area at that hour. So it was Pike who ministered to Emery now.

"How are we feeling?" Pike asked him.

"Where did you go?" Emery answered his question with a question.

"We went to the canals," Pike said. "Can you believe it? They have canals here, Emery. They're beautiful. Little men in funny suits stand up precariously in narrow little boats -- gondolas. You have to admire those guys! We visited an elegant but inexpensive little restaurant where we were served squid's eyes and who knows sliced what from purple porpoises. It could have been eggplant, for all I know. You should have been there, though, Emery. I really missed you. It was a special evening."

"Did Frida have any?" Emery asked, but Pike had already turned and gone to wash up or brush his teeth or something. Emery closed his eyes and quickly drifted back into his torpid state.

The next morning, Emery felt better. He felt returned to himself, like a package that had been dropped from the back of a truck and run over once or twice but eventually safely delivered. His knee was not in any pain at all. He took out a little ball peen hammer he had with him, and had at himself, trying to locate again the exact place where the shattered bone shards had so harshly stuck themselves into him. But he felt okay -- no pain. He could hardly believe it -- but there it was. Emery showered gleefully, feeling tremendous joy in every part of him. He put on the cleanest clothes he had, and joined Pike in going down to breakfast.

"To-to-to-tooooo,” Pike trumpeted. “Presenting Brother Zeno, Sir Richard Emery, the Duke of West Derry."

Frida was present, wearing a white blouse with very nicely embroidered smooth and textured filigree all over it, and blue carpenter's overalls. Glowing with enjoyment of Pike's antics, she clapped her hands.

Over tea, coffee, orange juice pastries, cheese, and bread sticks, Pike requested Emery tell Frida and the assembled Vagabondiers, as Pike called them, what he remembered of the last forty-eight hours. "Not much," Emery admitted. "I saw an angel," he said. Lovely Frida, on cue, blushed richly. Emery had a strong feeling he'd just got a moment's glimpse into time's standing still for an eternity.

One of the chattier Vagabondiers immediately picked up the slack, relating a story about a haggard fellow traveler who'd claimed he'd seen, in Amsterdam, an exquisite painting by Vermeer. The picture now haunted him. He'd revisited the Rijksmuseum to have another look at this gem, but the picture was gone. He spoke of it to the guards, but they could not place it. And nobody at the museum, as it turned out, had any inkling of what picture he was talking of. The painting was not there; it had never been there, the museum people insisted. (I liked that: "the museum people.") They did their damnedest to find it, but it was a no go. This guy was persistent. He kept looking. He ransacked the museum and library people's books, fiche, files, and records of all kinds. But he never found that picture. He roamed the world in search of it, but he never did see that Vermeer again.

Emery studied Frida's face. Hers was a thoughtful, deeply romantic disposition, Emery decided. Her lips moved along with every word enunciated by the Vagabondier.

Under cloudy skies, aboard a ferry crossing to the Doge's Palace and Saint Mark's Square, Frida revealed something of a research scientist's finger-pointing disposition in her, instilled perhaps by her professors at the University at Uppsala, Sweden, where she'd studied psychopathology and nursing. Frida excitedly shared her views on culture and psychology with her new friends. She then gave a demonstration of her powers, analyzing Pike severely. She said he'd soon be encountering very troubling dangers, perhaps even matters of life and death, for which he'd best soon get prepared by being more authentically engaged with the world and not only going along with things on the surface as he imagined them.

Emery took this last judgment very much to heart, for Pike was, after all, Emery's traveling partner and these dangers Frida mentioned -- were they then not also Emery's dangers? He was glad she scarcely knew him, as he decidedly did not want to be similarly -- severely -- judged. Then this beautiful but exacting angel turned to him.

"You will be paying a price for your past nonchalance, seeing a reality that is being very inviting but a taking of the wrong road for you," Frida said. "Your hubris, it will be shrinking, I am imagining!" She flayed him. What a vocabulary! he thought. And that charming accent! Beyond appreciation, Emery was filled with worshipful affection.

As the group approached Saint Mark's, Emery began limping. There was again a very light throbbing pain in his knee. Very boldly, he put his arm around Frida's shoulder, for support. She did not push his arm away.

On the piazza, there were many more pigeons than people. In contrast to the pigeons, the people were making a racket and commotion. A six-piece band played loudly (and terribly) while paraders walked in circles holding up red and gold banners. It was a worker's strike, formally declared by the Italian Communist Party. A burly, deep-voiced man with a megaphone made stirring declarations; the emboldened crowd chanted these apparent slogans right back at him, fists raised. No one seemed at all to mind a lighthearted little girl dressed merrily in red and gold, spraypainting graffiti on the world renowned church campanile.

The other hostel vagabondiers suddenly disappeared in the crowd, conveniently perhaps, rightly wary of also being psychoanalyzed by Frida, who seemed totally comfortable with the mayhem on the square. She very naturally and simply joined arms with Emery and Pike, and the three spent the rest of that day together. Emery was hobbling a little, but he was resolved to keep up with the other two. Pike accused him of faking this trick knee in order to get Frida more deeply involved in his recuperation. At that, Frida again blushed, delighted to perceive a psychological insight neatly tucked away inside what Pike had said.

Due to the national worker's strike, the Accademia was closed. The three wandered down side streets and got lost, but that didn't seem to matter. All of Venice seemed designed for this purpose: to get lost in. They came to alleyways so winding and narrow they had to pass through them single-file. They had a late lunch in a little ristorante where they laughed and shared stories and didn't place their order for an hour or more; then they took another hour and a half to eat.

They next wound up at the square of Campo St. Giovanni E. Paolo, where Verrochio's equestrian Collioni frowned at them from his high place even as sun broke through the clouds. A young woman holding a bambino wrapped up in soft blue blankets approached them with her free hand extended. Then she held out her little bambino to Emery. "Mia Bambino," she said. Emery gave her all the change in his pocket. Frida simply asked the pitiful mother for directions back to the Doge's Palace. The weepy eyes and imploring stance faded quickly, as the mother very matter-of-factly pointed out the direction the three should go.

"Did she seem at all to have a lisp to you?" Pike asked his companions. Before they could answer, Pike explained, "The Michelin Green Guide says all the people of Venice lisp. 'Venetians have pale complexions and lisp slightly.' Here," he said, showing Emery and Frida the place in his guide. Oddly, so soon as Pike drew attention to this, they seemed to hear lisping everywhere. And, in fact, the mother with the bambino had been pale.

The three took a quick tour of the palace. The pale and lisping palace quards were right on their heels the whole time. They crossed the Bridge of Sighs to the prison, where the guards jangled their keys obnoxiously when the sun began to set. The muffled, yet resounding sound of many closing doors caught up to them. It was closing time.

The Michelin Green Guide describes everything in Venice as being "charming and poetic," Pike pointed out when the three returned to the Ostello on their ferry in the evening. With the sun going down crimson and the bounty of stars emerging, they agreed the Michelin Guide was also right about that.

Back at the Flotilla della Vagabondiers, against house rules, much wine was shared. Pike thrilled the assembled with intimations of his and Emery's plans to ride their bikes to North Africa. A fellow sojourner then spoke up, "They'd as soon take a razor to your neck to get your money as say hello," he declared, which Pike said struck him as being about as blunt and narrow-minded as what the Michelin Green Guide had to say about pale and lisping Venetians. As for Emery, he didn't let it get under his skin. Several simultaneous heated arguments erupted after that comment, but Emery's thoughts all revolved around Frida, who said not a word -- tired, she was nodding off. Finally, she stood, excused herself from the evening fray, and went to bed. Emery did likewise.

The Accademia was open the next day. Frida, who had already already visited it twice prior to Emery and Pike's arrival in Venice, told them the place was like heaven. "Follow me," she said, leading the way. "I'll introduce you to your joys." The three made arrangements for meeting later, and Pike and Emery went in. They were astonished. The pictures by the Veneziano brothers were breathtaking. The Madonna Benidicente by Giovanni Bellini was powerfully affecting. It was a kind of heaven -- a beautiful maze filled with utterly divine creations. But nothing could have prepared Pike or Emery for one awesome painting which, when they came to, just about knocked them down. They did kneel down before it: Giorgione's The Tempest.

Talk about enigmatic. In that picture is world enough and time. A cataclysm looms. A young mother nurses her baby. A proud young man stands by. There is danger, dignity, urging, and emerging at the heart of everything. Giorgione imbued his picture with intimate knowledge of this.

There were the Tintorettos, the Veroneses, the Crivellis, Vivarinis, d'Alemagnas, and Muranos -- all fine and good -- but before Pike and Emery finally left the Accademia that afternoon, they had to go back to see The Tempest again.

Then they walked out to the Campo S. Margarita, where Frida was waiting. She’d already reserved a table for them at a little corner ristorante. "You saw the Giorgione," she said instantly, seeing the red, bloodstirred faces of Pike and Emery. She said they had the same baked, glazed look she’d also noticed on the faces of other young men departing the Accademia after seeing The Tempest. "What are you thinking of that sky?" she asked excitedly -- waxing poetic on the looming danger, so perplexing and troubling, close along the edge of life and death. "The couple in this picture, they are not engaging with their beauty, they are not preparing to their danger!"

They ordered dinner, sipped fine Fossato wine, and talked while waiting for the meal. Frida told Pike and Emery more of what she knew about Giorgione's picture. She said it clearly represented a surface enigma, a sign or emblem of the beauty and the danger in the world. She said the child fed by the mother had been born through illicit things they'd done -- joyful sins which, according to Frida, represented the essence of the reintegrated God.

"That's interesting," Emery said, actually understanding only a word or two of what she'd said, probably.

In this painting, Frida further beautifully asserted, you could see the couple had fallen -- like Adam and Eve. But the wonderful enigma of the picture, she said, was the potential, or promise, that was virtually absent from and yet inherrent in the painting -- the family's eventual return, through bliss, to their natural state of joy. "The husband and the wife, they are sharing -- and they are not sharing -- their conjugal love," Frida said mysteriously, "which is rising to cosmic significance."

Emery said nothing for a long time, then quietly asked Frida and Pike if they'd mind it if he read aloud to them what he'd written in his diary that day about the proud young man, the nursing mother, the sacred feminine -- both human and divine -- and the cataclysm looming in The Tempest.

When Emery finished telling them his view on what was at the heart of Giorgione’s picture, Frida said abruptly, "There is being no mystery in your thinking, Emery. Any girl containing a brain in her mind is knowing what you are seeing. I don't think I am needing to be spelling this out for you."

The psychologist. The pointing finger points, and having pointed moves on. Emery must have given Frida a pained look, because she immediately laughed and put her arm around his shoulder. "Okay," she said, "I am telling you, Emery. It is not being a mystery. Young men they are thinking the baby is being very lucky on the mother's chest."

Pike spewed wine, he laughed so hard, pounding the table with his palms so that the plates and glasses shook. Frida laughed, too. Emery didn't see all that much humor in it. He insisted there was far more to it than that. There were mysteries. He poured more wine. The three spoke of other matters. Frida laughed at everything Pike said.

The power of suggestion! For the life of him, Emery now could not keep his eyes from Frida's jiggling blouse. It must have been the wine. He wanted to drop a spoon into the valley of her cleavage and reach in and take it out. He was very unsettled. He pretended to be studying his wine glass. Maybe she was right. Emery had more wine. Looking up, he had to keep refocusing, staring intently into Frida's cool, green eyes. It was hopeless.

They ate their spaghetti and Verdura di Stagione salads. The Madonna Benedicente, Frida, held her napkin crumpled in her hand like a delicate white carnation. The waiters balanced dishes above their heads like circus performers. A sad faced cook kept peering out from behind the kitchen door, obviously enjoying our pleasure in the meal he'd prepared. Frida, Pike, and Emery lifted their glasses in salute to him. Pike gregariously gestured to the cook that he should come over to their table, but the cook turned as red as the tomato sauce on his apron and retreated back into the kitchen. Emery ordered more wine.

The three wove their way back through the maze of Venice, all along the canals, arm in arm. Pike and Frida almost carried wobbling, weak-kneed Emery. They had a ferry to catch, and his hobbling was a liability. There was a half moon glowing and stars filled the sky. On the waterfront, another vagabond waiting for the ferry played a flute -- simple variations on familiar melodies, which grew more intricate and subtle as he played on.

The sound of the flute and the lapping waters was soothing. The three listened. A mist rose up at the water's edge. Emery drifted. Clouds gathered over. The next thing he knew, angels were looking down on them -- on Pike and Emery -- from heaven. One of the angels, a Frida look-alike, said, "Why are you just sitting there? Do you think that you are princes, and that angels will serve you? Oh no. You clearly have forgotten that in heaven who desires to be great must be a servant."

The angel led Emery through a gate woven from the branches of tall, stately trees. They entered into a paradise that looked like it had been painted, of course, by Giorgione. Men, women, boys, and girls were picking fruits from trees and carrying them in baskets to others. Some were pressing out juice from grapes, cherries, and berries into cups, and drinking. Some were playing flutes or singing songs, delighting all. Some sat at fountains, splashing water, which arose in intricate and marvellous patterns. Some just walked along on paths, side by side, exchanging pleasantries. Others were running, playing, dancing. All these pleasures seemed just right, exactly appropriate for a paradise.

Now the angel took Emery down a path that led to a group of people sitting on the ground in a rose garden surrounded by olive, orange, and lemon trees. They were rocking back and forth, grieving and weeping. Emery asked one, "Why are you sitting here like this?"

"It is the seventh day since we came into this paradise," Emery was told. "When we arrived it seemed as though we had been raised into heaven. But, after three days, the blessings seemed to whither, and then vanish. We became afraid we'd lose all of the delight in our lives, despairing of eternal happiness. We wandered aimlessly on assorted paths in search of the gate through which we'd entered, going round and round in circles. In trying to leave, we only got more lost. We've been sitting here in this rose garden for a day and a half, looking around us at the lovely and abundant olives, grapes, lemons, and oranges but, the more we look at these, the wearier our eyes grow of seeing them, our noses of smelling them, and our mouths of tasting them. That's the reason for our grief and our tears."

"Actually," the angel said, "This maze is an entrance into heaven. I know the way, and I will take you." The people got up, and followed. On the way, the angel explained it's a very common misperception that the outward delights of a paradise are going to lead to eternal joy. "The outward delights of a paradise are only delights of the physical senses," the angel said, "while the inward delights of a paradise are delights of the soul. Garden paradises exist everywhere in the heavens -- and they are sources of joy to the angels -- but these are only joys to the angels to the degree that a delight of the soul is in them. There's not one thing here, in Paradise, not a leaf, that does not originate from a marriage of love and wisdom in useful service. Only if a person is in this marriage is he or she in a heavenly paradise."

Sunshine poured in through the hostel room's one window.

"Look who's up!" Pike laughed when he saw his friend. Pike had just come from the showers and was wrapped in a towel. Emery covered myself and asked Pike how he'd got back to the hostel. "We carried you home," Pike answered. "You were real, real gone."

At breakfast, Emery apologized to Frida for his behavior, but she just said, "Poor boy," and gently touched his face. "You were being very sweet last night," she said. "Not everyone is being so sweet," she added.

Pike and Emery were again on their own that day. Emery, having his little hangover to deal with, was sullen and perplexed. He drank a lot of bottled water. Pike took refuge in his picture-taking. When evening came, Pike got some very excellent crimson sunset shots. He and Emery stocked up on vegetables at the Rialto bridge, then returned to the hostel, where Frida was nowhere to be seen.

Emery inquired about her at the Ostello registration desk. The fellow there said she had checked out. When Emery asked him if he knew why, he said he had no idea. "People come and go," is all he had to say about it. Emery felt hollow, empty, dizzy for not having at least said goodbye to Frida. He was perplexed and heartsick, grieving at her just going off like this -- her not leaving any message or anything.

Emery was restless all that night. He finally fell asleep, but it wasn't very long before he was awoken again, needing to pee. He stumbled in the dark to find the bathroom, made water, then limped back toward his bed. Suddenly another Vagabondier appeared, startling him -- an elegant Belgian who shared the room. He put his hand on Emery's mouth. "Ssshhh," he said.

The Belgian was shaking. "There is a boy," he said. "He's going through your things." He'd seen this guy rifling through both Pike's and Emery's clothes and packs. He said it was "the Arab with the Afro" -- the silent Algerian in the bed next to Emery's -- his headboard was at Emery's feet. There was now no sign of him. Emery checked his pants. His wallet was gone.

The Belgian boy walked behind Emery. In silence, they went through some rooms. Emery didn't know what else to do. He told the informer to go back to bed -- they'd wait and see what would happen next. Emery lay in bed, worrying and fretting. Then the swarthy Algerian came from nowhere and lay back in his bed. Emery was going to confront him right away, then changed his mind. He waited.

Then Emery got up and went to the bathroom again. Maybe the Algerian had discarded the empty wallet there, he thought. Emery sought evidence. Then he went down to the common room and wrote a note at the registration desk. He described the Algerian and asked that the hostel detain him, and please get back his wallet. Then Emery went back upstairs.

He double-checked his stuff. He gave the situation more thought. Emery pulled on my chin. Then he thought he'd better take a chance. He tiptoed over to the Algerian's bunk. He tapped him on his shoulder. He turned and faced Emery. His eyes were on fire. "What?" he snapped.

"I need to have my wallet back," Emery said.

"I no understand," the Algerian said, glaring at him.

"You stole my wallet," Emery said. "I won't tell anyone," he promised, "if you'll just give it back to me."

"Ah!" he said with a look of sudden recognition. "No," he added, and turned away.

Again, Emery tapped him on the shoulder. "Come with me," he said. In the hall, he explained everything to the Algerian again. The Algerian denied everything. He said, "Mo-ment," went back to the room, then came back to the hall again. He had a cigarette burning in one hand, and his other hand was closed tightly over something else. "Here," he said, gesturing with his cigarette toward the bathroom. "No," Emery said. "It's okay. We stay right here." Emery stood firm.

The Algerian went back once more to the shared room. He returned with Emery's wallet, with his money in it. "I give it you for one reason," the Algerian explained. "I tell you why: you are intelli-gent," he said. Then he drew his finger across his throat. "Don't tell anyone," he said. Emery was as rattled by his compliment as by his threat.

Emery counted the money. Then he went down to the registration desk again, and tore up the note he'd left on the counter.

In the morning, during breakfast in the common room, the Algerian winked at Emery from across the room, and again pulled his finger across his throat. Emery smiled wanly, poking idly at his cornflakes with his spoon. Pike sensed something was wrong, and asked his friend if he was all right "It's taken care of," Emery insisted, and said nothing more. Perversely, he felt somehow good about it -- honor among thieves, and all that.

It was a dreary, cold morning. Emery's knee seemed okay -- good to go. Once Emery and Pike had got all their stuff attached to their bikes and were ready to push off, Emery had a sudden bad feeling -- a dread insight. He reached for his wallet and opened it. The wallet was empty

Emery ran around the hostel a few times, but there was no sign of the Algerian anywhere. Pike kept pestering him for some news of what was bugging him, but Emery kept it to himself. He felt like an idiot. The two set out. Somewhere in the Umbrian flatlands on the road to Ravenna, Emery just came to a halt.

"Shit, shit, shit!" he stammered.

Pike rolled back toward him. "What in the hell is wrong?”

"I was robbed," Emery whispered, shuddering. "I have no money."

Pike laid his bike down gently where it was. He went over to his riding partner and put his arm around his shoulder. "Emery," he said, and paused thoughtfully. "Emery, I haven't had a penny since we left Milan."