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Forster.”
    “The man cuts a good figure,” I conceded, “even if it is somewhat overinflated.”
    Guesci looked at me with a mixture of irritation and admiration. Then he grinned, shrugged with huge and comic resignation, and patted me on the shoulder. I think he suspected that I was lying; but it was the sort of large-scale, flamboyant lie that appealed to him. As he told me later, only pettiness annoyed him. He delighted in color and movement, and in the protean appearance of things. In this respect, he told me, he was a true Venetian. Like many other subjects of the Serenissima, he believed in style over content, art over life, appearance over reality, and form over substance. He believed simultaneously in fate and free will. He viewed life as a sort of Renaissance melodrama, complete with unexpected appearances and disappearances, heartrending confrontations, preposterous coincidences, disguises and doubles, switched twins and mysteries of birth; all revolving around an obscure and melancholy point of honor. And, of course, he was perfectly right.
     
    Guesci had booked a room for me in the Excelsior, and we went there after finishing our drinks. Through the muslin curtains I could see the elusive reflection of dragons in the Grand Canal. Guesci lay back on a chaise longue, looking terribly old and wise, with his eyes half-closed like a temple cat, smoking a cigarette in the Bulgarian manner. He had shed his businesslike exterior, leaving it perhaps in the saddlebag of his motorcycle. What remained was a pleasant, high-flown fellow direct from the cinquecento.
    I asked him how I was supposed to get Karinovsky out of Venice. The answer inevitably involved Guesci in a flight of discursive philosophy.
    “To escape from Venice,” he told me, “is a profound and disturbing problem. In a very real sense, you could say that no one escapes from Venice, since our city is a simulacre—or worse, a simulacrum—of the world.”
    “In that case, let’s just escape from Forster,” I suggested.
    “I’m afraid that doesn’t help us,” Guesci pointed out sadly. “If Venice is the world, then Forster is that ancient antagonist whom we call Death. No, my friend, in absolute terms an escape of any kind is clearly impossible.”
    “Why not settle for relative terms?” I asked.
    “I suppose we will be forced to. But still, we encounter difficulties. The nature of the city operates against us. Venice owes its very existence to the art of illusion—which is one of the Black Arts. It is a city of mirrors; the canals reflect the buildings, the windows reflect the canals. Distances slide and twist, earth and water interpenetrate. Venice advertises its falsehoods and conceals its truths. In a city like this, events cannot be predicted as in Genoa or Milan. The relative and conditional are apt to turn into the absolute and irrevocable without notice.”
    “That’s really terribly interesting,” I said. “But couldn’t you attempt a tentative and conditional prediction as to how—relatively, of course—we are going to get out of here?”
    Guesci sighed. “Eternally the man of action! My dear Agent X, you have yet to learn the folly of vanity. But I suppose you are anxious to use your much-advertised talents.”
    I shook my head. “I just want to get Karinovsky out of here in the simplest, safest way.”
    “Your terms are mutually contradictory,” Guesci said. “In Venice, that which is simple is rarely safe; and that which is safe is much too complicated even to consider. However, I have certain hopes. An opportunity presents itself for tomorrow night It is both simple and safe. Relatively.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    “A few days ago, a cousin of mine died. He will be buried tomorrow at the Cimitero Communale on San Michele.”
    I nodded. San Michele is a small rectangular island off the north side of Venice.
    “There will be a fine procession for him,” Guesci said. “I have hired the very best. My cousin was a