Tours of the Black Clock

139

BY NOW THEY KNOW we’ve gone. By this morning, when they came to my room and then his, they knew we’d disappeared. Perhaps they’ve scoured the city for us, perhaps they’ve searched the room to find the tunnel. At any rate we’ve left the city, on the afternoon the fishermen’s regatta takes place. With the spray of the lagoon now in my face, I gaze around from my place in the boat, and there are around me several boats, and then I see tens of them, and then hundreds. The city with the blue roof floats in the lagoon behind us. The Adriatic glistens to the east of us. Overhead swirl the German helicopters, I keep glancing up at them. Don’t look at them, Giorgio calls to me through his fixed smile from the other end of the boat. Any moment he’s going to understand about the old man. Sooner or later the word will be out, a manhunt will be underway, underway at this very moment by the helicopters above us. The fishermen were right. There are too many boats for the Germans; the lagoon’s filled with them. I’m overwhelmed by the sight of them. I hunch down in the boat, and at my feet, lying in the boat’s bottom, wrapped in the brown cloak, Z shivers from the cold of the sea, befuddled by the very blueness of a sky that’s bluer than any blue ceiling. I look up from the old man to Giorgio, who smiles. I look around at all the other Giorgios sailing on all sides of me. The boats dazzle the lagoon with colored flags that fly from their masts; the white of the swept water erupts in the air. I can’t bring myself to look back at the blue city again, I expect it to have sunk altogether now that we’ve gone, that if I look back once more there’ll be only a huge silver bubble rising from beneath the sea. I’m a little queasy from the boat and the panic. The end of the regatta and the Italian mainland are in sight. On the mainland they’ll certainly capture us; I’m thinking how I’ve used all the Giorgios and Brunos to smuggle out of exile the most evil man in the world. With the mainland just moments away, and with the sight of German soldiers lining the shore, Giorgio now says to me, When we reach the shore we won’t have time to say goodbye. So goodbye now. Goodbye, I say to him. I look around at the fishermen on the other boats, and the colors of the regatta flags; they’re all looking back at me, even fishermen I’ve never seen, fishermen who seem to have come out of nowhere, out of unseen islands. They’re all smiling goodbye.