The Miracle of the Images. Welby Thomas Cox, Jr.

home and cell phone for Aldo. He glanced at his watch and it was now 1:00am in Rome, making it 5:00pm in Centerville. Aldo hurried to his room and placed the call to Handmaker.

      The receptionist was still at work and she efficiently transferred Aldo to Handmaker.

      "Aldo...am I glad you have called...terrible thing this bombing...killed the driver and apparently burned your canvass to dust. How are you?"

      "Well I am shocked Homer...terrorist in Centerville...I don't believe it...there is something strange about it...why bomb a delivery truck in the middle of an all but abandoned parking lot."

      "Maybe the bomb was set to go off later and something happened to it...I don't know Aldo...I do know that your portrait was torched and I want to know what you want me to do when the insurance company comes calling."

      "I don't want any publicity on this at all counselor...so please stay away from the insurance company...I don't want or need it."

      "Aldo, DHL doesn't want a public exchange either...they will be looking to settle this claim quick and easy...please let me explore this component with them...nothing official you understand."

      "Homer you have better things to do...I suggest you drop this like a bad case of tuna and drop it now...I do not want to fund another dime of expense for this."

      "Listen Aldo...I feel responsible for this and believe me there will be no cost to you...if we settle with your permission, we'll take the industry standard one-third and you can give the rest to charity."

      VII. OIL FOR SQUEAKING PARTS

      Many before this writer have written voluminous passages of the magic and beauty of Venice. Certainly, Thomas Mann was most descriptive. The author must give credit here were credit is due. Mann had a measured hold of my mind for many years...just as Faulkner, Buck, Wouk, Dickens, Hemingway brought to life the words that fed the world. This lowly writer would be less than honest if he did not say that those words and descriptive phrases were devoured by this writer and become a convoluted part of his life and have felt an urgency to share them once again with the world in the hope that none will ever be forgotten...even as the words mesh with those of his own to conclude that there is nothing new under the sun that has not been said or even done. And so we begin with a passage by ship of a strange passenger...a large, silent man intent on seeing the coast of his beloved Venice...the chance late in life to stroll across St. Mark's Square...to sit in the Piazza, sip espresso and gather the evidence that there is no life of more interest than that of watching or describing humanity.

      It was an ancient hulk belonging to an Italian line, obsolete, dingy, and grimed with soot. A dirty hunched backed sailor, smirkingly polite, conducted him at once below ships to a cavernous, lamp lit cabin. There behind a table sat a man with a beard like a goat's; he had his hat on the back of his head, a cigarette stump in the corner of his mouth; he reminded of an old-fashioned circus-director. This person put the usual questions and wrote out a ticket to Venice, which he issued to the stranger with many commercial flourishes.

      "A ticket for Venice," said he stretching out his arm to dip the pen into the thick ink stand. "One first class to Venice! Here you are signore' Mio. He made some scrawls on the paper, folded the paper with bony yellow fingers and wrote on the outside. "An excellent choice," he rattled on, "Ah, Venice! What a glorious city! Irresistibly attractive to the cultured man for her past history as well as her present charm." His copious gestures and empty phrases gave the odd impression that he feared the stranger might alter his mind. He changed the traveler's pound notes, laying the money on the spotted table-cover with the glibness of a croupier. "A pleasant visit to you, signore, " he said, with a melodramatic bow, "Delighted to serve you." Then he beckoned and called out: "Next" as though a stream of passengers stood waiting to be served, though in point of fact there was not one. The stranger returned to the upper deck.

      He leaned an arm on the railing and looked at the idlers lounging along the quay to watch the boat go out. Then he turned his attention to his fellow passengers. Those of second class, both men and women, were squatted on their bundles of luggage on the forward deck. The first cabin consisted of a lively group of youthful clerks from Pola, evidently, who had made up a pleasure excursion to Italy and were not a little thrilled at the prospect, bustling about and laughing with satisfaction at the stir they made. They leaned over the railings and shouted, with a glib command of vulgarity, derisory remarks at such of their fellow-clerks as they saw going to business along the quay; and these in turn shook their fist and shouted just as well back again.

      One of the party in a dandified buff suit, a rakish panama with a colored scarf, and a red cravat, was loudest of the loud; he out crowed all the rest. The stranger's eye dwelt on him, and he was shocked to see that the apparent youth was no youth at all. He was an old man, beyond a doubt, with wrinkles and crow-feet round eyes and mouth; the dull carmine of the cheeks was rouge, the brown hair was a wig. His neck was shrunken and sinewy, his turned up 'Toulouse' moustache was dyed and the unbroken double row of yellow teeth he showed when he laughed were but too obviously a cheapish false set. He wore a seal ring on each forefinger, but the hands were those of an old man. The stranger was moved to shudder as he watched the creature and his associates with the rest of the group. Could they not see that he was old, that he had no right to wear the clothes they wore or pretend to be one of them? How could they? The stranger put his hand to his head, he covered his eyes, for he had slept little since he had left Cincinnati. He felt not quite canny, as though the world were suffering a dreamlike distortion of perspective, which he might arrest by shutting it all out for a few minutes and then looking at it fresh. But instead he felt a floating sensation, and opened his eyes with unreasoning alarm to find that the ship's dark sluggish bulk was slowly leaving the jetty. Inch by inch, with two and fro motion of her machinery, the strip of iridescent dirty water widened, the boat maneuvered clumsily and turned her bow to open sea. The stranger moved over to the starboard side, where the hunchbacked sailor had set up a deck-chair for him, and a steward in a greasy dress-coat asked for orders.

      The sky was grey, the wind humid. Harbor and island dropped behind, all sight of land soon vanished in mist. Flakes of sodden, clammy soot fell upon the still undried deck. Before the boat was an hour out a canvass had to be spread as a shelter from the rain.

      Wrapped in his cloak, cigarette in hand, our traveler rested; the hours slipped by unaware. It stopped raining and the canvass was removed. The horizon was visible right round; beneath the somber dome of the sky stretched the vast plain of the empty sea. But immeasurable unarticulated space weakens our power to measure time as well; the time sense falters and grows dim. Strange, shadowy figures passed and repassed-the elderly coxcomb, the goat bearded man from the bowels of the ship-with vague mutterings and gesturing marching through the strangers mind as he lay. He fell asleep.

      At midday he was summoned to luncheon in a corridor like saloon with the sleeping cabins off it. He ate at the head of a long table; the party of clerks, including the old man, sat with the jolly captain at the other end, where they had been carousing since ten o'clock. The meal was awful, and soon done...the stranger thought of the bologna in Covington. The stranger was driven to seek the open and look at the sky...perhaps it would lighten presently above Venice.

      He had not dreamed that it could be otherwise, for the city had always given him a brilliant welcome. But sky and sea remained laidened, with spurts of fine, mist-like rain; he reconciled himself to the idea of seeing a different Venice from that he had always approached on the landward side. He stood by the foremast, his gaze on the distance, alert for the first glimpse of the coast. And he thought of the melancholy and susceptible poet who had once seen the towers and turrets of his dreams rise out of these waves; repeated the rhymes born of his awe, his mingled emotions of joy and suffering-easily susceptible to a presence already shaped within him, he asked his own weary heart if a new enthusiasm, a new preoccupation, some late adventure of the feelings could still be in store for the idle traveler.

      The flat coast showed on the right, the sea was soon populated with fishing boats. The Lido appeared and was left behind as the ship glided at half speed through the narrow harbor of the same name, coming to a full stop on the lagoon in sight of garish, badly built houses, here it waited for the boat bringing the medical inspectors.

      Before