A Farce To Be Reckoned With

Chapter 1

Azzie was well content when he left Aretino's house, the memory of Adam's story still tingling in his mind, but he had become aware, with that fine demon's sense that he possessed, that something was curiously amiss.

The weather had continued fine. Little feathery clouds sailed across a sky of purest azure, like galleons of snow molded by children. All around him, Venice went on with its pleasures and its labors. Heavy-laden barges filled with clothing and foodstuffs sailed slowly across the Grand Canal, their bluff, gaily painted bows thrusting through the low chop. A funeral barge, all glossy black and silver, slipped silently past, its varnished coffin strapped to the bow, black-clad mourners standing silently together on the afterdeck.

Church bells sounded out. Crowds hurried to and fro on the promenades, and nearby a fellow came past in motley, with coxcomb swaying and bells jingling, a comedian bound for an engagement at some theater, no doubt. A group of five nuns hurried by, the great white wings of their headdresses looking ready to loft them into flight. On a bollard near a line of tied-up gondolas, a large fellow dressed in white satin and wearing a broad hat sat with a sketchbook and colored chalks, trying to capture a likeness of the Canal.

Azzie walked over to him. "It seems we meet again."

Babriel looked up. His jaw dropped.

Azzie came around to study Babriel's sketch.

"Is it the view here that you're drawing?" he asked.

"Yes. Can't you tell?"

Babriel nodded. "I know, I've gotten them wrong. This perspective matter is difficult to capture, but I thought I'd have a go at it."

Azzie squinted at it again. "It's really not bad for an amateur. I'm surprised to see you here. I thought you were going back to Heaven."

"And so I did. But Michael sent me back here to do some sketching and thus improve my understanding of European art. He sends his regards, by the way. And also inquired after the health of your friend, Aretino."

"How did you know about Aretino?"

"I saw you come out of his house. He's quite famous, of course, though most of his verses are scarcely fit for Heaven. He's notorious, too, isn't he? He was one of the Top Ten Sinners of 1523."

"Huh!" Azzie sneered. "Moralists are always prejudiced against writers who show life as it is rather than as they feel it ought to be. It happens I am a fan of Aretino. I merely went by to pay my compliments, nothing more."

Babriel stared at him. It had never occurred to him to inquire what Azzie was doing coming out of Aretino's house. But now that Azzie had called attention to it himself, the angel began to wonder.

Although Michael had hinted that something untoward might be afoot, Babriel hadn't really given it much thought. Azzie was his friend, and, although he served Bad, Babriel couldn't really consider him bad.

It occurred to him for the first time that his friend probably was up to something, and that it was up to him, Babriel, to discover what it was.

They parted with expressions of mutual esteem and a promise on both their parts to do lunch again soon.

Then Azzie went off down the street. Babriel stared thoughtfully after him for a while, then returned to his drawing.

Babriel returned to his hotel in the early afternoon. The four-story building sagged down on itself and seemed squeezed in by the larger buildings on either side. Half a dozen angels were staying there because Signor Amazzi, the grim and reverent owner, made a special price for those associated with religion.

Some said he knew that the quiet, well-mannered, regular-featured young people who came from some unspecified northern country to stay with him from time to time were angels. Others said he thought they were angles, repeating Pope Gregory's joke. Amazzi sat at his little desk when Babriel came in, and said to him, "There's someone waiting for you in the sitting room."

"A visitor! How nice!" said Babriel. He hurried in to see who it was.

The sitting room was cozy and small, a few feet below street level but illuminated by sunlight streaming through high narrow windows, giving it a churchly effect that the godly found pleasing. Michael the Archangel sat on a high- backed straw-seated chair off to one side, leafing through a papyrus travel brochure extolling the pleasures of upper Egypt. He closed it hastily and said, "Ah, there, Babriel! I just stopped by to see how you were getting on!"

"Oh, very well indeed, sir," Babriel said. He showed Michael his sketchbook, remarking, "I still haven't gotten on to this perspective trick, sir."

"Keep trying awhile longer," Michael said. "A working knowledge of painting is useful in helping to evaluate the many masterworks Heaven has in its superlative collections. Have you encountered your friend Azzie again?"

"Did you indeed? What do you think it was all about? Simple fan worship?"

"That's what I'd like to believe," Babriel said. "However, a certain appearance of upset in my friend's behavior when I mentioned Aretino's name has led me to wonder if it might not be otherwise. But I hate to accuse anyone of possible double-dealing, sir, and least of all one who is my friend, despite being a demon."

"Your scruples do you credit," Michael said. "Though we would expect no less of one who is after all a full- fledged angel. But consider. Azzie, as a servitor of Bad, would not be doing his job if he were not up to some subterfuge conducive to the advancement of Evil in the world. So to accuse him of harboring wrongdoing is simply to give him his due. Of course he's up to no good! The question is, what is he doing?"

"As to that, I have not the slightest idea."

"Yet I think we need to find out. Azzie is no longer an insignificant personage. Twice has he served the Powers of Darkness in great affairs. There was the case of Prince Charming to begin with, and then the matter of Faust, the outcome of which is still under adjudication in the courts of Ananke. I understand Azzie now stands high in the councils of unrighteousness. It seems obvious that he is a prune player in those games that spring up from time to time to bedevil mankind and set the feet of humans on the path to damnation."

"My friend is as important as all that?" Babriel said, round-eyed with amazement.

"So it would seem these days," Michael said. "At the least, it seems wise to investigate what his interest is in the wily and too-clever-by-half Aretino."

"I think you're right, sir," Babriel said.

"And you, my lad, are the very angel to do it."

"Me? Oh, surely not, sir! You know how lacking I am in guile, your archangelship. If I attempted by duplicitous conversation to ascertain his purposes, Azzie would see through me in an instant."

"I know that," Michael said. "Your ingenuousness is legendary among us. But it can't be helped. You are in the perfect position to do a bit of spying, since you are here in Venice already. It should be easy enough for you to make the acquaintance of this Aretino. Go to him as one who has long admired his work, and speak to him, look around his house, see what you see. Even buy him lunch to draw him out further. We'll put down the cost to Heavenly Investigations."

"You really think it'll be morally okay if I spy on my friend?" Babriel inquired.

"It stands to reason that it is," Michael said. "One cannot betray an enemy, only a friend. Without betrayal there'd be no revelation."

Babriel nodded and agreed at once to do what Michael asked. Only later did he realize Michael had never given him a direct answer. By then it was too late to worry about it, though. While betraying a friend may or may not be a moral wrong, going against the order of an archangel is decidedly inadvisable.

The next day, on the stroke of twelve, Babriel knocked at Aretino's door.

There was no response at first, although he could hear a variety of sounds from within. They seemed to be the strangest mixture of musical instruments and human voices, many of them raised in laughter. He knocked again. This time a servant opened it, a very proper-looking man save that his wig was askew.

He looked as if he had been trying to do too many things at the same time.

"I wish to speak with Aretino," Babriel said.

"Oh, dear, everything is in such a state of upset," the servant said. "Wouldn't another time do?"

"No, it must be now," Babriel said with unaccustomed firmness, stiffened by the thought that he'd soon have to report his progress — or lack of it—to Michael.

The servant stepped back, admitting Babriel. He led the angel to a drawing room, and said, "Kindly wait here. I'll ask if the master can see you."

Babriel teetered back and forth on his heels, a trick he'd learned long ago to help pass the time. He looked about the room and saw a manuscript on a little drawing table nearby. He had seen only the words "Father Adam" when there was a bustle of noise and a group of people came in. Babriel sprang back guiltily.

They were musicians, but they had discarded their for-mal coats and jackets and were walking at ease in their shirtsleeves, playing their instruments. It wasn't any church air they were striking up, but rather a lively dance melody.

They passed through without so much as a glance at Babriel. They were intent on penetrating to some inner room from which a babble of voices and high-pitched squeals and brays of raucous laughter betrayed the fact that some mirthful activity was in progress. Babriel stole another look at the manuscript, and this time he was able to read a half sentence: "Father Adam, shortly after his expulsion from the Garden of Eden for eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge…" Then he was interrupted again, this time by peals of girlish laughter.

He looked up just as two damsels came running into the room. They were young beauties, one with dark tousled hair, the other with tangled blond tresses. They wore bright diaphanous clothing that floated behind them as they ran, one in playful pursuit of the other, and Babriel blushed as he became aware that their clothing was sufficiently disheveled to reveal carmine-tipped breasts and rosy thighs.

They stopped in front of him. In the most delightful French accent, the blonde said, "You there! Have you seen him?"

"To whom do you refer?"

"That naughty Pietro! He promised to dance with me and Fifi here."

"I haven't seen him," said Babriel, resisting the urge to cross himself because he thought the ladies might find it offensive.

"He must be around here somewhere," the blonde said. "Come, Fifi, let's hunt him down and punish him."

She gave Babriel a certain look that sent a shiver down him from the crown of his head to the nethermost extremities of his toes. "Why don't you come, too?" she said to mm.

"And you always do what you're supposed to? How boring!"

Laughing, the girls swept on into the next room, down the corridor, and out of sight. Babriel mopped his brow and tried to get another look at the manuscript. This time he managed to read the title. The Legend of the Seven Golden Candlesticks.. And then the sound of footsteps alerted him and he moved away from the table.

Aretino came in, his beard in disarray and his doublet unfastened, his hose hanging halfway down his shanks. His fine linen shirt was stained, probably with wine. He walked with a decided list to starboard, and his eyes were bloodshot and bleary, the eyes of a man who has seen too much too often but still seeks to see more. He carried a half-filled wine sack in his hand, and his step was none too steady.

With some difficulty, the poet came to a stop in front of Babriel, and with owlish dignity demanded,

"Who the Hell are you?"

"A student," said Babriel. "A poor student from Germany. I've come here to Venice to bask in the bright sunshine of your genius, dear master, and to buy you lunch, if I may be so presumptuous. I am your greatest fan in all the country north of Aachen."

"Are you indeed?" said Aretino. "You like my stuff?"

" 'Like' is a paltry word, dear master, to express what I feel toward your oeuvre. Men call you the Divine Aretino, but even that is to damn your genius with faint praise."

Babriel was not a flatterer by nature, but he had been around enough, in both high circles and low, to know how to handle the lingo. He only hoped he wasn't laying it on too thick for credence. But Aretino, especially in his present state, found no expression of his talent too fulsome.

"You speak well, my boy. I'll say that for you." Aretino paused to suppress a hiccup. "I'd love to have lunch with you, but it'll have to be some other time. I'm right in the middle of a party now in celebration of my new commission. Where in Hell are my guests? Up in the bedrooms already, I'll warrant. But I'm not far behind!" And so saying he staggered toward the door.

"Might I inquire, dear master, as to the nature of your new commission? Your wellwishers all over Europe would be so interested to hear."

Aretino stopped, thought for a moment, then came back into the room and picked up the manuscript from the table. Tucking it under his arm, he said, "No, no! I am sworn to secrecy on this matter. But you and the rest of the world will be astonished, I promise that. The scale of the enterprise alone… But not another word." And so saying he walked out of the room, moving quite well save for the odd lurch or two.