small launches are moored. The varnished ones. There is a porter with the two bags. It is necessary to let them carry them since they have a concession.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jackson.
The two of them went out the door and no one looked back at anyone.
At the imbarcadero, the Colonel tipped the man who had carried their two bags and then looked around for a boatman he knew.
He did not recognize the man in the launch that was first on call, but the boatman said, “Good-day, my Colonel. I’m the first.”
“How much is it to the Gritti?”
“You know as well as I, my Colonel. We do not bargain. We have a fixed tariff.”
“What’s the tariff?”
“Three thousand five hundred.”
“We could go on the vaporetto for sixty.”
“And nothing prevents you going,” the boatman, who was an elderly man with a red but un-choleric face, said. “They won’t take you to the Gritti but they will stop at the imbarcadero past Harry’s, and you can telephone for someone from the Gritti to get your bags.”
And what would I buy with the God-damn three thousand five hundred lire; and this is a good old man.
“Do you want me to send that man there?” he pointed to a destroyed old man who did odd jobs and ran errands around the docks, always ready with the unneeded aid to the elbow of the ascending or descending passenger, always
