A Funeral of Gondolas [antikvár]

ONE The old man with the word GANZER in faded gold letters on his cap was in startling contrast to his surroundings. He had a long, much patched and filthy overcoat which almost reached his ankles and a pair of ancient boots without laces. He was unwashed with at least a week's growth of beard and gave off an odour to match his appearance. The tourists and the native Venetians gave him a wide berth. He was the only blot on an otherwise idyllic landscape, and nobody any longer even knew what the word on his cap meant. The Rialto Bridge humped regally over the Grand Canal as though posing for a postcard photograph. The water of the canal chopped and glinted in the sun. A huge low-lying craft piled with colourful rubbish swung out from under the bridge while a water-bus, overcrowded beyond the limits of the most elastic safety regulations, churned water in mid-stream. Then a long black craft with a silver bow prong swept with cheeky magnificence in front of the water-bus and in towards the shore. It rode lop-sidedly in the water, sported a pink plastic rose on its fore-part and was propelled by an oarsman with a permanent, involuntary grin upon his face which had earned him among his colleagues the nickname of Smiler. In this craft, oblivious of everything except each other, sat a couple who had been married the previous morning in Didcot. The boat was a Venetian gondola and, as it nosed in to the shore, the old man with the word GANZER in faded gold letters on his cap shuffled to meet it. Probably none of these people noticed an unusually good looking southerner who was sitting at one of the cafe tables by the canal drinking a glass of Chivas Regal whisky, smoking a black market English cigarette and glancing occasionally at a copy of