Roger Zelazny - If at Faust You Don't Succeed

As interesting as it all was, Mack decided he'd better find a place to stay. First he checked his purse and found that he had plenty of expense money. Mephistopheles had not been stingy in that regard. An inn just up the street appealed to him with its well-painted pastel walls and gold-leaf sign proclaiming it the Paradiso. The owner, a stout, red-faced man with a carbuncle on his nose, was suspicious at first, since Mack hadn't sent a messenger ahead to announce his arrival. But he became all affability when Mack handed him a gold florin.

"Our best room for you, my dear Dr. Faust! You come at an auspicious time. This is a public holiday, you know, the time when we Florentines burn our vanities."

"Yes, I know," Mack said. "Will it be held far from here?"

"Just a couple of streets away in the Piazza Signoria," the innkeeper said. "You'll have a great view of one of the most remarkable phenomena of our time. Savonarola has promised that this year's bonfire will be something truly remarkable."

"What sort of man is this Savonarola?" Mack asked.

"What's that?"

"It's our pact with the French king, which keeps us protected from the Pope's desire to force the Medicis back on us."

"You don't like these Medicis?" Mack asked.

"Oh, they do well enough," the landlord said. "Lorenzo is called the Magnificent, for good reason. There has never been a greater patron of the arts. Under his rule, Florence has become the most beautiful city in the world."

"But you still don't like him?" Mack asked.

The landlord shrugged. "It's the people who pay for his magnificence. And besides, we don't like any family lording it over us. We Florentines are free people, and we intend to stay that way."

Mack inspected his room and found it was up to the standard he was rapidly getting used to. Time to find Marguerite. The owner told him that the silk market was held in a small piazza on the Fiesole road. To Mack it looked like an oriental bazaar with its stalls crowded close together, its casual bathroom facilities, and its pig-tailed retinue of observers from Cathay. Here were piled high the watered silks that were de rigueur in Flanders and the Netherlands; the twice-dyed material that was making such a hit that year in Amsterdam, and the raw silk estofados and open-necked sanbenito sport shirts for the Spanish trade. Spotted here and there among the stalls were little espresso bars, and near them were spaghetti houses, already selling the concoction that Marco Polo had brought back from China, where they unaccountably called it noodles. Mack found Marguerite at a progenitor of the boutique system that was to make such a change in the habits of luxury buyers. She was looking at herself in a tall mirror that was tilted this way and that for her by the proprietor, a small man with a harelip but, perhaps in compensation, very good teeth.

"Ah, signore," he said, "you have come just in time to see your lady in all her glory!"

Mack smiled indulgently. It was not his money. He could afford to be generous.

"Go for it, babe," he said huskily.

"Look," she said, "I've picked out these darling ball gowns. You must look at Signore Enrico's men's store, Johann. He carries the latest in doublets and camicia."

"Camicia?" said Mack.

Signore Enrico smiled with extreme twinklings of his warm brown eyes. "It is the latest thing from Hungary," he said. "A casual style. For evening wear we have the most divine tights, which come with a codpiece that whispers masculinity rather than shouting it to the skies."

"I just love the way he talks," Marguerite said.

Mack felt more than a little foolish trying to respond to this conversation. But he consoled himself by remembering that buying expensive clothes for a beautiful woman is one of the delights of masculine success. And as soon as Marguerite was finished, he could start looking for some stuff for himself, perhaps asking Mephistopheles for an advance on his reward, if need be. Of course, Mephistopheles hadn't specifically mentioned what his reward would be. Mack knew he should have pinned it down earlier. But as soon as he had a chance, he'd check it out. In the meantime, taking a foretaste of his reward seemed only reasonable, because if he didn't like what he was going to get he was really wasting his time.

"And what business is that, my love?"

"I need to find a Botticelli. I can make a very good deal if I find one."

Enrico said, "A Botticelli? Perhaps I can help. I know all the painters. It would give me great pleasure to offer my assistance, and, of course, my expertise. Not," he added quickly, "that I think it will be needed.

Because the signore is obviously a connoisseur."

"Good idea," Mack said. "Let's check it out now."

He turned to go. Just then a heavyset man in nondescript clothing burst in.

"I am looking for Faust! The German doctor! They said at the Paradise that he had come this way!"

"I am he whom you seek," Mack said. "What seems to be the trouble, my good fellow?"

"It's my master! He's dying! When he heard there was a new German doctor in town, he sent me out to find him. Oh, sir, if you can cure him, you can name your own reward."

"I'm a little busy," Mack said, not wishing to put his imaginary healing skills to the test, especially in an excitable place like Florence. "Who did you say your master is?'

"My master is Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent!"

"Things seem to be falling into shape rather rapidly," Mack remarked to Marguerite. "Come, my dear, pack up your things and wait for me at the hotel. I have an errand of mercy to run."

Mack followed the servant to Medici's palace, which was in a small, exclusive suburb of palaces close by the Arno. It was a fine-looking place, with white marble pillars and a porch in the Attic style. The doors were of varnished mahogany and extensively carved in the manner originated by Damiato the Damned. There were servants at the door, wearing lounge suits and white-on-white shirts in the latest Neapolitan style. They looked askance at Mack, because his clothing here, uptown, as it were, didn't look half as good as it did in the clash of illusions that was the marketplace. But they passed him through in response to the old servant's plea.

Weeping and wringing his hands, the servant led Mack down quiet corridors with oil paintings on the walls, down to a big rosewood door at the far end. Tapping to make his presence known, the servant pushed open the door and Mack looked in on a room that would not have disgraced a king.

A large, tall, gorgeously carved, and sumptuously canopied bed dominated the chamber. Tall wax candles had been brought in and put around the bed on more end tables. A fire in the fireplace flickered and glowed red.

"Who is there?" asked Lorenzo de' Medici.

Lorenzo, well tucked up in the bed, looked every one of his seventy years, plus a few more. Dropsy had robbed his body of vigor. He peered at Mack from a fat, gray face. It was a countenance in which shrewd little eyes struggled to make a deal with mortality and stay alive a little longer, but with class, of course, since he was Lorenzo de' Medici and class was his middle name. He wore a long white cotton nightgown embroidered with unicorns, and a black cap with bobbin lace was tied under his chin. His face, where it bore any flesh at all that was not puffed out with rottenness, sagged toward the bone clearly visible beneath. His lips, formerly ruddy in the days when a Medici Pope considered announcing the unique existence of a Medici God, were withered, having tasted the bitterness of the world for so many years. An artery in his neck pulsed, as though wondering why it hadn't collapsed like the others.

The fingers of his left hand, palsy stricken, made little fluttering movements.