305. Bejewelled Pietro's Godwit

305. Bejewelled Pietro’s Godwit

“Do you like my outfit?” asked Bejewelled Pietro.

When we got to his mansion,  aside from the solid gold butler and the sterling silver maid who opened the front door, both automatons, the first and only  person we saw was someone wrapped in widow’s weeds. To our surprise, this was Bejewelled Pietro himself.  He removed the heavy, dark veil he was wearing and we saw a youth who had done nothing to make his face look like someone else’s.

“You lack a tear,” said Rosendo, "I think.”

“Mmm. Really? You may be right,” said Pietro, and he pulled a box of multi-coloured eye pencils out of a pocket and painted on his face one large tear that seemed to be dropping  gracefully from his left eye. Then he contemplated himself for a minute or two in a splendid Murano glass mirror.

“I am the Tsar of Looks,” he said proudly. “I don’t own a hundred or a thousand. I started collecting them when I was three, two to four a day, and now I have hundreds of thousands, just as many as the tsars owned serfs.”

“So, if you have that many, you aren’t mortal. I thought you might be, because your  great aunt was, I suppose,” said Azuline, “or she wouldn’t have worn mourning clothes.”

“No. Only her husband was mortal.”

“But that’s not a real problem for us. When mortals die, they become ghosts. She and he could still be together, being both spirits. I have a brother and a sister who are ghosts and they live with me and we share the nursery.”

“Whatever!” said Pietro, and he produced a black ostrich feather fan and fanned himself so his tear wouldn’t melt.

“Can we introduce ourselves and tell you why we are here?” I, Little Dolphus, the intellectual Leafy, said. “This isn’t only about you, you know.”

“Rudely put. But do, do introduce yourselves and state your business here.”

And when we had, he said, “Why has it never ocurred to me to dress up like Louis XIV? I don’t see how it can have escaped me to. Maybe I just don’t remember if I have. So many outfits, so many looks…how to remember?”

“Don’t you keep track of them?” asked Azuline. “As a historian, I think you should take a picture of each and keep an archive.”

“Why, yes. So I should have. Is it late to start? I have lost so many, handed over and condemned to oblivion. But getting back to what concerns you people today, I must say that no, I had no idea that colossal big wig existed. First notice, I just got. Thank you for informing me. Of course, I can find it. My grandparents have ways to find stolen jewels and this wig sounds like one. Yes, surely I can locate it. But not for you. For me. I want that wig.”

“Now we´ve done it!” I murrmured to the kids.

“No, the Rare Bird’s done it again,” said Azuline. “He’s sent us to someone he knew  would swipe the wig from us.”

“Tsk, tsk! Not swipe. Finders keepers. I find, I keep. Won’t I make a splendid Sun King  if that wig is really as cool as you say it is,” sighed Pietro.

“That wig has a purpose. And it’s not to decorate a swollen head like yours. Well, yes, it was made for a swollen head, but not yours,” I said. “For a much more serious one with serious problems.”

“Which part of finders keepers don’t you understand?” said Pietro. “Now, I must get down to finding the big wig before someone else does. Want to watch me do it? Or would that only make you suffer?”

“We’ll watch,” I said to Pietro, “so at least we’ll know where the darned thing is.” It was my idea to let Pietro find the wig and then have my cousins swipe it from him after he had stolen it from us, as he threatened to do.

“Then follow me to my treasure  chamber,” he said.

We went down a long, dizzying staircase, descending to the basement. Once there, he opened one of eight doors before us turning his left pinky into a skeleton key. And we passed through the door.

Bejewelled Pietro’s treasure chamber was not a lightless place with heaps and piles of treasures strewn all over the floor. It was a passably lit room with only a greening bronze table and six matching chairs in the centre. Its walls were all lined with small, white, wall safes. Pietro went up to one of these and spun the dial, marking a combination. It snapped open and he drew out a rectangular metal box that he set on the table. He sat down, spun a second combination, and the box opened too. From it he drew a purple velvet case.

“We have what we need,” he said, and we returned to the room where he had received us. Pietro opened all the windows there were there, large ones they were. And then he opened  the purple case and drew out a brooch shaped like a limosa lapponica, which is nothing more and nothing less than a bar-tailed godwit.

He spoke to the brooch, saying something like this, “Spione, we are searching for a gigantic, very eighteenth century like wig that has been stolen by an unidentified bird. A big bird surely, one  able to carry such a heavy object. Locate it for us.”

He set the pin on a window sill and the brooch got up and turned into a real godwit and spread its wings and flew off. 

“This kind of bird can fly nonstop from Alaska to New Zealand. He won’t stop flying until he has spotted the wig. We use this device to find jewels magpies thieve and sapphire bracelets stolen by satin bower birds and such. If a bird has stolen the wig, it is bound to be in a nest. A big nest, for a big bird’s nest is  easier to spot than a small one. Now we can sit on the sofas and watch the show.”

And we occupied two large sofas that faced each other. Upholstered in blue silk embroidered with gold thread madonna lilies they were. On the golden coffee table between them was a crystal ball the size of three basketballs in one. And in that we saw the godwit flying on his mission.