(1991) Pinocchio in Venice

by Robert Coover

  "Ah, well!" exclaims the porter, suddenly perking up and lifting the professor to his feet again. "Un po' di cuore, professore, the devil is not always as ugly as he is painted! Volere č potere, as they say, what you wish shall be yours, for as fortune would have it, I heard only today of one of the great palazzi of our city being converted into a splendid new hotel, especially appointed for gentlemen of culture like yourself."

  "Yes! Appointed! Culture!" echoes the tourist bureau clerk, then hobbles back a step or two as though the porter might have kicked her.

  "Well, it's not perfect, of course, the renovations are still in progress," the porter says soothingly in his gravelly old voice, peering down at the ancient traveler over his bent nose, "but, given the circumstances, it seems to be a matter of eat the soup or out the window, if you know what I mean, unless you're wanting wet stones tonight for a pillow. And, as the proprietor is a friend of mine, I am certain I can, eh, pull a few strings, if you'll pardon the expression. Tomorrow something better may be found, but for tonight, professore: better an egg "

  "Yes " Yet the old scholar seems rooted to the spot. This is not hesitation, not doubt - what choice does he have, after all? - but a simple loss of that willed power the porter, in his obliging way, has wished upon him. He feels hollowed out - unstrung, as he might have said in a former time (he shudders to think of it), his limbs loosened by fatigue and deep foreboding. He fears now that that metaphor he has come all this distance to find is to be one not of encapsulation but of erasure, not of summation but of irony and absence. He has envisioned a circle, traveling its circumference as though enacting an oracle, but he now finds himself falling helplessly through the hole in its middle. I have failed her, he thinks. I have failed her after all!

  The porter takes his elbow. "All right, signore, don't stand there with your hands in your belt! Let's put the road between our legs. Or a bridge or two, as the case may be! A little need makes the old woman trot, as they say!" They bid arrivederci to the tourist bureau clerk, who for no apparent reason turns and, with great haste, walks straight into a wall. Then, together, they step out, the professor and the porter, into the bitter night. "Courage, dottore! It's just two steps away! Soon you'll be sleeping like the Pope!"

  2. MASKED COMPANIONS

  The Stazione Santa Lucia is like a gleaming syringe, connected to the industrial mainland by its long trailing railway lines and inserted into the rear end of Venice's Grand Canal, into which it pumps steady infusions of fresh provender and daily draws off the waste. As such (perhaps it is constipation, that hazard of long journeys, that has provoked this metaphor, or just something in the air, but its irreverence brings a thin twisted smile to his chapped lips), it is that tender spot where the ubiquitous technotronic circuit of the World Metropolis physically impinges upon the last outpost of the self-enclosed Renaissance Urbs, as a face might impinge upon a nose, a kind of itchy boundary between everywhere and somewhere, between simultaneity and history, process and stasis, geometry and optics, extension and unity, velocity and object, between product and art. One is ejected through its glass doors as through the famous looking-glass into a vast empty but strangely vibrant space, little more than a hollow echo of the magnificent Piazza at the other end of the Canal, to be sure, severe still in its cool geometry transposed from the other world and stripped of all fantastical ornament, but its edges, lapped at by the city's peculiar magic, are already blurred and mysterious, its lights hazed by a kind of furtive narcissism, its very air corrupted by the pungent odor of the nonfunctional. The corpulent Scalzi with its dingy overworked façade is, inarguably, little more than a morose impertinent shadow of its luminous counterpart at St. Mark's, the latter held by some authorities to be "the central building in the world" (and who is he, in search here of such an anchor, to dispute that? no, no, he accepts everything, everything), and across the Grand Canal, instead of the placid grace and power of the Salute at the other end, there is here only misshapen little San Simeon Piccolo with its outsized portico and squeezed dome - but even these poor creatures are monuments to locus, place-markers, far removed from the current architectural glorification of airports, superhighways, and space flight, and thus a part of the immense integral Self that is this enchanted city, after all, the Scalzi's baroque façade a kind of Carnival mask, both revealing and deceptive, the popping green bubble on San Simeon the Dwarf rising through the fog with the erotic suggestion of a Venetian double entendre.

  Below the long arching stone bridge upon which the eminent pilgrim now stands, having paused a moment at the crest to contemplate this crossing, as he thinks of it, into the dark congested but alluring labyrinths of his own soul, his own core, so to speak (and to catch his breath, rest his damaged knees, vent a bit of spleen, unfray his temper; that useless fat-bottomed cretin of a porter has been unable to pull the luggage up the bridge alone, the professor has been obliged to push from behind, and more than once on the way up he caught the wily old villain with only one hand on the trolley), there would ordinarily be, as he knows, even now in the winter, a bustling traffic of water buses, barges, gondolas, private skiffs and motor launches and sleek speedboat taxis, all of them swarming in and out of the busy docks and wharves with their delectable clusters of souvenir stands and news vendors and flower stalls like bees at the hive, loading and unloading goods and people, and circled about all the while by wheeling gulls and fluttering pigeons, a most exemplary spectacle; but now it is night and the Canal is hushed and empty, save for a single light bobbing indistinctly in the cold fog or perhaps at the far side of his failing vision and, in the echoey distance, the audible rumble of a lonely waterbus sidling up to a landing stage. Not that he would have it otherwise. Perhaps it is the art critic in him, but he likes the stillness of the scene before him, its aura of motionless eternity. It comforts him. And the silence, the fog, the gloom excite him. It is as though the city, momentarily hushed by awe, were genuflecting before not him, but the nobility and solemnity of his pilgrimage. Here I am, the city seems to be saying, in all my innocence and beauty. Within my depths lies that final knowledge you seek. Enter me.

  "The world is made of stairs. Some people descend them and some climb them," remarks the porter ponderously, breaking the spell. "Unfortunately, sire, we must do both."

  "Yes," sighs the professor, tearing himself away from his revery (he has just been overtaken by a vague sweet memory of another time, another arrival, back when real steamers plied these waters, ferrying passengers all the way from the distant mainland where the stagecoaches and donkey carts, caravans and carriages stopped, a delicious time fragrant with friendships pledged from the heart and ripe with the prospect of endless gaiety and supreme clarity, when for a moment everything made sense), aware that the harsh icy wind has crept well inside his camelhair coat and professorial tweeds as though undressing him, preparing him for - for what? He prefers not to think about that. "I told you we should have taken a gondola," he adds crossly.

  "In this weather? It is easier to find the sun at midnight, dottore," replies the porter, turning his masked eyes to the skies, which are black and heavy but faintly aglitter with damp reflected light swirling about in the wind. Below the paper snout, a long tongue lolls, seemingly real. The professor leans closer, not trusting his old eyes. "But come along now," exclaims the porter with a hasty slurp, slouching away into the shadows. "Let us pick up the old sticks, as they say, professore, it's just two steps away. You take the front end this time, and I'll -"

  "What -?! I'll do nothing of the kind!" storms the professor, outrage gripping him by the throat yet again. Really, this is too much! Moreover, that reference to old sticks has stung him to the quick. "I'm an old man, and desperately ill - I'm not allowed to lift anything! Do you hear? Are you a porter or are you not a porter? You've been hired for this job, and if you don't fulfill your obligations, I shall be forced to take the appropriate -!"

  "Very well," the porter says with that mournful shrug of his, or rather has said somewhere
in the middle of this lecture, pushing the trolley dutifully toward the edge of the steps meanwhile, his back bowed and nose bobbing forlornly, the professor realizing too late that his tirade, however justified, has perhaps been impolitic and interrupting it now to stumble weak-kneed toward the trolley in the vain hopes of arresting its further progress, only to see it slip out of the trembling hands of the porter and commence, just beyond his grasp, its catastrophic descent. As he clutches at the tipping trolley, his forward momentum propels him out over the lip of the stairs and into the empty space as though he meant to throw his own fate in with his cascading luggage, but the porter, with a sudden display of unwonted agility and strength, snatches him deftly by his collar and, pulling him back from the very brink, saves his life. "Mustn't throw the handle after the axe," the porter admonishes morosely, still holding the professor suspended above the top step and watching the bags tumbling as if in slow motion to the gleaming pavement far below. "If you can't save the cabbages, at least save the goat."

  "I-I'm very grateful," the dangling professor whispers meekly, his heart in his throat where his regrettable rage once was, and receives, as though in reply, a stinging swat from the white cane of a blind bearded monk hurrying by. The monk, seemingly confused by this fresh information at the end of his cane, turns to swish wildly at the professor again, backs off the top step, misses the second, finds only the lip of the third, lands gingerly, cassock flying, on the fifth, his momentum propelling him to the seventh and eighth, where he strikes the one bag that has not tumbled to the bottom, and, his heels soaring gracefully now above his cowled head, completes his descent on all but his feet, yowling all the way down like a baby with colic or a cat in heat. At the bottom, where he seems to have landed on all fours, if he has four, the monk scrambles about in bewildered circles, searching for his cane, then, finding instead the professor's umbrella, rushes away without a backward glance, so to speak, disappearing down one of the dark foggy alleyways, his frantic tapping slowly trailing away into the night.

  "Mezza calzetta!" the porter shouts after him. He sets the trembling professor down on his feet at last, twists his finger meaningfully at his blue hat. "That turnip-head lacks a Friday, his stupid little wheels are out of place!" He pauses, seeming to regret his outburst, tipping his head to one side, stooping lower, clasping his hands in his armpits. "Still, a holy man, a happy heart no doubt, and blind as a mole in the bargain, we mustn't hit him with the cross, even if he does lack a bit of salt in his pumpkin. Eh, dottore? No, it takes all kinds, as the saying goes, saints are more famous for feast days than brains, we can't all be blessed with square heads. Come along now," he adds, starting down, planting both feet heavily on each step, "we'd better gather up your wares before the ants carry it all away."

  The professor follows the decrepit porter down the steps, keeping close to the stone balustrade, snatching up the bag the monk tripped over when the porter passes it by and dragging it along, too shaken by his recent brush with disaster to feel imposed upon or indignant, his knees weak as water still from the memory of nothing but empty space beneath them, his heart still knocking in his chest. It was not any false attachment to property that led him to that rash and potentially fatal impulse, he knows, but rather a profound unconstrainable feeling of duty toward her, a feeling nothing short of chivalric devotion, at least that was how it felt in the hot rush of the moment, foolish perhaps but genuine and selfless, as though her own survival were somehow bound up in the safety of the contents of his luggage and she herself were about to suffer the shocks and blows of that calamitous fall. And once again, he thinks, picking up his damp, battered bags at the foot of the bridge and loading them onto the trolley, I have failed her. I have brought her here and then, like a false servant, I have deceived and abused her. Metaphorically speaking, of course. "Don't make an illness of it, dottore," as the porter says now, strapping the luggage to the trolley, "everything makes broth, as they say." Yes, he is all too easily carried away by his own turns of phrase. Everything is well packed, after all, his luggage is solid and water-resistant, his computer is nested in polystyrene - all things considered, it was probably the easiest way to get everything down from up there. And even his reckless solicitude, his terrible moment of mortal peril, his pang of remorse afterwards: all this, in the end, will serve him as surely and faithfully as he serves her. "Just two steps away! Volere č potere!"

  "E patire," the old traveler adds, where there's a will there's suffering, but only in jest, for in truth his spirits, since he stepped down off the bridge, have been slowly rising. The bitterness that had gripped him in the railway station and then followed him up the Scalzi bridge seems gradually to be melting away, as though his own hard geometry, brought along from America like a kind of shield, or at least a badge of identity, were now being lovingly dissolved in the coiling Venetian fog. As the ancient bent-backed porter takes up the trolley once more and leads him down a narrow passageway overhung with balconies and laundry and dim yellow lamps, he feels something like ecstasy overtaking him, an unfettered, unreasonable joy, unlike anything he has known since childhood. He is here! He is home! The way is tortuous and complicated, and there are more bridges, they must wrestle his baggage up steps again and down, but the effort, far from annoying him or aggravating his fatigue, seems to give him increasing pleasure, as though the deeper they plunge into the shadowy labyrinth, the more replenished are his reserves of energy and strength.

  On the crest of one small bridge, he lets out such a sigh of rapture (what is it? the row of little boats snuggled against the wet narrow fondamenta glowing in the dim misty light? that distant bridge, delicate and pale, rising through the wisps of fog? the rosy cast of the light near that wall with all its overlapping shades of faded red and the little, metal fountain near its base, trickling water from a lion's jaw? or just the little bridge itself whereon he stands as at a rostrum or a pulpit, the dark canal water slipping past beneath him like hushed subversive laughter? all! all! and more!) that the porter turns to him in alarm and, staring quizzically at his nose, asks: "Are you all right, professore?"

  "Yes, yes! Is it much further?"

  "Just two steps away," the old fool says again, as he's been saying all along, and in truth, though he's cold and his feet are wet and his poor knees are killing him, the old professor feels that this long walk has really been no more than "two steps," the porter's figurative evasion being truer than he can possibly know. Indeed, so entrancing has this homecoming been, so sweet this trek (above him now, a shutter creaks in the wind, and, glancing up into the fog, he sees a bearded god gazing benignly down upon him from a door lintel, its stone face whitewashed, or perhaps so decorated by roosting pigeons, and he feels almost as though he were receiving some sort of benediction, greeting, some fraternal signal of recognition), he almost wishes it could go on forever.

  When he again finds himself on the same bridge as before, however, gazing at the same boats, the same distant bridge and damp red wall, sees again there the same torn poster flapping in the wind, the same peculiar misspelled graffiti announcing "JUVE! VIVA I BALOCCI!" and - faded but still visible - "ABBASSO LARIN METICA!" some of the magic fades as well. "Haven't we been this way before?"

  "You speak, dottore?"

  "I say, we seem to be going in circles! We've been on this bridge before!" He wonders now if this is only the second time. One of his elbows suddenly pains him sharply and his feet, he realizes, have gone numb with cold. He can feel his old childhood terror of the dark creeping up on him behind his back. Is this a trap?

  "Venice is not like other cities," the porter explains soberly, easing the trolley down off the bridge. "To reach some places you must cross a bridge twice." His voice seems to be disappearing into the night. "Come now, no need to blacken your liver over bagatelles, padrone, we're almost there."

  "Two steps away, I suppose?" he shouts scathingly after the porter, then clambers down the bridge and hurries after him, afraid of being left behind. Which way did he
go? He can hear the trolley wheels screaking, but the sound seems to be coming from three directions at once.

  "Ipso facto!" comes the distant voice, hollow as an echo on water, and as he turns out of a narrow underpass to follow it (why does he feel like something is chasing him? is it that bearded mascaron with his cadaverous veil of bird droppings -?!), the professor sees the porter standing in front of a dimly lit mansion at the far end of a long stony footway fronting on a dark canal. The devil seems to have managed the last bridge on his own; the professor, even unburdened, can barely drag himself over it. "Move your pegs, professore! We've arrived like cheese on macaroni! The room is yours, but let's not be all night about it!"

  The flush of annoyance aroused by this mockery is immediately tempered by his great relief at not having been abandoned after all. Had he really thought he might be? To his discredit, yes. This city, he knows, has other names. "The extent of the step, I'm afraid, is governed geometrically by the length and triangulation of the bodily members in question," he mutters gamely with what good humor his terrible exhaustion still grants him, and, limping creakily up the damp riva toward the dim flickering light, discovers that he has indeed been brought to an old palazzo, not a very beautiful one perhaps, faded and battered and quite homely and plain, with an air not so much of decay as of quiet discouragement, as if it had rather missed its career, its watersteps greasy and green with mold, its doorway blackened as though it might have been gutted by fire, the damp stony hall within lit by nothing more than a pair of plumber's candles, but a real Venetian palazzino for all that, gloomy and stately with characteristic pilasters and arches all over the front of it and stone balconies from end to end. His bags have already been moved inside, where the porter - clearly he has misjudged the old fellow (though he's afraid to guess how much all this personal portage is going to cost him) - awaits him now beside an individual dressed in the city's traditional white bauta mask, black cloak, and three-cornered hat, the two of them matching the dilapidated old palazzo in gloom and stateliness with their ghostly beaked faces and stooped figures. He hadn't expected to see so many masks this long before Carnival, but he has read about the recent enthusiasm for this ancient custom, and, for all its vulgarity and promiscuous connotations, he is secretly pleased, for it recalls for him quite piercingly that long-ago time of his own beginnings, call them that, allegedly innocent yet somehow wicked (what penance he has done for that!), certainly happy, and now under such close scrutiny in his current work-in-progress.