(1991) Pinocchio in Venice

by Robert Coover

  "Ah, povero Pinocchiolino "

  "She even wore one of those painted barrettes from the five-and-ten that were popular at that time, and gauzy wings like a mosquito or a blowfly. But they did me a favor, for it was this outrageous distortion of the truth, this callous misrepresentation of the very being to whom I had dedicated my entire life, that finally shook me out of my my iniquitous indolence " It is the indolence, of course, the iniquity, the outrage, that Melampetta has wanted to hear about. That's how it always is, he thinks, sipping his coffee while Melampetta trots to the edge of their little shelter to bark at a lone passerby on the bridge. A lifetime of scholarly diligence, of heroic integrity and self-discipline and an intransigent commitment to the loftiest of ideals, and what people always ask him about is the fun he had when he was naughty

  "So this Pimply Blue-Bottomed Fairy, I take it," rumbles the watchdog, stepping back in under the corrugated tin roof and shaking her coat, "was set up as a kind of synthetic milk-fed avatar of the Blessed Virgin, as she's called between theopathic farts at the Pope's table, who granted a pithless old carpenter his wish, in effect, to whelp without having to go through labor pains -?"

  "You could say so, Melampetta. According to the script, she first brought the wood to life, then, after all the entertaining sin-and-redemption rituals, she changed the wood to flesh, more as a part of Geppetto's dream than my own, since the movie suggested I was more or less dead by then, or at the very least hopelessly waterlogged. When I pointed out to the director that I'd been a talking puppet for ages before I'd ever met the Blue-Haired Fairy, he said that was interesting but he couldn't use it "

  He is pleased to be talking about the Fairy, even if this is not

  devil's flour exactly the approach he might have chosen, for his mind this raw and blustery Venetian morning is very much upon her. Having thought he'd lost her forever, he has her back again. In a manner of speaking. For he has awakened not only to hot coffee and a roaring fire (friends from the post office have dropped off a few bags of backlogged mail, Melampetta explained cheerfully, feeding the rusty oil drum appropriately through a tattered hole in the side), but also to the heartening news that his luggage has been found, Alidoro having already left for the police station to reclaim it. Soon he will have a fresh change of clothes, his own toothbrush and deodorant and mouthwash, money with which to procure a real hotel room with a real bath, his medicines and hair restoration elixir and linseed oil, his passport and credit cards, his scented handkerchiefs, his certificates and awards, his foot snuggies, and above all, in its manifold forms, his invaluable Mamma papers, the loss of which last night had seemed to him worse than the loss of life itself. The morning, as they say here, truly has gold in its mouth!

  Indeed, he was rather surprised to find himself awakening to a new day at all, having supposed last night to be his last, whether as a victim and outcast, as he had feared at first, or, later, as an old companion being prepared lovingly, if humiliatingly, for burial. He had slept so hard he was certain that his sleep had been dreamless, but Melampetta assured him he had wept and laughed aloud more than once during the night, and on one occasion had opened his mouth very wide and from somewhere deep in his stomach had announced very clearly: "We are all dead!" He wasn't even sure, when he came to, if it was the next morning or several days later, or even some other time and place altogether, his arrival in Venice having seemed more nightmarishly unreal to him just at that moment than anything that might have happened in dreams. He reared up and would have cried out, but, bound tightly in the stolen police blanket, and with a fire blazing away somewhere nearby, he was afraid that he might be a prisoner again like the time he was caught and nearly fried by the Green Fisherman, a fear reinforced by the floury dusting of white snow all about.

  "Aha! Sleeping Beauty blooms at last!" Melampetta barked out delightedly on seeing him start up in such alarm. "What a rising you make! Like the white goose's son, as the expression goes, beak and all! You've really been sawing wood, compagno, if you don't mind my saying so, you've been sleeping like a little log! Like a top! You were hitting the knots! Caulked off! You were like the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus all rolled into one and stretched out serially! It's nearly noon! You've missed all the news!"

  "I never closed my eyes," the old traveler grumbled then, falling back again. He saw he'd been sleeping in sawdust and wood chips, which reminded him, under the influence of Melampetta's terrible puns, of his own mortality. Like a human sleeping in hair and bones. "What day is it? What year?"

  "It's the day they found your luggage," she replied. Which sat him up again of course, this time with a shout, his weathered face split with a smile. "It's down at the Questura, and so is Alidoro. He'll be back soon. Now, meanwhile, dear friend, let's establish a few first principles, as the Holy Peripatetics used to call those morning rations of beer and porridge that preceded all their Olympian endeavors." And, tail wagging generously, she brought him over warm bread, coffee, and a thick chunk of unsliced prosciutto that still bore a dog's toothmarks. It was delicious. He was suddenly ravenous. "Lido went out and picked that up for you before he went for the bags, though don't ask where or how, for as they say in the Lord's Prayer, 'Give us each our daily bread, or else by the verminous ballocks of all the cardinals in hell, we'll take it.' Poor old fellow, his tail-stub's really drooping this morning. You were pretty restless, you know, thrashing about, yowling in your sleep, wheezing and snorting - the mangy old eyesore was up all night with you, he's had no sleep at all."

  "I'm sorry "

  "At one point you got free of your blanket somehow and stood up, naked as a worm in the winter storm, and rendered a fair approximation of the Sermon on the Mount, blessing the weepers and winegrowers, throwing pearls to the dogs, thank you very much, doing unto thieves and profligates as they would do unto you, honking your nose, turning your cheeks, unfolding your throat, and swearing against oaths and blind men, salting the lilies of the field from your peehole, prophesying against the foundations of the city which you said were of rusty unleavened sand, giving advice on how to stay out of the hands of the carabinieri, Romans, and other footstools of iniquity, plucking logs out of eyes and thistles out of figs and proverbs out of the air like Simon Magus himself conjuring up heresies. And all of it at full split, you were really telling it big! A logomaniac of the first water! Where did you learn to speechify like that?"

  "I don't know. I can't recall when I wasn't speaking. I was speaking before I was born "

  "It took both Alidoro and me to wrestle you back into your blanket again, you were really making fire and flames, you were climbing on all the furies, outside yourself, a devil in each hair, as one could say if you had any. You kept screaming something about rusty nails, hairy asses, and the forbidden fruits of firewood - what did you mean by all that?"

  "I don't remember "

  "And your mamma, as you called her, was in it, too."

  "She always is " Last night, by the light of the fire, he'd thought the old watchdog quite beautiful. Now, by the harsher light of day, he could see she was a rather stubby and jowly old crossbreed with droopy ears and thick matted hair, mostly white - off-white - with a black Rin-Tin-Tin patch over one eye that made her face look hollowed out on that side. Nevertheless, he felt comfortable around her, he felt she was someone he could open his heart to, so, though he might have preferred to talk about his life as an art critic, philosopher, and theologian, and to discuss with her such topics as his concept of "I-ness," his definition of the soul, and his views on reality and illusion, beauty (the only form of the spiritual we can receive through the senses, as he has often declared), nasology, and the veracity principle, he did not really object now when she led him back, by way of things he had supposedly said in his sleep last night ("You kept crying for her floppies, it was some kind of mad infatuation, you said, and there was something about a missing hard dick "), to his final crisis with the Blue-Haired Fairy and his sudden flight, a central theme after all of his work-now-
once-more-in-progress, to Hollywood. Indeed, he would probably, if he had his computer here already, and if there were an electrical outlet he could trust, be taking notes

  "They asked me out there to be an advisor to a film they were making about me, based on one of my early books. I knew better of course, even then the place was notorious for its venal disregard for the truth, but they caught me at a weak moment, and I decided to go. I thought that maybe if I got away from this place, I could get away, finally, from her. From her and all her tombstones. At least long enough to think things out. Get a new perspective. And it did seem different over there somehow " All those starlets, the auditions, they all wanted to take him home and play with him. There were beach parties and drunken nights by orchid-strewn swimming pools and wild drives to Mexico. They taught him how to mix American cocktails and drink champagne by the slipperful, though it tended to run straight through him, even as a human. They asked him to unzip their evening gowns. He lit their cigarettes for them. They cradled him in their arms and let him suck their pillowy breasts. They used him as a kind of bathtub toy. He was in all the gossip columns. Indeed, only his ignorance of his own anatomy saved him from fatal mistakes out there. He kept trying, at their urging, to put his penis in them, and it wouldn't go. It was more like a limp faucet. "It even looked like a faucet, my putative father's putative sense of puttanaio humor no doubt." The girls all thought it was cute. Only later did it suddenly occur to him "But then the fights at the studio began " The scriptwriters and storyboard people changed everything of course. The producers insisted on it. There were reasons: the need for metaphoric coherence and condensation, the temporal and technical limitations of the medium, the metaphysical riddle of the frame itself, the alleged infantilism of the American public, studio contracts with actors and artists, a growing dissatisfaction with Fascist Italy and with theology in general, the tight shooting schedule. "But the main points were there, I felt, even if the Americans did confuse beer and billiards with sin, redemption with technological ingenuity. And if they'd turned my heavy-handed ill-tempered father into a cuddly old feeble-minded saint, well, as I once said about your great-grandsire, Melampetta, the dead are the dead, and the best thing is to leave them in peace. And meanwhile I was the toast of the town, my face, as Jiminy said, on everybody's tongue, I was having too much fun really to argue about anything, doing interviews, judging bathing-beauty contests, turning up at premieres in the arms of the stars, trying to make my faucet work. So I took the money they threw at me, told them the truth whether they wanted to hear it or not, because what else could I do, and otherwise stayed away from the lot. Until it came to the Blue-Haired Fairy. There, finally, was the sticking-point."

  "So she found you after all."

  "She'd never lost me " Even if he'd nearly lost himself. She was everywhere now, he'd realized, vast and immediate as the ocean outside his Malibu window or the blue sky overhead. The house he'd returned to after rescuing his father from the belly of the monster fish - her house, though the Talking Cricket claimed he'd got it from the blue-haired goat - had expanded to become the entire universe. He'd been a fool to think he could get away

  "Yet last night you said," she says, bringing over his washed underclothes and suit, and helping him out of his cocoon of blanket, "that without you she wouldn't even exist."

  "It's our own creations that most possess us," he replies, pleased to be able to quote himself again, and thus, as it were, to clothe in some fashion his naked decrepitude.

  "Yes, true, like blind Father Didymus in the demonic grip of the Holy Trinity, or poor old Pope Innocent the Eighth, who, populating Hell for the faithful, found himself nightly in the fiends' amorous clutches, a consequence, I take it, you have not suffered ?"

  "Not not in that sense, no, I have never, so far as I know," he says, choosing his words carefully (his underwear is fresh and crisp, but his suit seems to have shrunk and is pocked, as though in imitation of his diseased flesh, with burn holes), "seen her again. Not since the night I I became a boy " He scrubs his itchy nose, holds his suit up to the dull light of the snowy day. "But what -?"

  "Sorry about that. Must have been cheap material, dear friend - old sheep's hair of some kind, I suspect. I put it to dry on the barrel last night and it couldn't take the heat. I don't have much else to -"

  "It's all right," he says, feeling very generous this glittery morning. "I've gotten by with less. There was a time when I had nothing better than wallpaper or a beanbag to wear, and stale bread on my head. And anyway I still have the overcoat."

  "Yes, well, most of it But wait!" She raises her snout to the air and sniffs expectantly, then barks: "Here comes Alidoro!"

  "Ah, noble friend!" the grateful professor cries, stumbling forward, tears in his eyes, to embrace the great mastiff as he comes lumbering into the boatyard. "You have saved my life - again! And my life's work! How can I ever thank you? How can the world thank you?!" Lido does not immediately return his embrace. His old eyes droop rheumily. What -? A chill runs through the old scholar. He staggers back. "Is something -? Were the bags not found? Were they someone else's -?!"

  "No, they're there. They're yours, all right -"

  "Well, then, it's time for celebrations! Dinner tonight! At my hotel! With champagne! Cream puffs and panettoni! Tiramisu! Grappa from the last century! We'll have a week of Saturdays! Christmas and Carnival, all at once! For you, Melampetta, those shawls and baubles you've been wanting! For you, Alidoro, my most precious friend, the world!"

  "The bags are yours," growls the old mastiff when he's able, "but they're empty."

  "Empty -?"

  "Ah," whispers Melampetta softly, tossing some more letters into the fire, "it rains on the arse of the unlucky, even when they are sitting on it "

  "Nothing in them but one sheet of paper."

  "One sheet -?" he squeaks, beginning to choke up. "From all my work, just one sheet? But which -?" Lido hands it to him. There are three proverbs scrawled on it. Stolen money never bears fruit. The devil's flour is all bran. He who steals his neighbor's cloak ends his life without a shirt. He recognizes them. The last time he'd seen La Volpe and her stupid companion before last night was nearly a century ago. They were ragged then, maimed and destitute, begging out of need, not knavery, though it was only what they deserved, and so, his own conversion by then complete, he'd sent them both to hell: "Addio, mascherine!" he'd laughed, throwing proverbs at them like stones. And these: these were the proverbs. "Scoundrels!" he hisses. He is trembling from head to foot. "Villains! Thieving treacherous fiends! Murderers! ASSASSINS!" He finds himself beating wildly on Alidoro's chest. He clutches his head, which seems about to burst. They can't do this! Not to him! Don't they know who -? But what -? What's this -?! There's nothing on the right side of his head! "My ear! What's happened to my ear -?!"

  Melampetta, head ducked, tail curled between her legs, glances

  devil's flour sideways at Alidoro as though she might have just eaten a chicken. "Last night," she says meekly, "when we were trying to get you back into your blanket, it it came off."

  "What -?! My ear -?!"

  "Don't worry, we saved it!"

  "You knocked my ear off, you stupid animals -?! You slobbered all over me, you burned my clothes up, you made me sleep in all this filth, and then, on top of it all, you knocked my ear off -?!"

  "Actually, it sort of fell off by itself "

  "Listen, my friend, you can stay here another night," suggests Alidoro. "The owners won't be back till the snow's gone, and Mela won't mind. Until we can -"

  "Here -?! In this pestilent flyblown dunghill of a kennel? This loathsome flea farm, this squalid, stinking -?"

  "You and Mela can talk. You know, about serious things. Meanwhile I'll go back and see if -"

  "Talk?" he screams, his rage exploding. "With this dumb mutt, this illiterate foul-mouthed retard? Listen to her preposterous idiocies another whole night? Are you crazy, you stupid mongrel, I'd rather die!"

  Alidoro,
who has slumped to his haunches, now lowers his jaws and gazes mournfully up at him from between his paws. "For charity, vecchio -!" he rumbles softly under his breath. Melampetta stares at him a moment as though trying to see through the holes in his suit. There is a brief dreadful silence. Then she lifts her snout, closes her eyes, and commences to howl pathetically.

  Oh no. What has he done? What has he said?

  "My my friends! Oh, my friends, forgive me!"

  He rushes over, tearfully, to embrace them. Alidoro buries his nose deeper, Melampetta howls all the louder. All over Venice he seems to hear dogs howling. "Oh please! I'm just upset! Can't you see? It's been so hard! I'm an old man! I'm at the very edge, I've nothing left!" He is weeping, sobbing, all his pain concentrated now in Melampetta's terrible howl. "Oh what a wretched fool I've been!" His knees collapse, but Alidoro reaches for him now to steady him with a gentle forepaw. "You're the dearest friends I have in the whole world! Last night was, truly, one of the most beautiful nights of my whole life! Not even the day I got my Ph.D. was as wonderful! It's true! Please, Melampetta! Don't howl like that! I'm so sorry! I love you so!" She releases one more anguished siren, then allows herself to be drawn into his arms. They are all hugging and licking one another now and whimpering and crying. "Oh dear sweet eloquent Melampetta! You're the greatest philosopher I've ever known!" he exclaims, then adds, to stop his nose from twitching: "In all of Venice!" They all laugh at that, and then they cry some more, and hug and kiss and promise always to be true and to help each other and not to say unkind things, and while they're all rubbed up together like that, his other ear comes off.