(1991) Pinocchio in Venice

by Robert Coover

  Subito is not exactly the word. They pick their way across the campo like ants, the pavement emerging in front of their wary toes as it vanishes behind their heels, a sharp contrast to yesterday's roisterous Carnivalesque crossing of the Piazza San Marco. If Eugenio was incensed by the irreverent congregation that approached him, he did not show it. He greeted the Count Ziani-Ziani with a deep bow and prepared eulogies, departing from his script only briefly to remark upon the nobleman's prodigious scepter, referring to it as "The Great Disseminator of Empire" and "The Magnificent Lion-Planter," citing it (at this reference to lions, the "Good Sovereign" awoke suddenly with a startled stupid look, bawled out "Che cazzo -?!", then, bloodshot eyes crossing, dropped his shabby old head back in his paws and nodded off once more) as demonstrable proof of the Count's lineage and pointing out to the wide-eyed city fathers gathered around him that: "You see before you the true cause of that envy that stirred our sister states in times gone by to so malign our great Republic and bring about through deceit, intrigue, and spiteful tongues her eventual and untimely ruin! The Turks, for all their famed endowments, came up short in their rash challenge to it, and similar fates befell the impudent Franks and Goths, who simply overreached themselves! In a later age, Napoleon in his impotent rage raped and pillaged our most beautiful Queen, swallowing up everything on the island he could lay his lascivious hands upon, but this, her true glory, he could not, for all his voracity, engorge, though a fateful glimpse of it is said to have embittered his dreams to the end of his tormented life!" He then suggested that, while the city officials were examining the deed, according to the law, the Count might like to join him privately in camera caritatis to sample some grappa distilled in the time of his ancestors and toast the success of their transactions.

  The Count, introduced as the direct descendant of four popes, at least three of them male, six cardinals, and nineteen doges, replied that he was indeed honored to have his pockets picked by such a distinguished assembly of impenitent thieves and whoresons, true heirs of the pustulous glories of the Serenissima, but that, while gladly surrendering the deed for their exanimation, he would have to decline the Director's kind invitation to visit his privy chambers, not because he suspected treachery or doubted his host's integrity - "You'd better doubt it, that rotto in culo is as bent as a forcola!" barked Melampetta from the edge of the multitudes, and Eugenio turned to the Inspector General of the Questura at his side and, smiling unctuously through clenched teeth, growled: "Somebody go muzzle that damned bitch!" - but because, in his present state of arousal stimulated by his return to his debauched and beloved homeland, he might do damage to its Renaissance splendors and would in any event find it painful to negotiate the stairwells. About this time, the Lion rose up once more and roared out a string of sour melancholic oaths threatening, for the greater glory of Venice, to bite the heads off every infidel present, starting with the Archbishop - "Soul to God, body to the crypt, asshole to the devil for his tobacco dip!" he bellowed - but the Madonna calmed him down by feeding him some of her organs, and soon enough the decrepit creature was sonorously back asleep again.

  For the professor, bundled up in the blue angora sweater with its warm milky odors, deliciously stupefying, all of this was happening as a sort of remote theatrical backdrop to the only event left for him on center stage and the focus of all his entranced attention. As his former student pranced about, so full of life, spraying dignitaries and revelers alike from her gaily striped machine, or clamping it between her thighs and riding it like a bronco, or challenging other phalli to duels, she occasionally afforded him glimpses of smooth creamy flesh and bouncing breasts with generous nipples that excited him as no masterpiece had ever done. Her worn blue jeans were molded around her abundant thighs and hips like a second skin, freely exhibiting to the delight of his captive eye every thrilling line and posture of her piquant body, which he, with an outburst of what would have been, before the Blue-Haired Fairy stole it from him, rapture, told himself was ideal beauty's very image and all he would ever know of the divine, forget all previous pretensions of his long misdirected life. He was utterly disarmed, overpowered, intoxicated with fugitive, mad, unreasoning hopes and visions of a monstrous sweetness: in short, oh joy, he was, alas, too late, in love.

  Seeing him stare at her with such pained tenderness, Bluebell gave the giant phallus back to Francatrippa and, zipping up her wind-breaker against the cold, came over to her old mentor's portantina. "Politicians are just so darn boring!" she complained, cracking her pink gum. She stripped off the condom and shook her blond curls out. "C'mon, teach! Whaddaya say we get the heck outa here and go have some fun!" He could not in his smitten state find breath to speak, much less words to use were even breath available, but, deftly reading his wistful devastated gaze, she unbuckled him from his litter chair - "What're they doing, prof, holding you prisoner -?" - and lifted him up into her arms. "Holy moley, you're light as a parakeet feather! Look at you, poor thing! You're nothing but skin and bones! Or whatever." She gave him a little hug and whispered in his earhole: "Let's sneak down to the waterfront and have a ride! C'mon! These goofballs'll never miss you!"

  And so it was that he found himself on the Apocalypse. There were other choices out on the cold windswept riva: bumper cars and whips and fun houses, pirate ships and merry-go-rounds, looping airplanes, spinning teacups, but for Bluebell, who had tried them all, only the Apocalypse still gave her a thrill. "Present company excluded of course!" she added with a tinkling gum-snapping laugh. In all his life as a human being, he had never been in or on any of these things, and he had disdained those who had, but now the very prospect brought tears of joy and excitement to his eyes, as he huddled, shivering, against Bluebell's soft slippery windbreaker, clasped like a child in her strong young arms. Music was playing separately from each of the attractions, a chaotic dissonance, diabolically loud, but the riva was empty, they were all alone, their Carnival fling like a secret tryst behind closed doors.

  What followed was the most exciting ride of his life. Not even his flight on Colombo's back could match it. At first it wasn't fun at all, it was sheer terror. So whipped about was he by the sudden violent wheeling and swooping and plunging that he worried he might start coming apart. Flakes of dried flesh were flying from him like dead moths from a shaken carpet and his insides were in such turmoil he was afraid he'd end up like the Madonna of the Organs. Bluebell, seeing his plight, quickly opened up her red windbreaker and tucked him inside. "Yow-eee!" she howled as they dipped and whirled, her golden locks flying and her bright white teeth sparkling in laughter. "Hot dog! I love it!" For a moment he suffered a terror of another sort. Not since Hollywood had he been this close to a woman's fleshy parts, and never when they were jouncing and bobbling so crazily as this. He grabbed on as best he could but it was like trying to hug a runaway exercise machine. Her naked breasts literally flew up and whopped him on the nose, and her knees were sometimes as high as his head. "Whee-ee-ee!" she squealed and wrapped her arms and legs around him and squeezed him tight.

  Then, as the mad ride continued, he began to find an anchor in that very motion. The earth was flying about them everywhere and they were being severely shaken still, but it was as though they were becoming one with the very forces that, so powerfully and so primordially, shook them. This: this is truth, he realized, with such a jolt of recognition, he knocked his head on her chin and set off another giddy burst of whooping and squealing: "You made me swallow my gum!" she yelled, and then suddenly they were upside down again and hanging on to each other for dear life. All these years, he thought as they plummeted, then shot upwards again, instead of riding with it, he had been trying to stop it in artificial freeze-frames, made lightheaded by anything that twitched, but now, suddenly, he began to feel most centered, most contented, when most ferociously flung about. "I feel alive," he gasped, as, headlong, they looped and dived and spun, "truly alive, for the - ahi!! - first time since the day I-I grew up!" It helped of course to be held by and
holding Bluebell and to be pillowed in her lovely bobbing breasts, whose nipples, he saw now, and this was just another amazing revelation among many, were exactly like the rosettes of Ca' Dario across from the Gritti Hotel where he used to take his grappas, but it was more than the breasts, more than the hugging and squeezing and bouncing against one another, and the glorious fragrances that wound him round, it was a true mystical communion with the Other, the most ecstatic and visionary moment in his life. And, well, even if it was just the hugging and the breasts, et cetera, one thing he knew without any qualifications: whatever it was, he didn't want it ever to stop

  They are lost again. Truffaldino, whimpering, wants to go back to the palazzo, but Buffetto reminds him that, as they are lost, they don't know where that is either. They have just crept over another bridge, having almost missed it on the other side and fallen in, and now they find themselves in another open space in fog too thick even to see each other if they lean away. They set the portantina down and, holding on to each other, feel about them in the fog. The whole purpose of this hazardous journey is to procure a certain mask for the professor, who, though he plays no part in the servants' deliberations, is determined to carry on, per amore o per forza, as the saying goes. The plan is Eugenio's. "Leave it to me, Pini," he'd said with a sly knowing smile. "Yes, yes, tomorrow night, I can see it all! Trust me!" And so here, wherever it is, they are, preparatory to his night of nights, whatever the deceptions, whatever the costs.

  On the Apocalypse yesterday, as he grew accustomed to the violent motion, he tried to speak to Bluebell about his affection for her, indirectly of course, joking abstractly about the laughable folly of old men and referring to certain scandals that had happened at his university over the years between professors and students, never to him needless to say, though who, ever, dear Bluebell, is wholly immune, and telling her about a movie star he once knew, quite famous, who kissed him once - for the cameras, of course - in a very special place, finding it difficult as he spoke to keep Bluebell's wildly bouncing breasts out of his mouth. This seemed to make her giggle, so he let it happen more and more until, his more reasoned approach abandoned, he was lapping at them and gumming them and scrubbing his nose on them quite shamelessly. She laughed at his clumsy gaiety, gasping as the Apocalypse whipped them about that she always thought of him as such a stuffy old bird, and he tried to correct this impression by bragging about running away from home all the time and about his bad-boy past in the Land of Toys. "We wuh' weawwy - shplurpp! glop! - wicked!" he squawked around his mouthful of convulsive breast. He offered to take her places in the motor launch, to Torcello or Chioggia, for example, wherever, it didn't matter, he was just hanging on, hanging on to everything, making desperate plans for the future, and she asked if they couldn't go out on an American Express "Venetian Night" package tour instead. "We'll go dancing! And to the Casino! No museums, no churches, just fun! We'll take gondolas! With singing gondoliers! It'll be wild!"

  And then suddenly the ride ended and she carried him back to the Piazza and, the official ceremonies over and his portantina gone, deposited him in the palazzo doorway in the Sotoportego del Capello, took her sweater back, rang the bell, gave him a little kiss on the top of his head, popped a bubble, and said: "Well, in case we don't see each other again, Professor Pinenut, have a happy Carnival!"

  He was shattered. He felt like he felt whenever the Fairy died. He turned, once he knew who he was, to Eugenio.

  Police whistles blow not far away and there are shouts and the sounds of scuffling. "Per caritŕ, gentlemen! What are you doing -?! A poor holy man! Ow! In nomine excelsis and de profundis gloria, have you no shame?" cries a gravelly old voice from out of the fog. "What ficcanaso has sent you here? Eh? What bad tongue in partibus infidelium has misled you? Ih! Ih! Ih! Mercy, gentlemen! A frustulum of indulgence, if you please! A bit of nunc dimittis and ite, missa est! I am no thief! Upon my faith! See, here is my money! Take it if you wish! I have made vows of poverty! Look at my hair shirt! Per amor del cielo, let me go and I will forgive you! See, it's only an old tail, not worth the novena of spades, as they say! Who would want to steal such a thing! Uf! Be reasonable, gentlemen!" There are heavy booted footsteps and the sound of something or someone being dragged, but the sounds seem to come from every direction at once. And, as suddenly as they began, they cease.

  "Signori carabinieri ?" Truffaldino calls out hopefully into the murky silence. There is no reply. The little servant starts to cry.

  "What -? Who is that malcontented guttersnipe out there?" comes a waspish voice from out of the coiling yellow fog. "Unbutton yourself, you blubbering turd!"

  "It's us!" wails Truffaldino. "Help! We are lost!"

  "Lost! Hah! We should all be so lucky!"

  "I'd give an arm and a leg to be lost!"

  "Easy for you to say, dearie!"

  "Please! We've walked all the way from Saint Mark's -!"

  "Oho! The little pap-sucker walks! He talks! He's a bloody miracle!"

  "He's probably even got one of those lumpish things between his head and his feet - what do you call them?"

  "Let it all leak out, piss-brains, we're on burning coals "

  They take a step toward the voices and faces materialize around them in the fog. The old scholar recognizes them - the pink-cheeked sun, the angel with the cherry-red lips, the camel, the skull, the freckled face with red hood and yellow braids - "Hey! It's the mask-maker's!" cries Truffaldino. "We've found it!"

  "It's found us, more like," mutters Buffetto, then falls silent as the towering figure of Mangiafoco with his fiery eyes and his rampant black beard like flung ink crowds into the doorway, filling it, his head half lost in the swirling mists high above. "Ma che cazzo fai -?" he roars, making the masks rattle on the wall. Peering down through the fog with his glowering eyes, he spies the old professor. "Eh! What's this -?!" He bends down to look more closely. A big toothy smile cracks his plaster-stained lips. "Oho! So this is our great Casanova, enh? Ebbene! Enter, signori! I have just the faccia for the little ciuco!"

  The masks titter furtively as they enter, making the collective sound of mice scurrying through the walls. The old scholar is fully aware that he is the object of some ridicule. He doesn't care. There is not time left in his life to care. This American student will be his, whether the foolish milk-fed gum-popping creature knows it or not. Nothing will stand in his way. Not his long unyielding life with its heroic devotion to truth and art and virtue. Not his terrible fear of confusion and humiliation. Not all the "civilizing" precepts and ruthless pieties of his despotic blue-haired catechist. Nothing. "Nothing!" he tells the walls of brightly colored faces, all the red ones, white ones, green, black, leathery brown, and Venetian gold ones, the flesh pink ones and those of dreadful azure blue: turchino. Cassiodorus called this blue the "Venetian color." It was the color of the darkness which came over the sun at the time of the desolation of the Gothic kingdom. The color of his own desolated life. No longer. Eugenio has promised. "Tonight!" he declares, twisting round defiantly in his portantina.

  And then he sees her. Just behind him in the middle of the room. Tipped back in a barber's chair in a winding sheet with only her blue jean cuffs and fringed white boots sticking out, hands crossed, face waxen, eyes rolled back, lips slack and parted. Dead. Dead -?! He feels faint. His vision blurs. He cannot breathe. There is something so dreadful about this sight that his mind will not take it in, but continues, stubbornly, even angrily (what has she done -?!), to contemplate a future now utterly erased: She will come to him. (She cannot.) He will have her. (There is nothing to have.) She will love him forever. (Forever is over.)

  25. COOKED IN LOVE

  The august professor emeritus, embedded in molded pizza dough, has an uneasy premonition, as they back him into a bread oven with only his head sticking out ("Don't worry, Pini, you won't melt!" Eugenio assures him, beaming ruddily from beaded ear to beaded ear: "Just like baked Alaska! You won't feel a thing!"), that this night is not going to turn out ex
actly as he had so ardently hoped. He had asked for a proper philological costume, a mysterious and somber bauta perhaps with ruffle and tricorn and wig and cape - he had practiced taking short steps about his room in the palazzo, more or less erect, imagining the cape fluttering majestically yet secretively around him as he staggered along - but, as Eugenio explained when they opened up the box from the maskmaker's and, to his wailing dismay, found instead the donkey mask inside: "Now, now, a bauta mask would not even fit correctly over your you know, your thing - and besides, there will be thousands of capes and bautas out there tonight, dear boy! How will she find you if you are not somehow different from the rest?"

  "Find me? I thought we were to be alone -!"

  "Well, er, of course! But not at first "

  "You mean it's some sort of masked ball?"

  "Precisely! A masked ball! Is it not Martedě Grasso? What did you think? So now stop being such a little fusspot, Pignolo my darling! I promise you, it's going to be beautiful! A night you will remember for the rest of your life! Trust me!"

  And so they have brought him to the kitchen, stripped him of his fine clothing, his silk suit and monogrammed hand-tailored shirt and his satin underthings, and wrapped him in layers and layers of heavy pizza dough, stuffing in prawns and olives and onions and pepperoni and wild mushrooms and tuna and golden pimientos and eggplant, with a whole garlic salami wedged up between the thighs, a stiffened mane made of wild asparagus beribboned with prosciutto curls, and with anchovies and artichoke hearts and extra cheese on the hind portions - "Best bits for last!" Eugenio enthuses, patting the enriched rump, his plump cheeks flushed with excitement and an overly tight corset (he doesn't look at all like the person the professor mistook him for yesterday, he must have been reeling still from that mind-churning ride) - and now, six cooks all helping at once, they ease him on backwards on a little trolley into the bread oven.