(1991) Pinocchio in Venice

by Robert Coover

  But then something quite unexpected happens. The winged monster dips and swerves erratically as though confused or blinded by the snow and (are its eyes crossed?) heads straight for the bell tower - or else the bell tower, which has been floating treacherously in and out of the whirling snow, sways suddenly and leans into the storm; from the stricken traveler's position in the nauseous pit of the orchestra, so to speak, it is hard to tell. The lion lifts its paws and spreads its wings, but too late: there is a thunderous earth-shaking ear-splitting clangor, followed by a frantic scattering of astonished pigeons, fleeing groggily from they know not what, the light fall of stone teeth and feathers upon the little campo, and a series of mighty reverberations that sound and resound through the frosty night as though a giant cymbal has been struck, a throbbing metallic clamor that seems to set all the bells in Venice ringing.

  Behind the repercussions rippling out into the night, the professor can hear, up in the campanile where the din was launched, a great moaning and puling and thick-tongued cursing in the Venetian dialect: ''You turd! Rotto in culo! Oh! Ah! I'm dying! You head of a prick! I piss in your mother's cunt! Oh, my head! My ears! Shut up, will you, sfiga di cazzo? By the leprous cock of Saint Mark, you asshole of God, I'll have you melted down and turned into souvenir gondolas! Where are my teeth -?! Oh, you whore! I come on you, you sack of shit, on you and all your dead!" And then, head in its paws, tail adroop, the pale beast goes flapping off sorely into the night, growling its oaths and imprecations, disappearing into the blowing snow and the fading tintinnabulation of tolling bells.

  Left alone, the abandoned wayfarer, huddled miserably against the wall, accepts this melancholy tolling as his own knell. To be poised against fatality, to meet adverse conditions gracefully is more than simple endurance, he knows, it is an act of aggression, a positive triumph, but he also knows such triumphs are now beyond him. He just wants to cry. There are always endings, but there are not always conclusions. If you're out of candles, as his father used to say with a tired shrug, enh, you'll go to bed in the dark. These simple truths come to him, along with all the memories. But what is it he remembers? His own life or the film of it, the legends? This life of his: it has been like a kind of dream - but who was the dreamer? He cannot think. His brain is frozen. He tries to remember his own famous dream, the one that made him what he is today, that might warm him up; but all that comes to him there under his helmet of iced scarf is what he saw that awesome day when she spread her knees as though to reveal to him his fate. Ah, dear lady, and where are you now? He looks up, hoping for another miracle, even another flying lion, company at least. But there's only a ghastly white all around him as in the house of the dead. Except for the wall itself: a flaking ochre red softly reminiscent of the Trecento masters like Paolo Veneziano. It encourages him that he can remember Paolo Veneziano. I'm not dead yet, he thinks, or perhaps says, his cheeks pressed against the wall, I can still remember Paolo Paolo What's-his-name. What was I thinking about? Already gone. Over his head, he sees now, there is something written. It seems to say "JESU." He's a sucker for words, he'll read anything, afraid of missing something if he doesn't. Might be a message, a final message (all my life, he thinks, I've been waiting for a message). He clutches at the snow-rimmed bricks of the wall, dragging himself up. Not "JESU," but "JUVE." And, yes, he brushes away the snow, here's the "VIVA," written like two birds in flight, their wings crossed in happy omen, and next to it the other one: "ABBASSO LARIN METICA!" - "Down with Larin Metica!" "Viva abbasso!" he cries. He laughs. He knows where he is now. He's almost there!

  He scrapes the crust of ice and snow off his glasses, glances round. Right! There's the bridge, there's the narrow underpass! The joints of his knees are locked up, frozen solid, he has to totter ahead stiff-legged, rocking from side to side, his eyes watering, his nose running: but, yes, through here and turn right - and there it is! The long fondamenta, now a ghostly white and daintily pricked out with cat tracks, the stately palazzo rising through the eddies of swirling snow, the blackened doorway! He scrambles over the last bridge, more or less on all fours, volere č potere, his mind thawing now with glowing anticipations of pillows and eiderdowns and his own flannel nightshirt, his liniments and antacids (his stomach, he realizes, is in a ferocious turmoil), his computer, his books, his Mamma (he will find that climactic metaphor, maybe in fact he has already found it!), his earplugs and blindfold and sleeping pills and his hot water bottle. The thought of a hot water bottle alone propels him down the last stretch from the bridge to the door.

  But it is all dark, the door is locked, they have given up on him! "I'm here! I'm here!" he cries into the howling wind. He bangs on the door. He is so weak he can almost not hear it himself. There should be a doorbell somewhere, but he cannot find it. He rattles the rusted wrought-iron grills at the windows, shaking the snow off them, shouting through the broken glass. "My friends! Open up!" He can hear cats prowling around, yowling, chasing one another. Overhead, the windows are all shuttered or broken. "Wake up! I'm here!" He wants to throw something at the windows, but all he can find is a plastic cat dish. "Help! Help!" he screams. They cannot leave him out here! He has already paid! There is one pane left whole in the window just above his head: he flings his watch through it. There is a soft splintering tinkle and the cats stop yowling for a moment, then start up again. He is beginning to cry. He thinks he might be going crazy. He is still screaming, but there are no words now, he sounds like one of the cats. He is getting sick. His screams have become groans. His insides seem to be exploding and collapsing at the same time. He must squat somewhere, and quick. He could use the canal but he is afraid of falling in. There is a walled garden, he tries the gate, it is locked. No time for alternatives. He presses into the shallow sill of the gate, under a wild rough tangle of overhanging thornbrush and dead vines, fumbles feverishly with his trousers, ripping them down as far as his knees. But his coat is in the way. Struggling with it (he is already too late, much too late), he falls facefirst into the snow. He rises to his knees and elbows, can rise no further. Behind his ears, there are terrible eruptions. He feels like he is dying. Like the time when he was sick and lame and tethered, heart broken, to a stinking stable. Only now no one would want him, he is not even worth flaying. "I'm sorry!" he weeps, pulling his coattails over his head. "I'm so sorry "

  And so it is that il gran signore, the distinguished emeritus professor from abroad, the world-renowned art historian and critic, social anthropologist, moral philosopher, and theological gadfly, the returning pilgrim, lionized author of The Wretch, Blue Repose, Politics of the Soul, The Transformation of the Beast, Astringent Truth, and other classics of Western letters, native son, galantuomo, and universally beloved exemplar of industry, veracity, and civility, not a child of his times, but the child of his times, is discovered on this, the night of his glorious homecoming, head buried and ancient fulminating arse high, when the police come cruising up in three sleek sky-blue motor launches, spotlights glaring, and arrest him ("What are you doing there on the ground?!" they cry) for indecent exposure, disturbing the peace, suspected terrorist activities, polluting the environment, and attempting to enter a public building without official written permission. "Avanti, you rascal! And step lively! Or so much the worse for you!"

  5. ALIDORO'S RESCUE

  Oh, he knows about the vagaries and terrors of the law. For years now he has lived a life of the utmost propriety, decent and law-abiding, crossing the street only when the light was green, avoiding swindlers and idlers and evil companions, speaking the truth with unflagging courage, and contributing annually to the policemen's ball. But it has not always been so. Once he got his own father sent to prison with a mere tantrum, then received a bit of his own back when, as the victim of an infamous fraud, he'd appealed to a judge for justice and got hauled off to jail instead ("This poor devil has been robbed of four gold pieces," the senile old ape told the police guards; "seize him therefore and put him immediately in prison!"), there to spend four of t
he worst months of his life, months of harsh deprivation, loneliness, and brutal abuse. In those lamentable days, all his worst crimes went unpunished, he's the first to admit that, yet when he tried to give help, for example, to his dear friend Eugenio, cruelly struck down by their own classmates, he was again dragged away as the main suspect in the case, and by police no more threatening than these. Oh, be sure of it, he knows full well the danger he's in! The abuse he suffered in prison was meted out by fellow prisoners and guards alike, he got it from both bells, as they say, they hated him on all sides of the law. His very existence seemed an affront to them, who and what he was, as though he demeaned them somehow merely by being in their midst, it was a kind of racism. In their merciless loathing, they used him as a nutcracker and knocked splinters off him for toothpicks and stuffed lighted matches up his rectum, hoping to get rid of him once and for all and toast their bread and sausages over him at the same time. And if anything, this lot tonight is even more violent, more heavily armed. Yet he can't stop himself. He has his father's pride and temper. And now, alas, his father's age, and then some. Long ago, when they'd tried to arrest him for Eugenio's injuries, he was able to run away, belly to the ground, so fast he stirred a dust storm; now he couldn't beat that old snail who took a week to serve him breakfast, there's no running left in him. Just helpless fury and terror and bitter indignation, his mind is literally reeling with it.

  But how they've toyed with him, provoked him, how they've mocked and taunted him! "A stinking joss stick," they've called him, and "a twisted little twig," "shit with ears," and "a purulent polecat with a beanful of crickets." He's screamed back at them, threatening them with lawsuits and high-level investigations and public denunciations and even popular uprisings: "When the world hears what you've done -!" Which has not been easy, of course, with his pants around his knees and full of the ghastly ruins of his night at the Gambero Rosso. "Foo! What a puzzone!" the officers exclaimed when they first grabbed him. "Someone get a lid on that pot!" "But that's my hotel!" he shrieked then. "I've already paid! My bags are in there! My manuscript -! My precious Mamma -!" "The disgusting old thing wants his mamma!" they laughed, pulling his pants up as they wrestled him toward their patrol boats, but failing to wipe him, leaving him feeling hot and sticky and chilled to the bone, so to speak, all at once. He was still blustering, so they picked him up by the scruff to watch him kick. They dropped him to watch him sprawl. They threw snow in his face to listen to him splutter. They tossed him from one to another in the glaring spotlights, shouting out vulgar jokes and proverbs about excreta and old age. They've threatened him with a hiding. They've threatened to take him out to the prison at Santa Marta and throw him in with their current catch of Red Brigade terrorists: "They'll know how to cook him!" They've rolled him in the snow. "You fools!" he blusters, spitting snow. "Don't worry, old man! It's always a consolation to fry in company!" they laugh and dangle him on high.

  One of them reaches into his pocket to pluck out his billfold with two fingers and says: "Empty. Some American, looks like. The little prigger must've snatched it." And, seething, stamping his feet in space, he storms right back at him: "That's my wallet, you imbecile! I'm an American professor, an emeritus professor, do you hear me? Everybody knows me! This is an outrage! An atrocity! An - oh! Ah!" He's choking now, gasping, he wonders if he's having a heart attack. They set him down, standing around laughing with hands on hips, kicking his feet out from under him whenever he tries to stand. "It's a - I'm - I've been -! Stop! You can't -! I know the Pope!" He is shrieking, bawling, his nose is inflamed (he doesn't know the Pope), he's completely out of control. He can't help it. His masterpiece! All he's worked for all his life - "Please -!" It's like when his father was beating him and he was crying for it to stop. Hugging the old man's knees as the strop came down. "You must open up! For pity's sake! You must let me -!"

  "Here, here, you scummy old tart, stop that!" The young gendarme whose knees he's grabbed swats him across the noggin with his leather gloves and boots him away, while the others make sport about this, saying not to be hasty, it's the best offer any of them has had all night. The professor howls and fumes and crawls about in the tumbling snow and bright lights, demanding, pleading, explaining, chastising, but it's as though the language has lost its referents and is only good for the noise it makes. "My computer! My life! My entire career -!" "Ha ha! Don't give us that to drink, you miserable little blister!" they jeer. "You pezzo di puzzo! You piece of garbage! You shrunken scrotum! You stinking smoke salesman! You gangrenous turd!" They seem to be having a great time. "Look at that beak! Last time I saw one like that it was being used as a billiard stick!" "And bald as a cueball on top of it, the little freak's a whole game in himself." "Idiots!" he screams. "Scoundrels!" "But not a very amusing game " "Delinquenti!" "To tell the truth, the little asswipe is starting to get up my nose." "Assassini!" "Basta! Enough and period! Someone go wake Lido up! Let him have a gnaw on this old tramp! If there's less of him, there might be less noise!"

  "Get up here, Lido! We got a live one for you!"

  "Or almost live!"

  One of the police launches sloshes about in the water as a huge ugly mastiff rises from it, growling throatily, so evil and monstrous in his appearance that even the hysterical scholar is momentarily silenced by awe. It's like some kind of hideous apparition, like a creature long dead rising grotesquely from the Venetian lagoon, pale and deadly, and the very sight of the dreadful thing makes the old professor's knees rattle. If he hadn't already emptied his bowels, he would probably be doing so now. "You're in bad waters now," an officer mutters sinisterly in his ear. "Lido hates presumptuous shitters like you."

  "Some he eats straightaway," murmurs another as the beast slouches ashore, "some he promises."

  "Eh, Lido, what do you think? One bite or two?"

  "The little testa di cazzo even claims to be a professor! That should whet your appetite!"

  "He certainly stinks like one! Dress him for the party, Lido!"

  "Give him a little holy reason!"

  He can feel the mastiffs hot breath on him. But the growling has stopped. The brute is sniffing him curiously, gazing blearily at him through muddy old eyes, drool spooling from his drooping lips. The professor can see that the old fellow is nearly toothless.

  "What's this, Lido? We catch you a filthy off-season tourist and you're not even going to chew off a leg or two?"

  "He says his name is Pinenut, Lido! Professor Pinenut! Ha ha! There's a tidbit for you!"

  "Pinocchio -? Does my nose tell me true, is it really you?"

  "Alidoro -?!"

  "Ah, Pinocchio! My old friend!" cries the dog, his voice phlegmy with age and deep emotion. He throws his paws around him, laps him on the face and behind the ears, his stub of a tail wagging. Alidoro's coat is mildewy and flyblown, almost suffocatingly rank, but the professor hugs it to him like the sweetest balm, burying his face in it and weeping like a baby. "What has happened, my friend? What has brought you to this miserable state?"

  "If you only knew!" the aged traveler wails. "This infernal - sob - night! I'll never -! The misfortunes that have - boo boo! - rained down on -!"

  "The little stronzo was waking up the whole neighborhood, Lido, making a bloody nuisance of himself with his drunken racket - then he tried to break into this old abandoned mansion here. We caught him with his -"

  "Keep your mouth out of this, goose-brain! You're breaking my pockets!" Alidoro roars. "Can't you see I'm speaking with this gentleman?" He tugs the professor's coat collar up around his ears, licks his frozen pate with a warm tongue, then wipes it gently with a big soft paw, covers it with a few tufts of hair, torn from his own breast. "So, my friend "

  "It was terrible, Alidoro!" he sobs. "Just imagine! The airport was fogged in and I had to take the train from Milan and it was overheated, I don't even know what time it was! I had no hotel reservation and the tourist office was closing and the woman dropped the spoon. I mean the key. But the porter had a friend so he
brought me here, it was just two steps away, and they were dressed up for Carnival. Only the room wasn't heated, so we had supper in the Gambero Rosso, it was included in the price, but I got lost. The snow - I couldn't see! My old eyes - I nearly died! Someone threw water on me and I got chased by a lion who flew into a belltower! Then I saw the viva abbasso and I came here but it was dark. I was getting sick. I threw my watch -! All my bags - choke! - my computer! My floppies! Oh, Alidoro! My life's work -!" He's not sure if any of this is comprehensible. He doesn't understand it himself, he's crying like a cut vine, it's all just streaming out of him, words, tears, terrors, the lot, as Alidoro hugs him close. "In there-! Everything's in there -!"

  "Gentlemen," says the dog, "this is a dear friend of mine. We once saved each other's lives. We are like bread and cheese, friends by the skin, do you understand? He is the most truthful person I have ever known. I'm sure he is all he says he is. You should believe everything he says."