(1991) Pinocchio in Venice

by Robert Coover

  10. THE THREE KINGDOMS

  It is all the old traveler can do, his traveling all but done, to put one benumbed foot in front of the other. It is not just the snow, blowing through the holes in his clothing and down his neck and ankles, it is not just the freezing cold snapping cruelly at his tender nose, or the pain in his elbows and locked-up wooden knees, the arduousness of the trek itself through the treacherously frosted city. It is also despair. Bleak, final, disabling. He no longer has anything left to live for. His conclusive and definitive work, his capolavoro, is gone forever, his life is ended. Why then must the suffering go on? "I have lived long enough," San Petrarca said. Perhaps while wandering these very streets. "If the Stage Director wants to break it off, very well." "We can but keep trying, my friend," Alidoro had insisted gruffly in a temper something between heroism and simple doggedness. "Death must find us alive." And so, without conviction, they have set out, the heartsick professor and the faithful old mastiff, bound for the Questura with the aim of providing the police with a list of the empty luggage's missing contents and perhaps a little monetary encouragement on the side ("Not for nothing is that band of shameless beggars known also as the questua- the Sunday collection plate!" Melampetta had growled good-humoredly, forcing upon him the few rumpled notes she and Lido had somehow scraped together, stuffing them into his pockets along with his ears), but the journey is as futile, he knows, as the larger one which brought him here. Back here, he should say, back here to Acchiappacitrulli, the infamous snare of simpletons, Fools' Trap, city of the shorn, where he himself once played, now plays again, the booby.

  "I always thought of this as the Island of the Busy Bees," he had sighed somewhat grievously while they were bundling him up in his scraps and tatters of overcoat, which has the odor this morning of burnt camel dung, and Lido had replied drily: "Well, that's right, and what they're busy at, compagno, is skinning the tourists."

  So he has returned, he has discovered, not only to the scene of his triumph, but to the scene of his ignominy as well, the place where all those years ago, in Acchiappacitrulli's Field of Miracles, he buried his gold coins, dreaming of orchards of tinkling money trees. He should have guessed. This infamous city of despotism and duplicity, of avarice and hypocrisy and subterfuge, this "stinking bordello," this wasps' nest of "insatiable cupidity" and "thirst for domination," as Venice's outraged neighbors once declared, this police state with the air of a robber's den, always out after its "quarter and a half-quarter" and "conspiring the ruin of everyone," this fake city built on fake pilings with its fake fronts and fake trompes l'oeil, this capital of licentiousness and murder and omnivorous greed: who else but these lagoon rats would want the tail feathers of a poor gullible pheasant or the hair of a dumb dog? One thing, surely, can be said of all who have come to this island: whether they left wiser, wearier, happier, sadder, enchanted or enlightened, exasperated or exalted, impregnated with beauty or disease or rabid hedonism, they all left poorer. Just as the Blue-Haired Fairy ever, in her profound maternal wisdom, warned him.

  Yet it was for her sake he has returned and, though deceived, he can pride himself that on this occasion his intentions at least were nobler: the search, not without considerable personal sacrifice, for the consummation, as it were, of a virtuous life - and yet, and yet, he cautions himself, stumbling along, wasn't that dream of an ultimate life-defining metaphor as mad as the dream of money trees? What was he hoping for this time, another Peace Prize? Beatification? Another review that lauded his wisdom and stylistic mastery, whilst scarcely concealing an annoyed amazement that he was still alive? Another invitation to receive an honorary degree and put his nose on view? As he trudges miserably, step by leaden step, through this city of masks, its very masks masked this morning by the snow blown against its crumbling walls like the white marble faces masking Palladio's pink churches, a dazzlingly sinister mask, today's, as expressionless and macabre as the Venetian bauta worn last night by the hotel proprietor, the alleged hotel proprietor (fakes within fakes, deceptions upon deceptions!), he feels the mockery cast upon his own shabby self-deceptions, the impostures and evasions, grand pretensions, the many masks he's worn - and not least that of flesh itself, now falling from him like dried-up actor's putty. Ah, he was right to come here, after all, old piece of rot-riven firewood that he is, to share his shame with the defrocked sheep and peacocks, the wingless butterflies and combless cocks of Fools' Trap.

  As the despondent prodigal shuffles along, "carrying through," as he would say, but just barely, dragging one ill-shod foot laboriously through the snow, then, after a deliberating pause, the other, his patient companion trots back and forth, sniffing this canal railing, lifting his leg on that boutique wall or Carnival poster, nosing around in garbage bags and emptied crates, lapping at cast-off food wrappers and paper cups, as though to pretend that this is the unhurried way he always goes to work. The streets are empty but for a few angry red-faced women under their dark umbrellas, carried like missile shields, a midmorning drunk or two, flurries of wheeling black-faced gulls, the occasional lost tourist. The heavy metal shutters are down on most of the shops, intensifying the city's blank stare (it is this blank stare he has been feeling, this cold shoulder, this icy scorn - there are no reflections today, even the ditchlike canals full of dirty slate-colored water, scummed with snow, are opaque), but from those that are open - a baker, a newsstand, a pasta maker, a toyshop and a cantina, a pizzeria - Alidoro receives and returns greetings, picking up scraps of this and that to nibble on which the professor in his desolation refuses.

  Once they've passed out of earshot, Lido fills him in on the politics, in-laws, crimes, calamities, debts, spouses and lovers, foibles, fantasies, and farces of each of the shopkeepers, keeping up a steady rumble of conversation as though to stop the old professor's brain from freezing up. "Started life as a gigolo for the local contessas, that one, helped manage one of their Friends of Venice flood rescue funds, rising as you might say while the Old Queen sank, and then, when his little bird died, he retired into politics for awhile and, after the usual scandals and piracies, ended up in fashion leather, security systems, and the manufacture of decorative window boxes. Careful now, old friend, not too close to the edge there " Lido talks as well about his career as a police dog, life in Italy between the wars, how the Fascists tore his tail off for some secret he never knew or couldn't recall ("You know me, I can't remember from the nose end of my muzzle to the other "), his irremediable attachment to this island in spite of his loathing of tourists and his lifelong fear of water ("I always meant to leave, but you can't straighten an old dog's legs my friend, I'll have to draw the hide in this infested overdecorated chamber pot, I'll fodder their boggy eelbeds in the end "), his hatred of the modern world with its electronically hyped-up homeless transients, all of them nowhere and anywhere at the same time, even when they think they're at home, the humiliations of toothlessness and blindness (the professor, absorbed in his own debilities, hasn't noticed; he notices now: the old fellow navigates largely by nose alone), and life with his "mistresses," as he calls them, women he meets getting arrested, who take him home with them when he gets them off, and who are grateful and treat him well until they get taken back in again.

  "They seem to get some comfort out of an old dog. I do what I can for them. Not much, of course, but the cask gives what wine it has, as they say, and at worst I've got this old stub of a tail to get me by when I'm not up to better. Unfortunately, a lot of the old dears have taken a bad fold of late, gone onto the needle, and are dying off now with the plague."

  "There's a plague in Venice -?!"

  "There's a plague everywhere."

  In between stories, Alidoro, circling round and round in the bristling cold, asks the venerable scholar about his own career, about his books and his honors and his nose, about his prison days and life as a farm worker and getting swallowed by the monster fish ("You know what my father said when I went running up to give him a hug," he flares up, angry about someth
ing, though he can't say just what, "he said, 'Oh no, not you again, you little fagot! Even in this putrid fishgut I can't get away!' "), about his reasons for coming back to Venice (he doesn't give them - whatever they were, they were tragically stupid), about his problems with wood-boring weevils and fungal decay, and about America, about the bosses and the range wars, the recent elections ("How is it a country can stand tall, hunker down, sit tight, fly high, show its muscle, tighten its belt, talk through its hat, and fall on its ass, all at the same time?" the old mastiff wants to know), and the gangsters and centerfolds and dog catchers of Chicago.

  Even though the professor is aware that his friend is provoking this dialogue as well-meant therapy against the despair which is threatening to halt him in his tracks, he cannot curb his sense of outrage and betrayal that he should be visited by such bitter despair in the first place - or the last place, as it were (and perhaps he even wants the despair, who knows, perhaps it is this that is making him crabby: he's earned it, has he not?), such that when Alidoro asks him: "How did you get so interested in painted pictures anyhow, compagno? I would have thought, wide-awake as you were -", he cuts him off snappishly with: "Because they don't move. And they don't ask tiresome questions." He groans faintly, regretting the outburst, though Alidoro seems unperturbed by it, maybe even pleased, in that it has carried him another three steps or so. They are trudging past silent black-faced gondolas with silver beaks, now laden with snow as though trying to disguise themselves as squatting gulls. Actors everywhere. Who can you trust? "I'm not a greedy man, Alidoro. I learned early on from my father's pear peels, the pigeon's tares, the circus hay, to be happy with little in this life. I have given up much for that little. And the little I wanted, here at the end, was to finish one last chapter of one last book before I died. But now "

  "Ah well, maybe that's a blessing," grumps the old dog. "Too many words in the world already. Like taking water to the sea."

  "Enough words maybe," acknowledges the old scholar with a sigh, "but we still haven't put them together right. That, Alidoro, is our sacred mission."

  "Bah!" barks Alidoro. "I shit on sacred missions!" And he squats right where he is in front of a barbershop to make his point.

  "That's easy for you to say," replies the professor wryly, gazing blurrily upon the squatting dog. "If I try to make that kind of argument, your friends will want to throw me in jail again."

  "To some son, to some - unff! - stepson," Lido grunts cheerfully, then lifts his rear, kicks a foot, and walks away. "Ciao, Mario!"

  "Ciao, Lido!" shouts the barber, rushing out to spread sawdust on the turd.

  "In Venice, Pinocchio my friend, in case you hadn't noticed, there is always a double standard. It goes with the scenery."

  The professor is momentarily transfixed, however, by the mastiffs sawdust-sprinkled turd, sitting upon the glittering white pavement with all the authority of a papal announcement. Or a gilded prophecy. "Mine," he says dismally, his depression creeping over him again, "are coming out that way. There's "

  "Eh?" The dog turns back to nose his turd quizzically.

  "That stuff there's something wrong inside "

  "Mm, the sawdust, you mean flour of your own bag, was it? Last night I was wondering "

  "The devil's flour ," he sighs, trying to make light of it, but feeling tears prick the corners of his eyes. And standing there staring down upon Alidoro's turd, he feels the pang of his loss penetrate him once again to the very core, releasing afresh all those bitter memories of the more distant past, those times that heartless pair had cheated him, and lied to him, and set fire to the tree he was hiding in, then tried to murder him with knives and ropes. "After that," the abased traveler says, or perhaps adds, not sure whether he's been talking out loud or not, "the villains made me bury my money in the Field of Miracles. They took, then as now, everything I had!"

  "Ah, that infamous patch, that pesthole - I'm afraid that's another story, my fr -!" Alidoro begins, but he is suddenly interrupted by a strange spindly fellow who comes leaping out of nowhere, black coat-tails flying, and lands with both feet - SPLAP!- on Lido's snow-frosted turd: "Got you!" he cries, laughing horribly. "Stamping out wisdom!" he shrieks at the postered wall, shaking his fist vehemently at it. Then he whirls abruptly on Pinocchio, startling him with his manic ferocity, and, staring straight through him, screams: "Heads up! Heads up! Here she comes!"

  "What -?!" gasps the old professor, ducking, as the wild-eyed creature flings himself flat out in the turd-stained snow, crying "WAAHH-H-hhh!" Then he springs to his feet again and bellows into the swirling snow: "Go to the devil, you ungrateful cold-assed nanny! You cuntless whore! You endless nightmare! Oh, what madness!" He throws himself at the wall, kicks it, rips off an impasto of overlaid posters and heaves it at the sky, crying out his "Woe! Woe! Woe!", his "Guai! Guai! Guai!" (or maybe it's "Mai! Mai! Mai!- Never! Never! Never!"), and then, declaiming solemnly with a quavering voice, "I shall not leave until I tell you a great truth," the lunatic goes bounding off into the falling snow, the black tatters of his suit fluttering behind him like unpinned ribbons, and, at the far end of the little calletta, disappears into the storm suddenly like a candle snuffed in the wind.

  "Poor old fellow," rumbles Alidoro, his rheumy eyes following his nose.

  "I - I think I saw him last night," gasps the professor, still doubled over from having ducked, his knees creaking with their trembling. "He was beating his head on a church wall."

  "Could have been. But Venice is full of them, my friend, you see them everywhere, bawling and squalling and abusing the masonry. Must be the water. Every campo has one. We call them our Venetian grillini, our little talking crickets, because they're always entertaining us, especially on balmy summer evenings. Days like this, I'm afraid, they don't last long." He sighs and seems to shudder. "Nor will we if we don't soon make bundle and - eh? What's the matter? Did you lose something?"

  "No, I - I can't straighten up! I ducked and -"

  "Ah! Here, lean on me, old man," says Alidoro, crawling under him. "Now, just relax " The dog rises slowly, straightening him up. More or less. He is still leaning dangerously like a Venetian campanile, his nose dipping at belt level. "That's better! Don't give up, compagno! Get your soul between your teeth and bite down hard, we have to show a good face to a bad game!"

  "It's - it's getting worse, Alidoro! Everything is seizing up!"

  "Yes, hmm, but it won't do to stop moving, not in this weather. Hang on to my coat now and follow along as best you can, and I'll tell you about the real gold in the Field of Miracles."

  "Real -?"

  "If you'd left your money there, you'd be another Solomon today."

  "Like those wretched beggars the Fox and the Cat, you mean," he gasps drily, stumbling along beside his friend, clutching his thick coat with frozen fingers, stiff as sticks.

  "Those two," rumbles the mastiff, "must be the world's most unfortunate swindlers. Shortsighted is what they are, and shortchanged is what they got. Better an egg today than a chicken tomorrow was the way La Volpe always figured it, especially when the chicken might be plucked before it was born, so the minute they got an offer, fools that they were, they sold the field off."

  "Hmm. It's true, she did tell me that a rich man had bought the field, that was why we had to hurry."

  "Yes, a quick turnover, that was always her game, so when the Little Man made her an offer -"

  This does straighten him up, with a noise like a squeaky rocker: "What -?! Who -?!"

  "The Little Man - L'Omino, you know, that little fat guy who ran the donkey factory here, where -"

  "Toyland? Here -? But -?!"

  "That's right. In fact, we just passed the old dockyards where they corralled the little asses before shipping them out - but who am I to be telling you, eh? Anyway, as it turned out, the old Fox outfoxed herself on that one. The Little Man had found out somehow that there was good water running deep below it, so he bought the field and then resold it to petrochemical and
electrometallurgical industries and steel plants and oil refineries and made himself a billion. It's called Porto Marghera now, you can see it from the Giudecca Canal. It's what you see in that direction instead of sky. Talk about your miracles! Sucking up all the sweet water sank this sinkhole another half meter into the sea and dried up all the wells."

  "But wait! Do you mean to say -?"

  "Oh, I'm not finished, my friend! For when the Little Man died, the Sons of the Little Man - Omino e figli, S.R.L., as they call themselves, the scheming little bastards - filled in the lagoon for more industry and airports and gouged out channels for tankers and that changed the very tides, eroding all the foundations. If you stand still and watch, you can actually see pieces of the city split off and fall into the canals. Some days now the sun turns red and yellow and even green, and all the walls are being eaten as if by invisible maggots. And I'm sure the Sons of the Little Man have more miracles in store for us yet "

  "But wait, Alidoro! Please!" he gasps, tottering under the dizzying impact of this new information. He lets go of his friend's coat. "Do you mean to say that this - this is Playland, too? This is the Land of Toys -?!"

  The old mastiff pauses, peers down at him quizzically. "You didn't recognize it? Hm. You've been away a long time, vecchio mio." So! They were all here, then: the Three Kingdoms, as he has called them in his writings. Not "points on a moral compass" (his sanctimonious phrase) but overlays, a montage, variations on a theme "Of course, the original operation is pretty much shut down - not much use for donkeys these days. And toys are a dime a dozen, the canals are clogged with them - ecologically, there's nothing worse in this town than another Christmas. Locally, the Sons of L'Omino are into tourist skins now - or Venetian sheepskins, as they're called - along with pederasty, restoration rackets, retirement scams, World Fairs, and the reinvention of Carnival. That's how the Little Man got started, you know: nothing more than a seedy Carnival sideshow down on the Riva degli Schiavoni in the old days. The landing place is still called the Street of the Donkey Cart, it's just behind the Piazza." Yes, this was Fools' Trap with its Campo dei Miracoli, this was the Island of the Busy Bees, and this was also Toyland - Pleasure Island, as they called it in the movie, and not so wrong at that. He had thought when he first visited those places he was seeing the world. But he was simply turning around in circles. On a moving stage. It was the world that was seeing him "There are a few other landmarks - the Canal of the Virgins, the Fondamenta of the Converts, the House of the Incurables, where they put the transformations that didn't quite come off, the Streets of the Hoof and the Chains and so on, a couple of theaters, some old graffiti here and there - but the Sons of the Little Man, imitating the old doges and their gangs, are mostly international merchant bankers now, their deceptions and rapacities hidden away in corporate computers."