(1991) Pinocchio in Venice

by Robert Coover

  "Hop -?! I can't even -!"

  Whereupon Arlecchino backed into him, reached down, and grabbed him behind the knees, and they were off, galloping clumsily over the icy stone flagging, the tall thin carabinieri in hot pursuit. "Hold it! Stop those two! They're dangerous criminals!"

  He could feel bits and pieces flaking off as they jounced along, escape was costing him dearly, he knew, but Arlecchino was quick and cunning, leaping benches and wellheads, dodging in and out of the crowds, he had a thousand tricks, and it was working, they seemed to be losing their two pursuers, the pounding of their boots fading, their angry shouts gradually getting swallowed up in the larger uproar of the smoke-filled campo. He tried to tell Arlecchino as they galloped along how grateful he was and how much he loved him, and also about poor Corallina and Pulcinella and Flaminia and all the rest, but all he could do was wheeze and snort, his head bobbing loosely, his chest slapping Arlecchino's wooden back, popping the wind from his antique lungs. "Oh dehea-hea-hea-hear Har-Har-Harle -!"

  And then, through his tears, like a miracle, he saw it: a flash of blue! That blue! "Stop! STO-HOP -!"

  "What - what is it?" Arlecchino panted, staggering to a halt. The puppet's knees seemed to buckle and he set the professor down for a moment.

  "I thought I saw -!"

  "Whew, this used to be - gasp! - easier, old friend! I must be drying out!"

  "Yes! Down there!" They were at the mouth of a dark passage through the middle of a building, the Sotoportego de l'Uva, he saw from the smudged sign above it, the Underpass of the Grape, and, at the far end of it, there she was, just drifting by as though in an angelic vision, her blond hair glistening with melted snowflakes, a fat pink bubble quivering between her puckered lips, and, jutting out from her unzipped plastic windbreaker, clad in soft blue angora and bouncing gently, those wondrous appendages which, for one magical moment that he desperately longed to reenact, had thawed him out this morning to the very tips of his being. "Bluebell! Miss -! WAIT -!"

  "Pinocchio! Where are you going -?! Come back! We're not out of the woods yet, friend! We have to - yow!!"

  "Hah! Got you, you impertinent little punk!"

  "Pinocchio! Help me -!"

  "Hey, look at the dummy's outfit! We've nailed the one the boss wanted!"

  "You're screwed now, knobhead!"

  "Ho ho! We're going to burn your wormy ass!"

  "Pinocchio! Help!" Arlecchino was crying. "Salvami dalla morte! I DON'T WANT TO DIE -!"

  But, lost in his mad trance, he was already halfway down the passageway, all this was far behind him, he was moving as he had not moved since he first staggered out of San Sebastiano, only now there was hope, real hope. This movement was not exactly running, nor even walking, it was more like some kind of goofy unhinged dance, the sort his drug-addled students used to dance a generation ago, his pelvis flying every which way and his arms and head moving more than his feet did. He caromed off the narrow walls, blackened with soot and wet moss, clattered into stacks of empty fruit crates, slapped through garbage, bounced off downpipes and stairwells, but he did make progress, slowly picking up forward momentum, his eyes fixed, no matter which direction the rest of him was momentarily aimed, on the opening at the far end, though she could no longer be seen there. "Miss! Please! It's Professor Pinenut! That bath -! I've changed my mind -!"

  It turned out, however, there was no little street running alongside the canal at the other end of the underpass as one might have assumed, just watersteps leading down into the cold coffee-colored water below. Luckily, he saw this in time to start backpedaling, call it that. Unluckily, the steps were covered with ice and snow and there was an evil green slime below that, and so, for a moment, after an experience not unlike that, he supposed with a fleeting but bitter irony, of being pitched from a slick shovel, the venerable scholar and aesthete, former rock star, and erstwhile cavalier servente found himself hovering in midair, still backpedaling frantically, those partial misgivings he had felt since returning to this city now become a sore distress, a positive misery, his most cherished convictions vanished like the pavement beneath his feet, his dreams of truth, virtue, perfection, and a hot bath now just derisive memories. Alas, he thought, nothing blunts the edge of a noble, robust mind more quickly and more thoroughly than the sharp and bitter corrosion of knowledge. Then - patatunfete! - in he went.

  And so, as though arriving at the final destination on that ticket purchased so impulsively back in America, he has come at the end to the beginning, to the very foundations of this mysterious enterprise and of his own as well: back to the slimy ooze and the ancient bits of wood, driven deep, holding the whole apparition up. "La strada č pericolosa," a creature once warned him, long ago on that fateful Night of the Assassins. "It is dangerous out on the road! Turn back!" Yet, though it has been brought home to him, now as then, that the failure to take such advice is, in the world's judgment, a capital offense (even as he struggles upward against his heavy clothing, his toes forebodingly touch mud), and though it may be true, as he has so often been told, that those who, in an excess of passion, rush into things without precaution rush into their own destruction, a sensible person never embarking on an enterprise (all the advice taken through the years is now passing before his drowning eyes as though it were his life) until he can see his way clear to the end of it, what is one to do, he asks petulantly, his wind giving out, his heart beating wildly in his chest, with failing eyesight? Stay at home? Faint heart and all that, remember! Better faint than defunto, fool! When will you ever learn? But I have learned, he rages, arguing thus with himself while trying to claw his way to the surface, which is not far above him, but the sludge is too thick and he is too weak: even as he kicks at the mire below him, his feet sink into it. I have done nothing but learn! It's not enough to learn -! He is still managing to hold his breath, he was always good at this, the girls in Hollywood used to throw him in the pool and see how long they could hold him under, they said it made them wet between their legs just counting the bubbles, and he let them, associating it with the excitement he had felt as a drowning donkey, but now it's over, he's not the youth he was then, his ancient chest is beginning to spasm involuntarily, he can't hold it any longer o babbo mio! o Fatina! - and then, just when all seems lost, something hooks him under his collar and hauls him, snorting and choking and webbed in slime, halfway out of the water.

  "Have a good bath, signore?" rumbles a gravelly old voice above him.

  "Help! Help -!" he splutters, floundering about in thick icy water. From what he can see through the muck and tears, he appears to be dangling from the end of a pole held by a hulking figure wearing a straw gondolier's boater with the braid torn at the brim, tilted rakishly over a sinister red mask with hornlike brows. "Save me!"

  "Hmm, I must think about that, signore. Why should I succor one who is running from the police? Save the hanged man and you'll be hanged by him, as they say -"

  "I am not running - splut! glub! - from anybody! I am a decent law-abiding citizen! It's all a - gasp! - mistake!"

  "So you say, signore! But why should one believe you?"

  "But you must! I am the most truthful person in the world -!"

  "Yes, yes, and you've got the nose of a titmouse, too! Ha ha!"

  "But can't you see? I am an American - glurp! - professor! A professor emeritus! Everyone knows me! I am a - blub! - good man! Un gran signore!"

  "Oh I can see the great man you are through the holes in your clothes, Eccellenza! Che spettacolo! Perhaps the little fish have been feeding on your 'poor festered amorettos' -?"

  "Oh, shut up, you damned fool, and get me out of here!" he cries and - thplup! - finds himself under water again, this time unfortunately with his mouth open. "Please -!" he gurgles when next brought to the surface. "I'll pay!"

  "Ebbene, at your service, padrone!" replies the devilish oarsman with a bow, lifting the professor out of the canal at last and, as though landing a crab, depositing his sodden catch on the black leather
cushions of his gondola. "One must not be too hasty, you can never tell a tree by its bark, as I always say, or a pocket by its pants. So will it be the grand tour, signor professore, or famous murders, masterpieces, and executions, or perhaps the Venezia esotica of the poets and their param -?"

  "No, no! I only want I want " What? He is dying. And soon. He knows that now. And what he wants, what he longs for, as he huddles there on the stiff black cushions, drenched through and trembling in the wintry wind, are his old down comforter, his snuggies, his hot water bottle. He wants a bed, a soft warm bed. "Did you see go past a young woman ?"

  "Ah! Una bambina -?"

  "Yes -"

  "Bella -?"

  "Yes, yes!"

  "Wearing a hat -!"

  "No "

  "I mean, hair -"

  "Yes "

  "Dark -"

  "Ah -"

  "But not too dark -?"

  "Well "

  "You might almost say blond -"

  "Yes!"

  "Eh, how much money do you have, signore?"

  "I-I don't know " He tries to reach into his soggy pockets for the few notes that Alidoro and Melampetta stuffed there, but his hands are frozen into inflexible claws.

  "Permesso!" the gondolier growls soothingly, and reaches in to help himself, pulling out a hairy handful of cheese, wet bread, a few soaked lire, and an ear. He cocks his head to peer at this collection through one of the eyeholes of his mask, the mask's expression of fiendish menace giving way at this angle to something more like red-faced bewilderment. "Is, eh, is this all there is?" he asks, sniffing the ear.

  "It's all I have left," he whimpers through chattering teeth. The tears are starting. He isn't going to make it. "It's not my fault! I am not a poor man! I have been the - sob! - victim of a cruel deceit! I have lost everything! Please help me -!"

  "Well, on a day like this, I suppose, somewhat is better than nothing," sighs the gondolier, tossing the ear and bread over his shoulder with a shrug, pocketing the lire, and popping the cheese behind the mask into his mouth with a slurp before setting off. "A little wood, as the saying goes, will heat a little oven."

  As the gondola turns and noses its way up the canal, the oar splashing sluggishly in the snow-clotted water, the professor, slumped desolately in his wet rags and deprived even of the somewhat, describes through his tears, because, like the gondolier's proverbial bit of wood, it seems to warm him a little to do so, how those two ruthless thieves last night stole all his earthly possessions, leaving him alone and homeless in the bitter weather. "They threw me to the lions! Literally! It's true! Sniff! I was even chased by one! They took my clothes, my money, my papers, my medicines, my traveling garment steamer -"

  "Ah, it is a terrible story, professore, my heart weeps for you!" commiserates the gondolier, reaching under his mask as though to wipe a tear, or perhaps to pick his teeth. "What a world we are condemned to live in, eh? Where can we gentle folk find a safe shelter? Well, but here we are! Step out, please!"

  "What -? Already? But -!" They have bumped up against a small open campo, he sees, in front of a church whose bare façade today is striped with snow, giving it the appearance of a circus tent. They have not even left the area of the police operation. It is just across the canal, they have only circled around it, he can still hear the screams, the shouts, smell the smoke, people are fleeing this way, then turning around to watch the action on the other side. "But wait, this isn't -! You promised -!"

  "Yes, yes, as requested, signore, thank you very much!"

  "What do you mean, thank you very much -?! I gave you all my money! You haven't taken me anywhere yet! This is robbery!"

  "Now, now, lower the comb," cautions the gondolier, glancing over his shoulder. "No sense drowning in a glass of water, as the I saying goes, professore, so don't make an affair of state out of it!"

  "But, see here, you - Stop! What are you doing -?!" The oar has caught him by the collar again, and once more he finds himself helplessly treading air, his coattails flapping soggily, over the murky brown waters of the snow-scummed canal. "Help! Thief! He stole my money!" he cries, appealing to the people in the square, even as he dangles from the gondolier's pole, but they only laugh and cheer, as though he were part of the daily entertainment.

  "Look at him!" mocks the gondolier, waving a few soggy lire at the crowd. "Il gran signore!"

  "Che bestiola!"

  "He's too small! Throw him back!"

  "Put me down! This is an outrage!"

  "People who wear small shoes," the scoundrel declares portentiously, easing him down onto the snowy paving stones beside a little fat man, broader than he is tall, who seems, like everyone else, greatly amused by it all, "should not try to live on a large foot, dottore!"

  "Foot dottore!" a blind beggar echoes, waving his white cane with the only hand he has.

  "You!" he gasps, recognizing his old enemy at last. "You stole my baggage! You stole my computer, all my work! You stole my life -!"

  "Ah well, that was long ago," rumbles the masked villain, dipping his head between his shoulders and leaning heavily on one foot. The fat man gives the rogue something, money probably, though the gesture is so fleetingly subtle as to be all but imperceptible. "Temporibus illis, and all that, dottore, if you please, let's pass the sponge over it, let's put a stone on it, as they say over on San Michele, let bygones be -"

  "Bygones!" cries the beggar, and rattles his tin cup. "If you please!"

  "It's La Volpe! Don't let her get away!" the old scholar wails, as the devilish creature pushes away with a tip of her tatty straw boater, slipping deftly up the waterway and out of sight. "Help! Police!" His voice is all that's left him, he cannot move, he cannot even point his finger. "She's the one! She stole everything I had! Stop her!"

  But the police, not far away, have other things to do, and the gathered crowds seem merely amused, waiting to see what will happen next. What does happen is that the strange little fat man, his round rosy face split with a gleaming smile, turns to the water-logged professor, takes him tenderly in his arms, and squeezes him as though to wring him dry. "Pini, Pini, my love!" he gushes with a soft old voice full of loving kindness. "Safe at last!"

  16. THE LITTLE MAN

  The low sky's sullen light is ebbing, as though swept up into the clouds of mothlike snow now blowing around the melancholy lilac-tinted lamps along the waterfront, by the time the rapidly sinking emeritus professor is lifted out of the rocking motor launch and onto his old friend's private dock on the Molo, the landing stage and promenade near the Piazzetta of San Marco. The ancient traveler is dimly aware, ravaged by illness and cruel abuse though he is, that he is making, at last, his proper entrance into this "fairy city of the heart," as Eugenio has just called it, quoting one or another of the city's agents, and it does not fail to occur to him, as his porters bear him ceremonially between the Piazzetta's two eccentric gallows posts as though through a turnstile, deep-throated bells ringing out their somber consent overhead, that had he somehow landed here last night, as so many who have preceded him to this city through the centuries have advised, the mortal disasters that have befallen him this past night and day might never have happened, a thought that, far from easing his despair, merely deepens it, reminding him once again of his deplorable ingrained resistance to all advice, no matter how noble and well meaning its source. He is that proverbial impetuous fool, who, rushing in, gets, over and over again, trod upon.

  "Now, now," says Eugenio gently, sidling up and tucking his blankets more tightly about him, "stop carrying on so, my angel, take your courage in both hands, we'll be there soon."

  "There" is Eugenio's palace, the Palazzo dei Balocchi, "my humble abode," as his old school chum called it, "my little capanna in the Piazza," which has been offered to the professor, not merely for the night, but for so long as he is able to remain, which, under the grave circumstances, may be, alas, the shorter span of time. He has been offered a suite of his own, centrally heated and "fitted out in f
ull rule" with built-in bar, medieval tapestries, a billiard table, marble bathroom with its original frescos, sauna, Byzantine mosaic floors, and an advanced electronic wraparound sound system, along with a staff of servants, doctors, nurses, cooks, priests, pharmacists, tailors, secretaries, and cellarmasters at his disposal, and more: a curative herbal risotto on arrival, silk pajamas, a new electric toothbrush, satin sheets and breakfast in bed, if he should last that long, even a personal hot water bottle and all the credit he might need during this emergency. "Indeed the whole city shall be laid at your feet, my exalted friend," Eugenio had exclaimed while still embracing him back there on the little exposed campo where La Volpe had deposited him, "you'll be sleeping between two pillars, as they say here, pillows, I mean, so long as I have anything to do with it, trust me - to the laureate his guerdon, the master his meed! Eh? So come along, contentment awaits, dear boy, but hurry now, the night is cold and the way is long! Andiamo pure!"

  But, soaked to the core from his fatal dunking and fast icing up in the bitter wind, he could no longer even speak, much less move, and hurrying was like a forgotten dream. He could only lift his chin creakily an inch or two and sneeze: "Etci! Etci!" Whereupon, with a snap of Eugenio's fingers, two servants appeared with a kind of sedan chair or litter, strapped him into it, bundled him up snugly in cashmere blankets, and hoisted him aboard the gleaming motor launch, which had all the while been growling impatiently alongside them at the foot of the bridge.