(1991) Pinocchio in Venice (13 page)

    "Yes, Mamma!" he said, and it
was
better, but he was still having trouble breathing. He tried to back out but he was clamped in her thighs.

    "Don't be idle!" she scolded, and she gave him a spank on his wooden bottom that drove him in deeper. "Look around! Idleness is a dreadful disease, of which one should be cured immediately in childhood; if not, one never gets over it."

    What he saw when he looked around was a glistening little snail peeking out under the eaves. "What are you doing there, with your nose in the door?" she asked, laughing. Or someone did, he wasn't sure, he was confused, and thought he might be about to faint.

    "I odly wadt to stop beigg a puppet and becubb a little boy," he wept. "Wod't you help be, little sdail?"

    "And will you ever tell a lie again?"

"Ndo!"
he cried desperately and, alarmingly, his nose began to grow again as it had done the last time he'd been in the little white house when the Fairy was still just a girl. That time she'd unloosed on him a thousand prickly woodpeckers to peck it all away, a pecking he still sometimes felt out beyond his face like a nervous tingle as Il Gattino once told him he still felt his missing paw.

    "Oh!" the Fairy gasped, giggling and wriggling about so, she seemed this time to be trying to break his nose off at the root. "A lie about lying, that's the worst kind, you naughty boy!" And then she began to spank him for real. No more playful smacks, she really let him have it.

    When she finally let him out, he was too weak to argue: he promised that he would mend his ways and study till his eyes fell out and always be good and tell the truth and be the consolation of his aged father. "How nice," the fairy sighed vaguely. He was lying flat out on the floor with his little wet red nose in the air and the Fairy was sprawled spraddle-legged in the chair above him. He looked up at her dear sweet face, hoping she might be smiling down upon him, and then he saw it, the image that would haunt him for the rest of his life: the languid gaze.

    Ah, Fairy! He can see it now! Not literally of course, not in here - no such languor on the face of Veronese's pinned Sebastian, nor in his other altar paintings of the twice-martyred saint either. The gaze is gone, most of the arrows as well, being used apparently to cross all the double-S initials of the saint which, looking like pairs of skewered serpents, decorate the church like a kind of company logo. Veronese's Sebastian is a man of action, a warrior, a politician of sorts who plays to the galleries, striking operatic poses (why didn't
he
get muscles like that, the old professor wants to know, sunk in his misery; why, when he put on flesh, did he still have to look like a spindly unstrung puppet, no bigger than a pennyworth of cheese, a veritable insult to the rules of human proportion - where was the heroic frame, the hairy chest,
where
- someone has a lot to answer for! -
were the powerful thighs?),
a kind of professional athlete who is used to pain, who has trained for it in effect and now receives the arrow like a gold medal. Still, for all the theatrics, the hedonism and decorative frivolity (this artist once likened his vocation to that of "poets and jesters"), there is something restful about Veronese, it is as though the languid gaze might have passed from painted to painter, invading the entire canvas, and the colors, flowing from that languor, are as soft and lush as old tapestry and vaguely warm him, much as the painting on his father's wall used to do.

    He is, after all, even should this prove to be his final hour, exactly where his heart, in such extremity, would have placed him: back in one of those fine Italian Renaissance churches which he once proclaimed to be the acme and paragon of Western art, its glory and (because its moment was forever past, Western art now nothing more than, like scrimshaw, a decorated fossil) also its tragedy. His throat is raw and tickling him as if he were swallowing some of his father's live whitebait, his eyes keep watering up, his chest is rattling, and everything below that is still numb, but his eyes can still discern beauty, his fingers have come unlocked from his thawed ears, and his nose has begun to relax and hang from his face in the usual way. If anything, it is now a bit hot, at least at the tip. In his pockets, along with his ears and the rumpled money Melampetta and Alidoro gave him, he has found some bread and a wet sack of fresh mozzarella that Lido must have tucked there when they said goodbye, and he nibbles gratefully at these offerings now.

    It was Lido who led him out of the snow and into this old church, like himself a crumbling ruin succumbing to the Venetian climate, faded and damp and veiled with mildew and tarnish, telling him to wait here until he returned. "I should at least be able to get your watch back, touch iron," the old mastiff growled gently after the professor had given him a shortlist of essentials from the bags' missing contents. "One of those thieving cunts must have snatched it last night." When he tried to give Lido his money back, however, the dog shook his shaggy old head and said: "Keep it, compagno. It's not much, but it might buy a warm hat or a hot meal. Besides, I don't have any pockets…" Which made him start to cry again - "I love you, Alidoro! You're the only real friend I have!" he sobbed into the mastiffs rancid coat, apologizing once again for all the stupid things he'd said this morning in the boat yard, but the venerable dog just lapped his nape tenderly and said: "Eh, vecchio, I've already forgotten, I told you I have a rotten memory. Now don't go away…"

    Which was a joke. He can't even walk. When Alidoro left, he turned stiffly and, out of an old habit, started to genuflect. Or maybe something just gave way. Whatever, he went all the way down, knocking the marble floor crisply -
ka-POK!
- with his crippled knees. When he tried to straighten up, there was a cracking, splitting sound in his haunches that he felt all the way to the back of his neck. He had to crawl on all fours to a bench and pull himself up on it, still doubled over like a groveling penitent, an inconsolable mourner (oh, he
was
repentant, he
was
desolate beyond repair, his
Mamma
gone, twice - thrice - over, his life gone with it:
Oh non mi fate piů piangere!
he wept, hoping that the echoes he heard, bouncing up off the checkered marble floor, were only in his imagination), unable to see anything for awhile through his tears but his shoes down between his knees. Boredom alone, in the end, drove the old art scholar's head up. The rest, unfortunately, has not chosen to follow. Though he's not yet as stiff as the Bishop of Cyprus stretched out up there on his marble tomb, he still can't unbend his knees or elbows, his back has locked itself into a fair imitation of a Venetian footbridge, and his backside on the hard wooden bench has now gone to sleep along with the rest of his nether parts. Overhead on the organ doors, Jesus is healing lepers and cripples at some spa or other. Relatively, they all look in pretty good shape.

    Look on the bright side, he admonishes himself, beginning to wheeze. No more deadlines. No more bibliographical evidence to amass. No more
words.
Up on the Nuns' Choir, there are representations of saints holding what he takes to be the instruments of their martyrdom. Some of them are holding books. He can appreciate this. A kind of plague, reading them maybe even worse than writing them, and no end to it. The terrible martyrdom of the ever-rolling stone. Saint Pinocchio. He and his father, a new heavenly host. And now think of it, for the first time in his long life, he does not have a book to write. That martyrdom at least is over. He is free at last. Which is probably just what they told poor Sebastian when they stripped his armor off him. "Free, my tortured
chiappie!"
he seems to be yelling, as they stuff him, up there beside the altar, into his second death. Trouble is, as martyrdoms go, the first was better than the second. This one hurts more and the compensations are more obscure. And this time: this time, no one's watching.

    "Oh my
Ga-ahd!"
exclaims a loud nasal American voice, blowing in behind him. The professor makes a movement which to his own inner eye is that of shrinking down in his seat, though it may be invisible to others, as the intruder, stamping her feet and shaking herself audibly, comes blustering down the aisle. "Lookit
this!
Brrr! What a creepshow, man! Everybody's
dead
in here!"

12. IN THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD

    "Gee-whillikers, prof, I feel really
flattered
to -
pjfft! POP!
- be able to talk with you all
alone
like this about art and life and beauty and all that
great
stuff, I'm so excited, it's like first day in class!" his former student gushes, squeezing his hands inside her sweater. It does not feel like flesh in there so much as a powdery cloud, like the materialization of his own flushed confusion. "You never know," his father used to rumble drunkenly, wiping the drool from his grizzled chops and tipping his yellow wig forward over his eyebrows, "in this world, boyo, anything can happen." It was about all the wisdom the old lout had:
In questo mondo i casi sono tanti,
so save your pear peels, they might come in handy. It had prepared the venerable professor for many of life's surprises, but it had not prepared him for this. Perhaps only Hollywood could have prepared him for this. "Everybody in class was crazy about you, you know. 'The beak's unique,' we used to say around campus. 'The Nose Knows!' "

    "I-I-I -!" he gasps. He feels, in such transport, like a fish out of water, his gills flapping wildly. His chest is shaken by violent spasms, which he is trying desperately to suppress. But his hands feel so wonderful he wants to cry.

    "We called you 'The Happy Honker,' you coulda had any girl you wanted - and probably at least half the guys as well. And what a dresser! A real zoot snoot, as we used to say, no disrespect intended - and speaking of which, your snoot, I mean, snuggle it down here, too, teach. Goodness sakes, but it's a mess! Is that an
acorn
growing out the side of it? You poor dear man!" She puts an arm around him and hugs him to her bosom, which is alive and tremulous and fragrant as a Tuscan summer. Or an Iowa cornfield. Cape Cod in August. He doesn't even know where he is for a dizzying moment. He grabs hold so as not to fall, then nearly faints again to think of what he's clutching. "What you need, professor, is to let me take you back to my room and give you a good hot bath!"

    "Oh, I can't -!" he squeaks, but his voice is smothered in fluffy blue angora. He tries to lift his head up, but she pushes it back down again. "I'm waiting for a frie -
mwmpff!"
She lays one hand soothingly against his nose, settling it into the warm hollow between her breasts, stroking it gently. It's as though it were made for it, like a violin case for its own particular instrument. Even resistance feels good…

    What he'd felt when she first came storming in, disturbing his revery (his head had slumped again to his chest, for all she knew he might have been praying, had she no shame?), was more like outrage and repugnance and bitter vexation: To have traveled so far, to have suffered so much, and now, at the very end -! She'd swaggered brazenly through the place like she owned it, blowing bubbles with her noisomely scented chewing gum, hooting and snorting and loudly decrying the very sobriety that gave the church its celebrated beauty ("Stone corpses and little babies holding skulls - and lookit that skinny dude with the facefuzz -
ffpupp! squit! SMACK!
- hanging there like bagged game! Whoo, by his color I'd say he's not only dead meat, he's gone
off!"
), a sturdy middle-American blonde in a red plastic windbreaker, blue jeans, and white cowboy boots. Luckily, she seemed not to see him, and he sank lower in the pew. "And lookit the cute little butt on John-boy the Baptist there, and - hey, whoa, am I right? Has the Holy Virgin got her thumb up her kid's wazoo? Prodding his little poop-shoot?! His itty-bitsy
bumbo?!
Yippee! What a diablerie! Or are these supposed to be the -
ffpLUP!
- good guys?
Murder!"

    She brushed the snow out of her blond hair with hands ringed and braceleted in cheap costume jewelry, and, her windbreaker rustling, leaned over the altar railing. Her tight jeans seemed almost to squeak as they filled up, the worn seams spreading, her honey-colored hair clinging in snow-dampened rings about her neck and temples. "Ouch! Bi-
zzang!
Right in his appendectomy scar! Musta missed his little dickydoo by a
whisper!
Well, what did it matter, what good's that old gap-stopper gonna -
splurpp! snap!
- do him now anyway, right? I mean,
that
sucker's
had
it! And, yikes, what're they trying to do to
that
guy, give him an
enema?
Weird!" She peeked into the side altars, stared up at the organ, gave the Veronese bust a high five, read the tomb inscription in the floor below it while blowing a huge rosy bubble. "I don't know," she sighed, sucking up the gum before it popped and turning around, "but it sure looks like a lotta heavy S and M to me, whips and bondage and dead bodies and all that, with some child porn thrown in for the kinkos - whadda
you
think, professor?"

    He was thinking - had been - that she was an unspeakably rude and vulgar young loudmouth, but he was so startled by her addressing him directly like that, all he could do was raise his chin an inch and break into a wheezing cough. Under her windbreaker, he saw, she was wearing a gaudy blue angora sweater, still sparkling frothily with snow. She smiled, pushed out another enormous pink bubble. This one did pop, sticking to her nose and chin. She plucked it away with her fingers, looking cross-eyed at it, poked it back in, smiled again, chewing vigorously with her mouth open. She had even white teeth, the sort invented by American orthodontists, wide lips painted cherry red. "You
are
Professor Pinenut, aren't you? I recognized you by the… by your…"

    "Ah! Yes…," he coughed, shrinking abjectly into his miserable rags. He squinted up at her past his ducked and shame-enflamed nose. "But… Miss -?"

    "Call me Bluebell," she said gaily, coming over, "the Underlying Principal of my graduating class, as they said in the yearbook, that's me, dumb as they come and gobsa fun!" As she moved, she seemed almost to bounce. Or maybe it was his blurred vision. Perhaps I have a fever, he thought, his eyes wobbling. "I was a student way back when in your famous Art Principles 101 - Pinenut's Arse Pimples, as we called it - oh, I don't expect you to remember me, prof, those huge freshman cores, you know, a thousand and one faces, and no one in the whole auditorium giving diddly-eff-you-pee about anything except maybe sneaking in some shut-eye or passing a joint, you were a saint to put up with us." She planted her soft behind on the back of the pew in front, her spangled and fringed white boot propped on the bench beside him. "We were awful. You called us the living dead."

    "I did -?"

    "Oh, we deserved it! I sure did, I was rotten student, I admit it, I sat through all your lectures - the ones I came to, I mean - doing my nails. But, hey, at least I was doing something
artistic,
right? You used to call on me sometimes when I was fluttering my hands about and blowing my nails dry, and my answers were so stupid, you used to say you admired the absolute purity of my mind which clearly no idea had as yet penetrated. Boy, the nicknames I got called after that!"

    "Oh yes…" But he didn't remember. He tried to recall the fluttering hands. Right then they were crossed on her breast, as though to emphasize her sincerity, as she leaned toward him, making her jeans squeak again. The nails were painted luminescent orange. To go with the blue sweater.

    "But some things I never forgot, prof. You really helped me, you know, you changed my
life!"
She reached into her mouth, pulled out a long glistening ribbon of gum like a frog's tongue, rolled it up, and, turning back to the altarpieces, stuffed it back in her cheeks again. "I can see now, for example, how all these -
schloopp!
- paintings are really like moving pictures.
Nothing
stands still, so art, to be truthful, has got to move, too, right? It's why you said you -
yoomm! sploop! SPAP!
- always loved the movies. And theater -"

    "No, I never…"

    "I mean, 'images of eternity,' 'shadows of the divine perfection,' all that's just -
ffplOP!
- bullpoop, isn't it, Professor Pinenut? Like you always said!"

    "I-I don't think you were, eh, listening very carefully…"

    "And I can see now what you meant about churches being nothing more than fancy repertory theaters - I mean, just look around! - it's a place where you just
expect
something
wild to
happen -!"

    "I said nothing of the kind -!" he rasped faintly, coughing and snorting. He felt infuriated by these stupid travesties of his deepest convictions, but at some remove, far behind his sinuses, which had filled up painfully, making his head bob heavily on his feeble neck.

    "All the bejeweled props and snazzy sets, the stage doors and costumes and all the music and magical stuff - I mean, what actor wouldn't go apeshit for the priest's gig, it's a real headliner, isn't it, it's got everything but dancing girls! And what with the whole amazing tonk dolled up in all colors of the rainbow, these glitzy dollar signs all over the joint, kissing putti in the front row, and those big chromos up there like crazy movie posters - what's a masterpiece but just a high-class ad, a billboard for the bigots, like you always said, right, prof?"

    "Oh, please -!" he squawked, racked by a rattling cough.

    "Jeepers, professor! Are you okay?" She slid in beside him then, took his hand. "Hey, you're looking like a whoopee cushion that's lost its whoopee! What's happened to all your fancy threads?!"

    "I-I have suffered a -
wheeze!
- great misfortune… Now, please, Miss, go -"

    "And you're so
cold!
Here, tuck your hands in here and get them warm!"

    "What are you
doing -?!"
he yelped. "I -
rurff! hawff!
- I don't -!
Kaff!
I never -!" But she had grabbed them both, stuffed them inside her sweater, it was already done. One of his hands was still clutched around an ear. He hopes she didn't notice. If it were still on his head, it would be burning with shame. In fact it feels a bit warm under his fingers right now. If that's his ear. Not much flesh left on his fingertips, can't be sure of anything any more. Not much in his head either, his faculties hardening, his memory turning to dust: who
was
this student? All the dense airless lecture halls of his endlessly protracted career have blurred into one, his innumerable pupils into a vast shapeless, faceless mass. Waiting outside his office door. Waiting to have their little strings pulled. Day after day. That was life, what he knew of it. Closed now, that door. Forever. He nestles his nose deeper into the soft fleece, wondering, vaguely, if he might have missed something… Well, and even if he did, what did it matter?
I casi sono tanti…

    "You know that Mary up there hanging out over the skewered saint, the one on the cloud holding up her little puppet," she says suddenly, so startling him that he sets everything jiggling around beneath his nose. "Hey! Be nice now, professor," she murmurs admonishingly through the scarf tied round his pate, and gives him a playful little smack on his behind. Which, to his joy, he feels. "Well, you used to show us a lot of pictures like that in class. And what I noticed is that the Virgin is always sad." She hugs him closer. He is still, in his mind, protesting, but his body has completely surrendered. And the therapy is working: there is feeling now, quite wondrously, even to the tips of his toes. "I know what that's supposed to mean, that she has that faraway look because she foresees her little boy's tragic future, and that spoils the fun, but I think that's just dumb guys talking. What
I
see in that look is a disappointed mother." Even the tickle in his throat and the wheezing convulsions of his chest have faded away. He feels so grateful he wants to kiss something. "It's like, I don't know, it's like having a perfect son is not enough…" She sighs, and her breasts lift and fall around his nose like animated powder puffs. "Is that what you think?"

    "Yes," he lies. He is too happy to argue. The gratitude wells up behind his eyes like the onset of a delicious sneeze. Before his eye, the open one, the tender blue hummock swells invitingly.
Che bella!
He lifts a finger under the sweater to touch the pointy part. "Exactly…!"

    "Is - is something the matter, professor?" she asks in alarm.

    "What -?!" he cries in panic, jerking his finger back and rearing his head up. It takes him a moment to remember where he is. "The matter -?!"

    "Your
nose!
It seems to be -!"

    "Ah, it's - it's a cold!" he mutters confusedly, his eyes watering. He turns his head away in embarrassment, pulls his hands back, hides his nose in his sleeve. "I'm sorry! Nasty thing, don't want you to catch it…"

    She seems to be giggling behind him, but he can't be certain, and he's too ashamed to look. He ducks his head. What was he thinking - exposing himself - in his condition - and if she saw the rest -! He is wheezing again, his chest racked anew by a fit of coughing. "You sure you don't want to come home with me?" she asks, rising from the pew, her jaws snapping at the gum once more. "I could put an extra blanket on -"