Robert Coover - Pinocchio in Venice

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!"

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 the 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 — !"