Robert Coover - Pinocchio in Venice

"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."