Robert Coover - Pinocchio in Venice

"Remember the party that night? We danced till dawn!"

"Dancing wasn't the half of it! We all stripped and swapped parts and got our strings in a delicious tangle! Then Arlecchino stole Mangiafoco's swazzle and started playing it through his bumhole!"

"If it was his bumhole — might have been anybody's, things were pretty mixed up by then!"

"Listen, Pinocchio had just saved my can from the fire, the least I could do was sing through it!"

"As Arlecchino said at the time, he was thanking Pinocchio from the bottom of his heart and from the heart of his bottom!"

"I remember!"

"What a blast!"

"Then Rosaura challenged everybody to a pelvis-cracking contest with her polished cherry pudendum, and ended up splitting Colombina's mound and breaking Lelio's little thing off, not that he ever had any use for it!"

"She called it hardass cunny-conkers!"

"It never healed, I've still got a crack there!"

"It was a crazy night!"

"I was so happy…!"

"That party is a legend now!"

"But when was it? I don't remember it!"

"You weren't there, Flaminia. Must have been a century ago, maybe two."

"You were still just a gleam in old Mangiafoco's chisel!"

"And Rosaura," he asked then, craning his head about above the sea of faces, "where is Rosaura?"

"Ah, poor Rosaura, bless her wormy little knothole, has gone the way of all wood, I'm afraid, all except for her hardwood hotbox which Pierotto here inherited for a head when his old one got damp rot and fell apart!"

"It's made him a bit strange, but he's got a new lazzo with a chamber pot and a monocle you wouldn't believe!"

"But there are plenty of others here, you old rogue! Here, meet Corallina and Lisetta and Diamantina…!" They lowered him into the arms of these gay soubrettes with their bright-colored skirts and aprons tucked into leather leggings, their purple and magenta butch cuts, and safety-pin earrings through their wooden ears. "Evviva Pinocchio!" they laughed and they kissed him again and pinched and squeezed him and, just for fun, knocked heads some more.

"But why did you go away, Pinocchio? We were having so much fun! Why did you leave us when you said you loved us so?"

"Well, I — ow! — my father — "

"Loved us? Loved us?" roared Capitano Spavento del Vall'Inferno, rearing up then in sudden choler, his plumes quivering and waxed moustaches bristling. "He loved us as the wolf loves the sheep! As the whip loves the donkey! As the woodman loves the tree! No, no, let us say bread to the bread and bugger-my-ass to bugger-my-ass! This abominable imitation of humanity, this vile hodgepodge, this double-dealing French-leave-taking skin artist deserted us!"

"Ahhh!" gasped the three servant girls in unison and, tossing him in the air, shrank away as though from a bad odor. He would have crashed disastrously to the stage floor had not Arlecchino and Colombina deftly caught him, Colombina whispering behind what had once been his ear: "Is it true you left us because of a woman, dear Pinocchio? A painted woman with a mysterious past…?"

"She wasn't exactly painted — !" he wheezed in dazed dismay.

"Ho ho! Beating about the bush, were you, you old gully-raker?" laughed Brighella, winking slyly. "Nothing like splitting whiskers for splitting friends!"

"It wasn't a woman, it was fame he was after," declared Pulcinella. "We weren't hot enough for the little showboat! He wanted to be the big pimple, not some second stringer out in the sticks! He wanted to be a star!"

"No, no: money! It was money made the donkey trot, it always is!" argued Pantalone, thrusting his pointed beard in the air like an accusing finger. "There was the passing of a purse, his palm was greased, I heard the insidious chink of gold! Money taken, friends forsaken — !"

"But — but it wasn't any of that, I just didn't want to be a — !"

"O blind counsels of the guilty! O vice, ever cowardly!" cried the Capitano, still in high dudgeon. "We took the little sapling in as our trusted friend and brother, but it was a viper we found at our bosoms, a copper-hearted two-timing turntail as treacherous as a deathwatch beetle!" He snapped his sword from its sheath and whirled it about menacingly, strutting up and down the cramped stage. "O evil, of evils most evil! There is no worse pestilence than a familiar foe! Such perfidy makes me snuff pepper, and when I'm aroused the seas duck under for cover, mountains shrink into the earth like iced ballocks, the sun is afraid to show its face, and even the mighty gods shit themselves in terror, so look out below! Down with your breaches of faith! Out with your double-jointed hybrid treachery! Avast! Avaunt! Oyez! Attento! The greatest achievement of a general is to smite the foe and chop the whoreson into little specks and slivers, so let me have at him! Don't hold me back! My heart detests him as the gates of hell!"

As Captain Spavento del Vall'Inferno, still brandishing his sword, whirled around and charged in his direction, the professor turned anxiously to the others for help, but they all seemed to be applauding the spectacle, or else grabbing up their musical instruments as though to use them for weapons themselves. Their painted faces and hard wooden smiles alarmed him, and he felt a sudden intense nostalgia for his old library carrel back at the university. "Wait! You don't understand — !" he gasped, but no one was listening. Arlecchino's and Colombina's grips tightened like shackles.

"Hasten with the sword," brayed the Capitano, bearing down upon him in full regalia and waving the others to follow, "bring weapons, climb the walls; the enemy is at hand — IHAH!"

Even as the old scholar ducked, Arlecchino heaved him up as though to ward the blow off himself. The effect, however, was to make everyone fall back, even the startled Captain, who dropped his sword and nearly fell off the stage, scrambling to pick it up again. "Look at him!" Arlecchino cried, holding him up by the scruff of his tattered coat and waggling him about. "Do you think he'd do this on purpose?!"

There was laughter and some rude whistling and murmurs of "It's true! what a calamity!" and "Povera bestia!" and when the Captain, recovering somewhat, started huffing and puffing again about collapsing the Hemispheres, shattering the Poles, sending heads rolling around the world like billiard balls, and, with his flaming sword inherited from Xerxes, Romulus, Caesar, and the Blind Doge, bringing on the final devastation, Lisetta took his sword away from him and swatted him on the behind with it until he cried. "Vergogna!" she scolded, as he crawled about on all fours, boohooing. "Keep your tongue, rotto in culo, and keep your friends, slander slanders itself! Chi pissa contro vento pisses on his own pants!"

"Remember that a wretched man, as a wise compatriot once said," continued Arlecchino solemnly, still dangling him on high like one of the cats of Venice, "is a holy thing, and vice versa, da cima a fondo, and to be without a friend is to be like a body without a soul, that is to say, a turd without a fragrance — nor is friendship to be bought at a fair, at least not at an honest price, except sometimes in a raffle, and even then, as they say, old friends are still the best bargain if they are not so old they are dead and beginning to smell. Pesce, oglio, e amico vecchio, we would all be wise to remember that famous old Venetian recipe, the secret of which is fresh basil, sturgeon eggs, a forgiving palate, and funghi porcini, when in season, as friendship always is of course if you have the liver for it. Yes, compagni, old wood, as they used to say in the old days, days so old they were never new, except on the Feast Day of poor little Saint Agnes, whose martyred maidenhead, preserved in a silver noggin, once rivaled the eyeballs of Santa Lucia as an object of veneration amongst our countrymen and made old days young again — old wood, they used to say, as I say now, burns brightest, old linens wash whitest, old friendships cling tightest, and old arses spread widest, so watch where you sit for it is a difficult thing to replace true friends who have been inadvertently flattened, may they rest in peace, or in pieces, as the case may be."