Robert Coover - Pinocchio in Venice

"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 — ?"