Robert Coover - Pinocchio in Venice

"A relic intact, you mean," he'd replied, adding gloomily: "More or less," and Eugenio had laughed his honeyed laugh and said: "You exaggerate, dear boy! To put you together again would be beyond even my considerable powers! Nor, were it possible, would I wish it so, for to tell the truth, dear Pini, I love you more each day, the less of you there is! But come now, let us escape these vaporous old stones and make our way out upon the open waters, and I will show you the empire that Toyland has built!"

But before they could even get started the palazzo was thrown into an uproar. Buffetto and Francatrippa, sent to the private hospital owned and operated by the Sons of L'Omino to bring back the personal effects of a deceased client, brought back the patient instead, very much alive, grinning dippily and still wired up to all his medical paraphernalia, which looked suspiciously like something made out of Lego blocks, colored balloons, a Meccano set, and birthday party straws. "No no, you fools, you went too soon, he wasn't ready yet!" Eugenio screamed, and in his rage he heaved an antique bejeweled chalice from Thessalonica at Buffetto, who ducked, the chalice striking the patient on the head instead, widening his witless smile and setting his ancient dilated eyes to spinning. "Must I do everything myself?!"

It was the sort of uproar all too frequent since the arrival at the Palazzo dei Balocchi of the new servants, hired to replace Marten and his brothers, summarily dismissed, if not worse (just yesterday Buffetto said to him: "Eh, professor, I saw my predecessor the other day!" "Marten? How — how was he — ?" "Tasty…"), such that hardly a day has passed without Eugenio erupting with fresh fury and complaining about the loss of his beloved old valet and reminding the professor bitterly of his own instigating role in that unfortunate decision. Indeed, this morning's incident was not unlike that of a day or two ago, when an English lord, who had supposedly drowned after slipping off the walkway at the back of the Arsenal walls and whose tragic and untimely death had been duly lamented in the evening newspaper, found his way back to the palazzo in time for supper after wandering the city all day in senile confusion, expounding thunderously to all the gondoliers upon the greater glory of the British fleet and declaring that if this was NATO, he'd have none of it, little Truffaldino meanwhile returning draped in sewage and seaweed and bawling like a baby, having fallen in in the nobleman's stead, an event that would have elicited even more wrath than it did, had not Truffaldino with his sweet musical voice and soft winsome ways so swiftly become Eugenio's newest favorite.

The Palazzo dei Balocchi, the professor has come to understand, is operated by Eugenio on behalf of his charities as a sort of aristocratic retirement hotel, catering to banking magnates, oil barons, the nobility, former munitions makers and Third World presidents, gambling czars and diamond miners, all the successful diggers and owners and traders of the world, now purchasing for themselves in their final days a foretaste of paradise in paradisiacal Venice, he himself being housed in the royal apartments of this generous establishment, though as a friend of course, not a client. Not only are all the creature comforts provided, but much more besides, and always with Eugenio's characteristic touches of elegance and serendipitous anticipation of every need and appetite. Thus the professor, for example, while having little interest in the theaters and nightclubs, restaurants, regattas, shops, casinos, masked balls, and gondola serenades so sought after by the others, has discovered that sitting on the Grand Canal under the blue-and-white-striped awnings of the Gritti Palace terrace bar, across from the sweet golden serenity of the incomparable Ca' Dario, dressed in a clean silk suit and an ascot tie puffed up like a cloud at his throat, his feet dangling in their new shoes and his macabre condition otherwise hidden behind hat, scarves, and soft kid gloves, sipping a small glass of the official papal grappa made in the Picolit region while watching behind subtly tinted spectacles the water traffic go rumbling by, a book in his lap and pen and fresh paper before him, is precisely what he has wanted to do all his life and was in fact the very reason, though he may not have expressed it in just this way, for his decision to return here in the first place, something only Eugenio could have, tacitly and wonderfully, intuited and, without asking, acted upon. "Whatever you want, dear boy," Eugenio has insisted over and over, "I can arrange it. Trust me." And who, so blessed, not merely with comforts but with such fraternal understanding, would not?

But since Buffetto, Francatrippa, and Truffaldino joined the staff, things have not been the same. Sheets have been shorted and sugar salted, room and sauna assignments have been alarmingly confused, bringing on palazzo mini wars with international reverberations, purses and gondolas alike have sprung inopportune leaks, medicines are now jumbled together and dispensed at random from a golden punch bowl, with spectacular and sometimes explosive consequences, and Eugenio's best vintage Barolos, when uncorked, have been found to be mysteriously filled with canal water. The professor himself has discovered a live squid in his hot water bottle, chewing gum on the seat of his portantina, and dog hairs in his grappa, though these latter were left, Francatrippa insisted, by "some irascible old mutt who keeps coming by here looking for you, lucky she didn't raise her leg in it before the boss chased her off." Contessas hired to throw tour-group parties at their Venetian palazzi have been stood up, the guests appearing in rowdy Mestre discos instead, the roulette wheel at the Casino has stopped repeatedly on the same number for five nights running, forcing it to close its doors right in the middle of Carnival season, a group of randy old widowers from Bavaria, taken ostensibly to a house of pleasure, had their lederhosen down before they realized they were actually in the cloister of a convent, and only last night a group of American retirees from Nebraska disrupted a performance of La forza del destino at the Fenice, apparently encouraged to believe it was a public sing-along.

Still, though Eugenio fires the three of them every day, he hires them back every day as well, either from necessity, as he claims, or from some perverse attraction to the very perversity he pretends to deplore, or perhaps merely out of his dreamy-eyed infatuation for little Truffaldino, who today, when his companions were not only discharged but turned over to the police, arriving ominously as suddenly as summoned, fell to his knees at Eugenio's feet and, weeping copiously, begged forgiveness and pardon for his two friends, insisting that the fault was really his and that if the questurini must take someone away it should be him. "Ah, what talent!" exclaimed Eugenio, his heart softening, and he opened his arms affectionately. "You are a good brave boy! Come here, my little piscione, and give me a kiss!" Truffaldino leapt up, straddled Eugenio's globe of a belly, gave his master a magnificent wet smack on the end of his nose, then bounced away again before the kiss could be returned or in any way elaborated upon, wherewith Eugenio not only rehired them all but invited them along on this afternoon's excursion, explaining that he wished to instruct them in seamanship, speedboat handling, and the sailor life.

And so after lunch they had set off, the professor, still unable to get about on his own, ported to the motor launch in his sedan chair by the three servants, Eugenio waddling along beside them, expounding grandly on the glories of his city and pointing out the many prized possessions of Omino e figli, S.R.L., and its affiliates. Indeed every second building seemed to belong to one or another of Eugenio's enterprises, many of the banks and businesses as well, innumerable palazzi, even several churches and bridges and historical monuments, it being the enlightened policy of the city government, in which he and his friends, due to their deep sense of civic duty, are also active, Eugenio explained, to turn over to private enterprise the terrible responsibility of maintaining these landmarks in the face of the awesome challenges that Venice, for all her beauty, daily presented. He fell just short of laying claim to the Doges' Palace, but added with an intimate wink that, thanks to a recent windfall, negotiations were in fact under way to make his fondest dream come true, and that, if successful, the first thing he was going to do was add a penthouse for his own personal quarters and for his dear friend Pinocchio.