Robert Coover: Pinocchio in Venice

"If you'd care to sign in, please," says the porter, standing before an old wooden table with the two candles on it, and the person in the bauta, the hotel manager no doubt, thrusts an old stick pen with a splayed point at him and repeats this in a rather horrible cavernous voice, befitting the macabre austerity of his costume: "Would you please care to sign in?"

"It's rather cold," the professor remarks, taking up the pen and gazing about. The huge dark hall, which runs the length of the building, opening out onto what is apparently a garden at the rear, is empty save for two boats parked on dollies and this wooden table. There is an intense unmistakable odor of cats and a glutinous damp darkness all about. "Are you sure — ?"

"The rooms upstairs of course are all heated," the porter assures him with an impatient sigh. "Come along now, professore, when you're between the door and the wall, don't try to look for the hair in the egg. You're showing the rope, I know, but a little supper, a glass of wine, and you'll soon be in fine leg!"

"A fine leg!" repeats the hotel manager.

"I'm not hungry," grumbles the professor, taking up the pen, though he's not sure of this, being too tired even to think about it. "I just want to get to bed."

"Ah well, appetite comes with the eating, dottore, as the saying goes. And my friend, not knowing you were coming, has only just put the heat on in your room," he seems to flick a foot out and give the hotel proprietor a kick on the shins, for the bauta mask dips abruptly and there is a grunt from behind it. "It will take a little while for it to warm up."

"I just put the hee-hee-heat on in your room," mewls the hotel manager, hobbling around in a small circle. "It will take a while to, eh, to, eh…"

"Besides," adds the porter, leaning closer to whisper in his ear: "the repast is included in the price of the room." The traveler, however, is staring in some amazement at the hotel manager's missing hand, the stump of which has just bobbed out from under the cloak to thump the table (it now ducks back in again): so many handicapped citizens in this town! Maybe it's the damp weather, all those miserable bridges, the slippery steps… "The war, you see," explains the porter, evidently following his startled gaze. "The Resistance. A national hero! This fellow, I tell you, this fellow has the heart of a Caesar!" The hotel proprietor modestly turns his masked head away, sweeping a candle to the floor with his remaining hand. The porter rocks forward and whispers in the professor's ear with a breath dizzyingly foul: "And the balls of Caesar's wife!" He chortles wheezily, then, straightening up, adds: "But come along now, it's time to go bend the proverbial elbow, professore. The kitchen is not yet in operation here, but there is an arrangement with a little inn just two steps away, where you cannot tell the polenta from Saint John's halo and there is at least as much wine in the wine as water. We will direct you there, but they will be closing soon so we must burn the laps. Animo! Don't worry about your bags, they will be waiting in your room for you when you return."

"Well…" Something is bothering him about all this, but he cannot think what it might be. He almost cannot think at all. He stares at his luggage, spread out in a heap on the cold stone floor like a careless jotting, his umbrella lying at one end like the line at the bottom of a long sum. Ah… "How much for all this? What do I owe you?" He is prepared for the worst, though admittedly, with the securing of his room here, the worst, in truth, is no longer the worst. But the porter merely shrugs, and it is a gesture so deeply iconic it almost brings tears to the professor's eyes. It means nothing, of course. And everything. Only rarely, in one "Little Italy" or another across America, has he seen its like. Perhaps the Plague Doctor's mask with its painted half-smile has intensified it: for it is an act of ultimate submission as well as negotiation, an acceptance, in effect, of mortality itself. There is a profit to be made, but the profit belongs to the act itself, not to the mortal through whose hands it is temporarily passing. The professor also shrugs, a different kind of shrug, one that says: Yes, we understand each other, I am a poor man, my fashionable camelhair coat which has caught your cunning eye notwithstanding, but not so poor that you do not fancy yourself a handsome return at my expense before we both must die. Yes, it is going to be a very daring figure. The professor, anticipating, not without a certain appetite in spite of his desperate weariness, a long ceremonial haggling, counts out a modest sum, fair but admittedly mean, and hands it to the porter.

To his amazement, the porter hands part of it back. "The dottore is too generous," he says. "I take what comes, to be sure, when the horse is given, one must not sound the teeth, but, alas," he sighs regretfully, "there are regulations, and this is more than they allow. I cannot afford to risk, at my age, you will understand…" He ducks his head as though winking behind his mask. "But perhaps the professore will invite us all to a small drop of wine at dinner…"

"Then the room — ?"

"It is nothing," the porter says with a dismissive gesture.

"Nothing," says the hotel manager.

Which means it's going to cost him an arm and a leg — or an eye out of his head, as they say here — but, under the circumstances, it's cheap at twice the price, especially given the miserable condition of these afflicted parts of his. Though he cannot remember when he last ate, he truthfully has no appetite, but he dreads the chill and loneliness of his room and something deep within him — part peasant, part adopted Yankee — rebels against the idea of turning down a free meal. Besides, the thought of a glass of wine greatly appeals to him just now, a little Prosecco maybe or a sparkling Marzemino, a kind of effervescent libation, as it were, to consecrate his heroic return and to invoke a blessing upon his solemn quest. There are wines here from the Euganean Hills and the Friuli, from the Tyrol and the Piave and the Alto Adige, all but unavailable elsewhere in the world, wines he hasn't tasted since childhood — Refoscos and Amarones, Blauburgunders, Franciacortas and young Teroldego Rotalianos with their almondy bitterness, lush Albanas, Pinot Grigios, pale Tokais from Lison, Traminers, and golden Picolits, sweet Ramandolos: their very invocation resounds like a benison in his ancient head. "Well, two steps, then," he says with a crooked smile. "What are we waiting for? While the dog scratches himself, the hare goes free. As the saying goes. Andiamo pure!"

It has begun to snow. At first just a flake or two like a fleeting dispatch sent from the world he has left behind, vanishing as quickly as glimpsed. Then a steadier fall, gently swirling, touching down, lifting up, touching down again, until the little square, or campo, outside the steamy window of the Gambero Rosso is aglow with a dusting of the purest white. Like a crisp clean sheet of paper, he thinks, and he is struck at the same time by the poignancy of this metaphor from the old days. For paper is no longer a debased surrogate for the stone tablets of old upon which one hammered out imperishable truths, but rather a ceaseless flow, fluttering through the printer like time itself, a medium for truth's restless fluidity, as flesh is for the spirit, and endlessly recyclable. The old professor sits there at the little osteria window, alone now with his reveries and musings, sipping the last of the fine grappa the landlord has offered him (he has forgotten how lovely the people are here, his people after all, to the extent he could be said to have any: how pleased he is to be among them again!) and staring out on the softly settling snow, letting himself be gradually submerged in a sweet melancholic languor. His erstwhile companions, perhaps sensing the onset of this pensive mood, have graciously slipped away for the moment, the porter to guide the blind hotel proprietor back to prepare the professor's lodgings for the night and to move the luggage up before returning for him here. Yes, blind as well as maimed. Upon leaving the hotel to come here, the unfortunate creature walked straight out the door and down the watersteps into the canal. "Now look what you've done! You've got your feet all wet!" the porter had scolded, pulling him out, and the hotel manager had whined: "My feet are all wet!" Which for some reason had made the professor laugh, made them all laugh. Then they had come here together, the ancient traveler in the middle holding both of the hobbling locals up, feeling quite jolly and youthful in spite of himself.