Robert Coover - Pinocchio in Venice

Just then the heavy silence is broken by a scratchy two-way radio announcing something about a thief in a junk store, and a moment later two carabinieri materialize out of the fog, clattering past at full trot, their black capes fluttering behind them, rifles gripped at the ready in their white-gloved hands. "Wait!" the three servants cry out as one: "Mangiafoco's — ?!"

"This way!" shouts one of the policemen as both are swallowed up once more in the swirling fog, the smacking of their boots on stone fading slowly away to a distant ticking sound like an animal's claws on glass, and then everything is submerged once more in a dense muggy silence.

"Ebbene," sighs Buffetto as he and Francatrippa pick up his litter chair again. "We'll never get there by standing still! Andiamo subito!"

Subito is not exactly the word. They pick their way across the campo like ants, the pavement emerging in front of their wary toes as it vanishes behind their heels, a sharp contrast to yesterday's roisterous Carnivalesque crossing of the Piazza San Marco. If Eugenio was incensed by the irreverent congregation that approached him, he did not show it. He greeted the Count Ziani-Ziani with a deep bow and prepared eulogies, departing from his script only briefly to remark upon the nobleman's prodigious scepter, referring to it as "The Great Disseminator of Empire" and "The Magnificent Lion-Planter," citing it (at this reference to lions, the "Good Sovereign" awoke suddenly with a startled stupid look, bawled out "Che cazzo — ?!", then, bloodshot eyes crossing, dropped his shabby old head back in his paws and nodded off once more) as demonstrable proof of the Count's lineage and pointing out to the wide-eyed city fathers gathered around him that: "You see before you the true cause of that envy that stirred our sister states in times gone by to so malign our great Republic and bring about through deceit, intrigue, and spiteful tongues her eventual and untimely ruin! The Turks, for all their famed endowments, came up short in their rash challenge to it, and similar fates befell the impudent Franks and Goths, who simply overreached themselves! In a later age, Napoleon in his impotent rage raped and pillaged our most beautiful Queen, swallowing up everything on the island he could lay his lascivious hands upon, but this, her true glory, he could not, for all his voracity, engorge, though a fateful glimpse of it is said to have embittered his dreams to the end of his tormented life!" He then suggested that, while the city officials were examining the deed, according to the law, the Count might like to join him privately in camera caritatis to sample some grappa distilled in the time of his ancestors and toast the success of their transactions.

The Count, introduced as the direct descendant of four popes, at least three of them male, six cardinals, and nineteen doges, replied that he was indeed honored to have his pockets picked by such a distinguished assembly of impenitent thieves and whoresons, true heirs of the pustulous glories of the Serenissima, but that, while gladly surrendering the deed for their exanimation, he would have to decline the Director's kind invitation to visit his privy chambers, not because he suspected treachery or doubted his host's integrity — "You'd better doubt it, that rotto in culo is as bent as a forcola!" barked Melampetta from the edge of the multitudes, and Eugenio turned to the Inspector General of the Questura at his side and, smiling unctuously through clenched teeth, growled: "Somebody go muzzle that damned bitch!" — but because, in his present state of arousal stimulated by his return to his debauched and beloved homeland, he might do damage to its Renaissance splendors and would in any event find it painful to negotiate the stairwells. About this time, the Lion rose up once more and roared out a string of sour melancholic oaths threatening, for the greater glory of Venice, to bite the heads off every infidel present, starting with the Archbishop — "Soul to God, body to the crypt, asshole to the devil for his tobacco dip!" he bellowed — but the Madonna calmed him down by feeding him some of her organs, and soon enough the decrepit creature was sonorously back asleep again.

For the professor, bundled up in the blue angora sweater with its warm milky odors, deliciously stupefying, all of this was happening as a sort of remote theatrical backdrop to the only event left for him on center stage and the focus of all his entranced attention. As his former student pranced about, so full of life, spraying dignitaries and revelers alike from her gaily striped machine, or clamping it between her thighs and riding it like a bronco, or challenging other phalli to duels, she occasionally afforded him glimpses of smooth creamy flesh and bouncing breasts with generous nipples that excited him as no masterpiece had ever done. Her worn blue jeans were molded around her abundant thighs and hips like a second skin, freely exhibiting to the delight of his captive eye every thrilling line and posture of her piquant body, which he, with an outburst of what would have been, before the Blue-Haired Fairy stole it from him, rapture, told himself was ideal beauty's very image and all he would ever know of the divine, forget all previous pretensions of his long misdirected life. He was utterly disarmed, overpowered, intoxicated with fugitive, mad, unreasoning hopes and visions of a monstrous sweetness: in short, oh joy, he was, alas, too late, in love.

Seeing him stare at her with such pained tenderness, Bluebell gave the giant phallus back to Francatrippa and, zipping up her wind-breaker against the cold, came over to her old mentor's portantina. "Politicians are just so darn boring!" she complained, cracking her pink gum. She stripped off the condom and shook her blond curls out. "C'mon, teach! Whaddaya say we get the heck outa here and go have some fun!" He could not in his smitten state find breath to speak, much less words to use were even breath available, but, deftly reading his wistful devastated gaze, she unbuckled him from his litter chair — "What're they doing, prof, holding you prisoner — ?" — and lifted him up into her arms. "Holy moley, you're light as a parakeet feather! Look at you, poor thing! You're nothing but skin and bones! Or… whatever." She gave him a little hug and whispered in his earhole: "Let's sneak down to the waterfront and have a ride! C'mon! These goofballs'll never miss you!"

And so it was that he found himself on the Apocalypse. There were other choices out on the cold windswept riva: bumper cars and whips and fun houses, pirate ships and merry-go-rounds, looping airplanes, spinning teacups, but for Bluebell, who had tried them all, only the Apocalypse still gave her a thrill. "Present company excluded of course!" she added with a tinkling gum-snapping laugh. In all his life as a human being, he had never been in or on any of these things, and he had disdained those who had, but now the very prospect brought tears of joy and excitement to his eyes, as he huddled, shivering, against Bluebell's soft slippery windbreaker, clasped like a child in her strong young arms. Music was playing separately from each of the attractions, a chaotic dissonance, diabolically loud, but the riva was empty, they were all alone, their Carnival fling like a secret tryst behind closed doors.

What followed was the most exciting ride of his life. Not even his flight on Colombo's back could match it. At first it wasn't fun at all, it was sheer terror. So whipped about was he by the sudden violent wheeling and swooping and plunging that he worried he might start coming apart. Flakes of dried flesh were flying from him like dead moths from a shaken carpet and his insides were in such turmoil he was afraid he'd end up like the Madonna of the Organs. Bluebell, seeing his plight, quickly opened up her red windbreaker and tucked him inside. "Yow-eee! " she howled as they dipped and whirled, her golden locks flying and her bright white teeth sparkling in laughter. "Hot dog! I love it!" For a moment he suffered a terror of another sort. Not since Hollywood had he been this close to a woman's fleshy parts, and never when they were jouncing and bobbling so crazily as this. He grabbed on as best he could but it was like trying to hug a runaway exercise machine. Her naked breasts literally flew up and whopped him on the nose, and her knees were sometimes as high as his head. "Whee-ee-ee!" she squealed and wrapped her arms and legs around him and squeezed him tight.