Robert Coover - Pinocchio in Venice

The outstretched arm bent stiffly at the elbow as the grim figure approached, and slowly the pointing finger rose to point directly overhead. "The devil teaches how to make the pot," intoned a hollow voice that seemed to come from the bottom of a well, Eugenio's painted scarlet lips moving slightly like a clumsy ventriloquist's, his face expressionless except for a tear glistening on one cheek, "but not, dear boy, the cover!" The empty eyes began to glow and rays of light emerged, beamed directly on the accused. "Murder will OUT!" The hand pressed to the costumed bosom swung out abruptly and the padded bodice slipped to the waist, then, as though by itself, popped back up again, the hand overhead dropping quickly to clamp it in place, the other hand flopping loosely for a moment, then rising steadily once more, elbow bent, until it covered the tearful face, extinguishing the beams of light. "No evil more terrible," bemoaned the echoey voice from behind the hand, "than to give an old friend such a bloody headache! It's a technological scandal! What good is a friend with an empty attic, not one turd of a brain in his bean?" As though to demonstrate the consequences of this condition (snorting sourly, the Lion of Saint Mark dropped his blunt snout back into his paws, and the escaped fugitive, too, felt the danger, if not the horror, pass), Eugenio's arms opened wide, the bodice plopped down and rose again, the hands waggled on their wrists, then the elbows angled upwards, the hands flopping loosely like laundry on a line, while the eyeless head rocked from side to side until it shook its wig off. One of Eugenio's thick white legs rose rigidly to one side, pushing against the brocaded skirt, and fell, then the other did the same. Then both legs rose straight up out of the gondola until the feet, still in their Queen-of-the-Night high-heeled shoes, were higher than the lurid head, hands falling limply between the fat thighs. "Piů in alto che se va," sang the voice, or voices, which now might have been coming from any part of the body, the flabby arms spreading apart like an opening curtain, "piů el cul se mostra! " This reprise of the familiar Gran Teatro dei Burattini Vegetal Punk Rock Band ballad was followed by clackety wooden applause from the other gondolas and the cadaver's sudden collapse, its animators Pierotto, Brighella, and Diamantina peering out from behind it to take their bows.

"Meat!" grumped Brighella in disgust, as he and Pierotto, Pierotto first plucking the crystal tear off Eugenio's face and putting it back on his own cheek, heaved the corpse into the canal. "It's got no style!" Then he sprang in one great leap from the gondola to the fondamenta, followed by all the other members of the troupe, the laden gondolas left bobbing on their own, spilling into the canal loose Trecento artworks, silver goblets and golden candelabra, and there he led them all in a strutting, high-spirited, double-jointed celebration of woodenness. They scaled the wall of the theater, then fell from the roof on their backs, wept lugubriously in unison, broke into wild knee-slapping laughter, fanned at each other with wooden or imaginary swords, danced, somersaulted, bounced rigidly as though on hidden springs, pirouetted, walked on their hands and kicked their wooden heels together, flew through the air from kicks they gave one another, swaggered about stiff-legged and flat-footed, spouting Latin nonsense, then turned into potbellied hunchbacks one and all, competing with one another in a wind-breaking contest. Throughout all of this, Il Zoppo, somewhat handicapped, put on his/her own show, a kind of choral version of the other puppets' acts, weeping and laughing at the same time, farting in Latin, walking on Pulcinella's hands while strutting on Lisetta's feet, and falling down even as she/he was getting up. Finally the two of them formed a kind of arched bridge from fondamenta to near gondola over which the others hopped, skipped, tumbled, pranced, or leapt.

When they were all back in their gondolas, they turned to smile and wave up at him. "Come along, Pinocchio!" they cried. Captain Spavento maneuvered his gondola over to the watersteps so he could get in. "This house is played out! We're on our way to Rome!"

"Paris!"

"London!"

"Hollywood!"

"Look at all the loot we've got!"

"We're rich! We sacked the palazzo!"

"What parties we will have!"

"Anyway, we have no choice," said Brighella. "The carabinieri are right behind us."

"And are they mad!"

"Pantalone's wearing the Madonna's gash and stalling them with his stolen cazzo act!"

"They can't seem to find the corpus delicti either!"

"Ha ha!"

"But why didn't you laugh at our show, Pinocchio?" Lelio wanted to know. "We did that famous 'Dead Meat Lazzo' just for you!"

"It's one of the oldest routines in show business!"

"It's a real bitch, too!"

"Hardest puppet act there is!"

"Especially in a gondola!"

"He weighed a ton!"

"And the mask was too old and stiff. Maybe we should have left all that mucky stuff inside and used the whole head on a stick or something."

"No, no, it was great! Those flashlight eyes were fantastic!"

"I saw the lips move!"

"So why didn't you think it was funny, Pinocchio?"

"Maybe he's seen it too many times."

"Maybe he's not really one of us. Maybe he's still — "

"Of course he's one of us!" Colombina argued hotly. "He killed the Little Man, didn't he? He saved our lives! And he did it with style! He added to the repertoire! He invented a whole new lazzo! And look at him! Of course, he can't last long, the rot's too deep, the pith's gone, and even his knotholes have knotholes, but one of us? What else could the poor little splinter be? Oh, I know, Lelio, I heard you complaining about the fungal spores and woodworm and other infestations, that they might be contagious and all that, but since when do we abandon a brother in his extremity just to save our own bark? That's not show business! That's not being one of us!"

"Bravo!" exclaimed Lisetta from inside Il Zoppo's flies. "Clap for me, you cretin!" she called up to Pulcinella, who, clapping, said: "But he still doesn't want to come with us. He's just sitting there."

"Because he hasn't got any feet, peathead! Have you forgotten what it was like? Somebody give him a hand!"

"Hurry! They'll be here any minute!"

So he was lifted aboard one of the gondolas, the Winged Lion of Saint Mark turning down their offer to join them, accepting instead a handblown bottle full of centuries-old grappa from the pillaging of the Palazzo dei Balocchi as a farewell gift, and after many hugs and "Ciao!'s" they set off, the Lion flapping westward to misdirect their pursuers, the puppets heading east for open waters, dreaming aloud about the grand adventures that awaited them. Hardly had they begun, however, when, sliding out from under a low arched bridge, they came upon this little campo bathed in blue light with the money tree in the middle.

It means nothing to him. He has no illusions, no hopes, no plans. All eaten away. He's going nowhere, he knows, even though he cannot stay. Does he hear sirens? Perhaps. It doesn't matter. He slumps, shivering, in his tapestry-upholstered gondola chair, watching his shipmates encircle, wide-eyed and breathlessly, the strange tree, drawn to the idea of wealth rather than to the thing itself. After all, their gondolas are already full to overflowing with fabulous cargo from the sacked palazzo, now tumbling piece by piece from the rocking barks into the sludge of the canal to become part of what holds this whole preposterous caprice up, they hardly need expired credit cards and coins worth less than the metal in them. Fairy gold