Robert Coover - Pinocchio in Venice

"Let's just hope we don't lose any more than the brides lose!"

"What did you say?"

"What?"

As they reach the blue-wreathed doorway, the liquid glow from within seems to grow more intense, troubling their sight and hearing alike ("Loose enema, then: what — ?"), the music, which is more like a fragrant lullaby than a hymn or a wedding march, now reaching them less through their ears than through their noses as a rich harmonious brew of incense, gentle arpeggios, hot peperonata, and Venetian lagoon.

"Listen! The bells!"

"It's nearly midnight!"

"And tomorrow — !"

"I can't hear them, but I can feel them kicking!"

"Tell me when we're in Paris!" whimpers Lisetta, only her nose sticking out, and Pierotto complains: "What's that? I can't hear a thing! I've still got poor Diamantina's ashes up my nose!"

"Now, come in here, and tell me how it happened that you fell into the hands of assassins!" intones a grave windy voice that seems to come from another world, and is not so much heard as felt like a cold finger down the spine. The gondola chair is dropped on the flagstones there in front of the open door with an answering bang and the trembling puppets fall clatteringly together like a sackful of shingles.

"Who was that — ?!"

"Assassins? What assassins — ?"

"I'm suddenly losing interest," Captain Spavento wheezes solemnly, turning shakily on his heel, and the top half of Il Zoppo gasps: "Whoa, old pegs! Any further and I'm getting off!"

"Button your pants, Pulcinella! Don't let me look!"

"You close this farcetta on your own, Colombina! I'm butting out of here!"

"Me too! I'm so scared I think I just split myself!"

"This is not in my contract!"

"No, don't go!" he cries. "Please! Capitano! Brighella — !"

"But they are right, dear Pinocchio!" agrees Colombina. "This is not our pitch! It's clear we've all been cast here for tomorrow's Ash Wednesday magic makeup kit! We must go — quickly! — and you must go with us!"

"But — !"

"No more 'buts'! 'Buts' have caused you nothing but trouble all your life! Come now! The show must go on, old trouper!"

"But that's just it!" he gasps feebly. "Look at me, Colombina! Dear Brighella! Capitano! Can't you see?! My part is over! I've got no feet, no ears, no teeth, my fingers are dropping off and everything else is warped and cracked and falling apart — I can't move without fracturing and splintering, my cords and ligaments have rotted out, and my insides are nothing but wet sawdust! There's nothing alive and well in there except the things feeding on me! And Lelio was right, though I love you, I'm not one of you! Flesh has made a pestilential freak out of me! Even I don't know who or what I am any more! There's only one thing left for me now. But I–I can't do it without you!"

His desperate plea has silenced them. Brighella has returned. Pierotto looks over his shoulder from the foot of the watersteps, the tear on his cheek gleaming like a sapphire in the blue light there.

"You've touched me to the very core, dear Pinocchio," Colombina sighs. She gives him a tender little hug, and the miserable sound of wet twigs snapping makes her groan and hug him again, whatever the damages. "What is it you want us to do, my brother?"

"I want, how can I say…? I want you to help me make… a good exit."

"Ah…!" The puppets turn as one toward the blazing blue-whiskered doorway of Santa Maria dei Miracoli. This is something they all understand. A proper exit needs timing, boldness, clarity, purpose, but, before anything else, one must command the stage. What they feel, standing here in the misty wings, is worse than stage fright to be sure, but it is no longer mere woodenheaded panic. They are professionals, after all. Those who have fled to the boats now return, and though there is still some surly grumbling to be heard at the fringes, the general mood as they pick up his tapestried gondola chair once more and step pluckily on through the resplendent portal (the Virgin, under a punctuated cross lit up now like a pinball bumper, seems to spit on them as they pass beneath her, or perhaps she is squirting her breasts at them, or little Jesus, lost in the dark tangled foliage, might even be peeing on them all, it is hard in the confusion of their senses wrought by the musical light, or luminous music, to be sure) is more like that of getting stuck with a lean part in a bad show in front of a cold house: grim but steady, and prepared to see it through.

They crowd in under the overhanging ridge of the Nuns' Choir at the back of the little Santuario di Santa Maria dei Miracoli, gazing in awe, their senses still somewhat bedazzled, at the fabulous scene before them, which reminds the much-traveled old wayfarer of nothing so much as his visit to Attila's innards. The sheer marble walls, pale as old bone and glistening dewily, seem to be pulsating with the strange pumping music, as do the softly clashing gold-framed Pennacchis, arched above them like the plated back of a prehistoric beast. As, cautiously, the puppets port him down the aisle between the ribbed pews, they are assailed by the delicate aromas of frankincense, ambrosia, and myrrh, along with something headier, reminiscent of the sweet decay of wens and bogs, which may be the odor of the throbbing music. In all the church, except for the celestial gallery of portraits in the gently billowing vault above, there is only one painting, a Quattrocento Madonna and Child, mounted on the high altar standing atop broad marble steps crisp as vertebrae and surrounded by balustraded galleries and filigreed marble carvings delicate as living tissue. Two hanging Byzantine lamps swing at either side of the altar like blood red pendulums under an expanding and contracting cupola, and the crimsoned painting itself seems to glow from within as though the Virgin, robed in midnight blue and holding the haloed child like a ventriloquist's dummy, were standing in the midst of a blazing fire. "Gentlemen, I should like you to tell me," the painted Madonna calls out to them in that whispery otherworldly voice they have heard before, "I should like you to tell me, gentlemen, if this unfortunate puppet is dead or alive!"

The Burattini pull up short, wooden mouths gaping from ear to ear, their knees knocking in the sudden silence like a whole marching band's drumsticks being rapped together. "Who-who said that — ?!" they gasp severally.

"O Fatina mia, why are you dead? Why you, so good, instead of me, so wicked?" squeaks the long-nosed deadpan creature the Madonna is holding, its right hand rising and falling mechanically. Her hands deftly but in full view work the marionette from underneath, pulling the wires down there, and her lips move perceptibly as the wooden-faced baby's lower jaw claps up and down: "If you truly love me, dear Fairy, if you love your little brother, come back to life! Aren't you sorry to see me here alone and abandoned by everyone? Who would save me if I were caught by assassins? What can I do, alone in a world like this?" Then, though the little figure continues its singsong recitation of the famous "Puppet's Lament," the text in this century of tragedies, operas, and countless requiems throughout the world, the Madonna's cheeks puff out, her lips pucker up, and between them a shiny pink bubble emerges, slowly filing with air until it is as big as the talking infant's mouth, its head, its halo. "Who will give me something to eat? Where will I sleep at night? Who will make me a new jacket?" continues the whining voice, the hinged jaw clopping up and down like slapsticks, even as the bubble expands until only the Virgin's right eye peeks slyly over the top of it. "Oh, it would be a hundred times better if I died too! Yes, I want to die! Ih! Ih! Ih — !