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.
They roared away from the Molo, sending gondolas bobbing and flopping and vaporetti grinding into reverse and blowing their horns, out into the magnificent Bacino di San Marco, Buffetto at the wheel, swerving wildly at full throttle between the strapped posts which serve as channel markers and which looked to the professor like grieving old men consoling one another, but which Buffetto compared to ball players in a huddle, Francatrippa to stacked rifles, Truffaldino to clasped lovers, and Eugenio to cazzi incatenati, as he called them, chained cocks, each then shouting out his own interpretation of the black tips or hoods of the posts and the little white gulls perched on each of them as though by assignment from the Tourist Office. They flew next up the Giudecca canal, slapping against the water churned up by other craft escaping their path, the encircling faces of the Palladian churches glowering at them in gape-mouthed disapproval, but Eugenio responding with squeals of unabashed joy - "Ah, this thrice-renowned and illustrious city! This precious jewel, this voluptuous old Queen, this magical fairyland! Love of my life and forger of my soul! I wish only to clasp it to my bosom! Una vera bellezza! Ah! Ah! Mother of God, I think I am coming! Faster, my boy, faster!" - while Truffaldino entertained them all with astonishing acrobatics on the cabin roof, even as they tipped and swerved and bounced through the busy canal. "Ah, life, life!" Eugenio cried, hugging his belly as though he had just named it. "It's so much fun!"
With like and in truth infectious delight, his round appley face flushed and black eyes twinkling, he pointed out to the professor his many projects for the lagoon, beginning with his desire to tear down the Giudecca and rebuild the entire island in the old aristocratic style of rich villas and exotic pleasure gardens that had characterized it in the time when Michelangelo stayed there, perhaps converting the old Stücky mill at the far end into a private academy or university to be named after the professor himself ("No, no, do not object! You deserve no less, my friend!"), and certainly reclaiming the famous Convent of the Converted Ones, now a women's prison, and restoring it as it was at the turn of the century when the Little Man used it as a marketplace for auctioning off his donkeys. "Our friends at Disney are definitely interested!" he exclaimed secretively above the roar of the speeding boat, clapping his little fat hands.
Whipping around by the Lido, Francatrippa now gleefully at the speedboat's controls, Eugenio pointed out the projected location of the new lagoon entrance tidegates, told him of his plans to seek commercial sponsorship of the gondolieri and sell advertising space on their shirts and straw hats, and described for him how, by digging between Malamocco and Marghera a channel deep enough for sixty-thousand-ton tankers, they could create what he called the Third Industrial Zone, making the Veneto region the rival of Osaka, Manchester, and New Jersey, though he admitted that, having done much the same thing twice before, even though the project would be immensely profitable, worth more perhaps than all their other investments put together, his heart really wasn't in it. "Besides, it would only increase the size of the working class, un fottio di cazzi as it is, God knows, a veritable plague, my dear, which is ruining the democratic process and turning the world into a fucking dungheap - no, no, I ask very little of this world, being at heart a modest man, only let me live the rest of my days, the few that remain, among the superrich! That's who this noblest of cities, sole refuge of humanity, peace, justice, and liberty, is truly for and they are the only ones who will save it! But just the same, my love," he added, leaning close and wrapping an arm around his old friend to wheeze into his earhole: "if you're looking for a hot real estate tip, you could do worse than to buy in to Malamocco!"
"I used to think it was the end of the world "
They were now barreling through the triumphal arch of the Great Gateway, past the statue of a lioness, strangely elongated like stretched taffy, and into the main canal of the Arsenal Vecchio, and, as they went ripping past the huge brick barns and rusting drums and the thick bunkers skulking like cement elephants, spray flying from the prow, Eugenio explained to him how he hoped to convert this great Renaissance workshop, once civilization's most famous shipyard and now little more than a rotting hulk, into a vast eighty-acre marina for the world's most luxurious private yachts: "It has a bigger basin than Monaco, Pini! Think of it! It will create a whole new generation of seagoing pleasure craft! Venice will again rule the waves! It w
ill take money, of course, but not only are we rich in public funds right now, we also have the whole world's hearts in our pockets and our hands in theirs, and, so long as our Socialist Party stays in office, I can promise you, we shall not lose sight of this noble goal!"
As they came plowing out through the low arch cut into the crenellated wall at the back end, Francatrippa and Buffetto now fighting like schoolboys over the wheel, Truffaldino at the same time hugging it head downward and arse high and, feet kicking, demanding his own turn, the launch reeling drunkenly through the lagoon and slicing a straying gondola clean in two ("He'll drown!" the professor cried in alarm, craning around to watch, but Eugenio only laughed and said: "Nonsense, my boy! You forget how shallow the lagoon is - he can walk home!"), the cemetery island of San Michele with its trim brick walls and cypress canopy suddenly loomed into view, and Eugenio, taking over the boat's controls so as to avoid hitting it, leaned over toward the professor and, Truffaldino having barely escaped getting bit on the bottom before scrambling away, stage-whispered above the motor's diminishing roar: "I have something to show you over here, Pini something special "
They moored next to the vaporetto landing stage and, after stopping to buy flowers just inside the cemetery walls, Eugenio led them in a little procession down the long cypress-lined gravel paths to the far end of the raftlike island where the route became increasingly mazy as though in imitation of the neighboring island these dead once called home. Along the way, women, carefully tending graves as though they were pieces of heirloom furniture, washing them, brushing them, shining up the photographs, changing the flowers and the water in the pots, paused to greet Eugenio as he passed, a regular visitor here, it would seem, and taken as one of their own. The professor could not help remarking how dry-eyed they all were, by contrast to his own wild unrestrained grief at the tomb of the Blue-Haired Fairy. In fact, he felt it again now, churning up inside afresh, that old graveyard fever, punctual as saliva.
"They are making their husband's beds," Eugenio murmured, his voice hidden behind the labored rumble of heavy earth-moving equipment digging somewhere nearby, "the beds they had in truth been making for them all their lives. They are happy now, this is their true vocation. When I am feeling morbid, Pini, I sometimes wish I had one of the dear things "
The twisting path, leading them down narrow labyrinthine passageways between stone condominiums of the dead, stacked five deep and sometimes two or three to a niche, opened out suddenly upon a splendid little campo, lined with cypresses and rosebushes and dominated by an immense yet graceful semicircular mausoleum built like a kind of marble stage with a raised platform, ceremonial central stairs, shielded wings protected by poised angels, and a recessed proscenium arch supported by fluted Corinthian columns like a ring of folded curtains. In the middle of the stage was the tomb of the Little Man, an ornately decorated marble sarcophagus, laden with fresh flowers piled up sumptuously around a perpetually burning oil lamp in the center. Above the sarcophagus hung a crucified Jesus with the familiar sloping hips, smooth feminine limbs, and soft pierced abdomen, his face turned heavenward in agony, or perhaps in ecstasy, while around him plump naked cherubs played in melancholic abandon. The legend on L'Omino's tomb was that famous line of his which every little boy along his route had heard sooner or later, and one which even now caused the professor's heart to sink: "Are you coming with us or staying behind?" "Vieni con noi, o rimani?"
"Io rimango," he thought to himself, recalling his futile resistance, as futile now as it was then: here still, but not for long. He was not getting well. He was feeling less pain, no doubt thanks to Eugenio's pharmaceuticals, and he was able, if carried, to get about a bit, but if anything his disease was worsening. The bits that had fallen off were gone for good, awash somewhere in the waterways of Venice, and more vanished every day, teeth and toes in particular, and the patches of flesh that kept flaking away, fouling his sheets with dusty excrescences sometimes as large as dried mushrooms. And what was left of him, once waterlogged, was twisting and splitting now as it dried out, he could hardly move without startling those about him, himself included (this is not me, he continued to feel deep in his heart, or whatever was down there, there in that dark place inside where all the weeping started, this can't be me!), with awesome splintering and cracking sounds, his elegant new clothing worn not merely to conceal the surface rot, but to muffle the terrible din of the disintegration within. He would shed the rest of his flesh altogether and be done with it, but it sticks tenaciously and bloodily to his frame like a kind of stubborn reprimand, his attempts to scrape it off causing him excruciating pain. Far from transcending flesh, he was dying into it. Into the tatters of it. Only, as he shrank toward oblivion, his love for her and a certain bitter dignity remained
"I loathe small deaths," Eugenio was saying. "Death is our great master, but must be met with the grandeur it deserves!" The old professor, emerging from his revery, realized that Eugenio had been describing for him the magnificence of the Little Man's final rites, beginning with a great requiem Mass in the colossal church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in the company of twenty-five dead doges and the skin of Marcantonio Bragadin, who was flayed alive by the Turks at Famagusta (perhaps Eugenio had told him this in response to his own complaints, or else, speaking his thoughts aloud, he had complained of his own slower flaying upon hearing of that of the hero of Famagusta, whose skin at least was whole enough to be saved as a relic and not shaken out each day with the changing of the beds), followed by a solemn funeral procession around to the Fondamenta Nuova with all the bells of Venice tolling (as, from over the lagoon, they were hollowly, as though in wistful remembrance, tolling at that moment), the hearse drawn by sixty-nine leather-booted donkeys who were later driven into the sea and drowned. There, the Little Man's coffin was removed to a gold and black funeral gondola, heaped with orchids and roses and palm branches, and, followed by other gondolas carrying the statues of the angels now mounted on the tomb and all the thousands of L'Omino's admirers and lovers, brought across the Laguna Morta to this island, the church here draped that day in black and silver and bearing, freshly engraved on the cloister gateway under Saint Michael and the dragon, where it could be seen still, another of L'Omino's immortal lines: "While the world sleeps, I sleep never."
"I-I never realized," the old scholar stammered, filling the momentary silence, "he was so-so-so "
"Loved? Oh yes, but it's not what I brought you here to show you," Eugenio replied with a sly vulnerable smile. "Lift him over here," he instructed the servants and, crossing himself as he passed the tomb and genuflecting gently, he led them to the naked angel, stage right, poised balletically on one foot as though in imitation of the beautiful angel in blue on the Pala d'Oro. "Look, Pini. Do you recognize him?"
Not exactly an angel after all, he noted, for it had a little inch-long uncircumcised penis and two tiny testicles like polished glass marbles which Eugenio now fingered affectionately. "I-I'm not sure The, uh, face "
"Yes, you have guessed it," Eugenio groaned, leaning his head almost shyly against the angel's pale thigh. "It is I, as I was, when L'Omino first loved me." He ran his finger in little loops through the artfully scrolled pubic hair, traced the contours of the childish abdomen, poked the tip of his finger into the deep navel. Yes, that's right, the creature also had a navel. "Now now it sticks out like like a little clitoris," Eugenio confessed, touching his own round tummy. He tried lamely to laugh through the tears that were now streaming down his cheeks. It's true, the professor thought, squinting up at the marble face with its pursed bow-shaped lips, its long-lashed eyes and flowing locks, it did quite resemble the Eugenio he once had known, and in particular - perhaps in part it was the ghastly pallor of the stone, or maybe the halo, tipped back like a cockily worn school cap, the wings attached to the shoulders like bulky bookbags - that Eugenio who lay sprawled on the beach that dreadful day, seemingly dead or dying after being struck down by the math book; but at the same time this was a different Eug
enio, a more mature one to be sure, a more intense and self-assured one than the boy he had known, but also (he was gazing up at the eyes now, eyes not unlike those he had seen in certain paintings as the light of the Renaissance dimmed) one clearly in touch with the nuances and deceptions of power and exchange, one who had already come to know pleasures and the pitfalls of pleasure and who had ceased to search for something that could not be found, one privy - like an angel, one might say - to the world's bleakest secrets and embracing them
The living Eugenio, the short butterball one with the fat crinkly face and slicked-back hair, was running one thick bejeweled hand up a taut thigh, hugging it to him, while caressing the marble buttocks, their luster attesting to the frequency of such devotions, with the other. "Ah, che culo!" he exclaimed throatily, covering it suddenly with passionate kisses and wetting it with his freely flowing tears. "How I wish now, Pini," he blubbered, "I could fuck myself as I - choke - was then!" He bawled there for a moment, cheek to cheek, his arms around the statue's hips, and then, when he could, he gasped: "You see, dear friend, that sweet bottom won L'Omino's heart, and - sob! - changed my life forever! It made me, fundamentally, in a word, what I am today! Che culo, we say: what luck, eh! And it gave good value. He beat it, bit it, slapped and tickled it, slept on it, sat on it, used it as a canvas, a pincushion, a footstool, a musical instrument, ate his supper off it, whispered his most intimate secrets to it and, as you might say, wrote his will on it. By the time its glory had begun to sag, L'Omino was dead and it was I who was choosing favorites "