(1991) Pinocchio in Venice

  "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

  Ah! The thought alarms him, waking him from the stupor into which, like this lagoon city, he had been irretrievably sinking. Is it possible? "My friends!" he croaks weakly. "Come back!"

  But Lelio has already reached for a fat cluster of coins. There is a blinding flash as the unfortunate puppet goes up in flames, the tree disappears, and in its place, aglow in the pale blue light, stands a small tombstone with an inscription carved on it. Even before poor Lelio's ashes have settled, the puppets are back in the bobbing gondolas and grabbing madly at their oars, having lost half their plunder in the frantic reboarding.

  "Wait!" whispers the former scholar, unable, even in such extremity, to break old habits. "Brighella -?"

  "No way, old friend! Did you see that?! We have to get our lumbar regions out of here!"

  "Please " If there is something to be read, he cannot but, fearful of missing a message, the message, read it. "That may be for me "

  Violent arguments break out among the frightened puppets and there is talk of abandoning him there with Lelio's ashes, but finally, Captain Spavento threatening to slice up anyone who disagrees into cheeseboards and drink coasters, his oldest friends prevail and he gets his way: they use his gondola chair as a makeshift portantina and, slapping sullenly back up the half-submerged watersteps, carry him in it to the center of the small campo. Afraid to stay alone back in the gondolas, the entire company joins them there, gathering in a tight little cluster behind him, staying close to the church as though for protection, muttering about the need to keep moving before the madama catches up with them and complaining about the sudden deadly chill in the air.

  He leans forward and squints his eyes, but either the light is too dim or else too radiant. He can see the letters but he cannot make them out. "Come on, come on, old vice! Get on with it!" complains Diamantina, glancing apprehensively over her shoulder, then, with a demonstratively impatient grunt, she stoops down and, peering close, reads it out for him: " 'I shall forgive you this once more,' it says, 'but woe betide you if ever again you are you are ' There's moss or dirt or some kind of shit growing there, I can't read it. It looks like 'nauseous,' 'if ever again you are nauseous,' but " She reaches forward to rub away the dirt.

  "No!" he squawks. "It says 'naughty!' Don't touch it -!"

  Too late. There is another flash as Diamantina flares up and, along with the tombstone, vanishes, leaving only a sooty smudge on the cracked flagstone. At the same moment, the church doors behind them open slowly as though by themselves and a thick creamy light, faintly rose-hued, flows out into the campo, accompanied by a strange ethereal music which might be harp music played on an organ, or else organ music played on a flute and theorbo. Or more likely none of these things, instrumentation having nothing to do with it. He sits alone in the light and music, of course; the puppets are all back in the gondolas once more, frantically preparing to push off from the steps and head with all haste for the high seas. "Stop! We forgot old Pinocchio!"

  "We can't stop, Colombina! The curtain is down on this horror show!"

  "But -!"

  "Leave him! Think of him like a dropped cue! A line that got stepped on! Tough, but that's showbiz!"

  "It was his fault anyway! Come on! Let's blow this mud-hole!" The beautiful inlaid marble walls now glow like alabaster lit from within and, above him, colored lights flicker and dance teasingly from window to window. The center of the lustrous façade is creased at the navel by a dark shadowy cross, and he sees now that the dazzling entranceway below it is bearded in a spiky blue moss, the Virgin's glistening white head peeking out overhead as though to inquire who might have put their foot in the door. He knows where he is. He has been here before. It is the little white house. The same one he saw between the Fairy's legs all those years ago.

  "But we can't just leave him there, not Pinocchio," he hears Colombina protesting, and, in spite of a lot of short-tempered growling, there eventually seems to be general agreement about that, though less a consensus about who would go pick him up and bring him back. Finally, by offering up her share of the booty, she is able to persuade five others to come with her, the six of them creeping up on tiptoes, doubled over like chicken thieves, peeping up uneasily from under their lowered hat brims at the transformed church.

  "These fucking miracle marts give me the creeps!"

  "Eat me, drink me - they're like a fast food chain for vampires and cannibals!"

  "Last time I played one of these houses, they called me Perverse Doctrine. Must've been centuries ago. Worst beating I ever got!"

  "You'll get worse if you don't move your stumps! Grab the old board up and let's go!"

  "No, no! Not that way!" he begs as they pull on his chair. "I want to go in there! I must go in there!"

  "Now, now, dear Pinocchio," counsels Colombina, leaning close to his earhole, then speaking as to a deaf person, "as your best friend, let me give you some advice. It is very late, the night is dark, and we're up to our mildewed bungholes in death and danger as it is! We've already lost poor Lelio and Diamantina tonight. And the law's right behind us! Things are bad enough, as the saying goes, so don't blow on the fire!"

  "Yes, you are my best friend, Colombina," he replies with his dry cracked voice. "I have almost no one left but you. If you don't help me, I-I don't know what I'll do!"

  "But, Pinocchio, my love, this is crazy! Do you remember what our dear late lamented Arlecchino used to say? 'What do you gain by hanging yourself?' he used to say. 'Does that put any flesh on your bones? It does not, it makes you thinner!' Now, for goodness' sake, or at least for
your own, and for mine, too, if you love me, be sensible! Come with us while there is still time!"

  "Please! Just take me inside. I can't get there by myself. Then you can go."

  "Go? But aren't you coming with us?"

  "I-I don't know."

  "Ahi, my dear Pinocchio, you are impossible!" she cries.

  "Perhaps we could just toss the old cazzo inside on the count of three and make a run for it -?" Pierotto suggests.

  "Or maybe we could nail a couple of those fancy crosses we stole to what's left of his knees and he could toddle on in on his own," says another.

  "Bad luck," mutters Brighella. "We've your nut for a hammer, but we're fresh out of nails."

  "No, if we're going to do it, let's at least show some style, let's go clean - like they say in the trade: if you slip in the shit, make a dance out of it!" Colombina insists, and, with an exasperated sigh, the six of them lift his gondola chair in unison like grim-faced pallbearers, sharing out not the weight, little of that that there is, but the dread. The other Burattini, being old troupers after all and superstitious about splitting up an act, reluctantly pile out of the gondolas yet again and join them, huddling closely, for their collective entrance.

  "Mamma mia! Is this dumb, or what?"

  "We must all be out of our waterlogged gourds!"

  "Look at those crazy lights playing around up there! It's like some kind of Grand Opening!"

  "Yeah, well, just so what gets opened isn't me!"

  "This church, is it is it used for last rites?" he asks faintly.

  "No, never. Lust rites, more like. It's a wedding chapel."

  "The brides are off-loaded from those steps out there."

  "The only things that get buried here, old chum, are little birds in ripe figs."

  "Ah "

  "But never so deep they can't be made to rise and sing again."

  "And again."

  "This is the only shaman shed in town where the Second Coming is not sufficient cause for celebration."

  "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.

  MAMMA

  29. EXIT

  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!"

  Th
e 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 -!

  The crescendoing sobs are interrupted by a sudden bang as the bubble explodes like a firecracker, splattering the faces of the Madonna and Child, and indeed some of the painting's fiery background as well, with pink bubble gum. A breathless quivering hush seems to grip the little wedding chapel. Even the music has stopped. The Virgin, blinking through the impasto of gum as though through thrown pie, pushes her hand deep into her son's body, then pokes out the eyes from within, waggling two long rosy fingers at her awestruck audience like insect feelers. Her own mouth gapes, webbed by moist streaks of gum, and the damp windy voice wails: "Birba d'un burattino! Are you not afraid to die?"