"Word! Hee hee hee!" Hee hee hee!"

"You two seem cheerful enough," gasps the b.u.t.t of their badinage in his transfixed pain, beginning to worry that the movie of his life might suddenly have turned into a doc.u.mentary.

"Enh," shrugs the Fox, as best, in her own pinned state, she can shrug, "you get used to everything in this world, professore, familiarity breeds consent, as the saying goes, though I do miss being able, what with all my blebs and buboes, to scratch my tormented old a.r.s.e. If perhaps you have a hand free -"

"Don't even listen to those bandits, Pinocchio!" warns a voice at his back. He twists around to seek out the source, but there is no one back there, just empty s.p.a.ce, blue, vast, and inscrutable. "If you lend those scoundrels a hand, they'll steal it!"

"Cross words," grumbles La Volpe sardonically, resolving the puzzle.

"Words!" repeats Il Gatto, sn.i.g.g.e.ring hysterically into his empty cuff. repeats Il Gatto, sn.i.g.g.e.ring hysterically into his empty cuff.

"Avoid evil companions, my boy, or you'll be sorry!"

"How could I be sorrier than I already am?" he groans, his wounds stretching as, losing strength, he slumps lower.

"You could be," replies the cross with a tremulous sigh, "like me."

"Ah well. As to that, there was a time when -"

"I know, I know, they send us dossiers, resumes, we get the publicity handouts. You're a famous case, a model for us all, you've - if you'll pardon the expression - crossed over. This is a big honor for me, I know that, I've got the star of the dance, top billing, I shouldn't complain. But do you remember what it was like before? Do you remember how it felt felt to be a piece of talking wood?" to be a piece of talking wood?"

So long ago. A time of darkness. He was innocent then. And innocence, as his long life has taught him, is a form of naughtiness. Yet! "I had! no pain! no fear! I was free!"

"Free to get used for a chair leg or a clapboard! Free to soak, rot, and burn! Free to get chopped, hacked, whittled, split, and pulped! Hey, look at me! A tree made out of a tree! A joke! They gave me arms, I can't use them. Am I mad? h.e.l.l, I'm cross as two sticks, that's what the children say, but I don't know what 'mad' is, I don't know 'cross.' 'Pain,' you say, 'fear': it all sounds like magic to me - or it would, if I knew what magic was. I even envy that old Fox over there with her itches and scratches - I say, 'her,' but what do I know, right? I don't know 'knowing'! 'knowing'! While you, you've had a life! You've had While you, you've had a life! You've had everything!" everything!"

"You don't don't know. Men's lives are short and stupid." know. Men's lives are short and stupid."

"Stupid? You tell me stupid? What's two and two, you ask. I don't know. I don't know what's two! two! But But you you know, you're smart, you've got brains, whatever they are. You've got - I don't know, I can only imagine - which is difficult, I don't even have an imagination - but what? You've got charm, right? Dignity. Serenity. You've got - correct me if I'm wrong - hauteur, glamour, cla.s.s, talent - how'm I doing? - dash and daring. And tenderness. Smoothness. Authority. Have I got the picture?" know, you're smart, you've got brains, whatever they are. You've got - I don't know, I can only imagine - which is difficult, I don't even have an imagination - but what? You've got charm, right? Dignity. Serenity. You've got - correct me if I'm wrong - hauteur, glamour, cla.s.s, talent - how'm I doing? - dash and daring. And tenderness. Smoothness. Authority. Have I got the picture?"

"Well, I guess so - but how did you -?"

"I read it on a movie poster."

"You did?"

"You caught me. I'm lying. I can't read. I'm dumb as a stump, I'm thick as a plank, I'll never make my mark, or any other. Oh, I wasn't born yesterday, but that's just it. I wasn't born at all. Not like you, Mr. Star of the Dance! And I can't take steps to do anything about it, I can't keep my nose to the grindstone or listen to reason or kick the problem around, so what chance have I got? I'd be down in the mouth about it if I had a mouth. I can't even put my foot in it. I can't show my hand or beat around the bush or face the music. I don't even know where it is, the music, I mean, or the bush either, I'm too stupid. If I had a heart, I'd be wearing it on my sleeve, if I had a sleeve. So what have I got? A routine. A lumber number. A dumb show, a curtain dropper, an act with nails, halfway between a hanky twister and a creepie. But I'm a pro, a reliable standby, an understud, a support who never lets you down, I'm an old hand who hasn't even got one. People like to wear me on their chests. I'm vaguely s.e.xy. I have a good silhouette. I stick out, as you might say. And I stick it it out. I'm solid, I'm always there. And we're not talking lifetimes here, are we, we're not talking mere centuries - out. I'm solid, I'm always there. And we're not talking lifetimes here, are we, we're not talking mere centuries - you you remember!" But maybe he doesn't. The old boy seems to be hanging lower, his head drooping as if sniffing his armpits. "But you know what?" he whispers down his nape. "I like the blood! I soak it up! I can't get enough of it! I think: this must be what 'tasting's' like. Am I right? This must be 'appet.i.te.' I like the writhing and the sweat: it oils me up. And I like remember!" But maybe he doesn't. The old boy seems to be hanging lower, his head drooping as if sniffing his armpits. "But you know what?" he whispers down his nape. "I like the blood! I soak it up! I can't get enough of it! I think: this must be what 'tasting's' like. Am I right? This must be 'appet.i.te.' I like the writhing and the sweat: it oils me up. And I like the crowds!" the crowds!"

"Why are you telling me all this?" gasps the dying figure pinned to his crossbeam. The wretch seems to have gotten thicker and hairier, as though death were filling him up and leaking out in coa.r.s.e filaments at all the pores. Below, he can feel a tail curling around his upright where the feet are nailed. There is a bad smell. "We were such good friends! We had such wonderful adventures! I showed you how I could pee longer than anybody. We used to make bets with the other boys. You showed me how your nose could grow!"

"What -?! Lampwick? Is it you -?!" The miserable creature lifts its long ears feebly, then drops them again. "Oh no!" He tries to throw his arms around his long-lost friend, but he cannot move them. "Lampwick!"

"And now! you're leaving me! hee haw!! to die alone!"

"I'm not leaving you, Lampwick! I'm here! I'll stay human! I promise!" But even as he protests, he can feel the place where they've nailed the charge twitch and stretch. A darkness is spreading everywhere like the darkness of unknowing. The sun seems to be falling from the sky. "Don't die, Lampwick! Don't die -!"

"Goodbye, Pinocchio!!"

"No -!" He struggles against the rigidity of his wooden arms to embrace the dying donkey, no matter what the consequences. All his heart is in it. He He struggles against the rigidity of his wooden arms to embrace the dying donkey, no matter what the consequences. All his heart is in it. He has has a heart. He has a heart. He has always always had a heart. And now he is straining it to the breaking point. He can feel the creaking and bending, the terrible splintering within. "Lampwick -?" And then the sky seems to tear like a curtain, there is a great roar (it is in his own throat), and he awakes to find himself grappling through his twisted blanket with Alidoro, his nose buried in the old mastiff's filthy coat, and bawling like a lost lamb. had a heart. And now he is straining it to the breaking point. He can feel the creaking and bending, the terrible splintering within. "Lampwick -?" And then the sky seems to tear like a curtain, there is a great roar (it is in his own throat), and he awakes to find himself grappling through his twisted blanket with Alidoro, his nose buried in the old mastiff's filthy coat, and bawling like a lost lamb.

"There, there," soothes Alidoro, breathing sleepily down his neck. He peels away the tangled blanket, then wraps him up again.

"It was Lampwick! He was dying! I could have saved him, but -!"

"It was a nightmare," says Alidoro gently, easing him back into the wood chips next to Melampetta, who watches him drowsily with one half-c.o.c.ked eye. "It's all right, old friend. Nothing you can do now!"

"No, I mean," he mumbles tearfully, curling up inside the blanket, his shoulders aching still from his recent struggle, "I could have saved him when he! when he died the first time!" Gripped by this painful truth, una.s.suaged by all the intervening decades, the old professor snuggles down between his two companions, closes his eyes once more and, with the kind of diligence he once applied to scholarship and basket weaving, chooses to dream that, while his colleagues sit behind him on the stage, gravely exhibiting their noses, he is giving a ceremonial address to the American Academy of Arts and Letters on the uses, proper and improper, of somatic metaphor, a dream which is, he recognizes, even as he embraces it, a dream of, a surrender to, oblivion!

A BITTER DAY.

9. THE DEVIL'S FLOUR.

"Impossible really," he says, describing for Melampetta the film studio's futile attempts to cast the part of the Blue-Haired Fairy, "like a painter trying to paint the color of air, or a composer reaching for the sound of grace -"

"Yes, or a theologian trying to imagine the taste of manna, which has been likened severally unto angel breath, Orphic eggs, the froth on a virgin's milk, pressed mistletoe, dream jelly, lingam dew, fairy pee, the alchemical Powder of Projection, and the excreta of greenflies on tamarisk leaves. I know what you mean. It's like going after the ineffable with a b.u.t.terfly net, or trying to catch time in a teaspoon. Or, as the immortal Immaculate Kunt once said, in an attempt to describe by way of the practical reason the odor of sanct.i.ty: 'Toe-cheese is only the half of it.' "

"That's right, there are approximations, metaphors, allusions - but nothing close to the real thing." The aged professor emeritus, sipping his coffee and staring out quite blissfully on the little boatyard, blanketed this morning in newly fallen - and falling - snow, muses in this oblique manner upon reality and illusion, pursuing his own themes, as it were, even as the watchdog's salacious appet.i.te for gossip seeks to deflect him from them. The front of the boat yard slopes down from the sheds to the ca.n.a.l like a beach, now completely white except for a few dog tracks and a yellow patch or two, and, though it's no bigger than a Boston back garden, its covelike nature takes him back to California and his once-upon-a-time pa.s.sage through Filmland, where the two concepts in question - reality, illusion - were truly inseparable: even he could no longer tell them apart, and so he nearly lost his way again. "Finally they gave the role to a blond ingenue who looked like a highschool cheerleader from Iowa dressed up for the junior prom. She wore lipstick and blue eyeshade and plucked her eyebrows. Her complexion was nice, though I happen to know she had pimples back where her swimsuit covered them. And she refused to dye her hair blue, so they put her in a kind of slinky blue nightgown and shortened her name to the Blue Fairy. Instead of living in the forest in the house of the dead, she presumably came from some distant star as an answer to my father's wish - my father, who might have wished for the cheerleader, had he known about such beings, but never for a fairy or even, for that matter, a talking puppet. He always called me his 'little accident.' "

"Ah, povero Pinocchiolino!"

"She even wore one of those painted barrettes from the five-and-ten that were popular at that time, and gauzy wings like a mosquito or a blowfly. But they did me a favor, for it was this outrageous distortion of the truth, this callous misrepresentation of the very being to whom I had dedicated my entire life, that finally shook me out of my! my iniquitous indolence!" It is the indolence, of course, the iniquity, the outrage, that Melampetta has wanted to hear about. That's how it always is, he thinks, sipping his coffee while Melampetta trots to the edge of their little shelter to bark at a lone pa.s.serby on the bridge. A lifetime of scholarly diligence, of heroic integrity and self-discipline and an intransigent commitment to the loftiest of ideals, and what people always ask him about is the fun he had when he was naughty!

"So this Pimply Blue-Bottomed Fairy, I take it," rumbles the watchdog, stepping back in under the corrugated tin roof and shaking her coat, "was set up as a kind of synthetic milk-fed avatar of the Blessed Virgin, as she's called between theopathic farts at the Pope's table, who granted a pithless old carpenter his wish, in effect, to whelp without having to go through labor pains -?"

"You could say so, Melampetta. According to the script, she first brought the wood to life, then, after all the entertaining sin-and-redemption rituals, she changed the wood to flesh, more as a part of Geppetto's dream than my own, since the movie suggested I was more or less dead by then, or at the very least hopelessly waterlogged. When I pointed out to the director that I'd been a talking puppet for ages before I'd ever met the Blue-Haired Fairy, he said that was interesting but he couldn't use it!"

He is pleased to be talking about the Fairy, even if this is not devil's flour exactly the approach he might have chosen, for his mind this raw and bl.u.s.tery Venetian morning is very much upon her. Having thought he'd lost her forever, he has her back again. In a manner of speaking. For he has awakened not only to hot coffee and a roaring fire (friends from the post office have dropped off a few bags of backlogged mail, Melampetta explained cheerfully, feeding the rusty oil drum appropriately through a tattered hole in the side), but also to the heartening news that his luggage has been found, Alidoro having already left for the police station to reclaim it. Soon he will have a fresh change of clothes, his own toothbrush and deodorant and mouthwash, money with which to procure a real hotel room with a real bath, his medicines and hair restoration elixir and linseed oil, his pa.s.sport and credit cards, his scented handkerchiefs, his certificates and awards, his foot snuggies, and above all, in its manifold forms, his invaluable Mamma Mamma papers, the loss of which last night had seemed to him worse than the loss of life itself. The morning, as they say here, truly has gold in its mouth! papers, the loss of which last night had seemed to him worse than the loss of life itself. The morning, as they say here, truly has gold in its mouth!

Indeed, he was rather surprised to find himself awakening to a new day at all, having supposed last night to be his last, whether as a victim and outcast, as he had feared at first, or, later, as an old companion being prepared lovingly, if humiliatingly, for burial. He had slept so hard he was certain that his sleep had been dreamless, but Melampetta a.s.sured him he had wept and laughed aloud more than once during the night, and on one occasion had opened his mouth very wide and from somewhere deep in his stomach had announced very clearly: "We are all dead!" "We are all dead!" He wasn't even sure, when he came to, if it was the next morning or several days later, or even some other time and place altogether, his arrival in Venice having seemed more nightmarishly unreal to him just at that moment than anything that might have happened in dreams. He reared up and would have cried out, but, bound tightly in the stolen police blanket, and with a fire blazing away somewhere nearby, he was afraid that he might be a prisoner again like the time he was caught and nearly fried by the Green Fisherman, a fear reinforced by the floury dusting of white snow all about. He wasn't even sure, when he came to, if it was the next morning or several days later, or even some other time and place altogether, his arrival in Venice having seemed more nightmarishly unreal to him just at that moment than anything that might have happened in dreams. He reared up and would have cried out, but, bound tightly in the stolen police blanket, and with a fire blazing away somewhere nearby, he was afraid that he might be a prisoner again like the time he was caught and nearly fried by the Green Fisherman, a fear reinforced by the floury dusting of white snow all about.

"Aha! Sleeping Beauty blooms at last!" Melampetta barked out delightedly on seeing him start up in such alarm. "What a rising you make! Like the white goose's son, as the expression goes, beak and all! You've really been sawing wood, compagno, if you don't mind my saying so, you've been sleeping like a little log! Like a top! You were hitting the knots! Caulked off! You were like the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus all rolled into one and stretched out serially! It's nearly noon! You've missed all the news!"

"I never closed my eyes," the old traveler grumbled then, falling back again. He saw he'd been sleeping in sawdust and wood chips, which reminded him, under the influence of Melampetta's terrible puns, of his own mortality. Like a human sleeping in hair and bones. "What day is it? What year?"

"It's the day they found your luggage," she replied. Which sat him up again of course, this time with a shout, his weathered face split with a smile. "It's down at the Questura, and so is Alidoro. He'll be back soon. Now, meanwhile, dear friend, let's establish a few first principles, as the Holy Peripatetics used to call those morning rations of beer and porridge that preceded all their Olympian endeavors." And, tail wagging generously, she brought him over warm bread, coffee, and a thick chunk of unsliced prosciutto that still bore a dog's toothmarks. It was delicious. He was suddenly ravenous. "Lido went out and picked that up for you before he went for the bags, though don't ask where or how, for as they say in the Lord's Prayer, 'Give us each our daily bread, or else by the verminous ballocks of all the cardinals in h.e.l.l, we'll take it.' Poor old fellow, his tail-stub's really drooping this morning. You were pretty restless, you know, thrashing about, yowling in your sleep, wheezing and snorting - the mangy old eyesore was up all night with you, he's had no sleep at all."

"I'm sorry!"

"At one point you got free of your blanket somehow and stood up, naked as a worm in the winter storm, and rendered a fair approximation of the Sermon on the Mount, blessing the weepers and winegrowers, throwing pearls to the dogs, thank you very much, doing unto thieves and profligates as they would do unto you, honking your nose, turning your cheeks, unfolding your throat, and swearing against oaths and blind men, salting the lilies of the field from your peehole, prophesying against the foundations of the city which you said were of rusty unleavened sand, giving advice on how to stay out of the hands of the carabinieri, Romans, and other footstools of iniquity, plucking logs out of eyes and thistles out of figs and proverbs out of the air like Simon Magus himself conjuring up heresies. And all of it at full split, you were really telling it big! A logomaniac of the first water! Where did you learn to speechify like that?"

"I don't know. I can't recall when I wasn't speaking. I was speaking before I was born!"

"It took both Alidoro and me to wrestle you back into your blanket again, you were really making fire and flames, you were climbing on all the furies, outside yourself, a devil in each hair, as one could say if you had any. You kept screaming something about rusty nails, hairy a.s.ses, and the forbidden fruits of firewood - what did you mean by all that?"

"I don't remember!"

"And your mamma, as you called her, was in it, too."

"She always is!" Last night, by the light of the fire, he'd thought the old watchdog quite beautiful. Now, by the harsher light of day, he could see she was a rather stubby and jowly old crossbreed with droopy ears and thick matted hair, mostly white - off-white - with a black Rin-Tin-Tin patch over one eye that made her face look hollowed out on that side. Nevertheless, he felt comfortable around her, he felt she was someone he could open his heart to, so, though he might have preferred to talk about his life as an art critic, philosopher, and theologian, and to discuss with her such topics as his concept of "I-ness," his definition of the soul, and his views on reality and illusion, beauty (the only form of the spiritual we can receive through the senses, as he has often declared), nasology, and the veracity principle, he did not really object now when she led him back, by way of things he had supposedly said in his sleep last night ("You kept crying for her floppies, it was some kind of mad infatuation, you said, and there was something about a missing hard d.i.c.k!"), to his final crisis with the Blue-Haired Fairy and his sudden flight, a central theme after all of his work-now-once-more-in-progress, to Hollywood. Indeed, he would probably, if he had his computer here already, and if there were an electrical outlet he could trust, be taking notes!

"They asked me out there to be an advisor to a film they were making about me, based on one of my early books. I knew better of course, even then the place was notorious for its venal disregard for the truth, but they caught me at a weak moment, and I decided to go. I thought that maybe if I got away from this place, I could get away, finally, from her. From her and all her tombstones. At least long enough to think things out. Get a new perspective. And it did seem different over there somehow!" All those starlets, the auditions, they all wanted to take him home and play with him. There were beach parties and drunken nights by orchid-strewn swimming pools and wild drives to Mexico. They taught him how to mix American c.o.c.ktails and drink champagne by the slipperful, though it tended to run straight through him, even as a human. They asked him to unzip their evening gowns. He lit their cigarettes for them. They cradled him in their arms and let him suck their pillowy b.r.e.a.s.t.s. They used him as a kind of bathtub toy. He was in all the gossip columns. Indeed, only his ignorance of his own anatomy saved him from fatal mistakes out there. He kept trying, at their urging, to put his p.e.n.i.s p.e.n.i.s in them, and it wouldn't go. It was more like a limp faucet. "It even in them, and it wouldn't go. It was more like a limp faucet. "It even looked looked like a faucet, my putative father's putative sense of puttanaio humor no doubt." The girls all thought it was cute. Only later did it suddenly occur to him! "But then the fights at the studio began!" The scriptwriters and storyboard people changed everything of course. The producers insisted on it. There were reasons: the need for metaphoric coherence and condensation, the temporal and technical limitations of the medium, the metaphysical riddle of the frame itself, the alleged infantilism of the American public, studio contracts with actors and artists, a growing dissatisfaction with Fascist Italy and with theology in general, the tight shooting schedule. "But the main points were there, I felt, even if the Americans did confuse beer and billiards with sin, redemption with technological ingenuity. And if they'd turned my heavy-handed ill-tempered father into a cuddly old feeble-minded saint, well, as I once said about your great-grandsire, Melampetta, the dead are the dead, and the best thing is to leave them in peace. And meanwhile I was the toast of the town, my face, as Jiminy said, on everybody's tongue, I was having too much fun really to argue about anything, doing interviews, judging bathing-beauty contests, turning up at premieres in the arms of the stars, trying to make my faucet work. So I took the money they threw at me, told them the truth whether they wanted to hear it or not, because what else could I do, and otherwise stayed away from the lot. Until it came to the Blue-Haired Fairy. There, finally, was the sticking-point." like a faucet, my putative father's putative sense of puttanaio humor no doubt." The girls all thought it was cute. Only later did it suddenly occur to him! "But then the fights at the studio began!" The scriptwriters and storyboard people changed everything of course. The producers insisted on it. There were reasons: the need for metaphoric coherence and condensation, the temporal and technical limitations of the medium, the metaphysical riddle of the frame itself, the alleged infantilism of the American public, studio contracts with actors and artists, a growing dissatisfaction with Fascist Italy and with theology in general, the tight shooting schedule. "But the main points were there, I felt, even if the Americans did confuse beer and billiards with sin, redemption with technological ingenuity. And if they'd turned my heavy-handed ill-tempered father into a cuddly old feeble-minded saint, well, as I once said about your great-grandsire, Melampetta, the dead are the dead, and the best thing is to leave them in peace. And meanwhile I was the toast of the town, my face, as Jiminy said, on everybody's tongue, I was having too much fun really to argue about anything, doing interviews, judging bathing-beauty contests, turning up at premieres in the arms of the stars, trying to make my faucet work. So I took the money they threw at me, told them the truth whether they wanted to hear it or not, because what else could I do, and otherwise stayed away from the lot. Until it came to the Blue-Haired Fairy. There, finally, was the sticking-point."

"So she found you after all."

"She'd never lost me!" Even if he'd nearly lost himself. She was everywhere now, he'd realized, vast and immediate as the ocean outside his Malibu window or the blue sky overhead. The house he'd returned to after rescuing his father from the belly of the monster fish - her her house, though the Talking Cricket claimed he'd got it from the blue-haired goat - had expanded to become the entire universe. He'd been a fool to think he could get away! house, though the Talking Cricket claimed he'd got it from the blue-haired goat - had expanded to become the entire universe. He'd been a fool to think he could get away!

"Yet last night you said," she says, bringing over his washed underclothes and suit, and helping him out of his coc.o.o.n of blanket, "that without you she wouldn't even exist."

"It's our own creations that most possess us," he replies, pleased to be able to quote himself again, and thus, as it were, to clothe in some fashion his naked decrepitude.

"Yes, true, like blind Father Didymus in the demonic grip of the Holy Trinity, or poor old Pope Innocent the Eighth, who, populating h.e.l.l for the faithful, found himself nightly in the fiends' amorous clutches, a consequence, I take it, you have not suffered!?"

"Not! not in that sense, no, I have never, so far as I know," he says, choosing his words carefully (his underwear is fresh and crisp, but his suit seems to have shrunk and is pocked, as though in imitation of his diseased flesh, with burn holes), "seen her again. Not since the night I! I became a boy!" He scrubs his itchy nose, holds his suit up to the dull light of the snowy day. "But what -?"

"Sorry about that. Must have been cheap material, dear friend - old sheep's hair of some kind, I suspect. I put it to dry on the barrel last night and it couldn't take the heat. I don't have much else to -"

"It's all right," he says, feeling very generous this glittery morning. "I've gotten by with less. There was a time when I had nothing better than wallpaper or a beanbag to wear, and stale bread on my head. And anyway I still have the overcoat."

"Yes, well, most of it! But wait!" She raises her snout to the air and sniffs expectantly, then barks: "Here comes Alidoro!" "Here comes Alidoro!"

"Ah, n.o.ble friend!" the grateful professor cries, stumbling forward, tears in his eyes, to embrace the great mastiff as he comes lumbering into the boatyard. "You have saved my life - again! And my life's work! How can I ever thank you? How can the world world thank you?!" Lido does not immediately return his embrace. His old eyes droop rheumily. What -? A chill runs through the old scholar. He staggers back. "Is something -? Were the bags thank you?!" Lido does not immediately return his embrace. His old eyes droop rheumily. What -? A chill runs through the old scholar. He staggers back. "Is something -? Were the bags not not found? Were they someone else's -?!" found? Were they someone else's -?!"

"No, they're there. They're yours, all right -"

"Well, then, it's time for celebrations! Dinner tonight! At my hotel! With champagne! Cream puffs and panettoni! Tiramisu! Grappa from the last century! We'll have a week of Sat.u.r.days! Christmas and Carnival, all at once! For you, Melampetta, those shawls and baubles you've been wanting! For you, Alidoro, my most precious friend, the world!" the world!"

"The bags are yours," growls the old mastiff when he's able, "but they're empty."

"Empty -?"

"Ah," whispers Melampetta softly, tossing some more letters into the fire, "it rains on the a.r.s.e of the unlucky, even when they are sitting on it!"

"Nothing in them but one sheet of paper."

"One sheet -?" he squeaks, beginning to choke up. "From all my work, just one sheet? But which -?" Lido hands it to him. There are three proverbs scrawled on it. Stolen money never bears fruit. The devil's flour is all bran. He who steals his neighbor's cloak ends his life without a shirt. He recognizes them. The last time he'd seen La Volpe and her stupid companion before last night was nearly a century ago. They were ragged then, maimed and dest.i.tute, begging out of need, not knavery, though it was only what they deserved, and so, his own conversion by then complete, he'd sent them both to h.e.l.l: "Addio, mascherine!" "Addio, mascherine!" he'd laughed, throwing proverbs at them like stones. And these: these were the proverbs. "Scoundrels!" he hisses. He is trembling from head to foot. "Villains! he'd laughed, throwing proverbs at them like stones. And these: these were the proverbs. "Scoundrels!" he hisses. He is trembling from head to foot. "Villains! Thieving treacherous fiends! Murderers! a.s.sa.s.sINS!" Thieving treacherous fiends! Murderers! a.s.sa.s.sINS!" He finds himself beating wildly on Alidoro's chest. He clutches his head, which seems about to burst. They can't He finds himself beating wildly on Alidoro's chest. He clutches his head, which seems about to burst. They can't do do this! Not to him! Don't they know who -? But what -? What's this -?! this! Not to him! Don't they know who -? But what -? What's this -?! There's nothing on the right side of his head! There's nothing on the right side of his head! "My ear! "My ear! What's happened to my ear What's happened to my ear - -?!"

Melampetta, head ducked, tail curled between her legs, glances devil's flour sideways at Alidoro as though she might have just eaten a chicken. "Last night," she says meekly, "when we were trying to get you back into your blanket, it! it came off."

"What -?! My ear -?!"

"Don't worry, we saved it!"

"You knocked my ear off, you stupid animals -?! You s...o...b..red all over me, you burned my clothes up, you made me sleep in all this filth, and then, on top of it all, you knocked my ear ear off -?!" off -?!"

"Actually, it sort of fell off by itself!"

"Listen, my friend, you can stay here another night," suggests Alidoro. "The owners won't be back till the snow's gone, and Mela won't mind. Until we can -"

"Here -?! In this pestilent flyblown dunghill of a kennel? This loathsome flea farm, this squalid, stinking -?"

"You and Mela can talk. You know, about serious things. Meanwhile I'll go back and see if -"

"Talk?" he screams, his rage exploding. "With this dumb mutt, this illiterate foul-mouthed r.e.t.a.r.d? Listen to her preposterous idiocies another whole night? Are you crazy, crazy, you stupid mongrel, I'd rather you stupid mongrel, I'd rather die!" die!"

Alidoro, who has slumped to his haunches, now lowers his jaws and gazes mournfully up at him from between his paws. "For charity, vecchio -!" he rumbles softly under his breath. Melampetta stares at him a moment as though trying to see through the holes in his suit. There is a brief dreadful silence. Then she lifts her snout, closes her eyes, and commences to howl pathetically.

Oh no. What has he done? What has he said?

"My! my friends! Oh, my friends, forgive me!" forgive me!"

He rushes over, tearfully, to embrace them. Alidoro buries his nose deeper, Melampetta howls all the louder. All over Venice he seems to hear dogs howling. "Oh please! I'm just upset! Can't you see? It's been so hard! I'm an old man! I'm at the very edge, I've nothing left!" He is weeping, sobbing, all his pain concentrated now in Melampetta's terrible howl. "Oh what a wretched fool I've been!" His knees collapse, but Alidoro reaches for him now to steady him with a gentle forepaw. "You're the dearest friends I have in the whole world! Last night was, truly, one of the most beautiful nights of my whole life! Not even the day I got my Ph.D. was as wonderful! It's true! Please, Melampetta! Don't howl like that! I'm so sorry! I love you so!" I love you so!" She releases one more anguished siren, then allows herself to be drawn into his arms. They are all hugging and licking one another now and whimpering and crying. "Oh dear sweet eloquent Melampetta! You're the greatest philosopher I've ever known!" he exclaims, then adds, to stop his nose from twitching: "In all of Venice!" They all laugh at that, and then they cry some more, and hug and kiss and promise always to be true and to help each other and not to say unkind things, and while they're all rubbed up together like that, his other ear comes off. She releases one more anguished siren, then allows herself to be drawn into his arms. They are all hugging and licking one another now and whimpering and crying. "Oh dear sweet eloquent Melampetta! You're the greatest philosopher I've ever known!" he exclaims, then adds, to stop his nose from twitching: "In all of Venice!" They all laugh at that, and then they cry some more, and hug and kiss and promise always to be true and to help each other and not to say unkind things, and while they're all rubbed up together like that, his other ear comes off.

10. THE THREE KINGDOMS.

It is all the old traveler can do, his traveling all but done, to put one benumbed foot in front of the other. It is not just the snow, blowing through the holes in his clothing and down his neck and ankles, it is not just the freezing cold snapping cruelly at his tender nose, or the pain in his elbows and locked-up wooden knees, the arduousness of the trek itself through the treacherously frosted city. It is also despair. Bleak, final, disabling. He no longer has anything left to live for. His conclusive and definitive work, his capolavoro, capolavoro, is gone forever, his life is ended. Why then must the suffering go on? "I have lived long enough," San Petrarca said. Perhaps while wandering these very streets. "If the Stage Director wants to break it off, very well." "We can but keep trying, my friend," Alidoro had insisted gruffly in a temper something between heroism and simple doggedness. "Death must find us alive." And so, without conviction, they have set out, the heartsick professor and the faithful old mastiff, bound for the Questura with the aim of providing the police with a list of the empty luggage's missing contents and perhaps a little monetary encouragement on the side ("Not for nothing is that band of shameless beggars known also as the is gone forever, his life is ended. Why then must the suffering go on? "I have lived long enough," San Petrarca said. Perhaps while wandering these very streets. "If the Stage Director wants to break it off, very well." "We can but keep trying, my friend," Alidoro had insisted gruffly in a temper something between heroism and simple doggedness. "Death must find us alive." And so, without conviction, they have set out, the heartsick professor and the faithful old mastiff, bound for the Questura with the aim of providing the police with a list of the empty luggage's missing contents and perhaps a little monetary encouragement on the side ("Not for nothing is that band of shameless beggars known also as the questua questua- the Sunday collection plate!" Melampetta had growled good-humoredly, forcing upon him the few rumpled notes she and Lido had somehow sc.r.a.ped together, stuffing them into his pockets along with his ears), but the journey is as futile, he knows, as the larger one which brought him here. Back Back here, he should say, back here to Acchiappacitrulli, the infamous snare of simpletons, Fools' Trap, city of the shorn, where he himself once played, now plays again, the b.o.o.by. here, he should say, back here to Acchiappacitrulli, the infamous snare of simpletons, Fools' Trap, city of the shorn, where he himself once played, now plays again, the b.o.o.by.

"I always thought of this as the Island of the Busy Bees," he had sighed somewhat grievously while they were bundling him up in his sc.r.a.ps and tatters of overcoat, which has the odor this morning of burnt camel dung, and Lido had replied drily: "Well, that's right, and what they're busy at, compagno, is skinning the tourists."

So he has returned, he has discovered, not only to the scene of his triumph, but to the scene of his ignominy as well, the place where all those years ago, in Acchiappacitrulli's Field of Miracles, he buried his gold coins, dreaming of orchards of tinkling money trees. He should have guessed. This infamous city of despotism and duplicity, of avarice and hypocrisy and subterfuge, this "stinking bordello," this wasps' nest of "insatiable cupidity" and "thirst for domination," as Venice's outraged neighbors once declared, this police state with the air of a robber's den, always out after its "quarter and a half-quarter" and "conspiring the ruin of everyone," this fake city built on fake pilings with its fake fronts and fake trompes l'oeil, this capital of licentiousness and murder and omnivorous greed: who else but these lagoon rats would want want the tail feathers of a poor gullible pheasant or the hair of a dumb dog? One thing, surely, can be said of all who have come to this island: whether they left wiser, wearier, happier, sadder, enchanted or enlightened, exasperated or exalted, impregnated with beauty or disease or rabid hedonism, they all left poorer. Just as the Blue-Haired Fairy ever, in her profound maternal wisdom, warned him. the tail feathers of a poor gullible pheasant or the hair of a dumb dog? One thing, surely, can be said of all who have come to this island: whether they left wiser, wearier, happier, sadder, enchanted or enlightened, exasperated or exalted, impregnated with beauty or disease or rabid hedonism, they all left poorer. Just as the Blue-Haired Fairy ever, in her profound maternal wisdom, warned him.

Yet it was for her her sake he has returned and, though deceived, he can pride himself that on this occasion his intentions at least were n.o.bler: the search, not without considerable personal sacrifice, for the consummation, as it were, of a virtuous life - and yet, and yet, he cautions himself, stumbling along, wasn't that dream of an ultimate life-defining metaphor as mad as the dream of money trees? What was he hoping for this time, another Peace Prize? Beatification? Another review that lauded his wisdom and stylistic mastery, whilst scarcely concealing an annoyed amazement that he was still alive? Another invitation to receive an honorary degree and put his nose on view? As he trudges miserably, step by leaden step, through this city of masks, its very masks masked this morning by the snow blown against its crumbling walls like the white marble faces masking Palladio's pink churches, a dazzlingly sinister mask, today's, as expressionless and macabre as the Venetian sake he has returned and, though deceived, he can pride himself that on this occasion his intentions at least were n.o.bler: the search, not without considerable personal sacrifice, for the consummation, as it were, of a virtuous life - and yet, and yet, he cautions himself, stumbling along, wasn't that dream of an ultimate life-defining metaphor as mad as the dream of money trees? What was he hoping for this time, another Peace Prize? Beatification? Another review that lauded his wisdom and stylistic mastery, whilst scarcely concealing an annoyed amazement that he was still alive? Another invitation to receive an honorary degree and put his nose on view? As he trudges miserably, step by leaden step, through this city of masks, its very masks masked this morning by the snow blown against its crumbling walls like the white marble faces masking Palladio's pink churches, a dazzlingly sinister mask, today's, as expressionless and macabre as the Venetian bauta bauta worn last night by the hotel proprietor, the worn last night by the hotel proprietor, the alleged alleged hotel proprietor (fakes within fakes, deceptions upon deceptions!), he feels the mockery cast upon his own shabby self-deceptions, the impostures and evasions, grand pretensions, the many masks he's worn - and not least that of flesh itself, now falling from him like dried-up actor's putty. Ah, he was right to come here, after all, old piece of rot-riven firewood that he is, to share his shame with the defrocked sheep and peac.o.c.ks, the wingless b.u.t.terflies and combless c.o.c.ks of Fools' Trap. hotel proprietor (fakes within fakes, deceptions upon deceptions!), he feels the mockery cast upon his own shabby self-deceptions, the impostures and evasions, grand pretensions, the many masks he's worn - and not least that of flesh itself, now falling from him like dried-up actor's putty. Ah, he was right to come here, after all, old piece of rot-riven firewood that he is, to share his shame with the defrocked sheep and peac.o.c.ks, the wingless b.u.t.terflies and combless c.o.c.ks of Fools' Trap.

As the despondent prodigal shuffles along, "carrying through," as he would say, but just barely, dragging one ill-shod foot laboriously through the snow, then, after a deliberating pause, the other, his patient companion trots back and forth, sniffing this ca.n.a.l railing, lifting his leg on that boutique wall or Carnival poster, nosing around in garbage bags and emptied crates, lapping at cast-off food wrappers and paper cups, as though to pretend that this is the unhurried way he always goes to work. The streets are empty but for a few angry red-faced women under their dark umbrellas, carried like missile shields, a midmorning drunk or two, flurries of wheeling black-faced gulls, the occasional lost tourist. The heavy metal shutters are down on most of the shops, intensifying the city's blank stare (it is this blank stare he has been feeling, this cold shoulder, this icy scorn - there are no reflections reflections today, even the ditchlike ca.n.a.ls full of dirty slate-colored water, sc.u.mmed with snow, are opaque), but from those that are open - a baker, a newsstand, a pasta maker, a toyshop and a cantina, a pizzeria - Alidoro receives and returns greetings, picking up sc.r.a.ps of this and that to nibble on which the professor in his desolation refuses. today, even the ditchlike ca.n.a.ls full of dirty slate-colored water, sc.u.mmed with snow, are opaque), but from those that are open - a baker, a newsstand, a pasta maker, a toyshop and a cantina, a pizzeria - Alidoro receives and returns greetings, picking up sc.r.a.ps of this and that to nibble on which the professor in his desolation refuses.

Once they've pa.s.sed out of earshot, Lido fills him in on the politics, in-laws, crimes, calamities, debts, spouses and lovers, foibles, fantasies, and farces of each of the shopkeepers, keeping up a steady rumble of conversation as though to stop the old professor's brain from freezing up. "Started life as a gigolo for the local contessas, that one, helped manage one of their Friends of Venice flood rescue funds, rising as you might say while the Old Queen sank, and then, when his little bird died, he retired into politics for awhile and, after the usual scandals and piracies, ended up in fashion leather, security systems, and the manufacture of decorative window boxes. Careful now, old friend, not too close to the edge there!" Lido talks as well about his career as a police dog, life in Italy between the wars, how the Fascists tore his tail off for some secret he never knew or couldn't recall ("You know me, I can't remember from the nose end of my muzzle to the other!"), his irremediable attachment to this island in spite of his loathing of tourists and his lifelong fear of water ("I always meant to leave, but you can't straighten an old dog's legs my friend, I'll have to draw the hide in this infested overdecorated chamber pot, I'll fodder their boggy eelbeds in the end!"), his hatred of the modern world with its electronically hyped-up homeless transients, all of them nowhere and anywhere at the same time, even when they think they're at home, the humiliations of toothlessness and blindness (the professor, absorbed in his own debilities, hasn't noticed; he notices now: the old fellow navigates largely by nose alone), and life with his "mistresses," as he calls them, women he meets getting arrested, who take him home with them when he gets them off, and who are grateful and treat him well until they get taken back in again.

"They seem to get some comfort out of an old dog. I do what I can for them. Not much, of course, but the cask gives what wine it has, as they say, and at worst I've got this old stub of a tail to get me by when I'm not up to better. Unfortunately, a lot of the old dears have taken a bad fold of late, gone onto the needle, and are dying off now with the plague."

"There's a plague in Venice -?!"

"There's a plague everywhere."

In between stories, Alidoro, circling round and round in the bristling cold, asks the venerable scholar about his own career, about his books and his honors and his nose, about his prison days and life as a farm worker and getting swallowed by the monster fish ("You know what my father said when I went running up to give him a hug," he flares up, angry about something, though he can't say just what, "he said, 'Oh no, not you again, you little f.a.got! Even in this putrid fishgut I can't get away!' "), about his reasons for coming back to Venice (he doesn't give them - whatever they were, they were tragically stupid), about his problems with wood-boring weevils and fungal decay, and about America, about the bosses and the range wars, the recent elections ("How is it a country can stand tall, hunker down, sit tight, fly high, show its muscle, tighten its belt, talk through its hat, and fall on its a.s.s, all at the same time?" the old mastiff wants to know), and the gangsters and centerfolds and dog catchers of Chicago.

Even though the professor is aware that his friend is provoking this dialogue as well-meant therapy against the despair which is threatening to halt him in his tracks, he cannot curb his sense of outrage and betrayal that he should be visited by such bitter despair in the first place - or the last place, as it were (and perhaps he even wants wants the despair, who knows, perhaps it is this that is making him crabby: he's earned it, has he not?), such that when Alidoro asks him: "How did you get so interested in painted pictures anyhow, compagno? I would have thought, wide-awake as you were -", he cuts him off snappishly with: "Because they don't move. And they don't ask tiresome questions." He groans faintly, regretting the outburst, though Alidoro seems unperturbed by it, maybe even pleased, in that it has carried him another three steps or so. They are trudging past silent black-faced gondolas with silver beaks, now laden with snow as though trying to disguise themselves as squatting gulls. Actors everywhere. Who can you trust? "I'm not a greedy man, Alidoro. I learned early on from my father's pear peels, the pigeon's tares, the circus hay, to be happy with little in this life. I have given up much for that little. And the little I wanted, here at the end, was to finish one last chapter of one last book before I died. But now!" the despair, who knows, perhaps it is this that is making him crabby: he's earned it, has he not?), such that when Alidoro asks him: "How did you get so interested in painted pictures anyhow, compagno? I would have thought, wide-awake as you were -", he cuts him off snappishly with: "Because they don't move. And they don't ask tiresome questions." He groans faintly, regretting the outburst, though Alidoro seems unperturbed by it, maybe even pleased, in that it has carried him another three steps or so. They are trudging past silent black-faced gondolas with silver beaks, now laden with snow as though trying to disguise themselves as squatting gulls. Actors everywhere. Who can you trust? "I'm not a greedy man, Alidoro. I learned early on from my father's pear peels, the pigeon's tares, the circus hay, to be happy with little in this life. I have given up much for that little. And the little I wanted, here at the end, was to finish one last chapter of one last book before I died. But now!"

"Ah well, maybe that's a blessing," grumps the old dog. "Too many words in the world already. Like taking water to the sea."

"Enough words maybe," acknowledges the old scholar with a sigh, "but we still haven't put them together right. That, Alidoro, is our sacred mission."