Pinocchio in Venice Part 10

"I am afraid if I did, master, I would lose my share to you! I would be in only half of my reality, you would be in the other half!"

"Macche! Pleasure is never diminis.h.i.+ng, ragazzo mio. It would not halve your reality, but double it!"

"But I can barely clothe and feed the reality I have now. What am I to do with twice as much?"

"Then I will double your income, sweet boy, with each doubling of your reality!"

"Ah, very good, direttore! And if I increased my reality, by, say, fifty percent?"

"Why, how would you do that?"

"Like this, master!" Truffaldino puts his feet on the deck of the launch, or seems to, and walks over to Eugenio, even while remaining sitting on the prow. He puts his hands under his chin and lifts his silhouetted head to arm's length - then the arms themselves seem to periscope upwards in the darkness, raising the head another foot or so in the night air.

"Che roba! And can you do that with all all your parts, you wicked boy?" your parts, you wicked boy?"

"Only in the darkness, master," sighs Truffaldino, shrinking back into himself, leaving Eugenio s.n.a.t.c.hing at air. "That's, as you say, the sadness of it!"

A moment of wistful silence descends then, through which, as though from some other time more than another place, come, across the dark waters from the other side of the island, the distant hollow reverberations of revelry: amplified voices, waves of laughter like sullen heartbeats, whistles rising into the night and m.u.f.fled shouting, the beat but not the melody of music - the sounds of Carnival. The peace of his suite in the Palazzo dei Balocchi is not what it once was, but he dare not complain, for the recent restoration of the Venetian Carnival is virtually the invention, or reinvention, of Eugenio, yet another of his host's acts of homage to his legendary mentor, for whom Carnival existed twelve months of the year. Besides, the professor expects to move any day now into quieter quarters of his own, as soon as his new credit cards, checkbooks, and personal doc.u.ments, requested for him by Eugenio, reach him through the anarchical Venetian postal service, though the bag of mail they saw floating in the Giudecca ca.n.a.l today made manifest the hazards.

The old scholar leans his head back and gazes up at the night sky. The hovering mist seems to be breaking up, letting a few stars s.h.i.+ne through, scattered here and there in abject loneliness like chips struck from the moon. Star light, star bright, he thinks. But what is he to wish for? To be free from his disease? A death wish. To be free from his fear of death? A kind of madness, the dubious blessing of senility, a greater terror. Perhaps just to know. know. But he already knows so much and what good has it done him? No, no, he knows all too well what he desires, she has been on his mind all afternoon, she whose graven tombs once marked his pa.s.sage like milestones. He wishes - it is quite simple - he wishes only to be held again. Taking them to the heretics' corner of the cemetery island this afternoon to show them where he hoped to enshrine the bones of Casanova, Eugenio led them all through a section devoted, it seemed, to those who had died young: children climbed stairs to heaven, youthful lovers sprawled erotically on marble deathbeds, babies reached for the arms of Jesus. And there, in the dim light, half buried amid the grander monuments, he saw, or thought for one heart-stopping moment that he saw, that selfsame little slab of marble which once announced the Blue-Haired Fairy's death of a broken heart: But he already knows so much and what good has it done him? No, no, he knows all too well what he desires, she has been on his mind all afternoon, she whose graven tombs once marked his pa.s.sage like milestones. He wishes - it is quite simple - he wishes only to be held again. Taking them to the heretics' corner of the cemetery island this afternoon to show them where he hoped to enshrine the bones of Casanova, Eugenio led them all through a section devoted, it seemed, to those who had died young: children climbed stairs to heaven, youthful lovers sprawled erotically on marble deathbeds, babies reached for the arms of Jesus. And there, in the dim light, half buried amid the grander monuments, he saw, or thought for one heart-stopping moment that he saw, that selfsame little slab of marble which once announced the Blue-Haired Fairy's death of a broken heart: "Qui giace una bambina," "Qui giace una bambina," he read, even from his bobbing portantina, "Here lies a child," and the words he read, even from his bobbing portantina, "Here lies a child," and the words abbandonata abbandonata and and fratellino fratellino jumped out at him as though the stone itself were crying out. jumped out at him as though the stone itself were crying out. "Stop!" "Stop!" he gasped, and begged that he be taken closer. No, not her, he saw through teary eyes, some other little sister gone, and he gasped, and begged that he be taken closer. No, not her, he saw through teary eyes, some other little sister gone, and abbandonato, abbandonato, the brother, not the girl, deserted, but that was how he felt, too, and, no doubt startling Eugenio and the servants, he sobbed out his grief there on that stone, not for the dead child but for the little brother left behind, who was himself, exiled forever from the consolation of her hugs and kisses, her sweet embrace. the brother, not the girl, deserted, but that was how he felt, too, and, no doubt startling Eugenio and the servants, he sobbed out his grief there on that stone, not for the dead child but for the little brother left behind, who was himself, exiled forever from the consolation of her hugs and kisses, her sweet embrace. O Fata mia! O Fata mia!

"Look, direttore! Do you see -?"

"Sshh! Come here, my child! Quickly!"

He made some foolish remark then, to cover his greater foolishness ("But why should you be interested in a little thing like me, master, when you have a n.o.bel Prize-winner on full display?"), about life's cruel brevity, the stony permanence of death, and Eugenio, laughingly reminding him of the old wisdom, which he credited to Dante Alighieri, that "He who comes from tinche tanche, goes in the end to gninche gnanche," guided them all back to the gloomiest, remotest, most desolate corner of the island where bad boys, he said, were buried and where all the tombs were sinking and collapsing, the headstones broken, the busts and crosses cracked and fallen, the pieces scattered about like garbage floating in the ca.n.a.ls. It was a strange, wild, darkly canopied place with spiky plants and stunted trees and thick beds of moldering leaves among the broken stones and rampant weeds through which fiendish little black and emerald lizards skittered while pale b.u.t.terflies hovered in the coiling mists above like flakes of dead flesh. "I ta morti!" "I ta morti!" Francatrippa exclaimed, and Buffetto concurred, "Un merdaio, compagno, a veritable s.h.i.+thole," Truffaldino pointing silently to a sign at the entrance that read: DEAD END. Eugenio ordered them to set the sedan-chair down and to jump up and down as hard as they could. As they did so, whooping and grunting cheerfully, the entire area began to wobble in little waves that spread slowly out to the four walled edges. Tombs tipped and toppled, cracked apart, dumped their dead flowers, cast off ornament, and sank another inch or two, as the ground rippled under them like a shaken carpet. With a soft sucking noise, two or three of the graves disappeared altogether. Overhead, cypresses leaned and fell against one another like grieving or drunken friends, and the walls coughed out loose bricks that plopped softly to the earth as though falling into thick pudding. He could feel the tremors beneath his chair, which seemed as it shook to be tipping and sinking just like the tombstones, and the fright he felt was not unlike that he'd suffered as a puppet whenever the Fairy, in despair at his misbehavior, would go pale and cold and fall down with her eyes rolled back, showing only their whites, remaining like that until he hugged and kissed her and wet her all over with his tears, her limp lifeless body slowly vibrating beneath his sobs just as the earth was doing now, a kind of loose ripple that seemed to spread from the middle out and come bouncing back, building slowly until at last her body would be shaking him as much as he was shaking it and she started to come alive again, groaning and sobbing, or maybe laughing, it didn't matter, and hugging and kissing him as feverishly as he her! Francatrippa exclaimed, and Buffetto concurred, "Un merdaio, compagno, a veritable s.h.i.+thole," Truffaldino pointing silently to a sign at the entrance that read: DEAD END. Eugenio ordered them to set the sedan-chair down and to jump up and down as hard as they could. As they did so, whooping and grunting cheerfully, the entire area began to wobble in little waves that spread slowly out to the four walled edges. Tombs tipped and toppled, cracked apart, dumped their dead flowers, cast off ornament, and sank another inch or two, as the ground rippled under them like a shaken carpet. With a soft sucking noise, two or three of the graves disappeared altogether. Overhead, cypresses leaned and fell against one another like grieving or drunken friends, and the walls coughed out loose bricks that plopped softly to the earth as though falling into thick pudding. He could feel the tremors beneath his chair, which seemed as it shook to be tipping and sinking just like the tombstones, and the fright he felt was not unlike that he'd suffered as a puppet whenever the Fairy, in despair at his misbehavior, would go pale and cold and fall down with her eyes rolled back, showing only their whites, remaining like that until he hugged and kissed her and wet her all over with his tears, her limp lifeless body slowly vibrating beneath his sobs just as the earth was doing now, a kind of loose ripple that seemed to spread from the middle out and come bouncing back, building slowly until at last her body would be shaking him as much as he was shaking it and she started to come alive again, groaning and sobbing, or maybe laughing, it didn't matter, and hugging and kissing him as feverishly as he her!

"Che sborro! What a What a cannon!" cannon!"

"If we had a sail, we could use it for a mast!"

"Maybe we should put a light on it to warn low-flying aircraft!"

"Standing at attention like that, I can see why it got the n.o.bel for keeping the peace!"

"Though it won the n.o.bel Peace Prize," the professor sighs, gazing up at the bright star his nose is fingering and silently making his futile but heartfelt wish ("No request is too extreme," as that old hymn goes), "it itself has had no peace. It was cited at the time 'for standing for the truth in the age of the Great Lie.' This was on the eve of World War Two, the film had just appeared and was being viewed as a realpolitik fable, with Geppetto as a kind of Swiss neutral, Stromboli as a bearded Mussolini, Foulfellow and Barker the Coachman as fifth columnists, Monstro the Whale as the German U-boat menace, the Miss America-like Blue Fairy representing the wished-for Yankee intervention with their magical know-how, and my mystical nose as a mark of the divine, visible proof that we, not they, were the designated good guys. Like many a victim of the political repression of that time, it had been imprisoned, tortured, humiliated, reviled, and in countless other ways persecuted, and so stood as well for courage and integrity in the face of tyranny, even while exhibiting a peaceful, rather than warlike, stance. In the film it is shown sprouting a branch in which birds nested, and this was interpreted as being an olive branch. Of course all that changed when war came!" That was when the jokes began. The world was more aggressive then. Military units wore his nose into battle and fighter pilots painted it on their fusilages: "Always Hard." It appeared on condom packets sold in PXs and USO canteens. Still, he didn't figure it out. Or rather, he knew full well, had known since he'd become a boy, if not before, but kept forgetting, that that truth elusive as a dream. The expanded version of his n.o.bel acceptance speech, truth elusive as a dream. The expanded version of his n.o.bel acceptance speech, Astringent Truth, Astringent Truth, which became a cla.s.sic of moral philosophy, never mentioned it, and even in his more autobiographical writings such as which became a cla.s.sic of moral philosophy, never mentioned it, and even in his more autobiographical writings such as The Wretch, Sacred Sins, The Wretch, Sacred Sins, and and The Transformation of the Beast, The Transformation of the Beast, works which won him his second n.o.bel, this was a truth, naked as it may have been in the world, which remained largely under wraps. With all the dignity of his great career he carried his nose through the world as though it were only a nose, he alone beguiled by his own pretenses. It might have been otherwise. There were students who wanted, who might have! but whenever they got too close his nose would start to smart and shrivel as if the Blue-Haired Fairy's woodp.e.c.k.e.rs were at it again, a painful humiliation far worse than any imaginable pleasure, at least any that he in his innocence could imagine, and so he distanced himself from them behind his professorial demeanor. Anyway, they were never his best students! works which won him his second n.o.bel, this was a truth, naked as it may have been in the world, which remained largely under wraps. With all the dignity of his great career he carried his nose through the world as though it were only a nose, he alone beguiled by his own pretenses. It might have been otherwise. There were students who wanted, who might have! but whenever they got too close his nose would start to smart and shrivel as if the Blue-Haired Fairy's woodp.e.c.k.e.rs were at it again, a painful humiliation far worse than any imaginable pleasure, at least any that he in his innocence could imagine, and so he distanced himself from them behind his professorial demeanor. Anyway, they were never his best students!

"Ah, poor Pini! And still a virgin, then!"

"Well, not quite!" He lowers his head, his nose inscribing its usual ignominious arc through the liquid night air, and stares out at the lagoon, pitch black except for the glittering gold coins cast on its surface by the yellow lamps of the channel markers and illusorily deep as an ocean. He lets his gaze drift out upon it, losing focus in its seeming immensity, floating deep, deep into the void, acknowledging his lifelong yearning to hide himself from life's profuse terrors and confusions upon the bosom of the simple, the vast, and surrendering for a moment to his ancient appet.i.te, as perverse as the day Geppetto chopped out his rough-hewn little torso, for the absolute anarchy of the eternal emptiness, that incommunicable but ineradicable truth of his pagan heart, which the Blue-Haired Fairy so abhorred. In effect, civilizing him, she taught him, if not his intractable nose, how to lie! "There was the night I! I became a boy!"

"Aha!!"

He'd been wearing himself out, doing the sort of donkey work he'd been spared in his donkey days, harnessed to the primitive water-wheel that had killed his old friend Lampwick, just to earn a gla.s.s of milk each day for his grappa-crazed babbo, now on his last legs. The times were hard. Since their escape from the monster fish, they'd been holing out in an abandoned straw cottage that was insect-ridden and stank of goats, sleeping on beds of rank straw, dressed in rags and half starving. The farmer he worked for was a tyrant, but no worse than his old man, who hated him still for dragging him out of Attila's innards, the best home he'd ever had. At the time, he'd felt that he was saving him, but now he didn't know for what. The old loony, now calling himself San 'Petto, raved all day and often as not all night, spat out the milk he brought him from his backbreaking labor, peed spitefully on their straw mattresses, left his other evacuations around the cottage wherever he felt like. Saint's relics, the old boy called them. So as to have something to trade at the market, he'd taken up basket weaving and, whenever he was away at market or off pus.h.i.+ng at that murderous waterwheel, his father would throw his handiwork down the well or set it on fire or chop it up and try to make grappa out of it. He'd knocked together a little cart to use on his trips to the market, and Geppetto had torn up three of his best baskets, braided a whip out of the raffia, and bullied him into pus.h.i.+ng him around in the thing. That was all right, at least it kept him quiet, if only while he was in it, and the whip didn't hurt, the old brute was too far gone to do more than wave it about like a blind man's cane. It was the meanness of it that hurt. The Disney film had captured something of Geppetto's stupidity maybe, but not his malice. On one of his trips to market, he had picked up an old coverless primer with half its pages missing, the very one perhaps he had sold for a ticket to Mangiafoco's puppet theater, and had begun to teach himself to read and write, and in this book, under "M for Madonna," was a picture that, though he did not know it at the time, was eventually to change his life: a reproduction of Giovanni Bellini's "Madonna of the Small Trees." He could not keep his eyes off it, returning to it time and again. Maybe he identified with the stunted trees. Whatever, it utterly absorbed him. "M" was the letter he learned best in the alphabet, and it was still his favorite. It was no accident that the t.i.tle of his final opus, only five letters long, was to have had three of them in it. This primer was the treasure of his life and his sole consolation. Until Geppetto mustachioed the Madonna of the Small Trees and drew a p.e.n.i.s in her mouth, then drank up all his fruit-juice ink and smoked the shredded pages, "M" the first to go.

"Poverino!"

"It was awful. I couldn't help but feel sorry for myself. I cried all the time. The Fairy was out of my life forever, I was stuck with this mad old man, I'd watched my best friend die a miserable death that seemed to foretell my own, I was working fourteen-hour days and getting nowhere and I felt like all my joints were coming apart from the physical strain, I was cold and hungry most of the time, and I was utterly alone. My old enemies the Fox and the Cat were somewhere in the neighborhood, down on their luck, Il Gattino who'd once feigned blindness as a beggar now blind in fact, La Volpe crippled and her tail gone, both of them desperately needy but also probably dangerous. I'd chased them off but knew they might return at any moment to steal what little we had, the sc.r.a.ps of food, the baskets, the few coins I'd managed to put aside from my market dealings. So one day, deciding I'd better spend those coins while I still had them, I took them to market to buy myself some new clothes. As I walked down the road, I imagined myself making a fresh start. You know me, always the irrational optimist, fields of miracles, money trees, zin, zin, zin, zin, zin, zin, and all that. Why not, I thought. I knew at least half the letters in the alphabet by then and figured I could fake the rest and so perhaps move up into the professional cla.s.ses. But!" and all that. Why not, I thought. I knew at least half the letters in the alphabet by then and figured I could fake the rest and so perhaps move up into the professional cla.s.ses. But!"

"Ah yes. With you, dear friend, there's always a but but!"

"On the way I met La Lumaca, the Blue-Haired Fairy's sluggish maid, the one who once took twelve hours to bring me plaster of Paris bread and alabaster apricots when I was sick from hunger."

"Ha ha! And she told you the Fairy was dying, no doubt, and was temporarily short of funds!!"

"That's right. She said she didn't even have enough to buy a crust of bread. I gave her all I had."

"Ah, poor Old Sticks!"

"It was nothing to me. I was overwhelmed by hope and despair at the same time. I ran back home and started making more baskets. I doubled my production in a single evening even though I was crying so hard I could hardly see, the tears streaming down my nose like a rainspout. I was going to save her life with baskets. I'd work till dawn, and then till dawn again, and for as many dawns as it would take. But I was too exhausted. About midnight I fell asleep. And I had a strange dream!"

He was back in the Fairy's little snow white house in the dark forest. He didn't remember how he got there, but there was something before about pus.h.i.+ng his sodden father, or perhaps the carca.s.s of his dead friend Lampwick, in the little wooden cart he had made. Whoever it was was very heavy and the going was slow. Far far ahead in the dark night he could see the old Snail, lit up like a porcelain-shaded nightlamp, and crying: "Hurry! Hurry! You'll be late!" But pus.h.i.+ng against the cart was like pus.h.i.+ng the terrible waterwheel. La Lumaca disappeared and the night came down on him like a coal sack. But then, without transition, it was he who was being carted, just like the first time, into the Fairy's cottage. She was little like she was when he first met her with her waxy face and spooky eyes and strange blue hair, and they were playing doctors again, or something like it, though this time he was completely dead. She laid him on her bed and took all his clothes off. Then she removed his feet, took his knees apart, unhooked his legs where they were pegged into his body, popped his faucet out like pulling a cork. She did the same thing with his arms and head and all the rest, took him apart joint by joint. Though it should have been scary, it was in fact very relaxing. When she unplugged his nose he felt like he could really breathe for the first time in his life, even though he was dead. She put all the parts together in a pile and played with them for a while like wooden blocks, making little houses with them and knocking them down. It didn't hurt and he felt freed from responsibility, though it made him dizzy when she rolled his head around. When any of the pieces got dirty, she licked them and rubbed them clean on her dress, which was more like a winding sheet. They seemed to need a lot of cleaning, so she took off her clothes and rubbed them all over her body, which was smooth and slippery like a bar of soap, kissing them and licking them and caressing them at the same time. It felt wonderful, especially when she pushed the pieces down between her legs, where her softest parts were. She was on her back now, fondling and stroking all his segments, and though he couldn't see very well anymore, he could feel how each part of him got pushed up into the warm wet place between her thighs and scrubbed around in there and then came out again, hot and soaking, his torso too, though he didn't know how she managed it, little flat-tummied thing that she was. When his head went in, he caught just a glimpse of the crimson slash amid the waxy pallor like rose petals buried in ice cream, and he was afraid she might have hurt herself, she was moaning and yowling now and pitching about as though in horrible pain, but she slapped him playfully and growled at him to "Close your eyes, you little scoundrel!" in a voice that didn't sound like a little girl at all, and pushed him on in where everything was soft and creamy and utterly delicious, he didn't want to come out again, he just wanted to push deeper and deeper and stay there forever. But while he was in there - his head at least, he could still feel the rest of him in a wet scatter outside - he seemed to hear her speaking to him: "Bravo Pinocchio!" she said. "Because of your good heart and other parts I forgive you everything!"

"Wonderful! And so you woke up a real boy!"

"Not yet. When my head came out I found myself lying on her bed where she was rea.s.sembling me. I was still drenched from head to foot. What is all this wetness, I wondered? Why, it must be sweat, human sweat! I'd never sweated before, and I realized now that something truly grand was happening. When she put my hands back on, she lifted them up and pressed them to her nipples. I could feel her b.r.e.a.s.t.s puff up like spongy little balloons to fill them up, and she blew me a sly kiss and winked. I felt whole and happy, but vaguely frightened. Almost whole. There was one part still missing, forgotten until now."

"Ah! I see it! Your nose!"

"I was rather hoping it had gotten lost. I'd always hated it, it had caused me nothing but trouble and humiliation, and it seemed I might be free of it at last. I'd not lost the sensation of it, however. Wherever it was, it was encased in a plump fragrant warmth. As it turned out she was sitting on it. She plucked it out from beneath her and held it up between us, as though it might be a wicked secret we shared. Her azure hair was snarled and wild, her eyes strangely glazed, her lips twisted into a grin that bared her teeth, and, somehow aware that I was dreaming, I began to fear this might turn into a nightmare. She licked it all over, then blew on it teasingly. I watched it grow in her hands, felt it growing at the same time, felt her tongue on it, her lips, her breath, even though she was sitting far away from me at the foot of the bed. It was a very peculiar sensation. Perhaps this sort of thing happens in everybody's dreams, but for me it began to feel like something utterly new in the world, not unlike a sudden visitation of angels. As she put it in her mouth, wallowing it about with her tongue and sucking it deeper and deeper down her throat, I began to suffer a terrible tension around the hole gouged in the middle of my face, and my eyes and teeth felt like they were about to leap from their sockets. It was frightening, I was literally petrified, but I couldn't stop it, nor did I want to. When a little acorn appeared at the end of it and she nipped it off with her teeth, I nearly screamed with something compounded of both terror and delight, and then she put it up in that place where all the other parts had been. It was too much. I couldn't hold back anymore. 'Grow wise,' she said, 'and be happy.' I sneezed. I woke! I was covered in fles.h.!.+"

CARNIVAL.

21. PLATO'S PRANK.

"Gee, Professor Pinenut," Bluebell exclaims, snapping her gum in his tender earhole, "that's a real masterpiece, hunh?" It is not. It is one of the most idiotic paintings he has ever seen. He cannot stop looking up at it, though. Chagrin would be his middle name, he thinks bitterly, if he had more than one in the first place. "I mean, when you look up at the ceiling and see a stark naked old man as ugly as that who's supposed to be, you know, 'The Universe,' it makes you realize what a mess mess we're in, right? Standing up there on that croc as though to say that's all it is, you know, just a big crock, see you later, alligator, whoo! That's really we're in, right? Standing up there on that croc as though to say that's all it is, you know, just a big crock, see you later, alligator, whoo! That's really deep, deep, man! I can see why you dig it!" man! I can see why you dig it!"

"He is not not the Universe, that happens to be the River Nile he is standing on, and in any case that is the Universe, that happens to be the River Nile he is standing on, and in any case that is not not why I -" why I -"

"No? Hey, wait, don't tell tell me it's that cute tootsie with her big jugs spilling out like the Milky Way that's - me it's that cute tootsie with her big jugs spilling out like the Milky Way that's - crack! pop! crack! pop! - got your old eye, teach! Jiminy! I feel like I'm back in your cla.s.sroom again, down mammary lane in the Beak's lecher hall, a.r.s.e pimples, dix pix, cunny funnies, and all that!" That vulgar creature up there does indeed have his weary eye, but by the decree of - first, crack, then pop - Fate, as it were, not by election. Fate and Plato. That his beloved mentor should have helped to do this to him makes him feel doubly betrayed. "Whoa, speaking of your old c.l.i.t cla.s.sics," Bluebell whispers, her red windbreaker rustling as she leans down to press her warm cheek next to his, "I just - got your old eye, teach! Jiminy! I feel like I'm back in your cla.s.sroom again, down mammary lane in the Beak's lecher hall, a.r.s.e pimples, dix pix, cunny funnies, and all that!" That vulgar creature up there does indeed have his weary eye, but by the decree of - first, crack, then pop - Fate, as it were, not by election. Fate and Plato. That his beloved mentor should have helped to do this to him makes him feel doubly betrayed. "Whoa, speaking of your old c.l.i.t cla.s.sics," Bluebell whispers, her red windbreaker rustling as she leans down to press her warm cheek next to his, "I just realized! realized! From where From where you're you're standing, you can see right up the little sweetie's ballooning sky blue skirts, can't you?! Wow, the art of introspective, just like you taught us! Dimples and all!" She gives him a conspiratorial squeeze. "Never know what you'll see if you just keep looking, right?" standing, you can see right up the little sweetie's ballooning sky blue skirts, can't you?! Wow, the art of introspective, just like you taught us! Dimples and all!" She gives him a conspiratorial squeeze. "Never know what you'll see if you just keep looking, right?"

"The details in this instance are insignificant, Miss," he snaps in his old tutorial manner, his irritability provoked not by her, for in truth he has been longing all the while, though he had forgotten this, to see her again, but by his present predicament, disconcertingly pathognomonic, preferring an aesthetic explanation for it, however contrived, to the humiliation of the mechanical one. Or, more precisely, the wooden one. "What matters is the, ahem, overall composition." Which doesn't matter at all. What matters in a cheap ham-fisted pastiche as bad as this one is who commissioned it and why that cretin and the painter weren't both gibbeted in the Piazzetta or hung out to dry in a cage at the top of the Campanile. But, given his seemingly intense scrutiny of the wretched thing (what is worse, he can feel his incorrigible nose acting up again, even as he speaks), what he says is: "That and its position, both in, eh, historico-cultural time and in physical politico-geographical, as you might say, s.p.a.ce."

"Oh yeah, I get it! You don't have to point! Like, right beside it there's that painting of 'Modesty,' right? And so that whole bare-a.s.sed scene of the Universe or whatever it is up there becomes like an a.s.sault on - splupp! crack! splupp! crack! - decency itself, a case of aggravating rape by a dirty old man, you might call it! I - decency itself, a case of aggravating rape by a dirty old man, you might call it! I love love it! And then in this one up here - gee, I'm sounding just like you, Professor Pinenut! I it! And then in this one up here - gee, I'm sounding just like you, Professor Pinenut! I told told you you taught me everything I know! - in this one we got this gorgeous hunk in the red bikini holding up the earth, or else maybe the mother just came down and - you you taught me everything I know! - in this one we got this gorgeous hunk in the red bikini holding up the earth, or else maybe the mother just came down and - squit! fpooff! squit! fpooff! - bopped the sucker in the neck, and right over there we got Fortune - am I warm? - with her naked buns spread like fat on lean on a round dead stone, same size as the world on the hunk's back, as though to say that that's - - bopped the sucker in the neck, and right over there we got Fortune - am I warm? - with her naked buns spread like fat on lean on a round dead stone, same size as the world on the hunk's back, as though to say that that's - spopp! spopp! - what this whole ball o' wax is gonna come to, right? Diddly-squat and let's hope her r.e.c.t.u.m's clean!" - what this whole ball o' wax is gonna come to, right? Diddly-squat and let's hope her r.e.c.t.u.m's clean!"

As far as this blue Monday is concerned, it has been pretty much diddly-squat from the beginning. There were masked Carnival revelers whooping it up outside his windows all night until the early hours, and then, after an hour or two of vague stifling nightmares about interminable tenure committee meetings back at the university, which he couldn't escape because the chairman, an old crab, had his claw clamped on his elbow, warning him to "void evil companions," he awoke to the shrill squealing of schoolchildren in St. Mark's trying to hold up armloads of feeding pigeons, a "Ladies' Marching Band" made up of bearded and mustachioed men dressed in pinafores and blowing trumpets and tubas, and the hammering together of the viewing stands for the Mardi Gras Gran Gala on the other side of the Piazza. He had a pounding headache, his backside felt as if it had been coa.r.s.ely sandpapered all night, and there was a fresh weevil infestation in his right elbow, telltale sawdust in the soiled sheets. On his return from the cemetery island of San Michele, he had resolved to press on immediately with his life's work - if he hoped to recover his discipline and integrity, it was now or never - and his worsened condition this morning made that resolution all the more urgent.

Of course he had to gauge his remaining strength. Though never afraid of the difficult, willing to confront challenges few other men of letters would even contemplate, he had never undertaken the impossible, knowing that was just another form of cowardice. His great Mamma Mamma opus was irretrievably lost, he knew that, and he also knew he could never reconstruct it, much less rewrite it, an effort as useless as trying to make an omelette out of a hatched chicken, but he believed he could capture something of its intent in a concentrated monograph, and such a project he might well have the time and energy to complete. In effect, he would write that final chapter that had brought him here in the first place, summarizing the salient points of the lost book and incorporating his recent Venetian experiences as paradigmatic fables of a sort, much as Saints Augustine and Petrarch used their own more vulnerable moments to provide dramatic contrast to their eventual unwavering commitment to higher principles, a commitment he intended, rejecting folly now once and for all (as though he had not done so many times before, but never with such a prospect of looming finality), to emulate. As his body weakened, he felt his spirit strengthening, as if being purified by the very impurity of his physical decay: home at last in the figurative lap of virtue, so to speak, all of a piece or not. This would be his theme, together perhaps with Wagner's dream of "dying in beauty," a dream which that musical impresario eventually realized upon this very island, though probably, as always, sooner than he'd hoped. With that in mind, then, he thought he might conclude the essay with the image of that tombstone on San Michele, the one he thought for a moment was hers, an artifact hard as an idea but pulsating with transcendent emotion, and ultimately something other (more abstract, in effect, more indefinite) than it appeared to be, an image that would thus reveal much that was at the very core of his personal aesthetic, he who, dying in beauty, had always lived in it as well, though more in the abstract than in the particular. opus was irretrievably lost, he knew that, and he also knew he could never reconstruct it, much less rewrite it, an effort as useless as trying to make an omelette out of a hatched chicken, but he believed he could capture something of its intent in a concentrated monograph, and such a project he might well have the time and energy to complete. In effect, he would write that final chapter that had brought him here in the first place, summarizing the salient points of the lost book and incorporating his recent Venetian experiences as paradigmatic fables of a sort, much as Saints Augustine and Petrarch used their own more vulnerable moments to provide dramatic contrast to their eventual unwavering commitment to higher principles, a commitment he intended, rejecting folly now once and for all (as though he had not done so many times before, but never with such a prospect of looming finality), to emulate. As his body weakened, he felt his spirit strengthening, as if being purified by the very impurity of his physical decay: home at last in the figurative lap of virtue, so to speak, all of a piece or not. This would be his theme, together perhaps with Wagner's dream of "dying in beauty," a dream which that musical impresario eventually realized upon this very island, though probably, as always, sooner than he'd hoped. With that in mind, then, he thought he might conclude the essay with the image of that tombstone on San Michele, the one he thought for a moment was hers, an artifact hard as an idea but pulsating with transcendent emotion, and ultimately something other (more abstract, in effect, more indefinite) than it appeared to be, an image that would thus reveal much that was at the very core of his personal aesthetic, he who, dying in beauty, had always lived in it as well, though more in the abstract than in the particular.

What was here unfolding, he felt, or rather was already in full bloom, was what one might call, as another who died here once did, the "miracle of regained detachment," that ingenuous but contemplative state of mind from which all true creativity flows. This detachment was difficult to sustain, however, with that rude din just outside his windows, it was worse than those head-b.u.t.ts the puppets had given him, so he decided to escape the palazzo altogether and, in preparation for that spiritual task which, like a kind of artist's holy purgation, awaited him, to embark upon his long-planned pilgrimage to the works of Giovanni Bellini, poetic painter of Madonnas, whose many masterpieces anch.o.r.ed the city in that high serenity for which it was named and kept it from floating off through Ricci's and Tiepolo's silly ceilings. And where better to start than in the Accademia with the painting that had changed his life, "The Madonna of the Small Trees"?

But Eugenio, in a pink-faced dither, would have none of it. "Out of the question, dear boy! I need everyone here! here! My costume has to be My costume has to be completely completely remade, the bodice just remade, the bodice just won't won't do! Then there are the masked b.a.l.l.s, the decorations, and I haven't even do! Then there are the masked b.a.l.l.s, the decorations, and I haven't even started started on my introduction speech for the Gran Gala! on my introduction speech for the Gran Gala! Tomorrow night! Tomorrow night! Marted Gra.s.so! Can't you Marted Gra.s.so! Can't you see?" see?" The palazzo staff was indeed in great turmoil, the servants scuttling about feverishly, racing hither and thither on Eugenio's screamed orders, out one door and in another, cras.h.i.+ng into each other on thresholds and tumbling down stairs, though it was not certain anyone was actually doing anything. "And now Count Agnello Ziani-Ziani Orseolo is on his way here with the deeds to the Palazzo Ducale! I The palazzo staff was indeed in great turmoil, the servants scuttling about feverishly, racing hither and thither on Eugenio's screamed orders, out one door and in another, cras.h.i.+ng into each other on thresholds and tumbling down stairs, though it was not certain anyone was actually doing anything. "And now Count Agnello Ziani-Ziani Orseolo is on his way here with the deeds to the Palazzo Ducale! I told told you I had something extravagant boiling, Pini! The Count is the direct descendant of nine doges, but he's at the green, as the saying goes, and we've got the gold! Think of it! The central building in the world! This is a chance that comes only once every Pope's death! But we have to grasp luck by the hair and the bull by the horns, my boy, a botta calda, while the drum's pounding -!" you I had something extravagant boiling, Pini! The Count is the direct descendant of nine doges, but he's at the green, as the saying goes, and we've got the gold! Think of it! The central building in the world! This is a chance that comes only once every Pope's death! But we have to grasp luck by the hair and the bull by the horns, my boy, a botta calda, while the drum's pounding -!"

"But you promised! promised! You said I could have anything I You said I could have anything I wanted!" wanted!"

"But, Pini, all the way to the Accademia -?! Be reasonable! I have five five Madonnas right here in the palazzo. One of them might even Madonnas right here in the palazzo. One of them might even be be by Burloni!" by Burloni!"

"Bellini."

"Bollini, Ballone, I simply can't do do it, my dear! The Count is due here any moment! it, my dear! The Count is due here any moment! History History is being made! Buffetto! Quickly! Take the professor to the Gritti and buy him a Picolit grappa!" is being made! Buffetto! Quickly! Take the professor to the Gritti and buy him a Picolit grappa!"

"I don't want want to go to the Gritti!" to go to the Gritti!"

"Ahi, what a plague you are, Old Sticks! You always were were such a restless thing, I did think you'd learned better!" such a restless thing, I did think you'd learned better!"

"It's not not restlessness, it's my restlessness, it's my life's work! life's work! My Venetian monograph! I insist -!" My Venetian monograph! I insist -!"

"Believe me, the worst thing you could possibly do, do, amor mio, is write another book about Venice!" amor mio, is write another book about Venice!"

"But it's not about -!"

"Wait! How about the Biblioteca Marciana? Eh? Just the other day you were complaining that it was easier for you to visit a distant island than the Marciana across the way!"

"But there aren't any Bellinis -!"

"Tomorrow the sodding Bellinis! Today Petrarca! Cicero and Pliny! Marco Polo's will and Era Mauro's map! The Grimani Breviary! The Bessarion Codexes! A million precious volumes, Pini, if we haven't sold them! Not to mention the 'Wisdom' of Tiziano hanging up there someplace, and the immortal 'Philosophers' Gallery' in the Great Gilded Hall! How can you the sodding Bellinis! Today Petrarca! Cicero and Pliny! Marco Polo's will and Era Mauro's map! The Grimani Breviary! The Bessarion Codexes! A million precious volumes, Pini, if we haven't sold them! Not to mention the 'Wisdom' of Tiziano hanging up there someplace, and the immortal 'Philosophers' Gallery' in the Great Gilded Hall! How can you resist?" resist?"

"Well! but -"

"Francatrippa! Buffetto! Hurry! Transport the professor across to the Sansovino Library immediately! immediately! This is important! Can't you see the dear man is This is important! Can't you see the dear man is waiting? waiting? His life's work His life's work depends depends upon it! And come back at once! Count Ziani-Ziani is on his way! upon it! And come back at once! Count Ziani-Ziani is on his way! The future of Venice awaits us!" The future of Venice awaits us!"

"Back in a crack, direttore!"

"In a pig's whisper, direttore!"

"In quattro e quat -!"

"Non fare il coglione, you impertinent blowhards! Get your feet out out of here, or it's off with your of here, or it's off with your heads! heads! And I don't mean the ones with And I don't mean the ones with ears ears on them!" on them!"

And so they'd not even gone for his litter chair, they'd just swept him up by his armpits and gone clambering madly out of the palazzo as though escaping a burning building, bustling him, feet dangling, down the back stairs into the alleyway behind with its stale kitchen odors, clinking of dishes, and BLOWING GLa.s.s FACTORY ENTRANCE sign, then through a tiny sottoportico past camera, clothing, and junk shops into the Piazza itself, startling the patrons of the Laverna as the three of them collided with the marble tables and sent the yellow cafe chairs tumbling; then, his feet fluttering behind him like a wind-whipped flag, they went racing pell-mell across the open end of the Carnivalized Piazza, under the rearing bronze horses and past the towering Campanile, colossal father figure of all bell towers, now sounding from on high its throaty five-mouthed alarums, putting white-masked tourists to flight as they charged down upon them and churning up clouds of terrified pigeons, barreling finally at full gallop through a doorway flanked by a pair of caryatids, ma.s.sive and glossy as body builders on steroids, and bearing the legend: BIBLIOTECA n.a.z.iONALE MARCIANA: LIBRERIA VECCHIA; without pause, he was hauled on up the marble stairs, now under workers' scaffolding, the vaulted ceilings and precious gilded grotesqueries hidden behind tented sheeting, and deposited hastily in the barren Great Hall, stripped of its display cases and undergoing restoration, no book in sight, not a person either, and there, without so much as a brief farewell, abandoned, his protest - "Wait! Stop! d.a.m.n you, take me back!" - unheard.

Stand there he could, but little more than, his knees shaky but holding, just, there in that cold empty hall, surrounded by a kind of cartoon gallery (he recognized Tintoretto's facile ink-stained hand) of ancient philosophers mocking him with their robust good health and their evident immunity to folly. Not a one with a wooden head. He felt cruelly judged. Was one of them his master Petrarch? No doubt. Perhaps that one in the golden robe, teetering on a loose pile of books, piercing him through with his dark sagacious gaze. Petrarch had bequeathed to Venice his entire library, the most splendid private collection of its time, launching the idea of this building in which to house it, and then had taken the whole lot back again. The professor had flown here from America with the poet's Epistolae seniles Epistolae seniles under his arm, and it might now be said their roles had been reversed, he now (it was the dank sad smell of the place perhaps that suggested this) in the great man's armpit. Francesco Petrarca, alias Petrarch, Petracchi, Petracco, Petraccolo, and Petrocchio: like himself the most celebrated scholar of his age, one who also blended art and theology, promoted the cla.s.sic vision, opposed folly and deceit, and became an exemplar in his lifetime for all humanity, the old professor not excluded. He had stopped short of producing b.a.s.t.a.r.d children, but had otherwise emulated in all ways the n.o.ble life of his fellow Platonist and Tuscan, even in ways unpremeditated, for Petrarch had also, upon becoming a boy (this is said to have happened when he saw Dante in Pisa at the age of eight), lived a pious and studious youth, suffered a Hollywood-like period of dissipation on foreign soil (Petrarch's faucet worked better, there were consequences), then found his true vocation through an idealized love, abjuring l.u.s.t and devoting himself thereafter to a lifetime of scholars.h.i.+p, writing, and tenured self-denial. They both had wandered the world in pursuit of truth and beauty, and had both ended up finally here in Venice, though Petrarch had lived long enough to die elsewhere, something the old professor doubts will be granted him. They both struggled their lives long against Aristotelians (Sophists they scorned outright), Petrarch finally driven from this city on that score, no wonder he took his books back. And they both were, it could be said, composers of tombstones! under his arm, and it might now be said their roles had been reversed, he now (it was the dank sad smell of the place perhaps that suggested this) in the great man's armpit. Francesco Petrarca, alias Petrarch, Petracchi, Petracco, Petraccolo, and Petrocchio: like himself the most celebrated scholar of his age, one who also blended art and theology, promoted the cla.s.sic vision, opposed folly and deceit, and became an exemplar in his lifetime for all humanity, the old professor not excluded. He had stopped short of producing b.a.s.t.a.r.d children, but had otherwise emulated in all ways the n.o.ble life of his fellow Platonist and Tuscan, even in ways unpremeditated, for Petrarch had also, upon becoming a boy (this is said to have happened when he saw Dante in Pisa at the age of eight), lived a pious and studious youth, suffered a Hollywood-like period of dissipation on foreign soil (Petrarch's faucet worked better, there were consequences), then found his true vocation through an idealized love, abjuring l.u.s.t and devoting himself thereafter to a lifetime of scholars.h.i.+p, writing, and tenured self-denial. They both had wandered the world in pursuit of truth and beauty, and had both ended up finally here in Venice, though Petrarch had lived long enough to die elsewhere, something the old professor doubts will be granted him. They both struggled their lives long against Aristotelians (Sophists they scorned outright), Petrarch finally driven from this city on that score, no wonder he took his books back. And they both were, it could be said, composers of tombstones!

On either side of the doorway through which he had been ported in such haste, posted there in their voluptuous robes like candidates for honorary degrees or guests at a royal feast (Veronese again, to be sure, that sybaritic host) and coldly examining him now in his doddering ignominy, stood the warring figures from his own and Petrarch's intellectual history, Aristotle and Plato. Plato's gaze, though full of disappointment and sorrow, was essentially benign, like that of a forgiving lover, but Aristotle, dressed as a Moorish prince, appeared to be glaring fiercely at him, giving him the big eye, as they say here, as though enraged at the bad press the professor had given him all these years. He had made Aristotle - and standing there on his trembling pins, feeling the chill of hostility in the air, needing all the friends he could find, he nevertheless did not regret this, and so, bravely, with what eye remained, returned the glare - the emblematic target of his lifelong dispute with those who subst.i.tuted mere problem solving and art-for-art's-sake ba.n.a.lities for the pursuit of idealized beauty, and thus of truth and goodness as well. Aristotle and his vast camp following had unlinked art from its true transcendent mission, reducing it to just another isolated discipline, one among many, the worst of heresies, he deserved no quarter even had he any, in his extremity, to give.

Perhaps a cloud went by, or else it was a trick of his old eyes, but Aristotle seemed to wince as though at a bad odor and turn away, dismissing him with a contemptuous shrug, while Plato's austere expression, contrarily, appeared to soften, a faint appreciative smile curling the great sage's lips. His aged disciple, confused but moved (though move in fact he could not), dipped his nose in modest homage to the master, whereupon Plato, his rosy robes rustling gently, lifted one hand, puckered his fat lips, and, with a coy wink, blew him a kiss. The professor started, Plato's eyes rolled up to stare in alarm at the ceiling, he jerked his own head back and - crack! pop! crack! pop! - there it stuck, his rot-decayed neck locked, his nose pointing up at Il Padovanino's barbarous allegorical roundel, while around him the venerable philosophers wheezed and giggled like mischievous schoolboys. Which is when Bluebell came in and said: "Hey, Professor Pinenut! What a surprise! Whatcha lookin' at?" - there it stuck, his rot-decayed neck locked, his nose pointing up at Il Padovanino's barbarous allegorical roundel, while around him the venerable philosophers wheezed and giggled like mischievous schoolboys. Which is when Bluebell came in and said: "Hey, Professor Pinenut! What a surprise! Whatcha lookin' at?"

There was a time once, he was still a young man in his early sixties, when he decided that writing about the decline of art in the Western world was not enough, he had to become a painter himself and establish the new cla.s.sical norms by example. Futurism, expressionism, cubism, surrealism, abstraction, op art and pop art and all the rest: just forms of iconicized naughtiness, when you got down to it, and he felt it was up to him to recover art's ancient integrity, its sense of duty, its inherent grandeur. No more self-mocking irony, no more moral s.h.i.+lly-shallying, but true devotion: this was his cause, so he bought himself a box of paints and pencils and turned up at life-drawing cla.s.s. It was not something he could accomplish overnight, he knew that, his eyes were open, but no one understood the history of art better than he did and he had been pretty good at basket making, so he figured it was just a matter of time, a year or two perhaps, he could be patient. He took to wearing berets, smocks, and neckerchiefs, and let the four or five hairs on his upper lip grow.

As it happened, the model for the art cla.s.s was a student in his Art Principles 101 (was it this this student? he couldn't be sure, but he thought not, remembering the girl as shy and delicate with body hair the color of burnt sienna dulled with a touch of Sicilian umber, which he had to go out and buy separately since it wasn't in his paint box), and about three weeks into the semester she came to see him late one afternoon during office hours. This was before the time of tights and miniskirts, it was more a ponytail-and-bobbysocks time when skirts were full and long and often pleated, and so, as she came in and sat down in his office, her flexing hips and legs were more like the subtle implications of hips and legs enveloped as they were in the soft contours of her flowing skirt, and, he thought as she gathered the folds around her, expressing a thigh here, hiding a knee there, much more provocative than when seen in the flesh, which he tended to look on primarily as a technical problem. That choice of roughly five parts of burnt sienna to one of Sicilian umber to capture the soft dark l.u.s.ter of her body hair, for example, was dictated in part by reality and his close examination of it, and thus captured something of the absolute for which he was always searching, but it was also tempered by the inconstant flesh tones of her circ.u.mambient thighs and abdomen, which seemed sometimes pale, almost bluish, and at other times tenderly flushed, almost aglow, and so threatened him with that relativity he so abhorred: if not even private hair color was constant, what then was Truth? An important question, perhaps none more so, yet one that seemed strangely irrelevant in his office that afternoon as he caught a teasing but imprecise glimpse of pale shadowy thigh when she crossed her legs and said: "That's just it, Professor Pinenut: it's - it's your nose!" student? he couldn't be sure, but he thought not, remembering the girl as shy and delicate with body hair the color of burnt sienna dulled with a touch of Sicilian umber, which he had to go out and buy separately since it wasn't in his paint box), and about three weeks into the semester she came to see him late one afternoon during office hours. This was before the time of tights and miniskirts, it was more a ponytail-and-bobbysocks time when skirts were full and long and often pleated, and so, as she came in and sat down in his office, her flexing hips and legs were more like the subtle implications of hips and legs enveloped as they were in the soft contours of her flowing skirt, and, he thought as she gathered the folds around her, expressing a thigh here, hiding a knee there, much more provocative than when seen in the flesh, which he tended to look on primarily as a technical problem. That choice of roughly five parts of burnt sienna to one of Sicilian umber to capture the soft dark l.u.s.ter of her body hair, for example, was dictated in part by reality and his close examination of it, and thus captured something of the absolute for which he was always searching, but it was also tempered by the inconstant flesh tones of her circ.u.mambient thighs and abdomen, which seemed sometimes pale, almost bluish, and at other times tenderly flushed, almost aglow, and so threatened him with that relativity he so abhorred: if not even private hair color was constant, what then was Truth? An important question, perhaps none more so, yet one that seemed strangely irrelevant in his office that afternoon as he caught a teasing but imprecise glimpse of pale shadowy thigh when she crossed her legs and said: "That's just it, Professor Pinenut: it's - it's your nose!"

"What -?" He realized then it had been growing and had become engorged and feverish at the tip, and, as always on such occasions, he ducked his head and buried the unruly thing in a handkerchief. "Sorry, Miss, just a bit of a -!"

"I always get the feeling, you know, in the studio, that you're painting painting with your nose, and it gives me a very eery feeling, not so much in the art cla.s.s itself where it seems almost natural, even when it b.u.mps the canvas and gets paint on the end of it or when it's down between my knees when you're mixing colors, but in your lecture cla.s.s when you're all dressed up in your nice wool suits and standing up there on the platform in front of everybody like the president or something and pointing it straight at some art slide you're showing, and, well, it's suddenly so - so with your nose, and it gives me a very eery feeling, not so much in the art cla.s.s itself where it seems almost natural, even when it b.u.mps the canvas and gets paint on the end of it or when it's down between my knees when you're mixing colors, but in your lecture cla.s.s when you're all dressed up in your nice wool suits and standing up there on the platform in front of everybody like the president or something and pointing it straight at some art slide you're showing, and, well, it's suddenly so - so naked!" naked!" She blushed and pushed her trembling hands between her knees, tightening the skirt around her hips. "It - it almost scares me, and I get this funny feeling between my legs like, well, like She blushed and pushed her trembling hands between her knees, tightening the skirt around her hips. "It - it almost scares me, and I get this funny feeling between my legs like, well, like G.o.d's G.o.d's there, you know, there, you know, doing doing something, and I can't even hear what you're saying anymore and everything else just disappears and all I can see is your nose and I can hardly breathe and I'm wet and trembling all over and probably the other kids around me are laughing but I don't even know they're something, and I can't even hear what you're saying anymore and everything else just disappears and all I can see is your nose and I can hardly breathe and I'm wet and trembling all over and probably the other kids around me are laughing but I don't even know they're there, there, there's just nothing in the world except your nose, pointing at there's just nothing in the world except your nose, pointing at me me suddenly, like it is now, and this weird overwhelming feeling, even now I can almost - suddenly, like it is now, and this weird overwhelming feeling, even now I can almost - oh! oh! - almost not stop it! - and what I'm wondering, Professor Pinenut, what's - - almost not stop it! - and what I'm wondering, Professor Pinenut, what's - gasp! gasp! - got me scared is, well - - got me scared is, well - ah! ah! - am I the Madonna?" - am I the Madonna?"

That was when he shaved his upper lip and gave up painting. And that was when he stopped blaming individual painters for the tragic decline of art. He now knew they couldn't help it. It was just how things were.

Which is more or less what he is thinking now when Bluebell, who is still cuddled up close with her arm around him, whispers in his earhole: "You know, Professor Pinenut, sometimes I think I don't even like like paintings, even great ones like that one up there on the ceiling. They just seem so dead or phony or something, like those photos they put up outside movie theaters to advertise the films they're showing and which aren't anything paintings, even great ones like that one up there on the ceiling. They just seem so dead or phony or something, like those photos they put up outside movie theaters to advertise the films they're showing and which aren't anything like like the films at all. But just watching you the films at all. But just watching you look look at a painting like you are now - I don't know, maybe it's your nose or something, how at a painting like you are now - I don't know, maybe it's your nose or something, how intense intense it gets, how it gets, how excited, excited, like it's really like it's really on on to something - whatever, I just get this tremendous feeling that, even though I'll never understand it, something to something - whatever, I just get this tremendous feeling that, even though I'll never understand it, something great great is happening, and it's enough for someone like me just to be close enough to pick up the vibrations. If I'm too dumb or insensitive to feel what you feel, you know, at least I can feel you feeling it!" is happening, and it's enough for someone like me just to be close enough to pick up the vibrations. If I'm too dumb or insensitive to feel what you feel, you know, at least I can feel you feeling it!"

He knows he should tell her the real reason he is staring at this stupid painting, just as he should have told that teary-eyed student in his office that day that she was not the Madonna and stopped her from licking his nose all over, but he hates, now as then, to break the spell. Bluebell has moved behind him and, taller than he, now stands looking down, their heads pointed in opposite directions, into his eyes, her blond hair falling in curtaining wisps, her soft b.r.e.a.s.t.s, unzipped from the windbreaker, resting snugly on his shoulders like a kind of furry foam rubber warming pad. It is wonderfully relaxing. He can feel the back of his neck unpopping, unsnapping, almost like magic. He squints up past her smiling eyes and wonders if he sees what he sees. "The - the roots of your hair - " he whispers hoa.r.s.ely, as she blows a quivering pink bubble toward his forehead and at the last second sucks it back between her bright white teeth: "- are they - are they blue blue - -?"

"Oh yeah," she laughs lightly, giving her head a little shake to tickle his face with its strands, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s hobbling gently around his ear-holes. "Just a silly college stunt. A bunch of us girls thought it'd be neat to dye our hair some weird punk color, and I did mine in this funky blue to, like, you know, go with my sweater. Pretty dumb, hunh? Thank goodness, it's finally growing out - only the roots are left."

"Ah!" The stiffness in his neck seems to have melted away. He finds he can lower his chin at last and his headache has utterly evaporated, though his face feels flushed and pinched in a not unpleasant way. He wonders if, in some mysterious way, he has found the illusive closing image for his monograph!

"Speaking of my sweater, prof," she adds, holding something strung on a gold chain in front of his nose, "you left this inside inside it last time." It is his ear, now blackened and shriveled up like a smoked oyster. He can feel his headache coming back. "I thought it was maybe kind of a present, you know, like a fraternity pin or something, so I've been - it last time." It is his ear, now blackened and shriveled up like a smoked oyster. He can feel his headache coming back. "I thought it was maybe kind of a present, you know, like a fraternity pin or something, so I've been - snap! ffp.o.o.p! snap! ffp.o.o.p! - wearing it, but if you need it for anything!?" - wearing it, but if you need it for anything!?"

"No -!" he squeaks.

"Gosh, thanks a million, Professor Pinenut," she whispers and gives him from behind a tender little hug. "I'll always wear it next to my heart, just where I found it! Right here - see?"

He turns his head, following the dangled ear, and, encouraged by her pointing finger, presses his earhole into the warm blue hollow where its dessicated outer sh.e.l.l is snuggled. As he listens to the accelerating thump within, nodding in concert with it, his nose stroking lightly the fleecy breast, he tells himself with an outburst of rapture that what he sees there before his crossed eyes is beauty's very essence: form as divine thought, the single and pure perfection which resides in the mind, of which an image and likeness, rare and holy and soft as a powder puff, is here raised up for adoration. He wishes to expla