(1991) Pinocchio in Venice (35 page)

    "Ah!" he replies with his vanishing voice, grateful for the line she has, in her wisdom, thrown him. "But a talking book, mamma!
A talking book…!"

    Though his eyes are closed, his senses withdrawn, for one vivid moment he sees himself at a distance in the Fairy's arms. He has not moved from those arms, has indeed fallen deeper than ever inside himself, yet the view seems to be from the back of the church, near the door, looking down a long polished nose at an altar bedecked with flowers and flooded with soft light, the rest of the little chapel now in darkness. What he sees up there is a decrepit misshapen little creature, neither man nor puppet, entangled in blue hair and lying in an unhinged sprawl in the embrace of a monstrous being, tented obscurely in her own wild tresses, but revealing, as she picks and nibbles at the ridiculous figure in her lap (it feels, remotely, very good), glimpses of tusk and claw and fiery eye. She is grotesque. Hideous. Beautiful. She leans toward the little man's head now as though to suck at the orifices there (yes, he can feel it go, feel it all emptying out), and then the eyes at the doorway turn away from the light and he is finally and for all that infinite span of time still left him, infinite because he will never know its limits, be they but a hair's breadth away (the thought escapes him, even as he thinks it), in the dark. Somewhere, out on the surface, distant now as his forgotten life, fingers dance like children at play and soft lips kiss the ancient hurts away. And… is she doing something with his nose? Ah…! Yes…! Good…!

Scan Notes, v3.0:
 

Proofed carefully against DT, italics and special characters intact. Was especially careful with the Italian (which Coover did not italicise). Somehow, I resisted rewriting the last chapter to reflect the debt of gratitude Robert Coover owes me for all of his great literature….