Look on the bright side, he admonishes himself, beginning to wheeze. No more deadlines. No more bibliographical evidence to amass. No more words. Up on the Nuns' Choir, there are representations of saints holding what he takes to be the instruments of their martyrdom. Some of them are holding books. He can appreciate this. A kind of plague, reading them maybe even worse than writing them, and no end to it. The terrible martyrdom of the ever-rolling stone. Saint Pinocchio. He and his father, a new heavenly host. And now think of it, for the first time in his long life, he does not have a book to write. That martyrdom at least is over. He is free at last. Which is probably just what they told poor Sebastian when they stripped his armor off him. "Free, my tortured chiappie!" he seems to be yelling, as they stuff him, up there beside the altar, into his second death. Trouble is, as martyrdoms go, the first was better than the second. This one hurts more and the compensations are more obscure. And this time: this time, no one's watching.
"Oh my Ga-ahd!" exclaims a loud nasal American voice, blowing in behind him. The professor makes a movement which to his own inner eye is that of shrinking down in his seat, though it may be invisible to others, as the intruder, stamping her feet and shaking herself audibly, comes blustering down the aisle. "Lookit this! Brrr! What a creepshow, man! Everybody's dead in here!"
12. IN THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD
"Gee-whillikers, prof, I feel really flattered to — pjfft! POP! — be able to talk with you all alone like this about art and life and beauty and all that great stuff, I'm so excited, it's like first day in class!" his former student gushes, squeezing his hands inside her sweater. It does not feel like flesh in there so much as a powdery cloud, like the materialization of his own flushed confusion. "You never know," his father used to rumble drunkenly, wiping the drool from his grizzled chops and tipping his yellow wig forward over his eyebrows, "in this world, boyo, anything can happen." It was about all the wisdom the old lout had: In questo mondo i casi sono tanti, so save your pear peels, they might come in handy. It had prepared the venerable professor for many of life's surprises, but it had not prepared him for this. Perhaps only Hollywood could have prepared him for this. "Everybody in class was crazy about you, you know. 'The beak's unique,' we used to say around campus. 'The Nose Knows!' "
"I–I-I — !" he gasps. He feels, in such transport, like a fish out of water, his gills flapping wildly. His chest is shaken by violent spasms, which he is trying desperately to suppress. But his hands feel so wonderful he wants to cry.
"We called you 'The Happy Honker,' you coulda had any girl you wanted — and probably at least half the guys as well. And what a dresser! A real zoot snoot, as we used to say, no disrespect intended — and speaking of which, your snoot, I mean, snuggle it down here, too, teach. Goodness sakes, but it's a mess! Is that an acorn growing out the side of it? You poor dear man!" She puts an arm around him and hugs him to her bosom, which is alive and tremulous and fragrant as a Tuscan summer. Or an Iowa cornfield. Cape Cod in August. He doesn't even know where he is for a dizzying moment. He grabs hold so as not to fall, then nearly faints again to think of what he's clutching. "What you need, professor, is to let me take you back to my room and give you a good hot bath!"
"Oh, I can't — !" he squeaks, but his voice is smothered in fluffy blue angora. He tries to lift his head up, but she pushes it back down again. "I'm waiting for a frie — mwmpff!" She lays one hand soothingly against his nose, settling it into the warm hollow between her breasts, stroking it gently. It's as though it were made for it, like a violin case for its own particular instrument. Even resistance feels good
What he'd felt when she first came storming in, disturbing his revery (his head had slumped again to his chest, for all she knew he might have been praying, had she no shame?), was more like outrage and repugnance and bitter vexation: To have traveled so far, to have suffered so much, and now, at the very end — ! She'd swaggered brazenly through the place like she owned it, blowing bubbles with her noisomely scented chewing gum, hooting and snorting and loudly decrying the very sobriety that gave the church its celebrated beauty ("Stone corpses and little babies holding skulls — and lookit that skinny dude with the facefuzz — ffpupp! squit! SMACK! — hanging there like bagged game! Whoo, by his color I'd say he's not only dead meat, he's gone off!"), a sturdy middle-American blonde in a red plastic windbreaker, blue jeans, and white cowboy boots. Luckily, she seemed not to see him, and he sank lower in the pew. "And lookit the cute little butt on John-boy the Baptist there, and — hey, whoa, am I right? Has the Holy Virgin got her thumb up her kid's wazoo? Prodding his little poop-shoot?! His itty-bitsy bumbo?! Yippee! What a diablerie! Or are these supposed to be the — ffpLUP! — good guys? Murder!"
She brushed the snow out of her blond hair with hands ringed and braceleted in cheap costume jewelry, and, her windbreaker rustling, leaned over the altar railing. Her tight jeans seemed almost to squeak as they filled up, the worn seams spreading, her honey-colored hair clinging in snow-dampened rings about her neck and temples. "Ouch! Bi-zzang! Right in his appendectomy scar! Musta missed his little dickydoo by a whisper! Well, what did it matter, what good's that old gap-stopper gonna — splurpp! snap! — do him now anyway, right? I mean, that sucker's had it! And, yikes, what're they trying to do to that guy, give him an enema? Weird!" She peeked into the side altars, stared up at the organ, gave the Veronese bust a high five, read the tomb inscription in the floor below it while blowing a huge rosy bubble. "I don't know," she sighed, sucking up the gum before it popped and turning around, "but it sure looks like a lotta heavy S and M to me, whips and bondage and dead bodies and all that, with some child porn thrown in for the kinkos — whadda you think, professor?"
He was thinking — had been — that she was an unspeakably rude and vulgar young loudmouth, but he was so startled by her addressing him directly like that, all he could do was raise his chin an inch and break into a wheezing cough. Under her windbreaker, he saw, she was wearing a gaudy blue angora sweater, still sparkling frothily with snow. She smiled, pushed out another enormous pink bubble. This one did pop, sticking to her nose and chin. She plucked it away with her fingers, looking cross-eyed at it, poked it back in, smiled again, chewing vigorously with her mouth open. She had even white teeth, the sort invented by American orthodontists, wide lips painted cherry red. "You are Professor Pinenut, aren't you? I recognized you by the by your "