"Some years later," his companion goes on, swigging from the flask, "I went away for a while. I was pretty old by this time, and suffering from mange and anemia and buboes and crotch rot and delirium tremens and all kinds of depressing shit, I couldn't even get it up anymore, I was just a useless fucked-up old boozer, sick at heart, jerking off limply at the world's keyhole. Napoleon came here then, just walked in and kicked my miserable hemorrhoidal butt around like he owned it, and nobody gave a moldering fig, not even me. Then he took me off to Paris for a while. And, though I hate to admit it, I had a pretty good time " The old Lion tips back the bottle, finishes it off, tosses it into the black waters of the canal, belches resonantly. "When I got back, this place looked different somehow, shriveled up, tackier, fucking pathetic really. It was never ever the same after that." He lifts one paw and scratches himself ruefully between his hind legs, making a sound like bricks rubbing and clattering against one another, a sound that rebounds thinly from the wall across the softly plashing water, dimly lit by the single dull yellow bulb above. Drifting down the canals toward them now with the wisps of cold fog as though carried on them come, faintly, the distant sounds of Carnivaclass="underline" music, laughter, whistles, horns, shouts, drumbeats, sirens. Then they fade away again. He stares at the little arched bridge a few meters up the canal from them as though to see the sounds lingering there, but there is only a bleak dark silence. Did his puppet friends get away, he wonders. Or ? He is afraid to consider the alternatives. "And now, shit, I'm nothing but an emasculated flea-bitten old clown, I know that. A fucking joke, too old to merit another telling. Hrmff. Still got my figure though. Eh? Wurrp! Damn right! Not worth the dingleberries on a stray cat's ass, but I'm still something to look at!"
When they got back to the Palazzo, the three servants having unstrapped him from the Count's giant penis and carried him gingerly up to his apartments, they found a glass coffin in the hallway outside his rooms, the rooms themselves stripped of his personal possessions, and a wizened Third World monarch, still wearing his crown, sleeping in his bed. They poked and prodded the ancient potentate but he seemed to be brain dead, so Buffetto and Francatrippa, peeling off their human masks to reveal themselves as his old Gran Teatro dei Burattini colleagues Brighella and Capitano Spavento del Vall'Inferno, dragged the royal person out onto the floor, while Colombina, whose head had popped up to replace Truffaldino's severed one, prepared now to remake the bed. "Yes, it's me, dear Pinocchio!" she laughed when she saw him staring up at her. "One of my most successful roles ever, though it hasn't been easy! I had a hard time keeping the Director from grabbing at something that wasn't there!" And she lowered her breeches to show him her hard hairless pubis, slightly cracked, knocking on it — bok! bok! — with her wooden fist. "Come in!" Brighella shouted ("In emergencies, I had to use everything from clothespins to broom handles!" Colombina was laughing), and the Captain muttered ominously: "Cazzo! Il tristo nominato e visto!"
"What are you doing, you idiots?!" screamed Eugenio, storming in in his disheveled Queen of the Night costume, no doubt red-faced under all the smeared paint. "Why is His Royal Puissant Majesty lying on the floor in his nightshirt? Are you mad?! I come back to powder my nose and freshen my lipstick and what do I find — ?!"
"Easy, easy, direttore," urged Brighella, hastily pulling on his noseless Buffetto mask. "There was someone in the professor's bed — "
"Of course there was someone in his bed, you cretinous scoundrel! He doesn't live here anymore!"
"No? But then — ?"
"Traitor!" the abused pilgrim squawked feebly from where he lay. "Monster — !"
"What? Ah, so there you are, Pini! How on earth did you get here, dear boy? I couldn't believe my eyes! There you were, in the middle of the crowded Piazza, quite the center of attention, and then suddenly a puff of smoke and: vanished! Into thin air! I thought they must have eaten you up! How ever did you manage that?"
"Murderer! See what you have done to me — !"
"What's that? Speak up, Pini," Eugenio complained, turning to primp in a gold-framed mirror, "I can't hear a word you say! As for your room here, if that's what you're mumbling about, I regret to say, your credit has run out, dear old chum, and I must ask you to leave. No hard feelings — "
"Run out — ? Credit — ?"
"Yes, credit — did you think it was Cuccagna around here? In the real world, things cost money, my dear, as a Nobel Prize-winner you should at least know that much!
"But all my savings — !"
"Your bank accounts are as empty as a Venetian well, your credit cards are used up, your properties sold or seized, your royalties bequeathed to, eh, charity, there's simply nothing left."
"My retirement funds ?"
"Tsk tsk. I am afraid they're gone, too, Pini. You've been a very expensive guest!"
"You took even my — ?!"
"Everything, carino mio. I am nothing if not thorough, as the Little Man himself would have told you long ago." Applying fresh ruby red lipstick, Eugenio puckered his lips in the mirror and winked coyly at himself. "And, please, I didn't take those little baubles, you forgetful old thing, you gave them to me. Still," he added, adjusting his wig, then turning away from the mirror and snapping his purse shut, "for old time's sake, if you stop fussing, I will let you stay on one more night. I'm certainly not coming home tonight, I'm having the most delicious time, so you or this grand imperial nabob here may use my rooms for the time being, whichever one of you promises to be continent. "
"But — but what about tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow is a lifetime away, amor mio. We will take off our shoes, as we say here, when we come to the water! Those of us who still have them, that is. Now, now, don't put on such a face! I do love you, you know. And just to prove it, I have a little present for you! You there without the nose! Go to the library immediately and bring me what you find there on the Cinquecento papal secretary! Snap to it, you unsightly rogue!"
Almost before he had left, Brighella/Buffetto was back, cradling an all-too-familiar portable computer. "That's mine!" the old scholar croaked as the puppet-servant set it on his old writing table by the window. "You've — you've had it all the time!"
"Have I? Well, how should I know?" snapped Eugenio petulantly, turning away from the window where he had been throwing kisses and hallooing in his teasing falsetto to someone down in the Piazza below. "I buy and sell things all the time, that's what I do. I can't keep up with all the details! Now, really, I must get back to my party. We only live once, you know! Be a good fellow and don't disturb the other guests! And get something on, dear boy, you look a fright!"