"These fucking miracle marts give me the creeps!"
"Eat me, drink me — they're like a fast food chain for vampires and cannibals!"
"Last time I played one of these houses, they called me Perverse Doctrine. Must've been centuries ago. Worst beating I ever got!"
"You'll get worse if you don't move your stumps! Grab the old board up and let's go!"
"No, no! Not that way!" he begs as they pull on his chair. "I want to go in there! I must go in there!"
"Now, now, dear Pinocchio," counsels Colombina, leaning close to his earhole, then speaking as to a deaf person, "as your best friend, let me give you some advice. It is very late, the night is dark, and we're up to our mildewed bungholes in death and danger as it is! We've already lost poor Lelio and Diamantina tonight. And the law's right behind us! Things are bad enough, as the saying goes, so don't blow on the fire!"
"Yes, you are my best friend, Colombina," he replies with his dry cracked voice. "I have almost no one left but you. If you don't help me, I–I don't know what I'll do!"
"But, Pinocchio, my love, this is crazy! Do you remember what our dear late lamented Arlecchino used to say? 'What do you gain by hanging yourself?' he used to say. 'Does that put any flesh on your bones? It does not, it makes you thinner!' Now, for goodness' sake, or at least for your own, and for mine, too, if you love me, be sensible! Come with us while there is still time!"
"Please! Just take me inside. I can't get there by myself. Then you can go."
"Go? But aren't you coming with us?"
"I–I don't know."
"Ahi, my dear Pinocchio, you are impossible!" she cries.
"Perhaps we could just toss the old cazzo inside on the count of three and make a run for it — ?" Pierotto suggests.
"Or maybe we could nail a couple of those fancy crosses we stole to what's left of his knees and he could toddle on in on his own," says another.
"Bad luck," mutters Brighella. "We've your nut for a hammer, but we're fresh out of nails."
"No, if we're going to do it, let's at least show some style, let's go clean — like they say in the trade: if you slip in the shit, make a dance out of it!" Colombina insists, and, with an exasperated sigh, the six of them lift his gondola chair in unison like grim-faced pallbearers, sharing out not the weight, little of that that there is, but the dread. The other Burattini, being old troupers after all and superstitious about splitting up an act, reluctantly pile out of the gondolas yet again and join them, huddling closely, for their collective entrance.
"Mamma mia! Is this dumb, or what?"
"We must all be out of our waterlogged gourds!"
"Look at those crazy lights playing around up there! It's like some kind of Grand Opening!"
"Yeah, well, just so what gets opened isn't me!"
"This church, is it is it used for last rites?" he asks faintly.
"No, never. Lust rites, more like. It's a wedding chapel."
"The brides are off-loaded from those steps out there."
"The only things that get buried here, old chum, are little birds in ripe figs."
"Ah "
"But never so deep they can't be made to rise and sing again."
"And again."
"This is the only shaman shed in town where the Second Coming is not sufficient cause for celebration."
"Let's just hope we don't lose any more than the brides lose!"
"What did you say?"
"What?"
As they reach the blue-wreathed doorway, the liquid glow from within seems to grow more intense, troubling their sight and hearing alike ("Loose enema, then: what — ?"), the music, which is more like a fragrant lullaby than a hymn or a wedding march, now reaching them less through their ears than through their noses as a rich harmonious brew of incense, gentle arpeggios, hot peperonata, and Venetian lagoon.
"Listen! The bells!"
"It's nearly midnight!"
"And tomorrow — !"
"I can't hear them, but I can feel them kicking!"
"Tell me when we're in Paris!" whimpers Lisetta, only her nose sticking out, and Pierotto complains: "What's that? I can't hear a thing! I've still got poor Diamantina's ashes up my nose!"
"Now, come in here, and tell me how it happened that you fell into the hands of assassins!" intones a grave windy voice that seems to come from another world, and is not so much heard as felt like a cold finger down the spine. The gondola chair is dropped on the flagstones there in front of the open door with an answering bang and the trembling puppets fall clatteringly together like a sackful of shingles.
"Who was that — ?!"
"Assassins? What assassins — ?"
"I'm suddenly losing interest," Captain Spavento wheezes solemnly, turning shakily on his heel, and the top half of Il Zoppo gasps: "Whoa, old pegs! Any further and I'm getting off!"
"Button your pants, Pulcinella! Don't let me look!"
"You close this farcetta on your own, Colombina! I'm butting out of here!"
"Me too! I'm so scared I think I just split myself!"
"This is not in my contract!"
"No, don't go!" he cries. "Please! Capitano! Brighella — !"
"But they are right, dear Pinocchio!" agrees Colombina. "This is not our pitch! It's clear we've all been cast here for tomorrow's Ash Wednesday magic makeup kit! We must go — quickly! — and you must go with us!"
"But — !"
"No more 'buts'! 'Buts' have caused you nothing but trouble all your life! Come now! The show must go on, old trouper!"
"But that's just it!" he gasps feebly. "Look at me, Colombina! Dear Brighella! Capitano! Can't you see?! My part is over! I've got no feet, no ears, no teeth, my fingers are dropping off and everything else is warped and cracked and falling apart — I can't move without fracturing and splintering, my cords and ligaments have rotted out, and my insides are nothing but wet sawdust! There's nothing alive and well in there except the things feeding on me! And Lelio was right, though I love you, I'm not one of you! Flesh has made a pestilential freak out of me! Even I don't know who or what I am any more! There's only one thing left for me now. But I–I can't do it without you!"
His desperate plea has silenced them. Brighella has returned. Pierotto looks over his shoulder from the foot of the watersteps, the tear on his cheek gleaming like a sapphire in the blue light there.
"You've touched me to the very core, dear Pinocchio," Colombina sighs. She gives him a tender little hug, and the miserable sound of wet twigs snapping makes her groan and hug him again, whatever the damages. "What is it you want us to do, my brother?"
"I want, how can I say ? I want you to help me make a good exit."
"Ah !" The puppets turn as one toward the blazing blue-whiskered doorway of Santa Maria dei Miracoli. This is something they all understand. A proper exit needs timing, boldness, clarity, purpose, but, before anything else, one must command the stage. What they feel, standing here in the misty wings, is worse than stage fright to be sure, but it is no longer mere woodenheaded panic. They are professionals, after all. Those who have fled to the boats now return, and though there is still some surly grumbling to be heard at the fringes, the general mood as they pick up his tapestried gondola chair once more and step pluckily on through the resplendent portal (the Virgin, under a punctuated cross lit up now like a pinball bumper, seems to spit on them as they pass beneath her, or perhaps she is squirting her breasts at them, or little Jesus, lost in the dark tangled foliage, might even be peeing on them all, it is hard in the confusion of their senses wrought by the musical light, or luminous music, to be sure) is more like that of getting stuck with a lean part in a bad show in front of a cold house: grim but steady, and prepared to see it through.