(1991) Pinocchio in Venice Read Online Free PDF Page B

on a magic tree, all atinkle with their manifest profundity and poetry. Zin! zin! zin! they go. I should be taking notes, he thinks. The blind hotel proprietor, likewise, complaining of a "grave indisposition of the gut, as it is called," said he could eat very little, settling in the end for a few modest portions of mullet al pomodoro, grilled cuttlefish, sea bass baked in salt, razor clams, and stuffed crabs, the house specialty, and finishing with sweetbreads and mushrooms, plus a simple risotto with sliced kidneys trifolato, smoked eels, and prawns with chicken gizzards and polenta, all of it consumed noisily from beneath the grim visor of his bauta mask, pressed upon his plate like a pale severed head, his one black-gloved hand left free thereby to clutch his glass, from which he seemed not so much to drink the wine as to snort it.
        The porter, contrarily, protesting that the night's exertions had aroused in him a most woeful discomfort in the stomach that closely resembled appetite, declared that he intended to consume at one sitting all that the liberality of il buon dottore had bestowed upon him, down to the last quattrino, speaking in the old way, and in demonstration of this proclamation proceeded to devour monumental quantities of tortellini and cannelloni, penne all'arrabbiata, rich and tangy, spaghetti with salt pork and peppers, heaps of thick chewy gnocchi made from cornmeal, tender pasticcio layered with baked radicchio from Treviso, pickled spleen and cooked tendons (or nervetti, as they call them here, "little nerves," slick and translucent as hospital tubing), bowls of risi e bisi and sliced stuffed esophagus (the professor skipped this one), fennel rolled in cured beef, and breaded meatballs with eggplant alla parmigiana. His doctor unfortunately having put him on a strict regimen (and here the masked porter patted his overflowing hips plaintively), he was denied the pleasures of the fish course, but he was able, in all good conscience, to round off his evening's repast with a dish of calf's liver alla veneziana, wild hare in wine sauce with a homely garnishing of baby cocks, beef brains, pheasants, and veal marrow, a small suckling lamb smothered in kiwi fruit, sage, and toasted almonds, and a kind of fricassee of partridges, rabbits, frogs, lizards, and dried paradise grapes, said to be another famous specialty of the house and particularly recommended for persons on stringent diets. "Ah, that was its own death!" he exclaimed on crunching up the last of the little birds, his gravelly old voice greased now to a mellow rumble. "I'm full as an egg!"
        Of course there was an abundance of wine to be had with all this food, for as the porter put it: "You can't build a wall without mortar, professore!" True, true, and, given the hearty generosity of the hotel manager in providing such a feast, even if he himself in his jet-lagged condition was able to enjoy so little of it, how could he refuse them all a few simple bottles, especially since in this respect at least he was able to join in the festivities. Indeed, it was the delicate whisper of a fizzy Cartizze from Valdobbiadene, the soft cheeky blush in a Pinot Grigio from the Veneto, the meaty brusqueness of a young Friulian Refosco, the tangy, faintly sour aroma of a spilled bottle of Venegazzu Riserva as it spread through the tablecloth stiffened with stains (not to mention the evaporation of his own reserve as the wines coursed through his age- and travel-stiffened limbs: good wine makes good blood, as they say here) that most pungently drew him back to the drama of his origins, leaving him now in this delicious metaphysical torpor, blessed as it were with purposeful idleness, at rest in the face of perfection - the very indolence in effect of Paradise itself, wherein self-knowledge is not pursued but intuitively received: seek not and (a belch arises from some deep inner well like a kind of affirmation of the pneuma, and he welcomes it,