Thinking that all this whining was just another of the puppet’s pranks, Geppetto decided to put a stop to it. He climbed the wall and went in through the window.
He was ready to say and do certain things, but when he saw that his Pinocchio, sprawled there on the ground, really had lost his feet, his heart melted. He took him in his arms at once and began kissing and stroking him and whispering a thousand tender words and sobbing, and as shiny tears ran down his cheeks, he said, “My darling Pinocchio! How in the world did you burn your feet off?”
“I don’t know, Daddy, but it sure was a hellish night and I’ll remember it for the rest of my days. It was thundering and lightning, and I was famished, and then the Talking Cricket said to me, ‘Serves you right, you’ve been naughty, you deserve it,’ and I said, ‘Watch out, Cricket!’ and he said, ‘You’re a puppet and you’re a blockhead,’ and I threw a wooden mallet at him, and he died, but it was his fault, because I didn’t want to kill him, the proof being that I put a little skillet on the live coals of the brazier, but the chick flew out and said, ‘Farewell, and all my best to your family.’ And I was getting hungrier and hungrier, which is why that little old man in a nightcap leaned out the window and said, ‘Stand below me and hold out your hat,’ and I got that basinful of water on my head, because there’s no shame in asking for a bit of bread, right? And I came straight home, and since I was still famished I put my feet on the brazier to dry them, and then you came home and I found them all burnt, and meanwhile I’m still hungry and I no longer have feet! Wah, wah, wah, wah!”
And poor Pinocchio began to cry and squawk so loudly that people could hear him five kilometers away.
Of all this jumbled talk, Geppetto understood only one thing: that the puppet was dying of hunger. And so he took three pears from his pocket and handed them over, saying, “These three pears were my breakfast, but I happily give them to you. Eat them, and may it do you good.”
“If you want me to eat them, please peel them for me first.”
“Peel them?” replied Geppetto, amazed. “I would never have guessed, my boy, that you had such a finicky and fastidious palate. That’s bad! In this world, even as children, we have to learn to eat anything and everything, and to like it, because we never know what lies in store for us. Strange things happen.”
“You’re no doubt right,” added Pinocchio, “but I would never eat a piece of unpeeled fruit. I can’t stand the peels.”
And so that good man Geppetto pulled out a knife and, armed with great patience, peeled the three pears and placed all the peels on a corner of the table.
Pinocchio ate the first pear in two bites and was about the throw away the core when Geppetto grabbed his arm and said, “Don’t throw it away—you never know what might come in handy in this world.”
“But I would certainly never eat the core!” shouted the puppet, recoiling like a viper.
“Who knows? Strange things happen,” said Geppetto again, calmly.
And so it was that the three cores, instead of being thrown out the window, were placed on the corner of the table, along with the peels.
Having eaten, or to put it a better way, devoured the three pears, Pinocchio yawned widely and said with a whine, “I’m still hungry!”
“But I have nothing more to give you, my boy.”
“Nothing, nothing at all?”
“All I could offer would be these peels and cores from the pears.”
“Oh all right,” said Pinocchio, “if there’s nothing else, I’ll eat one peel.”
He began to chew. At first he grimaced a little, but then he quickly wolfed down all the peels—and after the peels, the cores as well, and when he had polished it all off, he patted his belly with satisfaction and cheerfully said, “Now I feel better!”
“So you see,” observed Geppetto, “I was right when I told you that one shouldn’t be too dainty and delicate about food. My dear, we never know what this world has in store for us. Strange things happen…”
8
NO SOONER had the puppet satisfied his hunger than he began grousing and crying, because he wanted a pair of new feet.
But Geppetto, as punishment for his pranks, let him cry and despair for half a day, then said, “And why should I make you new feet? So I can see you run away from home again?”
“I promise,” said the sobbing puppet, “that from now on I’ll be good.”
“That’s what all children say,” replied Geppetto, “when they’re trying to get something.”
“I promise I’ll go to school, I’ll study, I’ll make you proud.”
“These are the very things all children say when they’re trying to get something.”
“But I’m not like other children! I’m better than the rest, and I always tell the truth. I promise you, Daddy, that I’ll learn a trade, and that I’ll be the staff and comfort of your old age.”
Geppetto was trying to look severe, but his eyes brimmed with tears and his heart swelled with compassion at seeing his poor Pinocchio in such a pitiful state. Without another word, he took up the tools of his trade, along with two pieces of seasoned wood, and he set to work in great earnest.
In less than an hour, the two little feet were finished, and they were as nimble, lean, and sinewy as if they had been fashioned by a brilliant artist.
Geppetto then told the puppet, “Close your eyes and go to sleep!”
And so Pinocchio closed his eyes and pretended to sleep. Meanwhile, Geppetto stuck the new feet in place with some glue he had melted in an eggshell, and he stuck them on so well that you couldn’t even see the joint.
As soon as the puppet realized the feet were on, he jumped down from the table where he had been lying and began skipping and capering about the room as if driven crazy by so much happiness.
“To repay you for everything you’ve done for me,” said Pinocchio to his daddy, “I want to go to school right away.”
“Good boy.”
“But before I can go to school, I need clothes.”
Geppetto, who was poor and didn’t have so much as a penny in his pocket, fashioned a humble outfit out of flowered paper, a pair of shoes out of tree bark, and a new cap out of bread crumbs.
Pinocchio ran to look at himself in a basin full of water, and he was so pleased with what he saw that he began strutting like a peacock, saying, “I look like a real gentleman!”
“It’s true,” replied Geppetto, “because it isn’t fine clothes, you must remember, that make a gentlemen—it’s clean clothes.”
“By the way,” continued the puppet, “there’s one more thing I need before I can go to school—in fact, the best and most important thing of all.”
“What’s that?”
“I need a spelling book.”
“You’re right, but how can we get one?”
“Simple: we go to a bookseller and buy one.”
“What about money?”
“I don’t have any.”
“Me neither,” added the kind old man, growing sad.
And Pinocchio, though he was a very cheerful boy, grew sad, too, because poverty, if it’s true poverty, is understood by everyone, even children.
“Don’t worry!” shouted Geppetto, suddenly springing to his feet. He put on his old fustian coat, all patches and darnings, and ran out the door.
He soon returned, and when he came in the door he had his son’s spelling book in his hands, but no coat. The poor man was in shirtsleeves, though it was snowing outside.
“Where’s your coat, Daddy?”
“I sold it.”
“Why did you sell it?”
“Because I was hot.”
Pinocchio quickly grasped what his answer meant, and he couldn’t resist the good-hearted impulse to throw his arms around Geppetto’s neck and begin covering his face with kisses.
9
AS SOON as it stopped snowing, Pinocchio, with his nifty new spelling book tucked under his arm, set out down the road to school. Along the way, his li
ttle brain dreamt up a thousand things, a thousand castles in the air, each more lovely than the last.
Conversing with himself, he said, “Today, at school, I’ll quickly learn to read; then tomorrow I’ll learn to write; and the day after tomorrow I’ll learn my numbers. Then, with all that knowledge, I’ll make a lot of money, and with the first money that comes into my hands I’ll buy my daddy a fine wool coat. But what am I saying, ‘wool’? I’ll buy him a coat made of silver and gold, with diamond buttons. And that poor man truly deserves it—because, after all, in order to buy me books and send me to school, he’s going around in shirtsleeves. In this cold! There are some sacrifices only a father would make!”
In the midst of all this emotional talk, he thought he heard, in the distance, the music of fifes and the beats of a big drum: dee-dee-dee, dee-dee-dee, dum, dum, dum, dum.
He stopped to listen. Those sounds came from the end of a long side road that led to a tiny little village constructed by the seaside.
“What could that music be? It’s too bad I have to go to school, otherwise…”
And there he stood, uncertain. One thing was sure: he had to do something, either go to school or listen to the fifes.
“Today I’ll go to hear the fifes, tomorrow I’ll go to school—there’s always time for school,” the rascal finally said, shrugging his shoulders.
Wasting no time, he headed down the side road and soon was running at top speed. The more he ran, the clearer he heard the sound of the fifes and the thumps of the big drum: dee-dee-dee, dee-dee-dee, dee-dee-dee, dum, dum, dum, dum.
Suddenly he found himself in the middle of a square packed with people. They were crowding around a big wooden booth covered with canvas that was painted with a thousand colors.
Turning to a little local boy, Pinocchio asked, “What is that booth?”
“It’s written on that poster. Read it and you’ll know.”
“I’d gladly read it, but it just so happens that I can’t read today.”
“Bravo, dummy! Okay, I’ll read it to you. For your information, those fire-red letters on the poster say: GREAT PUPPET SHOW.”
“How long ago did the show start?”
“It’s starting now.”
“And how much does it cost to get in?”
“Twenty cents.”
Pinocchio, in a fever of curiosity, lost all self-control and shamelessly asked the boy, “Would you loan me twenty cents until tomorrow?”
“I’d gladly give them to you,” said the boy, mocking him, “but it just so happens that I can’t today.”
“I’d sell you my jacket for twenty cents,” the puppet said to the boy.
“What am I supposed to do with a jacket made of flowery paper? If I got rained on, I’d never get it off.”
“You want to buy my shoes?”
“They’d be good for lighting fires.”
“How much will you give me for my hat?”
“Now that would be a bargain! A bread-crumb hat! Maybe the mice would come eat it off my head!”
Pinocchio was on pins and needles. He was just about to make one last offer, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He hemmed and hawed, he shilly-shallied, he agonized. At last he said, “Would you give me twenty cents for this new spelling book?”
“I’m just a child, and I don’t buy things from other children,” replied his little interlocutor, who had more sense than Pinocchio did.
“For twenty cents, I’ll buy that spelling book,” cried a ragpicker who happened to be listening to their conversation.
The book was sold right then and there. And to think that poor Geppetto was sitting at home shivering in shirtsleeves from the cold just so his son could have a spelling book!
10
WHEN PINOCCHIO entered the puppet theater, something happened that triggered a small revolution.
It’s important to understand that the curtain had been raised and the play had already begun.
Onstage, Harlequin and Punchinello were already quarreling with each other, as usual, and threatening at any moment to exchange a barrage of slaps and blows.
The audience was riveted, and they laughed till their bellies ached at the bickering of those two puppets, who gesticulated and traded insults so realistically that they truly appeared to be two thinking beings, two persons of this world.
Then all of a sudden, out of the blue, Harlequin stopped acting, turned toward the audience, pointed toward someone in the back of the pit, and started yelling in dramatic tones: “Good heavens! Do I dream or am I awake? Yet surely I see, there in the back, Pinocchio!”
“It truly is Pinocchio!” shouts Punchinello.
“It’s really him!” squeals Miss Rosaura, peeping out from the back of the stage.
“It’s Pinocchio! It’s Pinocchio!” all the puppets scream in unison, leaping out from the wings. “It’s Pinocchio! It’s our brother Pinocchio! Long live Pinocchio!”
“Pinocchio, come up here where I am!” shouts Harlequin. “Come throw yourself into the arms of your wooden brothers!”
At this affectionate invitation, Pinocchio leaps from the back of the pit into the expensive seats, then jumps again from the expensive seats onto the orchestra conductor’s head, and then springs from there onto the stage.
You can’t imagine all the hugging and embracing, the friendly pinches and the sincere head butts of brotherhood that Pinocchio received amid this mayhem from the actors and actresses of that plant-kingdom troupe.
It was a heartwarming spectacle, no doubt. But the audience, seeing that the play had ground to a halt, grew impatient and began to shout, “We want the play, we want the play!”
They were wasting their breath, because the puppets, instead of going on with the show, redoubled their rumpus and fuss, hoisting Pinocchio onto their shoulders and carrying him triumphantly into the footlights.
It was then that the puppet master came out, an enormous man, and so ugly that the mere sight of him was frightening. His foul beard was black as an inkblot and so long that it dragged on the ground. Let’s just say he stepped on it when he walked. His mouth was as wide as an oven, his eyes were like lanterns whose flames shined through panes of red glass, and his hands were cracking a big whip, made of snakes and foxtails braided together.
At the unexpected appearance of the puppet master, the crowd fell silent, holding its breath. You could have heard a pin drop. Those poor puppets, male and female alike, trembled like so many leaves.
“Why are you causing such a commotion in my theater?” the puppet master asked Pinocchio, booming like an ogre with a bad cold.
“Believe me, kind sir, it wasn’t my fault!”
“That’s enough out of you! We’ll settle this business tonight.”
Indeed, as soon as the play was finished, the puppet master went into the kitchen, where he was fixing himself a nice big ram for dinner; it turned slowly on a spit over the fire. But since he didn’t have enough wood to finish browning it, he called in Harlequin and Punchinello and said, “Fetch me that puppet—you’ll find him hanging on a nail. I think he’s made of good, dry wood, and I’m sure that if I toss him on the fire, it will flare up nicely and finish the roasting.”
At first, Harlequin and Punchinello hesitated. But then, afraid of incurring their owner’s wrath, they obeyed. They soon returned to the kitchen, carrying poor Pinocchio, who was wriggling like an eel out of water and screaming helplessly: “Oh save me, Daddy! I don’t want to die! No, I don’t want to die!”
11
I WON’T deny it: Fire-Eater (this was the puppet master’s name) did indeed look scary, with that foul black beard of his that covered his chest and legs like an apron. But deep down he really wasn’t a bad man. In fact, when he saw poor Pinocchio brought before him, struggling every which way and howling, “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die!” he was immediately moved to pity. He resisted the feeling for quite some time, but finally he could no longer help himself: he let out a resounding sneeze.
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Before that sneeze, Harlequin had looked hopelessly sad and was hunched over like a weeping willow. But after it, his face lit up and, leaning toward Pinocchio, he whispered, “Good news, brother! The puppet master sneezed, and that means he feels sorry for you, so you’ll be okay now.”
It’s important to know that while most people cry when they feel sorry for someone, or at least make a show of wiping their eyes, Fire-Eater was in the habit, when deeply moved, of sneezing. It was as good a way as any to show other people what he felt in his heart.
After sneezing, the puppet master, still grumpy, yelled at Pinocchio: “Stop that crying! Your wailing is giving me such a bellyache, causing me such cramps, it’s almost—ah-choo! ah-choo!”
“Bless you!” said Pinocchio.
“Thank you,” said Fire-Eater. “And your father and mother, are they still alive?”
“My daddy is. I never knew my mother.”
“I can only imagine what a blow it would be for your old father if I had you thrown onto those burning coals! That poor old man! I feel sorry—ah-choo! ah-choo! ah-choo!”
“Bless you!” said Pinocchio.
“Thank you! On the other hand, you should feel sorry for me, too, since as you can see I don’t have enough wood to finish roasting this ram; the fact is you really would have come in handy right about now. But I’ve already taken pity on you, so that’s that. Instead, I’ll put one of the puppets from my troupe onto the coals beneath that spit. Oh, guards!”
At this command, two wooden guards appeared at once. Both were very tall and very thin, with Napoleon hats on their heads and unsheathed swords in their hands.
Then the puppet master, his voice hoarse, said to them, “Fetch me Harlequin there, tie him up good, then throw him onto that fire. I want my ram well roasted!”
Just imagine how poor Harlequin felt! So frightened was he that his knees buckled and he fell forward onto the ground.