Pinocchio (12 page)

D
URING
that desperate race a terrible moment came, a moment in which Pinocchio thought he was lost. You see, Wingfoot (that was the mastiff dog's name), after running and running, had almost caught him.

Let's just say that the puppet could hear, a handbreadth away, the labored panting of that nasty beast, and he could even feel the hot blasts of his smelly breath.

As luck would have it, the beach was now close at hand and the sea just a few steps away.

As soon as he gained the beach, the puppet leapt magnificently into the air, as a bullfrog might have done, and landed with a splash in the water. Wingfoot, however, tried to stop, but his momentum carried him into the water as well. Since the poor wretch didn't know how to swim, he began flailing about with his paws to stay afloat. But the more he flailed, the more his head went under.

When his head resurfaced, the poor dog's eyes were bulging with terror and, barking, he cried, “I'm drowning! I'm drowning!”

“Drop dead!” replied Pinocchio from afar, seeing that by now he was safe from danger.

“Help me, dear Pinocchio! Save me from death!”

At that pitiful cry, the puppet (who deep down had a very good heart) was moved to compassion, and he turned to the dog and said, “If I help save you, do you promise to stop bothering and chasing me?”

“I promise! I promise! Hurry up, for heaven's sake—if you wait another half minute I'll be as good as dead.”

Pinocchio hesitated a little, but then he remembered how many times his daddy had told him that a good deed is never lost, and he swam over to Wingfoot, took hold of his tail with both hands, and pulled him safe and sound onto the dry sand of the beach.

The poor dog could no longer stand. Without meaning to, he had swallowed so much salt water that he was as swollen as a balloon. The puppet, however, not wanting to take any chances, thought it wise to throw himself back into the sea. And as he swam away from shore, he shouted to his rescued friend, “Goodbye, Wingfoot! Happy travels and all my best to you and yours.”

“Goodbye, Pinocchio,” replied the dog. “A thousand thanks for saving me from death. You've done me a good turn, and in this world one good turn deserves another. If the occasion arises, you never know…”

Pinocchio kept on swimming, keeping the shore always in sight. Finally he felt he had come to a safe place, and glancing at the shore he saw, among the rocks, a sort of cave, from which was rising a very long plume of smoke.

“In that cave,” Pinocchio thought to himself, “there must be a fire. So much the better! I'll go dry off and warm up—and then? And then we'll see what happens.”

Having made this decision, he approached the rocks. But as he was getting ready to climb out, he felt something beneath him in the water that rose and rose and rose and lifted him into the air. He immediately tried to get free, but it was too late: to his great astonishment he found himself caught in a large fishing net, amid a swarm of fish of every size and shape who were thrashing and struggling like doomed souls.

At the same time he saw, emerging from the cave, a fisherman so ugly that he looked like a sea monster. Instead of hair, a thick bush of green grass grew atop his head, green was his skin, green his eyes, green the long, long beard that hung down to here. He looked like a big lizard standing on its hind legs.

As the fisherman pulled the net out of the sea, he shouted happily, “Blessed Providence! Once again I can stuff myself to the gills with fish!”

“Lucky for me I'm not a fish,” Pinocchio thought to himself, plucking up his courage.

The fisherman carried the net loaded with fish into his cave, a dark and smoky cave in the middle of which a big skillet of oil was sizzling, giving off such a whiff of candle snuff as to take your breath away.

“Now let's see what fishes we've caught!” said the green fisherman. Thrusting into the net a hand so huge it looked like a baker's peel, he pulled out a handful of goatfish.

“Tasty, these goatfish!” he said, eyeing them and sniffing them with pleasure. After sniffing them, he tossed them into a big bucket with no water in it.

Then he repeated the same process several more times. And as he plucked the other fishes out, his mouth began to water and he said, with glee, “Tasty, these hake! Scrumptious, these mullet! Delectable, these sole! Choice, these sea bass! Cute, these anchovies with their heads on!”

As you can guess, the hake, the mullet, the sole, the sea bass, and the anchovies all went pell-mell into the bucket, to keep the goatfish company.

The last thing remaining in the net was Pinocchio.

As soon as the fisherman had plucked out Pinocchio, his big green eyes bulged with astonishment and he yelled, as though frightened, “What manner of fish is this? I don't recall ever eating this sort of fish!”

And he looked him over carefully again, and after scrutinizing him from every angle, he declared, “I know—this must be a sea slug.”

Mortified at being mistaken for a slug, Pinocchio replied indignantly, “A slug indeed! You better be careful how you treat me! For your information I am a puppet!”

“A puppet?” replied the fisherman. “To be honest, I'm not familiar with the puppet-fish species—so much the better! I'll eat you with greater relish.”

“Eat me? But can't you understand that I'm not a fish? Can't you hear that I speak and reason like you?”

“That's absolutely true,” agreed the fisherman, “and since I can see that you are a fish who is lucky enough to be able to speak and reason like me, I will indeed treat you with due respect.”

“Which means what?”

“As a sign of my friendship and extraordinary esteem, I'll allow you to choose how you would like to be cooked. Would you prefer to be fried in a skillet, or would you rather be stewed in a pot with a tomato sauce?”

“To be honest,” replied Pinocchio, “if I had to choose, I'd prefer to be set free instead, so I could go back home.”

“Surely you jest! Do you think I'd miss out on tasting such a rare fish? It isn't every day that you find a puppet-fish in these waters. Trust me: I'll fry you up in a skillet together with all the other fishes, and you'll end up liking it. It's always comforting to be fried in company.”

After this speech, the unhappy Pinocchio began to cry and scream and plead, and as he cried he said, “How much better it would have been if I had gone to school today! I listened to my schoolmates, and now I'm paying for it! Boo-hoo-hoo!”

And since he was wriggling like an eel and trying incredibly hard to slither out of the green fisherman's clutches, the fisherman took a nice length of reed, tied Pinocchio's hands and legs together like sausage ends, and threw him into the bucket with the others.

Then, taking out a battered wooden tray heaped with flour, he began flouring all those fish. And after he floured them, he threw them, one by one, into the sizzling skillet.

The first to dance in the boiling oil were the poor goatfish. The hake were next, then the sea bass, then the mullet, then the sole, then the anchovies, and then finally it was Pinocchio's turn. Seeing himself so close to death—and such a nasty death at that!—he began trembling so violently from fear that he had no voice or breath left for begging.

The poor boy begged with his eyes! But the green fisherman, not even noticing, rolled him five or six times in the flour, covering him so thoroughly from head to toe that he looked like a plaster puppet.

Then he took him by the head, and…

J
UST AS
the fisherman was on the verge of tossing Pinocchio into the skillet, a large dog entered the cave, lured there by the pungent, appetizing aroma of frying fish.

“Get out!” shouted the fisherman menacingly, still holding the flour-covered puppet in his hand. But the poor dog was as hungry as four dogs, and his whimpering and tail-wagging seemed to say, “Give me a bite of fried fish and I'll leave you in peace.”

“I said get out!” repeated the fisherman, and he pulled back his foot to give the dog a kick.

But this was a dog who, when he was truly hungry, did not take kindly to being trifled with, and he started growling at the fisherman and showing his terrible fangs.

At that moment a little voice called out faintly in the cave, “Save me, Wingfoot! If you don't save me, I'm going to fry!”

The dog recognized Pinocchio's voice at once, and to his great astonishment he realized that it was coming from that flour-coated bundle the fisherman held in his hand.

What could he do? He lunged mightily into the air, seized the flour-covered puppet in his mouth, and ran out of the cave holding it gently between his teeth—quick as a wink he was gone!

The fisherman, infuriated to see a fish that he would have happily eaten snatched from his hand, started to chase the dog. But after taking a few steps, he burst into a fit of coughing and had to turn back.

Meanwhile, having found once more the path that led to the village, Wingfoot stopped and set Pinocchio gently on the ground.

“I can't thank you enough!” said the puppet.

“No need to,” replied the dog. “You saved me, and one good turn deserves another. After all, we must help one another in this world.”

“But how on earth did you end up in that cave?”

“I was still lying on the beach, more dead than alive, when the aroma of frying fish wafted in on the wind. That aroma whetted my appetite, and I tracked it down. If I had arrived a minute later—”

“Don't even say it!” yelled Pinocchio, still trembling with fear. “Don't even say it! If you arrived a minute later then I'd be good and fried by now, eaten and digested—eek! I shudder at the thought!”

Wingfoot, laughing, held out his right paw to the puppet, who shook it long and hard as a sign of their close friendship. And then they went their separate ways.

The dog took the road back to the village. Pinocchio, on his own again, approached a nearby hut where a little old man in the doorway was sunning himself, and asked, “Tell me, kind sir, do you know anything about a poor boy named Eugenio who was wounded in the head?”

“The boy was brought by some fishermen to this hut, but now—”

“Now he's dead!” interjected Pinocchio, with great sorrow.

“No, now he's alive. He's already gone home.”

“Really and truly?” shouted the puppet, jumping for joy. “So the wound wasn't serious?”

“Well, it could have been awfully serious, even fatal,” replied the little old man, “because someone flung a big hardbound book at his head.”

“And who flung it?”

“One of his schoolmates—a certain Pinocchio.”

“And who is this Pinocchio?” the puppet asked, playing dumb.

“Folks say he's a good-for-nothing boy, a vagabond, a real hothead.”

“Slander! It's all slander!”

“Are you acquainted with this Pinocchio?”

“I've seen him!” replied the puppet.

“And what's your estimation of him?” asked the little old man.

“To me, he seems like a fine upstanding lad—really likes to study, does as he's told, loves his daddy and his family…”

As the puppet was telling all these lies with a straight face, he touched his nose and realized that it had grown more than a handbreadth in length. Suddenly afraid, he began to shout, “Pay no attention, kind sir, to all the good things I've been saying about him. Because I know Pinocchio perfectly well and I too can assure you that he really is a lazy good-for-nothing boy who doesn't do as he's told and runs around with his schoolmates like a scamp!”

As soon as he said these words, his nose shortened back to its natural length, just as it was before.

“And why are you all white like that?”

“I can explain: I accidentally rubbed up against a wall that had just been whitewashed,” replied the puppet, ashamed to admit he had been floured like a fish in preparation for frying in a skillet.

“And what have you done with your jacket, your pants, your cap?”

“I ran into some thieves and they stripped me. Say, kind sir, you don't by any chance have any scraps of clothing you could give me, so that I could return home?”

“My boy, as far as clothes go, I've got nothing but a little sack I keep my lupini beans in. If you want it, take it—it's right over there.”

Pinocchio didn't need to be told twice: he quickly took the lupini sack, which was empty, and after using some scissors to cut a small hole in the bottom and two on the sides, he put it on like a shirt. And dressed in this light fashion, he headed back to the village.

But on the way he felt ill at ease—so ill at ease, in fact, that he took one step backward for every two steps forward. And all the while he was talking to himself: “How can I ever show my face to the good Fairy? What will she say when she sees me? Will she forgive me this second escapade? I bet she won't forgive me! Oh, she certainly won't forgive me! And it serves me right! Because I'm a rascal, always making promises to change my ways and never keeping them!”

He arrived in the village after dark. And because the weather was bad—the rain was coming down in buckets—he went straight to the Fairy's house and resolved to knock on the door and ask to be let in.

But once he got there his courage deserted him, and instead of knocking he ran about twenty paces away. Then he approached the door a second time, but did nothing. He approached a third time: still he did nothing. The fourth time he took the knocker in his hand, trembling, and tapped softly.

He waited and waited and finally, after half an hour, a top-floor window opened (the house was four stories high), and out leaned a large Snail with a glowing lantern on her head, and she said, “Who's there at this hour?”

“Is the Fairy home?” the puppet asked.

“The Fairy is sleeping and doesn't wish to be disturbed. But who's there?”