Pinocchio (3 page)

And there was poor Geppetto running after him, unable to catch him because that puppet was bounding like a rabbit. The clacking of his wooden feet on the pavement made quite a racket, like twenty pairs of farmer clogs.

“Catch him! Catch him!” yelled Geppetto. But the people who were out in the street, seeing this wooden puppet running like a thoroughbred, stopped and watched him with delight. They laughed and laughed and laughed, not believing their eyes.

Finally, and fortunately, a policeman appeared. Hearing all that clatter, and thinking it was some colt that had slipped from its master's grasp, he bravely planted his feet wide in the middle of the road and resolved to stop him and prevent further mayhem.

When Pinocchio saw the policeman blocking the entire road up ahead of him, he figured he'd surprise him by running straight between his legs, but it didn't work.

Without budging an inch, the policeman snatched him up by the nose (it was a prodigiously long nose, one that seemed specially designed to be easily seized by policemen), and delivered him back into Geppetto's arms. Geppetto's first impulse was to give him a good ear-pulling, to set him straight. But imagine his reaction when, looking for Pinocchio's ears, he wasn't able to find them—and do you know why? Because in his haste to finish carving, he had forgotten to make them.

So he grabbed Pinocchio by the nape of his neck and began to lead him back. Shaking his head menacingly, Geppetto said, “We're going home. And you can be sure we'll settle our accounts when we get there.”

Pinocchio understood his drift and threw himself to the ground, refusing to take another step. Meanwhile the busybodies and the idlers began to gather into a crowd around them.

They all had their opinions.

“Poor puppet!” some said. “Who can blame him for not wanting to go home! Just imagine how that mean Geppetto would thrash him!”

And the others added spitefully: “That Geppetto seems like a nice man, but he's a real bully with the boys! If they leave that poor puppet in his hands, he might well bust him to pieces!”

In short, they made such a fuss that the policeman set Pinocchio free and took poor Geppetto straight to jail. At a loss for words to defend himself, Geppetto cried like a little calf, and on his way to jail he stammered as he sobbed: “Wicked child! And to think that I worked so hard to make him a proper puppet! But it's my own fault—I should have known what to expect!”

What happened next is so strange you'll scarcely believe it, but I'll tell you all about it in the coming chapters.

W
HAT HAPPENED
next, children, is that while poor, innocent Geppetto was being led off to jail, that rascal Pinocchio, freed from the policeman's clutches, went sprinting across the fields to get home as fast as he could. Running crazily, he leapt over tall embankments, thorny hedges, and ditches full of water, much like a little goat or rabbit fleeing from hunters. When he got back home, the front door was ajar. He pushed it open and went inside, and as soon as he had bolted the door behind him, he plopped down onto the floor with a great sigh of satisfaction.

But his satisfaction didn't last long, as he heard someone in the room saying, “Cree, cree, cree!”

“Who's calling me?” said Pinocchio, quite alarmed.

“I am!”

Pinocchio turned and saw a large cricket climbing slowly up the wall.

“Tell me, Cricket, who might you be?”

“I'm the Talking Cricket, and I've lived in this room for more than a hundred years.”

“Well it's my room now,” said the puppet, “and if you'd like to do me a big favor, leave right now and don't look back.”

“I won't leave this place,” replied the Cricket, “until I've told you a great truth.”

“Tell me and make it quick.”

“Woe to any little boy who rebels against his parents and turns his back on his father's house! He will come to no good in this world, and sooner or later he'll be filled with bitter regret.”

“Sing on, dear Cricket, if it makes you happy. But the fact is I'm leaving this place tomorrow at the crack of dawn, because if I hang around the same thing that happens to all the other kids will happen to me, too: I'll be sent to school, and I'll be expected to study whether I like it or not, and—just between you and me—I have absolutely no desire to study. I'd much rather run around chasing butterflies and climbing trees and catching baby birds.”

“You poor little simpleton! Don't you know that if you do that, you'll grow up to be a real jackass and everyone will make fun of you?”

“Hush, you gloom-and-doom Cricket!” yelled Pinocchio. But the Cricket, who was patient and philosophical, instead of taking offense at this rudeness, continued in the same tone.

“And if going to school doesn't suit you, why don't you at least learn an honest trade, so that you can put food on the table?”

“You want to know why?” replied Pinocchio, who was starting to lose his patience. “Of all the trades in the world, there's only one that really suits me.”

“And what trade would that be?”

“That of eating, drinking, sleeping, playing, and wandering wherever I like from sunup to sundown.”

“For your information,” said the Talking Cricket with his usual calm, “everyone who plies that trade ends up in either a poorhouse or a prison.”

“Watch out, you gloom-and-doom Cricket! If I snap, you'll be sorry!”

“Poor Pinocchio! I really feel sorry for you!”

“Why would you feel sorry for me?”

“Because you're a puppet and, what's worse, you're a blockhead.”

At these last words, Pinocchio jumped up in a rage, grabbed a wooden mallet from the workbench, and flung it at the Talking Cricket.

Perhaps he didn't mean to hit him at all, but unfortunately he hit him square on the head. With his last breath the poor Cricket cried
cree-cree-cree
and then died on the spot, stuck to the wall.

M
EANWHILE
darkness had begun to fall, and Pinocchio, who hadn't had a thing to eat, noticed a faint grumbling in his stomach, which felt exactly like appetite.

But appetite in boys grows quickly, and sure enough, after a few minutes his appetite had turned into hunger, and then suddenly it was a wolflike hunger—a hunger you could have cut with a knife.

Poor Pinocchio ran quickly toward the pot that was boiling on the fire and reached out to remove the lid, to see what was inside—but the pot was painted on the wall.

Just imagine how he felt. His nose, which was already long, grew at least four inches longer.

At this point he began to run around the room and rifle through every drawer, every nook and cranny, searching for a little bread, even stale bread, a crust, a dog's bone, a little moldy corn mush, a fish skeleton, a cherry pit—in short, anything he could chew on. But he found nothing, a big fat nothing, nothing at all.

And meanwhile poor Pinocchio's hunger kept growing and growing. His only relief was yawning, and he yawned so wide that the corners of his mouth met his ears. And after yawning, he would spit, and it felt as though he were spitting out his stomach.

Losing hope, he wept and said, “The Talking Cricket was right. I was wrong to rebel against my daddy and to run away from home. If my daddy was here, I wouldn't be yawning to death now! Oh, what a terrible sickness hunger is!”

Just then he thought he glimpsed, atop a heap of sweepings, something roundish and white that looked very much like a chicken egg. He was up and on it in a single motion—it really was an egg.

Words cannot describe the puppet's joy; you must imagine it yourself. Almost convinced it was a dream, he turned the egg over and over in his hand, touching it and kissing it. And as he kissed it, he said, “Now how should I cook it? I know, I'll make an omelet! No, better to fry it up in a pan. Or maybe it would be tastier if I poached it? Or what if I boiled it instead? No, the quickest way is to fry it up in a pan—I can't wait any longer!”

Wasting no time, he set a small frying pan on a brazier that was full of live coals. Instead of oil or butter, he put a little water in the pan, and when the water began to steam—
crack!
—he broke the eggshell and tried to pour its contents into the pan.

But instead of egg white and egg yolk, out came a very cheerful and refined Chick, who bowed handsomely as he said, “A thousand thanks, Sir Pinocchio, for having saved me the trouble of breaking the shell myself! Farewell, take care, and all my best to your family.”

With those words, he stretched out his wings and flew through the open window, disappearing from view.

The poor puppet stood there as if bewitched, eyes wide, mouth agape, half an eggshell in each hand. When the shock wore off, he began to weep and wail and stamp his feet on the ground in despair. Through his tears, he said, “So the Talking Cricket was right! If I hadn't run away, and if my daddy was here, I wouldn't be dying of hunger now! Oh, what a terrible sickness hunger is!”

And because his belly was rumbling more than ever and he had no idea how to quiet it, he decided to go out and pay a quick visit to the nearby village, in the hope of finding some charitable soul who might give him a bit of bread.

I
T TURNED
out to be a truly hellish night: thunder roared, lightning seemed to set fire to the sky, and a bitter, blustery wind whistled furiously, kicking up dust clouds and making the trees groan and creak across the countryside.

Pinocchio was terribly afraid of thunder and lightning, but his hunger was greater than his fear. And so he dashed out the door at top speed, and after a hundred or so leaping strides he reached the village, panting, his tongue hanging out like a hunting dog.

But everything was dark and deserted. The shops were closed; the doors of houses were closed; the windows were closed. There wasn't so much as a dog in the street. It looked like the land of the dead.

At this point, Pinocchio, overcome by despair and hunger, ran to the doorbell of a house and began ringing it loudly, telling himself, “Surely someone will come.”

Indeed a little old man in a nightcap did come, and he yelled angrily from his window, “What do you want at this hour?”

“Would you be so kind as to give me a bit of bread?”

“Don't move, I'll be right back,” replied the little old man, who assumed Pinocchio was one of those annoying miscreants who get their kicks by ringing the doorbells of decent folk, just to prevent them from getting a good night's sleep.

After half a minute the window opened again, and the same little old man shouted, “Stand below me and hold out your hat.”

Pinocchio took off his raggedy hat, but when he held it out, a basinful of water drenched him from head to toe, as if he had been a pot of wilting geraniums.

He went back home looking like a drowned rat, worn out from fatigue and hunger, and since he no longer had the strength to stand, he sat down, resting his soaked and muddy feet on the brazier, still full of live coals.

He fell asleep. And as he slept, his wooden feet caught fire and slowly burnt away until they were nothing but ash.

Pinocchio slept through it all, snoring, as if they were someone else's feet. Finally he woke, at dawn, when someone knocked at the door.

“Who is it?” he asked, yawning and rubbing his hands together.

“It's me!” a voice replied.

That voice was the voice of Geppetto.

P
OOR PINOCCHIO:
he was still half asleep and hadn't yet noticed that his feet had burnt right off. That's why, when he heard his father's voice, he leapt off his stool to run and unbolt the door. Instead, he lurched this way and that, and then he tumbled headlong to the ground.

When he hit the floor he made the same sound that a sack of wooden spoons might make if dropped off a tall building.

Meanwhile Geppetto was shouting, “Open up!”

“I can't, Daddy,” replied the puppet as he wept and flailed.

“Why can't you?”

“Because my feet got eaten!”

“And who ate them?”

“The cat,” said Pinocchio, noticing that the cat was amusing itself by batting wood shavings with its forepaws.

“Open up, I say!” said Geppetto again. “Or else when I get in I'll eat you myself!”

“I can't stand up, believe me. Oh, poor me, poor me! I'll have to walk on my knees for the rest of my life!”

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!”