Pinocchio (9 page)

“It's true, it's true,” shouted Pinocchio, crying, “and I'll never do it again.”

At this point the conversation was interrupted by the faint noise of footsteps approaching. It was the owner of the field, coming on tiptoe to see if any of those weasels who had been eating his chickens at night had been caught in his trap.

Great was his astonishment when, pulling a lantern out from beneath his overcoat, he saw that instead of a weasel, he had caught a boy.

“Ah, little thief!” said the furious farmer. “So you're the one who makes off with my chickens!”

“Not me, not me!” shouted Pinocchio, sobbing. “I only came into the field to take a few grapes!”

“Anyone who can steal grapes is perfectly capable of stealing chickens, too. Leave it to me, I'll teach you a lesson you won't soon forget.”

Opening the trap, he grabbed the puppet by the scruff of his neck and carried him home the way you'd carry a suckling lamb.

When the farmer reached the courtyard in front of his house, he threw Pinocchio on the ground and with a foot on his neck held him there and said, “It's late now and I want to go to bed. We'll settle our accounts tomorrow. Meanwhile, since my watchdog died today, you'll take his post at once. You'll be my watchdog.”

With those words, he slipped a large brass-spiked collar over Pinocchio's head and tightened it around his neck so it wouldn't come off. Attached to the collar was a long iron chain—and the chain was fastened to the wall.

“If it should rain tonight,” the farmer said, “you can go lie down in that wooden doghouse—the straw my poor dog slept on these past four years is still there. And remember to keep an ear out for thieves, and if any should come around, be sure to bark.”

After this warning, the farmer went inside and bolted the door. And poor Pinocchio was left crouching in the courtyard, more dead than alive from cold, from hunger, and from fear. Every now and then he angrily tugged at his collar, which was tight on his throat, and said through his tears, “It serves me right! Alas, it serves me right! I acted like an idler and a vagabond. I listened to bad advice, and so now bad luck follows me wherever I go. If only I had been a good little boy, like so many others; if only I had been willing to study and work; if only I had stayed home with my poor daddy, then I wouldn't find myself here, in the middle of this field, serving as a watchdog outside a farmer's house. Oh, if I could only start over! But it's too late now, and I must be patient!”

After this little outburst, which was truly from the heart, he crawled into the doghouse and fell asleep.

H
E HAD
been sound asleep for more than two hours when, around midnight, he was awoken by the whispers and murmurs of strange little voices, which seemed to come from the courtyard. He poked his nose out of the doghouse and saw four dark-furred creatures holding council. They looked a bit like cats, but they weren't cats: they were weasels, carnivorous little beasts with a strong weakness for eggs and young hens. One of these weasels, turning away from his companions, came over to the doghouse door and said, “Good evening, Tiresias.”

“My name is not Tiresias,” replied the puppet.

“Who are you then?”

“I am Pinocchio.”

“And what are you doing in there?”

“I'm serving as a watchdog.”

“But where's Tiresias? Where's the old dog who lived in this doghouse?”

“He died this morning.”

“Died? Poor beast! He was such a good dog! But judging by the looks of you, I'd say you're a friendly dog, too.”

“I beg your pardon—I'm not a dog!”

“Then what are you?”

“I'm a puppet.”

“And you're serving as a watchdog?”

“Unfortunately, as punishment!”

“Okay then, I'll offer you the same terms I had with the late Tiresias—you'll be pleased.”

“And what might these terms be?”

“We'll come once a week, as in the past, and we'll take eight hens. Of these eight, seven will be for us to eat, and one will be for you—on the condition, of course, that you pretend to be sleeping and never get the urge to bark and wake the farmer.”

“Did Tiresias really do that?” Pinocchio asked.

“He did, which is why we always got along just fine. So sleep tight, and rest assured that before we go we'll leave a nice plucked hen outside your doghouse for your morning breakfast. Do we understand each other?”

“All too well!” replied Pinocchio, nodding his head in an almost threatening way, as if to say:
This isn't over yet!

The four weasels, now confident in their plan, went straight to the henhouse, which indeed was right there beside the doghouse. With a flurry of claws and teeth, they unlocked the little wooden door that blocked the entrance and they slipped inside, one by one. The last weasel was barely in when they all heard the little door slam violently shut behind them.

It was Pinocchio who had shut it. And not content with merely closing the little door, he propped a large rock against it, for extra security.

And then he began to bark—and he barked just like a real watchdog, like this:
woof
,
woof
,
woof, woof
.

Hearing the barks, the farmer jumped out of bed, grabbed his rifle, and stuck his head out the window.

“What's going on?” he asked.

“The thieves are here!” replied Pinocchio.

“Where?”

“In the henhouse.”

“I'll be right down.”

And quicker than you could say “amen” the farmer came down. He rushed into the henhouse, and after grabbing the four weasels and sticking them in a sack, he said in a genuinely happy voice, “Finally you've fallen into my hands! I could punish you, but I'm not so mean-spirited! I'll content myself, rather, with taking you tomorrow to the innkeeper of the neighboring town, who'll skin you and cook you like hares, in a soursweet sauce. It's an honor you don't deserve, but generous men, like me, can overlook such trifles!”

Then he went over to Pinocchio and gave him a big hug, and eventually he got around to asking him, “How did you manage to discover the plot of these four little thieves? And to think that Tiresias, my faithful Tiresias, never caught on at all!”

The puppet, now, could have recounted everything he knew. He could, in other words, have told about the shameful pact that existed between the dog and the weasels. But remembering that the dog was dead, he immediately thought: “What good does it do to accuse the dead? The dead are dead, and the best thing to do is to leave them in peace!”

“When the weasels came into the courtyard, were you awake or asleep?” the farmer now asked him.

“I was asleep,” replied Pinocchio, “but the weasels woke me up with their chattering, and one of them came up to the doghouse to tell me: ‘If you promise not to bark and not to wake your master, we'll give you a nice plucked chicken!' Can you imagine? To have the gall to propose something like that to me! You see, I may be a puppet, and I may have every fault under the sun, but I would never get mixed up with dishonest folk!”

“Good boy!” shouted the farmer, slapping him on the back. “Such sentiments do you honor. And to show you how pleased I am, I'm setting you free right now so you can go home.”

And he took the dog collar off.

A
S SOON
as the hard, humiliating weight of that collar was lifted from his neck, Pinocchio began dashing across the fields, and he didn't stop for single moment until he reached the main road that he knew should lead back to the Fairy's little house.

Once on the main road, he looked down the hill to the flat country below, and there, perfectly visible to the naked eye, was the forest where he had, alas, encountered the Fox and the Cat. He could see, rising above the other trees, the top of the Big Oak, from which he had been left dangling by the neck. But he could not see, though he looked this way and that, the little house of the Beautiful Girl with Sky-Blue Hair.

Suddenly he had a dreadful premonition, and running with all the strength left in his legs he soon found himself in the clearing where the little white house had once stood. But the little white house was no longer there. In its place stood a small slab of marble on which could be read, in block letters, these painful words:

 

HERE LIES

THE GIRL WITH SKY-BLUE HAIR

WHO DIED OF GRIEF

AFTER BEING ABANDONED BY HER

LITTLE BROTHER PINOCCHIO

After struggling mightily to read those words, Pinocchio felt—well, I'll let you imagine how he felt. He fell forward onto the ground, covered the gravestone with a thousand kisses, and burst into tears. He cried all through the night, and the next morning when the sun came up he was crying still, though by this point he had no tears left in his eyes. His cries and laments were so heartrending and piercing that all of the surrounding hills kept repeating their echo.

And as he cried, he said, “Oh, little Fairy, why did you die? Why couldn't I have died instead, I who am so wicked, while you were so good? And where in the world is my daddy? Oh, little Fairy, please tell me you're not really dead! If you truly love your little brother, come back to life—come back like you were before! Doesn't it bother you to see me alone, abandoned by everyone? If the murderers come, they'll hang me again from that branch—and then I'll die forever. What do you want me to do, all alone in this world? Now that I've lost you and my daddy, who will feed me? Where will I sleep at night? Who'll make me a new jacket? Oh, it would be better, a hundred times better, if I died, too! Yes, I want to die! Boo-hoo-hoo!”

Despairing in this fashion, he made as if to tear out his hair. But since his hair was wooden, he didn't even have the satisfaction of sticking his fingers into it.

Just then a great Pigeon, hovering above him on extended wings, shouted down from a great height, “Tell me, child, what are you doing down there?”

“Can't you see? I'm crying!” Pinocchio said, looking up at that voice and rubbing his eyes with his coat sleeve.

“Say,” added the Pigeon, “you wouldn't by any chance happen to know someone—a puppet—named Pinocchio?”

“Pinocchio? Did you say Pinocchio?” repeated the puppet, jumping to his feet. “I'm Pinocchio!”

Hearing this, the Pigeon swooped down and landed on the ground. He was larger than a turkey.

“Then you must know Geppetto, too!”

“Know him! He's my poor daddy! Did he by any chance tell you about me? Can you take me to him? Is he still alive? Answer me, please: Is he still alive?”

“I left him three days ago on the seashore.”

“What was he doing?”

“He was building himself a rowboat, to cross the ocean in. For more than four months that poor man has been roaming the world looking for you. And having failed to find you, he has now gotten the notion to look for you in the distant lands of the New World.”

“How far is it from here to the shore?” Pinocchio asked with breathless worry.

“More than a thousand kilometers.”

“A thousand kilometers? Oh, dear Pigeon, how happy I'd be if I had your wings!”

“If you wish to go, I'll take you myself.”

“How?”

“You can ride on my back. Are you heavy?”

“Heavy? Not at all! I'm light as a feather.”

And so, without another word, Pinocchio leapt onto the Pigeon's back. Straddling the bird like a horse, he shouted happily, “Gallop, gallop, little horsey—I have to get there soon!”

The Pigeon took flight and soon was soaring so high that they almost touched the clouds.

Having reached that extraordinary height, the puppet turned, out of curiosity, and looked down, which left him so scared and dizzy that he looped his arms ever so tightly around the neck of his feathered mount, to keep from falling off.

They flew all day. Toward evening, the Pigeon said, “I'm very thirsty!”

“And I'm very hungry,” added Pinocchio.

“Let's stop for a few minutes at this pigeon coop, then resume our journey again, so we can reach the seashore by tomorrow morning.”

In the deserted pigeon coop they found only a bowl full of water and a basket heaped with vetch peas.

The puppet had never, in his whole life, been able to stand vetch peas. He said they nauseated him, turned his stomach. But that evening he ate them until he nearly burst, and when he had almost finished, he turned to the Pigeon and said, “I'd never have believed that vetch peas could taste so good!”

“You have to realize, my boy,” replied the Pigeon, “that when hunger is real and there's nothing else to eat, even vetch peas become delicious! Hunger's neither picky nor greedy.”

They wolfed down their snack and were on their way again. The next morning they reached the seashore.

The Pigeon set Pinocchio down, and not wishing to be bothered even with thanks for his good deed, flew off at once and disappeared.

The beach was crowded with people looking out to sea, shouting and gesticulating.

“What happened?” Pinocchio asked a little old woman.

“What happened is that some poor father who has lost his son has decided to row a boat across the sea to look for him on the other side. But the sea today is very rough and his boat is about to go under.”

“Where is the boat?”

“Over there, where I'm pointing,” said the old woman, aiming her finger at a small boat that looked, from this distance, like a walnut shell with an itty-bitty man in it.

After gazing carefully in that direction, Pinocchio let out a piercing shriek: “That's my daddy! That's my daddy!”

Meanwhile the boat, battered by the raging sea, now disappeared between the enormous waves, now rose upon their crests. Pinocchio, standing on a high rock, never stopped calling out to his daddy or signaling to him—with his hands and his hankie and even with his cap.