Pinocchio (6 page)

“Are my companions ready to go?” the puppet asked.

“More than ready! They left two hours ago.”

“What was the rush?”

“The Cat received a message saying that his oldest kitten was suffering from chilblains and was at death's door.”

“Did they pay for supper?”

“What do you think? They're too polite to insult a gentleman such as yourself in that fashion.”

“What a shame—I wouldn't mind being insulted in that fashion!” Pinocchio said, scratching his head. Then he asked, “And where did those dear friends of mine say I should meet them?”

“At the Field of Miracles, at the break of day.”

Pinocchio gave the innkeeper one of his gold coins to cover his dinner and that of his companions, and then he set out.

But you might say he had to grope his way forward: it was so dark outside the inn that he couldn't see his hand in front of his face. Nor could he hear, in the surrounding countryside, so much as the rustling of a leaf—except for the ominous night birds that occasionally flapped their wings against Pinocchio's nose as they flew across the road from one hedge to the other. Each time, Pinocchio jumped back, afraid, and shouted, “Who goes there?” And the surrounding hills sent back a distant, repeating echo:
Who-goes-there? who-goes-there? who-goes-there?

At one point during his walk, he saw, on a tree trunk, a small creature that glowed with a pale, dull light, like a translucent porcelain night lamp with a tiny flame burning inside.

“Who are you?” said the puppet.

“I'm the ghost of the Talking Cricket,” replied the creature in the faintest of voices, which seemed to come from the world beyond.

“What do you want with me?”

“I want to give you some advice. Turn around and take your four remaining gold coins straight to your poor father, who is weeping and despairing because you haven't come home.”

“Tomorrow my daddy will be a great gentleman, because I'm going to turn these four gold pieces into two thousand.”

“My boy, never trust those who promise to make you rich overnight. They're usually either madmen or swindlers! Take my advice and turn back.”

“But I want to keep going.”

“The hour is late!”

“I want to keep going.”

“The night is dark!”

“I want to keep going.”

“The road is perilous!”

“I want to keep going.”

“Remember that children who want to do everything their way come sooner or later to regret it!”

“Same old story. Good night, Cricket.”

“Good night, Pinocchio. May heaven protect you from morning dew and murderers.”

No sooner had he uttered these words than the Talking Cricket vanished, like a candle someone had blown out, leaving the street even darker than before.

“I
T'S AMAZING,”
said the puppet to himself as he resumed his journey, “how unlucky we poor kids are! Everyone scolds us, everyone warns us, everyone gives us advice. They seem to have gotten the notion, to hear them talk, that they're both our fathers and our teachers, every last one of them, even talking crickets. And just because I didn't follow that dreary Cricket's advice, he tells me that all sorts of bad things will happen to me! Supposedly I'll even run into murderers! It's a good thing I don't believe in murderers—never have. In my opinion, murderers were made up by fathers just to scare kids who wanted to go out at night. And besides, even if I did meet some on the road, you think I'd be afraid of them? Not a chance. I'd go right up to them and shout, ‘Hey Mr. Murderers, what do you want with me? You better not try any funny stuff! Just run along and mind your own business!' I can see it now: at that torrent of harsh words, those murderers would run like the wind. And if they happened to be rude enough not to run away, well then, I'd run away myself, and that would be the end…”

But Pinocchio was unable to finish his train of thought, because just at that moment he thought he heard a slight rustling of leaves behind him.

He turned to look, and there, in the dark, he saw two ominous black figures, completely draped in coal sacks. They were bounding toward him on tiptoe, like ghosts.

“They really do exist!” he thought, and not knowing where else to hide his four gold coins, he stuck them into his mouth, under his tongue.

Then he tried to escape. But before he had taken a single step, his arms were seized and he heard two horrible, cavernous voices saying, “Your money or your life!”

Since the coins in his mouth prevented him from responding with words, Pinocchio made a thousand faces and gestures, like a mime, in an attempt to make it clear to those two hooded figures—whose eyes were all he could see, through holes in the sacks—that he was a poor puppet without so much as a phony penny to his name.

“Come on! Cut the act and give us the money!” shouted the murderers in menacing tones.

And the puppet made a gesture with his head and his hands, as if to say: “I don't have any.”

“Hand over the money or you're dead!” said the tall one.

“Dead!” said the short one.

“And after we kill you, we'll kill your daddy, too!”

“Your daddy, too!”

“No, no, no, not my poor daddy!” yelled Pinocchio, desperation in his voice. But when he yelled, the gold pieces clinked in his mouth.

“Oh, you rascal! So you've hidden the money under your tongue? Spit it out, right now!”

But Pinocchio refused!

“What, are you deaf? Just you wait, we'll make you spit it out!”

At that, one of them seized the puppet by the tip of his nose and the other grabbed hold of his pointed chin, and they began tugging, quite rudely, in opposite directions, trying to force the puppet's mouth open—but to no avail. It was as if his mouth had been nailed and riveted shut.

Then one of the murderers, the short one, whipped out a nasty-looking knife and tried to stick it between Pinocchio's lips, like a lever or chisel. But Pinocchio, quick as lightning, chomped down on the hand with his teeth, bit it clean off, and spat it out. Imagine his astonishment when he looked at the ground and saw he had bitten off not a hand but a cat's paw.

Emboldened by this first victory of his, he wrenched himself free from the murderers' clutches, jumped over the roadside hedge, and fled into the countryside. And the murderers followed, like two dogs after a rabbit. And the one who had lost a paw ran on a single leg—no one ever knew how he managed it.

After running fifteen kilometers, Pinocchio couldn't go any farther. As a last-ditch effort, he climbed up the trunk of a towering pine tree and sat in the topmost branches. The murderers tried to climb the tree, too, but halfway up they slipped and slid back down to the ground, skinning their hands and feet.

Instead of giving up, they piled dry sticks around the base of the tree and set them on fire. In no time, the pine began to burn and blaze like a candle in the breeze. Seeing the flames rise higher and higher and not wanting to end up like a roasted pigeon, Pinocchio made a great leap from the top of the tree and began running again through fields and vineyards. The murderers gave chase and kept chasing, never tiring.

Day was beginning to break, with the murderers still in pursuit, when Pinocchio found his path blocked by an enormous ditch full of filthy water that was the muddy color of coffee with milk. What was he to do? “One, two, three!” yelled the puppet, and with a running start he leapt to the opposite bank. The murderers jumped, too, but not having judged the distance properly, they fell—
kersplash!
—smack in the middle of the ditch. When Pinocchio heard them flailing in the water, he shouted through his laughter, “Enjoy your bath, Mr. Murderers!” And he kept on running.

He was imagining them nicely drowned, but when he turned around to look, he saw that they were both still chasing him, still draped in their coal sacks, gushing water like a pair of upside-down baskets.

J
UST AS
the puppet, terribly discouraged, was on the point of flinging himself to the ground and giving up, he happened to look around and see, through the dark green of the trees, a little white house, gleaming in the distance like snow.

“If only I had strength enough to reach that house, perhaps I would be saved!” he thought.

Not wasting a moment, he started running at full speed again, toward the forest. The murderers were still behind him.

At last, after racing desperately for almost two hours, he arrived, completely out of breath, at the door of the little house, and he knocked.

No answer.

He knocked again, harder this time, for he could hear the rapid approach of footsteps and the loud, panting breath of his persecutors. Still no answer.

In desperation, since knocking wasn't working, he began to kick the door and bang his head against it. Then a beautiful girl came to the window, her hair sky-blue, her face white as a waxen image. Her eyes were closed and her hands were folded across her chest, and without moving her lips she said, in a tiny voice that seemed to come from the world beyond, “There is no one in this house. They are all dead.”

“Open the door yourself, at least!” begged Pinocchio, weeping.

“I too am dead.”

“Dead? But then what are you doing there at the window?”

“I am waiting for the coffin to come and carry me away.”

As soon as she had uttered those words, the girl disappeared, and the window closed again without a sound.

“Oh, Beautiful Girl with Sky-Blue Hair,” yelled Pinocchio, “for pity's sake open the door! Have mercy on a poor boy chased by murd—”

But he was unable to finish the word, for he felt himself being seized by the neck, and he heard two familiar voices growl menacingly: “You won't get away again!”

The puppet, seeing death flashing before his eyes, trembled so hard that the joints of his wooden legs and the four gold coins hidden beneath his tongue all rattled.

“Well then,” the murderers asked him, “will you open your mouth or not? What, no reply? Never mind, this time we'll make you open it!”

They each whipped out a nasty-looking knife, long and razor sharp, and stabbed him—
whack, whack
—right in the back.

Luckily, the puppet was made of very hard wood indeed, which explains why both blades shattered into a thousand pieces, leaving the murderers holding only the handles of their knives and gaping at each other.

“I know,” said the tall one, “we have to hang him! Let's hang him!”

“Hang him!” repeated the short one.

They wasted no time tying his hands behind his back and slipping a noose over his head, and then they strung him up from a branch of a large tree called the Big Oak.

And then they waited, sitting on the grass below, for the puppet to stop kicking. But after three hours, his eyes were still open, his mouth still closed, and he was kicking more than ever.

Finally, tired of waiting, they turned to Pinocchio and sneered: “Goodbye until tomorrow. When we come back, let's hope you'll be so kind as to let us find you good and dead, with that mouth of yours wide open.”

And off they went.

Soon a violent north wind blew in, raging and howling and jerking the poor dangling puppet this way and that, making him swing as wildly as the clapper of a church bell on Sunday. The swinging caused him terrible pain, and the noose grew ever tighter, cutting off his breath.

Little by little, his eyes grew dim, and though he felt himself approaching death, he continued to hope that at any moment some merciful soul might yet come to his aid. But when, after waiting and waiting, he saw that no one was coming, no one at all, then he thought of his poor father—and there at death's door he stammered, “Oh, if only you were here, Daddy!”

He lacked the strength to say another word. His eyes closed, his mouth opened, his legs straightened, and then, after a tremendous shudder, he went completely limp.

P
OOR PINOCCHIO:
having been hung by murderers from a branch of the Big Oak, he now seemed more dead than alive. When the Beautiful Girl with Sky-Blue Hair came to her window again, she was moved to pity by the sight of that poor wretch, dangling by his neck, dancing a jig with the north wind. She brought her hands together three times, making three soft claps.

Her signal was followed by a great beating of wings, as an enormous falcon hurtled down from the sky and landed on the windowsill.

“What is your command, my lovely Fairy?” said the Falcon, lowering his beak in a gesture of reverence. (For it just so happens that the Girl with Sky-Blue Hair was nothing other than the kindest of fairies, one who had dwelt in and around that forest for more than a thousand years.)

“Do you see that puppet dangling from a branch of the Big Oak?”

“I see him.”

“Now then: fly to him at once, use your powerful beak to tear apart the knot that keeps him suspended in the air, and lay him out gently on the grass, there at the foot of the tree.”

The Falcon flew off and two minutes later returned, saying, “I have done as you commanded.”

“And how did you find him: alive or dead?”

“He looked dead at first, but he must not be thoroughly dead, because as soon as I loosened the rope around his neck, he sighed and murmured, ‘I feel better now!'”

Then the Fairy brought her hands together twice, making two soft claps, and suddenly a magnificent poodle appeared, and he was walking on his hind legs just as people do.

The Poodle was dressed as a coachman, in the finest livery. He wore a tricorn hat with gold-braid trim, a white wig of curly locks that hung down to his shoulders, a chocolate-colored jacket with diamond buttons and two oversize pockets for storing the bones his mistress gave him at dinner, a pair of crimson velvet breeches, silk stockings, little court shoes, and, behind him, a sort of umbrella cover, made entirely of sky-blue satin, that he put over his tail in rainy weather.