Pinocchio (5 page)

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.

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.

At this heartrending sight, Pinocchio threw himself at the puppet master's feet, weeping copiously and bathing that long beard in his tears. He began to speak in pleading tones: “Have mercy, kind sir!”

“There are no sirs here!” growled the puppet master.

“Have mercy, noble knight!”

“There are no knights here!”

“Have mercy, my lord!”

“There are no lords here!”

“Have mercy, Your Excellency!”

Hearing himself called
Excellency
, the puppet master quickly pursed his lips and, having suddenly become gentler and more agreeable, he said to Pinocchio, “Well then, what is it you want from me?”

“I implore you to have mercy on poor Harlequin!”

“This is no time for mercy. If I save you, it means I have to put him on the fire, because I want that ram of mine to be well roasted.”

“In that case,” cried Pinocchio proudly, standing and throwing off his bread-crumb cap, “in that case, I know what I must do. Come, guards! Tie me up and throw me into those flames. No, it isn't fair for poor Harlequin, my true friend, to die in my place.”

At these words, pronounced loudly and heroically, every puppet in the room burst into tears. Even the guards, though made of wood, cried like a pair of newborn lambs.

Fire-Eater, at first, remained as hard and firm as a block of ice. But then, little by little, he too began melting—and sneezing. After sneezing four or five times, he opened his arms warmly to Pinocchio and said, “You are a marvelously good boy! Come here and give me a kiss.”

Pinocchio ran over to the puppet master, clambered like a squirrel up his beard, and planted a big kiss on the tip of his nose.

“Then mercy is granted?” asked poor Harlequin, in a feeble voice the others could barely hear.

“Mercy is granted!” replied Fire-Eater. And then, sighing and shaking his head, he added: “That's that! Tonight I'll have to make do with half-raw mutton. But beware: next time it will be someone else's turn!”

Hearing that mercy had been granted, the puppets all ran to the stage, lit the lamps and chandeliers as if for a gala performance, and began to leap and dance about. When dawn arrived, they were dancing still.

T
HE NEXT
day Fire-Eater took Pinocchio aside and asked him, “What's your father's name?”

“Geppetto.”

“And what's his trade?”

“Being poor.”

“Does he earn much?”

“He earns enough never to have a penny in his pocket. Why, just to buy me a spelling book for school, he had to sell his one and only coat, which was so covered with patches it looked like it had the plague.”

“The poor devil! I nearly feel sorry for him. Here are five gold pieces—take them to him at once, along with my warmest wishes.”

Pinocchio, as you can imagine, thanked the puppet master a thousand times. He hugged every puppet in the company, one by one—even the guards. And then, beside himself with joy, he set out for home.

But he had not walked half a kilometer when he met a Fox, who was lame in one leg, and a Cat, who was blind in both eyes. They were helping each other slowly down the road, like good companions in misfortune. The Fox, being lame, was leaning on the Cat, and the Cat, being blind, was following the Fox.

“Good day, Pinocchio,” said the Fox, greeting him politely.

“How is it that you know my name?” asked the puppet.

“I know your father well.”

“Where did you see him last?”

“I saw him yesterday at the door of his house.”

“What was he doing?”

“He was in shirtsleeves and was shivering from the cold.”

“My poor daddy! But, God willing, he won't be shivering after today.”

“Why not?”

“Because I've become a rich man.”

“A rich man—you?” said the Fox, breaking into crude, derisive laughter. The Cat was also laughing, a fact he tried to hide by grooming his whiskers with his forepaws.

“It's nothing to laugh at,” cried Pinocchio, crossly. “I apologize in advance for making your mouths water, but these here, in case you didn't know, are five fabulous gold pieces.”

And out of his pocket he pulled the coins Fire-Eater had given him.

Hearing the pleasant sound those coins made, the Fox reached out, in an involuntary motion, the leg that had seemed lame, and the Cat opened his eyes, which shone like two green lanterns, before closing them again so quickly that Pinocchio didn't notice a thing.

“And now,” asked the Fox, “just what do you plan to do with those coins?”

“First of all,” the puppet replied, “I'll buy my daddy a brand-new coat, made of gold and silver and with diamond buttons, and then I'll get a spelling book for myself.”

“For yourself?”

“Indeed. Because I want to go to school and be a good student.”

“But look at me!” said the Fox. “Thanks to a foolish enthusiasm for studying, I lost the use of one leg!”

“And look at me!” said the Cat. “Thanks to a foolish enthusiasm for studying, I lost the use of both eyes!”

Just then a white Blackbird, perched on a hedge beside the road, whistled his usual tune and said, “Pinocchio, pay no mind to the advice of bad companions—you'll be sorry if you do!”

Poor Blackbird—if only he had said nothing! The Cat leapt high in the air and pounced on him, swallowing him whole, feathers and all, before he could even say “ouch!”

As soon as he had finished eating and cleaned his mouth, the Cat shut his eyes once more and went back to being blind.

“Poor Blackbird!” said Pinocchio to the Cat. “Why were you so mean to him?”

“To teach him a lesson. Next time he'll know better than to stick his beak into other people's business.”

They were more than halfway to Geppetto's house when the Fox, stopping suddenly, said to the puppet, “Want to double your money?”

“Meaning?”

“Do you want to take five measly gold coins and turn them into a hundred, a thousand, two thousand?”

“Sure! But how?”

“Simple as can be: instead of going straight home, come with us.”

“And where do you propose to take me?”

“To the Land of Gulls.”

Pinocchio thought on this for a moment before replying firmly, “No, I don't want to come. I'm almost back home now, and I want to see my daddy, who's waiting for me. Who knows how much that poor old man worried yesterday, when I didn't return. Unfortunately, I've been a bad boy. The Talking Cricket was right when he said that disobedient children will come to no good in this world, and I've learned the hard way, by getting into lots of trouble, and just last night at Fire-Eater's house, I was in such danger—brrr! I get goose bumps just thinking about it!”

“So,” said the Fox, “you really want to go back home? Go ahead, then. It's your loss.”

“Your loss!” repeated the Cat.

“Think it over, Pinocchio—you're turning your back on fortune.”

“On fortune!” repeated the Cat.

“Your five gold coins could become two thousand overnight.”

“Overnight!” repeated the Cat.

“But how could they possibly become so much?” asked Pinocchio, his mouth hanging open in astonishment.

“I'll explain at once,” said the Fox. “You must know that in the Land of Gulls there is a sacred field that everybody calls the Field of Miracles. You dig a hole in this field and you put something, a gold coin for example, into the hole. Then you cover it up with a little dirt, water it with two bucketfuls of springwater, sprinkle it with a pinch of salt, and when evening comes you go happily to bed. While you're sleeping, the coin will sprout and flower, and the next morning when you get up and go back to the field, what will you find? You'll find a big tree laden with as many gold coins as there are kernels on a good ear of corn in the month of June.”

“So,” said Pinocchio, increasingly amazed, “if I buried my five gold pieces in that field, how many would I find the next morning?”

“That's easily determined,” replied the Fox. “You can count it out on your fingers. Let's say that each coin grows into a bunch of five hundred coins—multiply five hundred by five, and the next morning you'd have two thousand five hundred shiny new coins.”

“How wonderful!” shouted Pinocchio, jumping with joy. “As soon as I've gathered up all those coins, I'll keep two thousand for myself and I'll give the other five hundred as a gift to you two.”

“A gift to us?” shouted the Fox, taking offense and looking hurt. “God forbid!”

“Forbid!” repeated the Cat.

“We,” continued the Fox, “do not work for selfish reasons. We work solely to enrich others.”

“Others!” repeated the Cat.

“What nice people,” thought Pinocchio to himself. And he forgot, on the spot, about his father, the new coat, his spelling book—about all the resolutions he had made—and he said to the Fox and the Cat, “Let's get started right now, I'm coming with you.”

T
HEY WALKED
and walked and walked, and at dusk they finally arrived, dead tired, at the Red Crayfish Inn.

“Let's stop here a while,” said the Fox, “to get a bite to eat and rest for a few hours. Then we'll set out again at midnight, so as to reach the Field of Miracles by dawn.”

They entered the inn and sat down at a table, but none of them had any appetite.

The poor Cat, due to a terribly upset stomach, managed to eat only thirty-five goatfish in red sauce and four portions of tripe parmesan. And finding the tripe insufficiently seasoned, he called for more butter and grated cheese—three times!

The Fox, too, would have gladly nibbled on something, but since his doctor had put him on an extra-strict diet, he had to content himself with a simple hare in soursweet sauce, along with a tiny side order of fat pullets and fine cockerels. After the hare, to clear his palate, he ordered a goulash of partridges, quails, rabbits, frogs, lizards, and paradise grapes—and that was simply all he could eat. Food made him so sick to his stomach, he said, that he could barely stand to look at it.

But Pinocchio ate least of all. He ordered half a walnut and a crust of bread, but even those items were left on his plate. The poor boy couldn't stop thinking about the Field of Miracles, and all those gold coins gave him indigestion in advance.

When they had finished supper, the Fox said to the innkeeper, “Give me two good rooms, one for Mr. Pinocchio and the other for my companion and myself. We'll take a little nap before we leave. But don't forget to wake us at midnight so that we may continue on our journey.”

“Yessir,” replied the innkeeper, winking at the Fox and the Cat as if to say:
I catch your drift and we're on the same page
.

No sooner had Pinocchio climbed into bed than he fell fast asleep and began to dream. He dreamt he was in the middle of a field, and this field was full of trees laden with clusters of fruit, like grapes, but in the place of grapes were gold coins, which clinked and chimed in the breeze as if to say, “Whoever wants us, come and get us.” But in the very moment when Pinocchio was reaching up, ready to grab handfuls of those lovely coins and stuff them in his pockets, he was awoken by three thundering knocks on the door of his room.

It was the innkeeper, come to tell him that the clock had struck midnight.