The Pinocchio Megapack: 4 Classic Puppet Tales

by Carlo Collodi

  “That’s my secret. Now that you are rested, let us go home to Tursio.”

  “Very well. But still I should like to know why that narwhal was so very obliging.”

  With a laugh Pinocchio jumped on the dolphin’s back, and they were off.

  Without stopping anywhere, the two friends traveled straight to the coral island. And as soon as they reached it, they turned straight to the place where Beluga lived. They found every one healthy and happy and overjoyed to see them.

  Tursio asked Pinocchio to tell him all his adventures, and the boy was only too happy to please him. He told of the seals, of the old ship, of the meeting with the octopus, of the battle on the high seas. But of his last adventure and of the loss of his pearls he said never a word.

  “And then? Is that all?” asked Tursio.

  “Yes; what else should there be?”

  “You had a very pleasant voyage, then, after all.”

  “Yes, a splendid voyage.”

  “With no very unpleasant adventures?”

  “No, none—well, yes, one; but it has been forgotten long ago.” Pinocchio was beginning to learn the value of truth.

  “And what was that?”

  “But it has been forgotten.”

  “I want to know about it,” said Tursio, in a voice that had to be obeyed.

  “Very well,” and Pinocchio told him.

  “And if it had not been for a kind narwhal passing by just then, Marsovino would now be dead,” he finished.

  “A kind narwhal? What did he do?”

  “I asked him to help me, and he did.”

  “But what did you give him in return for his kindness? A narwhal is not kind for nothing.”

  “I just gave him something, that’s all.”

  Pinocchio finally told him.

  “Well done, my boy. You were certainly courageous, and you deserve to be forgiven for your disobedience. And, remember, Pinocchio, you shall be rewarded for your act of kindness.”

  The next day the four friends traveled far, and by sunset they came to a strange land.

  “Well, good-by, my boy,” said Tursio, turning to Pinocchio. “Our journey is finished. I hope you have learned something. You must go back to the world now.”

  “Are you going to leave me here alone?”

  “You shall not be alone very long. Do not be afraid. Walk a short distance inland. You’ll come to a little house There you will find some one waiting for you.”

  “My father!” cried Pinocchio, overjoyed. “At last! Hurrah!”

  The marionette then thanked his kind friends and jumped on land.

  The dolphins shook their fins in good-by, and then swam away.

  “Good-by, Tursio! Good-by, Marsovino! Good-by, Globicephalous!” screamed Pinocchio, watching the sea until the three had disappeared.

  “Well, now for my father!” and turning toward the land, he started to run.

  All happened as Tursio had told him.

  Not only did he find his father, but he also found a beautiful little home, and a comfortable happy life waiting for him.

  He remembered then Tursio’s words, “You will be rewarded.”

  THE HEART OF PINOCCHIO by Collodi Nipote

  New Adventures of the Celebrated Little Puppet

  Adapted from the Italian by Virginia Watson

  INTRODUCTION

  Dear Boys and Girls—

  Let us hope that none of you has been so unfortunate as to have missed the pleasure of watching sometime or other a puppet show. Probably Punch and Judy is the one you know best, but there are many others with jolly little fellows who dance in and out of all sorts of adventures. So you can imagine Pinocchio, the hero of this book, as one of those lively puppets. And, in case you have never read the earlier book about him, you will want to know something of what happened to him before you meet him in these pages.

  One day a poor carpenter, called Master Cherry, began to cut up a piece of wood to make a table-leg of it when, to his utmost amazement, the piece of wood cried out, “Do not strike me so hard!” The frightened carpenter stopped for a moment, and when he began again and struck the wood a blow with his ax the voice cried out once more, “Oh, oh! you have hurt me so!” The carpenter was now so terrified that he was only too glad to turn the piece of wood over to a neighbor, Papa Geppetto, who cut it up into the shape of a boy puppet, painted it, and named it Pinocchio—which means “a piece of pinewood.” As soon as he had finished making him, Pinocchio grabbed the old man’s wig off his head and started in to play tricks. Papa Geppetto then taught the puppet to walk, and when naughty Pinocchio discovered he could use his legs, he ran away. Then began all kinds of adventures, and Pinocchio was sometimes naughty and selfish, and sometimes kind and considerate, but always funny and jolly.

  In this new book Pinocchio’s heart has grown through love and consideration for others, so that he becomes a real boy and takes part in the war to help his beautiful country, Italy.

  The Translator.

  CHAPTER I

  How Pinocchio Discovered That He Had a Heart and Had Become a Real Boy

  He yawned, stuck out his tongue and licked the end of his nose, opened his eyes, shut them again, opened them once more and rubbed them vigorously with the back of his hand, jumped up, and then sat down on the sofa, listening intently for several minutes, after which he scratched his noddle solemnly. When Pinocchio scratched his head in this way you could be sure that there was trouble in the air. And so there was. The room was empty, the windows closed, and the door as well; no noise came from the still quiet street; a deep silence filled the air, yet there, right there, close to him, he heard queer sounds like blows—tick-tock…tick-tock…tick-tock…tick-tock.

  It sounded like some one who was amusing himself by rapping with his knuckles on a wooden box—tick-tock…tick-tock…tick-tock.

  “But who is it?” called out the puppet, suddenly, jumping down from the sofa and running to peer into every corner of the room. When he had knocked over the chest, rummaged the wardrobe with the mirror, upset the little table, turned over the chairs, pulled the pictures off the walls, and torn down the window-curtains, he found himself seated on the floor in the middle of the room, dead tired, his face all smeared with dust and spider-webs, his shirt in tatters, his tongue hanging out like a pointer’s returning from the hunt. Yet there, close to him, he still heard that strange tick-tock…tick-tock…tick-tock…and it seemed as if those mysterious fingers were rapping even more quickly upon the mysterious wooden box. Pinocchio would have pulled his hair out in desperation if Papa Geppetto hadn’t forgotten to make him any. But as the desperation of puppets lasts just about as long as the joy of poor human beings, Pinocchio, laying his right forefinger on the point of his magnificent nose, calmly remarked:

  “Let me argue this out. There is no one else in here but me. I am keeping perfectly quiet, not even drawing a long breath, yet the noise keeps up.… Then, since it is not I who am making the noise, some one else must be making it, and as no one outside me is making it, whatever makes it must be inside me.”

  This seemed reasonable, but Pinocchio, who had not expected he would come to such a conclusion, gave a start, kicked violently, and began to roll around on the ground, yelling as if he would split his throat: “Help! Help!” The thought had suddenly come to him that during the night a mouse had jumped into his mouth and down into his stomach and was searching about in it for some way to get out. But the quieter he kept the noisier grew the tick-tock; in fact, so loud that it seemed to cut off his breath. Fear made him calm.

  “Let me argue this out,” he said again, laying his forefinger against his nose. “It cannot be a mouse; the movement is too regular, so regular that if I weren’t sure that I went to bed without supper I should think I had swallowed Papa Geppetto’s watch
by mistake.… Hm! If he hadn’t told me time and time again that I am only a little puppet without a heart I should almost believe that I had one down inside me, and that this tick-tock were indeed…”

  “Just so!”

  “Who said ‘Just so’? Who said ‘Just so’?” called Pinocchio, looking around in terror. Naturally no one answered him.

  “Hm! Did I dream it?” he asked himself. “And even if there is any one who thinks he can frighten me with his ‘just so’ he will find himself much mistaken. A brave boy does not know what fear is, and I begin to think…

  “‘Just so’ or not ‘just so,’ if any one has anything to say to me let him come forward and he will learn what kind of blows I can give.”

  He turned round and stepped back a few steps. It seemed to him that some one was making a threatening gesture at him. Without hesitating a moment, he rushed forward with his head down, thrashing out blows like a madman. Then he heard a terrible smashing of glass. Pinocchio had hit out at his own image in the wardrobe mirror, which naturally was shattered to bits. There is no need for me to tell you how he felt, because you will have no trouble in picturing it for yourselves.

  “But how did I come to make such a blunder?” he asked himself, as soon as he had recovered from his surprise. “How did I happen not to recognize myself in the mirror? Am I really so changed…? Can I indeed be changed into a real little boy or am I a puppet as I always was?”

  “Just so! Just so! Just so!”

  This time there could be no doubt about it. Pinocchio sprang toward the window, opened it, and stuck his head out. There below, a few feet lower down, was a beautiful terrace covered with flowering plants. In the midst of the plants was a stand, and on the stand a magnificent green parrot who just at that moment was scratching under his beak with his claw, and looking around him with one eye open. Down in the street below there was not a soul to be seen.

  “Oh, you ugly beast! Was it you who was chattering ‘just so, just so, just so’?”

  The parrot burst out into a crazy laugh and began to sing in his cracked voice:

  “Coccorito wants to know

  Who the glass gave such a blow.

  Coccorito knows it well

  And the master he will tell.”

  “Hah! Hah! Hah!” And he burst out into another guffaw. Patience, which is the only heritage of donkeys, was certainly not Pinocchio’s principal virtue. Moreover, the parrot laughed in such a rude manner that he would have annoyed Jove himself.

  “Stop it, idiot!”

  “Idiot, idiot, ’yot, ’yot.”

  “Beast!”

  “Beast!”

  “Take care…”

  “Take ca-a-a-re.”

  “I’ll give it to you.”

  “You, you, you.”

  “Stop it!”

  “Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!

  Who the glass gave such a blow?

  Coccorito knows it well

  And the master he will tell.”

  “Will you? I’ll make you shut up. Take this, you horrid beast!”

  There was a large terra-cotta pot with a fine plant of basil in it standing on the window-sill, and the furious Pinocchio seized it in both hands and hurled it down with all his force. Coccorito would have come to a sad ending if the god of parrots had not protected his topknot. The flower-pot grazed the stand and was shattered against the marble parapet, and the pieces, falling down, hit against the large stained-glass window opening on to the terrace and broke it.

  Pinocchio, who could hardly believe that he had done so much damage, stood still a moment and gazed stupidly at the pile of broken pieces and at the parrot, who laughed as if he would burst. But when Pinocchio saw a big officer rush angrily over the terrace, with his hair brushed up on his head, a huge mustache beneath his curved nose, and a thick switch in his hand, he was seized with such a fright that he threw over his shoulders the first thing in the way of clothing he could lay his hand on, rushed to the door, opened it with a kick, ran through a small room adjoining, sped down the stairs at breakneck speed, flung open the street door and—Heavens! He felt a violent blow on his stomach and, as if hurled from a catapult, he was thrown into the air and fell down the rest of the steps, his legs out before him. But he didn’t stay still when he got to the bottom. He sprang up like a jack-in-the-box, rubbed himself on the injured part, and was off again. He seemed to see some one strolling there in the middle of the street; he thought he heard himself called twice or thrice by a well-known voice, but the fear which was driving him bade him run, and he ran with all the strength he had in his body.

  Poor Papa Geppetto! It was indeed he who was strolling in the middle of the street and who, seeing Pinocchio flying out of the house like a madman, wrapped in a flowered chintz curtain, had called to him imploringly.

  And so it was—in his hurry Pinocchio had thrown over his shoulders one of the curtains of his room, and if I must tell you10all the truth, he was a perfectly comical sight. Soon Pinocchio had a string of people at his heels crying out: “Catch the madman! Give it to the madman!”

  Catch him! That was easy to say, but it was no easy matter to grab hold of the rascal. Indeed, his pursuers were soon weary, and Pinocchio might have thought himself safe if a dog hadn’t suddenly joined in the game. It was a large jet-black poodle that had come from no one knew where. With a couple of bounds he had caught up with Pinocchio and had seized the curtain in his teeth and was dragging it through the dust. Suddenly he stiffened on his four legs and Pinocchio gave a little whirl and found himself face to face with the animal.

  “Ho, ho, ho! What do I see? Oh, Medoro, don’t you recognize me? Give me your paw.”

  Medoro growled and shook the curtain violently, which was still knotted about Pinocchio’s waist. It was only then that he noticed the strange covering he had on and burst out laughing.

  “Oh, Medoro! What do you really want to do with this rag? I’ll give it to you willingly.”11

  He had scarcely undone the knots when Medoro made a spring and was off down the street they had come, the curtain in his teeth. The puppet stood there, quite upset. Medoro had given him a lesson. The dog that had been so friendly had turned on him and, after having pulled the miserable old curtain off him, had made off without paying any further attention to his old friend.

  “A fine way of doing!” he grumbled. “I’ll catch cold running around after that rag. Papa Geppetto won’t even thank him.… I had better tried to mend the mirror of the wardrobe or the general’s window.”

  The thought of all the troubles he had caused the poor man in so short a time made Pinocchio rather melancholy, and two big tears shone in his bright little eyes. But suddenly he sighed a deep sigh, shrugged his shoulders several times, and with his head high and his hands on his hips, set off again on his way, whistling a popular song.

  He had not gone a hundred steps when he stopped suddenly, cocked his ear, listened a moment quietly, and then flung himself into the fields which bordered the street. The wind brought from far off the gay notes of a military band.

  There was a huge crowd, but Pinocchio didn’t give that a thought, in spite of the fact that he was very tired with his long run. By pushing and poking and kicks in the shins he got up into the front row. Soldiers were passing. At the head was a company of bicycle sharpshooters (bersaglieri), then the band, then the regiment, the Red Cross ambulance, and soldiers, and a long line of sappers. Everybody clapped, threw kisses and flowers, and overwhelmed the bersaglieri with little gifts. The soldiers broke ranks and mingled with the crowd and answered the applause with loud cheers for Italy, the King, and the Army. Some of them marched along in the midst of their families; weeping mothers begged their sons to be careful; the fathers bade them be brave, reminding them of the fighting in ’48, ’66, ’70—the glorious years of our emancipation. The
little boys kept close to their fathers, proud to see them armed like the heroes of old legends, and many of the girls besought their sweethearts: “Write to me, won’t you? Every day I want you to write to me. If I don’t get letters from you I shall think that you are dead and I shall weep so bitterly.”

  Dead! This word affected Pinocchio so that suddenly he felt his heart beating loudly—that strange tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock which had startled him earlier that morning.

  Dead? “Oh! where are they going?” he asked a sprightly old man who was standing near by, shouting, “Hurrah for Italy!” as if he were a boy.

  “They are going to the war.”

  “Are they really off to war? Will they fire only powder from their guns, or real, lead bullets, too?”

  “Indeed yes, real bullets, too.”

  “And will they all die?”

  “We hope not all of them—but they are going to fight for the honor and greatness of their country, and he who dies for his country may die happy.”

  Pinocchio did not breathe. He scratched his head solemnly, and with his eyes and mouth made such a face that if the little old man had seen it he would probably have boxed his ears for him. This “die happy” was silly. Death had always frightened him whenever he had come near to it.

  “Have you been to war?” Pinocchio asked the little old man, half ironically.

  “Can’t you see?” and he pointed to a row of medals pinned on his coat.

  “And you would go back?”

  “Certainly, if they would take me as a volunteer.”

  This reply brought a strange longing to Pinocchio, all the more that the tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock in the box inside of his body was making so much noise that it rang in his ears. And then the gay notes of the band, the joyous air of the soldiers, the cheers of the crowd, suddenly brought a strange idea into his head. The war, with its cannon, marches on one side, fighting on the other, horses dashing, flags waving in the wind, songs of victory, medals on the breast, prisoners tied together like sausages, war trophies, danced before his eyes in a fantastic dance. The war must be just the place for him, all the more so when he thought that it couldn’t be easy to get to it if the little old man who had been there so often couldn’t go now.