“What has happened?”
“The mail has come.”
“And you’re making all this racket for that? I thought it was the Austrians.”
“You little coward, you!”
“That’s enough, Bersaglierino, if you say that to me again I’ll give you such a kick that will change your shape. But why don’t you, too, go to see if you have any letters?”
“Who do you think would write me? I am as alone in the world as a dog, just like you, it seems.”
“Yes, that’s so,” replied Pinocchio, swallowing hard, because he had suddenly felt his throat tighten at the thought of Papa Geppetto, from whom he had had no news for many a long day.
“It is a red-letter day for the others. Mollica will have a letter from his father, Fanfara news from his two babies, Stecca kisses from his wife.… I might be killed to-morrow by a bullet in the stomach and they would let me rot in a ditch and that would be the end.”
Mollica came back, his arms full of newspapers. His father, a news-dealer in Naples, sent him a copy of every unsold publication, knowing that anything may come in useful in war-times, even old news.
“Heh! Bersaglierino! You want us to play the postman and yet you don’t take any trouble to get your scented letter.”
“You are joking?”
“No, it’s no joke. Here is one really for you, and I congratulate you because if you are engaged she must be at least a countess.”
The Bersaglierino took the letter his comrade held out to him and read the address over several times. There was no doubt; it was his name that was written on the scented envelope the color of a blush rose. He turned pale and stood for a moment undecided, then he tore it open and read:
Dear Bersaglierino—
I saw how sad and alone you were at the moment of your departure, so I felt it was my duty as a patriotic Italian girl to write to you. Go and fight for our country; do your duty bravely, and remember that in thought I follow and will follow you every minute. If you return valorously I will meet you and tell you how happy I am; if you fall wounded I will go to your hospital bed to soothe your suffering; if you die for your country my flowers shall lie on your grave and your name will always be written in my heart. Long live Italy!
Your war-godmother,
Fatina.
“Long live Italy!” Bersaglierino shouted like mad. He caught up his hat with its cock plumes and tossed it in the air with all his force, seized Pinocchio who was standing by him, and lifted him up in both his arms, pulled his cap off his head, and then twirled it round on his pate, scratching the poor boy’s nose.
“What’s got into you? Are you crazy?”
“Am I crazy? I am happy! I am not alone any more, do you understand? I am no longer an unlucky fellow like you with no one belonging to him. But I am fonder of you than ever. Give me a kiss…” and he pressed such a hearty kiss on his nose that his comrades laughed. But Pinocchio longed to cry. The heart in his body beat a violent tick-tock, tick-tock.
“Have you read what Franz Joe’s newspapers say?—‘Italian soldiers are brigands who do not respect civilians or the wounded in the hospitals.’ That means you, dear Pinocchio, because you shot the traitor on the tower. You can be sure that if the suet-eaters win they will make you pay for the crime.”
“Me?”
“Yes, indeed, you! You don’t intend to say that I killed him, do you? And you, thank God, are not an enlisted Italian soldier, therefore…”
“I understand.”
The camp was quiet once again; indeed, I might say that tender memories had softened its youthful exuberance. The voices from home were keeping the soldiers silent. It was as if every letter their eyes fell on was speaking to them quietly and they were blessed in listening, their faces shining with happiness. Corporal Fanfara held a sheet of paper on which there was nothing but some strange scrawls. He gazed at it with delight, and while two big tears ran down his cheeks he murmured in his Venetian dialect, “My darling little rascals!” These scrawls of theirs were more welcome to him than the letter from his wife which told of privations, anxiety, and troubles. Private Mollica was acting like a detective, searching through the newspaper pages for his father’s dirty finger-marks; and as there was little trouble in finding them he kept repeating every moment, “This was made by my dear old man.” Then he kissed the marks so often that his whole mouth was black with printer’s ink.
Shortly after every one was writing, some bent over their writing-tablets, some on the back of a good-natured comrade, some stretched out on the ground, some on the edge of a bench, on the staves of a barrel, on a tree-trunk, with pencils, fountain-pens, on post-cards, envelopes, letter-paper spilled out miraculously from portfolios, bags, and canteens. Every one was writing. The Bersaglierino seemed to be composing a poem. He gesticulated, whacked himself on the ear, beat time with his pen that squirted ink in every direction, and every now and then declaimed under his breath certain phrases that were so moving that they made even him weep.
Pinocchio was as silent and gloomy as the hood of a dirty kitchen stove. Squatting at the entrance to the tent, he kept glancing at his companions, and every now and then he would scratch his head so vigorously that he might have been currycombing a donkey. When Pinocchio scratched his head in that way… Well, now you know that matters were serious, but I tell you they were so serious that he had the courage to interrupt the Bersaglierino in his literary studies.
“Excuse me, but will you do me a favor?”
“What do you want? Keep quiet…leave me alone…you make me lose my thread of thought…”
“So you write with thread, do you? Are you aware that they don’t use this any more?”
“Stop your nonsense. Leave me alone, puppet.”
“Do me a favor and then…”
“What is it? Spit it out!”
“Lend me a pencil and a piece of paper.”
“You want to write, too?”
“Yes.”
“Then you, too, have some one in the world who interests you?”
“Yes…perhaps.”
“A godmother like mine?”
“Hum! No indeed.”
“You are serious about wanting to write?”
“Yes.”
“Here’s paper and pencil, then. Do you know how to write?”
“Once I knew how.”
“All right. Then let me see it.”
“Gladly.”
Pinocchio rested his elbows on his knees, chin on his clasped hands, and, biting his pencil, lost himself in profound meditation.
“Excuse me, Bersaglierino.”
“Ho! Finished already?”
“No…that is…yes, I have finished beginning, but…I don’t know what you put before the beginning.”
“Write, ‘Dear So-and-so,’ or ‘My darling, etc., etc.’”
“But you see I can’t put either ‘dear’ or ‘my darling.’”
“So you are writing to a creditor?”
“Something like that.”
“Heavens! Put his first name, his last name, swear at him, and that’s enough.”
“Excuse me, Bersaglierino…”
“Oh, are you still there?”
“Yes.… I haven’t been able to start the beginning because…”
“Do you or do you not know how to write?”
“Like a lawyer.”
“Then?”
“I don’t know what his last name is.”
“Whose?”
“Franz Joe’s.”
“Writing to him? You want to write to him? To that miserable Hapsburg?”
The news spread like lightning through the camp. The soldiers passed it from mouth to mouth, laughing like mad: Pinocchio was writing
to Emperor Franz Joseph! This was interesting. They must know what the letter said. It would certainly be something to amuse them. So walking quietly, as if they were all eager to take him in the very act, they approached the tent where Pinocchio was composing his missive, not without difficulty. He had not been writing for several minutes and the words seemed so long to put down on paper. He had to keep thinking of the spelling, and the verbs bothered him terribly. When he raised his head to draw a breath of relief before re-reading what he had managed to write, he found himself surrounded by all the regiment.
“Oh, you are well brought up, aren’t you? Who taught you to stick your noses into other people’s business?”
“To whom have you written?”
“To the one I wanted to.”
“Let’s see the scribbling.”
“Look in your mirror and you will see worse lines on your own face.”
“We want to read the letter.”
“But if you are a pack of illiterates…”
“Listen, either you will let me see it or I will take you by one ear and the letter with the other hand, and I’ll carry you both off to the censor, who will haul you before a court martial that will condemn you to be shot in the back.”
“Oh, do you really want to see it, Mollica?”
“You heard what I said.”
“On one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“That you will take charge of it and see that it gets to its address.”
“All right. Hand it here, you puppy. Listen to what he writes:
“Mr. Franz Hapsburg,
In his house in Austria,
“You wrote in the papers that the Italian soldiers are rascals because they kill civilians and wounded Ostrians. I want you to know that you are mistaken, because as you know the traitor was killed by a pistol that shot off Ostrian bullets by itself while it was in my hands who am not in the army. That’s how our soldiers found the traitor already dead, the traitor who made signals from the church tower, so that the shells fell on the ruins. As for the wounded in the horspital I can asshure you that they were better off than me and you, and that they had guns between their leggs under the sheets. He who tells lies goes to hell and you will certainly go there, but just now I’d like to send you there myself who don’t give a hang for you.
“Pinocchio.”
I can’t describe to you what took place after the letter had been read.
They gave the poor youngster such a feast that they had to put him to bed in a hammock. Before Private Mollica went to sleep he kept repeating: “I have promised to take your letter to Franz Joseph.… You see if I don’t send it through all the ranks till it reaches his own hands. On Mollica’s honor!… I have promised to take your letter to Franz Joseph!”
CHAPTER IV
How Pinocchio Learned That War Changes Everything—Even the Meaning of Words
The bersaglieri had passed the Isonzo and were intrenched at——(censor). You certainly know now what the Isonzo is, because war teaches geography better than do teachers in the schools; so I don’t intend to explain it to you. Pinocchio had followed his friends, and I assure you no one regretted his coming. When there were orders to carry to the rear or purchases to be made, it was Pinocchio who attended to them. Slender as a lizard and quick as a squirrel, he was out of the trenches without being seen and slipped along the furrows and ditches and the bushes with marvelous dexterity. He had been absolutely forbidden to approach the loopholes, and when they caught him about to disobey he got such boxes on the ears that he had to rub them for half an hour afterward. Mollica, and the Bersaglierino in particular, kept their eyes on him, so that they punished him often.
“I’d like to know why it is you two can stand with your noses against the hole and I mayn’t.”
“Because of the mosquitoes.”
“Who cares for them? I haven’t the slightest fear of mosquitoes.”
But when he saw them carry off a poor soldier hit in the middle of the forehead and understood that the “mosquitoes” were Austrian bullets, he gained a little wisdom. While the soldiers were suffering from the trench life which restrained their ardent natures, keeping them still and watchful, the rogue of a Pinocchio amused himself with all kinds of jokes. Dirty as he could be, he was always grubbing with his nails in the ground to deepen the trench, to make some new breastwork, to build up an escarp. If they sent him out to find logs of wood to repair the roofs of the dugouts he would come back laden with all sorts of things. Hens and eggs were his favorite booty. One day he managed to capture a pig and to drag it along behind him. But when they got near the trenches the cussed animal began to squeal so horribly that the Austrians opened up a terrific fire on him. For fear of the “mosquitoes” Pinocchio had to let him go, and the pig ran to take refuge among his brothers, the enemy.
That evening it rained cats and dogs. The trench was one slimy pool. The rain dripped everywhere, penetrating, baring the parapets which collapsed, squirting mud and gluing the feet of the soldiers, who, wet to the bone, had to scurry through the wire to carry ammunition to safety and to repair the damage done to the trench. Pinocchio, barelegged, ran back and forth, bemired up to his hair, to give a helping hand to his friends.
“What fun! We seem to be turning into crabs.”
“You are a beastly little puppy!”
“Poor Mollica! You really make me sorry for you.”
“I make you sorry for me?”
“Certainly. I shouldn’t want to be you in all this downpour.”
“Why?”
“Because this rain will melt your sugary nature.”
Mollica, to convince him of the contrary, started to administer one of his usual boxes on the ear, but he slipped and fell, face down, into the mud.
“Are you comfortable, Private Mollica? Tell me were you ever in a softer bed than now?… You look to me like a roll dipped in chocolate.… Bersaglierino, come and see how ugly he is! All chalky up into his hair.… I never saw any one look such an idiot!”
“I wish they would murder you, you beastly little puppy!”
After struggling about in the mud he managed to get to his feet again and had almost caught him, but in one spring Pinocchio was far away. The telephone dugout was a little deeper than the trench and the water was rapidly filling it up. It was already up to the operator’s knees. A crowd of soldiers were working hard to stop the flood.
“What are you doing, stupids? Do you think you can bail out this puddle with a cap? You are green. We ought to have big Bertha.…”
He didn’t get in another word. They took hold of him by his arms and legs and soused him into the dirty water and held him under till he had drunk a cupful. The telephone operator would have liked to see him dead, then and there.
“Hold him under till he is as swollen as a toad. He was calling down misfortune on us, wishing that a shell would fall on us. As if this rain weren’t enough (che-chew, che-chew!); we are chilled to the marrow (che-chew!) and are likely to die bravely of cold…(che-chew!).”
“Enough! Let me go! Help! Bersaglierino! Mollica-a-a!”
“What are you doing to him? Let him go. Shame on you!” yelled Bersaglierino, running up.
“But don’t you know that he was wishing a shell would hit us, the little wretch?”
“Just as if we hadn’t enough troubles now.”
“Of course you have enough, and one of your troubles is that you are regular beasts,” cried Pinocchio as soon as he could get his breath. “I said I wished for Bertha, the cook in Papa Geppetto’s house, to sweep away the water in here, but now I wish I had a broom in my hand to break its handle against your ribs.”
“But don’t you know that a ‘Big Bertha’ is a Boche gun that would have blown us into a thousand pieces?”
“
So, little devil, do you understand? And now that you have learned your lesson, be off with you.”
There was nothing else for poor Pinocchio to do but to spit out the mud still in his mouth and turn on his heel.
“Bersaglierino, I would have believed anything but that words change their meaning in this way. With these idiots you have to pay attention to what you say. They made me swallow so much ditch-water that it will be a miracle if I don’t have little fish swimming around in my stomach.”
It stopped raining, but as if the Austrians didn’t want to give the bersaglieri time to repair the damages caused by the bad weather, they began a furious bombardment of the trench. The “mosquitoes” kept up a terrible singing. Huge projectiles churned up the ground all around, digging out deep holes, raising whirls of earth, throwing off shreds of stone and steel in every direction. One shell had fallen near the telephone and had done great damage. The soldiers couldn’t venture any distance from the dugout to aim at the enemy who was firing at them with such accuracy. Mud prevented their movements. They couldn’t change their positions because the slippery earth offered no foothold. It was impossible to excavate deep because the earth slid down. It was a critical moment. Several men had been killed, the wounded were moaning bitterly, the dying were groaning.… But the Italian bersaglieri did not lose courage and stood up against the foe, showing a genuine disregard for their lives. Pinocchio longed to cry. He wasn’t thinking of the danger to himself, but of the fact that if this devilish fire kept up much longer all his bersaglieri would be killed. Wasn’t there anybody to look out for them? What was our artillery doing? Did they really intend to let them all be massacred?
He had scarcely thought this when he heard behind him the thunder of Italian guns. A quarter of an hour later and the Austrians were quite quiet. But the situation hadn’t improved. Orders had come from the second line to hold out at all costs because it wouldn’t be possible to relieve them until the next evening. An attack in force was expected every minute.
The Pinocchio Megapack: 4 Classic Puppet Tales Page 24
