The captain assembled his company and said: “Men, we must stick and be ready for anything. We can’t have reinforcements, but tonight they will send us chevaux de frise and barbed wire. But I don’t want to be caught like a bird in a net. We have plenty of ‘jelly.’ If two would volunteer to carry a couple of pounds of it under the entanglements of those gentlemen over yonder we might be able to change our lodgings. They have a fine trench of reinforced concrete with rooms and good beds and bathroom. We’d be better off there than in this mud. What do you say, boys? Is there any one who…”
They didn’t even let him finish. All stepped forward, and, if I am to tell you the truth, Pinocchio, too, but no one noticed him. Mollica and the Bersaglierino were chosen.
It grew dark. Some of them, completely worn out, dozed leaning up against the side of the trench. The Bersaglierino was writing rapidly a letter in pencil. Mollica had pulled out of his knapsack the old newspapers his father had sent him and seemed about to take up his old studies of fingerprints. There were tears in his eyes.
“Heh! Mollica, you look as if you weren’t pleased with the duty the captain has given you.”
“Well?”
“But you ought to let me go.”
“You? But how do you suppose they would let a boy like you carry jelly?”
“Do you think I would eat it all up? I won’t say that I mightn’t taste it, especially if it is that golden-yellow kind that shivers like a paralytic old man, but I would carry out the order like any one else.… Only, I can’t understand how for a little bit of jelly those scoundrels will give up their comfortable trench. It’s true that they eat all sorts of miserable kinds of food and that Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, but…”
“Shut up, you chatterbox! You’ll see what will happen. I’ll explain to you that ‘jelly’ in war-time is what we call a mixture of stuff that when put in a pipe under the wire entanglements and set off by a fuse will blow you up sky-high in a thousand pieces, if you don’t take to your heels in time.”
“And you…want to go and be blown up?”
“No. I hope to come back safe and sound, and I have still to send your letter to Franz Joey.”
Pinocchio was silent and hid himself in a corner without another word. I can’t tell you exactly if he had some sad presentiment or if his disillusion resulting from Mollica’s technical explanation of “jelly” had put him in a bad humor. There was no doubt about it—war had changed the dictionary. He was still more certain of this when, an hour later, he saw the “Frisian horses” arrive. He was expecting beasts with at least four legs, and instead he saw them drag in front of the trenches a huge roll of iron wound up in an enormous skein of barbed wire. But there was still a greater surprise in store for him. That very night he was to find out that in war-time not only the value of words changes, but that there are some which are canceled from certain persons’ vocabulary.
It was night…and there was nothing to be seen and you couldn’t even hear the traditional fly. From the Austrian trench there came a dull regular noise. It seemed as if a lot of pigs were squealing. Instead, it was the Croats who were snoring. No one slept in the Italian trenches. There was a strange coming and going, a fantastic flittering of shadows. There was low talking, commands were passed from mouth to mouth and whispered in the ear—every one was making preparations. Mollica and the Bersaglierino had put steel helmets on their heads and had shields of the same metal on their arms.
“But what are you going to do? You look like the statue of Perseus in the costume of a soldier.”
“I would almost rather be in his place and with no more clothes than he has on instead of in this get-up…but what’s there to be done about it? I promised you to take the letter to Franz Joey.”
A little later Mollica and Bersaglierino left the trench and wriggled along the ground like serpents, carrying with them big metal boxes. The bersaglieri took their places behind the loopholes, their muskets in position, and stood there motionless, anxious, and restless. Pinocchio, too, wanted to see what was happening, and, taking advantage of his guardians’ carelessness, slipped out of the trench and squatted down in a big hole which an enemy projectile had hollowed out twenty yards away.
The poor youngster was very sad. The black night, the silence everywhere, the preparations he had watched and could not understand, were the causes of his melancholy.
“But how under the sun did it ever enter Bersaglierino’s head to offer himself for this expedition?” he thought. “He might have let some one else go. Not so bad for Mollica. He’ll eat up the Austrians like waffles. If any one dares to play a trick on him he’ll land him a few good blows and put him where he belongs, but Bersaglierino…so little and so frail.… If any misfortune happens to him…”
Some time went by, I can’t say how long, but it was quite a little while, because Pinocchio had almost fallen asleep, when the air was shaken by two tremendous explosions. He woke with a start, saw two red flashes shining for an instant on a shower of fragments thrown up to a great height…then blackness and the fiendish rattling of the machine-guns and crackle of musket fire. Suddenly a long white shaft of light broke the darkness, coming from no one knew where, waving to the right and to the left, and fixing itself on the ground between the two trenches, which were immediately showered by shells.
“And Bersaglierino? And Mollica?” Pinocchio asked himself, anxiously, feeling his throat tighten up.
Suddenly a black shadow was outlined in the gleam of a searchlight that was operated from a distance. It crawled along the ground, moving by starts. They had seen it, too, from the trenches and there were confused cries of, “Come on!” … “Bravo!” … “A few more steps!” … “Stick to it!”
And the figure seemed to gain new strength and to bound like a wild beast. But who was it? Surely the Bersaglierino. The form was small, slender, and very quick. Mollica was large and slow. What had become of him? Between the roar of the explosions and the whistle of the shells there came a shrill cry of anguish. The little shadow slid along, then a leap in the silvery ray, and it was lost in the blackness of the earth torn by the rain of steel.
“Oh, beasts that they are! They have murdered him!” Pinocchio screamed. “Enough! Enough! Wretches! Don’t you see that he has ceased to move? Stop shooting.… Give him time to recover.… Perhaps he is wounded.”
It seemed that the Austrian fire grew even more murderous.
Pinocchio, beside himself with fury, rushed out of his hiding-place and in a couple of bounds was back in the trench.
“They have wounded Bersaglierino.… He is there…out there in the No Man’s Land.… Help him…don’t let him die so.”
They sprang over the top to rescue their wounded comrades, but had scarcely gone a step before they were lost to him.
Pinocchio lost his head. He sprang out of the dugout and ran as fast as he could into the spot still illuminated by the ray of silver. He stumbled, fell, got up again, fell once more, but kept on crawling on his hands and knees.… He heard a groan, felt a body, lifted it in his arms, and, gathering all his strength together, began to drag it toward the trench. All at once he felt his legs give way and he let out a yell of terror. He was answered by another from a hundred valiant throats; he saw a strange flash, felt a hurricane strike him, a wave roll over him…but before losing his senses there came to him the cry of victory. The Italian bersaglieri had bayoneted those who had wounded Bersaglierino and had won from the enemy one more portion of their country.
A little later the stretcher-bearers were able to gather up the wounded from the field of honor.
CHAPTER V
In Which Pinocchio Discovers That Sometimes When You Want to Advance You Have to Take a Step Backward
For a long while Pinocchio didn’t know whether he was alive or dead. Then after a time he seemed to be dreaming, but the dre
ams were so queer that…just imagine, he thought he was a puppet again, asleep on a chair with his feet resting on a brazier full of lighted charcoal, that one of his feet was on fire and that the flame, little by little, was creeping up his leg. And, just as once before when something similar had happened, the dream became a painful reality. However, there was another dream that comforted him. A lovely woman’s smiling face would come close to him and he would hear soft, affectionate words. It was the queerest thing possible! It seemed to him that this face was set in a lovely frame of light-blue hair which came down like a veil, like a cape enfolding the graceful form of a young girl. Some one had told him that her name was Fatina, and he kept repeating the name, as once…when he was still a little puppet and the girl with blue hair… But what had happened to him?
One morning he opened his eyes and discovered that he was in a little white bed in a white room, and that to right and left of him in two other beds were two wounded men all enveloped in bandages.
“Bersaglierino! Bersaglierino!” cried Pinocchio, trying to raise himself up in bed. But a horrid pain made him fall back on the pillow and forced him to scream loudly. The door of the little room opened and a Red Cross nurse in her blue uniform entered swiftly.
“Oh! At last! But be good and don’t try to move! The Bersaglierino is here on your right; he is better, but you must let him be quiet, and you, too, need to rest.”
“Tell me, Fatina, is the Bersaglierino really alive?”
“Don’t you see him? Here he is. When he wakes up you can say a few words to him. Yesterday he was so eager to know about you, but you couldn’t speak to him.”
“Listen, Fatina, and I…am I really alive?”
“It seems so to me.”
“But am I…made of wood or…”
“You are made of iron.”
“Of iron? Don’t joke so with me, Fatina. If you want my nose to grow longer, dearest lady, or if you want me to turn back into a wooden puppet, I am ready to do so; but not of iron, no. I am too afraid of rust.”
“But what are you talking about? Let me feel your pulse. No, that’s all right, no fever. I said you were made of iron because you have come out of it all so wonderfully. You were threatened with gas gangrene, and if they had not amputated at once, it would have been the end of you, but instead…”
“Please, please…what did they do to me?”
“They cut off your injured leg.”
“My leg!”
“Yes, indeed; they couldn’t help it.”
“And when did they cut it off?”
“Three days ago.”
“You are perfectly certain of this?”
“I was present.”
“And I…wasn’t I present?”
“I think so.”
“And how is it I didn’t know anything about it?”
“You were asleep.”
“I think it was you who were dreaming. Look.”
Before Fatina could stop him Pinocchio caught the covers and threw them off. One leg was indeed missing and just the one which he had dreamed had been burned by the brazier. He saw a heap of bloody bandages and let out such a scream that he made the other two wounded start up.
The one on the left, who looked like a monk in a hood, because from under the bands which bound his head a long shaggy beard was sticking out, cried in annoyance:
“Heh! What is it, a locomotive? You are making as much noise as an enemy’s cannon.”
“Be quiet, be quiet!”
“Bersaglierino, have you seen what they did to me? They’ve carried off one of my legs without asking my permission.”
“And they took off one of my arms, and they’ve made a hole in my head and cut open my stomach.”
“But what kind of dirty tricks are these? I want my leg.… I want my leg!”
“If it were still on you it would be all swollen and black. Be silent, shut up, and thank God that they haven’t taken the other one. Because Major Cutemup is here, and when he begins to amputate it is hard to get him to stop. Imagine, they wanted to cut off my nose.”
“I want my leg!”
“Be good.”
“Fatina, I beg you, make them make me another one. Write to Geppetto to make me another one, even of wood, but I want to be able to walk and run. I want to go back to the war, I do!”
The patient on the left jumped out of his bed and, in giving him a kiss, brushed his face with his bushy beard.
“There, you are a brave boy. You please me.… We will have another leg made for you, and if you want to go back to see the Boches you can come with me. Sister Fatina, is it not true that they’re going to make him a new leg?”
“Certainly.”
“Of wood?”
“And with machinery inside so that you can move it as if it were a real leg.”
“Then…”
“Will you be good?”
“Yes…but as soon as I catch sight of Major Cutemup I’ll tell him a few things I think of him.”
“How are you, Bersaglierino?”
“Better, Fatina dear.”
“Be brave.”
Then she moved softly away, as noiseless as a dream.
“Did you see, Pinocchio? Fatina kept her word. She had scarcely heard that I was wounded before she hurried to my bed. She is an angel and I am quite happy. But I owe it to you that I am alive. I had four bullets in my back.… Those dogs had got the range on me, and if you hadn’t come to my aid they would have finished me.… And you weren’t lucky, either—they shot your leg to pieces, and if the company hadn’t appeared… But we won! Hurrah for Italy!”
“And Mollica?”
“Dead. They found him near the wire, surrounded by a heap of dead enemies. He made a regular slaughter. He had your letter to Franz Joseph stuck on the end of his bayonet. Every time that he hit a foe he cried, ‘Beast of a potato-eater, take this letter and carry it to your Joey.’”
“Poor Mollica! If I am able to get back there I’ll avenge you.”
“I told you I wanted you with me. You will see what we’ll do to those creatures. I am Captain Teschisso, of the Second Regiment of Alpine Troops. What fights we have had! How we have ‘strafed’ them! A shell splinter gave me a whack and carried off one of my ears, but if you join me we’ll have dozens of them every day.”
“Will I go with you? Yes, indeed, if the Bersaglierino…”
“As far as I am concerned, do what you’ve a mind to. I shall never return to the regiment now.… You can’t make war without an arm, but…”
Just at this moment the door of the little white room opened and Major Cutemup, followed by two young lieutenants, Fatina, and some men nurses, came in. He was a short, squatty little man, with smooth face and tiny eyes hidden behind gold-rimmed glasses, and with a stomach that would have made an alderman jealous. He looked more like a cab-driver than like an officer, and even more like a butcher who has risen to be master of a shop by selling old beef for veal.
“Good morning, boys. You are getting on finely, eh? When I take hold of you you either die or are better off than you were before anything happened to you. Let’s look at you, Bersaglierino. The arm’s doing well…the wound in your head will be healed in ten days or so. Thank God that I saved your eye. It was a risk… we ought to have taken it out if we had followed the usual method.… No, no, I find you in good condition, so good, in fact, that I can tell you a piece of news…they have recommended you for the silver medal. I believe his Majesty will come in person to pin it on your breast. It would be a real honor for our hospital.
“And you, lad? But really I don’t need to bother about you, either. Boys are like lizards—you can cut them in pieces and they keep on living.”
“Please, please, Mr. Major Carve-Beefsteak, I should li
ke to know who gave you permission to cut off my leg.”
“What? What? You dare…”
“There’s no good lecturing me, because I am not in the army, as poor Mollica used to say, so you don’t frighten me worth a soldo. So I am just asking you who gave you permission to…carry off my claw.”
“Your claw? The femur was broken, the tibia cracked, the patella shattered, your temperature up over a hundred, delirium, threatened with gas gangrene.… I couldn’t wait until you had gone to the devil before asking your permission to amputate. And, moreover, no more words about it. I cut when it’s my duty to cut. If, in spite of the operation, the gangrene had continued I should have amputated your other leg as well. So let’s look at it. Nurse, undo the bandages.”
In a minute the bloody flesh was uncovered. Pinocchio bit his lips in order to keep from yelling with pain. Cutemup approached in a solemn manner, and, nearsighted as he was, had almost to stick his nose into the wound to make his examination.
“Fine.… The healing process has already begun…the granulation is splendid, but have you any pain in the groin, boy?”
“How in the world do you expect me to know what that is?”
“Does it hurt you here?”
“No.”
“Have you any pain in the sound leg?”
“No.”
“Can you move it?”
“Yes.”
“Bend it at the knee.”
“I am doing it.”
“Again, again, again. Does it pain you?”
“No.”
“Fine!… Now stretch it out.”
He should never have said that. Pinocchio stretched it out with such agility that there was no difference from the way he usually administered his solemnest kicks. His foot caught Cutemup right in the stomach and knocked him breathless into the arms of the young lieutenant, who had to resort to artificial respiration to revive him.
The Pinocchio Megapack: 4 Classic Puppet Tales Page 25
