The Alpine soldier broke out into such an astonishing laugh from beneath his bandages and his beard that the others, Fatina included, had to echo him. Pinocchio played ’possum, perfectly still with his eyes half closed. When Cutemup, quite recovered, sprang toward him to give vent to his just vengeance, he seemed much surprised to see him in such a state. He examined him attentively, and, keeping himself a respectful distance away, poked with his forefinger two or three times the leg which had given him such marvelous proof of vitality and energy, then, turning to his colleagues, he began to speak in an imposing manner:
“The accident which befell me was the result of the nervous depression of the patient. The reflex motions have superiority over the will centers. The muscles slacken at the lightest pressure, like a cord of a strung bow. The vitality shown by the patient is due to a nervous over-excitation, not noticeable until now. I shall keep the patient under observation. If you come across similar cases, take notes of them that I may include them in my article. I shall order extra nutrition and care in building up the patient as soon as the wound has healed completely. Sister Fatina, note for the boy special rations of filet of beefsteak, roast chicken, eggs, custards well-sweetened, at dinner and again at supper.”
At this bill of fare Pinocchio’s leg by some strange phenomenon began to bend again from the knee.
The major, thoroughly absorbed in his lesson, did not notice it: “So, then, that is understood. You, Captain Teschisso, are doing splendidly; in a few days we’ll take the bandage off you. Gentlemen, let us go into the next room.”
They had scarcely gone out and the door was scarcely closed before Pinocchio burst out into such a hearty laugh that the captain and Bersaglierino had to laugh, too.
“You don’t seem too much depressed.”
“What were you doing with that leg in the air?”
“Do you know, Captain, as my first kick had gained special nourishment for me, I wanted to give him another one so that I could get a double quantity; then there would have been something for all of you.”
“Thank you, you shaved poodle.”
Just then Fatina returned and was surprised to see Pinocchio laughing so hard that his tongue was hanging out with happiness.
“What’s this?”
“Fatina, my compliments. Did you hear what the major ordered? Filet of beefsteak, chickens, custards with heaps of sugar, at dinner and again at supper.”
“You wretch!”
“I am not a wretch; I am a poor, weak invalid and no one had better feel the muscles in my legs too much who doesn’t want to get kicks in the stomach.”
“You little beast! Suppose I go and tell the major that…”
“No, for Heaven’s sake! Dear Fatina, keep quiet.”
“On one condition.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“That you will be good, that you will be patient and let yourself be taken care of until it is time to fit your wooden leg.”
“I promise you. You know, once I was made of wood all over. In order to get ahead I can even make up my mind to take a step backward.”
CHAPTER VI
Wherein We See Pinocchio’s Heart
All three of them were now up again. It was to be for them a day of great gladness. Yet all three were in a bad humor. They didn’t even talk. Captain Teschisso, dressed in a brand-new uniform, couldn’t tear himself away from the mirror, which he addressed in a low voice:
“Just see what they have made of me. I can’t go on this way.… I am not presentable. Without an ear, with a slash on the cheek, half my beard gone…I look like a wild animal to be shown at a circus. Lord! How many kicks I’d like to give those dogs! They’ve botched me so I’m no longer fit for this world.… It’s against the regulations, but before I die I want to devour heaps of those curs! Who allows them to make war like this? Who permits them to reduce a captain of Alpine troops to such a sight? It would be better for me to die at once. I’m not good for anything, and that dog of a Cutemup might have made a better job of me. Let him show himself and I’ll give him a piece of my mind.”
Poor Teschisso! He was right! His ugly scar did disfigure him. Another man would have wept at seeing himself thus; he trembled with eagerness to be revenged.
Pinocchio, too, was grumbling like a stewpot, giving vent to his ill humor. They had put on him a wooden leg that was a real triumph of mechanism. It was jointed like a real one and moved with an automatic motion in harmony with his sound leg. Pinocchio had tried to run, to jump, and to balance, and had to convince himself that he had not lost anything by the exchange. But the leg had one fault—when he extended it it unbent too rapidly, hitting the heel on the ground with a noisy and annoying sound. And in addition to this the mechanism, which was still so new, rattled.
“Plague take it! My own didn’t need to be oiled. Who knows how much oil this one will expect me to give it? But that I’ll make Mr. Cutemup pay for. If he comes up to me and repeats that I am better than I used to be I’ll plant another kick in his stomach, then I’ll ask how he would manage to walk if it were his, on the tip of his toes, with this heel that beats like a drumstick.”
The Bersaglierino, too, had a wooden left arm. You wouldn’t even have noticed it. He could move it in any direction, and the gloved artificial hand which came out of the sleeve of his gray jacket, although a little stiff, could be moved as easily as a real hand. The wound that furrowed his forehead didn’t disfigure him; indeed, it gave to his gentle features a certain air of nobility and fierceness. But the Bersaglierino was sad, so sad that if you had looked into his eyes you would have been certain that he had to make a great effort not to cry. Pinocchio noticed it.
“Tell me, Bersaglierino, what was your business before the war?”
“What’s that to you?”
“Oh, I just want to know.”
“I was a journalist, a writer.”
“Hm! Must be a horrid profession.”
“Why?”
“Because you have to work so hard not to die of hunger.”
“Who told you so?”
“Nobody. But if you had made a lot of money in your job you wouldn’t have left it to volunteer, and as you get only fourteen cents a day as a volunteer at the front, as a civilian you must have been hard up all the year. Then…you needn’t make a face…you don’t write with the left hand…so you can go back to being a journalist, even with…the Austrian improvement.”
He hoped to drive away his sadness by saying it in this way, but instead he only increased it.
“Leave me in peace, puppet!” he said, roughly and with such a stern tone that Pinocchio in his turn longed to cry.
At this moment the door of the room was opened with great violence and Major Cutemup, as if hurled by a catapult, made his appearance, followed by Fatina and by a regiment of soldiers and nurses. He was red as the comb of a cock at his first crow, wheezed every now and then like a pair of bellows, and dripped sweat as a bucket just out of the well drips water.
“Sister Fatina, I rely on you…I rely on you to see that everything is in order. Four soldiers will wash the windows…six will scrub the floors, which must shine like a mirror, and everything must be done in ten minutes. And you, boys, put on your special uniforms.… I have great news for you. His Majesty has announced his visit to the hospital; with his own august hands he will bestow the decorations. You, Bersaglierino, who are among these fortunate ones, take care to be irreproachable in your appearance. You, Captain…”
“What! What did he say? Do you think I can let his Majesty see me in this frightful condition? Half a beard, half a mustache, minus an ear, half a face…”
“But…I don’t know what you can do about it. Fix it up the best you can.”
“Certainly I’ll fix it up, I’ll…Good Heavens! man, let me go to a barber who can ma
ke me look like a Christian, because you, Major Cutemup, have made me resemble one of Menelik’s crew.”
“But…”
“But I swear that I won’t let the dogs who got me in this condition stick their fingers on my face, I tell you.”
“Teschisso!”
“No, I won’t let them touch me.”
“Captain Teschisso, I must remind you of the respect due…”
“What’s that? Major Cutemup…did you think I was talking of you? Not a thought of doing so. I meant those dogs of Austrians.”
“A-a-a-h! Then be off to the barber’s.”
“Thanks. I’ll have him fix me up in a minute.”
“Boy, hurry up. His Majesty is coming.”
Ten minutes later everything was shining like a mirror. The soldiers were already at work in the adjoining room. Pinocchio had disappeared. Teschisso had gone to be shaved. Fatina was arranging the white window-curtains. The Bersaglierino was seated on his bed, his right arm resting on his knee and his chin held in the hollow of his hand.
“What’s the matter? What is it, Bersaglierino?”
He didn’t answer, and Fatina, after having looked at him a minute with her large, soft eyes, came up nearer and sat down beside him on the little white bed.
“Tell me what’s the trouble, Bersaglierino. Why are you crying? Why don’t you make yourself handsome? Didn’t you hear? The King is coming to give you the medal.”
“Why should I care about that? What do you think that means to me, Fatina?”
And then, since she seemed much astonished at his words, he continued, vehemently:
“Why, indeed, should I care about that?… After they have sent me away from here I shall go back to living alone like a dog…to fighting every day for my existence. Who will get any satisfaction from the reward the King’s hand has bestowed on me? No one. Perhaps the day will come when I shall have to pin the medal on my coat to keep the boys in the streets from making fun of me, the poor maimed creature who will wander about playing a street-organ.”
“Oh, Bersaglierino! I never imagined you could talk like that. I don’t want you to talk so.”
And she spoke with so much feeling that he, fearing he had offended her, started to beg her pardon:
“Fatina…”
“Tell me, aren’t you glad to have done your duty, to have given your blood for your country? Didn’t you volunteer? Didn’t you go willingly through the barbed wire to open a road of victory for your country? And now you are almost blaming yourself for the good you have done, for fear of the morrow. And you think yourself destined to end as a laughing-stock of horrid little children? Oh, but you are bad! Tell me, are you really so sure that you are alone in the world, that there is no one who will rejoice to see shining on your breast the medal your country has bestowed on you?”
“Ah, if it were so, Fatina, if it were true!”100
“Do you believe that no one has followed you in thought through all your dangers on the field of honor, that no one suffered, knowing you were wounded, or trembled at the thought of your bed of pain? Do you really believe that there is no one to rejoice at seeing you take up again your place in the world? You are young, full of ardor and intelligence…”
“But I am poor, so poor!”
“You can get rich by working. You fought the war with weapons; continue it with the pen. Write what you have seen; you will make a name for yourself and some day will be the pride of your family.”
“I! Don’t make fun of me, Fatina. I, wounded, maimed, will never find a woman to link her life with mine.”
“Bersaglierino, I, too, am alone in the world, free to dispose of myself. I am not rich, but I have enough to live on; I am not a professor, but I am widely educated.… I will be frank; if to-morrow a brave man like you, in the same condition, should come and ask me…”
“To be his wife?”
“I should say yes, and I should be proud. Do you understand? Proud of him and of101the medal shining on his breast, which would seem like my own.…”
“Oh! Fatina, Fatina!”
He could say no more. Tears choked him. But she looked at him tenderly with her kind eyes, and in them, too two large tears were shining.
Pinocchio could not stand any more of this. For half an hour he had been hidden under the bed, had therefore listened to this noble dialogue, and had had to bite his lips to keep from crying. But as it was not amusing he could not stand it any longer. He crawled very quietly from his hiding-place, approached Fatina and Bersaglierino cautiously and without their seeing him or being able to put up any resistance, he gathered the two heads in his arms, brought them close together, and held them close, covering them both with kisses.
Pinocchio’s generous and lovable impulse had found the way to unite these two beings whom destiny had brought together. The picture they made was interesting and touching and would have touched every one who knew them, if at this moment Captain Teschisso had not entered, quite made over by the barber.
“What…what are you doing? Aren’t you preparing for the august visit?”
“Augusta? Who’s she?”
“What? Don’t you know that the King, the commander-in-chief of our army, the first soldier of New Italy, the head of the state, the corporal of the Zouaves, like his grandfather before him, the flower of gentlemen, a good father of his family, one of the wisest sovereigns of Europe…? In short, you’ll see him soon. Hurry up, because when I came in the royal automobile had been sighted.… Don’t you think that dog of a barber fixed me up fine? Anyway, he was able to get rid of the half of my beard which the Germans shaved with a shell.”
The King? This short word frightened Pinocchio terribly. This man who commanded everybody, who could put everybody in prison, who was named Majesty, August, and Victor Emanuel all at the same time, who caused the rooms to be polished in five minutes, who set Cutemup to trembling, who kept all the wounded in the hospital in order, all of them men of valor who had held their own against hundreds of the foe—frightened him like a hobgoblin or something similar. At the very thought of having his glance fall upon him he felt goose-flesh all over his body.
“It isn’t fear; it is lack of courage or something of that sort, but I must get out of the way. I have never had anything to do with kings and I don’t know much about the way they think. If Augusta, or his Majesty, is in a bad humor and should find my presence among the soldiers out of order, he can bat his eye at Cutemup, make him a sign, and…whack!…my head would roll on the ground. Wouldn’t that murderer of a surgeon be glad to be revenged for the kick I gave him in the stomach? Yes, I must find some way…”
His musings were interrupted by three bugle notes which brought every one to attention.
“There he is! There he is!”
Then resounded enthusiastic hurrahs for the King.
Pinocchio disappeared under Bersaglierino’s bed…popped up again, disguised himself, and no one noticed that…
Captain Teschisso and the Bersaglierino stood at attention at the foot of their beds, straight and immovable, awaiting the royal visit. The King in his soldier way entered without ceremony, followed by his aide-de-camp, General Win-the-War, Major Cutemup, and a number of other officers of the garrison, Red Cross nurses, and other wounded who had come from their rooms to take part in the ceremony. It didn’t seem possible that the room could hold so many persons, but all of them crowded in, squeezing together in order to see the King and to be near to him. And his face, which was wrinkled, was illuminated by a kindly smile that spread out from his thick mustache grown prematurely white. He gave Teschisso a military salute, then shook his hand vigorously and said:
“I am so pleased to see you recovered. I am sure that when you go back to your regiment I shall hear more of you. You Alpine troopers are all of you wonderful soldiers.”
>
“For Italy and for our King, your Majesty.”
“For our Italy greater than ever.”
“She shall be, if we have to shed all our blood.”
“Such is my belief.”
Major Cutemup had suddenly turned crimson with rage, and approached Fatina, his large, angry eyes scowling at her from behind his eyeglasses.
“Why have you treated me so?” he asked, in a low, furious voice.
“I?”
“Yes. I told you to put everything in order.”
“Well?”
“Look at that mess!” and he nodded toward a kind of clothes-hanger near the head of Bersaglierino’s bed, on which were hung a hat with cock plumes, a coat, with a pair of trousers all torn and ragged and dirty. It was the uniform the brave young soldier had worn on the field and which Fatina had hidden under the bed a little while ago.
Fatina didn’t know what to say. The sudden appearance of this clothes-hanger,…those clothes spread out, affected her so that she had no thought of the major or of his rage, which escaped in such violent outbursts that they would have started a windmill going.
The King had approached Bersaglierino, and General Win-the-War presented him, with these words:
“Your Majesty, this brave soldier has been proposed for the medal of valor for the following reasons: enrolled as a volunteer, he took part in the first battles with the enemy, giving an example of courage and discipline; he volunteered to blow up the enemy wire defenses; he carried out the assignment given him, and, unhurt himself, he tried to free a comrade caught on the barbed wire and managed to put to flight an enemy patrol which attacked him. Then he was hit several times by machine-gun fire. Carried to the first-aid station, he showed the greatest self-control and cheered for his King and his country when he learned that his efforts had enabled his company to take an important trench from the enemy.”
The Pinocchio Megapack: 4 Classic Puppet Tales Page 26
