The Heart of Pinocchio Part 1

The Heart of Pinocchio.

by Collodi Nipote.

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.

THE HEART OF PINOCCHIO

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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 gla.s.s. 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 gla.s.s 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 princ.i.p.al virtue. Moreover, the parrot laughed in such a rude manner that he would have annoyed Jove himself.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"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."

"Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!

Who the gla.s.s 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 G.o.d 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-gla.s.s window opening on to the terrace and broke it.