The Heart of Pinocchio Part 21

"Why?"

"Because I'd feel as if I were on stilts and it would amuse me to death to take steps longer than any one else."

He was satisfied and left the hospital with such long legs that he was almost as tall as Ciampanella, who took Pinocchio's arm in his as if he were his sweetheart.

"Heh, youngster, but you have grown! And then they say that we non-combatants never do anything! I haven't done anything, but if I were the one I have in mind I would bestow on you the medal for bravery because your legs have won it. I tell you, I, who know what I am talking about."

"Even if they don't give me anything, I am satisfied all the same. All I ask is for them to leave me here and not send me home."

"Come with me and I'll appoint you first adjutant of the mess kitchen, and when I have taught you how and put the ladle in your hand _we will live on the fat of the land_ and will make meat-b.a.l.l.s with our leavings for the general, and when we don't know what else to do we'll write the _Manual of War Cookery_, which I won't risk now because I haven't a writing hand, as the saying is."

"Listen, Ciampanella, I am as grateful as if you had offered to lend me a hundred lire without interest, but just now I can't accept."

"Why?"

"Because it requires a special const.i.tution to be a cook. I'd be all right as far as eating the best morsels was concerned, but it would be dangerous for me to stay near the stove. I am half wooden and run the risk of catching on fire. I should have to decide to take out insurance against fire. Moreover, let's consider. To-day I have other views. Fatina here has given me a letter for my friend Bersaglierino, who is at headquarters as the war correspondent of an important newspaper. We'll see what he advises me to do."

They parted good friends after a solemn feast which almost made Ciampanella roll under the table, like an ancient Roman at one of the banquets of Lucullus or Nero.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Bersaglierino was truly delighted to see his dear little friend again and kept him with him several days for company. From him he learned a number of things he didn't know. One day he asked him:

"Tell me, Pinocchio, do you know the reason for this war in which you, too, have played your small part and to which you have paid tribute of part of yourself?"

"Do you imagine I don't know? It is _to make Italy bigger_."

"And that seems a just reason to you?"

"That's what every one says."

"All those who don't know what they are talking about. If every nation had the right to let loose a war for the sole purpose of enlarging her boundaries we'd have to take off our hats to the Germans who provoked the present curse for their own purposes. We have other and n.o.bler ideals. We have brothers to liberate, peoples to free from a foreign yoke. Certain lands which are ours because they were enriched by the labors of our fathers, because our Italian tongue is spoken in them, were until to-day exploited by the enemy, who sought in every way to embitter the existence of our brothers, paying with contempt and scorn, with persecution and oppression, their loyalty and love for the mother-country. Italian unity, begun in the revolutionary movement of 1811, was not completed in 1870 with the taking of Rome. The jealousy of other nations halted us on our way to emanc.i.p.ation. We were too weak then to make our will felt; we were exhausted with fifty years of continuous fighting and we had need of a little rest in order to restore our energy. To-day we are strong enough to stand up for our rights. Neither underhand dealings of wicked men nor betrayal by partizans will prevent the victory of our arms. Italy will be retempered in the war. Our destiny will be fulfilled.

"I see as in a dream our borders which have been overrun won back to us, Trent bleeding with Italian blood, Goriza twice redeemed, Trieste in the shadow of the tricolor. Istria awaits us impatiently; Parenzo is preparing the way for us to Pola, which we shall take intact, with the defenses the Austrians erected there against our own brothers.

Zara, Sebenico, and the coast of Dalmatia, which for so many centuries displayed the glorious insignia of the Lion of St. Mark, are longing impatiently for the moment which shall reunite them to the mother-country, that for them and with them will grow ever greater.

War is a curse; this one which is being fought to-day all over the civilized world is perhaps the most terrible which humanity has ever known; yet it will not fail to bring great blessings. It has awakened the consciences of peoples and revealed the virtues and the defects of particular races. In the contest of the ancient Latin civilization with the Teuton power the might of right has been re-established, the right that has been trampled upon by force...."

And so on and so on, for when Bersaglierino began to argue there was no way of stopping him, and Pinocchio stood there listening with his mouth open like a peasant absorbed by the wonderful discourse of a fakir at a fair. And who knows how long he would have stood there, but Bersaglierino had so much to do and was obliged to leave him alone, letting him stay in the rear where he could follow the progress of the war without exposing himself too much, but where he could still be doing important service for his country. He put him in the care of a captain of the commissary department, a good friend of his who had the unlucky idea of making him a baker in a camp bakery. He stayed there only two days, astounded at the enormous quant.i.ty of bread which was kneaded and baked all the time. All he did was to give a hand in filling the baskets which were loaded on automobiles that carried the bread to the front. The third day he made a figure of dough that looked like the twin brother of the captain, put it in the oven and, when it was baked, set it astraddle on the cup of coffee poured out for that officer, then hid himself behind a curtain to take part in the welcome which would certainly be given to his most valuable work of art. But the commissary officer's orderly found him and wanted to dust his trousers and pull his ears. He never succeeded in doing this.

Pinocchio helped him out of the house with kicks and then hurled him into the flour-barrel. If they had not pulled him out in time he would have suffocated.

The boy fled on the first automobile which left for the front, and for several days whirled back and forth between the front and rear lines, going forward on the supply automobiles and returning on the Red Cross ambulances which brought the wounded to the first-aid posts. The drivers were glad to take him on their machines because he kept them all jolly with his pranks, and he, better than any one, was able to get an idea of the gigantic and wonderful work which was being done side by side with the army which was fighting for the defense of its country. What profound respect for discipline, what order, what spirit of self-sacrifice in those brave soldiers (almost all fathers of families), continually exposed to bad weather, to the hardest fatigues, to the most complete privations! Rain, snow, ice, tornadoes of wind and of shot and sh.e.l.l, nothing succeeded in interrupting for a single minute the interminably long chain of wagons and lorries that carried food to the trenches, ammunition to the artillery, and cannon to the fortified positions. The drivers, dead with sleep, soaked with rain, shivering with cold, remained calmly at their wheels and at the heads of their horses. When the great caravan stopped for a moment for any reason these men, revived with new energy and by the force of their will, started the huge mechanism on its way again.

For a little way Pinocchio thought he would become an automobile-driver, but when they told him that he would have to have a license and that, in order to get one, he would have to take a regular examination, he didn't proceed farther. Examiners he looked upon as even greater enemies than Franz Joe's hunters.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

After pondering the subject a long time he decided to become a military postman. At first he took pleasure in it all. When he arrived it seemed as if heaven had come down to earth. He was received like a king, with joyous cries and shouts, and he walked between two rows of soldiers like a general. When he distributed the letters it was as if he conferred a favor; when he handed out a money-order he had an air of condescension as if he were doling the soldi from his purse. When he had finished distributing the mail he would let them pay him to read their letters. I can tell you it was not an easy matter. Often he had hieroglyphics to decipher which would have given trouble to a professor of paleontology. But Pinocchio had such a quick mind that when he found he couldn't puzzle it out he invented a letter and did it so well that he earned a soldo by it and the deep grat.i.tude of his clients. What disgusted him with the business was the postal service, which suddenly became confoundedly bad, perhaps on account of a change in the Ministry. Pinocchio saw his popularity vanish in an instant, and the soldiers made him bear the brunt of their dissatisfaction. One day he heard so many complaints that he grew furious and flung away the bag he wore about his neck and cried out to those who were disputing around him:

"You are a bunch of imbeciles. Why do you come to me with your letters? Do you know what you ought to do? Go and get them, because I won't take another step for the sake of your pretty faces."

His ears were boxed again and again and he replied with as many kicks, but he didn't play postman any more. He was wondering to what new service he could dedicate himself when a corporal baker gave him this note:

DEAR PINOCCHIO,--I am having the one who will hand you this write these lines so that he can tell you for me that I have a great longing to see you, because I am not well and I don't know what to do, and I sign myself your most affectionate

CIAMPANELLA,

_Chief Mess-cook in the service of the Commander-in-chief_.

Pinocchio was so affected by this letter that he set off at once in search of his friend. He found him in full performance of his n.o.ble functions, white, red, and flourishing as if he had come back the day before from taking the cure at Montecatini.

"Well?" he said in astonishment, after they had embraced.

"Well, youngster, I am here and I am not here in this beastly world."

"But, truly ..."

"You wouldn't say that I am on the downward path, to make use of the words of the chaplain, but Ciampanella is no longer himself. They have given me only a few months more to live. I don't mind for myself, you know. I think that I shall be as well off there as I have been here.... But I am thinking of humanity."

"Nothing and a little less than nothing."

"No joking now, youngster. Without the _Manual of War Cookery_ written by Ciampanella humanity can never be happy, because with it men will eat and laugh, and when you laugh you spend willingly, and when you spend willingly you eat well.... So that ..."

"Why don't you write it?"

"First of all, because I lack the knowledge of handwriting, which you've got to do; that is why I sent for you, and then ... because I am afraid that I won't have time enough to dictate it all, because the surgeon-major who examined me said that I had a disease of the liver from eating too much, and that it would be the liver that would bring me to my grave if I didn't stop immediately living on the fat of the land and drink quant.i.ties of water. Listen, youngster, I have always had a great antipathy for liver, so much so that I never even put it in patties called Strasburg and which in my _Manual_ I will rechristen 'Austro-German Trenches with Reinforcements of War Bread and Ambushed in Jelly.' But that's not the point. As I tell you, I have always had a great antipathy to liver, but also for water, so much so, I'll tell you in confidence, that sometimes I don't even use it to wash my face in.

"So listen. Since they have brought me to this crossroads--either drink water and live or eat good things and let my liver take me to the next world--I have decided on the latter. Before dying I wanted to call you to my presence to tell you that as I have no one in the world I have been thinking of leaving you everything I possess: ten ladles, a carver, the change-purse, and the recipes for the _Manual_, for which, when you publish it, they will give you at least the cross of a knight, that when you put it on will make, you feel 'way and ahead of those who look at you."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

In short, Ciampanella said so much and did so much that he persuaded Pinocchio to stay with him. And certainly the boy could not find a better way of making himself useful to his country. The mess-cook was at the orders of a division. Each day he satisfied the hunger of four generals, six colonels, and a crowd of majors and captains of the General Staff. All these were men who had need of good eating that wouldn't cause indigestion. Pinocchio served ... as director of the mess. When he saw some saucepan boiling over, a pot too full, he quickly reduced them by tasting their contents generously. Sauces and ragots were his pa.s.sion. Every now and then you might have seen him dipping half a loaf of bread into the ca.s.seroles. One day a captain who was inspecting surprised him at this, and naturally he lit into Ciampanella about it, who threatened to quit the kitchen if they didn't leave him in peace.

"Do you understand, Mr. Captain? Do you imagine that standing over a fire is a great pleasure? I am beginning to believe that it is better to stay in the trenches and die _with a ball in the head_ than in the rear when you come and ruin my comfort with your inspections. But do you know what I'll do? I'll hide the ladles in a place I know of and I'll take up a musket and you'll see what you'll see."

The captain had to slink off, speeded by the laughs of Pinocchio, whose nose was smeared and greasy and his mouth dripping with tomato sauce. Ciampanella, who was so lacking in respect to his superiors, obeyed the boy as if he were a head taller than he. Pinocchio had persuaded him to drink quarts of water and to take digestive tablets after his meals, and every morning a spoonful of salts in a gla.s.s of water as the surgeon-major had ordered. And he followed out this prescription so carefully that he had noticed a wonderful improvement, and he kept a big bottle full of medicine among his cans of pepper and spices. This fact had several times started an idea in Pinocchio's whimsical pate, and several times he had been on the point of exchanging this medicine for the kitchen salt, but the thought of the serious consequences which might result had kept him from doing it.

Moreover, Pinocchio was called more and more often to serve the mess-table and spent less time in the kitchen. The famous captain of the inspection had thought in this way to avenge himself upon that most insolent of semi-puppets, but, to tell you the truth, he didn't find it bad. Serving at table so many grand generals seemed to him almost an honor, and he was proud of it. When he handed the dishes to the highest officers he would make low bows; the captains he treated almost with disdain. He always tried to serve his "particular" captain the last, and when there was left in the dish scarcely enough to sc.r.a.pe out another portion he would whisper in his ear:

"Heh, Captain, blessed are those that are last!"

The captain fumed, but waited for the moment when he could give him a reprimand. He thought the time had come one morning when he found a fly in the stew.

"Come here, you little beast."

"Yes, sir; at your orders, sir."

"Look!" and he stuck the plate of stew two inches from his nose.

"There is no doubt, Captain, that it is a fly, a very vulgar fly," and sticking two fingers delicately into the sauce he pulled the insect out ... "a fly indeed! But you may consider yourself lucky because in the rations of your men there will be at least twenty of them. And those who fight don't think much of it. You do the same, Captain ...