“You have made my Princess smile,” he told the players. “You have made her laugh. So, as I promised, my kingdom is yours.”
One by one, players took off their masks, and then the Prince knew them for who they were, that same family of travellers who had sheltered him from the snowstorm, to whom he had told his story.
“We do not want your kingdom,” said the old grandfather. “We wanted only to be sure your story had a happy ending, that the Princess could learn to smile again. And now she has. It will soon be the best of times again for her, and for all of you in this happy land.”
“Then at least stay with us a while, stay for our feasting,” said the Prince, “so that in some small way I can repay your kindliness and hospitality.”
So the players stayed, and feasted, but they would not stay the night. “Travellers,” said the old grandfather, as he climbed up into their caravan, “never stay for long. We like to keep travelling on. We just follow the bend in the road. But before we go, we should like to leave you a Christmas gift. Our little goose. We’ve talked to him about it. He says he’s quite happy to live in a palace – just so long as you don’t eat him!” And so, leaving the goose behind them, they went on their way into the night. No one knew where they had come from. No one knew where they went. No one ever saw them again.
By Christmas time the next year, Princess Serafina was not only restored to full health and happiness, but she had her own precious baby in her arms, which, of course, was just what the Princess had been longing for all this time. In the play they put on in the great hall that Christmas, the Princess played Mary, and her own child played the baby, kicking his little legs and waving his fists just as he should.
The goose, of course, still insisted on playing the goose. He wasn’t the kind of goose you could argue with, everyone knew that. And in his honour – just in case he ever found out – no one in that land ate roast goose at Christmas ever again.
“My name is Pinocchio. I reckon I must be just about the most famous puppet the world has ever known. But I’m more than just bits of wood and string. I’m me. So it’s about time that I, Pinocchio, told you my story …”
o here’s how I began. I was a tiny cherry-pip in a blackbird’s beak. The blackbird dropped me in an orchard below a town called Naples, and I fell to earth.
After a while, I grew into a fine cherry tree, blossoming wonderfully every year, until one winter’s day a raging storm blew me over, and the next thing I know, I am nothing but a piece of wood, a branch in a pile of other branches, waiting to be burnt. And that would have been that. There would have been no Pinocchio.
But … as luck would have it, along came an old woodcarver. He was whistling away as he searched through the pile, and talking to himself. He picked me up, turned me this way and that, peered at me, smelt me even.
“This will do very well,” he said. “Cherry-wood, the best for carving. Just what I’ve been looking for.”
He looked about him nervously. “No one’s around. No one will notice, will they?” He tapped me with his knuckle, knocked me against a tree. “Yes, you’ll carve perfectly.”
That was when I spoke my first words – I’d heard a lot of speaking in my life, so words came easily. I’d just never needed them before.
“Excuse me,” I said, “but I do wish you wouldn’t keep knocking me about like that. It hurts. And carving me up, I’m sure, will hurt a great deal more – I don’t like the sound of that one bit.”
He heard me. I know that because in his surprise he dropped me on his foot. When he’d stopped hopping about, he began to search around, wondering where on earth the voice had come from.
“Anyway, you can’t just steal me,” I went on.
“All right, all right,” he said, clapping his hands to his ears. “I will pay. Here, look. I’m leaving a coin for you on the woodpile.”
And with that he tucked me under his arm and legged it. All the way I kept shouting and shouting, begging him to take me back. By the time we reached his house I’d been shouting so loud and for so long that I’d lost my voice completely.
All around the walls of his house hung the tools of his trade: chisels, planes, hammers, drills. I was terrified. To me they were nothing but instruments of torture. But when I tried to protest, nothing would come out, not a squeak, not a whisper. Then I saw the lady sitting by the fire, staring sadly into the flames.
“Carissima mia,” said the woodcarver. “See what I have for you, my darling.”
She turned and looked.
“Not another log,” she sighed. “How many times have you tried before? I want a real boy for a son, not a puppet.”
“But this is the finest cherry-wood, carissima mia. And when I touch it, it has life. I feel it. I smell it. I can almost hear it. You’ll see, my darling. With this piece of wood, I will make you at last the son you have always longed for.”
Gepetto’s wife shook her head, and I could see there were tears in her eyes. “You are the kindest of men, Gepetto. And I love you because you never stop trying, you never stop hoping. But it is hopeless, I tell you, hopeless. We’ll never have a son of our own.” And again she turned her face to the fire and wept.
Gepetto the woodcarver took down his tools from the wall, rolled up his sleeves, and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Then, looking down on me, he said, “I will make a boy of you, block of wood. I will make a son for my darling wife and me. So lie still and be good. It won’t hurt.”
I was terrified. I tried to yell, I tried to screech, but no sound came out, so of course he heard nothing. But I need not have worried. Gepetto was right. It didn’t hurt at all. It felt as if he was tickling me!
My hair, my ears, my forehead – as he worked on them, chiselling them into shape, they simply tickled. I wanted to giggle, to laugh out loud, but I couldn’t. And when he made my eyes, I couldn’t move them either, not at first. All I could do was stare at him.
“It’s rude to stare, you know,” he said. “I knew a little boy once who stared, and he picked his nose too. He was called Pinocchio. There we are! That shall be your name: Pinocchio! Now for your nose, which you should never pick – because that is ruder even than staring, and carissima mia would not like it.”
Gepetto had trouble with my nose – it seemed to be too long for my face. But he didn’t want to risk cutting it off altogether, so, in the end, he left it too long – something I often blamed him for later on. Children often blame their fathers and mothers later on, it’s quite natural.
The real trouble came when he made my mouth. Now I could giggle and laugh, but not out loud yet – because I still had no voice, you remember – but inside, and I was killing myself laughing, if you know what I mean. It tickled so much. The face was the most complicated part. That’s what took the time. After that the neck, the shoulders, the stomach, the legs, the arms, the hands, all came fairly easily.
I could see how excited Gepetto was, how delighted he was with his handiwork. At last, as I lay there on the table, arms and legs outstretched, staring up at him, he stood back, hands on hips, smiling down at me.
“You’ll do, Pinocchio,” he whispered. “You’ll do.” Then he picked me up gently in his arms and carried me over to where his wife still sat gazing into the fire, brushing her tears away. He set me on her knee, took her arms and put them round me so that I was cradled in her lap. One large tear fell on my cheek and suddenly I could move, suddenly my voice came back to me too.
“Mama,” I cried. “Papa!”
“Pinocchio!” They were both so happy.
Mama held me up higher and then hugged me to her. They took a hand each to help me walk. But after going once or twice around the room I didn’t need them any more. Within moments I was walking on my own, a little wobbly maybe, but not falling over, not once. Then I was running, running all around the room, skipping with joy, jumping over the stools. I could do the splits; I could do somersaults; I could stand on my head!
“Our brave little
Pinocchio,” Gepetto cried, catching me up and setting me on his shoulder. “We have a son at last, a boy of our own.” And together my new mama and papa took me out into the streets to show me off to the world.
As word spread about the town, everyone in Naples came running to see me.
“He’s not a boy,” they shouted, pointing at me and mocking me. “He’s just a puppet, a puppet without any strings maybe, but a puppet nonetheless. He can’t talk,” they cried.
“He can,” Gepetto told them triumphantly. “Say something to them, Pinocchio.”
“Of course I can talk,” I said. “I can walk with no one holding me,” I said. And I did. “I can dance,” I said. And I did – tap-dancing was easy with wooden feet. “I can do somersaults and handstands too.”
They were amazed, everyone was, but they didn’t stop laughing at me, and, what was worse, they laughed at Mama and Papa too, who I could tell were so proud of me.
“Look how his wooden head wobbles when he walks! He isn’t a proper boy,” they said. “A proper boy has a mind of his own, goes on adventures. You can’t make a mind out of wood, Signor Gepetto! He’s not a real boy at all. Wobble head! Clumpy feet! Big nose!”
That was it. I’d had enough of all their insults. I took off, legged it, did a runner. And could I run! In leaps and bounds I ran, tickety-tackety tickety-tackety went my wooden feet on the cobbled streets. They tried to catch me, but I dodged and ducked.
“Grab him!” they shouted. “Catch Pinocchio!” The whole town was after me.
I had almost escaped them when, ahead of me, barring my way, there was a huge, burly policeman, a carabiniere, legs apart, arms wide open to catch me.
Go through his legs, I thought. It’s the only way to get past him. But he grabbed me by my nose. Can you imagine? The indignity of it!
And then he carried me under his arm, back to Papa and Mama, who took me home at once and put me to bed.
“Never run away again, Pinocchio,” Mama said, hugging me tight and kissing me. Then she brought me a mug of hot milk.
“You gave us such a fright,” Gepetto said. “We thought we’d lost you for good. No matter what anyone says, you are our dear son, our little boy, and this is your home. Tomorrow you will go to school, like all the other boys and girls.”
“What happens at school?” I asked them.
“You will read books and learn to spell and to write and to add up and to take away. You will learn to have a mind of your own.”
“But I have a mind of my own already,” I said. “I don’t like this school idea at all.”
“You’ll love it,” they told me. “You’ll soon make lots of friends.”
But I didn’t love it and I didn’t make lots of friends – in fact, not one. All the others did was laugh at me and tease me because I was different. And the teachers were just as bad. The moment they found me staring out of the window dreaming, which was often – I wanted to be out there exploring the world, not stuck in a classroom – they’d put me in the corner with a dunce’s cap on my head.
I was standing there in the corner one day when I made up my mind. I knew it would upset Mama and Papa, and I felt bad about that because after all they fed me and looked after me and loved me, but I couldn’t stand it any longer. I would run away and see the world. I would make my fortune. I’d show the world I wasn’t a puppet, that I was a boy with a mind of my own. I’d make Mama and Papa proud of me, but I’d do it my way.
All right, all right, I know now that it was stupid. But don’t think too badly of me. I don’t think I was that different from most of you who are reading this – except of course I was made of wood. But that wasn’t my fault, was it? I was a wooden-head, a puppet with very little sense. I just wanted to have a good time, do my own thing. That’s natural, right?
The fable of the mysterious piper who comes to Hamelin town and leaves with its children is one of the world’s greatest tales. And here it begins, retold in a wonderfully modern way …
don’t know who my mother was, nor my father. There were a lot of children like that, like me, in Hamelin town in those days. We lived in a shanty town of shacks, around the rubbish tips outside the walls of the town, scavenging for scraps, like the crows, like the dogs, like the rats. Some of us were orphans, some simply abandoned. The truth is that most of us didn’t know which, and it didn’t much matter anyway. Either way, we were “thief dogs” – that’s what the townspeople called us when they spat on us, threw stones at us or set their dogs on us. And we were thieves too, there’s no denying it.
But don’t imagine there were just a few of us. The streets and alleyways of Hamelin town were full of beggars and children like us. In every square, on every street corner, under every bridge, you’d see us. We had nowhere else to go. We begged because we had to, stole because we had to. When you’re starving you have to, I promise you. There was no other way for us to survive.
Meanwhile, the rich and the greedy lived like kings and queens behind the walls and gates of their grand houses. And their children grew up – through no fault of their own, I’ve got to say – like spoilt little princes and princesses, with far too much of everything they wanted. Richest and greediest of all though, was the Mayor himself and his councillors in the Town Hall. They were proud of it too, for ever showing how rich and powerful they were, dressed in their ermine cloaks, with their shining gold chains and their sparkling jewels. And the Mayor and his councillors were the nastiest of all. The truth was that they were the real thieves. They’d got rich by taking money from the working people, by the extortionate taxes they made them pay, more than three quarters of everything they earned. But if ever they caught us stealing, they’d set their servants on us. They’d beat us with sticks, and sometimes let their dogs loose on us as well.
To see me now, you’d think I’d been lame all my life. It wasn’t like that. It was just bad luck. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was a cold frosty morning, I do remember that, so cold I could see my breath in the air. I’d been sitting on the corner of the Market Square, my usual pitch, playing my penny whistle and hoping that some passer-by would take pity on me and drop a coin or two in my hat. But my hat was still empty. I was tired, weak with hunger and chilled to the bone after a night out in the open. I think that must have been why I fell asleep, why I didn’t hear the carriage coming, didn’t hear the horses galloping over the cobbles. They were on me before I knew it. Somehow the horses didn’t trample me. They told me afterwards that none of them even touched me. It was the wheels of the carriage that did the damage. They ran right over my leg and crushed it. It was Emma who found me – she was my best friend and a thief dog like me. She patched me up as best she could. Emma saved my life, but there was nothing she could do about my leg.
Since then I’ve needed my crutch to get around – I can shuffle around on my bottom of course, but I’d rather not. It’s very slow and it makes me sore. It’s not very dignified either. Everyone said at the time that I was lucky to be alive. But to be honest, I didn’t feel that lucky. Anyway, I wasn’t much use as a thief dog after that, only as a lookout. I couldn’t thieve and make a run for it like the others. I couldn’t even climb the rubbish tips to go scavenging with the pack. Emma and the other thief dogs, they looked after me as best they could. I managed to survive. Just.
I could still play my penny whistle, I could still beg. My leg – or perhaps my crutch I should say – helped a bit too. Some days, a few of the townspeople seemed to take pity on me as they passed me by, and I’d get quite a few coins dropped in my hat, enough sometimes to buy myself a bread roll and even a bit of cheese too, if I was really lucky. In spite of everything, I was all right.
But then came the rats – not just a few. No, this was a plague. Like locusts, they ate everything in their path, and there were hundreds of them, then before we knew it, thousands, then tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands. The Mayor and his corporation did nothing about it, nothing whatsoever. It shouldn’t have bee
n a surprise to them, nor to any of us, not with the huge mountains of rubbish piling up around the town. I mean, rats and rubbish – they go together, don’t they?
Of course we all knew that. We were used to rats. After all, we lived where they lived, in and around the rubbish tips. We ate what they did, and we ate them too – when we could catch them, that is. The trouble was that quite suddenly these rats weren’t like normal rats any more. They were massive, as big as cats some of them, honestly. And they were everywhere, running all over us while we slept, eating up every scrap of food on the rubbish tips, so that there was scarcely a thing left for us. Worse still, these giant rats were beginning to attack us. A cornered rat will always go for you, but these were hunting now, in packs. They had a dangerous look in their eyes, and we knew what it meant. We knew that they would kill us if they could.
Soon they had chased us out of our shacks, out of our shanty town, and off the rubbish tips altogether. We had nowhere else to run to, but into Hamelin town itself, where the rich folk lived, and where we all knew we’d be very far from welcome. No one offered us food. No one offered us shelter from the winter cold. The rich children hurled abuse at us, threw stones at us whenever they saw us and the Mayor and his councillors set their dogs on us. At night-time we hid and huddled where we could, under bridges, under carriages and carts.
Emma became such a true and faithful friend to me in those hard times. Now that the plague of rats was eating all the town’s scraps, there was precious little left for us. Only the best scavengers were eating at all. To be a good scavenger, you had to be quick on your feet – and I wasn’t. Emma helped me all she could, sharing whatever food she found with me. She stuck by me, looked after me. We broke into houses together, hid down in cellars or up in attics, until we were discovered – as sooner or later we always were. Then people would drive us out with their cruel whips and their snarling dogs. The time came when there was no hiding place left and the two of us found ourselves with nowhere to shelter, almost always on the run. We were nearly starving and frozen half to death.
Of Lions and Unicorns Page 36