Pinocchio

Part One · The Talking Log

Long ago there lived... a king, you might guess. No! There lived a piece of wood. It was an ordinary log for the fire, and it lay in the workshop of an old carpenter called Master Cherry, whose nose was as red and shiny as a ripe cherry. But when he lifted his axe to chop it, a tiny voice cried, "Don't hit me so hard!" Master Cherry was so frightened that he gave the log away to his friend Geppetto, a poor old woodcarver who dreamed of making a marvelous wooden puppet that could dance and fence and turn somersaults.

Geppetto carried the log home to his little room under the stairs, where the only fire was painted on the wall, with a painted pot bubbling over it. He decided to call the puppet Pinocchio, and he began to carve. As soon as he made the eyes, they stared at him. As soon as he carved the nose, it began to grow, and it grew and grew no matter how often he trimmed it. The mouth laughed at him, and the hands snatched his wig. The moment the feet were finished, Pinocchio kicked Geppetto on the nose, leaped down, and raced out the door.

A policeman caught the runaway puppet by his long nose and brought him back. But a crowd gathered and blamed poor Geppetto for the trouble, so the policeman marched the old man off to jail instead, and Pinocchio ran home alone. On the wall of the empty room sat a large Talking Cricket. "Boys who disobey their parents and run away from home will be sorry," it said. "They never come to any good." Pinocchio laughed. "Tomorrow I'm leaving," he declared, "because if I stay here, I'll have to go to school!"

The Cricket kept giving advice, until Pinocchio grew so annoyed that he threw a wooden hammer at it. The Cricket hopped aside just in time, gave him a sorrowful look, and crept away through a crack in the wall. That night Pinocchio was starving, and he fell asleep with his wooden feet resting on the hot stove. In the morning, when Geppetto came home, the puppet's feet had burned away to ashes. Pinocchio cried so hard that Geppetto forgave him, gave him three pears he had saved for his own breakfast, and carved him a brand new pair of feet.

"I'll go to school and be good," Pinocchio promised, "but I need a spelling book." Geppetto had no money at all, so he went out into the snow and sold his only coat to buy one. Pinocchio set off for school with the book under his arm, full of good intentions. Then he heard music: pipes and a drum, coming from a puppet theater near the sea. He sold the spelling book for four pennies and bought a ticket. The puppets on the stage recognized him immediately and shouted, "It's our brother Pinocchio!" and the whole show fell apart.

The puppet master was a gigantic man with a black beard down to his feet, and at first he wanted to use Pinocchio as firewood to roast his dinner. But Pinocchio begged so pitifully, for the sake of his poor old father, that the showman sneezed, which was how he showed sympathy. He gave Pinocchio five gold coins to take home to Geppetto, and Pinocchio skipped away happily. On the road, however, he met a Fox who pretended to be lame and a Cat who pretended to be blind. When they heard the coins jingle, their eyes gleamed.

Part Two · The Long Nose

"Why take home only five coins," said the Fox, "when you could take home two thousand? In the Field of Miracles, you bury your gold coins in the ground at night. By morning a tree grows up, covered with gold coins like apples!" Pinocchio forgot all about his father, the snow and the coat. On the way, the little Talking Cricket appeared on a tree trunk, glowing faintly in the dark. "Go home," it whispered. "Don't trust anyone who promises to make you rich overnight." But Pinocchio paid no attention, and he followed the Fox and the Cat.

That night, two robbers wrapped in black sacks leaped out and chased Pinocchio through the forest. He hid the gold coins under his tongue and ran until his legs ached. At dawn he reached a little white house in the woods, where a lovely girl with blue hair looked out of the window. She was the Fairy with Blue Hair, and she had lived in that forest for more than a thousand years. She carried the exhausted puppet inside, tucked him into bed, and sent for three doctors: a crow, an owl, and the same Talking Cricket, who sighed and said nothing kind at all.

When Pinocchio felt better, the Fairy asked him gently what had happened to his gold coins. "I lost them," said Pinocchio, but that was a lie, because they were in his pocket. At once his nose grew two inches longer. "Where did you lose them?" "In the woods nearby." His nose grew longer still. "Then we'll find them." "Oh, now I remember! I swallowed them with my medicine." At this third lie, his nose grew so long that he could not turn around. When he turned one way, it bumped the bed, and when he turned the other, it poked out of the window.

The Fairy laughed. "Lies are always discovered, my boy," she said, "because some lies have short legs, and some have long noses. Yours have long noses." Pinocchio felt so ashamed that he cried for half an hour. Then the Fairy clapped her hands, and a thousand woodpeckers flew through the window, perched along his nose, and pecked it back to its proper size. Pinocchio promised to go home and be good. But on the way, he met the Fox and the Cat again, and he buried his coins in the Field of Miracles. In the morning, of course, the coins had disappeared.

Part Three · The Land of Toys

After many more misadventures, Pinocchio returned to the Fairy, who now looked like a grown woman, and he begged her to be his mother. She agreed, if he would go to school and work hard. To everyone's surprise, he did, and before long he was the best pupil in the class. "Tomorrow you will stop being a puppet," the Fairy promised, "and you will become a real boy." But that very evening Pinocchio met his friend Candlewick, the laziest boy in school, who was waiting for a coach in the moonlight.

"I'm going to the Land of Toys," Candlewick announced. "There are no schools there and no teachers, and every week has six Thursdays and one Sunday." At midnight the coach arrived, pulled by twenty-four little donkeys wearing white boots and driven by a round, smiling coachman. Pinocchio could not resist. In the Land of Toys, the boys played games all day long, from morning until night, and nobody ever opened a book. For five whole months Pinocchio was perfectly happy, and he never once thought about the Fairy or his poor father.

Then one morning Pinocchio woke up, scratched his head, and discovered that he had grown a pair of long, furry donkey ears. By lunchtime he had a tail as well, and when he tried to cry, he could only bray, "Hee-haw!" Candlewick had turned into a donkey too. That was the secret of the Land of Toys: lazy boys who did nothing but play turned into donkeys, and the smiling coachman sold them at the market. Pinocchio was sold to a circus, where he learned to dance and jump through hoops, until he landed badly and hurt his leg.

The circus sold the limping donkey to a man who tied a rope around his neck and tossed him into the sea. But the Fairy had not forgotten him. A crowd of little fish nibbled away the donkey costume, and when the man pulled up the rope, out came a wooden puppet, laughing! Pinocchio dived into the waves and swam away. Then an enormous head rose out of the water, with a mouth as wide as a cave and three rows of teeth. It was the Terrible Shark, as long as a mile, and it swallowed Pinocchio in one gulp.

Part Four · Inside the Shark

Inside the shark it was completely dark, and it smelled terribly fishy. Pinocchio splashed along in the blackness until he saw a tiny light, far away. He walked toward it for a long time, and at last he found a little table with a candle burning in a bottle. At the table sat an old man with white hair, eating a little fish. "Father!" cried Pinocchio, and he threw his arms around Geppetto's neck. Geppetto had set out to sea in a little boat, searching for Pinocchio, and the shark had swallowed him two whole years before.

"We have to get out," said Pinocchio, "and we have to do it now." The old shark slept with his mouth wide open, because he had trouble breathing. So the two of them tiptoed up his throat, over his enormous tongue, and past three rows of teeth. Then they dived into the sea. Pinocchio swam through the night with Geppetto clinging to his shoulders, until he was almost too tired to move his arms. Luckily a friendly tuna had escaped from the shark too, and it carried them both safely to the shore on its back.

Geppetto was weak and ill, so they found a little hut, and Pinocchio took care of him. Every single morning, he turned a heavy water wheel for a farmer to earn a glass of milk for his father. In the evenings he wove baskets to sell, and by candlelight he practiced his reading and writing. For five months he worked like this without one complaint. When he heard that the Fairy was sick and poor, he sent her every coin he had saved for a new coat, and he said he would gladly work twice as hard.

That night Pinocchio dreamed that the Fairy kissed him and said, "Well done, Pinocchio! Because of your good heart, I forgive you for everything." When he woke up, he was not a puppet anymore. He was a real boy, in a bright, sunny room, wearing brand new clothes. Geppetto was healthy and cheerful again, carving a picture frame by the window. In a chair nearby sat an old wooden puppet with its head on one side. Pinocchio looked at it for a long time. "How funny I was as a puppet," he said, "and how glad I am to be a real boy!"