The Heart of Pinocchio Part 8

"Bersaglierino, I would have believed anything but that words change their meaning in this way. With these idiots you have to pay attention to what you say. They made me swallow so much ditch-water that it will be a miracle if I don't have little fish swimming around in my stomach."

It stopped raining, but as if the Austrians didn't want to give the bersaglieri time to repair the damages caused by the bad weather, they began a furious bombardment of the trench. The "mosquitoes" kept up a terrible singing. Huge projectiles churned up the ground all around, digging out deep holes, raising whirls of earth, throwing off shreds of stone and steel in every direction. One sh.e.l.l had fallen near the telephone and had done great damage. The soldiers couldn't venture any distance from the dugout to aim at the enemy who was firing at them with such accuracy. Mud prevented their movements. They couldn't change their positions because the slippery earth offered no foothold.

It was impossible to excavate deep because the earth slid down. It was a critical moment. Several men had been killed, the wounded were moaning bitterly, the dying were groaning.... But the Italian bersaglieri did not lose courage and stood up against the foe, showing a genuine disregard for their lives. Pinocchio longed to cry. He wasn't thinking of the danger to himself, but of the fact that if this devilish fire kept up much longer all his bersaglieri would be killed.

Wasn't there anybody to look out for them? What was our artillery doing? Did they really intend to let them all be ma.s.sacred?

He had scarcely thought this when he heard behind him the thunder of Italian guns. A quarter of an hour later and the Austrians were quite quiet. But the situation hadn't improved. Orders had come from the second line to hold out at all costs because it wouldn't be possible to relieve them until the next evening. An attack in force was expected every minute.

The captain a.s.sembled his company and said: "Men, we must stick and be ready for anything. We can't have reinforcements, but to-night they will send us _chevaux de frise_ and barbed wire. But I don't want to be caught like a bird in a net. We have plenty of 'jelly.' If two would volunteer to carry a couple of pounds of it under the entanglements of those gentlemen over yonder we might be able to change our lodgings. They have a fine trench of reinforced concrete with rooms and good beds and bathroom. We'd be better off there than in this mud. What do you say, boys? Is there any one who ..."

They didn't even let him finish. All stepped forward, and, if I am to tell you the truth, Pinocchio, too, but no one noticed him. Mollica and the Bersaglierino were chosen.

It grew dark. Some of them, completely worn out, dozed leaning up against the side of the trench. The Bersaglierino was writing rapidly a letter in pencil. Mollica had pulled out of his knapsack the old newspapers his father had sent him and seemed about to take up his old studies of fingerprints. There were tears in his eyes.

"Heh! Mollica, you look as if you weren't pleased with the duty the captain has given you."

"Well?"

"But you ought to let me go."

"You? But how do you suppose they would let a boy like you carry jelly?"

"Do you think I would eat it all up? I won't say that I mightn't taste it, especially if it is that golden-yellow kind that s.h.i.+vers like a paralytic old man, but I would carry out the order like any one else.... Only, I can't understand how for a little bit of jelly those scoundrels will give up their comfortable trench. It's true that they eat all sorts of miserable kinds of food and that Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, but ..."

"Shut up, you chatterbox! You'll see what will happen. I'll explain to you that 'jelly' in war-time is what we call a mixture of stuff that when put in a pipe under the wire entanglements and set off by a fuse will blow you up sky-high in a thousand pieces, if you don't take to your heels in time."

"And you ... want to go and be blown up?"

"No. I hope to come back safe and sound, and I have still to send your letter to Franz Joey."

Pinocchio was silent and hid himself in a corner without another word.

I can't tell you exactly if he had some sad presentiment or if his disillusion resulting from Mollica's technical explanation of "jelly"

had put him in a bad humor. There was no doubt about it--war had changed the dictionary. He was still more certain of this when, an hour later, he saw the "Frisian horses" arrive. He was expecting beasts with at least four legs, and instead he saw them drag in front of the trenches a huge roll of iron wound up in an enormous skein of barbed wire. But there was still a greater surprise in store for him.

That very night he was to find out that in war-time not only the value of words changes, but that there are some which are canceled from certain persons' vocabulary.

It was night ... and there was nothing to be seen and you couldn't even hear the traditional fly. From the Austrian trench there came a dull regular noise. It seemed as if a lot of pigs were squealing.

Instead, it was the Croats who were snoring. No one slept in the Italian trenches. There was a strange coming and going, a fantastic flittering of shadows. There was low talking, commands were pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth and whispered in the ear--every one was making preparations. Mollica and the Bersaglierino had put steel helmets on their heads and had s.h.i.+elds of the same metal on their arms.

"But what are you going to do? You look like the statue of Perseus in the costume of a soldier."

"I would almost rather be in his place and with no more clothes than he has on instead of in this get-up ... but what's there to be done about it? I promised you to take the letter to Franz Joey."

A little later Mollica and Bersaglierino left the trench and wriggled along the ground like serpents, carrying with them big metal boxes.

The bersaglieri took their places behind the loopholes, their muskets in position, and stood there motionless, anxious, and restless.

Pinocchio, too, wanted to see what was happening, and, taking advantage of his guardians' carelessness, slipped out of the trench and squatted down in a big hole which an enemy projectile had hollowed out twenty yards away.

The poor youngster was very sad. The black night, the silence everywhere, the preparations he had watched and could not understand, were the causes of his melancholy.

"But how under the sun did it ever enter Bersaglierino's head to offer himself for this expedition?" he thought. "He might have let some one else go. Not so bad for Mollica. He'll eat up the Austrians like waffles. If any one dares to play a trick on him he'll land him a few good blows and put him where he belongs, but Bersaglierino ... so little and so frail.... If any misfortune happens to him ..."

Some time went by, I can't say how long, but it was quite a little while, because Pinocchio had almost fallen asleep, when the air was shaken by two tremendous explosions. He woke with a start, saw two red flashes s.h.i.+ning for an instant on a shower of fragments thrown up to a great height ... then blackness and the fiendish rattling of the machine-guns and crackle of musket fire. Suddenly a long white shaft of light broke the darkness, coming from no one knew where, waving to the right and to the left, and fixing itself on the ground between the two trenches, which were immediately showered by sh.e.l.ls.

"And Bersaglierino? And Mollica?" Pinocchio asked himself, anxiously, feeling his throat tighten up.

Suddenly a black shadow was outlined in the gleam of a searchlight that was operated from a distance. It crawled along the ground, moving by starts. They had seen it, too, from the trenches and there were confused cries of, "Come on!" ... "Bravo!" ... "A few more steps!" ...

"Stick to it!"

And the figure seemed to gain new strength and to bound like a wild beast. But who was it? Surely the Bersaglierino. The form was small, slender, and very quick. Mollica was large and slow. What had become of him? Between the roar of the explosions and the whistle of the sh.e.l.ls there came a shrill cry of anguish. The little shadow slid along, then a leap in the silvery ray, and it was lost in the blackness of the earth torn by the rain of steel.

"Oh, beasts that they are! They have murdered him!" Pinocchio screamed. "Enough! Enough! Wretches! Don't you see that he has ceased to move? Stop shooting.... Give him time to recover.... Perhaps he is wounded."

It seemed that the Austrian fire grew even more murderous.

Pinocchio, beside himself with fury, rushed out of his hiding-place and in a couple of bounds was back in the trench.

"They have wounded Bersaglierino.... He is there ... out there in the No Man's Land.... Help him ... don't let him die so."

They sprang over the top to rescue their wounded comrades, but had scarcely gone a step before they were lost to him.

Pinocchio lost his head. He sprang out of the dugout and ran as fast as he could into the spot still illuminated by the ray of silver. He stumbled, fell, got up again, fell once more, but kept on crawling on his hands and knees.... He heard a groan, felt a body, lifted it in his arms, and, gathering all his strength together, began to drag it toward the trench. All at once he felt his legs give way and he let out a yell of terror. He was answered by another from a hundred valiant throats; he saw a strange flash, felt a hurricane strike him, a wave roll over him ... but before losing his senses there came to him the cry of victory. The Italian bersaglieri had bayoneted those who had wounded Bersaglierino and had won from the enemy one more portion of their country.

A little later the stretcher-bearers were able to gather up the wounded from the field of honor.

CHAPTER V

_In Which Pinocchio Discovers That Sometimes When You Want to Advance You Have to Take a Step Backward_

For a long while Pinocchio didn't know whether he was alive or dead.

Then after a time he seemed to be dreaming, but the dreams were so queer that ... just imagine, he thought he was a puppet again, asleep on a chair with his feet resting on a brazier full of lighted charcoal, that one of his feet was on fire and that the flame, little by little, was creeping up his leg. And, just as once before when something similar had happened, the dream became a painful reality.

However, there was another dream that comforted him. A lovely woman's smiling face would come close to him and he would hear soft, affectionate words. It was the queerest thing possible! It seemed to him that this face was set in a lovely frame of light-blue hair which came down like a veil, like a cape enfolding the graceful form of a young girl. Some one had told him that her name was Fatina, and he kept repeating the name, as once ... when he was still a little puppet and the girl with blue hair ... But what had happened to him?

One morning he opened his eyes and discovered that he was in a little white bed in a white room, and that to right and left of him in two other beds were two wounded men all enveloped in bandages.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Bersaglierino! Bersaglierino!" cried Pinocchio, trying to raise himself up in bed. But a horrid pain made him fall back on the pillow and forced him to scream loudly. The door of the little room opened and a Red Cross nurse in her blue uniform entered swiftly.

"Oh! At last! But be good and don't try to move! The Bersaglierino is here on your right; he is better, but you must let him be quiet, and you, too, need to rest."

"Tell me, Fatina, is the Bersaglierino really alive?"

"Don't you see him? Here he is. When he wakes up you can say a few words to him. Yesterday he was so eager to know about you, but you couldn't speak to him."

"Listen, Fatina, and I ... am I really alive?"