_How Pinocchio Learned That War Changes Everything--Even the Meaning
of Words_
The bersaglieri had passed the Isonzo and were intrenched at ----
(censor). You certainly know now what the Isonzo is, because war
teaches geography better than do teachers in the schools; so I don't
intend to explain it to you. Pinocchio had followed his friends, and I
assure you no one regretted his coming. When there were orders to
carry to the rear or purchases to be made, it was Pinocchio who
attended to them. Slender as a lizard and quick as a squirrel, he was
out of the trenches without being seen and slipped along the furrows
and ditches and the bushes with marvelous dexterity. He had been
absolutely forbidden to approach the loopholes, and when they caught
him about to disobey he got such boxes on the ears that he had to
rub them for half an hour afterward. Mollica, and the Bersaglierino
in particular, kept their eyes on him, so that they punished him
often.
[Illustration: ONE DAY HE MANAGED TO CAPTURE A PIG AND TO DRAG IT
ALONG BEHIND HIM]
"I'd like to know why it is you two can stand with your noses against
the hole and I mayn't."
"Because of the _mosquitoes_."
"Who cares for them? I haven't the slightest fear of mosquitoes."
But when he saw them carry off a poor soldier hit in the middle of the
forehead and understood that the "mosquitoes" were Austrian bullets,
he gained a little wisdom. While the soldiers were suffering from the
trench life which restrained their ardent natures, keeping them still
and watchful, the rogue of a Pinocchio amused himself with all kinds
of jokes. Dirty as he could be, he was always grubbing with his nails
in the ground to deepen the trench, to make some new breastwork, to
build up an escarp. If they sent him out to find logs of wood to
repair the roofs of the dugouts he would come back laden with all
sorts of things. Hens and eggs were his favorite booty. One day he
managed to capture a pig and to drag it along behind him. But when
they got near the trenches the cussed animal began to squeal so
horribly that the Austrians opened up a terrific fire on him. For fear
of the "mosquitoes" Pinocchio had to let him go, and the pig ran to
take refuge among his brothers, the enemy.
That evening it rained cats and dogs. The trench was one slimy pool.
The rain dripped everywhere, penetrating, baring the parapets which
collapsed, squirting mud and gluing the feet of the soldiers, who, wet
to the bone, had to scurry through the wire to carry ammunition to
safety and to repair the damage done to the trench. Pinocchio,
barelegged, ran back and forth, bemired up to his hair, to give a
helping hand to his friends.
"What fun! We seem to be turning into crabs."
"You are a beastly little puppy!"
"Poor Mollica! You really make me sorry for you."
"I make you sorry for me?"
"Certainly. I shouldn't want to be you in all this downpour."
"Why?"
"Because this rain will melt your sugary nature."
Mollica, to convince him of the contrary, started to administer one of
his usual boxes on the ear, but he slipped and fell, face down, into
the mud.
[Illustration]
"Are you comfortable, Private Mollica? Tell me were you ever in a
softer bed than now?... You look to me like a roll dipped in
chocolate.... Bersaglierino, come and see how ugly he is! All chalky
up into his hair.... I never saw any one look such an idiot!"
[Illustration]
"I wish they would murder you, you beastly little puppy!"
After struggling about in the mud he managed to get to his feet again
and had almost caught him, but in one spring Pinocchio was far away.
The telephone dugout was a little deeper than the trench and the
water was rapidly filling it up. It was already up to the operator's
knees. A crowd of soldiers were working hard to stop the flood.
"What are you doing, stupids? Do you think you can bail out this
puddle with a cap? You are green. We ought to have big Bertha...."
He didn't get in another word. They took hold of him by his arms and
legs and soused him into the dirty water and held him under till he
had drunk a cupful. The telephone operator would have liked to see him
dead, then and there.
"Hold him under till he is as swollen as a toad. He was calling down
misfortune on us, wishing that a shell would fall on us. As if this
rain weren't enough (che-chew, che-chew!); we are chilled to the
marrow (che-chew!) and are likely to die bravely of cold ...
(che-chew!)."
"Enough! Let me go! Help! Bersaglierino! Mollica-a-a!"
"What are you doing to him? Let him go. Shame on you!" yelled
Bersaglierino, running up.
"But don't you know that he was wishing a shell would hit us, the
little wretch?"
"Just as if we hadn't enough troubles now."
"Of course you have enough, and one of your troubles is that you are
regular beasts," cried Pinocchio as soon as he could get his breath.
"I said I wished for Bertha, the cook in Papa Geppetto's house, to
sweep away the water in here, but now I wish I had a broom in my hand
to break its handle against your ribs."
"But don't you know that a 'Big Bertha' is a Boche gun that would have
blown us into a thousand pieces?"
"So, little devil, do you understand? And now that you have learned
your lesson, be off with you."
There was nothing else for poor Pinocchio to do but to spit out the
mud still in his mouth and turn on his heel.
"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 shell 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 massacred?
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 assembled 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 shivers 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 passed
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 shields 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 shining 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 shells.
"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
shells 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.