Part 5 (2/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration]
”Who do you think would write me? I am as alone in the world as a dog, just like you, it seems.”
”Yes, that's so,” replied Pinocchio, swallowing hard, because he had suddenly felt his throat tighten at the thought of Papa Geppetto, from whom he had had no news for many a long day.
”It is a red-letter day for the others. Mollica will have a letter from his father, Fanfara news from his two babies, Stecca kisses from his wife.... I might be killed to-morrow by a bullet in the stomach and they would let me rot in a ditch and that would be the end.”
Mollica came back, his arms full of newspapers. His father, a news-dealer in Naples, sent him a copy of every unsold publication, knowing that anything may come in useful in war-times, even old news.
”Heh! Bersaglierino! You want us to play the postman and yet you don't take any trouble to get your scented letter.”
”You are joking?”
”No, it's no joke. Here is one really for you, and I congratulate you because if you are engaged she must be at least a countess.”
The Bersaglierino took the letter his comrade held out to him and read the address over several times. There was no doubt; it was his name that was written on the scented envelope the color of a blush rose. He turned pale and stood for a moment undecided, then he tore it open and read:
DEAR BERSAGLIERINO,--I saw how sad and alone you were at the moment of your departure, so I felt it was my duty as a patriotic Italian girl to write to you. Go and fight for our country; do your duty bravely, and remember that in thought I follow and will follow you every minute. If you return valorously I will meet you and tell you how happy I am; if you fall wounded I will go to your hospital bed to soothe your suffering; if you die for your country my flowers shall lie on your grave and your name will always be written in my heart. Long live Italy!
Your war-G.o.dmother,
FATINA.
”Long live Italy!” Bersaglierino shouted like mad. He caught up his hat with its c.o.c.k plumes and tossed it in the air with all his force, seized Pinocchio who was standing by him, and lifted him up in both his arms, pulled his cap off his head, and then twirled it round on his pate, scratching the poor boy's nose.
”What's got into you? Are you crazy?”
”Am I crazy? I am happy! I am not alone any more, do you understand? I am no longer an unlucky fellow like you with no one belonging to him.
But I am fonder of you than ever. Give me a kiss ...” and he pressed such a hearty kiss on his nose that his comrades laughed. But Pinocchio longed to cry. The heart in his body beat a violent tick-tock, tick-tock.
”Have you read what Franz Joe's newspapers say?--'Italian soldiers are brigands who do not respect civilians or the wounded in the hospitals.' That means you, dear Pinocchio, because you shot the traitor on the tower. You can be sure that if the suet-eaters win they will make you pay for the crime.”
”Me?”
”Yes, indeed, you! You don't intend to say that I killed him, do you?
And you, thank G.o.d, are not an enlisted Italian soldier, therefore ...”
”I understand.”
The camp was quiet once again; indeed, I might say that tender memories had softened its youthful exuberance. The voices from home were keeping the soldiers silent. It was as if every letter their eyes fell on was speaking to them quietly and they were blessed in listening, their faces s.h.i.+ning with happiness. Corporal Fanfara held a sheet of paper on which there was nothing but some strange scrawls. He gazed at it with delight, and while two big tears ran down his cheeks he murmured in his Venetian dialect, ”My darling little rascals!”
These scrawls of theirs were more welcome to him than the letter from his wife which told of privations, anxiety, and troubles. Private Mollica was acting like a detective, searching through the newspaper pages for his father's dirty finger-marks; and as there was little trouble in finding them he kept repeating every moment, ”This was made by my dear old man.” Then he kissed the marks so often that his whole mouth was black with printer's ink.
Shortly after every one was writing, some bent over their writing-tablets, some on the back of a good-natured comrade, some stretched out on the ground, some on the edge of a bench, on the staves of a barrel, on a tree-trunk, with pencils, fountain-pens, on post-cards, envelopes, letter-paper spilled out miraculously from portfolios, bags, and canteens. Every one was writing. The Bersaglierino seemed to be composing a poem. He gesticulated, whacked himself on the ear, beat time with his pen that squirted ink in every direction, and every now and then declaimed under his breath certain phrases that were so moving that they made even him weep.
Pinocchio was as silent and gloomy as the hood of a dirty kitchen stove. Squatting at the entrance to the tent, he kept glancing at his companions, and every now and then he would scratch his head so vigorously that he might have been currycombing a donkey. When Pinocchio scratched his head in that way ... Well, now you know that matters were serious, but I tell you they were so serious that he had the courage to interrupt the Bersaglierino in his literary studies.
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