Geppetto starts to make the puppet. He calls it Pinocchio. The puppet is naughty and plays some tricks on Geppetto..
GEPPETTO'S HOME was just one small room, but it was neat and comfortable. It was on the ground floor, and had one tiny window. There was not much furniture: an old chair, an old bed, and a small table.
On the wall opposite the door there was a fireplace and a bright fire of burning logs. Over the fire hung a pot full of something that looked delicious; it seemed to be boiling happily and sending up clouds of what you might think was real steam.
Did I say you might think so?
I did.
Wasn't the steam really steam, then?
No, it wasn't.
The burning logs were not real, either; nor was there anything delicious in the pot. It was all just a painting. Geppetto had painted it; he was a clever painter.
Geppetto was good at woodwork, too, and as soon as he reached home, he got out his tools and began to cut and shape the wood into a puppet.
"What shall I call this puppet?" he said to himself. "I think I'll call him PINOCCHIO. That's a good name. People will pay money to see a puppet called 'Pinocchio'. I knew a whole family of Pinocchi once --Pinocchio the father, Pinocchia the mother, and the little Pinocchi, their children. They all did well in their lives. If I remember correctly, the richest of them was no poorer than me: he was a beggar."
Mr Geppetto thought that was funny, and he laughed quietly at his own thoughts.
After choosing the name for his puppet, Geppetto began to paint the hair, and then the eyes. What a surprise he had when he noticed that the eyes moved! They stared straight at him. He turned the puppet's head to one side, but the eyes still looked at him. He turned the head the other way, and the eyes turned back. They kept looking at him.
Geppetto did not feel comfortable with those wooden eyes looking at him like that.
"Ugly wooden eyes, why do you stare so?" he asked.
There was no answer.
After the eyes, Geppetto made the nose.
As soon as he had finished it, the nose began to grow. It stretched and stretched and stretched. Wouldn't it ever stop growing?
Poor Geppetto took a knife and started cutting and cutting and cutting, but the more he cut the longer that naughty nose grew. In the end he stopped cutting. He did not know what to do. He just sat still and watched.
The nose stopped growing.
Next he made the mouth.
No sooner was it finished than the mouth began to smile.
"Stop smiling!" said Geppetto angrily; but the mouth did not obey him.
"Stop smiling like that, I say!" Geppetto shouted out in a voice like thunder.
The mouth stopped smiling. Then it put out a long tongue at him.
Geppetto pretended he saw nothing and went on with his work.
After the mouth, he made the chin, then the neck, the shoulders, the stomach, the arms, and the hands.
The hands took a long time. Four fingers and one thumb on each, and finger nails that needed painting. Just as he had finished the last finger nail on the last little finger, he felt something strange happening above his head. He looked up and what did he see? The puppet, using his other hand, had got hold of Geppetto's yellow wig.
"Pinocchio, give me back my wig!"
But instead of returning it, Pinocchio put it on his own head.
Pinocchio was a big puppet, but not a big person. Geppetto was a small man, but his wig was a large one. Geppetto's wig almost covered Pinocchio's head. It looked as if that wig had half eaten the poor puppet.
Geppetto became quite sad when he saw what Pinocchio had done.
"Pinocchio, you bad boy!" he cried out. "You are not yet finished, and already you are being impolite to your poor old father. That is bad, my son, very bad!"
He cried a little, but then he dried his eyes, and went back to work.
He started making the legs and feet.
As soon as they were done, Geppetto felt a sharp kick on his nose.
"I will not get angry!" he said to himself. "It is not his fault. It is my fault for wanting to make him. I should have thought of this before I started. Now it's too late!"
He took hold of the puppet under the arms and put him on the floor to teach him to walk.
At first Pinocchio could not move his legs at all. Geppetto held his hand and showed him how to put out one foot after the other.
Once he had learned what to do, Pinocchio began to walk by himself. First he started walking, then he started hopping on one leg, and then hopping on the other, and then jumping on both legs, then skipping --left and-right-and-left-and-right-and . . . ; and then running. He ran all round the room. He came to the door --which was open-- and with one big jump he was out into the street. Away he went, as fast as he could!
Poor Geppetto ran after him but he couldn't catch him, for Pinocchio ran faster and faster. His two wooden feet, as they hit on the stones of the street, made as much noise as twenty or thirty poor country-people walking about in wooden shoes.
"Stop him! Stop him!" Geppetto kept shouting. But the people in the street, seeing a wooden puppet running as fast as the wind, stood still to stare and to laugh.
At last a policeman came along. He had heard people shouting, and he had heard the sound of Pinocchio's feet on the stone road. He thought five or six horses were running away. He was a large, strong man. He stood bravely in the middle of the street, waiting for the horses to come round the corner.
The noise got louder and louder, but what came round the corner was --Pinocchio. He saw the policeman. He tried his best not to get caught. He tried to run past the big man, but he was unlucky. The policeman caught hold of his nose (it was still a long nose) and gave the puppet back to Mr Geppetto.
The little old man wanted to punish Pinocchio. He wanted to pull Pinocchio's ears. Think how he felt when he saw that he had forgotten to make them!
All he could do was to hold Pinocchio by the back of the neck and carry him home. As he was doing so, he shook him two or three times and said to him angrily: "You are going to get a lesson, you bad boy! When we get home, I'll teach you not to run away like that!"
When Pinocchio heard this, he pulled himself away from Geppetto's arms, threw himself on the ground, and started kicking and shouting and screaming. One person after another came to see what all the noise was about. Some said one thing, some another.
"Poor little puppet," called out one man. "Look! He doesn't want to go home. Well, I am not at all surprised about that. Geppetto will punish him --and we all know how angry that man can get sometimes!"
"Yes, Geppetto looks like a nice old man," added another, "but with boys he gets really angry. If we leave that poor puppet with Geppetto, he will tear him to pieces!"
There was so much shouting and talking that the policeman came along. He set Pinocchio free and took Geppetto to the police station.
The poor old man did not know what to do, he was so angry and so sad, all at the same time. As he went away with the policemen he said to himself: "What a bad boy that Pinocchio is! I tried so hard to make him into a good little puppet. Now I am in all this trouble. Well, it was my own fault, I can see that. I should have thought about this more carefully before I started."
What happened after this, boys and girls, is an almost unbelievable story, but you may read about it in the chapters that follow.