Читать книгу Приключения Пиноккио / The adventures of Pinocchio. Уровень 1 - Карло Коллоди - Страница 4

Geppetto’s house was little, but neat and comfortable. It was a small room on the ground floor, with a tiny window under the stairway. The furniture was very simpler: a very old chair, a rickety old bed, and an old table. A fireplace was painted on the wall opposite the door. Over the fire, there was painted a pot full.

When Geppetto reached home, he took his tools and began to cut and shape the wood into a Marionette.

“What shall I call him?” he said to himself. “I think I’ll call him Pinocchio. This name will make his fortune. I knew a whole family of Pinocchi once-Pinocchio the father, Pinocchia the mother, and Pinocchi the children-and they were all lucky. The richest of them was the beggar.”

Then Geppetto began to work, he made the hair, the forehead, the eyes. These eyes moved and then stared fixedly at him. Geppetto asked:

“Ugly wooden eyes, why do you stare so?”

There was no answer.

After the eyes, Geppetto made the nose. It stretched and stretched and stretched till it became so long, it seemed endless.

Next he made the mouth. The mouth began to laugh.

“Stop it!” said Geppetto angrily.

In vain.

“Stop it, I say!” he roared in a voice of thunder.

The mouth stopped to laugh, but showed a long tongue.

After the mouth, Geppetto made the chin, then the neck, the shoulders, the stomach, the arms, and the hands. When he finished the finger tips, they pulled his wig off.

“Pinocchio, give me my wig!”

But Pinocchio put it on his own head.

Geppetto became very sad and downcast.

“Pinocchio, you wicked boy!” he cried out. “You are impudent to your poor old father. Very bad, my son, very bad! I deserve it!” he said to himself. “Now it’s too late.”

He put the Marionette on the floor to teach him to walk.

But Pinocchio’s legs were very stiff and did not move. Geppetto taught him to walk.

Finally, Pinocchio started to walk by himself and ran all around the room. He came to the open door, and away he ran!

Poor Geppetto ran after him but was unable to catch him.

“Catch him! Catch him!” Geppetto shouted. But the people in the street laughed.

At last, a Carabineer grabbed the Marionette by the nose and returned him to Master Geppetto. Geppetto seized Pinocchio by the back of the neck and took him home. He said to him angrily:

“When we get home, I’ll give you a good lesson!”

Pinocchio threw himself on the ground and refused to go. The people gathered around them.

Some said one thing, some another.

“Poor Marionette,” said a man. “I am not surprised he doesn’t want to go home. Geppetto, no doubt, will beat him unmercifully. He is very mean and cruel!”

“Geppetto looks like a good man,” added another, “but with boys he’s a real tyrant. Poor Marionette!”

The Carabineer heard that and dragged Geppetto to prison. The poor old Geppetto did not know how to defend himself. He wept and wailed like a child and said between his sobs:

“Ungrateful boy! I wanted to make you a good Marionette! I deserve it, however!”

What happened after this is an almost unbelievable story.