Children's fairy tale: “The Golden Key or the Adventures of Pinocchio”
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CARRIER GIUSEPPE CUT INTO HAND OF A LOGO THAT SQUEAKED WITH A HUMAN VOICE
Once upon a time, in a town on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, there lived an old carpenter.
Giuseppe, nicknamed Gray Nose.
One day he came across a log, an ordinary fire log
outbreak in winter.
“It’s not a bad thing,” Giuseppe said to himself, “you can make it from
something like a table leg...
Giuseppe put on glasses wrapped with twine, since the glasses were also
old,” he turned the log in his hand and began to cut it with a hatchet.
But as soon as he began to speak, someone’s unusually thin voice
squeaked:
- Oh-oh, quiet down, please!
Giuseppe pushed his glasses to the tip of his nose and began to look around the workshop, -
no one...
He looked under the workbench - no one...
He looked in the basket of shavings - no one...
He stuck his head out the door - no one was on the street...
“Did I really imagine it? - thought Giuseppe. “Who could be squeaking?”
He took the hatchet again and again, just hit the log...
- Oh, it hurts, I say! - howled a thin voice.
This time Giuseppe was seriously scared, his glasses even sweated... He looked at all the corners in the room, even climbed into the fireplace and, turning his head, looked into the chimney for a long time.
- There is no one...
“Perhaps I drank something inappropriate and my neck is ringing.”
ears? - Giuseppe thought to himself...
No, today he didn’t drink anything inappropriate... Having calmed down a little,
Giuseppe took the plane, hit the back of it with a hammer so that the blade came out just enough - not too much and not too little - and put down the log
to the workbench and just took the shavings...
- Oh, oh, oh, oh, listen, why are you pinching? - a thin voice squealed desperately...
Giuseppe dropped the plane, backed away, backed up and sat down straight on the floor: he
I guessed that the thin voice was coming from inside the log.
GIUSEPPE GIVES A TALKING LOGO TO HIS FRIEND CARLO
At this time, his old friend, an organ grinder, came to see Giuseppe.
named Carlo.
Once upon a time, Carlo, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, walked around with a beautiful organ-organ
He earned his living in the cities through singing and music.
Now Carlo was already old and sick, and his organ-organ had long since broken down.
“Hello, Giuseppe,” he said, entering the workshop. “Why are you sitting on the floor?”
- And you see, I lost a small screw... Fuck it! - answered
Giuseppe and glanced sideways at the log. - Well, how are you living, old man?
“It’s bad,” Carlo answered. - I keep thinking - how can I earn money?
bread... If only you could help me, advise me or something...
“What’s easier,” Giuseppe said cheerfully and thought to himself: “I’ll get rid of this damned log now.” - What’s simpler: you see - there’s an excellent log lying on the workbench, take this log, Carlo, and take it home...
“Eh-heh-heh,” Carlo answered sadly, “what’s next?” I'll bring it home
log, and I don’t even have a fireplace in my closet.
- I’m telling you the point, Carlo... Take a knife, cut a log out of this
doll, teach it to say all sorts of funny words, sing and dance, and
carry it around the yards. You will earn enough for a piece of bread and a glass of wine.
At this time, on the workbench where the log lay, a cheerful voice squeaked:
- Bravo, great idea, Gray Nose!
Giuseppe again shook with fear, and Carlo just looked around in surprise - where did the voice come from?
- Well, thank you, Giuseppe, for your advice. Come on, let's have your log.
Then Giuseppe grabbed the log and quickly handed it to his friend. But is he
awkwardly, or it jumped up and hit Carlo on the head.
- Oh, these are your gifts! - Carlo shouted offendedly.
“Sorry, buddy, I didn’t hit you.”
- So I hit myself on the head?
“No, buddy, the log itself must have hit you.”
- You're lying, you knocked...
- No, not me…
“I knew that you were a drunkard, Gray Nose,” said Carlo, “and you’re also
liar.
- Oh, you swear! - Giuseppe shouted. - Come on, come Blinka!..
“Come closer yourself, I’ll grab you by the nose!”
Both old men pouted and started jumping at each other. Carlo grabbed Giuseppe's blue nose. Giuseppe grabbed Carlo by the gray hair that grew near his ears.
After that, they began to really tease each other under the mikitki. At this time, a shrill voice on the workbench squeaked and urged:
- Get out, get out of here!
Finally the old men were tired and out of breath. Giuseppe said:
- Let's make peace, shall we...
Carlo replied:
- Well, let's make peace...
The old people kissed. Carlo took the log under his arm and went home.
CARLO MAKES A WOODEN DOLL AND CALLS HER PINOCOCIO
Carlo lived in a closet under the stairs, where he had nothing but
a beautiful hearth - in the wall opposite the door.
But the beautiful hearth, and the fire in the hearth, and the pot boiling on the fire, were
not real - painted on a piece of old canvas.
Carlo entered the closet, sat down on the only chair at the legless table and,
Having turned the log this way and that, he began to cut a doll out of it with a knife.
“What should I call her? - Carlo thought. - Let me call her Pinocchio. This name will bring me happiness. I knew one family - all their names were
Pinocchio: father is Pinocchio, mother is Pinocchio, children are also Pinocchio... All
they lived cheerfully and carefree..."
First of all, he carved out hair on a log, then his forehead, then his eyes...
Suddenly the eyes opened on their own and stared at him...
Carlo didn’t show that he was scared, he just asked affectionately:
- Wooden eyes, why are you looking at me so strangely?
But the doll was silent, probably because it did not yet have a mouth.
Carlo planed the cheeks, then planed the nose - an ordinary one...
Suddenly the nose itself began to stretch, grow, and it turned out so long
sharp nose that Carlo even grunted:
- Not good, long...
And he began to cut off the tip of his nose. Not so!
The nose twisted and turned, and remained just that - a long, long, curious, sharp nose.
Carlo began to work on his mouth. But as soon as I managed to cut out my lips, my mouth immediately
opened:
- Hee-hee-hee, ha-ha-ha!
And a narrow red tongue poked out of it, teasingly.
Carlo, no longer paying attention to these tricks, continued to plan,
cut, pick. I made the doll’s chin, neck, shoulders, torso, arms...
But as soon as he finished whittling the last finger, Pinocchio began pounding Carlo’s bald head with his fists, pinching and tickling him.
“Listen,” said Carlo sternly, “after all, I haven’t finished tinkering with you yet, and you’ve already started playing around... What will happen next... Eh?..”
And he looked sternly at Buratino. And Pinocchio with round eyes, like
the mouse looked at Papa Carlo.
Carlo made him long legs with large feet from splinters. On this
Having finished the work, he put the wooden boy on the floor to teach him to walk.
Pinocchio swayed, swayed on his thin legs, stepped once, stepped
the other, hop, hop, straight to the door, across the threshold and out into the street.
Carlo, worried, followed him:
- Hey, little rogue, come back!..
Where there! Pinocchio ran down the street like a hare, only his wooden soles - tap-tap, tap-tap - tapped on the stones...
- Hold him! - Carlo shouted.
Passers-by laughed, pointing their fingers at the running Pinocchio. At the intersection stood a huge policeman with a curled mustache and a triangular
hat.
Seeing the running wooden man, he spread his legs wide, blocking the entire street with them. Pinocchio wanted to slip between his legs, but
the policeman grabbed him by the nose and held him there until his dad arrived.
Carlo...
“Well, just wait, I’ll deal with you already,” Carlo said, pushing away and wanted to put Pinocchio in his jacket pocket...
Buratino did not at all want to stick his legs up out of his jacket pocket on such a fun day in front of all the people - he deftly twisted out of the way and plopped down.
onto the pavement and pretended to be dead...
“Oh, oh,” said the policeman, “things seem bad!”
Passers-by began to gather. Looking at the lying Pinocchio, they shook their heads.
“Poor thing,” some said, “he must be hungry...
“Carlo beat him to death,” others said, “that old
The organ grinder only pretends to be a good person, he is bad, he is an evil person...
Hearing all this, the mustachioed policeman grabbed the unfortunate Carlo by the collar and dragged him to the police station.
Carlo dusted his shoes and moaned loudly:
- Oh, oh, to my grief I made a wooden boy!
When the street was empty, Buratino raised his nose, looked around and skipped home...
A TALKING CRICKET GIVES PIOCOCARD WISE ADVICE
Having run into the closet under the stairs, Pinocchio plopped down on the floor near
chair legs.
- What else could you come up with?
We must not forget that Pinocchio was only one day old.
His thoughts were small, small, short, short, trivial, trivial.
At this time I heard:
- Kri-kri, kri-kri, kri-kri...
Pinocchio turned his head, looking around the closet.
- Hey, who's here?
“Here I am,” kri-kri...
Pinocchio saw a creature that looked a little like a cockroach, but with a head
like a grasshopper. It sat on the wall above the fireplace and crackled quietly, -
kri-kri, - looked with bulging, glass-like, iridescent eyes, moving its antennae.
- Hey, who are you?
“I am the Talking Cricket,” answered the creature, “I live in this room.”
more than a hundred years.
“I’m the boss here, get out of here.”
- Okay, I'll leave, although I'm sad to leave the room where I lived for a hundred years.
years,” answered the Talking Cricket, “but before I go, listen to some useful advice.”
- I really need the advice of the old cricket...
“Ah, Pinocchio, Pinocchio,” said the cricket, “stop self-indulgence,
listen to Carlo, don’t run away from home without doing anything, and start going to school tomorrow. Here's my advice. Otherwise, terrible dangers and terrible adventures await you. I won’t give even a dead dry fly for your life.
- Why? - asked Pinocchio.
“But you’ll see—pretty much,” answered the Talking Cricket.
- Oh, you hundred-year-old cockroach bug! - Buratino shouted. - More
I love scary adventures of all things. Tomorrow I'll run away at first light
at home - climbing fences, destroying birds' nests, teasing boys,
dragging dogs and cats by the tails... I can’t think of anything else yet!..
“I feel sorry for you, I’m sorry, Pinocchio, you will shed bitter tears.”
- Why? - Buratino asked again.
- Because you have a stupid wooden head.
Then Pinocchio jumped onto a chair, from the chair to the table, grabbed a hammer and
threw it at the head of the Talking Cricket.
The old smart cricket sighed heavily, moved his whiskers and crawled away behind
hearth, - forever from this room.
PINOCOCIO NEARLY DIES BY HIS OWN FLIPLESS. PAPA CARLO
GLUES HIM CLOTHES FROM COLORED PAPER AND BUYS THE ABC
After the incident with the Talking Cricket, it became completely boring in the closet under the stairs. The day dragged on and on. Pinocchio's stomach was also a bit boring.
He closed his eyes and suddenly saw the fried chicken on the plate.
He quickly opened his eyes and the chicken on the plate had disappeared.
He closed his eyes again and saw a plate of semolina porridge mixed with raspberry jam.
I opened my eyes and there was no plate of semolina porridge with raspberry jam.
Then Pinocchio realized that he was terribly hungry.
He ran to the hearth and stuck his nose into the boiling pot, but it was long.
Pinocchio's nose pierced through the bowler, because, as we know, and
the hearth, and the fire, and the smoke, and the pot were drawn by poor Carlo on a piece
old canvas.
Pinocchio pulled out his nose and looked through the hole - behind the canvas in the wall there was
something like a small door, but it was so covered in cobwebs,
that you can't make out anything.
Pinocchio went to rummage around in all corners to see if he could find a crust of bread
or a chicken bone gnawed by a cat.
Oh, poor Carlo had nothing, nothing saved for dinner!
Suddenly he saw a chicken egg in a basket with shavings. Grabbed him
I put it on the windowsill and with my nose - bale-bale - I broke the shell.
A voice squeaked inside the egg:
- Thank you, wooden man!
A chicken with fluff instead of a tail and with cheerful eyes crawled out of the broken shell.
- Goodbye! Mama Kura has been waiting for me in the yard for a long time.
And the chicken jumped out of the window - that was all they saw.
“Oh, oh,” shouted Pinocchio, “I’m hungry!”
The day has finally ended. The room became twilight.
Pinocchio sat near the painted fire and slowly hiccupped from hunger.
He saw a fat head appear from under the stairs, from under the floor.
A gray animal on low legs leaned out, sniffed, and crawled out.
Slowly it went to the basket with shavings, climbed in, sniffing and groping,
- the shavings rustled angrily. It must have been looking for the egg that
broke Pinocchio.
Then it got out of the basket and approached Pinocchio. She sniffed it, twisting her black nose with four long hairs on each side. Pinocchio did not smell of food - it walked past, dragging behind it a long thin
tail.
Well, how could you not grab him by the tail! Pinocchio immediately grabbed it.
It turned out to be the old evil rat Shushara.
Out of fright, like a shadow, she rushed under the stairs, dragging Pinocchio,
but she saw that it was just a wooden boy - she turned around and
she attacked with furious anger to gnaw his throat.
Now Buratino got scared, let go of the cold rat's tail and
jumped onto the chair. The rat is behind him.
He jumped from the chair to the windowsill. The rat is behind him.
From the windowsill it flew across the entire closet onto the table. Rat - for
him... And then, on the table, she grabbed Pinocchio by the throat, threw him down, holding
in her teeth, jumped onto the floor and dragged him under the stairs, into the underground.
- Papa Carlo! - Pinocchio only managed to squeak.
- I'm here! - answered a loud voice.
The door opened and Papa Carlo entered. Pulled a wooden shoe off his foot
and threw it at the rat.
Shushara, releasing the wooden boy, gritted her teeth and disappeared.
- This is what self-indulgence can lead to! - Dad Carlo grumbled, raising his
Paul Pinocchio. I looked to see if everything was intact. He sat him on his knees, took an onion out of his pocket, and peeled it. - Here, eat!..
Pinocchio sank his hungry teeth into the onion and ate it, crunching and smacking. After that, he began to rub his head against Papa Carlo’s stubbled cheek.
- I’ll be smart and sensible, Papa Carlo... Talking Cricket
told me to go to school.
- Nice idea, baby...
“Papa Carlo, but I’m naked and wooden,” the boys in
the school will laugh at me.
“Hey,” said Carlo and scratched his stubbled chin. - You're right, baby!
He lit the lamp, took scissors, glue and scraps of colored paper. cut out
and glued together a jacket from brown paper and bright green pants. I made shoes from an old boot and a hat - a cap with a tassel - from
old sock I put all this on Pinocchio:
- Wear it in good health!
“Papa Carlo,” said Pinocchio, “how can I go to school without the alphabet?”
- Hey, you're right, baby...
Papa Carlo scratched his head. He threw his only old jacket over his shoulders and went outside.
He soon returned, but without his jacket. In his hand he held a book with large
letters and entertaining pictures.
- Here's the alphabet for you. Study for health.
- Papa Carlo, where is your jacket?
- I sold the jacket. It’s okay, I’ll get by just like that... Just you live on
health.
Pinocchio buried his nose in the kind hands of Papa Carlo.
- I’ll learn, grow up, buy you a thousand new jackets...
Pinocchio wanted with all his might on this first evening in his life to live without
pampering, as the Talking Cricket taught him.
BURATINO SELLS THE ABC AND BUYS A TICKET TO THE PUPPET THEATER
Early in the morning Buratino put the alphabet in his purse and skipped into
school.
On the way, he didn’t even look at the sweets displayed in the shops - triangles of poppy seeds with honey, sweet pies and lollipops in the shape of roosters,
impaled on a stick.
He didn't want to look at the boys flying a kite...
A tabby cat, Basilio, was crossing the street and could be caught.
by the tail. But Buratino resisted this too.
The closer he got to the school, the louder cheerful music played nearby, on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
“Pi-pi-pi,” the flute squeaked.
“La-la-la-la,” the violin sang.
“Ding-ding,” the copper plates clinked.
- Boom! - beat the drum.
You need to turn right to go to school, music was heard to the left. Pinocchio
began to stumble. The legs themselves turned towards the sea, where:
- Pee-wee, peeeeee...
- Ding-lala, ding-la-la...
- Boom!
“The school won’t go anywhere,” he said loudly to himself.
Pinocchio, I’ll just take a look, listen, and run to school.
With all his might he began to run towards the sea. He saw a canvas booth, decorated with multi-colored flags flapping in the sea wind.
At the top of the booth, four musicians were dancing and playing.
Downstairs, a plump, smiling aunt was selling tickets.
There was a large crowd near the entrance - boys and girls, soldiers, lemonade sellers, nurses with babies, firefighters, postmen - everyone, everyone
read the big poster:
PUPPET THEATER ONLY ONE PERFORMANCE
HURRY!
HURRY!
HURRY!
Pinocchio tugged one boy by the sleeve:
— Tell me, please, how much is the entrance ticket?
The boy answered through gritted teeth, slowly:
- Four soldi, wooden man.
- You see, boy, I forgot my wallet at home... You can’t tell me
lend four soldi?..
The boy whistled contemptuously:
- Found a fool!..
- I really want to see the puppet theater! - through tears
said Pinocchio. - Buy my wonderful jacket from me for four soldi...
— A paper jacket for four soldi? Look for a fool.
- Well, then my pretty cap...
- Your cap is only used to catch tadpoles... Look for a fool.
Buratino’s nose even turned cold - he wanted so badly to get to the theater.
- Boy, in that case, take my new alphabet for four soldi...
- With pictures?
- With wonderful pictures and big letters.
“Come on, I guess,” said the boy, took the alphabet and reluctantly counted out four soldi.
Pinocchio ran up to the plump, smiling aunt and squeaked:
- Listen, give me a front row ticket to the only puppet theater show.
DURING THE COMEDY PRESENTATION, THE DOLLS WILL RECOGNIZE PINOCOCARIO
Buratino sat in the first row and looked with delight at the lowered curtain.
Dancing men and girls in black were painted on the curtain.
masks, scary bearded people in caps with stars, the sun, similar
a pancake with a nose and eyes, and other entertaining pictures.
The bell was struck three times and the curtain rose.
On the small stage there were cardboard trees to the right and left. Above them
A lantern in the shape of the moon hung and was reflected in a piece of mirror on which two swans made of cotton wool with golden noses floated.
A small man in a long white suit appeared from behind a cardboard tree.
shirt with long sleeves.
His face was dusted with powder, white as tooth powder.
He bowed to the most respectable audience and said sadly:
- Hello, my name is Pierrot... Now we will play in front of you
a comedy called; "The Girl with Blue Hair, Or Thirty-Three
slap on the head." They will beat me with a stick, slap me in the face and slap me on the head. This is a very funny comedy...
Another man jumped out from behind another cardboard tree, all checkered like a chessboard.
He bowed to the most respectable audience:
- Hello, I am Harlequin!
After that, he turned to Pierrot and gave him two slaps in the face, like this
so loud that powder fell from his cheeks.
- Why are you whining, fools?
“I’m sad because I want to get married,” Pierrot answered.
- Why didn’t you get married?
- Because my bride ran away from me...
“Ha-ha-ha,” Harlequin roared with laughter, “we saw the fool!”
He grabbed a stick and beat Piero.
-What is your fiancee's name?
- Aren't you going to fight anymore?
- Well, no, I've just started.
- In that case, her name is Malvina, or the girl with blue hair.
- Ha-ha-ha! - Harlequin rolled again and released Pierrot three times on the back of the head.
- Listen, dear audience... Are there really girls?
with blue hair?
But then, turning to the audience, he suddenly saw on the front bench
wooden boy with mouth to ear, with a long nose, in a cap with
with a brush...
- Look, it's Pinocchio! - Harlequin shouted, pointing at him
finger.
- Buratino alive! - Pierrot yelled, waving his long sleeves.
Many dolls jumped out from behind the cardboard trees - girls in black
masks, scary bearded men in caps, shaggy dogs with buttons instead of eyes, hunchbacks with noses like cucumbers...
They all ran up to the candles that stood along the ramp and, peering, began chattering:
- This is Pinocchio! This is Pinocchio! Come to us, come to us, cheerful rogue Pinocchio!
Then he jumped from the bench onto the prompter booth, and from it onto the stage.
The dolls grabbed him, started hugging him, kissing him, pinching him... Then everything
the dolls sang “Polka Bird”:
The bird danced a polka
On the lawn in the early hours.
Nose to the left, tail to the right, -
This is the polka Karabas.
Two beetles on the drum
A toad blows into a double bass.
Nose to the left, tail to the right, -
This is Polish Barabas.
The bird danced a polka
Because it's fun.
Nose to the left, tail to the right, -
That's how Polish it was.
The spectators were touched. One nurse even shed tears. One firefighter cried his eyes out.
Only the boys on the back benches were angry and stamped their feet:
- Enough licking, not little ones, continue the show!
Hearing all this noise, a man leaned out from behind the stage, so scary
with a look that one could freeze with horror just by looking at him.
His thick, unkempt beard trailed along the floor, his bulging eyes rolled, his huge mouth clanged with teeth, as if he were not a man, but a crocodile. In his hand he held a seven-tailed whip.
It was the owner of the puppet theater, Doctor of Puppet Science, Signor Karabas Barabas.
- Ga-ha-ha, goo-goo-goo! - he roared at Pinocchio. - So it was you who interrupted
the performance of my wonderful comedy?
He grabbed Pinocchio, took him to the theater storeroom and hung him on a nail.
Returning, he threatened the dolls with a seven-tailed whip so that they would continue
performance.
The puppets somehow finished the comedy, the curtain closed, and the audience dispersed.
Doctor of Puppet Science, Signor Karabas Barabas went to the kitchen to have dinner.
Putting the lower part of his beard in his pocket so as not to get in the way, he sat down in front of
fireplace, where a whole rabbit and two chickens were roasting on a spit.
Having flexed his fingers, he touched the roast, and it seemed raw to him.
There was little wood in the hearth. Then he clapped his hands three times.
Harlequin and Pierrot ran in.
“Bring me that slacker Pinocchio,” said Signor Karabas Barabas. - It is made of dry wood, I will throw it into the fire, my
the roast will roast quickly.
Harlequin and Pierrot fell to their knees and begged to spare the unfortunate Pinocchio.
-Where is my whip? - shouted Karabas Barabas.
Then, sobbing, they went to the pantry, took Buratino off the nail and dragged him to the kitchen.
SIGNOR KARABAS BARABAS, INSTEAD OF BURNING BURATINO, GIVES HIM FIVE GOLD COINS AND SENDS HIM HOME
When the dolls dragged Pinocchio and threw him on the floor near the grate of the fireplace,
Signor Karabas Barabas, sniffling terribly, stirred the coals with a poker.
Suddenly his eyes became bloodshot, his nose, and then his whole face became filled with transverse wrinkles. There must have been a piece of coal in his nostrils.
- Aap... aap... aap... - howled Karabas Barabas, rolling his eyes, - aap-chhi!..
And he sneezed so much that the ashes rose in a column in the hearth.
When the doctor of puppet sciences began to sneeze, he could no longer stop and sneezed fifty, and sometimes a hundred times in a row.
This extraordinary sneezing made him weak and became kinder.
Pierrot secretly whispered to Pinocchio:
- Try to talk to him between sneezes...
- Aap-chhi! Aap-chhi! - Karabas Barabas took in air with his open mouth and
He sneezed loudly, shaking his head and stamping his feet.
Everything in the kitchen shook, glass rattled, pans and pots on nails swayed.
Between these sneezes, Pinocchio began to howl with a plaintive thin voice.
gloss:
- Poor, unfortunate me, no one feels sorry for me!
- Stop crying! - shouted Karabas Barabas. - You're bothering me...
Aap-chhi!
“Be healthy, sir,” Buratino sobbed.
- Thank you... Are your parents alive? Aap-chhi!
“I never, never had a mother, sir.” Oh, I'm unhappy! - AND
Pinocchio screamed so shrilly that Karabas Barabas' ears became
prick like a needle.
He stamped his feet.
- Stop screaming, I tell you!.. Aap-chhi! What, is your father alive?
“My poor father is still alive, sir.”
“I can imagine what it will be like for your father to find out what I fried on you.”
a rabbit and two chickens... Aap-chhi!
“My poor father will soon die of hunger and cold anyway.” I him
the only support in old age. Please, let me go, sir.
- Ten thousand devils! - shouted Karabas Barabas. - No pity
out of the question. The rabbit and chickens must be roasted. Get in
hearth
“Sir, I can’t do this.”
- Why? - asked Karabas Barabas only so that Pinocchio
continued to talk, and did not scream in his ears.
- Signor, I already tried to stick my nose into the fireplace once and only pierced
hole.
- What nonsense! - Karabas Barabas was surprised. “How could you poke a hole in the fireplace with your nose?”
- Because, sir, the hearth and the pot over the fire were painted on
a piece of old canvas.
- Aap-chhi! - Karabas Barabas sneezed with such a noise that Pierrot flew off
left. Harlequin went to the right, and Pinocchio spun around like a top.
- Where did you see the hearth, and the fire, and the pot painted on a piece of canvas?
— In my dad Carlo’s closet.
- Your father is Carlo! - Karabas Barabas jumped up from his chair, waved his arms, his beard flew away. - So, this means it’s in old Carlo’s closet.
there is a secret...
But then Karabas Barabas, apparently not wanting to let slip about some secret, covered his mouth with both fists. And he sat there for a while, looking
bulging eyes at the dying fire.
“Okay,” he said finally, “I’ll have dinner with an undercooked rabbit and
raw chickens. I give you life, Pinocchio. Little of…
He reached under his beard into his vest pocket, pulled out five gold coins and
handed them to Pinocchio:
- Not only that... Take this money and take it to Carlo. Bow down and say
that I ask him under no circumstances to die of hunger and cold, and most of all
the main thing is not to leave his closet, where the hearth is located, drawn on
a piece of old canvas. Go, get some sleep and run home early in the morning.
Buratino put five gold coins in his pocket and answered with a polite
bow:
- Thank you, sir. You couldn't trust your money to a more reliable place
hands…
Harlequin and Pierrot took Pinocchio to the doll's bedroom, where the dolls again
started hugging, kissing, pushing, pinching and hugging Buratino again,
so incomprehensibly escaped a terrible death in the hearth.
He whispered to the dolls:
- There is some kind of secret here.
ON THE WAY HOME, BURATINO MEETS TWO BEGGARS - THE CAT BASILIO AND THE FOX
ALICE
Early in the morning Buratino counted the money - there were so many gold coins
How many fingers are there on a hand? - five.
Clutching the gold coins in his fist, he skipped home and chanted:
- I’ll buy dad Carlo a new jacket, I’ll buy a lot of poppy triangles,
lollipop roosters on sticks.
When the booth of the puppet theater and the waving flags disappeared from his eyes, he saw two beggars sadly wandering along the dusty road: Alice the fox,
hobbling on three legs, and the blind cat Basilio.
This was not the same cat that Pinocchio met yesterday on the street, but
the other is also Basilio and also striped. Pinocchio wanted to pass by, but
the fox Alice said to him touchingly:
- Hello, dear Pinocchio! Where are you going in such a hurry?
- Home, to dad Carlo.
Lisa sighed even more tenderly:
“I don’t know if you’ll find poor Carlo alive, he’s really bad.”
from hunger and cold...
- Did you see this? - Buratino unclenched his fist and showed five gold pieces.
Seeing the money, the fox involuntarily reached out to it with his paw, and the cat suddenly opened his blind eyes wide, and they sparkled like two green lanterns.
But Buratino did not notice any of this.
- Dear, pretty Pinocchio, what are you going to do with these
money?
- I’ll buy a jacket for dad Carlo... I’ll buy a new alphabet...
- ABC, oh, oh! - said Alice the fox, shaking her head. - It won’t finish
This teaching will do you good... So I studied, studied, and - look - I go to
three paws.
- ABC! - Basilio the cat grumbled and snorted angrily into his mustache. - Through
I lost my eyes with this damned teaching...
An elderly crow was sitting on a dry branch near the road. I listened and listened and
croaked:
- They're lying, they're lying!..
Basilio the cat immediately jumped high, knocked the crow off the branch with his paw,
I tore out half of her tail as soon as she flew away. And again he introduced himself as if he
blind.
- Why are you doing this to her, Basilio the cat? - Buratino asked in surprise.
“My eyes are blind,” the cat answered, “it seemed like a little dog in a tree... The three of them walked along the dusty road.” Lisa said:
- Smart, prudent Pinocchio, I would like you to have
there is ten times more money?
- Of course I want! How is this done?
- As easy as pie. Go with us.
- Where?
- To the Land of Fools.
Pinocchio thought for a bit.
- No, I think I’ll go home now.
“Please, we don’t pull you by the rope,” said the fox, “so much the worse.”
for you.
“So much the worse for you,” the cat grumbled.
“You are your own enemy,” said the fox.
“You are your own enemy,” the cat grumbled.
- Otherwise, your five gold pieces would turn into a lot of money...
Pinocchio stopped and opened his mouth...
- You're lying!
The fox sat on its tail and licked its lips:
- I'll explain to you now. In the Land of Fools there is a magical field called the Field of Miracles... Dig a hole in this field, say three times:
“Cracks, fex, pex”, put the gold in the hole, cover with earth, sprinkle on top
salt, water well and go to sleep. The next morning a small one will grow out of the hole.
a tree with gold coins hanging on it instead of leaves. It's clear?
Pinocchio even jumped:
- You're lying!
“Let’s go, Basilio,” the fox said, turning up his nose offended, “they don’t believe us.”
- Do not need…
“No, no,” Buratino shouted, “I believe, I believe!.. Let’s go quickly to
Country of Fools!..
IN THE THREE MOUNTAIN TANK
Pinocchio, Alice the fox and Basilio the cat went down the mountain and walked and walked -
through fields, vineyards, through a pine grove, they came out to the sea and again turned away from the sea, through the same grove, vineyards...
The town on the hill and the sun above it were visible now to the right, now to the left...
Fox Alice said, sighing:
- Ah, it’s not so easy to get into the Country of Fools, you’ll erase all your paws...
Towards evening they saw on the side of the road an old house with a flat roof and
a sign above the entrance: “THREE MOUNTAIN TANK.”
The owner rushed out to meet the guests, tore the cap from his bald head and
bowed low, asking to come in.
“It wouldn’t hurt us to have at least a dry crust,” said the fox.
“At least they’d treat me to a crust of bread,” the cat repeated.
We went into the tavern and sat down near the fireplace, where all sorts of things were being fried on spits and frying pans.
The fox was constantly licking his lips, the cat Basilio put his paws on the table, the mustachioed
muzzle to paws, staring at the food.
“Hey, master,” Buratino said importantly, “give us three crusts of bread...”
The owner almost fell backward in surprise that such honorable guests
so little is asked.
“Cheerful, witty Pinocchio is joking with you, master,” the fox giggled.
“He’s joking,” the cat muttered.
“Give me three crusts of bread and with them that wonderfully roasted lamb,” said the fox, “and also that gosling, and a couple of pigeons on a spit,
yes, perhaps some more livers...
“Six pieces of the fattest crucian carp,” the cat ordered, “and small fish
raw for a snack.
In short, they took everything that was on the hearth: there was only one crust of bread left for Pinocchio.
Alice the fox and Basilio the cat ate everything, including the bones. Their bellies
swollen, muzzles shiny.
“We’ll rest for an hour,” said the fox, “and we’ll leave at exactly midnight.” Don't forget to wake us up, master...
The fox and the cat collapsed on two soft beds, snored and whistled. Pinocchio took a nap in the corner on a dog bed...
He dreamed of a tree with round golden leaves... Only he
extended his hand...
- Hey, Signor Pinocchio, it’s time, it’s already midnight...
There was a knock on the door. Pinocchio jumped up and rubbed his eyes. There is no cat or fox on the bed, it’s empty.
The owner explained to him:
“Your venerable friends deigned to get up early, refreshed themselves with a cold pie and left...
“Didn’t they tell me to give you anything?”
- They even ordered that you, Signor Buratino, without wasting a minute,
ran along the road to the forest...
Pinocchio rushed to the door, but the owner stood on the threshold, squinted, his hands
leaned on the sides:
- Who will pay for dinner?
“Oh,” Pinocchio squeaked, “how much?”
- Exactly one gold...
Pinocchio immediately wanted to sneak past his feet, but the owner grabbed
spit - his bristly mustache, even the hair above his ears stood on end.
“Pay up, scoundrel, or I’ll skewer you like a bug!”
I had to pay one gold out of five. Snorting with chagrin, Pinocchio left the damned tavern.
The night was dark—that’s not enough—black as soot. Everything around was asleep.
Only the night bird Splyushka flew silently over Pinocchio’s head.
Touching his nose with her soft wing, Scops Owl repeated:
- Don't believe it, don't believe it, don't believe it!
He stopped with annoyance:
- What do you want?
- Don't trust the cat and the fox...
- Come on!..
He ran further and heard Scops squealing after him:
- Beware of robbers on this road...
BURATINO IS ATTACKED BY BIGGERS
A greenish light appeared at the edge of the sky - the moon was rising.
A black forest became visible ahead.
Pinocchio walked faster. Someone behind him also walked faster.
He started running. Someone was running after him in silent leaps.
He turned around.
Two people were chasing him; they had bags on their heads with holes cut out for their eyes.
One, shorter, was waving a knife, the other, taller, was holding a pistol, the barrel of which expanded like a funnel...
- Ay-ay! - Pinocchio squealed and, like a hare, ran towards the black forest.
- Stop, stop! - the robbers shouted.
Although Pinocchio was desperately frightened, he still guessed - he stuck it in
mouth four gold and turned off the road towards a hedge overgrown with blackberries...
But then two robbers grabbed him...
- Trick or Treat!
Pinocchio, as if not understanding what they wanted from him, only often, often
I breathed through my nose. The robbers shook him by the collar, one threatened him with a pistol,
the other was searching his pockets.
- Where is your money? - the tall one growled.
- Money, you brat! - the short one hissed.
- I'll tear you to shreds!
- Let's take the head off!
Then Pinocchio shook so much with fear that the gold coins began to jingle.
it in your mouth.
- That's where his money is! - howled the robbers. - In his mouth
money…
One grabbed Buratino by the head, the other by the legs. They started tossing him around. But he only clenched his teeth tighter.
Turning him upside down, the robbers slammed his head on the ground. But he didn’t care about that either.
The shorter robber began to unclench his teeth with his wide toe. He was just about to unclench it... Pinocchio contrived - he bit with all his might
his hand... But it turned out to be not a hand, but a cat’s paw. Robber wildly
howled. At this time Pinocchio turned around like a lizard and rushed to the fence,
dived into the thorny blackberries, leaving scraps of his pants and jacket on the thorns, climbed over to the other side and rushed to the forest.
At the edge of the forest the robbers caught up with him again. He jumped, grabbed a swinging branch and climbed up the tree. The robbers are behind him. But they were hampered by the bags on their heads.
Having climbed to the top, Pinocchio swung and jumped onto a nearby tree. The robbers are behind him...
But both immediately fell apart and fell to the ground.
While they were grunting and scratching themselves, Pinocchio slipped from the tree and
started to run, moving his legs so quickly that they weren’t even there
it is seen.
The trees cast long shadows from the moon. The whole forest was striped...
Buratino then disappeared into the shadows, then his white cap flashed in the moonlight
light.
So he got to the lake. The moon hung over the mirror-like water, like in a puppet theater.
Pinocchio rushed to the right - sloppily. To the left it’s swampy... And behind again
the branches cracked...
- Hold him, hold him!..
The robbers were already running up, they were jumping high out of the wet grass,
to see Buratino.
- Here he is!
All he could do was throw himself into the water. At this time he saw a white
a swan sleeping near the shore with its head tucked under its wing. Pinocchio rushed
into the lake, dived and grabbed the swan by the paws.
“Ho-ho,” the swan cackled, waking up, “what indecent jokes!”
Leave my paws alone!
The swan opened its huge wings, and while the robbers were already
grabbed Pinocchio's legs sticking out of the water, the swan flew importantly through
lake.
On the other side, Pinocchio let go of his paws, plopped down, jumped up, and started running over the moss hummocks and through the reeds straight to the big moon - above
hills.
THE BIGGERS HANG BURATINO ON A TREE
From fatigue, Pinocchio could barely move his legs, like a fly on a windowsill in autumn.
Suddenly, through the branches of a hazel tree, he saw a beautiful lawn and in the middle of it -
a small, moonlit house with four windows. Painted on the shutters
sun, moon and stars. Large azure flowers grew around.
The paths are sprinkled with clean sand. A thin stream of water came out of the fountain, and a striped ball danced in it.
Pinocchio climbed onto the porch on all fours. Knocked in the door. In the house
it was quiet. He knocked harder; they must have been sleeping soundly there.
At this time, the robbers jumped out of the forest again. They swam across the lake
water poured from them in streams. Seeing Pinocchio, the short robber hissed vilely like a cat, the tall one yapped like a fox...
Pinocchio pounded on the door with his hands and feet:
- Help, help, good people!..
Then a pretty curly-haired girl with a pretty
raised nose.
Her eyes were closed.
- Girl, open the door, robbers are chasing me!
- Oh, what nonsense! - said the girl, yawning with her pretty mouth. - I want
I can't sleep, I can't open my eyes...
She raised her hands, stretched sleepily and disappeared through the window.
Buratino, in despair, fell with his nose into the sand and pretended to be dead.
The robbers jumped up:
- Yeah, now you won’t leave us!..
It’s hard to imagine what they did to make Pinocchio open his mouth. If during the chase they had not dropped the knife and pistol, the story about the unfortunate man could have ended at this point.
Pinocchio.
Finally, the robbers decided to hang him upside down, tied a rope to his feet, and Pinocchio hung on an oak branch... They sat down under the oak tree,
holding out their wet tails and waiting for the golden ones to fall out of his mouth...
At dawn the wind rose and the leaves rustled on the oak tree. Pinocchio swayed like a piece of wood. The robbers got tired of sitting on wet tails...
“Hang there, my friend, until evening,” they said ominously and went to look for some roadside tavern.
A GIRL WITH BLUE HAIR BRINGS PINOCOCIO TO LIFE
Behind the branches of the oak tree where Pinocchio hung, the morning dawn spread. Grass
the clearing turned gray, the azure flowers were covered with drops of dew.
The girl with curly blue hair leaned out of the window again, rubbed it, and opened her sleepy pretty eyes wide.
This girl was the most beautiful doll from the Signora puppet theater
Karabasa Barabas.
Unable to bear the rude antics of the owner, she ran away from the theater and
settled in a secluded house in a gray clearing.
Animals, birds and some of the insects loved her very much - it must
maybe because she was a well-mannered and meek girl.
The animals supplied her with everything necessary for life.
The mole brought nutritious roots.
Mice - sugar, cheese and pieces of sausage.
The noble poodle dog Artemon brought rolls.
Magpie stole chocolates in silver papers for her at the market.
The frogs brought lemonade in nutshells.
Hawk - fried game.
May bugs are different berries.
Butterflies - pollen from flowers - powder.
Caterpillars squeezed out paste to clean teeth and lubricate
creaking doors.
Swallows destroyed wasps and mosquitoes near the house...
So, opening her eyes, the girl with blue hair immediately saw Pinocchio hanging upside down.
She put her palms to her cheeks and screamed:
- Ah, ah, ah!
The noble poodle Artemon appeared under the window, ears fluttering. He
I just cut the back half of my torso, which I did every day.
The curly fur on the front half of the body was combed, brush
tied at the end of the tail with a black bow. On the front paw - silver
watch.
- I'm ready!
Artemon turned his nose to the side and raised his upper lip over his white teeth.
- Call someone, Artemon! - said the girl. “We need to pick up poor Pinocchio, take him into the house and invite a doctor...
- Ready!
Artemon spun around so ready that damp sand flew away from him.
hind legs... He rushed to the anthill, barking woke up the entire population and
sent four hundred ants to gnaw the rope on which Pinocchio was hanging.
Four hundred serious ants crawled in single file along a narrow path,
climbed the oak tree and chewed through the rope.
Artemon picked up the falling Pinocchio with his front paws and carried him to
house... Putting Pinocchio on the bed, he rushed into the forest at a dog gallop
thicket and immediately brought from there the famous doctor Owl, the paramedic Toad and the folk healer Mantis, who looked like a dry twig.
The owl put its ear to Pinocchio's chest.
“The patient is more dead than alive,” she whispered and turned her head away.
back one hundred and eighty degrees.
The toad crushed Pinocchio with its wet paw for a long time. Thinking, she looked with bulging eyes in different directions at once. She muttered with her big mouth:
— The patient is more alive than dead...
The folk healer Bogomol, with hands as dry as blades of grass, began to touch Pinocchio.
“One of two things,” he whispered, “either the patient is alive or he died.” If he is alive, he will remain alive or he will not remain alive. If he is dead, he can be revived or he cannot be revived.
“Shh charlatanism,” said the Owl, flapped its soft wings and flew away.
la to the dark attic.
All of Toad's warts were swollen with anger.
- What disgusting ignorance! - she croaked and, slapping her belly, jumped into the damp basement.
Just in case, the doctor Mantis pretended to be a dried up twig and fell out of the window.
The girl clasped her pretty hands:
- Well, how can I treat him, citizens?
“Castor oil,” croaked the Toad from the underground.
- Castor oil! - the Owl laughed contemptuously in the attic.
“Either castor oil, or no castor oil,” the Mantis rasped outside the window.
Then, ragged and bruised, the unfortunate Pinocchio moaned:
- No need for castor oil, I feel very good!
A girl with blue hair leaned over him carefully:
- Pinocchio, I beg you - close your eyes, hold your nose and drink.
- I don’t want, I don’t want, I don’t want!..
- I'll give you a piece of sugar...
Immediately a white mouse climbed up the blanket onto the bed and was holding a piece of sugar.
“You will get it if you listen to me,” said the girl.
- Give me one saaaaaahar...
- Yes, understand, if you don’t take the medicine, you can die...
- I’d rather die than drink castor oil...
Then the girl said sternly, in an adult voice:
- Hold your nose and look at the ceiling... One, two, three.
She poured castor oil into Pinocchio's mouth, immediately gave him a piece of sugar and kissed him.
- That's all…
The noble Artemon, who loved everything prosperous, grabbed his
tail, spinning under the window, like a whirlwind of a thousand paws, a thousand ears, a thousand
sparkling eyes.
A GIRL WITH BLUE HAIR WANTS TO EDUCATE PINOCOCIO
The next morning Buratino woke up cheerful and healthy, as if nothing had happened.
A girl with blue hair was waiting for him in the garden, sitting at a small table covered with doll dishes,
Her face was freshly washed, there was a floral pattern on her upturned nose and cheeks.
pollen.
While waiting for Pinocchio, she waved away the annoying butterflies with annoyance:
- Come on, really...
She looked the wooden boy from head to toe and winced. Velela
him to sit at the table and poured cocoa into a tiny cup.
Buratino sat down at the table and tucked his leg under him. Macaroons he
I stuffed it whole into my mouth and swallowed it without chewing.
He climbed right into the vase of jam with his fingers and sucked them with pleasure.
When the girl turned to throw a few crumbs to the elderly ground beetle, he grabbed the coffee pot and drank all the cocoa from the spout. Choked
spilled cocoa on the tablecloth.
Then the girl told him sternly:
- Pull your leg out from under you and lower it under the table. Don't eat with your hands
There are spoons and forks for this.
She batted her eyelashes in indignation.
- Who is raising you, please tell me?
— When Papa Carlo raises, and when no one does.
- Now I will take care of your upbringing, rest assured.
“I’m so stuck!” - thought Pinocchio.
On the grass around the house, the poodle Artemon was running around chasing small birds.
When they sat in the trees, he raised his head, jumped up and barked with
howling.
“He’s great at chasing birds,” Buratino thought with envy.
Sitting decently at the table gave him goosebumps all over his body.
Finally the painful breakfast was over. The girl told him to wipe it off
cocoa nose. She straightened the folds and bows on the dress, took Pinocchio by the
hand and led her into the house to do her upbringing.
And the cheerful poodle Artemon ran across the grass and barked; birds, not at all
fearing him, they whistled merrily; the breeze flew merrily over the trees.
“Take off your rags, they’ll give you a decent jacket and pants,”
said the girl.
Four tailors - a single master, a gloomy crayfish Sheptallo, a gray Woodpecker
with a tuft, a large beetle Rogach and a mouse Lisette - sewn from old girls' clothes
dresses, a beautiful boyish suit. Sheptallo cut, Woodpecker pierced holes with his beak and sewed. The stag was twisting the threads with his hind legs, and Lisette was gnawing them.
Pinocchio was ashamed to put on the girl’s cast-offs, but he still had to change clothes. Sniffling, he hid four gold coins in the pocket of his new jacket.
- Now sit down, put your hands in front of you. “Don’t be hunched over,” she said.
the girl took a piece of chalk. - We'll do arithmetic... You have two apples in your pocket...
Pinocchio winked slyly:
- You’re lying, not a single one...
“I’m saying,” the girl repeated patiently, “suppose that you have
two apples in my pocket. Someone took one apple from you. How much do you have left
apples?
- Two.
- Think carefully.
Pinocchio wrinkled his face, thinking so coolly.
- Two…
- Why?
“I won’t give Nect the apple, even if he fights!”
“You have no aptitude for mathematics,” she said with disappointment.
girl. - Let's take a dictation.
She raised her pretty eyes to the ceiling.
— Write: “And the rose fell on Azor’s paw.” Have you written? Now read this
the magic phrase in reverse.
We already know that Pinocchio has never even seen a pen and inkwell.
The girl said: “Write,” and he immediately put his
nose and was terribly scared when an ink blot fell from his nose onto the paper.
The girl clasped her hands, tears even flowed out of her eyes.
- You are a disgusting naughty boy, you must be punished!
She leaned out the window:
- Artemon, take Pinocchio to the dark closet!
Noble Artemon appeared at the door, showing white teeth. grabbed
Buratino by the jacket and, backing away, dragged him into the closet, where in the corners there were cobwebs
large spiders were hanging. Locked him there, growled to give him a good scare,
and again rushed off after the birds.
The girl, throwing herself on the doll's lace bed, began to sob because
that she had to act so cruelly to the wooden boy. But if
I took up the task of education, the matter must be completed.
Pinocchio grumbled in a dark closet:
- What a stupid girl... There was a teacher, just think... At the very
porcelain head, body stuffed with cotton...
A thin creaking sound was heard in the closet, as if someone was grinding small
teeth:
- Listen, listen...
He raised his ink-stained nose and in the darkness made out a
bat upside down from the ceiling.
- What do you need?
- Wait until night, Pinocchio.
“Hush, hush,” the spiders rustled in the corners, “don’t shake our nets, don’t
scare away our flies...
Pinocchio sat down on the broken pot and rested his cheek. He was in trouble and
worse than this, but I was outraged by the injustice.
- Is this how children are raised?.. This is torment, not education... So
don’t sit and eat like that... The child may not have mastered the ABC book yet,” she
he immediately grabs the inkwell... And the dog is probably chasing birds, -
nothing to him...
The bat squeaked again:
- Wait until night, Pinocchio, I’ll take you to the Land of Fools, they’re waiting there
your friends are the cat and the fox, happiness and fun. Wait for the night.
BURATINO ENTERS THE COUNTRY OF FOOLS
A girl with blue hair walked to the closet door.
- Pinocchio, my friend, are you finally repenting?
He was very angry, and besides, he had something completely different on his mind.
- I really need to repent! Can't wait...
- Then you will have to sit in the closet until the morning...
The girl sighed bitterly and left.
Night has come. The owl laughed in the attic. The toad crawled out of the underground
to splash your belly on the reflections of the moon in the puddles.
The girl went to bed in a lace crib and sobbed sadly for a long time as she fell asleep.
Artemon, with his nose buried under his tail, slept at the door of her bedroom.
In the house the pendulum clock struck midnight.
A bat fell from the ceiling.
- It's time, Pinocchio, run! - she squeaked in his ear. - In the corner of the closet there is
rat's passage underground... I'm waiting for you on the lawn.
She flew out the dormer window. Pinocchio rushed to the corner of the closet, getting confused
in spider networks. Spiders hissed angrily after him.
He crawled like a rat underground. The move was getting narrower and narrower. Pinocchio
now he could barely squeeze under the ground... And suddenly he flew headfirst into
underground.
There he almost fell into a rat trap, stepped on the tail of a snake, just
drank milk from a jug in the dining room, and jumped out through the cat hole
onto the lawn.
A mouse flew silently over the azure flowers.
- Follow me, Pinocchio, to the Land of Fools!
Bats do not have a tail, so the mouse does not fly straight, like birds,
and up and down - on membranous wings, up and down, like a little devil; her mouth is always open, so that without wasting time, she catches along the way,
bite, swallow alive mosquitoes and moths.
Pinocchio ran after her neck-deep in the grass; wet porridge lashed him
cheeks.
Suddenly the mouse rushed high towards the round moon and from there shouted to someone:
- Brought!
Pinocchio immediately flew head over heels down the steep cliff. Rolled
rolled and splashed into the burdocks.
Scratched, his mouth full of sand, he sat down with wide eyes.
- Wow!..
In front of him stood the cat Basilio and the fox Alice.
“Brave, brave Pinocchio must have fallen from the moon,”
said the fox.
“It’s strange how he remained alive,” the cat said gloomily.
Pinocchio was delighted with his old acquaintances, although it seemed suspicious to him that the cat had his right paw bandaged with a rag, and the fox had his entire tail
stained with swamp mud.
“Every cloud has a silver lining,” said the fox, “but you ended up in the Land of Fools...
And she pointed with her paw to a broken bridge over a dry stream. According to that
On the side of the stream, among heaps of garbage, one could see dilapidated houses, stunted trees with broken branches and bell towers, lopsided in different directions.
sides...
— This city sells the famous hare fur jackets for dad.
Carlo,” the fox sang, licking its lips, “the alphabet with painted pictures...
Oh, the sweet pies and lollipops they sell! You
I haven’t lost your money yet, wonderful Pinocchio?
Fox Alice helped him to his feet; After thinking about it, I cleaned his paw
jacket and led her across the broken bridge. Basilio the cat hobbled sullenly behind.
It was already the middle of the night, but no one was sleeping in the City of Fools.
Skinny dogs in burrs wandered along the crooked, dirty street, yawning from hunger:
- Eh-he-he...
Goats with tattered hair on their sides nibbled the dusty grass near the sidewalk, shaking stubs of their tails.
- B-e-e-e-yes...
The cow stood with her head hanging; her bones were sticking out through her skin.
“Muu-teaching...” she repeated thoughtfully.
Plucked sparrows sat on mounds of mud; they did not fly away, even though
crush them with your feet...
Chickens with their tails torn out were staggering from exhaustion...
But at the intersections, fierce bulldog policemen stood at attention in
triangular hats and spiky collars.
They shouted at the hungry and mangy inhabitants:
- Come on in! Keep it right! Don't delay!..
The fox dragged Pinocchio further down the street. They saw people walking under the moon
along the sidewalk of well-fed cats in gold glasses, arm in arm with cats in caps.
The fat Fox, the governor of this city, was walking, raising his nose importantly, and
nim - a arrogant fox holding a night violet flower in her paw.
Fox Alice whispered:
— Those who sowed money on the Field of Miracles are walking... Today is the last
night when you can sow. By morning you will have collected a lot of money and bought all kinds of
stuff... Let's go quickly.
The fox and the cat led Pinocchio to a vacant lot where broken pots were lying,
torn shoes, holey galoshes and rags... Interrupting each other, they started babbling:
- Dig a hole.
- Put the gold ones.
- Sprinkle with salt.
- Scoop it out of the puddle, water it well.
- Don’t forget to say “crex, fex, pex”...
Pinocchio scratched his nose, stained with ink.
- But you still go away...
- My God, we don’t even want to look where you’ll bury the money! - said the fox.
- God forbid! - said the cat.
They walked away a little and hid behind a pile of rubbish.
Pinocchio dug a hole. Said three times in a whisper: “Cracks, fex, pex”
put four gold coins in the hole, fell asleep, took a pinch out of his pocket
salt, sprinkled on top. He took a handful of water from the puddle and poured it on it.
And he sat down to wait for the tree to grow...
THE POLICE OFFICERS GRAB BURATINO AND DON'T ALLOW HIM TO SAY A SINGLE WORD IN
YOUR JUSTIFICATION
Fox Alice thought that Pinocchio would go to bed, but he still sat on the garbage heap, patiently stretching out his nose.
Then Alice told the cat to stay on guard, and she ran to the nearest police station.
There, in a smoky room, at a table dripping with ink, the bulldog on duty was snoring thickly.
The fox said to him in her most well-meaning voice:
- Mister courageous duty officer, is it possible to detain one homeless thief? A terrible danger threatens all the rich and respectable.
to the small citizens of this city.
The half-awake bulldog on duty barked so loudly that out of fear there was a puddle under the fox.
- Warrrishka! Gum!
The fox explained that the dangerous thief Pinocchio had been discovered in a vacant lot.
The duty officer, still growling, called. Two Doberman pinschers rushed in,
detectives who never slept, trusted no one, and even suspected themselves of criminal intentions.
The duty officer ordered them to deliver the dangerous criminal, dead or alive.
to the department.
The detectives answered briefly:
- Tyaf!
And they rushed to the wasteland at a special cunning gallop, raising their hind legs
sideways
They crawled on their bellies for the last hundred steps and immediately rushed at Pinocchio, grabbed him under the arms and dragged him to the department. Pinocchio was swinging his legs, begging him to say - for what? for what? The detectives replied:
- They'll figure it out there...
The fox and the cat wasted no time in digging up four gold coins. Fox
she began to divide the money so cleverly that the cat ended up with one coin, she
- three.
The cat silently grabbed her face with his claws.
The fox wrapped her paws tightly around him. And they both rode around for a while
in a ball across the wasteland. Cat and fox fur flew in clumps in the moonlight.
Having skinned each other's sides, they divided the coins equally and that same night
fled the city.
Meanwhile, the detectives brought Buratino to the department.
The bulldog on duty got out from behind the table and searched his pockets himself.
Having found nothing but a lump of sugar and crumbs of almond cake, the duty officer began to snore bloodthirstyly at Pinocchio:
- You have committed three crimes, scoundrel: you are homeless, without a passport and unemployed. Take him out of town and drown him in a pond.
The detectives replied:
- Tyaf!
Pinocchio tried to tell about dad Carlo, about his adventures. All
in vain! The detectives picked him up and galloped him out of town and off the bridge.
thrown into a deep muddy pond full of frogs, leeches and water beetle larvae.
Pinocchio splashed into the water, and the green duckweed closed over him.
BURATINO MEETS THE POND INHABITANTS, LEARNS ABOUT THE MISSING OF FOUR GOLD COINS AND RECEIVES A GOLDEN KEY FROM THE TURTLE TORTILA
We must not forget that Pinocchio was made of wood and therefore could not drown. Yet he was so frightened that he lay on the water for a long time, covered in green duckweed.
The inhabitants of the pond gathered around him: everyone is known for their stupidity
black pot-bellied tadpoles, water beetles with hind legs similar to
oars, leeches, larvae that ate everything they came across, even
themselves, and, finally, various small ciliates.
The tadpoles tickled him with their hard lips and chewed with pleasure.
tassel on the cap. Leeches crawled into my jacket pocket. One water beetle
several times he climbed onto its nose, which stuck high out of the water, and from there threw himself into the water - like a swallow.
Small ciliates, wriggling and hastily trembling with hairs that replaced
they tried to pick up something edible, but they themselves ended up in the mouth of the water beetle larvae.
Pinocchio finally got tired of this, he splashed his heels in the water:
- Let's go away! I'm not your dead cat.
The inhabitants ran away in all directions. He turned over on his stomach and swam.
Large-mouthed frogs sat on the round leaves of water lilies under the moon, looking at Pinocchio with bulging eyes.
“Some cuttlefish is swimming,” one croaked.
“The nose is like a stork,” another croaked.
“This is a sea frog,” croaked the third.
Pinocchio, in order to rest, climbed out onto a large leaf of a water lily. sat down
on it, grabbed his knees tightly and said, chattering his teeth:
- All the boys and girls have drunk milk, sleep in warm beds,
I'm sitting alone on a wet leaf... Give me something to eat, frogs.
Frogs are known to be very cold-blooded. But it is vain to think that
they have no heart. When Pinocchio, chattering his teeth, began to tell
about their unfortunate adventures, the frogs jumped up one after another,
flashed their hind legs and dived to the bottom of the pond.
They brought from there a dead beetle, a dragonfly wing, a piece of mud,
a grain of crayfish caviar and several rotten roots.
Having placed all these edible things in front of Pinocchio, the frogs again jumped onto the leaves of water lilies and sat like stones, raising their large mouths
heads with bulging eyes.
Pinocchio sniffed and tasted the frog treat.
“I vomited,” he said, “what disgusting!”
Then the frogs again all at once - splashed into the water...
The green duckweed on the surface of the pond swayed, and a large one appeared,
scary snake head. She swam to the leaf where Pinocchio was sitting.
The tassel on his cap stood on end. He almost fell into the water
because of fear.
But it was not a snake. It was not scary to anyone, an elderly turtle
Tortilla with blind eyes.
- Oh, you brainless, gullible boy with short thoughts! —
Tortila said. - You should stay at home and study diligently! You're carried away
to the Land of Fools!
- So I wanted to get more gold coins for Papa Carlo... I
a very good and sensible boy...
“The cat and the fox stole your money,” said the turtle. - They were running
passed a pond, stopped for a drink, and I heard them boast that
dug up your money, and how they fought over it... Oh, you brainless one,
gullible fool with short thoughts!..
“You shouldn’t swear,” Buratino grumbled, “here a man needs to be helped... What am I going to do now?” Oh-oh-oh!.. How will I get back to Papa Carlo?
Ah ah ah!..
He rubbed his eyes with his fists and whined so pitifully that the frogs suddenly all
sighed at once:
- Uh-uh... Tortilla, help the man.
The turtle looked at the moon for a long time, remembering something...
“Once I helped one person in the same way, and then he came from my
grandmother and my grandfather made tortoiseshell combs,” she said. AND
again looked at the moon for a long time. “Well, sit here, little man, and I’ll crawl along the bottom, maybe I’ll find one useful thing.”
She pulled in the snake's head and slowly sank under the water.
The frogs whispered:
— Tortila the turtle knows a great secret.
It's been a long, long time.
The moon was already setting behind the hills...
The green duckweed wavered again, and the turtle appeared, holding in its mouth
small golden key.
She put it on a leaf at Pinocchio's feet.
“A brainless, gullible fool with short thoughts,” said
Tortila, don’t worry that the fox and the cat stole your gold coins. I am giving
This key is for you. He was dropped to the bottom of a pond by a man with a beard so long that he put it in his pocket so that it would not interfere with his walk. Oh,
how he asked me to find this key at the bottom!..
Tortila sighed, paused, and again sighed so loudly that the water
bubbles...
“But I didn’t help him, I was very angry at the time with people because my grandmother and my grandfather were made into tortoiseshell combs.” The bearded man talked a lot about this key, but I forgot everything. I remember
only that you need to open some door for them and this will bring happiness...
Buratino's heart began to beat and his eyes lit up. He immediately forgot all his
misfortune. He pulled the leeches out of his jacket pocket, put the key there, politely thanked Tortila the turtle and the frogs, threw himself into the water and swam to
shore.
When he appeared as a black shadow on the edge of the shore, the frogs hooted.
after him:
- Pinocchio, don’t lose the key!
BURATINO ESCAPE FROM THE COUNTRY OF FOOLS AND MEETS A FRIEND IN MISTAKES
Tortila the Turtle did not indicate the way out of the Land of Fools.
Pinocchio ran wherever he could. The stars sparkled behind the black trees. Rocks hung over the road. There was a cloud of fog in the gorge.
Suddenly a gray lump jumped in front of Buratino. I heard it now
dog barking.
Buratino pressed himself against the rock. They rushed past him, sniffing fiercely
two police bulldogs from the City of Fools.
The gray lump darted from the road to the side - onto the slope. The Bulldogs are behind him.
When the stomping and barking had gone far away, Pinocchio began to run so fast that the stars quickly floated behind the black branches.
Suddenly the gray lump crossed the road again. Pinocchio managed to see that it was a hare, and a pale little man was sitting astride it, holding it by the ears.
Pebbles fell from the slope - the bulldogs jumped after the hare
road, and everything was quiet again.
Pinocchio ran so fast that the stars now rushed behind him like crazy.
black branches.
For the third time the gray hare crossed the road. Little man touching
with his head behind a branch, fell off his back and plopped down right at Pinocchio’s feet.
- Rrr-guff! Hold him! - the police galloped after the hare
bulldogs: their eyes were so filled with anger that they did not notice either Pinocchio,
not a pale man.
- Goodbye, Malvina, goodbye forever! — the little man squeaked in a whiny voice.
Buratino bent over him and was surprised to see that it was Pierrot
in a white shirt with long sleeves.
He lay head down in the wheel furrow and, obviously, considered himself already
dead and squeaked the mysterious phrase: “Farewell, Malvina, goodbye forever!”, parting with life.
Pinocchio began to bother him, pulled his leg, but Pierrot did not move.
Then Pinocchio found a leech that had fallen into his pocket and put it to
the nose of a lifeless man.
Without thinking twice, the leech grabbed his nose. Pierrot quickly sat down and shook his
head, tore off the leech and groaned:
- Oh, I’m still alive, it turns out!
Pinocchio grabbed his cheeks, white as tooth powder, kissed him,
asked:
- How did you get here? Why did you ride astride a gray hare?
“Pinocchio, Pinocchio,” Pierrot answered, looking around fearfully, “hide it.”
me quickly... After all, the dogs weren’t chasing a gray hare, they were chasing
behind me... Signor Karabas Barabas pursues me day and night. He hired
in the City of Fools police dogs and vowed to capture me alive or
dead.
In the distance the dogs began to bark again. Pinocchio grabbed Pierrot by the sleeve and dragged him
him in a thicket of mimosa, covered with flowers in the form of round yellow fragrant pimples.
There, lying on rotten leaves. Pierrot began to tell him in a whisper:
- You see, Pinocchio, one night the wind was noisy, it was raining like...
buckets...
PIERO TELLS HOW HE, RIDING A HARE, GOT INTO THE COUNTRY
FOOLS
- You see, Pinocchio, one night the wind was noisy, it was raining like...
buckets. Signor Karabas Barabas sat near the fireplace and smoked a pipe. All the dolls were already asleep. I was the only one who didn't sleep. I thought about the girl with blue hair...
- I found someone to think about, what a fool! - Buratino interrupted. - I ran away from this girl last night - from the closet with spiders...
- How? Have you seen the girl with blue hair? Have you seen my Malvina?
- Just think - unheard of! Crybaby and pestered...
Pierrot jumped up, waving his arms.
- Lead me to her... If you help me find Malvina, I will
I will reveal the secret of the golden key...
- How! - Buratino shouted joyfully. - Do you know the secret of the golden key?
- I know where the key is, how to get it, I know what they need to open
one door... I overheard the secret, and that’s why Signor Karabas Barabas is looking for me with police dogs.
Pinocchio really wanted to boast right away that the mysterious
the key is in his pocket. In order not to let it slip, he pulled the cap off his head and stuffed it into his mouth.
Piero begged to be taken to Malvina. Pinocchio, using his fingers, explained to this fool that it was dark and dangerous now, but when it dawned -
they will run to the girl.
Having forced Pierrot to hide again under the mimosa bushes, Pinocchio said
in a woolly voice, since his mouth was covered with a cap:
- Checker live...
“So,” one night the wind rustled...
- You’ve already made jokes about this...
“So,” continued Pierrot, “you know, I’m not sleeping and suddenly I hear:
someone knocked loudly on the window.
Signor Karabas Barabas grumbled:
- Who brought it in such dog weather?
“It’s me, Duremar,” they answered outside the window, “a seller of medicinal leeches.”
Let me dry myself by the fire.
You know, I really wanted to see what kind of sellers there are
medicinal leeches. I slowly pulled back the corner of the curtain and stuck my head in
room. And - I see:
Signor Karabas Barabas rose from his chair and stepped, as always, on
beard, swore and opened the door.
A long, wet, wet man came in with a small, small face, as wrinkled as a morel mushroom. He was wearing an old green coat,
There were tongs, hooks and pins dangling from his belt. In his hands he held a tin can and a net.
“If your stomach hurts,” he said, bowing as if his back
was broken in the middle - if you have a severe headache or knocking
ears, I can put half a dozen excellent leeches behind your ears.
Signor Karabas Barabas grumbled:
- To hell with the devil, no leeches! You can dry yourself by the fire for as long as you like
will fit.
Duremar stood with his back to the hearth.
Now his green coat gave off steam and smelled of mud.
“The trade in leeches is going badly,” he said again. “For a piece of cold pork and a glass of wine, I’m ready to put a dozen of the most beautiful leeches on your thigh, if you have broken bones...”
- To hell with the devil, no leeches! - shouted Karabas Barabas. —
Eat pork and drink wine.
Duremar began to eat pork, his face contracted and stretched,
like rubber. After eating and drinking, he asked for a pinch of tobacco.
“Sir, I’m full and warm,” he said. - To repay your hospitality, I will tell you a secret.
Signor Karabas Barabas puffed on his pipe and answered:
“There is only one secret in the world that I want to know.” For all os-
I spat and sneezed.
“Signor,” Duremar said again, “I know a great secret, it was reported by
I have a turtle tortilla.
At these words, Karabas Barabas widened his eyes, jumped up, got entangled in
beard, flew straight at the frightened Duremar, pressed him to his stomach and roared like a bull:
- Dearest Duremar, most precious Duremar, speak, speak quickly,
What did Tortila the turtle tell you?
Then Duremar told him the following story:
“I was catching leeches in a dirty pond near the City of Fools. For four
I hired one poor man a day - he undressed, went into the pond up to his neck and stood there until they stuck to his naked body
leeches.
Then he went ashore, I collected leeches from him and again sent
him into the pond.
When we had caught a sufficient quantity in this way, suddenly out of the water
a snake's head appeared.
“Listen, Duremar,” said the head, “you scared the whole population.”
our beautiful pond, you are muddying the water, you are not allowing me to rest peacefully after breakfast... When will this disgrace end?..
I saw that it was an ordinary turtle, and, not at all afraid, I answered:
- Until I catch all the leeches in your dirty puddle...
“I’m ready to pay you off, Duremar, so that you leave our
pond and never came again.
“Then I began to mock the turtle:
- Oh, you old floating suitcase, stupid aunt Tortila, what can you do?
buy me off? Is it with your bone lid, where you hide your paws and
head... I would sell your lid for scallops...
The turtle turned green with anger and said to me:
“There’s a magic key at the bottom of the pond... I know one person,” he
I’m ready to do everything in the world to get this key...”
Before Duremar had time to utter these words, Karabas Barabas screamed
what to eat:
- This person is me! I! I! Dear Duremar, why don’t you
Did you take the key from the Turtle?
- Here's another! - Duremar answered and wrinkled his whole face, so that it
it looked like a boiled morel. - Here's another! - exchange the best
leeches on some key... In short, we quarreled with the turtle,
and she, raising her paw from the water, said:
“I swear, neither you nor anyone else will receive the magic key.” I swear - only the person who will force the entire population of the pond will receive it.
ask me about this...
With its paw raised, the turtle plunged into the water.”
- Without wasting a second, run to the Land of Fools! - shouted Karabas Barabas, hastily putting the end of his beard into his pocket, grabbing his hat and lantern. —
I will sit on the shore of the pond. I will smile tenderly. I'll beg the frogs
tadpoles, water beetles, so that they ask for a turtle... I promise them
one and a half million of the fattest flies... I will cry like a lonely cow,
moan like a sick chicken, cry like a crocodile. I'll get down on my knees
in front of the smallest frog... I must have the key! I go to
city, I will enter a house, I will enter the room under the stairs... I will find
a small door - everyone walks past it, and no one notices it. I'll stick it in
key in the keyhole...
“At this time, you know, Pinocchio,” said Pierrot, sitting under a mimosa on rotten leaves, “I became so interested that I leaned out all over.”
from behind the curtain.
Signor Karabas Barabas saw me.
- You're eavesdropping, scoundrel! - And he rushed to grab me and
throw it into the fire, but again got tangled in his beard and, with a terrible crash, overturning chairs, stretched out on the floor.
I don’t remember how I ended up outside the window, how I climbed over the fence. In that
At the same time, the wind was noisy and the rain was lashing.
Over my head, a black cloud was illuminated by lightning, and ten steps behind I saw Karabas Barabas and the leech seller running... I thought:
“Died”, tripped, fell on something soft and warm, grabbed someone’s
ears…
It was a gray hare. He squealed in fear and jumped high, but I
I held him tightly by the ears, and we galloped in the dark through fields, vineyards, and vegetable gardens.
When the hare got tired and sat down, chewing resentfully with his forked lip, I kissed his forehead.
- Well, please, let’s jump a little more, little gray one...
The hare sighed, and again we rushed unknown somewhere to the right, then to the left...
When the clouds cleared and the moon rose, I saw a small town under the mountain with bell towers leaning in different directions.
Karabas Barabas and the leech seller were running along the road to the city.
The hare said:
- Ehe-he, here it is, hare happiness! They go to the City of Fools to
hire police dogs. Done, we're gone!
The hare lost heart. He buried his nose in his paws and hung his ears.
I asked, I cried, I even bowed at his feet. The hare did not move.
But when two snub-nosed bulldogs with black
with bandages on his right paws, the hare trembled finely all over his skin - I barely had time to jump on top of him, and he gave a desperate run through the forest...
You saw the rest yourself, Pinocchio.
Pierrot finished the story, and Pinocchio asked him carefully:
- In which house, in which room under the stairs is there a door that is unlocked by a key?
- Karabas Barabas didn’t have time to tell us about this... Oh, isn’t that all we need?
anyway, there is a key at the bottom of the lake... We will never see happiness...
- Did you see this? - Buratino shouted into his ear. And, pulling it out of my pocket
key, turned it in front of Pierrot's nose. - Here he is!
PINOCOCIO AND PIERO COME TO MALVINA, BUT THEY NOW HAVE TO ESCAPE WITH MALVINA AND THE Poodle ARTEMON
When the sun rose over the rocky mountain peak, Pinocchio and
Pierrot crawled out from under a bush and ran across the field where yesterday
at night a bat took Pinocchio away from the house of a girl with blue hair
Country of Fools.
It was funny to look at Pierrot - so he was in a hurry to see
Malvina.
“Listen,” he asked every fifteen seconds, “Pinocchio, will she be happy with me?”
- How do I know...
Fifteen seconds later again:
- Listen, Pinocchio, what if she’s not happy?
- How do I know...
Finally they saw a white house with sun painted on the shutters,
moon and stars.
Smoke rose from the chimney. Above it floated a small cloud that looked like
on a cat's head.
The poodle Artemon sat on the porch and growled at this cloud from time to time.
Pinocchio didn't really want to return to the girl with blue hair -
mi. But he was hungry and from afar he smelled the smell of boiled milk.
“If the girl decides to raise us again, we’ll drink milk,” and
There's no way I'm staying here.
At this time Malvina left the house. In one hand she held a porcelain coffee pot, in the other a basket of cookies.
Her eyes were still tear-stained - she was sure that the rats
They stole Pinocchio from the closet and ate it.
As soon as she sat down at the doll's table on the sandy path, the azure
the flowers swayed, the butterflies rose above them, like white and yellow
leaves, and Pinocchio and Pierrot appeared.
Malvina opened her eyes so wide that both wooden boys could
I wish I could jump there freely.
Pierrot, at the sight of Malvina, began to mutter words - so incoherent and
It's stupid that we don't list them here.
Buratino said as if nothing had happened:
- So I brought him, educate him...
Malvina finally realized that this was not a dream.
- Oh, what happiness! “she whispered, but immediately added in an adult voice: “Boys, go wash and brush your teeth immediately.” Artemon, take the boys to the well.
“You saw,” Buratino grumbled, “she has a quirk in her head - to wash herself,
brush your teeth! It will bring purity to anyone from the world...
Still, they washed themselves. Artemon used a brush at the end of his tail to clean them
jackets...
We sat at the table. Pinocchio stuffed food into both cheeks. Pierrot didn't even take a bite of the cake; he looked at Malvina as if she were made of almond dough. She finally got tired of it.
“Well,” she told him, “what did you see on my face?” Please have your breakfast calmly.
“Malvina,” Pierrot answered, “I haven’t eaten anything for a long time, I’m composing.”
poetry…
Pinocchio shook with laughter.
Malvina was surprised and opened her eyes wide again.
- In that case, read your poems.
She rested her pretty hand on her cheek and raised her pretty eyes to the cloud that looked like a cat's head.
Pierrot began to read poems with such a howl, as if he was sitting on the bottom
deep well:
Malvina fled to foreign lands,
Malvina is missing, my bride...
I’m sobbing, I don’t know where to go...
Isn't it better to part with the doll's life?
Before Pierrot had time to read, before Malvina had time to praise the poems that she really liked, a toad appeared on the sandy path.
Her eyes bulging terribly, she said:
—Tonight, the maddened turtle Tortila told Karabas
Barabas is all about the golden key...
Malvina screamed in fear, although she did not understand anything. Pierrot, absent-minded like all poets, uttered several stupid exclamations that
we do not present it here. But Pinocchio immediately jumped up and began to thrust it into
pockets of cookies, sugar and candy.
- Let's run as quickly as possible. If the police dogs bring Karabas Barabas here, we are dead.
Malvina turned pale, like the wing of a white butterfly. Pierrot, thinking that she
dying, he knocked over the coffee pot on her, and Malvina’s pretty dress turned out to be covered in cocoa.
Artemon jumped up with a loud bark - and he had to wash
Malvina’s dresses,” grabbed Pierrot by the collar and began to shake him until
Pierrot did not speak, stuttering:
- Enough, please...
The toad looked at this fuss with bulging eyes and said again:
- Karabas Barabas with police dogs will be here in a quarter
hours.
Malvina ran to change clothes. Pierrot desperately wrung his hands and even tried to throw himself backwards onto the sandy path. Artemon was dragging bundles from
household things. Doors slammed. The sparrows chattered desperately on the bush.
Swallows flew over the very ground. Owl to increase panic wildly
laughed in the attic.
Only Pinocchio was not at a loss. He loaded Artemon with two bundles with the most necessary things. They put Malvina on the knots, dressed in pretty clothes.
travel dress. He told Pierrot to hold on to the dog's tail. I myself became
ahead:
- No panic! Let's run!
When they, that is, Pinocchio, courageously walking ahead of the dog,
Malvina, bouncing on knots, and behind Pierrot, stuffed instead
common sense in silly verses - when they emerged from the thick grass onto
smooth field,” the scraggly beard of Karabas Barabas poked out of the forest. He shielded his eyes from the sun with his palm and looked around the surroundings.
A TERRIBLE BATTLE AT THE EDGE OF THE FOREST
Signor Karabas kept two police dogs on a leash. Seeing on
In the flat field of fugitives, he opened his toothy mouth.
- Yeah! - he shouted and released the dogs.
The ferocious dogs first began to throw the earth with their hind paws. They don't even
they growled, they even looked in the other direction, and not at the fugitives - they were so proud of their strength.
Then the dogs slowly walked to the place where Pinocchio, Artemon, Pierrot and Malvina stopped in horror.
Everything seemed to have died. Karabas Barabas walked clumsily after the police dogs. His beard constantly crawled out of his jacket pocket and got tangled under his feet.
Artemon tucked his tail and growled angrily. Malvina shook her hands:
- I'm afraid, I'm afraid!
Pierrot lowered his sleeves and looked at Malvina, sure that it was all over.
Buratino was the first to come to his senses.
“Pierrot,” he shouted, “take the girl by the hand, run to the lake, where
swans!.. Artemon, throw off the bales, take off your watch, you will fight!..
Malvina, as soon as she heard this courageous order, jumped off Artemon and, picking up her dress, ran to the lake. Pierrot is behind her.
Artemon threw off the bales, took off the watch from his paw and the bow from the tip of his tail. He bared his white teeth and jumped to the left, jumped to the right, straightening his muscles, and
He also began to kick the ground with his hind legs.
Pinocchio climbed the resinous trunk to the top of the Italian pine,
standing alone on the field, and from there he shouted, howled, squealed at the top of his lungs:
- Animals, birds, insects! They're beating our people! Save the innocent
wooden men!..
The police bulldogs seemed to have just now seen Artemon and at once
rushed at him. The nimble poodle dodged and bit one dog by the
a stub of a tail, another by the thigh.
The bulldogs turned awkwardly and rushed at the poodle again. He's high
jumped up, letting them pass under him, and again managed to rip off one side,
to the other - the back.
The bulldogs rushed at him for the third time. Then Artemon, lowering his tail
on the grass, rushed in circles across the field, then letting the police get close
dogs, then rushing to the side right in front of their noses...
The snub-nosed bulldogs were now really angry, sniffling and running
after Artemon slowly, stubbornly, ready to die rather than get to
the throat of a fussy poodle.
Meanwhile, Karabas Barabas approached the Italian pine tree, grabbed
the trunk and began to shake:
- Get off, get off!
Pinocchio grabbed onto the branch with his hands, feet, and teeth. Karabas Barabas
shook the tree so that all the cones on the branches swayed.
On Italian pine, the cones are prickly and heavy, the size of a small
melon. To get hit on the head with such a bump is so oh-oh!
Pinocchio could barely hold on to the swaying branch. He saw that Artemon had already
sticks out his tongue with a red rag and jumps more and more slowly.
- Give me the key! - shouted Karabas Barabas, opening his mouth.
Pinocchio crawled along the branch, got to a hefty cone and began to move
biting the stem on which it hung. Karabas Barabas shook
stronger, and a heavy lump flew down - bang! - right in the tooth
mouth
Karabas Barabas even sat down.
Pinocchio tore off the second lump, and it - bang! — Karabas Barabas directly
into the crown, like into a drum.
- They're beating our people! - Buratino shouted again. - To the aid of innocent wooden men!
The swifts were the first to fly to the rescue - they began to cut hair with a low-level flight
air in front of the bulldogs' noses.
The dogs clicked their teeth in vain, - the swift is not a fly: like gray lightning -
F-zhik past the nose!
From a cloud that looked like a cat's head, a black kite fell - the one
usually brought Malvina game; he dug his claws into the policewoman's back
dog, soared on magnificent wings, picked up the dog and released him...
The dog, squealing, flopped up with his paws.
Artemon ran into another dog from the side, hit him with his chest, knocked him down,
bit, jumped back...
And again they rushed across the field around the lonely pine Artemon and followed it
crumpled and bitten police dogs.
Toads came to help Artemon. They were dragging two snakes, blind from old age.
grow. The snakes still had to die - either under a rotten stump, or in
a heron's stomach. The toads persuaded them to die a heroic death.
Noble Artemon now decided to engage in open battle.
He sat on his tail and bared his fangs.
The bulldogs ran at him, and all three of them rolled into a ball.
Artemon clicked his jaws and tore with his claws. Bulldogs not paying attention
for bites and scratches, they were waiting for one thing: to get to Artemon’s throat - with a death grip. Squeals and howls were heard throughout the entire field.
A family of hedgehogs came to Artemon’s aid: the hedgehog himself, the hedgehog’s wife, the hedgehog’s mother-in-law, two
Yezhov's unmarried aunts and little hedgehogs.
Thick black-velvet bumblebees in golden cloaks flew and hummed and hissed
wings of ferocious hornets. Ground beetles and biting beetles with long antennae crawled.
All animals, birds and insects selflessly attacked the hated
police dogs.
Hedgehog, hedgehog, hedgehog's mother-in-law, two unmarried aunts and little cubs
curled up into a ball and hit the needles at the speed of a croquet ball
bulldogs in the face.
Bumblebees and hornets stung them with poisoned stings. Serious ants slowly climbed into the nostrils and released poisonous formic acid there.
Ground beetles and beetles bit my navel.
The kite pecked first one dog, then another with its crooked beak in the skull.
Butterflies and flies crowded in a dense cloud before their eyes, obscuring
light.
The toads kept two snakes at the ready, ready to die a heroic death.
And so, when one of the bulldogs opened his mouth wide to sneeze
poisonous formic acid, the old blind man rushed head first into him
throat and screwed into the esophagus. The same thing happened with another bulldog:
the second blind man had already rushed into his mouth. Both dogs, punctured, pitied,
scratched, gasping for breath, they began to roll helplessly on the ground. Noble Artemon emerged victorious from the battle.
Meanwhile, Karabas Barabas finally pulled out the prickly
bump.
The blow to the top of his head made his eyes bulge. Staggering, he again
grabbed the trunk of an Italian pine tree. The wind blew his beard.
Pinocchio noticed, sitting at the very top, that the end of Karabas's beard
Barabasa, lifted by the wind, stuck to the resinous trunk.
Pinocchio hung on a branch and, teasingly, squeaked:
- Uncle, you won’t catch up, uncle, you won’t catch up!..
He jumped to the ground and began to run around the pine trees. Karabas-Barabas, stretching out his hands to grab the boy, ran after him, staggering, around the tree.
He ran around once, almost, it seemed, and grabbed the fleeing boy with his gnarled fingers, ran around another, ran around a third time... His beard was wrapped around the trunk, tightly glued to the resin.
When the beard ended and Karabas Barabas rested his nose against the tree, Pinocchio showed him a long tongue and ran to Swan Lake to look for
Malvina and Pierrot. Battered Artemon on three legs, tucking the fourth,
hobbled after him at a lame dog trot.
Two police dogs remained on the field, for whose lives, apparently,
it was impossible to give even a dead dry fly, and the confused doctor of puppet sciences, Signor Karabas Barabas, his beard tightly glued to the Italian pine.
Malvina and Pierrot were sitting on a damp, warm hummock in the reeds. on top of them
covered by a cobweb network, littered with dragonfly wings and sucked mosquitoes.
Little blue birds, flying from reed to reed, with a cheerful
They looked in amazement at the bitterly crying girl.
Desperate screams and squeals were heard from afar - it was Artemon and Buratino,
Obviously, they sold their lives dearly.
- I'm afraid, I'm afraid! - repeated Malvina and a burdock leaf in despair
covered her wet face.
Pierrot tried to console her with poetry:
We're sitting on a hill
Where flowers grow
Yellow, pleasant,
Very fragrant.
We'll live all summer
We are on this hummock,
Ah, in solitude,
To everyone's surprise...
Malvina stamped her feet on him:
- I'm tired of you, tired of you, boy! Pick a fresh burdock, you see
- this one is all wet and full of holes.
Suddenly the noise and squealing in the distance died down. Malvina slowly clasped her hands:
- Artemon and Pinocchio died...
And she threw herself face first onto a hummock, into the green moss.
Pierrot stomped around her stupidly. The wind quietly whistled through the panicles of reeds. Finally footsteps were heard. Undoubtedly, it was Karabas Bara-
bass to roughly grab and shove Malvina and
Pierrot. The reeds parted, and Pinocchio appeared: his nose was erect, his mouth was
ears. Behind him limped the tattered Artemon, laden with two bales...
- They also wanted to fight with me! - said Pinocchio, not paying attention to the joy of Malvina and Pierrot. - What is a cat to me, what is a fox to me, what is to me
police dogs are like Karabas Barabas to me - ugh! Girl, climb on the dog, boy, hold on to the tail. Went…
And he courageously walked over the hummocks, pushing aside the reeds with his elbows - all around
lakes on the other side...
Malvina and Pierrot did not even dare to ask him how the fight with the police dogs ended and why Karabas Barabas was not pursuing them.
When they reached the other side of the lake, noble Artemon began to whine and limp on all his legs. I had to stop to bandage
his wounds. Under the huge roots of a pine tree growing on a rocky hillock,
saw a cave. They dragged the bales there, and Artemon crawled in there too. Noble
The dog first licked each paw, then handed it to Malvina.
Pinocchio tore Malvinin's old shirt for bandages, Pierrot held them,
Malvina was bandaging her paws.
After the dressing, Artemon was given a thermometer, and the dog calmly fell asleep.
Buratino said:
- Pierrot, go to the lake, bring water.
Pierrot obediently trudged along, muttering poetry and stumbling, losing the lid on the way as soon as he brought water from the bottom of the kettle.
Buratino said:
- Malvina, fly down and gather some branches for the fire.
Malvina looked reproachfully at Pinocchio, shrugged her shoulder, and brought several dry stalks.
Buratino said:
- This is the punishment with these well-mannered...
He himself brought water, he himself collected branches and pine cones, he himself lit a fire at the entrance to the cave, so noisy that the branches on a tall pine tree swayed... He himself cooked cocoa in the water.
- Alive! Sit down to breakfast...
Malvina was silent all this time, pursing her lips. But now she said
very firmly, in an adult voice:
- Don’t think, Pinocchio, that if you fought with dogs and won,
saved us from Karabas Barabas and subsequently behaved courageously, then
This saves you from having to wash your hands and brush your teeth before
food...
Pinocchio sat down: - Here you go! — he bulged his eyes at the girl with an iron character.
Malvina came out of the cave and clapped her hands:
- Butterflies, caterpillars, beetles, toads...
Not a minute passed - large butterflies flew in, stained with flower
pollen. Caterpillars and sullen dung beetles crawled in. Toads slapped on their stomachs...
Butterflies, sighing with their wings, sat on the walls of the cave so that inside there would be
beautifully and the crumbled earth did not end up in the food.
The dung beetles rolled all the debris on the cave floor into balls and threw them away.
A fat white caterpillar crawled onto Pinocchio's head and, hanging from his
nose, squeezed some paste onto his teeth. Like it or not, I had to
clean.
Another caterpillar cleaned Pierrot's teeth.
A sleepy badger appeared, looking like a shaggy pig... He took
paw of brown caterpillars, squeezed brown paste out of them onto shoes and
with his tail he perfectly cleaned all three pairs of shoes - those of Malvina, Buratino and
Pierrot. After cleaning, he yawned:
- Ahaha. - and waddled away.
A fussy, motley, cheerful hoopoe with a red crest flew in,
stood on end when he was surprised by something.
-Who should I comb?
“Me,” said Malvina. - Curl and comb your hair, I’m disheveled...
-Where is the mirror? Listen, darling...
Then the bug-eyed toads said:
- We'll bring...
Ten toads splashed with their bellies towards the lake. Instead of a mirror they dragged
a mirror carp, so fat and sleepy that it didn’t care where it was dragged under its fins. The carp was placed on the tail in front of Malvina.
To prevent him from suffocating, water was poured into his mouth from a kettle. Fussy hoopoe
curled and combed Malvina's hair. Carefully took one of the butterflies from the wall and
I powdered the girl's nose with it.
- Ready, darling...
Fffrr! - flew out of the cave in a motley ball.
The toads dragged the mirror carp back into the lake. Pinocchio and Pierrot -
Whether you like it or not, you washed your hands and even your neck. Malvina allowed me to sit down
breakfast.
After breakfast, brushing the crumbs off her knees, she said:
- Pinocchio, my friend, last time we stopped at dictation. Let's continue the lesson...
Pinocchio wanted to jump out of the cave - wherever his eyes were looking. But
It was impossible to abandon helpless comrades and a sick dog! He grumbled:
- They didn’t take writing materials...
“It’s not true, they took it,” Artemon groaned. He crawled to the knot, untied it with his teeth and pulled out a bottle of ink, a pencil case, a notebook and even a small
globe.
- Do not hold the insert frantically and too close to the pen, otherwise you will
“You’ll get ink on your fingers,” said Malvina. Raised the pretty ones
eyes to the ceiling of the cave at the butterflies and...
At this time, the crunching of branches and rude voices were heard - past the cave
passed by the seller of medicinal leeches, Duremar, and Karabas Barabas, dragging his feet.
There was a huge bump on the forehead of the puppet theater director, his nose
swollen, beard in tatters and smeared with resin.
Groaning and spitting, he said:
“They couldn’t run far.” They are somewhere here in the forest.
DESPITE ANYTHING, PINOCOCARIO DECIDES TO FIND OUT THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN KEY FROM KARABASS BARABASA
Karabas Barabas and Duremar slowly walked past the cave.
During the battle on the plain, the seller of medicinal leeches sat in fear
bush. When it was all over, he waited until Artemon and Buratino
hide in the thick grass, and then only with great difficulty did he tear off
from the trunk of an Italian pine tree the beard of Karabas Barabas.
- Well, the boy got you off! - said Duremar. - You'll have to
put two dozen of the best leeches to the back of your head...
Karabas Barabas roared:
- A hundred thousand devils! Quickly in pursuit of the scoundrels!..
Karabas Barabas and Duremar followed in the footsteps of the fugitives. They pushed apart
the grass with our hands, examined every bush, searched every hummock.
They saw the smoke of a fire at the roots of an old pine tree, but they never thought
it came that wooden men were hiding in this cave and also lit
bonfire.
“I’ll cut this scoundrel Pinocchio into pieces with a penknife!” - Karabas Barabas grumbled.
The fugitives hid in a cave.
So what's now? Run? But Artemon, all bandaged, tightly
slept. The dog had to sleep twenty-four hours for the wounds to heal.
Is it really possible to leave a noble dog alone in a cave?
No, no, to be saved - so all together, to perish - so all together...
Pinocchio, Pierrot and Malvina in the depths of the cave, with their noses buried, for a long time
consulted. We decided to wait here until the morning and disguise the entrance to the cave.
branches and for a speedy recovery, give Artemon a nutritious
enema. Buratino said:
- I still want to find out from Karabas Barabas at all costs,
where is the door that the golden key opens? Stored behind the door
something wonderful, amazing... And it should bring us
happiness.
“I’m afraid to be left without you, I’m afraid,” Malvina moaned.
- What do you need Pierrot for?
- Oh, he only reads poems...
“I will protect Malvina like a lion,” Pierrot said in a hoarse voice, like the way large predators speak, “you don’t know me yet...
- Well done Pierrot, it would have been like this a long time ago!
And Buratino started to run in the footsteps of Karabas Barabas and Duremar.
He soon saw them. The director of the puppet theater sat on the shore
stream, Duremar put a compress of horse sorrel leaves on his bump.
From afar one could hear the ferocious rumbling in the empty stomach of Karabas Barabas and the boring squeaking in the empty stomach of the seller of medicinal leeches.
“Signor, we need to refresh ourselves,” said Duremar, “the search
scoundrels can drag on until late at night.
“I would eat a whole piglet and a couple of ducks right now,” Karabas Barabas answered gloomily.
The friends wandered to the Three Minnows tavern - its sign was visible on
hillock. But sooner than Karabas Barabas and Duremar, Pinocchio rushed there, bending down to the grass so as not to be noticed.
Near the door of the tavern, Pinocchio crept up to a large rooster, who,
Having found a grain or piece of chicken intestine, he proudly shook it in red
comb, shuffled his claws and anxiously called the chickens for a treat:
- Ko-ko-ko!
Pinocchio handed him crumbs of almond cake on his palm:
- Help yourself, Signor Commander-in-Chief.
The rooster looked sternly at the wooden boy, but could not resist
pecked him in the palm.
- Ko-ko-ko!..
- Signor Commander-in-Chief, I would need to go to the tavern, but so,
so that the owner doesn't notice me. I will hide behind your magnificent multi-colored tail, and you will lead me to the very hearth. OK?
- Ko-ko! - the rooster said even more proudly.
He didn’t understand anything, but in order not to show that he didn’t understand anything, it’s important
went to the open door of the tavern. Buratino grabbed him by the sides under his wings, covered himself with his tail and squatted his way into the kitchen, to the very
hearth, where the bald owner of the tavern was bustling about, turning spits on the fire and
frying pans
- Go away, you old broth meat! - the owner shouted at the rooster and
He kicked so hard that the rooster went cluck-dah-dah-dah! - With a desperate cry, he flew out into the street to the frightened chickens.
Pinocchio, unnoticed, slipped past the owner's feet and sat down behind a large
clay jug.
At this time, the voices of Karabas Barabas and Duremar were heard.
The owner, bowing low, came out to meet them.
Pinocchio climbed inside the clay jug and hid there.
Pinocchio LEARNS THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN KEY
Karabas Barabas and Duremar refreshed themselves with roasted pig. Master
poured wine into glasses.
Karabas Barabas, sucking a pig's leg, said to the owner:
“Your wine is rubbish, pour me some from that jug!”
- And he pointed with the bone at the jug where Pinocchio was sitting.
“Sir, this jug is empty,” answered the owner.
- You're lying, show me.
Then the owner lifted the jug and turned it over. Pinocchio with all his might
rested his elbows on the sides of the jug so as not to fall out.
“Something is turning black there,” Karabas Barabas wheezed.
“There’s something white there,” Duremar confirmed.
“Sirs, there’s a boil on my tongue, a shot in my lower back—the jug is empty!”
- In that case, put it on the table - we will throw dice there.
The jug where Pinocchio sat was placed between the director of the puppet theater and the seller of medicinal leeches. Gnawed bones and crusts fell on Pinocchio's head.
Karabas Barabas, having drunk a lot of wine, held his beard to the fire of the hearth so that the adhering tar would drip from it.
“I’ll put Pinocchio in my palm,” he said boastfully, “with my other palm.”
I’ll slam it down and it will leave a wet spot.
“The scoundrel fully deserves it,” confirmed Duremar, “but first it would be good to put leeches on him so that they suck out all the blood...”
- No! - Karabas Barabas pounded his fist. - First I'll take it from him.
Golden Key…
The owner intervened in the conversation - he already knew about the flight of the wooden men.
- Signor, you don’t need to tire yourself out searching. Now I'll call two
quick guys - while you are refreshed with wine, they will quickly search
the whole forest and they will drag Pinocchio here.
- OK. “Send the guys,” said Karabas Barabas, putting him near the fire
huge soles. And since he was already drunk, he sang a song at the top of his lungs:
My people are strange
Stupid, wooden.
Puppet lord
This is who I am, come on...
Terrible Karabas,
Glorious Barabas...
Dolls in front of me
They spread like grass.
If only you were a beauty
I have a whip
Whip of seven tails,
Whip of seven tails.
I'll just threaten you with a whip
My people are meek
Sings songs
Collects money
In my big pocket
In my big pocket...
Then Buratino said in a howling voice from the depths of the jug: -
Reveal the secret, wretch, reveal the secret!..
Karabas Barabas loudly snapped his jaws in surprise and bulged
on Duremar.
- It's you?
- No, it's not me…
- Who told me to reveal the secret?
Duremar was superstitious; besides, he also drank a lot of wine. face
he turned blue and wrinkled with fear, like a morel mushroom. Looking at him and
Karabas Barabas chattered his teeth.
“Reveal the secret,” the mysterious voice howled again from the depths of the jug,
- otherwise you won’t get off this chair, you unfortunate thing!
Karabas Barabas tried to jump up, but he couldn’t even get up.
- What kind of ta-ta-secret? - he asked stuttering.
The voice answered:
— The secret of Tortila the turtle.
Out of horror, Duremar slowly crawled under the table. Karabas Barabas's jaw dropped.
-Where is the door, where is the door? - like the wind in a chimney
autumn night, a voice howled...
- I’ll answer, I’ll answer, shut up, shut up! - Karabas whispered to Barabas. —
The door is in old Carlo’s closet, behind the painted fireplace...
As soon as he said these words, the owner came in from the yard.
- These are reliable guys, for money they will bring you even the devil for money, sir...
And he pointed to the fox Alice and the cat Basilio standing on the threshold. The fox respectfully took off her old hat:
- Signor Karabas Barabas will give us ten gold coins for poverty, and we will deliver the scoundrel Pinocchio into your hands without leaving this place.
Karabas Barabas reached under his beard into his vest pocket and took out ten gold pieces.
- Here’s the money, where’s Pinocchio?
The fox counted the coins several times, sighed, giving half
to the cat, and pointed with her paw:
- It’s in this jug, sir, right under your nose...
Karabas Barabas grabbed a jug from the table and furiously threw it on the stone floor. Pinocchio jumped out of the fragments and a pile of gnawed bones. Bye
everyone stood with their mouths open, he, like an arrow, rushed from the tavern into the yard -
straight to the rooster, who proudly looked first with one eye and then with the other
dead worm.
- It was you who betrayed me, you old cutlet! - Stretching out his nose ferociously,
Pinocchio told him. - Well, now hit as hard as you can...
And he grabbed his general's tail tightly. Rooster, don't understand anything
May, spread his wings and began to run on his long legs. Pinocchio -
in the whirlwind - behind him - downhill, across the road, across the field, towards the forest.
Karabas Barabas, Duremar and the owner of the tavern finally came to their senses from
surprised and ran out after Pinocchio. But no matter how much they looked around,
he was nowhere to be seen, only in the distance a rooster was clapping wildly across the field. But since everyone knew that he was a fool, this rooster
no one paid attention.
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HER LIFE, BURATINO COMES TO DESPAIR, BUT EVERYTHING ENDS
SAFELY
The stupid rooster was exhausted, he could barely run with his beak open. Pinocchio let go
finally his rumpled tail.
- Go, general, to your chickens...
And one went to where Swan Lake shone brightly through the foliage.
Here is a pine tree on a rocky hill, here is a cave. Scattered around
broken branches. The grass is crushed by wheel tracks.
Buratino's heart began to beat desperately. He jumped down from the hill and looked
under the gnarled roots...
The cave was empty!!!
Neither Malvina, nor Pierrot, nor Artemon.
There were only two rags lying around. He picked them up - they were torn sleeves from Pierrot's shirt.
Friends have been kidnapped by someone! They died! Pinocchio fell face down - his nose
stuck deep into the ground.
He only now realized how dear his friends were to him. Let Malvina take care of her upbringing, let Pierrot read poems at least a thousand times in a row, -
Pinocchio would even give a golden key to see his friends again.
A loose mound of earth silently rose near his head, a velvet mole with pink palms crawled out, sneezed three times squeakily and said:
- I'm blind, but I hear perfectly. A cart pulled by
sheep. The Fox, the governor of the City of Fools, and the detectives sat in it. Governor
ordered:
- Take the scoundrels who beat my best policemen in the line of duty! Take! The detectives replied:
- Tyaf!
They rushed into the cave, and a desperate fuss began there. Your friends were tied up, thrown into a cart along with the bundles, and left.
What good was it to lie with your nose stuck in the ground! Pinocchio jumped up and
ran along the tracks of the wheels. I went around the lake and came out into a field with thick grass.
He walked and walked... He didn't have any plan in his head. We need to save our comrades, that’s all. I reached the cliff where the night before last I fell into
burdocks. Below I saw a dirty pond where Tortila the turtle lived. On the way to
a cart was going down to the pond; she was dragged by two sheep, thin as skeletons, with
stripped wool.
On the box sat a fat cat, with puffy cheeks, wearing gold glasses - he
served under the governor as a secret whisperer in the ear. Behind him is important
Fox, governor... Malvina, Pierrot and all bandaged lay on the bundles
Artemon, his combed tail always dragged like a brush through the dust.
Behind the cart walked two detectives - Doberman pinschers.
Suddenly the detectives raised their dog muzzles and saw a white
Pinocchio cap.
With strong jumps, the pinschers began to climb the steep slope. But
before they galloped to the top, Pinocchio, - and he’s nowhere to go
to hide, not to run away, - folded his hands above his head and - like a swallow - from the very
from a steep place he rushed down into a dirty pond covered with green duckweed.
He described a curve in the air and, of course, would have landed in a pond under protection
Aunt Tortila, if not for a strong gust of wind.
The wind picked up a light wooden Pinocchio, whirled and twirled
he was thrown to the side with a “double corkscrew”, and, falling, he plopped straight
into the cart, onto the head of Governor Fox.
A fat cat in gold glasses fell from the box in surprise, and so
Because he was a scoundrel and a coward, he pretended to faint.
Governor Fox, also a desperate coward, rushed to run away along the slope with a squeal and immediately climbed into a badger hole. He had a hard time there: the badgers deal harshly with such guests.
The sheep shied away, the cart overturned, Malvina, Pierrot and Artemon
together with the bundles they rolled into the burdocks.
All this happened so quickly that you, dear readers, would not have had time
count all the fingers on your hand.
The Doberman pinschers rushed down the cliff with huge leaps. Jumping up to the overturned cart, they saw a fat cat fainting. Seen in
burdocks of lying wooden men and a bandaged poodle.
But Governor Lys was nowhere to be seen.
He disappeared, as if someone whom detectives must protect like the apple of their eye had fallen through the ground.
The first detective, raising his muzzle, let out a dog-like cry of despair.
The second detective did the same:
- Ay, ah, ah, ah-oo-oo!..
They rushed and searched the entire slope. They howled sadly again, because
that they were already imagining the whip and the iron bars.
Humiliatingly wagging their butts, they ran to the City of Fools to lie to
the police department, like a governor; was taken to heaven alive, so
On the way they came up with something to justify themselves. Pinocchio slowly felt
myself - my legs and arms were intact. He crawled into the burdocks and freed himself from the ropes
Malvina and Pierrot.
Malvina, without saying a word, grabbed Pinocchio by the neck, but could not kiss him - his long nose got in the way.
Pierrot's sleeves were torn off up to the elbows, white powder fell off his cheeks,
and it turned out that his cheeks were ordinary - rosy, despite his love of poetry.
“I fought great,” he said in a rough voice. - If only they didn't give me
tripping me - there’s no way they’d take me.
Malvina confirmed: “He fought like a lion.”
She grabbed Pierrot by the neck and kissed him on both cheeks.
“Enough, enough licking,” Buratino grumbled, “let’s run.” We'll drag Artemon by the tail.
All three of them grabbed the tail of the unfortunate dog and dragged it along
slope up.
“Let me go, I’ll go myself, I feel so humiliating,” moaned the bandaged
poodle.
- No, no, you are too weak.
But as soon as they climbed halfway up the slope, Karabas Barabas and Duremar appeared at the top. Alice the fox pointed at the fugitives with her paw, Basilio the cat bristled his mustache and hissed disgustingly.
- Ha-ha-ha, so clever! - Karabas Barabas laughed. - The gold itself
The key is in my hands!
Pinocchio hastily figured out how to get out of this new trouble. Pierrot
He hugged Malvina to himself, intending to sell his life dearly. Not this time
there was no hope of salvation.
Duremar chuckled at the top of the slope.
- Give me your sick poodle dog, Signor Karabas Barabas, I will
I’ll throw it into the pond for the leeches so that my leeches will get fat...
Fat Karabas Barabas was too lazy to go down, he beckoned the fugitives with his finger like a sausage:
- Come, come to me, children...
- Don `t move! - Buratino ordered. - Dying is so much fun! Pierrot,
say some of your nastiest poems. Malvina, laugh out loud
throat...
Malvina, despite some shortcomings, was a good friend.
She wiped away her tears and laughed, very offensively for those who stood at the top
slope.
Pierrot immediately composed poetry and howled in an unpleasant voice:
I feel sorry for Alice the Fox
A stick cries for her.
Basilio the beggar cat
Thief, vile cat.
Duremar, our fool,
The ugliest morel.
Karabas you are Barabas,
We are not very afraid of you...
At the same time, Pinocchio grimaced and teased:
- Hey you, director of the puppet theater, old beer keg, fat
a bag full of stupidity, come down, come down to us - I’ll spit in you
tattered beard!
In response, Karabas Barabas growled terribly, Duremar raised his skinny hands to
sky.
Fox Alice smiled wryly:
- Do you allow me to break the necks of these impudent people?
Another minute and everything would have been over... Suddenly they rushed with a whistle
swifts:
- Here, here, here!..
A magpie flew over the head of Karabas Barabas, chattering loudly:
- Hurry, hurry, hurry!..
And at the top of the slope old dad Carlo appeared. He had sleeves
rolled up, a gnarled stick in his hand, eyebrows furrowed...
He pushed Karabas Barabas with his shoulder, Duremar with his elbow, pulled the fox Alice across the back with his baton, and threw Basilio the cat with his boot...
After that, bending down and looking down from the slope where the wooden men stood, he said joyfully:
- My son, Pinocchio, you rogue, you are alive and well, go quickly to
to me!
BURATINO FINALLY RETURN HOME WITH DADDY CARLO, MALVINA,
PIERO AND ARTEMON
The unexpected appearance of Carlo, his baton and frowning eyebrows
horror at scoundrels.
Alice the fox crawled into the thick grass and there she gave a run, sometimes only
pausing to wince after being hit with a baton. Basilio the cat, having flown ten steps away, hissed with anger like a punctured bicycle tire.
Duremar picked up the flaps of his green coat and climbed down the slope, repeating:
- I have nothing to do with it, I have nothing to do with it...
But on a steep place it fell off and rolled with a terrible noise and splash.
splashed into the pond.
Karabas Barabas remained standing where he stood. He just pulled his entire head up to his shoulders; his beard hung like tow.
Pinocchio, Pierrot and Malvina climbed up. Papa Carlo took them one by one in his arms and shook his finger:
- Here I am, you spoiled ones!
And put it in his bosom.
Then he went down a few steps from the slope and crouched over the unfortunate dog. Faithful Artemon raised his muzzle and licked Carlo on the nose. Pinocchio immediately poked his head out from his bosom:
— Papa Carlo, we won’t go home without a dog.
“Eh-heh-heh,” answered Carlo, “it will be hard, but somehow.”
I'll bring your dog.
He lifted Artemon onto his shoulder and, panting from the heavy load, climbed up, where, still with his head drawn in and his eyes bulging, stood Karabas Barabas. “My dolls...” he grumbled.
Papa Carlo answered him sternly:
- Oh you! Whom did I get in touch with in my old age—those known to the whole world?
swindlers, with Duremar, with a cat, with a fox. You hurt the little ones! Ashamed,
doctor! And Carlo walked along the road to the city. Karabas Barabas followed him with his head drawn in. - My dolls, give them back!.. - Don’t give them back at all! —
Buratino screamed, sticking out from his bosom.
So they walked and walked. We passed the Three Minnows tavern, where the bald owner was bowing at the door, pointing with both hands to the sizzling frying pans.
Near the door, a rooster with its tail torn out walked back and forth, back and forth, and indignantly talked about Pinocchio’s hooligan act.
The chickens sympathetically agreed:
- Ah-ah, what fear! Wow, our rooster!..
Carlo climbed a hill from where he could see the sea, covered here and there with matte stripes from the breeze, and near the shore there was an old sandy town
colors under the sultry sun and the canvas roof of the puppet theater.
Karabas Barabas, standing three steps behind Carlo, grumbled:
“I’ll give you a hundred gold coins for the doll, sell it.”
Pinocchio, Malvina and Pierrot stopped breathing - they were waiting for what Carlo would say.
He replied:
- No! If you were a kind, good theater director, I would tell you
so be it, I gave away the little people. And you are worse than any crocodile.
I won't give it away or sell it, get out.
Carlo went down the hill and, no longer paying attention to Karabas
Barabas, entered the town.
There, in the empty square, a policeman stood motionless.
From the heat and boredom his mustache drooped, his eyelids stuck together, over the triangular
flies circled with his hat.
Karabas Barabas suddenly put his beard in his pocket and grabbed Carlo from behind
shirt and shouted across the entire square:
- Stop the thief, he stole my dolls!..
But the policeman, who was hot and bored, didn’t even move.
Karabas Barabas jumped up to him, demanding that Carlo be arrested.
- And who are you? - the policeman asked lazily.
- I am a doctor of puppet science, director of the famous theater, holder of the highest orders, the closest friend of the Tarabar King, Signor Karabas Bara-
bass…
“Don’t yell at me,” the policeman replied.
While Karabas Barabas was arguing with him, Papa Carlo, hastily knocking
with a stick on the pavement slabs, he approached the house where he lived. He unlocked the door to the darkened closet under the stairs, took Artemon off his shoulder, laid him on the bed,
from his bosom he took out Pinocchio, Malvina and Pierrot and sat them side by side on
table.
Malvina immediately said:
- Papa Carlo, first of all take care of the sick dog. Boys, wash yourself immediately...
Suddenly she clasped her hands in despair:
- And my dresses! My brand new shoes, my pretty ribbons were left at the bottom of the ravine, in the burdocks!..
“It’s okay, don’t worry,” said Carlo, “in the evening I’ll go and bring your
nodes.
He carefully unbandaged Artemon's paws. It turned out that the wounds were almost
had already healed and the dog could not move only because it was hungry.
“A plate of oatmeal and a bone with a brain,” moaned Artemon, “and I’m ready to fight all the dogs in the city.”
“Ah-ah-ah,” Carlo lamented, “but I don’t have a crumb at home, and not a soldo in my pocket...”
Malvina sobbed pitifully. Pierrot rubbed his forehead with his fist, thinking.
“I’ll go out into the street to read poetry, passers-by will give me a lot of soldi.”
Carlo shook his head:
“And you’ll spend the night, son, for vagrancy at the police station.”
Everyone except Pinocchio became despondent. He smiled slyly, twirled around like that,
as if he was sitting not on the table, but on an upside-down button.
- Guys, stop whining! — He jumped to the floor and pulled out something
from the pocket. - Papa Carlo, take a hammer and separate the holey canvas from the wall.
And he pointed with his nose in the air to the hearth, and to the pot over the hearth, and to
smoke painted on a piece of old canvas.
Carlo was surprised:
“Why, son, do you want to rip such a beautiful picture off the wall?”
In winter, I look at it and imagine that it is a real fire and in
real lamb stew with garlic in the pot, and I feel a little
warmer.
- Papa Carlo, I give my puppet my word of honor, you will have a real one.
fire in the hearth, a real cast-iron pot and hot stew. Rip off
canvas.
Pinocchio said this so confidently that Papa Carlo scratched his head,
shook his head, grunted, grunted, took the pliers and hammer and began
tear off the canvas. Behind him, as we already know, everything was covered in cobwebs and
There were dead spiders hanging.
Carlo carefully swept away the cobwebs. Then a small door became visible
made of darkened oak. There were carvings of laughing people on the four corners.
faces, and in the middle - a dancing man with a long nose.
When the dust was dusted off, Malvina, Piero, Papa Carlo, even hungry Artemon exclaimed in one voice:
- This is a portrait of Buratino himself!
“That’s what I thought,” said Buratino, although he didn’t think anything like that and
I was surprised myself. - And here is the key to the door. Papa Carlo, open...
“This door and this golden key,” said Carlo, “were made
a very long time ago by some skilled craftsman. Let's see what's hidden behind the door.
He put the key in the keyhole and turned... There was a black voice -
What a very pleasant music, as if an organ was playing in a music box...
Papa Carlo pushed the door. With a creak, it began to open.
At this time, hurried steps were heard outside the window, and the voice of Karabas Barabas roared:
- In the name of the Tarabar King, arrest the old rogue Carlo!
KARABAS BARABAS BREAKS INTO THE CLOSET UNDER THE STAIRS
Karabas Barabas, as we know, tried in vain to persuade the sleepy policeman to arrest Carlo. Having achieved nothing, Karabas Barabas ran down the street.
His flowing beard clung to the buttons and umbrellas of passers-by.
He pushed and clanked his teeth. The boys whistled shrilly after him and threw rotten apples at his back.
Karabas Barabas ran to the mayor of the city. At this hot hour, the boss was sitting in the garden, near the fountain, in his shorts and drinking lemonade.
The chief had six chins, his nose was buried in rosy cheeks.
Behind him, under the linden tree, four gloomy policemen kept uncorking bottles of lemonade.
Karabas Barabas threw himself on his knees in front of the boss and, smearing tears across his face with his beard, screamed:
“I’m an unfortunate orphan, I was offended, robbed, beaten...
- Who offended you, orphan? - the boss asked, puffing.
- My worst enemy, the old organ grinder Carlo. He stole three of my most
the best dolls, he wants to burn down my famous theater, he will set fire and rob
the whole city, if he is not arrested now.
To reinforce his words, Karabas Barabas pulled out a handful of gold coins and put them in the boss’s shoe.
In short, he spun and lied so much that the frightened boss
ordered four policemen under the linden tree:
- Follow the venerable orphan and do everything necessary in the name of the law.
Karabas Barabas ran with four policemen to Carlo’s closet and
shouted:
- In the name of the King of Gibberish, arrest the thief and scoundrel!
But the doors were closed. No one responded in the closet. Karabas Barabas
ordered:
- In the name of the Gibberish King, break down the door!
The police pressed, the rotten halves of the doors broke off their hinges, and four brave policemen, rattling their sabers, fell into the closet with a roar
under the stairs.
It was at that very moment when Carlo was leaving through the secret door in the wall, bending over.
He was the last to escape. The door—Tink!..—slammed shut. Quiet music
stopped playing. There were only dirty bandages lying in the closet under the stairs.
and a torn canvas with a painted hearth...
Karabas Barabas jumped to the secret door and pounded on it with his fists
and heels:
Tra-ta-ta-ta!
But the door was strong.
Karabas Barabas ran up and hit the door with his back.
The door didn't budge.
He stomped on the police:
- Break down the damned door in the name of the Gibberish King!..
The police felt each other - some had a mark on their nose, some had a bump.
on the head.
“No, the work here is very hard,” they answered and went to the head of the city to tell him that they had done everything according to the law, but to the old organ grinder,
Apparently the devil himself is helping, because he went through the wall.
Karabas Barabas pulled his beard, fell to the floor and began to roar, howl and roll around like mad in the empty closet under the stairs.
WHAT THEY FOUND BEHIND THE SECRET DOOR
While Karabas Barabas was rolling around like mad and tearing out his beard, Pinocchio was in front, and behind him were Malvina, Pierrot, Artemon and - last - dad
Carlo went down the steep stone stairs into the dungeon.
Papa Carlo was holding a candle stub. Its wavering light was thrown away from
Artemon's shaggy head or from Pierrot's outstretched hand large shadows,
but could not illuminate the darkness into which the stairs descended.
Malvina, in order not to cry out of fear, pinched her ears.
Pierrot, as always, neither to the village nor to the city, muttered rhymes:
Shadows dance on the wall -
I'm not afraid of anything.
Let the stairs be steep
Let the darkness be dangerous,
Still an underground route
Will lead somewhere...
Pinocchio was ahead of his comrades - his white cap was barely visible deep below.
Suddenly something hissed there, fell, rolled, and his plaintive voice could be heard
voice:
- Come to my aid!
Instantly Artemon, forgetting his wounds and hunger, knocked over Malvina and Pierrot,
rushed down the steps like a black whirlwind.
His teeth chattered. Some creature screeched vilely.
Everything was quiet. Only at Malvina’s house it was beating loudly, like an alarm clock.
heart.
A wide beam of light from below hit the stairs. The light of a candle that
held by dad Carlo, turned yellow.
- Look, look quickly! - Buratino called loudly.
Malvina, backwards, hurriedly began to climb down from step to step, Pierrot jumped after her. Carlo was the last to go down, bending down, and then
case of losing wooden shoes.
Below, where the steep staircase ended, sat on a stone platform
Artemon. He was licking his lips. At his feet lay the strangled rat Shushara.
Buratino lifted the decayed felt with both hands; it covered the hole in the stone wall. Blue light poured from there.
The first thing they saw when they crawled through the hole was the diverging rays of the sun. They fell from the vaulted ceiling through the round window.
Wide beams with dust particles dancing in them illuminated a round room made of
yellowish marble. In the middle of it stood a wonderfully beautiful puppet theater.
A golden zigzag of lightning glittered on its curtain.
From the sides of the curtain rose two square towers, painted so
as if they were made of small bricks. High roofs made of green
the tins shone brightly.
On the left tower there was a clock with bronze hands. On the dial against
Each number has the laughing faces of a boy and a girl.
On the right tower there is a round window made of multi-colored glass.
Above this window, on a roof made of green tin, sat the Talking Cricket.
When everyone stopped with their mouths open in front of the wonderful theater, the cricket said slowly and clearly:
“I warned you that terrible dangers and terrible adventures await you, Pinocchio.” It’s good that everything ended well, but it could have ended unfavorably... So...
The cricket's voice was old and slightly offended, because the speaker
At one time, the cricket was still hit on the head with a hammer and, despite
hundred years of age and natural kindness, he could not forget the undeserved
grievances. That's why he didn't add anything else, he twitched his antennae as if
brushing the dust off them, and slowly crawled somewhere into a lonely crevice - further away
from the bustle.
Then Papa Carlo said:
“I thought we’d at least find a bunch of gold and silver here, but all we found was an old toy.”
He went up to the clock built into the turret, tapped his fingernail on the dial, and since there was a key hanging on a copper nail on the side of the clock, he took it and
started the clock...
There was a loud ticking sound. The arrows moved. The big arrow has come
by twelve, the little one by six. There was a hum and hiss inside the tower. The clock struck six...
Immediately, a window of multi-colored glass opened on the right tower, a colorful motley bird jumped out and, fluttering its wings, sang six times:
- To us - to us, to us - to us, to us - to us...
The bird disappeared, the window slammed shut, and organ-organ music began to play. AND
curtain rose…
No one, not even Papa Carlo, had ever seen such a beautiful scenery.
There was a garden on the stage. On little trees with gold and silver
clockwork starlings the size of a fingernail sang through the leaves. On one tree hung apples, each of them no larger than a buckwheat grain. Peacocks walked under the trees and, rising on tiptoe, pecked at apples. Two little goats were jumping and butting heads on the lawn, and butterflies were flying in the air, barely
noticeable to the eye.
A minute passed like that. The starlings fell silent, the peacocks and kids retreated behind
side scenes. Trees fell into secret hatches under the stage floor.
The tulle clouds began to disperse from the backdrop. It seemed
red sun over the sandy desert. Right and left, from the side scenes,
branches of vines were thrown out, looking like snakes - on one of them there actually hung
boa snake On another, a family swayed, clutching their tails
monkeys
This was Africa.
Animals walked along the desert sand under the red sun.
In three leaps a maned lion rushed by - although he was no more than a kitten, he was terrible.
A teddy bear with an umbrella waddled along on its hind legs.
A disgusting crocodile crawled along - his small, crappy eyes pretended to be kind. But still Artemon did not believe it and growled at him.
A rhinoceros galloped along; for safety, a rubber ball was placed on its sharp horn.
A giraffe, looking like a striped, horned camel, ran as fast as it could
the strength of stretching his neck.
Then came an elephant, a friend of the children, smart, good-natured, waving its trunk in which it held soy candy.
The last to trot sideways was a terribly dirty wild jackal dog. Artemon rushed at her, barking, and Papa Carlo barely managed to pull him away by the
tail from the stage.
The animals have passed. The sun suddenly went out. In the dark, let some things down -
came from above, some things moved from the sides. There was a sound like
ran the bow along the strings.
Frosted street lights flashed. On the stage was a city square.
The doors to the houses opened, little people ran out and climbed into the toy tram. The conductor rang the bell, the driver turned the handle,
the boy quickly clung to the sausage, the policeman whistled - the tram
rolled into a side street between tall buildings.
A cyclist passed by on wheels - no bigger than a jam saucer.
A newspaperman ran by - four folded sheets of a tear-off calendar - here
how big were his newspapers?
The ice cream man rolled an ice cream cart across the site. On the balconies
girls ran out of the houses and waved at him, and the ice cream man spread his arms and said:
“We’ve eaten everything, come back another time.”
Then the curtain fell, and the golden zigzag of lightning shone on it again.
Papa Carlo, Malvina, Piero could not recover from admiration. Pinocchio, with his hands in his pockets and his nose in the air, said boastfully:
- Did you see what? So, it was not for nothing that I got wet in the swamp at Aunt Tortila’s...
In this theater we will stage a comedy - do you know what kind? - "Golden Key,
or The Extraordinary Adventures of Pinocchio and His Friends. Karabas Barabas
will burst out of frustration.
Pierrot rubbed his wrinkled forehead with his fists:
- I will write this comedy in luxurious verses.
“I will sell ice cream and tickets,” said Malvina. - If you
If you find my talent, I’ll try to play the roles of pretty girls...
- Wait, guys, when will we study? - asked Papa Carlo.
Everyone answered at once:
- We will study in the morning... And in the evening we will play in the theater...
“Well, that’s it, kids,” said Papa Carlo, “and I, kids, will
play the barrel organ for the amusement of the respectable public, and if we become
travel around Italy from city to city, I will ride a horse and cook
lamb stew with garlic...
Artemon listened, raising his ear, turning his head, looking with shining eyes.
at friends, asking: what should he do?
Buratino said:
- Artemon will be in charge of props and theatrical costumes, he
We'll give you the keys to the storage room. During the performance, he can act behind
in the wings the roar of a lion, the stomp of a rhinoceros, the creak of crocodile teeth, the howl
wind - through rapid twirling of the tail and other necessary sounds.
- Well, what about you, what about you, Pinocchio? - everyone asked. -Who do you want to be?
theater?
- Weirdos, in a comedy I will play myself and become famous throughout the world.
light!
NEW PUPPET THEATER GIVES FIRST PERFORMANCE
Karabas Barabas sat in front of the fire in a disgusting mood. Raw
the firewood was barely smoldering. It was raining outside. Leaky roof of the puppet theater
was leaking. The puppets' hands and feet were damp; no one wanted to
work, even under the threat of a seven-tailed whip. Dolls for the third day
They ate nothing and whispered ominously in the pantry, hanging from nails.
Not a single theater ticket had been sold since the morning. And who would go?
watch Karabas Barabas's boring plays and hungry, ragged actors!
The clock on the city tower struck six. Karabas Barabas walked gloomily
into the auditorium - empty.
“Damn all the respectable spectators,” he grumbled and left.
outside. Coming out, he looked, blinked and opened his mouth so that he could easily get there.
a crow might fly in.
Opposite his theater in front of a large new canvas tent stood
the crowd, not paying attention to the damp wind from the sea.
A long-nosed man in a cap stood on a platform above the entrance to the tent, blowing a hoarse trumpet and shouting something.
The audience laughed, clapped their hands, and many went inside the tent.
Duremar approached Karabas Barabas; he smelled like mud as never before.
“Eh-heh-heh,” he said, gathering his whole face into sour wrinkles, “nowhere.”
dealing with medicinal leeches. “I want to go to them,” Duremar pointed to the new tent, “I want to ask them to light candles or sweep the floor.”
- Whose damn theater is this? Where did he come from? - Karabas Barabas growled.
— It was the puppets themselves who opened the Molniya puppet theater, they themselves write
plays in verse, they play themselves.
Karabas Barabas gritted his teeth, pulled his beard and walked towards
new canvas tent. Above the entrance to it Buratino shouted:
— The first performance of an entertaining, exciting comedy from life
wooden men. The true story of how we defeated everyone
their enemies with the help of wit, courage and presence of mind...
At the entrance to the puppet theater, Malvina sat in a glass booth with a beautiful bow in her blue hair and did not have time to hand out tickets to those who wanted
watch a funny comedy from a puppet's life.
Papa Carlo, wearing a new velvet jacket, was twirling a barrel organ and cheerfully winking at the respectable audience.
Artemon was dragging the fox Alice, who passed without a ticket, by her tail from the tent.
The cat Basilio, also a stowaway, managed to escape and sat in the rain on a tree, looking down with feisty eyes.
Buratino, puffing out his cheeks, blew into a hoarse trumpet:
— The show begins.
And he ran down the stairs to play the first scene of the comedy, in which
was depicted as poor dad Carlo whittling a log of wood
little man, not expecting that it would bring him happiness.
Tortila the turtle was the last to crawl into the theater, holding an honorary medal in his mouth.
ticket on parchment paper with golden corners.
The performance has begun. Karabas Barabas gloomily returned to his empty
theater. He took the seven-tailed whip. He unlocked the door to the pantry.
“I’ll teach you brats not to be lazy!” - he growled fiercely. - I’ll teach you how to lure the public to me!
He cracked his whip. But no one answered. The pantry was empty. Only
Scraps of string hung from nails.
All the dolls - Harlequin, and girls in black masks, and sorcerers in pointed hats with stars, and hunchbacks with noses like cucumbers, and araps, and
dogs - all, all, all the dolls ran away from Karabas Barabas.
With a terrible howl, he jumped out of the theater into the street. He saw the last of his actors running away through the puddles into the new theater, where music was playing merrily, laughter and clapping were heard.
Karabas Barabas only managed to grab a paper dog with buttons
instead of eyes. But, out of nowhere, Artemon flew at him, knocked him down,
grabbed the dog and rushed off with it to the tent, where behind the scenes for the hungry
The actors were prepared with hot lamb stew with garlic.
Karabas Barabas remained sitting in a puddle in the rain.
The hero of the famous fairy tale by A.N. Tolstoy, the cheerful wooden boy Pinocchio, became the favorite of millions of readers of different generations.
I dedicate this book to Lyudmila Ilyinichna Tolstoy
Preface
When I was little - a long, long time ago - I read one book: it was called “Pinocchio, or the Adventures of a Wooden Doll” (wooden doll in Italian - Pinocchio).
I often told my comrades, girls and boys, the entertaining adventures of Pinocchio. But since the book was lost, I told it differently each time, inventing adventures that were not in the book at all.
Now, after many, many years, I remembered my old friend Pinocchio and decided to tell you, girls and boys, an extraordinary story about this wooden man.
Alexey Tolstoy
I find that of all the images of Pinocchio created by different artists, L. Vladimirsky’s Pinocchio is the most successful, the most attractive and most consistent with the image of the little hero A. Tolstoy.
Lyudmila Tolstaya
The carpenter Giuseppe came across a log that squeaked with a human voice.
A long time ago, in a town on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, there lived an old carpenter, Giuseppe, nicknamed Gray Nose.
One day he came across a log, an ordinary log for heating the hearth in the winter.
“It’s not a bad thing,” Giuseppe said to himself, “you can make something like a table leg out of it...”
Giuseppe put on glasses wrapped in string - since the glasses were also old - he turned the log in his hand and began to cut it with a hatchet.
But as soon as he began to cut, someone’s unusually thin voice squeaked:
- Oh-oh, quiet down, please!
Giuseppe pushed his glasses to the tip of his nose and began looking around the workshop - no one...
He looked under the workbench - no one...
He looked in the basket of shavings - no one...
He stuck his head out the door - no one was on the street...
“Did I really imagine it? – thought Giuseppe. “Who could be squeaking that?”
He again took the hatchet and again - he just hit the log...
- Oh, it hurts, I say! - howled a thin voice.
This time Giuseppe was seriously scared, his glasses even sweated... He looked at all the corners in the room, even climbed into the fireplace and, turning his head, looked into the chimney for a long time.
- There is no one...
“Maybe I drank something inappropriate and my ears are ringing?” - Giuseppe thought to himself...
No, today he didn’t drink anything inappropriate... Having calmed down a little, Giuseppe took the plane, hit the back of it with a hammer so that the blade came out just the right amount - not too much and not too little, put the log on the workbench - and just moved the shavings...
- Oh, oh, oh, oh, listen, why are you pinching? – a thin voice squealed desperately...
Giuseppe dropped the plane, backed away, backed up and sat down straight on the floor: he guessed that the thin voice was coming from inside the log.
Giuseppe gives a talking log to his friend Carlo
At this time, his old friend, an organ grinder named Carlo, came to see Giuseppe.
Once upon a time, Carlo, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, walked around the cities with a beautiful barrel organ and earned his living by singing and music.
Now Carlo was already old and sick, and his organ-organ had long since broken down.
“Hello, Giuseppe,” he said, entering the workshop. - Why are you sitting on the floor?
– And, you see, I lost a small screw... Fuck it! – Giuseppe answered and glanced sideways at the log. - Well, how are you living, old man?
“Bad,” Carlo replied. - I keep thinking - how can I earn my bread... If only you could help me, advise me, or something...
“What’s easier,” Giuseppe said cheerfully and thought to himself: “I’ll get rid of this damned log now.” “What’s simpler: you see an excellent log lying on the workbench, take this log, Carlo, and take it home...”
“Eh-heh-heh,” Carlo answered sadly, “what’s next?” I’ll bring home a piece of wood, but I don’t even have a fireplace in my closet.
- I’m telling you the truth, Carlo... Take a knife, cut a doll out of this log, teach it to say all sorts of funny words, sing and dance, and carry it around the yards. You'll earn enough to buy a piece of bread and a glass of wine.
At this time, on the workbench where the log lay, a cheerful voice squeaked:
- Bravo, great idea, Gray Nose!
Giuseppe again shook with fear, and Carlo only looked around in surprise - where did the voice come from?
- Well, thank you, Giuseppe, for your advice. Come on, let's have your log.
Then Giuseppe grabbed the log and quickly handed it to his friend. But either he awkwardly thrust it, or it jumped up and hit Carlo on the head.
- Oh, these are your gifts! – Carlo shouted offendedly.
“Sorry, buddy, I didn’t hit you.”
- So I hit myself on the head?
“No, buddy, the log itself must have hit you.”
- You're lying, you knocked...
- No, not me…
“I knew that you were a drunkard, Gray Nose,” said Carlo, “and you are also a liar.”
- Oh, you - swear! – Giuseppe shouted. - Come on, come closer!..
– Come closer yourself, I’ll grab you by the nose!..
Both old men pouted and started jumping at each other. Carlo grabbed Giuseppe's blue nose. Giuseppe grabbed Carlo by the gray hair that grew near his ears.
After that, they began to really tease each other under the mikitki. At this time, a shrill voice on the workbench squeaked and urged:
- Get out, get out of here!
Finally the old men were tired and out of breath. Giuseppe said:
- Let's make peace, shall we...
Carlo replied:
- Well, let's make peace...
The old people kissed. Carlo took the log under his arm and went home.
Carlo makes a wooden doll and names it Buratino
Carlo lived in a closet under the stairs, where he had nothing but a beautiful fireplace - in the wall opposite the door.
But the beautiful hearth, the fire in the hearth, and the pot boiling on the fire were not real - they were painted on a piece of old canvas.
Carlo entered the closet, sat down on the only chair at the legless table and, turning the log this way and that, began to cut a doll out of it with a knife.
“What should I call her? – Carlo thought. - Let me call her Pinocchio. This name will bring me happiness. I knew one family - all of them were called Buratino: the father was Buratino, the mother was Buratino, the children were also Buratino... They all lived cheerfully and carefree..."
First of all, he carved out hair on a log, then his forehead, then his eyes...
Suddenly the eyes opened on their own and stared at him...
Carlo didn’t show that he was scared, he just asked affectionately:
- Wooden eyes, why are you looking at me so strangely?
But the doll was silent - probably because it did not yet have a mouth. Carlo planed the cheeks, then planed the nose - an ordinary one...
Suddenly the nose itself began to stretch out and grow, and it turned out to be such a long, sharp nose that Carlo even grunted:
- Not good, long...
And he began to cut the tip of his nose. Not so!
The nose turned and twisted, and remained just that - a long, long, curious, sharp nose.
Carlo began to work on his mouth. But as soon as he managed to cut out his lips, his mouth immediately opened:
- Hee-hee-hee, ha-ha-ha!
And a narrow red tongue poked out of it, teasingly.
Carlo, no longer paying attention to these tricks, continued to plan, cut, pick. I made the doll’s chin, neck, shoulders, torso, arms...
But as soon as he finished whittling the last finger, Pinocchio began pounding Carlo’s bald head with his fists, pinching and tickling him.
“Listen,” said Carlo sternly, “after all, I haven’t finished tinkering with you yet, and you’ve already started playing around... What will happen next... Eh?
And he looked sternly at Buratino. And Buratino, with round eyes like a mouse, looked at Papa Carlo.
Carlo made him long legs with large feet from splinters. Having finished the work, he put the wooden boy on the floor to teach him to walk.
Pinocchio swayed, swayed on his thin legs, took one step, took another step, hop, hop - straight to the door, across the threshold and into the street.
Carlo, worried, followed him:
- Hey, little rogue, come back!..
Where there! Pinocchio ran down the street like a hare, only his wooden soles - tap-tap, tap-tap - tapped on the stones...
- Hold him! - Carlo shouted.
Passers-by laughed, pointing their fingers at the running Pinocchio. At the intersection stood a huge policeman with a curled mustache and a three-cornered hat.
Seeing the wooden man running, he spread his legs wide, blocking the entire street. Pinocchio wanted to jump between his legs, but the policeman grabbed him by the nose and held him there until Papa Carlo arrived in time...
“Well, just wait, I’ll deal with you already,” Carlo said, puffing away and wanted to put Pinocchio in his jacket pocket...
Buratino did not at all want to stick his legs up out of his jacket pocket on such a fun day in front of all the people - he deftly turned away, plopped down on the pavement and pretended to be dead...
“Oh, oh,” said the policeman, “things seem bad!”
Passers-by began to gather. Looking at the lying Pinocchio, they shook their heads.
“Poor thing,” they said, “must be hungry...
“Carlo beat him to death,” others said, “this old organ grinder is only pretending to be a good man, he is bad, he is an evil man...”
Hearing all this, the mustachioed policeman grabbed the unfortunate Carlo by the collar and dragged him to the police station.
Carlo dusted his shoes and moaned loudly:
- Oh, oh, to my grief I made a wooden boy!
When the street was empty, Buratino raised his nose, looked around and skipped home...
Having run into the closet under the stairs, Pinocchio plopped down on the floor near the leg of the chair.
- What else could you come up with?
We must not forget that Pinocchio was only one day old. His thoughts were small, small, short, short, trivial, trivial.
At this time I heard:
- Kri-kri, kri-kri, kri-kri.
Pinocchio turned his head, looking around the closet.
- Hey, who's here?
- Here I am, kri-kri...
Pinocchio saw a creature that looked a little like a cockroach, but with a head like a grasshopper. It sat on the wall above the fireplace and quietly crackled - kri-kri - looked with bulging, glass-like iridescent eyes, and moved its antennae.
- Hey, who are you?
“I am the Talking Cricket,” the creature answered, “I have been living in this room for more than a hundred years.”
“I’m the boss here, get out of here.”
“Okay, I’ll leave, although I’m sad to leave the room where I’ve lived for a hundred years,” answered the Talking Cricket, “but before I go, listen to some useful advice.”
– I really need the old cricket’s advice...
“Ah, Pinocchio, Pinocchio,” said the cricket, “stop self-indulgence, listen to Carlo, don’t run away from home without doing anything, and start going to school tomorrow.” Here's my advice. Otherwise, terrible dangers and terrible adventures await you. I won’t give even a dead dry fly for your life.
- Why? - asked Pinocchio.
“But you’ll see - a lot,” answered the Talking Cricket.
- Oh, you hundred-year-old cockroach bug! - Buratino shouted. “More than anything in the world, I love scary adventures.” Tomorrow, at first light, I’ll run away from home - climb fences, destroy birds’ nests, tease boys, pull dogs and cats by the tails... I can’t think of anything else yet!..
“I feel sorry for you, I’m sorry, Pinocchio, you will shed bitter tears.”
- Why? - Buratino asked again.
- Because you have a stupid wooden head.
Then Pinocchio jumped onto a chair, from the chair to the table, grabbed a hammer and threw it at the head of the Talking Cricket.
The old smart cricket sighed heavily, moved his whiskers and crawled behind the fireplace - forever from this room.
Pinocchio almost dies due to his own frivolity
Carlo's dad makes him clothes out of colored paper and buys him the alphabet
After the incident with the Talking Cricket, it became completely boring in the closet under the stairs. The day dragged on and on. Pinocchio's stomach was also a bit boring.
He closed his eyes and suddenly saw the fried chicken on the plate.
He quickly opened his eyes and the chicken on the plate had disappeared.
He closed his eyes again and saw a plate of semolina porridge mixed with raspberry jam.
I opened my eyes and there was no plate of semolina porridge mixed with raspberry jam. Then Pinocchio realized that he was terribly hungry.
He ran to the hearth and stuck his nose into the boiling pot, but Pinocchio’s long nose pierced the pot, because, as we know, the hearth, the fire, the smoke, and the pot were painted by poor Carlo on a piece of old canvas.
Pinocchio pulled out his nose and looked through the hole - behind the canvas in the wall there was something similar to a small door, but it was so covered with cobwebs that nothing could be made out.
Pinocchio went to rummage around in all corners to see if he could find a crust of bread or a chicken bone that had been gnawed by the cat.
Oh, poor Carlo had nothing, nothing saved for dinner!
Suddenly he saw a chicken egg in a basket with shavings. He grabbed it, put it on the windowsill and with his nose - bale-buck - broke the shell.
- Thank you, wooden man!
A chicken with fluff instead of a tail and with cheerful eyes emerged from the broken shell.
- Goodbye! Mama Kura has been waiting for me in the yard for a long time.
And the chicken jumped out of the window - that’s all they saw.
“Oh, oh,” shouted Pinocchio, “I’m hungry!”
The day has finally ended. The room became twilight.
Pinocchio sat near the painted fire and slowly hiccupped from hunger.
He saw a fat head appear from under the stairs, from under the floor. A gray animal on low legs leaned out, sniffed, and crawled out.
Slowly it went to the basket with the shavings, climbed in, sniffing and rummaging - the shavings rustled angrily. It must have been looking for the egg that Pinocchio broke.
Then it got out of the basket and approached Pinocchio. She sniffed it, twisting her black nose with four long hairs on each side. Pinocchio did not smell of food - it walked past, dragging a long thin tail behind it.
Well, how could you not grab him by the tail! Pinocchio immediately grabbed it.
It turned out to be the old evil rat Shushara.
Out of fright, she, like a shadow, rushed under the stairs, dragging Pinocchio, but saw that he was just a wooden boy - she turned around and pounced with furious anger to gnaw his throat.
Now Buratino got scared, let go of the cold rat's tail and jumped onto a chair. The rat is behind him.
He jumped from the chair to the windowsill. The rat is behind him.
From the windowsill it flew across the entire closet onto the table. The rat is behind him... And then, on the table, she grabbed Pinocchio by the throat, knocked him down, holding him in her teeth, jumped to the floor and dragged him under the stairs, into the underground.
- Papa Carlo! – Pinocchio only managed to squeak.
The door opened and Papa Carlo entered. He pulled a wooden shoe off his foot and threw it at the rat.
Shushara, releasing the wooden boy, gritted her teeth and disappeared.
- This is what self-indulgence can lead to! - Dad Carlo grumbled, picking up Pinocchio from the floor. I looked to see if everything was intact. He sat him on his knees, took an onion out of his pocket, and peeled it.
- Here, eat!..
Pinocchio sank his hungry teeth into the onion and ate it, crunching and smacking. After that, he began to rub his head against Papa Carlo’s stubbled cheek.
- I’ll be smart and prudent, Papa Carlo... The Talking Cricket told me to go to school.
- Nice idea, baby...
“Papa Carlo, but I’m naked and wooden, the boys at school will laugh at me.”
“Hey,” said Carlo and scratched his stubbled chin. - You're right, baby!
He lit the lamp, took scissors, glue and scraps of colored paper. I cut and glued a brown paper jacket and bright green pants. I made shoes from an old boot and a hat - a cap with a tassel - from an old sock.
I put all this on Pinocchio.
- Wear it in good health!
“Papa Carlo,” said Pinocchio, “how can I go to school without the alphabet?”
- Hey, you're right, baby...
Papa Carlo scratched his head. He threw his only old jacket over his shoulders and went outside.
He soon returned, but without his jacket. In his hand he held a book with large letters and interesting pictures.
- Here's the alphabet for you. Study for health.
- Papa Carlo, where is your jacket?
- I sold the jacket... It’s okay, I’ll get by as is... Just live well.
Pinocchio buried his nose in the kind hands of Papa Carlo.
- I’ll learn, grow up, buy you a thousand new jackets...
Pinocchio wanted with all his might on this first evening in his life to live without pampering, as the Talking Cricket taught him.
Pinocchio sells the alphabet and buys a ticket to the puppet theater
Early in the morning Buratino put the alphabet in his purse and skipped to school.
On the way, he didn’t even look at the sweets displayed in the shops - triangles of poppy seeds with honey, sweet pies and lollipops in the shape of roosters impaled on a stick.
He didn't want to look at the boys flying a kite...
A tabby cat, Basilio, was crossing the street and could be grabbed by the tail. But Buratino resisted this too.
The closer he got to the school, the louder cheerful music played nearby, on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
“Pi-pi-pi,” the flute squeaked.
“La-la-la-la,” the violin sang.
“Ding-ding,” the copper plates clinked.
- Boom! - beat the drum.
You need to turn right to go to school, music was heard to the left. Pinocchio began to stumble. The legs themselves turned towards the sea, where:
- Pee-wee, peeeeee...
- Ding-la-Evil, ding-la-la...
“The school won’t go anywhere,” Buratino began to say loudly to himself, “I’ll just take a look, listen, and run to school.”
With all his might he began to run towards the sea.
He saw a canvas booth, decorated with multi-colored flags flapping in the sea wind.
At the top of the booth, four musicians were dancing and playing.
Below, a plump, smiling aunt was selling tickets.
There was a large crowd near the entrance - boys and girls, soldiers, lemonade sellers, nurses with babies, firefighters, postmen - everyone, everyone was reading a large poster:
PUPPET SHOW
ONLY ONE PRESENTATION
Hurry!
Hurry!
Hurry!
Pinocchio tugged one boy by the sleeve:
– Tell me, please, how much is the entrance ticket?
The boy answered through gritted teeth, slowly:
- Four soldi, wooden man.
- You see, boy, I forgot my wallet at home... Can you lend me four soldi?..
The boy whistled contemptuously:
- Found a fool!..
– I really want to see the puppet theater! - Pinocchio said through tears. - Buy my wonderful jacket from me for four soldi...
- A paper jacket for four soldi? Look for a fool...
- Well, then my pretty cap...
-Your cap is only used to catch tadpoles... Look for a fool.
Buratino’s nose even turned cold - he wanted so badly to get to the theater.
- Boy, in that case, take my new alphabet for four soldi...
- With pictures?
– With wonderful pictures and big letters.
“Come on, I guess,” said the boy, took the alphabet and reluctantly counted out four soldi.
Buratino ran up to his plump, smiling aunt and squeaked:
- Listen, give me a front row ticket to the only puppet theater show.
During a comedy performance, the dolls recognize Pinocchio
Buratino sat in the first row and looked with delight at the lowered curtain.
On the curtain were painted dancing men, girls in black masks, scary bearded people in caps with stars, a sun that looked like a pancake with a nose and eyes, and other entertaining pictures.
The bell was struck three times and the curtain rose.
On the small stage there were cardboard trees to the right and left. A lantern in the shape of the moon hung above them and was reflected in a piece of mirror on which two swans made of cotton wool with golden noses floated.
A small man wearing a long white shirt with long sleeves appeared from behind a cardboard tree.
His face was dusted with powder, white as tooth powder.
He bowed to the most respectable audience and said sadly:
- Hello, my name is Pierrot... Now we will perform for you a comedy called “The Girl with Blue Hair, or Thirty-three Slaps.” They will beat me with a stick, slap me in the face and slap me on the head. This is a very funny comedy...
From behind another cardboard tree, another little man jumped out, all checkered like a chessboard. He bowed to the most respectable audience.
– Hello, I’m Harlequin!
After that, he turned to Pierrot and gave two slaps in the face, so loud that powder fell from his cheeks.
– Why are you whining, fools?
“I’m sad because I want to get married,” Pierrot answered.
- Why didn’t you get married?
- Because my fiancée ran away from me...
“Ha-ha-ha,” Harlequin roared with laughter, “we saw the fool!”
He grabbed a stick and beat Piero.
– What is your fiancee’s name?
- Aren’t you going to fight anymore?
- Well, no, I’ve just started.
“In that case, her name is Malvina, or the girl with blue hair.”
- Ha-ha-ha! – Harlequin rolled again and released Pierrot three times on the back of the head. - Listen, dear audience... Are there really girls with blue hair?
But then, turning to the audience, he suddenly saw on the front bench a wooden boy with mouth to ear, with a long nose, in a cap with a tassel...
- Look, it's Pinocchio! - Harlequin shouted, pointing his finger at him.
- Buratino alive! - Pierrot yelled, waving his long sleeves.
A lot of dolls jumped out from behind the cardboard trees - girls in black masks, scary bearded men in caps, shaggy dogs with buttons for eyes, hunchbacks with noses like cucumbers...
They all ran up to the candles that stood along the ramp and, peering, began chattering:
- This is Buratino! This is Pinocchio! Come to us, come to us, cheerful rogue Pinocchio!
Then he jumped from the bench onto the prompter’s booth, and from it onto the stage.
The dolls grabbed him, started hugging him, kissing him, pinching him... Then all the dolls sang “Polka Birdie”:
The bird danced a polka
On the lawn in the early hours.
Nose to the left, tail to the right, -
This is Polish Barabas.
Two beetles on the drum
A toad blows into a double bass.
Nose to the left, tail to the right, -
This is the polka Karabas.
The bird danced a polka
Because it's fun.
Nose to the left, tail to the right, -
That's how Polish was...
The spectators were touched. One nurse even shed tears. One firefighter cried his eyes out.
Only the boys on the back benches were angry and stamped their feet:
– Enough licking, not little ones, continue the show!
Hearing all this noise, a man leaned out from behind the stage, so scary in appearance that one could freeze with horror just by looking at him.
His thick, unkempt beard dragged along the floor, his bulging eyes rolled, his huge mouth clanged with teeth, as if he were not a man, but a crocodile. In his hand he held a seven-tailed whip.
It was the owner of the puppet theater, Doctor of Puppet Science, Signor Karabas Barabas.
- Ga-ha-ha, goo-goo-goo! - he roared at Pinocchio. - So it was you who interfered with the performance of my wonderful comedy?
He grabbed Pinocchio, took him to the theater storeroom and hung him on a nail. When he returned, he threatened the dolls with the seven-tailed whip so that they would continue the performance.
The puppets somehow finished the comedy, the curtain closed, and the audience dispersed.
Doctor of Puppet Science, Signor Karabas Barabas went to the kitchen to have dinner.
Putting the lower part of his beard in his pocket so as not to get in the way, he sat down in front of the fire, where a whole rabbit and two chickens were roasting on a spit.
Having flexed his fingers, he touched the roast, and it seemed raw to him.
There was little wood in the hearth. Then he clapped his hands three times. Harlequin and Pierrot ran in.
“Bring me that slacker Pinocchio,” said Signor Karabas Barabas. “It’s made of dry wood, I’ll throw it on the fire, my roast will roast quickly.”
Harlequin and Pierrot fell to their knees and begged to spare the unfortunate Pinocchio.
-Where is my whip? - shouted Karabas Barabas.
Then, sobbing, they went to the pantry, took Buratino off the nail and dragged him to the kitchen.
Signor Karabas Barabas, instead of burning Pinocchio, gives him five gold coins and sends him home
When the dolls were dragged by Pinocchio and thrown onto the floor by the grate of the fireplace, Signor Karabas Barabas, sniffling terribly, stirred the coals with a poker.
Suddenly his eyes became bloodshot, his whole face wrinkled. There must have been a piece of coal in his nostrils.
“Aap... aap... aap...” howled Karabas Barabas, rolling his eyes, “aap-chhi!..”
And he sneezed so much that the ashes rose in a column in the hearth.
When the doctor of puppet sciences began to sneeze, he could no longer stop and sneezed fifty, and sometimes a hundred times in a row.
This extraordinary sneezing made him weak and became kinder.
Pierrot secretly whispered to Pinocchio:
- Try to talk to him between sneezes...
- Aap-chhi! Aap-chhi! - Karabas Barabas took in air with his open mouth and sneezed loudly, shaking his head and stamping his feet.
Everything in the kitchen shook, glass rattled, pans and pots on nails swayed.
Between these sneezes, Pinocchio began to howl in a plaintive thin voice:
- Poor, unfortunate me, no one feels sorry for me!
- Stop crying! - shouted Karabas Barabas. - You're disturbing me... Aap-chhi!
“Be healthy, sir,” Buratino sobbed.
- Thank you... Are your parents alive? Aap-chhi!
“I never, never had a mother, sir.” Oh, wretched me! - And Pinocchio screamed so shrilly that Karabas Barabas’ ears began to prick like a needle.
He stamped his feet.
- Stop screaming, I tell you!.. Aap-chhi! What, is your father alive?
“My poor father is still alive, sir.”
“I can imagine what it will be like for your father to find out that I fried a rabbit and two chickens on you... Aap-chhi!”
“My poor father will soon die of hunger and cold anyway.” I am his only support in his old age. Please, let me go, sir.
- Ten thousand devils! - shouted Karabas Barabas. – There can be no talk of any pity. The rabbit and chickens must be roasted. Get into the hearth.
“Sir, I can’t do this.”
- Why? - asked Karabas Barabas only so that Pinocchio would continue talking and not squeal in his ears.
“Sir, I already tried to stick my nose into the fireplace once and only poked a hole.”
- What nonsense! – Karabas Barabas was surprised. “How could you poke a hole in the fireplace with your nose?”
“Because, sir, the hearth and the pot over the fire were painted on a piece of old canvas.”
- Aap-chhi! - Karabas Barabas sneezed with such a noise that Pierrot flew to the left, Harlequin to the right, and Pinocchio spun around like a top.
- Where did you see the hearth, and the fire, and the pot, painted on a piece of canvas?
– In my dad Carlo’s closet.
– Your father is Carlo! – Karabas Barabas jumped up from his chair, waved his arms, his beard flew away. - So, it’s in old Carlo’s closet that there’s a secret...
But then Karabas Barabas, apparently not wanting to let slip about some secret, covered his mouth with both fists. And so he sat for some time, looking with bulging eyes at the dying fire.
“Okay,” he said finally, “I’ll have dinner on undercooked rabbit and raw chicken.” I give you life, Pinocchio. Moreover... - He reached under his beard into his vest pocket, pulled out five gold coins and handed them to Pinocchio. - Not only that... Take this money and take it to Carlo. Bow and say that I ask him under no circumstances to die of hunger and cold, and most importantly, not to leave his closet, where the fireplace, painted on a piece of old canvas, is located. Go, get some sleep and run home early in the morning.
Buratino put five gold coins in his pocket and answered with a polite bow:
- Thank you, sir. You couldn't trust your money into more reliable hands...
Harlequin and Pierrot took Pinocchio to the doll's bedroom, where the dolls again began to hug, kiss, push, pinch and again hug Pinocchio, who had so incomprehensibly escaped the terrible death in the hearth.
He whispered to the dolls:
- There is some kind of secret here.
On the way home, Pinocchio meets two beggars - the cat Basilio and the fox Alice.
Early in the morning Buratino counted the money - there were as many gold coins as there were fingers on his hand - five.
Clutching the gold coins in his fist, he skipped home and chanted:
– I’ll buy Papa Carlo a new jacket, I’ll buy a lot of poppy triangles and lollipop roosters.
When the booth of the puppet theater and the waving flags disappeared from his eyes, he saw two beggars sadly wandering along the dusty road: the fox Alice, hobbling on three legs, and the blind cat Basilio.
This was not the same cat that Pinocchio met yesterday on the street, but another one - also Basilio and also tabby. Pinocchio wanted to pass by, but Alice the fox said to him touchingly:
- Hello, dear Pinocchio! Where are you going in such a hurry?
- Home, to Papa Carlo.
Lisa sighed even more tenderly:
“I don’t know if you’ll find poor Carlo alive, he’s completely ill from hunger and cold...”
-Did you see this? – Buratino unclenched his fist and showed five gold pieces.
Seeing the money, the fox involuntarily reached out to it with his paw, and the cat suddenly opened his blind eyes wide, and they sparkled like two green lanterns.
But Buratino did not notice any of this.
- Dear, pretty Pinocchio, what will you do with this money?
- I’ll buy a jacket for dad Carlo... I’ll buy a new alphabet...
- ABC, oh, oh! - said Alice the fox, shaking her head. - This teaching will not bring you any good... So I studied, studied, and - look - I walk on three legs.
- ABC! - Basilio the cat grumbled and snorted angrily into his mustache. “Through this damned teaching I lost my eyes...
An elderly crow was sitting on a dry branch near the road. She listened and listened and croaked:
- They’re lying, they’re lying!..
The cat Basilio immediately jumped high, knocked the crow off the branch with his paw, tore off half of its tail - as soon as it flew away. And again he pretended to be blind.
- Why are you doing this to her, Basilio the cat? – Buratino asked in surprise.
“My eyes are blind,” answered the cat, “it seemed like a little dog in a tree...
The three of them walked along the dusty road. Lisa said:
- Smart, prudent Pinocchio, would you like to have ten times more money?
- Of course I want! How is this done?
- As easy as pie. Go with us.
- To the Land of Fools.
Pinocchio thought for a bit.
- No, I think I’ll go home now.
“Please, we don’t pull you by the rope,” said the fox, “so much the worse for you.”
“So much the worse for you,” the cat grumbled.
“You are your own enemy,” said the fox.
“You are your own enemy,” the cat grumbled.
- Otherwise, your five gold pieces would turn into a lot of money...
Pinocchio stopped and opened his mouth...
The fox sat on its tail and licked its lips:
– I’ll explain to you now. In the Country of Fools there is a magical field - it’s called the Field of Miracles... In this field, dig a hole, say three times: “Cracks, fex, pex” - put the gold in the hole, fill it with earth, sprinkle salt on top, pour it well and go to sleep. The next morning a small tree will grow from the hole, and gold coins will hang on it instead of leaves. It's clear?
Pinocchio even jumped:
“Let’s go, Basilio,” the fox said, turning up his nose offended, “they don’t believe us - and there’s no need...
“No, no,” shouted Pinocchio, “I believe, I believe!.. Let’s go quickly to the Land of Fools!”
In the tavern "Three minnows"
Pinocchio, the fox Alice and the cat Basilio went down the mountain and walked and walked - through fields, vineyards, through a pine grove, came out to the sea and again turned away from the sea, through the same grove, vineyards...
The town on the hill and the sun above it were visible now to the right, now to the left...
Fox Alice said, sighing:
- Ah, it’s not so easy to get into the Country of Fools, you’ll erase all your paws...
Towards evening they saw on the side of the road an old house with a flat roof and a sign above the entrance:
THE THREE MOUNTAINS TUBLE
The owner jumped out to meet the guests, tore the cap off his bald head and bowed low, asking them to come in.
“It wouldn’t hurt us to have at least a dry crust,” said the fox.
“At least they’d treat me to a crust of bread,” the cat repeated.
We went into the tavern and sat down near the fireplace, where all sorts of things were being fried on spits and frying pans.
The fox was constantly licking his lips, Basilio the cat put his paws on the table, his mustachioed muzzle on his paws, and stared at the food.
“Hey, master,” Buratino said importantly, “give us three crusts of bread...”
The owner almost fell backward in surprise that such respectable guests asked so little.
“Cheerful, witty Pinocchio is joking with you, master,” the fox giggled.
“He’s joking,” the cat muttered.
“Give me three crusts of bread and with them that wonderfully roasted lamb,” said the fox, “and also that gosling, and a couple of pigeons on a spit, and, perhaps, some livers too...”
“Six pieces of the fattest crucian carp,” the cat ordered, “and small raw fish for a snack.”
In short, they took everything that was on the hearth: there was only one crust of bread left for Pinocchio.
Alice the fox and Basilio the cat ate everything, including the bones.
Their bellies were swollen, their muzzles were shiny.
“Let’s rest for an hour,” said the fox, “and we’ll leave at exactly midnight.” Don't forget to wake us up, master...
The fox and the cat collapsed on two soft beds, snored and whistled. Pinocchio took a nap in the corner on a dog bed...
He dreamed of a tree with round golden leaves... Only he extended his hand...
- Hey, Signor Pinocchio, it’s time, it’s already midnight...
There was a knock on the door. Pinocchio jumped up and rubbed his eyes. There is no cat, no fox on the bed - empty.
The owner explained to him:
“Your venerable friends deigned to get up early, refreshed themselves with a cold pie and left...
“Didn’t they tell me to give you anything?”
“They even ordered that you, Signor Buratino, not waste a minute, run along the road to the forest...”
Pinocchio rushed to the door, but the owner stood on the threshold, squinted, put his hands on his hips:
– Who will pay for dinner?
“Oh,” Pinocchio squeaked, “how much?”
- Exactly one gold...
Pinocchio immediately wanted to sneak past his feet, but the owner grabbed the spit - his bristly mustache, even the hair above his ears stood on end.
“Pay up, scoundrel, or I’ll skewer you like a bug!”
I had to pay one gold out of five. Sniffling with disappointment, Pinocchio left the damned tavern.
The night was dark—that’s not enough—black as soot. Everything around was asleep. Only the night bird Splyushka flew silently over Pinocchio’s head.
Touching his nose with her soft wing, Scops Owl repeated:
- Don't believe it, don't believe it, don't believe it!
He stopped with annoyance:
- What do you want?
– Don’t trust the cat and the fox...
- Beware of robbers on this road...
Buratino is attacked by robbers
A greenish light appeared at the edge of the sky - the moon was rising.
A black forest became visible ahead.
Pinocchio walked faster. Someone behind him also walked faster.
He started running. Someone was running after him in silent leaps.
He turned around.
Two people were chasing him; they had bags on their heads with holes cut out for their eyes.
One, shorter, was waving a knife, the other, taller, was holding a pistol, the barrel of which expanded like a funnel...
- Ay-ay! - Pinocchio squealed and, like a hare, ran towards the black forest.
- Stop, stop! - the robbers shouted.
Although Pinocchio was desperately frightened, he still guessed - he put four gold pieces in his mouth and turned off the road towards a hedge overgrown with blackberries... But then two robbers grabbed him...
– Trick or treat!
Buratino, as if not understanding what they wanted from him, only breathed through his nose very often. The robbers shook him by the collar, one threatened him with a pistol, the other rummaged through his pockets.
-Where is your money? - the tall one growled.
- Money, you brat! - the short one hissed.
- I'll tear you to shreds!
- Let's take the head off!
Then Pinocchio shook so much with fear that the gold coins began to ring in his mouth.
- That's where his money is! - the robbers howled. - He has money in his mouth...
One grabbed Pinocchio by the head, the other by the legs. They started tossing him around. But he only clenched his teeth tighter.
Turning him upside down, the robbers slammed his head on the ground. But he didn’t care about that either.
The robber - the shorter one - began to unclench his teeth with a wide knife. He was just about to unclench it... Pinocchio contrived to bite him on the hand with all his might... But it turned out to be not a hand, but a cat's paw. The robber howled wildly. At that time, Pinocchio turned around like a lizard, rushed to the fence, dived into the thorny blackberry, leaving scraps of his pants and jacket on the thorns, climbed over to the other side and rushed to the forest.
At the edge of the forest the robbers caught up with him again. He jumped, grabbed a swinging branch and climbed up the tree. The robbers are behind him. But they were hampered by the bags on their heads.
Having climbed to the top, Pinocchio swung and jumped onto a nearby tree. The robbers are behind him...
But both immediately fell apart and fell to the ground.
While they were groaning and scratching themselves, Pinocchio slipped from the tree and began to run, moving his legs so quickly that they were not even visible.
The trees cast long shadows from the moon. The whole forest was striped...
Pinocchio either disappeared into the shadows, or his white cap flashed in the moonlight.
So he got to the lake. The moon hung over the mirror-like water, like in a puppet theater.
Pinocchio rushed to the right - sloppily. To the left it was swampy... And behind me the branches began to crackle again...
- Hold him, hold him!..
The robbers were already running up, they were jumping high out of the wet grass to see Pinocchio.
- Here he is!
All he could do was throw himself into the water. At that time, he saw a white swan sleeping near the shore, his head tucked under his wing.
Pinocchio rushed into the lake, dived and grabbed the swan by the paws.
“Ho-ho,” the swan cackled, waking up, “what indecent jokes!” Leave my paws alone!
The swan opened its huge wings, and while the robbers were already grabbing Pinocchio’s legs sticking out of the water, the swan flew importantly across the lake.
On the other side, Pinocchio let go of his paws, plopped down, jumped up and began to run over the moss hummocks and through the reeds - straight to the big moon above the hills.
Robbers hang Pinocchio from a tree
From fatigue, Pinocchio could barely move his legs, like a fly on a windowsill in autumn.
Suddenly, through the branches of a hazel tree, he saw a beautiful lawn and in the middle of it - a small moonlit house with four windows. The sun, moon and stars are painted on the shutters. Large azure flowers grew around.
The paths are sprinkled with clean sand. A thin stream of water came out of the fountain, and a striped ball danced in it.
Pinocchio climbed onto the porch on all fours. Knocked in the door.
It was quiet in the house. He knocked harder - they must have been sleeping soundly there.
At this time, the robbers jumped out of the forest again. They swam across the lake, water poured from them in streams. Seeing Buratino, the short robber hissed disgustingly like a cat, the tall one yapped like a fox...
Pinocchio pounded on the door with his hands and feet:
- Help, help, good people!..
Then a pretty curly girl with a pretty upturned nose leaned out of the window. Her eyes were closed.
- Girl, open the door, robbers are chasing me!
- Oh, what nonsense! - said the girl, yawning with her pretty mouth. - I want to sleep, I can’t open my eyes...
She raised her hands, stretched sleepily and disappeared through the window.
Buratino, in despair, fell with his nose into the sand and pretended to be dead.
The robbers jumped up.
- Yeah, now you won’t leave us!..
It’s hard to imagine what they did to make Pinocchio open his mouth. If during the chase they had not dropped the knife and pistol, the story about the unfortunate Pinocchio could have ended at this point.
Finally, the robbers decided to hang him upside down, tied a rope to his feet, and Pinocchio hung on an oak branch... They sat under the oak tree, holding out their wet tails, and waited for the golden ones to fall out of his mouth...
At dawn the wind rose and the leaves rustled on the oak tree. Pinocchio swayed like a piece of wood. The robbers got tired of sitting on wet tails.
“Hang there, my friend, until evening,” they said ominously and went to look for some roadside tavern.
The girl with blue hair returns Pinocchio
The morning dawn spread over the branches of the oak tree where Pinocchio hung.
The grass in the clearing turned gray, the azure flowers were covered with drops of dew.
The girl with curly blue hair leaned out of the window again, wiped it and opened her sleepy pretty eyes wide.
This girl was the most beautiful doll from the puppet theater of Signor Karabas Barabas.
Unable to bear the rude antics of the owner, she ran away from the theater and settled in a secluded house in a gray clearing.
Animals, birds and some of the insects loved her very much - probably because she was a well-mannered and meek girl.
The animals supplied her with everything necessary for life.
The mole brought nutritious roots.
Mice - sugar, cheese and pieces of sausage.
The noble poodle dog Artemon brought rolls.
Magpie stole chocolates in silver papers for her at the market.
The frogs brought lemonade in nutshells.
Hawk - fried game.
May beetles are different berries.
Butterflies take pollen from flowers and powder themselves.
The caterpillars squeezed out paste to clean teeth and lubricate creaking doors.
Swallows destroyed wasps and mosquitoes near the house...
So, opening her eyes, the girl with blue hair immediately saw Pinocchio hanging upside down.
She put her palms to her cheeks and screamed:
- Ah, ah, ah!
The noble poodle Artemon appeared under the window, ears fluttering. He had just cut the back half of his torso, which he did every day. The curly fur on the front half of the body was combed, the tassel at the end of the tail was tied with a black bow. On one of the front paws is a silver watch.
- I'm ready!
Artemon turned his nose to the side and raised his upper lip over his white teeth.
- Call someone, Artemon! - said the girl. “We need to pick up poor Pinocchio, take him into the house and invite a doctor...
Artemon spun so much in readiness that the damp sand flew out from under his hind paws... He rushed to the anthill, woke up the entire population by barking and sent four hundred ants to gnaw the rope on which Pinocchio was hanging.
Four hundred serious ants crawled in single file along a narrow path, climbed onto an oak tree and chewed through the rope.
Artemon picked up the falling Pinocchio with his front paws and carried him into the house... Putting Pinocchio on the bed, he rushed into the forest thickets at a dog's gallop and immediately brought from there the famous doctor Owl, the paramedic Toad and the folk healer Mantis, who looked like a dry twig.
The owl put its ear to Pinocchio's chest.
“The patient is more dead than alive,” she whispered and turned her head back one hundred and eighty degrees.
The toad crushed Pinocchio with its wet paw for a long time. Thinking, she looked with bulging eyes in different directions. She whispered with her big mouth:
– The patient is more likely alive than dead...
The folk healer Bogomol, with hands as dry as blades of grass, began to touch Pinocchio.
“One of two things,” he whispered, “either the patient is alive or he died.” If he is alive, he will remain alive or he will not remain alive. If he is dead, he can be revived or he cannot be revived.
“Shh charlatanism,” said the Owl, flapped its soft wings and flew away into the dark attic.
All of Toad's warts were swollen with anger.
- What disgusting ignorance! – she croaked and, splashing her belly, jumped into the damp basement.
Just in case, the doctor Mantis pretended to be a dried up twig and fell out of the window. The girl clasped her pretty hands:
- Well, how can I treat him, citizens?
“Castor oil,” croaked the Toad from the underground.
- Castor oil! – the Owl laughed contemptuously in the attic.
“Either castor oil, or not castor oil,” the Mantis creaked outside the window.
Then, ragged and bruised, the unfortunate Pinocchio moaned:
– No need for castor oil, I feel very good!
A girl with blue hair leaned over him carefully:
- Pinocchio, I beg you - close your eyes, hold your nose and drink.
- I don’t want, I don’t want, I don’t want!..
- I'll give you a piece of sugar...
Immediately a white mouse climbed up the blanket onto the bed and was holding a piece of sugar.
“You will get it if you listen to me,” said the girl.
- Give me one saaaaaahar...
- Yes, understand - if you don’t take the medicine, you can die...
- I’d rather die than drink castor oil...
- Hold your nose and look at the ceiling... One, two, three.
She poured castor oil into Pinocchio's mouth, immediately gave him a piece of sugar and kissed him.
- That's all…
Noble Artemon, who loved everything prosperous, grabbed his tail with his teeth and spun under the window like a whirlwind of a thousand paws, a thousand ears, a thousand sparkling eyes.
A girl with blue hair wants to raise Pinocchio
The next morning Buratino woke up cheerful and healthy, as if nothing had happened.
A girl with blue hair was waiting for him in the garden, sitting at a small table covered with doll dishes.
Her face was freshly washed, and there was flower pollen on her upturned nose and cheeks.
While waiting for Pinocchio, she waved away the annoying butterflies with annoyance:
- Come on, really...
She looked the wooden boy from head to toe and winced. She told him to sit down at the table and poured cocoa into a tiny cup.
Buratino sat down at the table and tucked his leg under him. He stuffed the whole almond cake into his mouth and swallowed it without chewing.
He climbed right into the vase of jam with his fingers and sucked them with pleasure.
When the girl turned away to throw a few crumbs to the elderly ground beetle, he grabbed the coffee pot and drank all the cocoa from the spout.
I choked and spilled cocoa on the tablecloth.
Then the girl told him sternly:
– Pull your leg out from under you and lower it under the table. Don't eat with your hands; that's what spoons and forks are for. “She batted her eyelashes in indignation. – Who is raising you, please tell me?
– When Papa Carlo raises, and when no one does.
- Now I will take care of your upbringing, rest assured.
“I’m so stuck!” - thought Pinocchio.
On the grass around the house, the poodle Artemon was running after small birds. When they sat in the trees, he raised his head, jumped up and barked with a howl.
“He’s great at chasing birds,” Buratino thought with envy.
Sitting decently at the table gave him goosebumps all over his body.
Finally the painful breakfast was over. The girl told him to wipe the cocoa off his nose. She straightened the folds and bows on the dress, took Pinocchio by the hand and led him into the house to educate him.
And the cheerful poodle Artemon ran across the grass and barked; the birds, not at all afraid of him, whistled merrily; the breeze flew merrily over the trees.
“Take off your rags, they will give you a decent jacket and pants,” said the girl.
Four tailors - a single master - the gloomy crayfish Sheptallo, the gray Woodpecker with a tuft, the large beetle Rogach and the mouse Lisette - sewed a beautiful boy's suit from old girls' dresses. Sheptallo cut, Woodpecker pierced holes with his beak and sewed, Rogach twisted threads with his hind legs, Lisette gnawed them.
Pinocchio was ashamed to put on the girl’s cast-offs, but he still had to change clothes.
Sniffling, he hid four gold coins in the pocket of his new jacket.
– Now sit down, put your hands in front of you. “Don’t hunch over,” the girl said and took a piece of chalk. - We'll do arithmetic... You have two apples in your pocket...
Pinocchio winked slyly:
- You're lying, not a single one...
“I’m saying,” the girl repeated patiently, “suppose you have two apples in your pocket.” Someone took one apple from you. How many apples do you have left?
- Think carefully.
Pinocchio wrinkled his face - he thought so great.
- Why?
“I won’t give Nect the apple, even if he fights!”
“You have no ability for mathematics,” the girl said sadly. - Let's take a dictation. “She raised her pretty eyes to the ceiling. – Write: “And the rose fell on Azor’s paw.” Have you written? Now read this magic phrase backwards.
We already know that Pinocchio has never even seen a pen and inkwell.
The girl said: “Write,” and he immediately stuck his nose into the inkwell and was terribly scared when an ink blot fell from his nose onto the paper.
The girl clasped her hands, tears even flowed out of her eyes.
- You are a disgusting naughty boy, you must be punished!
She leaned out the window.
- Artemon, take Pinocchio to the dark closet!
Noble Artemon appeared at the door, showing white teeth. He grabbed Pinocchio by the jacket and, backing away, dragged him into the closet, where large spiders hung in the cobwebs in the corners. He locked him there, growled to scare him well, and again rushed off after the birds.
The girl, throwing herself onto the doll's lace bed, began to sob because she had to act so cruelly to the wooden boy. But if you have already taken up education, you need to see it through to the end.
Pinocchio grumbled in a dark closet:
- What a stupid girl... There was a teacher, just think... She herself has a porcelain head, a body stuffed with cotton...
A thin creaking sound was heard in the closet, as if someone was grinding small teeth:
- Listen, listen...
He raised his ink-stained nose and in the darkness made out a bat hanging upside down from the ceiling.
- What do you need?
- Wait until night, Pinocchio.
“Hush, hush,” the spiders rustled in the corners, “don’t shake our nets, don’t scare away our flies...
Pinocchio sat down on the broken pot and rested his cheek. He had been in worse troubles than this, but he was outraged by the injustice.
- Is this how they raise children?.. This is torment, not education... Don’t sit there and don’t eat like that... The child may not have mastered the ABC book yet - she immediately grabs the inkwell... And the male dog is probably chasing birds - nothing to him...
The bat squeaked again:
- Wait for the night, Pinocchio, I will take you to the Country of Fools, where your friends are waiting for you - a cat and a fox, happiness and fun. Wait for the night.
Pinocchio finds himself in the Land of Fools
A girl with blue hair walked to the closet door.
- Pinocchio, my friend, are you finally repenting?
He was very angry, and besides, he had something completely different on his mind.
– I really need to repent! Can't wait...
-Then you will have to sit in the closet until the morning...
The girl sighed bitterly and left.
Night has come. The owl laughed in the attic. The toad crawled out of hiding to slap its belly on the reflections of the moon in the puddles.
The girl went to bed in a lace crib and sobbed sadly for a long time as she fell asleep.
Artemon, with his nose buried under his tail, slept at the door of her bedroom.
In the house the pendulum clock struck midnight.
A bat fell from the ceiling.
- It's time, Pinocchio, run! – she squeaked in her ear. - In the corner of the closet there is a rat's passage to the underground... I'm waiting for you on the lawn.
She flew out the dormer window. Pinocchio rushed to the corner of the closet, getting tangled in the cobwebs. Spiders hissed angrily after him.
He crawled like a rat underground. The move was getting narrower and narrower. Pinocchio was now barely squeezing his way underground... And suddenly he flew headfirst into the underground.
There he almost fell into a rat trap, stepped on the tail of a snake that had just drunk milk from a jug in the dining room, and jumped out through a cat hole onto the lawn.
A mouse flew silently over the azure flowers.
- Follow me, Pinocchio, to the Land of Fools!
Bats do not have a tail, so the mouse does not fly straight, like birds, but up and down - on membranous wings, up and down, similar to an imp; her mouth is always open so that, without wasting time, she catches, bites, and swallows mosquitoes and moths alive along the way.
Pinocchio ran after her through the grass; wet porridge whipped across his cheeks.
Suddenly the mouse rushed high towards the round moon and from there shouted to someone:
- Brought!
Pinocchio immediately flew head over heels down the steep cliff. It rolled and rolled and fell into the burdocks.
Scratched, his mouth full of sand, he sat down with wide eyes.
- Wow!..
In front of him stood the cat Basilio and the fox Alice.
“Brave, brave Pinocchio must have fallen from the moon,” said the fox.
“It’s strange how he remained alive,” the cat said gloomily.
Pinocchio was delighted with his old acquaintances, although it seemed suspicious to him that the cat’s right paw was bandaged with a rag, and the fox’s entire tail was stained with swamp mud.
“Every cloud has a silver lining,” said the fox, “but you ended up in the Land of Fools...
And she pointed with her paw to a broken bridge over a dry stream. On the other side of the stream, among the heaps of garbage, one could see dilapidated houses, stunted trees with broken branches and bell towers, leaning in different directions...
“In this city they sell famous jackets with hare fur for Papa Carlo,” the fox sang, licking his lips, “alphabet books with painted pictures... Oh, what sweet pies and lollipop cockerels they sell!” You haven’t lost your money yet, wonderful Pinocchio?
Fox Alice helped him to his feet; After shaking her paw, she cleaned his jacket and led him across the broken bridge.
Basilio the cat hobbled sullenly behind.
It was already the middle of the night, but no one was sleeping in the City of Fools.
Skinny dogs in burrs wandered along the crooked, dirty street, yawning from hunger:
- Eh-he-he...
Goats with tattered hair on their sides nibbled the dusty grass near the sidewalk, shaking stubs of their tails.
- B-e-e-e-e-yes...
The cow stood with her head hanging; her bones were sticking out through her skin.
“Muu-teaching...” she repeated thoughtfully.
Plucked sparrows sat on mounds of mud; they wouldn’t fly away even if you crushed them with your feet...
Chickens with their tails torn out were staggering from exhaustion...
But at the intersections, fierce police bulldogs in triangular hats and spiky collars stood at attention.
They shouted at the hungry and mangy inhabitants:
- Come on in! Keep it right! Don't delay!..
The fat Fox, the governor of this city, was walking, his nose raised importantly, and with him was a arrogant fox holding a night violet flower in his paw.
Fox Alice whispered:
– Those who sowed money on the Field of Miracles are walking... Today is the last night when you can sow. By morning you will have collected a lot of money and bought all sorts of things... Let's go quickly...
The fox and the cat led Pinocchio to a vacant lot, where there were broken pots, torn shoes, holey galoshes and rags lying around... Interrupting each other, they started babbling:
- Dig a hole.
- Put the gold ones.
- Sprinkle with salt.
- Scoop it out of the puddle, give it a good soaking.
- Don’t forget to say “crex, fex, pex”...
Pinocchio scratched his nose, stained with ink.
- My God, we don’t even want to look where you bury the money! - said the fox.
- God forbid! - said the cat.
They walked away a little and hid behind a pile of rubbish.
Pinocchio dug a hole. He said three times in a whisper: “Cracks, fex, pex,” put four gold coins in the hole, fell asleep, took a pinch of salt from his pocket, and sprinkled it on top. He took a handful of water from the puddle and poured it on it.
And he sat down to wait for the tree to grow...
The police grab Buratino and do not allow him to say a single word in his defense.
Fox Alice thought that Pinocchio would go to bed, but he still sat on the garbage heap, patiently stretching out his nose.
Then Alice told the cat to stay on guard, and she ran to the nearest police station.
There, in a smoky room at a table dripping with ink, the bulldog on duty was snoring thickly.
- Mister courageous duty officer, is it possible to detain one homeless thief? A terrible danger threatens all the rich and respectable citizens of this city.
The half-awake bulldog on duty barked so loudly that out of fear there was a puddle under the fox.
- Warrrishka! Gum!
The fox explained that a dangerous thief - Pinocchio - had been discovered in a vacant lot.
The duty officer, still growling, called. Two Doberman Pinschers burst in, detectives who never slept, trusted no one, and even suspected themselves of criminal intentions.
The duty officer ordered them to deliver the dangerous criminal, alive or dead, to the station.
The detectives answered briefly:
And they rushed to the wasteland at a special cunning gallop, raising their hind legs to the side.
They crawled on their bellies for the last hundred steps and immediately rushed at Pinocchio, grabbed him under the arms and dragged him to the department.
Pinocchio was swinging his legs, begging him to say - for what? For what? The detectives replied:
- They'll figure it out there...
The fox and the cat wasted no time in digging up four gold coins. The fox began dividing the money so cleverly that the cat ended up with one coin, and she had three.
The cat silently grabbed her face with his claws.
The fox wrapped her paws tightly around him. And they both rolled around in a ball in the wasteland for some time. Cat and fox fur flew in clumps in the moonlight.
Having skinned each other's sides, they divided the coins equally and disappeared from the city that same night.
Meanwhile, the detectives brought Buratino to the department.
The bulldog on duty crawled out from behind the table and searched his pockets.
Having found nothing but a lump of sugar and crumbs of almond cake, the duty officer began to snore bloodthirstyly at Pinocchio:
– You have committed three crimes, scoundrel: you are homeless, without a passport and unemployed. Take him out of town and drown him in a pond!
The detectives replied:
Pinocchio tried to tell about Papa Carlo, about his adventures... All in vain! The detectives picked him up, galloped him out of town and threw him off the bridge into a deep muddy pond full of frogs, leeches and water beetle larvae.
Pinocchio splashed into the water, and the green duckweed closed over him.
Pinocchio meets the inhabitants of the pond, learns about the disappearance of four gold coins and receives a golden key from the turtle Tortila.
We must not forget that Pinocchio was made of wood and therefore could not drown. Still, he was so frightened that he lay on the water for a long time, covered in green duckweed.
The inhabitants of the pond gathered around him: black pot-bellied tadpoles, known to everyone for their stupidity, water beetles with hind legs like oars, leeches, larvae that ate everything they came across, including themselves, and, finally, various small ciliates.
The tadpoles tickled him with their hard lips and happily chewed the tassel on the cap. Leeches crawled into my jacket pocket. One water beetle several times climbed onto his nose, which stuck high out of the water, and from there rushed into the water - like a swallow.
Small ciliates, wriggling and hastily trembling with the hairs that replaced their arms and legs, tried to pick up something edible, but they themselves ended up in the mouth of the water beetle larvae.
Pinocchio finally got tired of this, he splashed his heels in the water:
- Let's go away! I'm not your dead cat.
The inhabitants ran away in all directions. He turned over on his stomach and swam.
Large-mouthed frogs sat on the round leaves of water lilies under the moon, looking at Pinocchio with bulging eyes.
“Some cuttlefish is swimming,” one croaked.
“The nose is like a stork,” croaked another.
“This is a sea frog,” croaked the third.
Pinocchio, in order to rest, climbed out onto a large water lily bush. He sat down on it, grabbed his knees tightly and said, chattering his teeth:
- All the boys and girls have drunk milk, sleep in warm beds, I’m the only one sitting on a wet leaf... Give me something to eat, frogs.
Frogs are known to be very cold-blooded. But it is in vain to think that they have no heart. When Pinocchio, chattering his teeth, began to talk about his unfortunate adventures, the frogs jumped up one after another, flashed their hind legs and dived to the bottom of the pond.
They brought from there a dead beetle, a dragonfly wing, a piece of mud, a grain of crustacean caviar and several rotten roots.
Having placed all these edible things in front of Pinocchio, the frogs again jumped onto the leaves of the water lilies and sat like stones, raising their large-mouthed heads with bulging eyes.
Pinocchio sniffed and tasted the frog treat.
“I threw up,” he said, “what disgusting!”
Then the frogs again - all at once - splashed into the water...
The green duckweed on the surface of the pond swayed, and a large, scary snake head appeared. She swam to the leaf where Pinocchio was sitting.
The tassel on his cap stood on end. He almost fell into the water from fear.
But it was not a snake. It was not scary to anyone, an elderly turtle Tortila with blind eyes.
- Oh, you brainless, gullible boy with short thoughts! - Tortila said. - You should stay at home and study diligently! Brought you to the Land of Fools!
- So I wanted to get more gold coins for Papa Carlo... I’m a very good and prudent boy...
“The cat and the fox stole your money,” said the turtle. - They ran past the pond, stopped for a drink, and I heard how they boasted that they dug up your money, and how they fought over it... Oh, you brainless, gullible fool with short thoughts!..
“We shouldn’t swear,” Buratino grumbled, “here we need to help a person... What am I going to do now?” Oh-oh-oh!.. How will I get back to Papa Carlo? Ah ah ah!..
He rubbed his eyes with his fists and whined so pitifully that the frogs suddenly all sighed at once:
- Uh-uh... Tortilla, help the man.
The turtle looked at the moon for a long time, remembering something...
“Once I helped one person in the same way, and then he made tortoiseshell combs out of my grandmother and my grandfather,” she said. And again she looked at the moon for a long time. - Well, sit here, little man, and I crawl along the bottom - maybe I’ll find one useful thing.
She pulled in the snake's head and slowly sank under the water.
The frogs whispered:
– Tortila the turtle knows a great secret.
It's been a long, long time.
The moon was already setting behind the hills...
The green duckweed wavered again, and the turtle appeared, holding a small golden key in its mouth.
She put it on a leaf at Pinocchio's feet.
“You brainless, gullible fool with short thoughts,” said Tortila, “don’t worry that the fox and the cat stole your gold coins.” I give you this key. He was dropped to the bottom of a pond by a man with a beard so long that he put it in his pocket so that it would not interfere with his walk. Oh, how he asked me to find this key at the bottom!..
Tortila sighed, paused and sighed again so that bubbles came out of the water...
“But I didn’t help him, I was very angry at the time with people because my grandmother and my grandfather were made into tortoiseshell combs.” The bearded man talked a lot about this key, but I forgot everything. I only remember that I need to open some door for them and this will bring happiness...
Buratino's heart began to beat and his eyes lit up. He immediately forgot all his misfortunes. He pulled the leeches out of his jacket pocket, put the key there, politely thanked the turtle Tortila and the frogs, threw himself into the water and swam to the shore.
When he appeared as a black shadow on the edge of the shore, the frogs hooted after him:
- Pinocchio, don’t lose the key!
Pinocchio flees from the Country of Fools and meets a fellow sufferer
Tortila the Turtle did not indicate the way out of the Land of Fools.
Pinocchio ran wherever he could. The stars sparkled behind the black trees. Rocks hung over the road. There was a cloud of fog in the gorge.
Suddenly a gray lump jumped in front of Buratino. Now a dog was heard barking.
Buratino pressed himself against the rock. Two police bulldogs from the City of Fools rushed past him, snuffling fiercely.
The gray lump darted from the road to the side - onto the slope. The Bulldogs are behind him.
When the stomping and barking had gone far away, Pinocchio began to run so fast that the stars quickly floated behind the black branches.
Suddenly the gray lump crossed the road again. Pinocchio managed to see that it was a hare, and a pale little man was sitting astride it, holding it by the ears.
Pebbles fell from the slope - the bulldogs crossed the road after the hare, and again everything became quiet.
Pinocchio ran so fast that the stars were now rushing behind the black branches like mad.
For the third time the gray hare crossed the road. The little man, hitting his head on a branch, fell off his back and plopped down right at Pinocchio’s feet.
- Rrr-guff! Hold him! - the police bulldogs galloped after the hare: their eyes were so filled with anger that they did not notice either Pinocchio or the pale man.
- Goodbye, Malvina, goodbye forever! – the little man squeaked in a whiny voice.
Pinocchio leaned over him and was surprised to see that it was Pierrot in a white shirt with long sleeves.
He lay head down in the wheel furrow and, obviously, considered himself already dead and squeaked a mysterious phrase: “Farewell, Malvina, goodbye forever!” - parting with life.
Pinocchio began to bother him, pulled his leg - Pierrot did not move. Then Pinocchio found a leech lying in his pocket and put it to the nose of the lifeless little man.
The leech, without thinking twice, bit him by the nose. Pierrot quickly sat up, shook his head, tore off the leech and groaned:
– Oh, I’m still alive, it turns out!
Pinocchio grabbed his cheeks, white as tooth powder, kissed him, asked:
- How did you get here? Why did you ride astride a gray hare?
“Pinocchio, Pinocchio,” Pierrot answered, fearfully looking around, “hide me quickly... After all, the dogs were not chasing a gray hare - they were chasing me... Signor Karabas Barabas chases me day and night. He hired police dogs from the City of Fools and vowed to catch me dead or alive.
In the distance the dogs began to bark again. Pinocchio grabbed Pierrot by the sleeve and dragged him into the thicket of mimosa, covered with flowers in the form of round yellow fragrant pimples.
There, lying on rotten leaves, Pierrot began to tell him in a whisper:
- You see, Pinocchio, one night the wind was noisy, the rain was pouring like buckets...
Pierrot tells how he, riding a hare, ended up in the Land of Fools
- You see, Pinocchio, one night the wind was noisy and it was raining like buckets. Signor Karabas Barabas sat near the fireplace and smoked a pipe.
All the dolls were already asleep. I was the only one who didn't sleep. I thought about the girl with blue hair...
- I found someone to think about, what a fool! - Buratino interrupted. - I ran away from this girl last night - from the closet with spiders...
- How? Have you seen the girl with blue hair? Have you seen my Malvina?
- Just think - unheard of! Crybaby and pestered...
Pierrot jumped up, waving his arms.
- Lead me to her... If you help me find Malvina, I will tell you the secret of the golden key...
- How! - Buratino shouted joyfully. - Do you know the secret of the golden key?
– I know where the key is, how to get it, I know that they need to open one door... I overheard the secret, and that’s why Signor Karabas Barabas is looking for me with police dogs.
Pinocchio desperately wanted to boast right away that the mysterious key was in his pocket. In order not to let it slip, he pulled the cap off his head and stuffed it into his mouth.
Piero begged to be taken to Malvina. Pinocchio, using his fingers, explained to this fool that it was dark and dangerous now, but when it dawned, they would run to the girl.
Having forced Pierrot to hide again under the mimosa bushes, Pinocchio said in a woolly voice, since his mouth was covered with a cap:
- Checker live...
“So,” one night the wind rustled...
– You’ve already talked about this...
“So,” continued Pierrot, “you know, I’m not sleeping and suddenly I hear: someone knocked loudly on the window.” Signor Karabas Barabas grumbled: “Who brought this in such dog weather?”
“It’s me, Duremar,” they answered outside the window, “a seller of medicinal leeches. Let me dry myself by the fire."
You know, I really wanted to see what kind of medicinal leeches sellers there are. I slowly pulled back the corner of the curtain and stuck my head into the room. And I see: Signor Karabas Barabas got up from his chair, stepped on his beard, as always, cursed and opened the door.
A long, wet, wet man came in with a small, small face, as wrinkled as a morel mushroom. He was wearing an old green coat and had tongs, hooks and pins hanging from his belt. In his hands he held a tin can and a net.
“If you have a stomach ache,” he said, bowing as if his back were broken down the middle, “if you have a bad headache or a pounding in your ears, I can put half a dozen excellent leeches behind your ears.”
Signor Karabas Barabas grumbled: “To hell with the devil, no leeches! You can dry yourself by the fire as long as you like.”
Duremar stood with his back to the hearth.
Now steam came from his green coat and smelled of mud.
“The trade in leeches is going badly,” he said again. “For a piece of cold pork and a glass of wine, I’m ready to put a dozen of the most beautiful leeches on your thigh, if you have aching bones...”
“To hell with the devil, no leeches! - shouted Karabas Barabas. “Eat pork and drink wine.”
Duremar began to eat pork, his face squeezing and stretching like rubber. After eating and drinking, he asked for a pinch of tobacco.
“Sir, I’m full and warm,” he said. “To repay your hospitality, I will tell you a secret.”
Signor Karabas Barabas puffed on his pipe and answered: “There is only one secret in the world that I want to know. I spat and sneezed at everything else.”
“Signor,” Duremar said again, “I know a great secret, the turtle Tortila told me about it.”
At these words, Karabas Barabas bulged his eyes, jumped up, got tangled in his beard, flew straight at the frightened Duremar, pressed him to his stomach and roared like a bull: “Dearest Duremar, most precious Duremar, speak, say quickly what the turtle Tortila told you!”
Then Duremar told him the following story:
“I was catching leeches in a dirty pond near the City of Fools. For four soldi a day, I hired one poor man - he undressed, went into the pond up to his neck and stood there until leeches attached themselves to his naked body.
Then he went ashore, I collected leeches from him and again sent him into the pond.
When we had caught a sufficient amount in this way, a snake’s head suddenly appeared from the water.
“Listen, Duremar,” said the head, “you have frightened the entire population of our beautiful pond, you are muddying the water, you are not allowing me to rest peacefully after breakfast... When will this disgrace end?..
I saw that it was an ordinary turtle, and, not at all afraid, I answered:
- Until I catch all the leeches in your dirty puddle...
“I’m ready to pay you off, Duremar, so that you leave our pond alone and never come again.”
Then I began to mock the turtle:
- Oh, you old floating suitcase, stupid Aunt Tortila, how can you pay me off? Is it with your bone lid, where you hide your paws and head... I would sell your lid for scallops...
The turtle turned green with anger and said to me:
“At the bottom of the pond lies a magic key... I know one person - he is ready to do everything in the world to get this key...”
Before Duremar had time to utter these words, Karabas Barabas screamed at the top of his lungs: “This man is me! I! I! My dear Duremar, why didn’t you take the key from the turtle?”
"Here's another! - Duremar answered and wrinkled his entire face, so that it looked like a boiled morel. - Here's another! - exchange the most excellent leeches for some key...
In short, we quarreled with the turtle, and she, raising her paw from the water, said:
“I swear, neither you nor anyone else will receive the magic key.” I swear - only the person who will get the entire population of the pond to ask me for it will receive it...
With its paw raised, the turtle plunged into the water.”
“Without wasting a second, run to the Land of Fools! - shouted Karabas Barabas, hastily putting the end of his beard into his pocket, grabbing his hat and lantern. - I will sit on the shore of the pond. I will smile tenderly. I will beg frogs, tadpoles, water beetles to ask for a turtle... I promise them one and a half million of the fattest flies... I will sob like a lonely cow, moan like a sick chicken, cry like a crocodile. I will kneel in front of the smallest frog... I must have the key! I will go into the city, I will enter a house, I will enter the room under the stairs... I will find a small door - everyone walks past it, and no one notices it. I'll put the key in the keyhole..."
“At this time, you know, Pinocchio,” said Pierrot, sitting under a mimosa on rotten leaves, “I became so interested that I leaned out from behind the curtain.”
Signor Karabas Barabas saw me. "You're eavesdropping, scoundrel!" And he rushed to grab me and throw me into the fire, but again he got tangled in his beard and with a terrible roar, overturning chairs, he stretched out on the floor.
I don’t remember how I ended up outside the window, how I climbed over the fence. In the darkness the wind rustled and the rain poured down.
Over my head, a black cloud was illuminated by lightning, and ten steps behind I saw Karabas Barabas and the leech seller running... I thought: “I’m dead,” I tripped, fell on something soft and warm, and grabbed someone’s ears...
It was a gray hare. He squealed in fear and jumped high, but I held him tightly by the ears, and we galloped in the dark through fields, vineyards, and vegetable gardens.
When the hare got tired and sat down, chewing resentfully with his forked lip, I kissed his forehead.
“Please, let’s jump a little more, little gray one...”
The hare sighed, and again we rushed to an unknown place - now to the right, then to the left...
When the clouds cleared and the moon rose, I saw a small town under the mountain with bell towers leaning in different directions.
Karabas Barabas and the leech seller were running along the road to the city.
The hare said: “Ehe-he, here it is, hare happiness! They go to the City of Fools to hire police dogs. Done, we're lost!
The hare lost heart. He buried his nose in his paws and hung his ears.
I asked, I cried, I even bowed at his feet. The hare did not move.
But when two snub-nosed bulldogs with black bands on their right paws galloped out of the city, the hare trembled slightly all over, I barely had time to jump on top of him, and he gave a desperate run through the forest... You saw the rest for yourself, Pinocchio.
Pierrot finished the story, and Pinocchio asked him carefully:
- In which house, in which room under the stairs is there a door that is unlocked by a key?
- Karabas Barabas didn’t have time to tell about it... Oh, does it matter to us - the key is at the bottom of the lake... We will never see happiness...
- Did you see this? - Buratino shouted into his ear. And, taking a key out of his pocket, he twirled it in front of Pierrot’s nose. - Here he is!
Pinocchio and Pierrot come to Malvina, but they immediately have to run away with Malvina and the poodle Artemon
When the sun rose over the rocky mountain peak, Pinocchio and Pierrot crawled out from under the bush and ran across the field where last night the bat had taken Pinocchio from the house of the girl with blue hair to the Land of Fools.
It was funny to look at Pierrot - he was so in a hurry to see Malvina as soon as possible.
“Listen,” he asked every fifteen seconds, “Pinocchio, will she be happy with me?”
- How do I know...
Fifteen seconds later again:
- Listen, Pinocchio, what if she’s not happy?
- How do I know...
Finally they saw a white house with the sun, moon and stars painted on the shutters.
Smoke rose from the chimney. Above him floated a small cloud that looked like a cat's head.
The poodle Artemon sat on the porch and growled at this cloud from time to time.
Pinocchio didn't really want to return to the girl with blue hair. But he was hungry and from afar he smelled the smell of boiled milk with his nose.
“If the girl decides to raise us again, we’ll drink milk and I won’t stay here.”
At this time Malvina left the house. In one hand she held a porcelain coffee pot, in the other a basket of cookies.
Her eyes were still teary - she was sure that the rats had dragged Pinocchio out of the closet and eaten him.
As soon as she sat down at the doll table on the sandy path, the azure flowers began to sway, butterflies rose above them like white and yellow leaves, and Pinocchio and Pierrot appeared.
Malvina opened her eyes so wide that both wooden boys could have jumped there freely.
Pierrot, at the sight of Malvina, began to mutter words - so incoherent and stupid that we do not present them here.
Buratino said as if nothing had happened:
- So I brought him - educate him...
Malvina finally realized that this was not a dream.
- Oh, what happiness! - she whispered, but immediately added in an adult voice: - Boys, go wash and brush your teeth immediately. Artemon, take the boys to the well.
“You saw,” Buratino grumbled, “she has a quirk in her head - to wash herself, brush her teeth!” It will bring purity to anyone from the world...
Still, they washed themselves. Artemon used a brush at the end of his tail to clean their jackets...
We sat at the table. Pinocchio stuffed food into both cheeks. Pierrot didn't even take a bite of the cake; he looked at Malvina as if she were made of almond dough. She finally got tired of it.
“Well,” she told him, “what did you see on my face?” Please have your breakfast calmly.
“Malvina,” Pierrot answered, “I haven’t eaten anything for a long time, I’m writing poetry...
Pinocchio shook with laughter.
Malvina was surprised and opened her eyes wide again.
- In that case, read your poems.
She propped her cheek with her pretty hand and raised her pretty eyes to the cloud that looked like a cat's head.
Malvina fled to foreign lands,
Malvina is missing, my bride...
I’m sobbing, I don’t know where to go...
Isn't it better to part with the doll's life?
Her eyes bulging terribly, she said:
“Tonight, the crazy turtle Tortila told Karabas Barabas everything about the golden key...
Malvina screamed in fear, although she did not understand anything.
Pierrot, absent-minded like all poets, uttered several stupid exclamations, which we do not reproduce here. But Pinocchio immediately jumped up and began stuffing cookies, sugar and candy into his pockets.
- Let's run as quickly as possible. If the police dogs bring Karabas Barabas here, we are dead.
Malvina turned pale, like the wing of a white butterfly. Pierrot, thinking that she was dying, overturned the coffee pot on her, and Malvina’s pretty dress turned out to be covered in cocoa.
Artemon jumped up with a loud bark - and he had to wash Malvina's dresses - grabbed Pierrot by the collar and began to shake him until Pierrot said, stuttering:
- Enough, please...
The toad looked at this fuss with bulging eyes and said again:
- Karabas Barabas with the police dogs will be here in a quarter of an hour...
Malvina ran to change clothes. Pierrot desperately wrung his hands and even tried to throw himself backwards onto the sandy path. Artemon was carrying bundles of household items. Doors slammed. The sparrows chattered desperately on the bush. Swallows flew over the very ground. To add to the panic, the owl laughed wildly in the attic.
Only Pinocchio was not at a loss. He loaded Artemon with two bundles with the most necessary things. He placed Malvina, dressed in a pretty traveling dress, on the knots. He told Pierrot to hold on to the dog's tail. He himself stood in front:
- No panic! Let's run!
When they - that is, Pinocchio, courageously walking in front of the dog, Malvina, bouncing on the knots, and behind Pierrot, filled with stupid poems instead of common sense - when they emerged from the thick grass onto a smooth field - the scraggly beard of Karabas Barabas poked out of the forest. He shielded his eyes from the sun with his palm and looked around.
A terrible battle on the edge of the forest
Signor Karabas kept two police dogs on a leash. Seeing the fugitives on the flat field, he opened his toothy mouth.
- Yeah! - he shouted and released the dogs.
The ferocious dogs first began to throw the earth with their hind paws. They didn’t even growl, they even looked in the other direction and not at the fugitives - they were so proud of their strength.
Then the dogs slowly walked to the place where Pinocchio, Artemon, Pierrot and Malvina stopped in horror.
It seemed that everything was lost. Karabas Barabas walked clumsily after the police dogs. His beard constantly crawled out of his jacket pocket and got tangled under his feet.
Artemon tucked his tail and growled angrily. Malvina shook her hands:
- I'm afraid, I'm afraid!
Pierrot lowered his sleeves and looked at Malvina, sure that it was all over.
Buratino was the first to come to his senses.
“Pierrot,” he shouted, “take the girl by the hand, run to the lake where the swans are!.. Artemon, throw off the bales, take off your watch - you will fight!..”
Malvina, as soon as she heard this courageous order, jumped off Artemon and, picking up her dress, ran to the lake. Pierrot is behind her.
Artemon threw off the bales, took off the watch from his paw and the bow from the tip of his tail. He bared his white teeth and jumped to the left, jumped to the right, straightening his muscles, and also began to throw the ground with his hind paws.
Pinocchio climbed up the resinous trunk to the top of an Italian pine tree that stood alone in the field, and from there he screamed, howled, and squealed at the top of his lungs:
- Animals, birds, insects! They're beating our people! Save innocent wooden men!..
The police bulldogs seemed to have just now seen Artemon and rushed at him at once. The nimble poodle dodged and with his teeth bit one dog by the stub of his tail, and another by the thigh.
The bulldogs turned awkwardly and rushed at the poodle again. He jumped high, letting them pass under him, and again managed to skin one's side and the other's back.
The bulldogs rushed at him for the third time. Then Artemon, letting his tail trail across the grass, ran in circles across the field, either letting the police dogs get close, or rushing to the side right in front of their noses...
The snub-nosed bulldogs were now really angry, sniffling, running after Artemon slowly, stubbornly, ready to die rather than get to the throat of the fussy poodle.
Meanwhile, Karabas Barabas approached the Italian pine tree, grabbed the trunk and began to shake:
- Get off, get off!
Pinocchio grabbed onto the branch with his hands, feet, and teeth. Karabas Barabas shook the tree so that all the cones on the branches swayed.
On Italian pine, the cones are prickly and heavy, the size of a small melon. To get hit on the head with such a bump is so oh-oh!
Pinocchio could barely hold on to the swaying branch. He saw that Artemon had already stuck out his tongue with a red rag and was jumping more and more slowly.
- Give me the key! - shouted Karabas Barabas, opening his mouth.
Pinocchio climbed up the branch, got to a huge cone and began to bite the stem on which it was hanging. Karabas Barabas shook harder, and the heavy lump flew down - bang! - right into his toothy mouth.
Karabas Barabas even sat down.
Pinocchio tore off the second lump, and it - bang! - Karabas Barabas right in the crown, like a drum.
- They're beating our people! - Buratino shouted again. - To the aid of innocent wooden men!
The swifts were the first to fly to the rescue - with a shaving flight they began to cut the air in front of the bulldogs' noses.
The dogs clicked their teeth in vain - the swift is not a fly: like gray lightning - z-zhik past the nose!
From a cloud that looked like a cat's head, a black kite fell - the one that usually brought Malvina game; he dug his claws into the back of the police dog, soared on magnificent wings, lifted the dog and released him...
The dog, squealing, flopped up with his paws.
Artemon ran into another dog from the side, hit him with his chest, knocked him down, bit him, jumped back...
And again Artemon and the battered and bitten police dogs rushed across the field around the lonely pine tree.
Toads came to help Artemon. They were dragging two snakes, blind from old age. The snakes still had to die - either under a rotten stump or in the stomach of a heron. The toads persuaded them to die a heroic death.
Noble Artemon now decided to engage in open battle. He sat on his tail and bared his fangs.
The bulldogs flew at him, and all three of them rolled into a ball.
Artemon clicked his jaws and tore with his claws. The bulldogs, not paying attention to the bites and scratches, were waiting for one thing: to get to Artemon’s throat - with a death grip. Squeals and howls were heard throughout the entire field.
A family of hedgehogs came to Artemon’s aid: the hedgehog himself, the hedgehog’s wife, the hedgehog’s mother-in-law, two unmarried hedgehog aunts and little cubs.
Thick black-velvet bumblebees in golden cloaks flew and hummed, and ferocious hornets hissed with their wings. Ground beetles and biting beetles with long antennae crawled.
All the animals, birds and insects selflessly attacked the hated police dogs.
The hedgehog, the hedgehog's wife, the hedgehog's mother-in-law, two unmarried aunts and little hedgehogs curled up into a ball and hit the bulldogs in the face with their needles at the speed of a croquet ball.
Bumblebees and hornets stung them with poisoned stings. Serious ants slowly climbed into the nostrils and released poisonous formic acid there.
Ground beetles and beetles bit my navel.
The kite pecked first one dog, then another with its crooked beak in the skull.
Butterflies and flies crowded in a dense cloud in front of their eyes, obscuring the light.
The toads kept two snakes at the ready, ready to die a heroic death.
And so, when one of the bulldogs opened his mouth wide to sneeze out poisonous formic acid, the old blind man rushed head first into his throat and crawled into the esophagus with a screw.
The same thing happened to the other bulldog: the second blind man rushed into his mouth.
Both dogs, stabbed, pinched, scratched, began to roll helplessly on the ground, gasping for breath.
Noble Artemon emerged victorious from the battle.
Meanwhile, Karabas Barabas finally pulled the prickly cone out of his huge mouth.
The blow to the top of his head made his eyes bulge. Staggering, he again grabbed the trunk of the Italian pine. The wind blew his beard.
Pinocchio noticed, sitting at the very top, that the end of Karabas Barabas's beard, raised by the wind, was stuck to the resinous trunk.
Pinocchio hung on a branch and, teasingly, squeaked:
- Uncle, you won’t catch up, uncle, you won’t catch up!..
He jumped to the ground and began to run around the pine trees. Karabas Barabas, stretching out his hands to grab the boy, ran after him, staggering, around the tree.
He ran around once, almost, it seemed, and grabbed the fleeing boy with his crooked fingers, ran around another time, ran around a third time...
His beard was wrapped around the trunk, tightly glued to the resin.
When the beard ended and Karabas Barabas rested his nose against the tree, Pinocchio showed him a long tongue and ran to Swan Lake to look for Malvina and Pierrot.
What remained on the field were two police dogs, whose lives, apparently, could not be given a dead fly, and the confused doctor of puppet science, Signor Karabas Barabas, his beard tightly glued to the Italian pine.
In a cave
Malvina and Pierrot were sitting on a damp, warm hummock in the reeds. From above they were covered by a cobweb network, littered with dragonfly wings and sucked mosquitoes.
Little blue birds, flying from reed to reed, looked with cheerful amazement at the bitterly crying girl.
Desperate screams and squeals were heard from afar - it was Artemon and Buratino, obviously, selling their lives dearly.
- I'm afraid, I'm afraid! - Malvina repeated and covered her wet face with a burdock leaf in despair.
Pierrot tried to console her with poetry:
We're sitting on a hill
Where do flowers grow?
Yellow, pleasant,
Very fragrant.
We'll live all summer
We are on this hummock,
Ah, in solitude,
To everyone's surprise...
Malvina stamped her feet on him:
- I'm tired of you, tired of you, boy! Pick a fresh burdock and you will see that it is all wet and full of holes.
Suddenly the noise and squealing in the distance died down. Malvina slowly clasped her hands:
- Artemon and Pinocchio died...
And she threw herself face first onto a hummock, into the green moss.
Pierrot stomped around her stupidly. The wind quietly whistled through the panicles of reeds.
Finally footsteps were heard. Undoubtedly, it was Karabas Barabas who came to roughly grab Malvina and Pierrot and stuff them into his bottomless pockets. The reeds parted - and Pinocchio appeared: his nose stuck up, his mouth up to his ears. Behind him limped the tattered Artemon, laden with two bales...
- They also wanted to fight with me! - said Pinocchio, not paying attention to the joy of Malvina and Pierrot. - What is a cat to me, what is a fox to me, what is a police dog to me, what is Karabas Barabas himself to me - ugh! Girl, climb on the dog, boy, hold on to the tail. Went…
And he courageously walked over the hummocks, pushing aside the reeds with his elbows, around the lake to the other side...
Malvina and Pierrot did not even dare to ask him how the fight with the police dogs ended and why Karabas Barabas was not pursuing them.
When they reached the other side of the lake, noble Artemon began to whine and limp on all his legs. It was necessary to stop to bandage his wounds. Under the huge roots of a pine tree growing on a rocky hillock, we saw a cave.
They dragged the bales there, and Artemon crawled in there too.
The noble dog first licked each paw, then handed it to Malvina. Pinocchio tore Malvina's old shirt for bandages, Piero held them, Malvina bandaged his paws.
After the dressing, Artemon was given a thermometer, and the dog calmly fell asleep.
Buratino said:
- Pierrot, go to the lake, bring water.
Pierrot obediently trudged along, muttering poetry and stumbling, losing the lid on the way as soon as he brought water from the bottom of the kettle.
Buratino said:
- Malvina, fly down and gather some branches for the fire.
Malvina looked reproachfully at Pinocchio, shrugged her shoulder, and brought several dry stalks.
Buratino said:
- This is the punishment with these well-mannered...
He brought water himself, he himself collected branches and pine cones, he himself lit a fire at the entrance to the cave, so noisy that the branches on a tall pine tree swayed... He himself cooked cocoa in the water.
- Alive! Sit down to breakfast...
Malvina was silent all this time, pursing her lips. But now she said - very firmly, in an adult voice:
- Don’t think, Pinocchio, that if you fought with dogs and won, saved us from Karabas Barabas and subsequently behaved courageously, then this saves you from the need to wash your hands and brush your teeth before eating...
Pinocchio just sat down - that's it for you! – he bulged his eyes at the girl with an iron character.
Malvina came out of the cave and clapped her hands:
- Butterflies, caterpillars, beetles, toads...
Not a minute passed - large butterflies, stained with flower pollen, arrived. Caterpillars and sullen dung beetles crawled in. Toads slapped on their stomachs...
Butterflies, flapping their wings, sat on the walls of the cave so that it would be beautiful inside and the crumbled earth would not fall into the food.
The dung beetles rolled all the debris on the cave floor into balls and threw them away.
A fat white caterpillar crawled onto Pinocchio's head and, hanging from his nose, squeezed some paste onto his teeth. Like it or not, I had to clean them.
Another caterpillar cleaned Pierrot's teeth.
A sleepy badger appeared, looking like a shaggy pig... He took the brown caterpillars with his paw, squeezed out a brown paste from them onto the shoes and with his tail perfectly cleaned all three pairs of shoes - Malvina, Pinocchio and Pierrot.
Having cleaned it, he yawned - a-ha-ha - and waddled away.
A fussy, motley, cheerful hoopoe with a red crest flew in, which stood on end when he was surprised at something.
-Who should I comb?
“Me,” said Malvina. - Curl and comb, I’m disheveled...
-Where is the mirror? Listen, darling...
Then the bug-eyed toads said:
- We'll bring...
Ten toads splashed with their bellies towards the lake. Instead of a mirror, they dragged in a mirror carp, so fat and sleepy that it didn’t care where they dragged it under its fins. The carp was placed on the tail in front of Malvina. To prevent him from suffocating, water was poured into his mouth from a kettle.
The fussy hoopoe curled and combed Malvina's hair. He carefully took one of the butterflies from the wall and powdered the girl’s nose with it.
- Ready, darling...
And - ffrr! - flew out of the cave in a motley ball.
The toads dragged the mirror carp back into the lake. Pinocchio and Pierrot - like it or not - washed their hands and even their necks. Malvina allowed us to sit down and have breakfast.
After breakfast, brushing the crumbs off her knees, she said:
- Pinocchio, my friend, last time we stopped at dictation. Let's continue the lesson...
Pinocchio wanted to jump out of the cave - wherever his eyes were looking. But it was impossible to abandon helpless comrades and a sick dog! He grumbled:
- They didn’t take writing materials...
“It’s not true, they took it,” Artemon groaned.
He crawled to the knot, untied it with his teeth and pulled out a bottle of ink, a pencil case, a notebook and even a small globe.
“Do not hold the insert frantically and too close to the pen, otherwise you will stain your fingers with ink,” said Malvina. She raised her pretty eyes to the ceiling of the cave at the butterflies and...
At this time, the crunching of branches and rude voices were heard - the seller of medicinal leeches, Duremar, and Karabas Barabas, dragging his feet, passed by the cave.
The director of the puppet theater had a huge lump on his forehead, his nose was swollen, his beard was in tatters and smeared with tar.
Groaning and spitting, he said:
“They couldn’t run far.” They are somewhere here in the forest.
Despite everything, Pinocchio decides to find out the secret of the golden key from Karabas Barabas.
Karabas Barabas and Duremar slowly walked past the cave.
During the battle on the plain, the seller of medicinal leeches sat behind a bush in fear. When it was all over, he waited until Artemon and Pinocchio disappeared into the thick grass, and then only with great difficulty did he tear Karabas Barabas’s beard off the trunk of an Italian pine tree.
- Well, the boy got you off! - said Duremar. – You’ll have to put two dozen of the best leeches to the back of your head...
Karabas Barabas roared:
- A hundred thousand devils! Quickly in pursuit of the scoundrels!..
Karabas Barabas and Duremar followed in the footsteps of the fugitives. They parted the grass with their hands, examined every bush, searched every mound.
They saw the smoke of a fire at the roots of an old pine tree, but it never occurred to them that wooden men were hiding in this cave and that they had also lit a fire.
“I’ll cut this scoundrel Pinocchio into pieces with a penknife!” - Karabas Barabas grumbled.
The fugitives hid in a cave.
So what's now? Run? But Artemon, all bandaged, was fast asleep. The dog had to sleep twenty-four hours for the wounds to heal.
Is it really possible to leave a noble dog alone in a cave?
No, no, to be saved - so all together, to perish - so all together...
Pinocchio, Pierrot and Malvina, in the depths of the cave, buried their noses, and conferred for a long time. We decided to wait here until the morning, disguise the entrance to the cave with branches, and give Artemon a nutritious enema to speed up his recovery. Buratino said:
“I still want to find out from Karabas Barabas at all costs where this door is that the golden key opens.” There is something wonderful, amazing hidden behind the door... And it should bring us happiness.
“I’m afraid to be left without you, I’m afraid,” Malvina moaned.
– What do you need Pierrot for?
- Oh, he only reads poetry...
“I will protect Malvina like a lion,” Pierrot said in a hoarse voice, like large predators speak, “you don’t know me yet...
- Well done, Pierrot, this would have happened a long time ago!
And Buratino started to run in the footsteps of Karabas Barabas and Duremar.
He soon saw them. The director of the puppet theater was sitting on the bank of the stream, Duremar was putting a compress of horse sorrel leaves on his bump. From afar one could hear the ferocious rumbling in the empty stomach of Karabas Barabas and the boring squeaking in the empty stomach of the seller of medicinal leeches.
“Signor, we need to refresh ourselves,” said Duremar, “the search for the scoundrels may drag on until late at night.”
“I would eat a whole piglet and a couple of ducks right now,” Karabas Barabas answered gloomily.
The friends wandered to the Three Minnows tavern - its sign was visible on the hill. But sooner than Karabas Barabas and Duremar, Pinocchio rushed there, bending down to the grass so as not to be noticed.
Near the door of the tavern, Pinocchio crept up to a large rooster, who, having found a grain or the remains of chicken porridge, proudly shook his red comb, shuffled his claws and anxiously called the chickens for a treat:
- Ko-ko-ko!
Pinocchio handed him crumbs of almond cake on his palm:
- Help yourself, Signor Commander-in-Chief.
The rooster looked sternly at the wooden boy, but could not resist and pecked him in the palm.
- Ko-ko-ko!..
- Signor Commander-in-Chief, I would need to go to the tavern, but without the owner noticing me. I will hide behind your magnificent multi-colored tail, and you will lead me to the very hearth. OK?
- Ko-ko! – the rooster said even more proudly.
He didn’t understand anything, but in order not to show that he didn’t understand anything, he walked importantly to the open door of the tavern. Pinocchio grabbed him by the sides under his wings, covered himself with his tail and squatted his way into the kitchen, to the very hearth, where the bald owner of the tavern was bustling around, turning spits and frying pans on the fire.
- Go away, you old broth meat! - the owner shouted at the rooster and kicked it so hard that the rooster cackled-cluck-clacked! - With a desperate cry, he flew out into the street to the frightened chickens.
Pinocchio, unnoticed, slipped past the owner's feet and sat down behind a large clay jug.
The owner, bowing low, came out to meet them.
Pinocchio climbed inside the clay jug and hid there.
Pinocchio learns the secret of the golden key
Karabas Barabas and Duremar refreshed themselves with roasted pig. The owner poured wine into glasses.
Karabas Barabas, sucking a pig's leg, said to the owner:
“Your wine is rubbish, pour me some from that jug!” - And he pointed with the bone at the jug where Pinocchio was sitting.
“Sir, this jug is empty,” answered the owner.
- You're lying, show me.
Then the owner lifted the jug and turned it over. Pinocchio rested his elbows against the sides of the jug with all his strength so as not to fall out.
“Something is turning black there,” croaked Karabas Barabas.
“There’s something white there,” Duremar confirmed.
“Sirs, a boil on my tongue, a shot in my lower back—the jug is empty!”
- In that case, put it on the table - we will throw dice there.
The jug where Pinocchio sat was placed between the director of the puppet theater and the seller of medicinal leeches. Gnawed bones and crusts fell on Pinocchio's head.
Karabas Barabas, having drunk a lot of wine, held his beard to the fire of the hearth so that the adhering tar would drip from it.
“I’ll put Pinocchio on my palm,” he said boastfully, “I’ll slam it with the other palm and it will leave a wet spot.”
“The scoundrel fully deserves it,” confirmed Duremar, “but first it would be good to put leeches on him so that they suck out all the blood...”
- No! – Karabas Barabas pounded his fist. - First I’ll take the golden key from him...
The owner intervened in the conversation - he already knew about the flight of the wooden men.
- Signor, you don’t need to tire yourself out searching. Now I’ll call two quick guys, while you’re refreshing yourself with wine, they’ll quickly search the whole forest and bring Pinocchio here.
- OK. Send the guys,” said Karabas Barabas, putting his huge soles to the fire. And since he was already drunk, he sang a song at the top of his lungs:
My people are strange
Stupid, wooden.
Puppet lord
This is who I am, come on...
Terrible Karabas,
Glorious Barabas...
Dolls in front of me
They spread like grass.
Even if you are a beauty -
I have a whip
Whip of seven tails,
Whip of seven tails.
I'll just threaten you with a whip -
My people are meek
Sings songs
Collects money
In my big pocket
In my big pocket...
- Reveal the secret, unfortunate one, reveal the secret!..
Karabas Barabas loudly clicked his jaws in surprise and stared at Duremar.
- It's you?
- No, it's not me…
-Who told me to reveal the secret?
Duremar was superstitious, and he also drank a lot of wine. His face turned blue and wrinkled with fear, like a morel mushroom.
Looking at him, Karabas Barabas chattered his teeth.
“Reveal the secret,” the mysterious voice howled again from the depths of the jug, “otherwise you won’t get out of this chair, unfortunate one!”
Karabas Barabas tried to jump up, but could not even rise.
- What kind of secret? – he asked stuttering.
- The secret of Tortila the turtle.
Out of horror, Duremar slowly crawled under the table. Karabas Barabas's jaw dropped.
– Where is the door, where is the door? - like the wind in a chimney on an autumn night, a voice howled...
- I’ll answer, I’ll answer, shut up, shut up! - Karabas whispered to Barabas. – The door is in old Carlo’s closet, behind the painted fireplace...
As soon as he said these words, the owner came in from the yard.
- These are reliable guys, for money they will bring you even the devil for money, sir...
And he pointed to the fox Alice and the cat Basilio standing on the threshold. The fox respectfully took off her old hat:
- Signor Karabas Barabas will give us ten gold coins for poverty, and we will deliver the scoundrel Pinocchio into your hands without leaving this place.
Karabas Barabas reached under his beard into his vest pocket and took out ten gold pieces.
- Here’s the money, where’s Pinocchio?
The fox counted the coins several times, sighed, giving half to the cat, and pointed with her paw:
- It’s in this jug, sir, right under your nose...
Karabas Barabas grabbed the jug from the table and furiously threw it onto the stone floor. Pinocchio jumped out of the fragments and a pile of gnawed bones. While everyone stood with their mouths open, he rushed like an arrow from the tavern into the yard - straight to the rooster, who proudly examined, first with one eye, then with the other, a dead worm.
“It was you who betrayed me, you old cutlet!” – Pinocchio told him, sticking out his nose fiercely. - Well, now hit as hard as you can...
And he grabbed his general's tail tightly. The rooster, not understanding anything, spread his wings and began to run on his long legs.
Buratino - in a whirlwind - behind him - downhill, across the road, across the field, towards the forest.
Karabas Barabas, Duremar and the owner of the tavern finally came to their senses from their surprise and ran out after Pinocchio. But no matter how much they looked around, he was nowhere to be seen, only in the distance a rooster was clapping as hard as he could across the field. But since everyone knew that he was a fool, no one paid attention to this rooster.
Buratino for the first time in his life comes to despair, but everything ends well
The stupid rooster was exhausted, he could barely run with his beak open. Pinocchio finally let go of his crumpled tail.
- Go, general, to your chickens...
And one went to where Swan Lake shone brightly through the foliage.
Here is a pine tree on a rocky hill, here is a cave. Broken branches are scattered around. The grass is crushed by wheel tracks.
Buratino's heart began to beat desperately. He jumped off the hill and looked under the gnarled roots...
The cave was empty!!!
Neither Malvina, nor Pierrot, nor Artemon.
There were only two rags lying around. He picked them up - they were torn sleeves from Pierrot's shirt.
Friends have been kidnapped by someone! They died! Buratino fell face down - his nose stuck deep into the ground.
He only now realized how dear his friends were to him. Even if Malvina is engaged in education, even if Pierrot reads poems at least a thousand times in a row, Pinocchio would even give a golden key to see his friends again.
A loose mound of earth silently rose near his head, a velvet mole with pink palms crawled out, sneezed three times squeakily and said:
- I'm blind, but I hear perfectly. A cart pulled by sheep drove up here. The Fox, the governor of the City of Fools, and the detectives sat in it. The governor ordered: “Take the scoundrels who beat my best policemen in the line of duty! Take!"
The detectives replied: “Tuff!” They rushed into the cave, and a desperate fuss began there. Your friends were tied up, thrown into a cart along with the bundles, and left.
What good was it to lie with your nose buried in the ground! Pinocchio jumped up and ran along the tracks of the wheels. I went around the lake and came out into a field with thick grass.
He walked and walked... He didn't have any plan in his head. We need to save our comrades - that’s all.
I reached the cliff where the night before last I fell into the burdocks. Below I saw a dirty pond where Tortila the turtle lived. Along the road to the pond, a cart was going down: it was pulled by two thin, skeleton-like sheep with tattered wool.
On the box sat a fat cat in gold glasses with puffy cheeks - he served as a secret whisperer in the governor’s ear. Behind him is the important Fox, the governor... Malvina, Pierrot and the entire bandaged Artemon lay on the bundles; always so combed, his tail trailed like a brush in the dust.
Behind the cart walked two detectives - Doberman pinschers.
Suddenly the detectives raised their dog muzzles and saw Pinocchio’s white cap at the top of the cliff.
With strong jumps, the pinschers began to climb the steep slope. But before they galloped to the top, Pinocchio - and he could no longer hide or run away - folded his hands above his head and, like a swallow, rushed down from the steepest place into a dirty pond covered with green duckweed.
He described a curve in the air and, of course, would have landed in the pond under the protection of Aunt Tortila, if not for a strong gust of wind.
The wind picked up the light wooden Pinocchio, spun it around, spun it in a “double corkscrew”, threw it to the side, and, falling, it plopped right into the cart, on the head of Governor Fox.
The fat cat in gold glasses fell from the box in surprise, and since he was a scoundrel and a coward, he pretended to faint.
Governor Fox, also a desperate coward, rushed to run away along the slope with a squeal and immediately climbed into a badger hole. He had a hard time there: the badgers deal harshly with such guests.
The sheep shied away, the cart overturned, Malvina, Pierrot and Artemon, together with their bundles, rolled into the burdocks.
All this happened so quickly that you, dear readers, would not have time to count all the fingers on your hand.
The Doberman pinschers rushed down the cliff with huge leaps. Jumping up to the overturned cart, they saw a fat cat fainting. We saw wooden men and a bandaged poodle lying in the burdocks.
But Governor Lys was nowhere to be seen.
He disappeared - as if someone whom detectives must protect like the apple of their eye had fallen through the ground.
The first detective, raising his muzzle, let out a dog-like cry of despair.
The second detective did the same:
- Ay, ah, ah, - ooh-ooh!..
They rushed and searched the entire slope. They howled sadly again, because they were already imagining a whip and an iron grate.
Humiliatingly wagging their butts, they ran to the City of Fools to lie to the police department that the governor was taken to heaven alive - this is what they came up with on the way to justify themselves.
Pinocchio slowly felt himself - his legs and arms were intact. He crawled into the burdocks and freed Malvina and Pierrot from the ropes.
Malvina, without saying a word, grabbed Pinocchio by the neck, but could not kiss him - his long nose got in the way.
Pierrot's sleeves were torn off up to his elbows, white powder fell off his cheeks, and it turned out that his cheeks were ordinary - rosy, despite his love of poetry.
Malvina confirmed:
“He fought like a lion.”
She grabbed Pierrot by the neck and kissed him on both cheeks.
“Enough, enough licking,” Buratino grumbled, “let’s run.” We'll drag Artemon by the tail.
All three of them grabbed the tail of the unfortunate dog and dragged it up the slope.
“Let me go, I’ll go myself, I’m so humiliated,” moaned the bandaged poodle.
- No, no, you are too weak.
But as soon as they climbed halfway up the slope, Karabas Barabas and Duremar appeared at the top. Alice the fox pointed at the fugitives with her paw, Basilio the cat bristled his mustache and hissed disgustingly.
- Ha-ha-ha, so clever! – Karabas Barabas laughed. - The golden key itself goes into my hands!
Pinocchio hastily figured out how to get out of this new trouble. Piero pressed Malvina to him, intending to sell his life dearly. This time there was no hope of salvation.
Duremar chuckled at the top of the slope.
- Give me your sick poodle dog, Signor Karabas Barabas, I’ll throw it into the pond for the leeches so that my leeches will get fat...
Fat Karabas Barabas was too lazy to go down, he beckoned the fugitives with his finger like a sausage:
- Come, come to me, children...
- Don `t move! - Buratino ordered. - Dying is so much fun! Pierrot, say some of your nastiest poems. Malvina, laugh out loud...
Malvina, despite some shortcomings, was a good friend. She wiped away her tears and laughed, very offensively for those who stood at the top of the slope.
Pierrot immediately composed poetry and howled in an unpleasant voice:
I feel sorry for Alice the Fox -
A stick cries for her.
Basilio the beggar cat -
Thief, vile cat.
Duremar, our fool, -
The ugliest morel.
Karabas you are Barabas,
We are not very afraid of you...
And Pinocchio grimaced and teased:
- Hey you, director of the puppet theater, old beer keg, fat bag full of stupidity, come down, come down to us - I’ll spit in your tattered beard!
In response, Karabas Barabas growled terribly, Duremar raised his skinny hands to the sky.
Fox Alice smiled wryly:
– Do you allow me to break the necks of these impudent people?
Another minute and everything would have been over... Suddenly swifts rushed by whistling:
- Here, here, here!..
A magpie flew over the head of Karabas Barabas, chattering loudly:
- Hurry, hurry, hurry!..
And at the top of the slope old dad Carlo appeared. His sleeves were rolled up, he had a gnarled stick in his hand, his eyebrows were furrowed...
He pushed Karabas Barabas with his shoulder, Duremar with his elbow, pulled the fox Alice across the back with his baton, and threw Basilio the cat with his boot...
After that, bending down and looking down from the slope where the wooden men stood, he said joyfully:
- My son, Pinocchio, you rogue, you are alive and well - come to me quickly!
Pinocchio finally returns home with dad Carlo, Malvina, Piero and Artemon
The unexpected appearance of Carlo, his club and frowning eyebrows terrified the villains.
Alice the fox crawled into the thick grass and ran away there, sometimes only stopping to shudder after being hit with a club.
Basilio the cat, having flown ten steps away, hissed with anger like a punctured bicycle tire.
Duremar picked up the tails of his green coat and climbed down the slope, repeating:
- I have nothing to do with it, I have nothing to do with it...
But on a steep place he fell off, rolled and splashed into the pond with a terrible noise and splash.
Karabas Barabas remained standing where he stood. He just pulled his entire head up to his shoulders; his beard hung like tow.
Pinocchio, Pierrot and Malvina climbed up. Papa Carlo took them one by one in his arms and shook his finger:
- Here I am, you spoiled people!
And put it in his bosom.
Then he went down a few steps from the slope and crouched over the unfortunate dog. Faithful Artemon raised his muzzle and licked Carlo on the nose. Pinocchio immediately poked his head out from his bosom.
– Papa Carlo, we won’t go home without a dog.
“Eh-heh-heh,” answered Carlo, “it will be hard, but somehow I’ll carry your dog.”
He lifted Artemon onto his shoulder and, panting from the heavy load, climbed up, where, still with his head drawn in and his eyes bulging, stood Karabas Barabas.
“My dolls...” he grumbled.
Papa Carlo answered him sternly:
- Oh you! With whom in his old age he got involved - with swindlers known to the whole world - with Duremar, with a cat, with a fox. You hurt the little ones! Shame on you, doctor!
And Carlo walked along the road to the city.
Karabas Barabas with his head drawn in followed him.
- My dolls, give me back!..
- Don’t give anything away! - Buratino screamed, sticking out from his bosom.
So they walked and walked. We passed the Three Minnows tavern, where the bald owner was bowing at the door, pointing with both hands to the sizzling frying pans.
Near the door, a rooster with its tail torn out walked back and forth, back and forth, indignantly telling the chickens about Pinocchio’s hooligan act. The chickens sympathetically agreed:
- Ah-ah, what fear! Wow, our rooster!..
Carlo climbed a hill from where he could see the sea, here and there covered with matte stripes from the breeze, and near the shore there was an old sand-colored town under the sultry sun and the canvas roof of a puppet theater.
Karabas Barabas, standing three steps behind Carlo, grumbled:
“I’ll give you a hundred gold coins for the dolls, sell them.”
Pinocchio, Malvina and Pierrot stopped breathing - they were waiting for what Carlo would say.
He replied:
- No! If you were a kind, good theater director, I would give you the little people, so be it. And you are worse than any crocodile. I won't give it away or sell it, get out.
Carlo went down the hill and, no longer paying attention to Karabas Barabas, entered the town.
There, in the empty square, a policeman stood motionless.
From the heat and boredom his mustache drooped, his eyelids were stuck together, and flies were circling over his three-cornered hat.
Karabas Barabas suddenly put his beard in his pocket, grabbed Carlo by the back of his shirt and shouted across the entire square:
- Stop the thief, he stole my dolls!..
But the policeman, who was hot and bored, didn’t even move. Karabas Barabas jumped up to him, demanding that Carlo be arrested.
- And who are you? – the policeman asked lazily.
- I am a doctor of puppet science, director of the famous theater, holder of the highest orders, the closest friend of the Tarabar King, Signor Karabas Barabas...
“Don’t yell at me,” the policeman replied.
While Karabas Barabas was arguing with him, Papa Carlo, hastily knocking on the pavement with a stick, approached the house where he lived. He unlocked the door to the darkened closet under the stairs, took Artemon off his shoulder, laid him on the bed, took Pinocchio, Malvina and Pierrot out of his bosom and sat them side by side on a chair.
Malvina immediately said:
– Papa Carlo, first of all take care of the sick dog. Boys, wash yourself immediately...
Suddenly she clasped her hands in despair:
- And my dresses! My brand new shoes, my pretty ribbons were left at the bottom of the ravine, in the burdocks!..
“It’s okay, don’t worry,” said Carlo, “in the evening I’ll go and bring your bundles.”
He carefully unbandaged Artemon's paws. It turned out that the wounds had almost healed and the dog could not move only because it was hungry.
“A plate of oatmeal and a bone with a brain,” groaned Artemon, “and I’m ready to fight all the dogs in the city.”
“Ah-ah-ah,” Carlo lamented, “but I don’t have a crumb at home, and not a soldo in my pocket...”
Malvina sobbed pitifully. Pierrot rubbed his forehead with his fist, thinking.
Carlo shook his head:
“And you’ll spend the night, son, for vagrancy at the police station.”
Everyone except Pinocchio became despondent. He smiled slyly, turned around as if he was sitting not on a chair, but on an upside-down button.
- Guys, stop whining! “He jumped to the floor and pulled something out of his pocket. - Papa Carlo, take a hammer and tear the holey canvas off the wall.
And he pointed with his nose in the air to the hearth, and to the pot over the hearth, and to the smoke, painted on a piece of old canvas.
Carlo was surprised:
“Why, son, do you want to rip such a beautiful picture off the wall?” In winter, I look at it and imagine that it is a real fire and there is real lamb stew with garlic in the pot, and I feel a little warmer.
“Papa Carlo, I give my puppet my word of honor, you will have a real fire in the hearth, a real cast-iron pot and hot stew.” Rip off the canvas.
Pinocchio said this so confidently that Papa Carlo scratched the back of his head, shook his head, grunted, grunted - he took pliers and a hammer and began to tear off the canvas. Behind it, as we already know, everything was covered in cobwebs and dead spiders were hanging.
Carlo carefully swept away the cobwebs. Then a small door made of darkened oak became visible. Laughing faces were carved on its four corners, and in the middle there was a dancing man with a long nose.
When the dust was dusted off, Malvina, Piero, Papa Carlo, even hungry Artemon exclaimed in one voice:
– This is a portrait of Buratino himself!
“I thought so,” said Pinocchio, although he didn’t think anything like that and was surprised himself. - And here is the key to the door. Papa Carlo, open...
“This door and this golden key,” said Carlo, “were made a long time ago by some skilled craftsman.” Let's see what's hidden behind the door.
He put the key in the keyhole and turned...
Quiet, very pleasant music was heard, as if an organ was playing in a music box...
Papa Carlo pushed the door. With a creak, it began to open.
At this time, hurried steps were heard outside the window and the voice of Karabas Barabas roared:
- In the name of the Tarabarian King, arrest the old rogue Carlo!
Karabas Barabas breaks into the closet under the stairs
Karabas Barabas, as we know, tried in vain to persuade the sleepy policeman to arrest Carlo. Having achieved nothing, Karabas Barabas ran down the street.
His flowing beard clung to the buttons and umbrellas of passers-by. He pushed and clanked his teeth. The boys whistled shrilly after him and threw rotten apples at his back.
Karabas Barabas ran to the mayor of the city. At this hot hour, the boss was sitting in the garden, near the fountain, in his shorts and drinking lemonade.
The chief had six chins, his nose was buried in rosy cheeks. Behind him, under the linden tree, four gloomy policemen kept uncorking bottles of lemonade.
Karabas Barabas threw himself on his knees in front of the boss and, smearing tears across his face with his beard, screamed:
“I’m an unfortunate orphan, I was offended, robbed, beaten...
- Who offended you, an orphan? – the boss asked, puffing.
– My worst enemy, the old organ grinder Carlo. He stole three of my best dolls, he wants to burn down my famous theater, he will set fire and rob the whole city if he is not arrested now.
To reinforce his words, Karabas Barabas pulled out a handful of gold coins and put them in the boss’s shoe.
In short, he spun such things and lied that the frightened chief ordered four policemen under the linden tree:
- Follow the venerable orphan and in the name of the law do everything that is necessary.
Karabas Barabas ran with four policemen to Carlo’s closet and shouted:
- In the name of the Tarabarian King, arrest the thief and scoundrel!
But the doors were closed. No one responded in the closet.
Karabas Barabas ordered:
– In the name of the King of Gibberish, break down the door!
The police pressed, the rotten halves of the doors tore off their hinges, and four brave policemen, rattling their sabers, fell with a roar into the closet under the stairs.
It was at that very moment when Carlo was leaving through the secret door in the wall, bending over.
He was the last to escape. The door - ding! – slammed shut.
The quiet music stopped playing. In the closet under the stairs there were only dirty bandages and a torn canvas with a painted hearth...
Karabas Barabas jumped to the secret door, pounded on it with his fists and heels: tra-ta-ta-ta!
But the door was strong.
Karabas Barabas ran up and hit the door with his back.
The door didn't budge.
He stomped on the police:
– Break down the damned door in the name of the Gibberish King!..
The policemen felt each other's spots on their noses, their bumps on their heads.
“No, the work here is very hard,” they answered and went to the head of the city to say that they had done everything according to the law, but the old organ grinder was apparently being helped by the devil himself, because he went through the wall.
Karabas Barabas pulled his beard, fell to the floor and began to roar, howl and roll around like mad in the empty closet under the stairs.
What did they find behind the secret door?
While Karabas Barabas was rolling around like mad and tearing out his beard, Pinocchio was ahead, and behind him Malvina, Piero, Artemon and - last - Papa Carlo, were descending the steep stone stairs into the dungeon.
Papa Carlo was holding a candle stub. Its wavering light cast large shadows from Artemon’s shaggy head or from Pierrot’s outstretched hand, but could not illuminate the darkness into which the staircase descended.
Malvina, in order not to cry out of fear, pinched her ears.
Pierrot - as always, neither to the village nor to the city - muttered rhymes:
Shadows dance on the wall -
I'm not afraid of anything.
Let the stairs be steep
Let the darkness be dangerous,
It's still an underground route
Will lead somewhere...
Pinocchio was ahead of his comrades - his white cap was barely visible deep below.
Suddenly something hissed there, fell, rolled, and his plaintive voice was heard:
- Come to my aid!
Instantly Artemon, forgetting his wounds and hunger, knocked over Malvina and Pierrot and rushed down the steps in a black whirlwind.
His teeth chattered. Some creature screeched vilely.
Everything became quiet. Only Malvina’s heart was beating loudly, like an alarm clock.
A wide beam of light from below hit the stairs. The light of the candle that Papa Carlo was holding turned yellow.
- Look, look quickly! - Buratino called loudly.
Malvina - backwards - hastily began to climb down from step to step, Pierrot jumped after her. Carlo was the last to get down, bending over, and now and then losing his wooden shoes.
Below, where the steep staircase ended, Artemon was sitting on a stone platform. He was licking his lips. At his feet lay the strangled rat Shushara.
Pinocchio lifted the decayed felt with both hands - it covered the hole in the stone wall. Blue light poured from there.
The first thing they saw when they crawled through the hole was the diverging rays of the sun. They fell from the vaulted ceiling through the round window.
Wide beams with dust particles dancing in them illuminated a round room made of yellowish marble. In the middle of it stood a wonderfully beautiful puppet theater. A golden zigzag of lightning glittered on its curtain.
From the sides of the curtain rose two square towers, painted as if they were made of small bricks. The high roofs of green tin glittered brightly.
On the left tower there was a clock with bronze hands. On the dial, opposite each number, are drawn the laughing faces of a boy and a girl.
On the right tower there is a round window made of multi-colored glass.
Above this window, on a roof made of green tin, sat the Talking Cricket. When everyone stopped with their mouths open in front of the wonderful theater, the cricket said slowly and clearly:
“I warned you that terrible dangers and terrible adventures await you, Pinocchio.” It’s good that everything ended well, but it could have ended unfavorably... That’s right...
The cricket's voice was old and slightly offended, because the Talking Cricket had once been hit on the head with a hammer and, despite his hundred years of age and natural kindness, he could not forget the undeserved insult. Therefore, he did not add anything else - he twitched his antennae, as if brushing dust off them, and slowly crawled somewhere into a lonely crevice - away from the bustle.
Then Papa Carlo said:
“And I thought we’d at least find a bunch of gold and silver here,” but all we found was an old toy.
He walked up to the clock built into the turret, tapped his fingernail on the dial, and since there was a key hanging on a copper nail on the side of the clock, he took it and wound up the clock...
There was a loud ticking sound. The arrows moved. The big hand approached twelve, the small one approached six. There was a hum and hiss inside the tower. The clock struck six...
Immediately, a window made of multi-colored glass opened on the right tower, a colorful colorful bird jumped out and, fluttering its wings, sang six times:
- To us - to us, to us - to us, to us - to us...
The bird disappeared, the window slammed shut, and organ-organ music began to play. And the curtain rose...
No one, not even Papa Carlo, had ever seen such a beautiful scenery.
There was a garden on the stage. On small trees with gold and silver leaves, clockwork starlings the size of fingernails sang. On one tree hung apples, each of them no larger than a buckwheat grain. Peacocks walked under the trees and, rising on tiptoe, pecked at apples. Two little goats were jumping and butting heads on the lawn, and butterflies were flying in the air, barely visible to the eye.
A minute passed like that. The starlings fell silent, the peacocks and kids retreated behind the side curtains. Trees fell into secret hatches under the stage floor.
The tulle clouds began to disperse from the backdrop.
The red sun appeared over the sandy desert. To the right and left, from behind the side curtains, branches of vines, similar to snakes, were thrown out - on one of them there was actually a boa constrictor snake hanging. On another, a family of monkeys swayed, clutching their tails.
This was Africa.
Animals walked along the desert sand under the red sun.
A maned lion rushed in three leaps - although he was no bigger than a kitten, he was scary.
A teddy bear with an umbrella waddled along on its hind legs.
A disgusting crocodile crawled along - its small crappy eyes pretended to be kind. But still Artemon did not believe it and growled at him.
A rhinoceros galloped along; for safety, a rubber ball was placed on its sharp horn.
A giraffe ran by, looking like a striped, horned camel, stretching its neck with all its might.
Then came the elephant, the children’s friend, smart, good-natured, waving his trunk in which he held soy candy.
The last to trot sideways was a terribly dirty wild dog - a jackal. Artemon rushed at her, barking, and Papa Carlo barely managed to pull him away from the stage by his tail.
The animals have passed. The sun suddenly went out. In the darkness, some things fell from above, some things moved out from the sides. There was a sound as if a bow was being drawn across the strings.
The frosted street lamps flashed. The stage was a city square. The doors to the houses opened, little people ran out and climbed into the toy tram. The conductor rang the bell, the driver turned the handle, the boy eagerly clung to the sausage, the policeman whistled, the tram rolled into a side street between tall buildings.
A cyclist passed by on wheels no bigger than a jam saucer. A newspaperman ran by - four folded sheets of a tear-off calendar - that's how big his newspapers were.
The ice cream man rolled an ice cream cart across the site. Girls ran out onto the balconies of the houses and waved at him, and the ice cream man spread his arms and said:
“You’ve eaten everything, come back another time.”
Then the curtain fell, and a golden zigzag of lightning glittered on it.
Papa Carlo, Malvina, Piero could not recover from admiration. Pinocchio, with his hands in his pockets and his nose in the air, said boastfully:
- Did you see what? So, it was not for nothing that I got wet in the swamp at Aunt Tortila’s... In this theater we will stage a comedy - do you know which one? - “The Golden Key, or The Extraordinary Adventures of Pinocchio and His Friends.” Karabas Barabas will burst out of frustration.
Pierrot rubbed his wrinkled forehead with his fists:
- I will write this comedy in luxurious verses.
“I will sell ice cream and tickets,” said Malvina. – If you find my talent, I’ll try to play the roles of pretty girls...
- Wait, guys, when will we study? – asked Papa Carlo.
Everyone answered at once:
- We will study in the morning... And in the evening we will play in the theater...
“Well, that’s it, kids,” said Papa Carlo, “and I, kids, will play the barrel organ for the amusement of the respectable public, and if we start traveling around Italy from city to city, I’ll ride a horse and cook lamb stew with garlic.” ...
Artemon listened with his ear raised, turned his head, looked at his friends with sparkling eyes, and asked: what should he do?
Buratino said:
– Artemon will be in charge of props and theatrical costumes, we’ll give him the keys to the storeroom. During the performance, he can imitate the roar of a lion, the stomping of a rhinoceros, the creaking of crocodile teeth, the howl of the wind - by quickly wagging his tail - and other necessary sounds behind the scenes.
- Well, what about you, what about you, Pinocchio? - everyone asked. – Who do you want to be at the theater?
“Cranks, I’ll play myself in a comedy and become famous all over the world!”
The new puppet theater gives its first performance
Karabas Barabas sat in front of the fire in a disgusting mood. The damp wood barely smoldered. It was raining outside. The puppet theater's leaky roof was leaking. The puppets' hands and feet were damp, and no one wanted to work at rehearsals, even under the threat of a seven-tailed whip. The dolls had not eaten anything for the third day and were whispering ominously in the pantry, hanging on nails.
Not a single theater ticket had been sold since the morning. And who would go to see Karabas Barabas’s boring plays and hungry, ragged actors!
The clock on the city tower struck six. Karabas Barabas gloomily wandered into the auditorium - it was empty.
“Damn all the respectable spectators,” he grumbled and went out into the street. When he came out, he looked, blinked and opened his mouth so that a crow could easily fly in.
Opposite his theater, a crowd stood in front of a large new canvas tent, oblivious to the damp wind from the sea.
A long-nosed man in a cap stood on a platform above the entrance to the tent, blowing a hoarse trumpet and shouting something.
The audience laughed, clapped their hands, and many went inside the tent.
Duremar approached Karabas Barabas; he smelled like mud as never before.
“Eh-heh-heh,” he said, gathering his entire face into sour wrinkles, “nothing is going on with medicinal leeches.” “I want to go to them,” Duremar pointed to the new tent, “I want to ask them to light candles or sweep the floor.”
- Whose damn theater is this? Where did he come from? - Karabas Barabas growled.
– It was the puppets themselves who opened the Molniya puppet theater, they themselves write plays in verse, they act themselves.
Karabas Barabas gritted his teeth, pulled his beard and walked towards the new canvas tent.
Above the entrance to it Buratino shouted:
– The first performance of an entertaining, exciting comedy from the life of wooden men! The true story of how we defeated all our enemies with wit, courage and presence of mind...
At the entrance to the puppet theater, Malvina was sitting in a glass booth with a beautiful bow in her blue hair and did not have time to hand out tickets to those who wanted to watch a funny comedy from a puppet’s life.
Papa Carlo, wearing a new velvet jacket, was twirling a barrel organ and cheerfully winking at the respectable audience.
Artemon was dragging the fox Alice, who passed without a ticket, by her tail from the tent.
The cat Basilio, also a stowaway, managed to escape and sat in the rain on a tree, looking down with feisty eyes.
Pinocchio, puffing out his cheeks, blew a hoarse trumpet.
- The show begins!
And he ran down the stairs to play the first scene of the comedy, which depicted poor dad Carlo whittling a wooden man out of a log, not expecting that this would bring him happiness.
Tortila the turtle was the last to crawl into the theater, holding in his mouth an honorary ticket on parchment paper with gold corners.
The performance has begun. Karabas Barabas gloomily returned to his empty theater. I took the seven-tailed whip. He unlocked the door to the pantry.
“I’ll teach you brats not to be lazy!” – he growled fiercely. - I’ll teach you how to lure the public to me!
He cracked his whip. But no one answered. The pantry was empty. Only scraps of string hung from the nails.
All the dolls - the Harlequin, and the girls in black masks, and the sorcerers in pointed hats with stars, and the hunchbacks with noses like cucumbers, and the araps, and the dogs - all, all, all the dolls ran away from Karabas Barabas.
With a terrible howl, he jumped out of the theater into the street. He saw the last of his actors running away through the puddles into the new theater, where music was playing merrily, laughter and clapping were heard.
Karabas Barabas only managed to grab a paper dog with buttons instead of eyes. But out of nowhere, Artemon swooped in, snatched the dog and rushed off with it to the tent, where hot lamb stew with garlic was prepared backstage for the hungry actors.
Karabas Barabas remained sitting in a puddle in the rain.
"The Golden Key, or The Adventures of Pinocchio"- a fairy tale story by Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy, which is a literary adaptation of a fairy tale by Carlo Collodi « » . Tolstoy dedicated the book to his future wife Lyudmila Ilyinichna Krestinskaya.
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History of creation and publication
The creation of the story began with the fact that in 1923-1924, Alexei Tolstoy, while in exile, began work on a translation of the Italian fairy tale by Carlo Collodi "The Adventures of Pinocchio. History of the wooden doll ». In the spring of 1934, already in the USSR, he decided to return to the fairy tale, postponing work on the trilogy "The Road to Calvary "(at that time the writer was recovering from a myocardial infarction).
Initially, Tolstoy wanted to simply translate the original, but then he became carried away by the original idea and created the story of a hearth painted on an old canvas and a golden key. Ultimately, he moved quite far from the original plot due to the fact that it was outdated for the period of socialist realism, and also because Collodi’s tale is full of moralizing and instructive maxims. Tolstoy wanted to breathe more spirit of adventure and fun into the heroes.
I'm working on Pinocchio. At first I only wanted to write the contents of Collodi in Russian. But then I gave up on it, it turns out a bit boring and bland. With Marshak’s blessing, I am writing on the same topic in my own way.
Plot
The tale takes place in a fictional Italian “town on the Mediterranean coast.”
Day 1
The old carpenter Giuseppe, nicknamed “Grey Nose,” fell into the hands of a log. Giuseppe began to cut it with a hatchet to make a table leg, but the log squeaked in a human voice. Then Giuseppe decided not to get involved with this strange object and gave the log to his friend, the former organ grinder Carlo, recommending that he cut a doll out of the log. True, at the time of the transfer, a log hit Carlo on the head, and he had a little fight with Giuseppe, but the friends quickly calmed down and made peace.
Carlo brought the log into his poor closet and made a doll out of it. Miraculously, she came to life right in his hands. Carlo barely had time to name the created doll “Pinocchio” before she ran out of the closet and into the street. Carlo gave chase. Pinocchio was stopped by a policeman, grabbing him by the nose, but when Papa Carlo arrived, Pinocchio pretended to be dead. Passers-by decided that it was Carlo who had “beaten” the doll to death, and the policeman took Carlo to the police station to investigate.
Buratino returned alone to the closet under the stairs, where he met the Talking Cricket. The latter advised Pinocchio to behave well, obey Papa Carlo and go to school. Pinocchio, however, replied that he did not need such advice and that he liked scary adventures more than anything in the world, and to confirm his words he even threw a hammer at the cricket. The offended cricket crawled away forever from the closet, where he had lived for more than a hundred years, finally predicting big troubles for the wooden boy.
Feeling hungry, Buratino rushed to the fireplace and stuck his nose into the pot, but it turned out to be painted, and Buratino only pierced the canvas with his long nose. Then he found an egg and broke it to eat, but instead of the contents there was a chicken, which, thanking Pinocchio for freeing him, jumped out the closet window and ran away to his mother.
In the evening of the same day, the old rat Shushara crawled out from under the floor. Pinocchio pulled its tail, and the rat got angry, grabbed him by the throat and dragged him underground. But then Carlo returned from the police station, saved Pinocchio and fed him an onion. Then he glued together Pinocchio’s clothes: “a jacket made of brown paper and bright green pants. I made shoes from an old boot and a hat - a cap with a tassel - from an old sock.”
Remembering the Talking Cricket's advice, Pinocchio told Carlo that he would go to school. To buy the alphabet, Carlo had to sell his only jacket.
Pinocchio buried his nose in the kind hands of Papa Carlo.
I’ll learn, grow up, buy you a thousand new jackets...
Day 2
The next day, Buratino went to school in the morning, but on the way he heard music inviting the audience to a puppet theater performance. His legs themselves brought him to the theater. Pinocchio sold his alphabet book to some boy for four soldiers and bought a ticket to the performance “The Girl with Blue Hair, or Thirty-three Slaps on the Head.” During this performance, the dolls recognized Pinocchio:
This is Pinocchio! This is Pinocchio! Come to us, come to us, cheerful rogue Pinocchio!
Pinocchio jumped onto the stage, all the dolls sang “Polka the Bird,” and the performance got mixed up. The owner of the puppet theater and doctor of puppet science, Signor Karabas Barabas, intervened and removed Pinocchio from the stage, after which, threatening the puppets with a seven-tailed whip, he ordered them to continue the performance. At dinner, he wanted to use Pinocchio as firewood for the roast, but suddenly he sneezed and became lighter. Pinocchio managed to tell something about himself. When he mentioned the painted fireplace in the closet, Karabas Barabas said:
So, it means that there is a secret secret in old Carlo’s closet...
After that, he spared Pinocchio and even gave him five gold coins, ordering him to return home in the morning and give the money to Carlo, with the condition that he under no circumstances leave his closet. Pinocchio stayed overnight in the doll's bedroom.
Day 3
In the morning, Pinocchio ran home, but on the way he met two swindlers - the fox Alice and the cat Basilio. They, trying to fraudulently take money from Buratino, suggested going not home, but to the Land of Fools:
In the Country of Fools there is a magical field called the “Field of Miracles”... In this field, dig a hole, say three times: “Cracks, fex, pex”, put the gold in the hole, cover it with earth, sprinkle salt on top, fill it well and go to sleep. The next morning a small tree will grow from the hole, and gold coins will hang on it instead of leaves.
After hesitation, Buratino agreed. Until evening they wandered around the neighborhood until they ended up at the Three Minnows tavern, where Buratino ordered three crusts of bread, and the cat and the fox ordered all the rest of the food that was in the tavern. After dinner, Buratino and his companions lay down to rest. At midnight, the owner of the tavern woke up Pinocchio and said that the fox and the cat had left earlier and ordered him to catch up with them. Pinocchio had to pay one gold piece for the shared dinner and hit the road.
On the night road, Buratino was chased by robbers, on whose heads “were wearing bags with holes cut for the eyes.” It was Alice the fox and Basilio the cat in disguise. After a long chase, Pinocchio saw a house on the lawn and began to desperately pound on the door with his hands and feet, but they did not let him in.
Girl, open the door, robbers are chasing me!
Oh, what nonsense! - said the girl, yawning with her pretty mouth. - I want to sleep, I can’t open my eyes...
She raised her hands, stretched sleepily and disappeared through the window.
The robbers grabbed Pinocchio and tortured him for a long time to force him to give up the gold that he managed to hide in his mouth. Finally they hung him upside down on an oak branch, and at dawn they went to look for some tavern.
Day 4
Near the tree where Pinocchio hung, in a forest house lived Malvina, a girl with blue hair, with whom Pierrot was in love. She escaped from the tyranny of Karabas Barabas along with her poodle Artemon and managed to make friends with the forest inhabitants, who “supplied her with everything necessary for life.” Malvina discovered Pinocchio and ordered him to be removed from the tree and moved into the house. To treat the victim, she invited forest healers - Doctor Owl, paramedic Toad and folk healer Mantis.
All three argued for a long time whether Pinocchio was alive or not, but then he came to his senses. As a result, he was prescribed castor oil and left alone.
Day 5
In the morning Buratino came to his senses in the dollhouse. As soon as Malvina saved Pinocchio, she immediately tried to teach him good manners, arithmetic and penmanship. Buratino's training was unsuccessful (since he did not want to study at all), and Malvina locked him in a closet for educational purposes. Buratino did not stay under the castle for long, but he escaped through a cat hole. A bat showed him the way, which led him to the fox Alice and the cat Basilio. The latter, in turn, led him to the Field of Miracles (in fact, a wasteland completely covered with various garbage).
Pinocchio, following the instructions, buried the remaining four gold pieces, poured water on them, and read a spell “Cracks, fex, pex!” and sat down to wait for the money tree to grow. The fox and the cat, without waiting for Pinocchio to fall asleep or leave his post, decided to speed up events. One of them went to the police station of the Country of Fools and reported to the bulldog on duty about Pinocchio, while the latter was still sitting on the Field of Miracles, where he was captured by two Doberman pinscher detectives, after which he was taken to the station.
Alice the fox and Basilio the cat took possession of the gold and immediately fought among themselves over the incorrect division, but then they still divided the money equally and disappeared. Meanwhile, Buratino's sentence was short:
You have committed three crimes, scoundrel: you are homeless, without a passport and unemployed. Take him out of town and drown him in a pond!
The detectives picked up Pinocchio, “dragged him out of town at a gallop and threw him from the bridge into a deep dirty pond full of frogs, leeches and water beetle larvae.” Having fallen into the water, he met the inhabitant of the pond, Tortila the turtle. She took pity on the poor wooden boy who had lost his money (he learned from her who stole it), and gave him a golden key, which Karabas Barabas accidentally dropped into the pond. Pinocchio ran away from the Country of Fools and met Pierrot, who, like Malvina, escaped from the puppet theater.
It turned out that one rainy night Pierrot accidentally overheard a conversation between Karabas Barabas and Duremar, a leech merchant, who came to warm up, from whom he learned that Tortila the turtle was hiding a golden key at the bottom of the pond. Karabas Barabas noticed that Pierrot was eavesdropping, and sent two police bulldogs, whom he hired in the City of Fools, in pursuit of him. But Pierrot barely managed to escape on a hare. Now Pierrot had one desire - to meet Malvina, and he asked Pinocchio to take him to his beloved.
Day 6
Pinocchio led Pierrot to the dollhouse, but before Pierrot had time to rejoice at meeting Malvina, it turned out that they had to immediately flee from the chase. Malvina and Artemon packed their things, but the dolls did not have time to run far: Karabas Barabas and two police bulldogs were already waiting for them at the edge of the forest. Pinocchio ordered Malvina and Pierrot to run to Swan Lake, and he and Artemon entered into battle with Karabas Barabas and the bulldogs. He called all the inhabitants of the forest for help. Hedgehogs, toads, snakes, kites and many other animals came to the defense of the dolls.
The police dogs were defeated by Artemon and the forest inhabitants who came to the rescue, and Pinocchio defeated Karabas Barabas in a one-on-one fight, throwing two Italian pine cones at him and gluing his beard to a resinous tree trunk. After a fight with police dogs, Pinocchio, Pierrot, Malvina and the wounded Artemon hid in a cave. The badly injured Karabas Barabas, having come to his senses, went with Duremar (who peeled his beard off the pine tree) to the Three Minnows tavern to have a good meal before searching for the fugitives. The brave Pinocchio followed them, climbed into a clay jug and during the meal found out from Karabas Barabas what the secret of the golden key was.
Alice the fox and Basilio the cat entered the tavern. They promised Duremar and Karabas Barabas that for ten gold coins they would give them Pinocchio, “without leaving this place,” after which they showed the villains the jug where Pinocchio was hiding. Karabas Barabas breaks this jug, but Buratino, who jumped out of there, unexpectedly runs out into the street, sits astride the rooster and returns to his friends. However, he finds no one in the cave. A mole crawls out from under the ground and tells Pinocchio about what happened to his friends. It turns out that while Pinocchio was away in the cave, detectives from the Country of Fools found his friends and arrested them.
Pinocchio gives chase. Accidentally encountering a procession consisting of the Governor of the City of Fools, a fat cat with gold glasses, two Doberman pinschers and arrested dolls, he tried to escape, but his desperate attempt led to the unexpected release of his friends. They had almost escaped when Karabas Barabas, Duremar, the fox Alice and the cat Basilio blocked their way. Now there would be no way for the dolls to escape if Papa Carlo had not arrived just at that moment and dispersed the villains:
He pushed Karabas Barabas with his shoulder, pushed Duremar with his elbow, pulled the fox Alice across the back with his baton, and threw Basilio the cat with his boot...
Despite the objections of Karabas Barabas that the dolls belonged to him, Papa Carlo took Pinocchio, Piero, Malvina and Artemon and returned to the city, to his closet. It was here that Pinocchio revealed the secret to his friends. He asked Papa Carlo to remove the canvas, and behind it was a door, which he opened with a golden key. Behind the door was an underground passage that led the heroes to a small room:
Wide beams with dust particles dancing in them illuminated a round room made of yellowish marble. In the middle of it stood a wonderfully beautiful puppet theater. A golden zigzag of lightning glittered on its curtain.
From the sides of the curtain rose two square towers, painted as if they were made of small bricks. The high roofs of green tin glittered brightly.
On the left tower there was a clock with bronze hands. On the dial, opposite each number, are drawn the laughing faces of a boy and a girl.On the right tower there is a round window made of multi-colored glass.
The friends agreed that in the morning they would study at school and in the evening they would play in the wonderful Molniya puppet theater.
Epilogue
The tale ends with the theater's first performance - the comedy "The Golden Key, or the Extraordinary Adventures of Pinocchio and His Friends." All the dolls of Karabas Barabas ran away from him to the new theater. Karabas Barabas was left with nothing - he literally sat in a puddle.
Illustrations
The first edition was designed by the artist Bronisław Malachowski, the illustrations were in black and white. Later, images of Pinocchio and other characters in the book were created by Aminadav Kanevsky. In 1943, he created illustrations also in black and white, and in 1950 he created a color version in watercolor.
Subsequent editions were illustrated by famous artists such as Leonid Vladimirsky, Alexander Koshkin, Anatoly Kokorin and German Ogorodnikov, and many others, in a variety of styles: from caricature to abstract.
"Golden Key..." in culture
Children and adults loved the book from the first edition. The only negative that was noted by critics is its secondary nature in relation to Collodi's original.
Tolstoy's fairy tale has gone through many reprints and translations since 1936. Film adaptations appeared in the form of a film with dolls and live actors; cartoons, plays (there is even a play in verse), opera and ballet. The production of “Pinocchio” at the Sergei Obraztsov Theater gained fame. In Soviet times, the board game “Golden Key” was released, and with the beginning of the digital era, the computer game “The Adventures of Pinocchio” was released. The drink Buratino and the Golden Key candy appeared. Even the heavy flamethrower system “Buratino”. The characters of the book and their phrases have steadily entered the Russian language, folklore and have become a topic for jokes.
Critic Mark Lipovetsky called Pinocchio influential cultural archetype, a book that has become a kind of monument and at the same time an important element of the spiritual tradition of Soviet culture.
Cultural references in the book
I found the money and didn’t share it with anyone. Take everything for yourself, Mitrofanushka. Don't study this stupid science.
- "And the rose fell on Azor's paw"(the phrase dictated by Malvina Buratino during the lesson) is a palindrome of Afanasy Fet.
- The explanation that the detective dogs came up with to justify the disappearance of Governor Fox - that he was “taken into heaven alive” - is a reference to the biblical stories about the forefather Enoch (Gen.) and the prophet Elijah (2 Kings).
Sequels
The fairy tale about Pinocchio by Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy was repeatedly continued.
- Elena Yakovlevna Danko (1898-1942) wrote the fairy tale “The Defeated Karabas,” which was first published in 1941.
- In 1975, Alexander Kumma and Sacco Runge published the book “The Second Secret of the Golden Key.”
- The illustrator of Alexei Tolstoy's fairy tale, artist and writer Leonid Viktorovich Vladimirsky, came up with his own fairy tales about a wooden boy:
- “Pinocchio is looking for treasure” (which tells the story of the origin of the Molniya Theater);
- “Pinocchio in the Emerald City” (crossover).
- Also known [ When?] Lara Dream’s fairy tale “New Adventures of Pinocchio and His Friends.”
- Max Fry's book "The Yellow Metal Key" is actually [ When?] a paraphrase of “The Golden Key”, a retelling of an old fairy tale in a new way.
- Sergey Vasilievich Lukyanenko wrote the idea of the novel"Argentum Key" in cyberpunk style.
Differences from The Adventures of Pinocchio
| "The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Pinocchio" | "The Adventures of Pinocchio" |
| The plot is good and quite childish. Although there are several deaths in the story (the rat Shushara, old snakes and, possibly, Governor Fox), there is no emphasis on this. Moreover, all the deaths occur not through the fault of Pinocchio: Shushara was strangled by Artemon, the snakes died a heroic death in a battle with police dogs, and the Fox was dealt with by the badgers. | The book contains scenes related to cruelty and violence. For example, Pinocchio threw a hammer at the Talking Cricket, then lost his legs, which were burned in a brazier, and then bit off the Cat's paw. The latter had previously killed a blackbird who was trying to warn Pinocchio. |
| Heroes commedia dell'arte- Burattino, Harlequin and Pierrot. | Heroes commedia dell'arte- Harlequin and Pulcinella. |
| Fox Alice (female); There is also an episodic character - Governor Fox. | Fox (male). |
| Malvina with her poodle Artemon, who is her friend. | A fairy with the same appearance, who then changes her age several times. Poodle Medoro is a very old livery servant. |
| There is a golden key; For information about the secret door Karabas Barabas gives Buratino money. | The golden key is missing; at the same time, Manjafoko also gives money. |
| Karabas Barabas is definitely a negative character, a rival of Pinocchio and his friends. | Mangiafoco is a positive character, despite his fierce appearance, and sincerely wants to help Pinocchio. |
| Pinocchio does not change his character and appearance until the end of the plot. He stops all attempts to forcibly re-educate him and remains a doll, although he becomes more social and begins to value friendship. | Pinocchio, who is lectured throughout the story, first turns into a real donkey, but is then rehabilitated. At the end of the book he becomes a living, virtuous boy. |
| The dolls behave like independent animate beings. | It is emphasized that dolls are just puppets in the hands of a puppeteer. |
| Pinocchio has a long nose “from birth”, since attempts to shorten it led nowhere. | Pinocchio's nose gets even longer when he lies. |
| The story lasts 6 days. | The story lasts 2 years and 8 months, or approximately 1000 days. |
The books vary significantly in atmosphere and detail. The main plot coincides quite closely until the moment when the cat and the fox dig up the coins buried by Pinocchio, with the difference that Pinocchio is significantly kinder than Pinocchio. There are no further plot similarities with Pinocchio.
Heroes of the book
Positive characters
- Pinocchio- a wooden doll carved from a log by the organ grinder Carlo.
- Papa Carlo- an organ grinder who carved Pinocchio from a log.
- Giuseppe(aka Gray Nose) - carpenter, friend of Carlo.
- Malvina- doll, girl with blue hair.
- Artemon- a poodle devoted to Malvina.
- Pierrot- doll, poet, in love with Malvina.
- Harlequin- doll, Pierrot's stage partner.
- Turtle Tortilla- lives in a pond near the City of Fools. Gives Pinocchio a golden key.
- Talking Cricket- Pinocchio predicts his fate.
Negative characters
- Karabas Barabas- Doctor of Puppet Science, owner of a puppet theater, holder of the highest orders and closest friend of the Tarabar King.
- Duremar- seller of medicinal leeches.
- Fox Alice- a scammer from the highway.
- Cat Basilio- a rogue from the highway.
- Rat Shushara, killed by Artemon.
- The owner of the Three Minnows tavern.
Other characters
- Cashier of the Karabas Barabas Theater
- The boy who bought the alphabet for 4 soldi
- Policemen
- Chief of the city
Film adaptations
- “The Golden Key” is a feature film with dolls and live actors from 1939, directed by Alexander Ptushko.
- “The Adventures of Pinocchio” - a hand-drawn cartoon of 1959, directed by Ivan Ivanov-Vano and Dmitry Babichenko.
- “The Adventures of Pinocchio” is a two-part television film of 1975, directed by Leonid Nechaev.
- “The Newest Adventures of Pinocchio” is a 1997 musical film directed by Dean Makhmatdinov.
- “Golden Key” is a 2009 New Year’s musical film for the Rossiya TV channel, directed by Alexander Igudin.
- “The Return of Pinocchio” - 2013 cartoon, directed by Ekaterina Mikhailova.
Notes
| Pinocchio in Wikiquote | |
| in Wikisource | |
| Pinocchio on Wikimedia Commons |
- What unlocks the “Golden Key”? Miron Petrovsky
- E. D. Tolstaya, Pinocchio and Tolstoy’s Contexts
- Dossier on a long nose, cap and brush
- A. Tolstoy Lit. inheritance. 1963. T. 70. P. 420.
- Works of A. Tolstoy
- playwright Alexei Tolstoy
- Karaichentseva S. A. Russian children's book of the 18th-20th centuries. Monograph - Moscow: MGUP, 2006. - 294 p. - ISBN 5-8122-0870-0
- In Italian burattino means "doll, puppet." Probably Pinocchio was recognized as a typical doll, and not as a specific person.
- Play in verse “Golden Key”
- Great puppeteer Sergei Obraztsov
- Educational game “The Adventures of Pinocchio”
- Confectionery factory "Red October"
- Jokes about Pinocchio
- Utopia of a free puppet, or How an archetype is made
- In memory of Pinocchio
- Gavryuchenkov Yu. Pinocchio - a myth of the 20th century
- Peter Weil. Heroes of the time: Pinocchio
- Project Fram / They write about us / Tell what is his name?..
- Lukyanenko Sergei - Argentum key (idea for the novel)
- The “Argentum Key was distributed on the FIDO network as the premise of my new novel with the question: “Something it reminds me of some book...”
- Ban on Pinocchio and Rainbow: how else will the feelings of believers be protected? (news based on a fake publication)
I dedicate this book to Lyudmila Ilyinichna Tolstoy
Preface
When I was little - a long, long time ago - I read one book: it was called “Pinocchio, or the Adventures of a Wooden Doll” (wooden doll in Italian - Pinocchio).
I often told my comrades, girls and boys, the entertaining adventures of Pinocchio. But since the book was lost, I told it differently each time, inventing adventures that were not in the book at all.
Now, after many, many years, I remembered my old friend Pinocchio and decided to tell you, girls and boys, an extraordinary story about this wooden man.
Alexey Tolstoy
I find that of all the images of Pinocchio created by different artists, L. Vladimirsky’s Pinocchio is the most successful, the most attractive and most consistent with the image of the little hero A. Tolstoy.
Lyudmila Tolstaya
The carpenter Giuseppe came across a log that squeaked with a human voice.
A long time ago, in a town on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, there lived an old carpenter, Giuseppe, nicknamed Gray Nose.
One day he came across a log, an ordinary log for heating the hearth in the winter.
“It’s not a bad thing,” Giuseppe said to himself, “you can make something like a table leg out of it...”
Giuseppe put on glasses wrapped in string - since the glasses were also old - he turned the log in his hand and began to cut it with a hatchet.
But as soon as he began to cut, someone’s unusually thin voice squeaked:
- Oh-oh, quiet down, please!
Giuseppe pushed his glasses to the tip of his nose and began looking around the workshop - no one...
He looked under the workbench - no one...
He looked in the basket of shavings - no one...
He stuck his head out the door - no one was on the street...
“Did I really imagine it? – thought Giuseppe. “Who could be squeaking that?”
He again took the hatchet and again - he just hit the log...
- Oh, it hurts, I say! - howled a thin voice.
This time Giuseppe was seriously scared, his glasses even sweated... He looked at all the corners in the room, even climbed into the fireplace and, turning his head, looked into the chimney for a long time.
- There is no one...
“Maybe I drank something inappropriate and my ears are ringing?” - Giuseppe thought to himself...
No, today he didn’t drink anything inappropriate... Having calmed down a little, Giuseppe took the plane, hit the back of it with a hammer so that the blade came out just the right amount - not too much and not too little, put the log on the workbench - and just moved the shavings...
- Oh, oh, oh, oh, listen, why are you pinching? – a thin voice squealed desperately...
Giuseppe dropped the plane, backed away, backed up and sat down straight on the floor: he guessed that the thin voice was coming from inside the log.
Giuseppe gives a talking log to his friend Carlo
At this time, his old friend, an organ grinder named Carlo, came to see Giuseppe.
Once upon a time, Carlo, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, walked around the cities with a beautiful barrel organ and earned his living by singing and music.
Now Carlo was already old and sick, and his organ-organ had long since broken down.
“Hello, Giuseppe,” he said, entering the workshop. - Why are you sitting on the floor?
– And, you see, I lost a small screw... Fuck it! – Giuseppe answered and glanced sideways at the log. - Well, how are you living, old man?
“Bad,” Carlo replied. - I keep thinking - how can I earn my bread... If only you could help me, advise me, or something...
“What’s easier,” Giuseppe said cheerfully and thought to himself: “I’ll get rid of this damned log now.” “What’s simpler: you see an excellent log lying on the workbench, take this log, Carlo, and take it home...”
“Eh-heh-heh,” Carlo answered sadly, “what’s next?” I’ll bring home a piece of wood, but I don’t even have a fireplace in my closet.
- I’m telling you the truth, Carlo... Take a knife, cut a doll out of this log, teach it to say all sorts of funny words, sing and dance, and carry it around the yards. You'll earn enough to buy a piece of bread and a glass of wine.
At this time, on the workbench where the log lay, a cheerful voice squeaked:
- Bravo, great idea, Gray Nose!
Giuseppe again shook with fear, and Carlo only looked around in surprise - where did the voice come from?
- Well, thank you, Giuseppe, for your advice. Come on, let's have your log.
Then Giuseppe grabbed the log and quickly handed it to his friend. But either he awkwardly thrust it, or it jumped up and hit Carlo on the head.
- Oh, these are your gifts! – Carlo shouted offendedly.
“Sorry, buddy, I didn’t hit you.”
- So I hit myself on the head?
“No, buddy, the log itself must have hit you.”
- You're lying, you knocked...
- No, not me…
“I knew that you were a drunkard, Gray Nose,” said Carlo, “and you are also a liar.”
- Oh, you - swear! – Giuseppe shouted. - Come on, come closer!..
– Come closer yourself, I’ll grab you by the nose!..
Both old men pouted and started jumping at each other. Carlo grabbed Giuseppe's blue nose. Giuseppe grabbed Carlo by the gray hair that grew near his ears.
After that, they began to really tease each other under the mikitki. At this time, a shrill voice on the workbench squeaked and urged:
- Get out, get out of here!
Finally the old men were tired and out of breath. Giuseppe said:
- Let's make peace, shall we...
Carlo replied:
- Well, let's make peace...
The old people kissed. Carlo took the log under his arm and went home.
Carlo makes a wooden doll and names it Buratino
Carlo lived in a closet under the stairs, where he had nothing but a beautiful fireplace - in the wall opposite the door.
But the beautiful hearth, the fire in the hearth, and the pot boiling on the fire were not real - they were painted on a piece of old canvas.
Carlo entered the closet, sat down on the only chair at the legless table and, turning the log this way and that, began to cut a doll out of it with a knife.
“What should I call her? – Carlo thought. - Let me call her Pinocchio. This name will bring me happiness. I knew one family - all of them were called Buratino: the father was Buratino, the mother was Buratino, the children were also Buratino... They all lived cheerfully and carefree..."
First of all, he carved out hair on a log, then his forehead, then his eyes...
Suddenly the eyes opened on their own and stared at him...
Carlo didn’t show that he was scared, he just asked affectionately:
- Wooden eyes, why are you looking at me so strangely?
But the doll was silent - probably because it did not yet have a mouth. Carlo planed the cheeks, then planed the nose - an ordinary one...
Suddenly the nose itself began to stretch out and grow, and it turned out to be such a long, sharp nose that Carlo even grunted:
- Not good, long...
And he began to cut the tip of his nose. Not so!
The nose turned and twisted, and remained just that - a long, long, curious, sharp nose.
Carlo began to work on his mouth. But as soon as he managed to cut out his lips, his mouth immediately opened:
- Hee-hee-hee, ha-ha-ha!
And a narrow red tongue poked out of it, teasingly.
Carlo, no longer paying attention to these tricks, continued to plan, cut, pick. I made the doll’s chin, neck, shoulders, torso, arms...
But as soon as he finished whittling the last finger, Pinocchio began pounding Carlo’s bald head with his fists, pinching and tickling him.
“Listen,” said Carlo sternly, “after all, I haven’t finished tinkering with you yet, and you’ve already started playing around... What will happen next... Eh?
And he looked sternly at Buratino. And Buratino, with round eyes like a mouse, looked at Papa Carlo.
Page 1 of 7
A long time ago, in a town on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, there lived an old carpenter, Giuseppe, nicknamed Gray Nose.
One day he came across a log, an ordinary log for heating the hearth in the winter.
“It’s not a bad thing,” Giuseppe said to himself, “you can make something like a table leg out of it...”
Giuseppe put on glasses wrapped in string - since the glasses were also old - he turned the log in his hand and began to cut it with a hatchet.
But as soon as he began to cut, someone’s unusually thin voice squeaked:
- Oh-oh, quiet down, please!
Giuseppe pushed his glasses to the tip of his nose and began looking around the workshop, no one...
He looked under the workbench - no one...
He looked in the basket of shavings - no one...
He stuck his head out the door - no one was on the street...
“Did I really imagine it? - thought Giuseppe. “Who could be squeaking?”
He took the hatchet again and again, just hit the log...
- Oh, it hurts, I say! - howled a thin voice.
This time Giuseppe was seriously scared, his glasses even sweated... He looked at all the corners in the room, even climbed into the fireplace and, turning his head, looked into the chimney for a long time.
- There is no one...
“Maybe I drank something inappropriate and my ears are ringing?” - Giuseppe thought to himself...
No, today he didn’t drink anything inappropriate... Having calmed down a little, Giuseppe took the plane, hit the back of it with a hammer so that the blade came out just the right amount - not too much and not too little, put the log on the workbench and just moved the shavings...
- Oh, oh, oh, oh, listen, why are you pinching? - a thin voice squealed desperately...
Giuseppe dropped the plane, backed away, backed up and sat down straight on the floor: he guessed that the thin voice was coming from inside the log.
GIUSEPPE GIVES A TALKING LOGO TO HIS FRIEND CARLO
At this time, his old friend, an organ grinder named Carlo, came to see Giuseppe.
Once upon a time, Carlo, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, walked around the cities with a beautiful barrel organ and earned his living by singing and music.
Now Carlo was already old and sick, and his organ-organ had long since broken down.
“Hello, Giuseppe,” he said, entering the workshop. - Why are you sitting on the floor?
- And you see, I lost a small screw... Fuck it! - Giuseppe answered and glanced sideways at the log. - Well, how are you living, old man?
“It’s bad,” Carlo answered. - I keep thinking - how can I earn my bread... If only you could help me, advise me, or something...
“What’s easier,” Giuseppe said cheerfully and thought to himself: “I’ll get rid of this damned log now.” - What’s simpler: you see an excellent log lying on the workbench, take this log, Carlo, and take it home...
“Eh-heh-heh,” Carlo answered sadly, “what’s next?” I’ll bring home a piece of wood, but I don’t even have a fireplace in my closet.
“I’m telling you the truth, Carlo... Take a knife, cut a doll out of this log, teach it to say all sorts of funny words, sing and dance, and carry it around the yards.” You will earn enough for a piece of bread and a glass of wine.
At this time, on the workbench where the log lay, a cheerful voice squeaked:
- Bravo, great idea, Gray Nose!
Giuseppe again shook with fear, and Carlo just looked around in surprise - where did the voice come from?
- Well, thank you, Giuseppe, for your advice. Come on, let's have your log.
Then Giuseppe grabbed the log and quickly handed it to his friend. But either he awkwardly thrust it, or it jumped up and hit Carlo on the head.
- Oh, these are your gifts! - Carlo shouted offendedly.
“Sorry, buddy, I didn’t hit you.”
- So I hit myself on the head?
“No, buddy, the log itself must have hit you.”
- You're lying, you knocked...
- No, not me… 
“I knew that you were a drunkard, Gray Nose,” said Carlo, “and you are also a liar.”
- Oh, you swear! - Giuseppe shouted. - Come on, come closer!..
“Come closer yourself, I’ll grab you by the nose!”
Both old men pouted and started jumping at each other. Carlo grabbed Giuseppe's blue nose. Giuseppe grabbed Carlo by the gray hair that grew near his ears.
After that, they began to really tease each other under the mikitki. At this time, a shrill voice on the workbench squeaked and urged:
- Get out, get out of here!
Finally the old men were tired and out of breath. Giuseppe said:
- Let's make peace, shall we...
Carlo replied:
- Well, let's make peace...
The old people kissed. Carlo took the log under his arm and went home.
CARLO MAKES A WOODEN DOLL AND CALLS HER PINOCOCIO
Carlo lived in a closet under the stairs, where he had nothing but a beautiful fireplace - in the wall opposite the door.
But the beautiful hearth, the fire in the hearth, and the pot boiling on the fire were not real - they were painted on a piece of old canvas.
Carlo entered the closet, sat down on the only chair at the legless table and, turning the log this way and that, began to cut a doll out of it with a knife.
“What should I call her? - Carlo thought. - Let me call her Pinocchio. This name will bring me happiness. I knew one family - all of them were called Buratino: the father was Buratino, the mother was Buratino, the children were also Buratino... They all lived cheerfully and carefree..."
First of all, he carved out hair on a log, then his forehead, then his eyes...
Suddenly the eyes opened on their own and stared at him... 
Carlo didn’t show that he was scared, he just asked affectionately:
- Wooden eyes, why are you looking at me so strangely?
But the doll was silent, probably because it did not yet have a mouth. Carlo planed the cheeks, then planed the nose - an ordinary one...
Suddenly the nose itself began to stretch out and grow, and it turned out to be such a long, sharp nose that Carlo even grunted:
- Not good, long...
And he began to cut off the tip of his nose. Not so!
The nose twisted and turned, and remained just that - a long, long, curious, sharp nose.
Carlo began to work on his mouth. But as soon as he managed to cut out his lips, his mouth immediately opened:
- Hee-hee-hee, ha-ha-ha!
And a narrow red tongue poked out of it, teasingly.
Carlo, no longer paying attention to these tricks, continued to plan, cut, pick. I made the doll’s chin, neck, shoulders, torso, arms...
But as soon as he finished whittling the last finger, Pinocchio began pounding Carlo’s bald head with his fists, pinching and tickling him.
“Listen,” said Carlo sternly, “after all, I haven’t finished tinkering with you yet, and you’ve already started playing around... What will happen next... Eh?..”
And he looked sternly at Buratino. And Buratino, with round eyes like a mouse, looked at Papa Carlo.
Carlo made him long legs with large feet from splinters. Having finished the work, he put the wooden boy on the floor to teach him to walk. 
Pinocchio swayed, swayed on his thin legs, took one step, took another step, hop, hop, straight to the door, across the threshold and into the street.
Carlo, worried, followed him:
- Hey, little rogue, come back!..
Where there! Pinocchio ran down the street like a hare, only his wooden soles - tap-tap, tap-tap - tapped on the stones...
- Hold him! - Carlo shouted.
Passers-by laughed, pointing their fingers at the running Pinocchio. At the intersection stood a huge policeman with a curled mustache and a three-cornered hat.
Seeing the running wooden man, he spread his legs wide, blocking the entire street with them. Pinocchio wanted to jump between his legs, but the policeman grabbed him by the nose and held him there until Papa Carlo arrived in time...
“Well, just wait, I’ll deal with you already,” Carlo said, pushing away and wanted to put Pinocchio in his jacket pocket...
Buratino did not at all want to stick his legs up out of his jacket pocket on such a fun day in front of all the people - he deftly turned away, plopped down on the pavement and pretended to be dead...
“Oh, oh,” said the policeman, “things seem bad!”
Passers-by began to gather. Looking at the lying Pinocchio, they shook their heads.
“Poor thing,” some said, “he must be hungry...
“Carlo beat him to death,” others said, “this old organ grinder is only pretending to be a good man, he is bad, he is an evil man...”
Hearing all this, the mustachioed policeman grabbed the unfortunate Carlo by the collar and dragged him to the police station.
Carlo dusted his shoes and moaned loudly:
- Oh, oh, to my grief I made a wooden boy!
When the street was empty, Buratino raised his nose, looked around and skipped home...
A TALKING CRICKET GIVES PIOCOCARD WISE ADVICE
Having run into the closet under the stairs, Pinocchio plopped down on the floor near the leg of the chair.
- What else could you come up with?
We must not forget that Pinocchio was only one day old. His thoughts were small, small, short, short, trivial, trivial.
At this time I heard:
- Kri-kri, kri-kri, kri-kri...
Pinocchio turned his head, looking around the closet.
- Hey, who's here?
“Here I am,” kri-kri...
Pinocchio saw a creature that looked a little like a cockroach, but with a head like a grasshopper. It sat on the wall above the fireplace and quietly crackled, kri-kri, looked with bulging, glass-like iridescent eyes, and moved its antennae.
- Hey, who are you?
“I am the Talking Cricket,” the creature answered, “I have been living in this room for more than a hundred years.”
“I’m the boss here, get out of here.”
“Okay, I’ll leave, although I’m sad to leave the room where I’ve lived for a hundred years,” answered the Talking Cricket, “but before I go, listen to some useful advice.”
- I really need the advice of the old cricket...
“Oh, Pinocchio, Pinocchio,” said the cricket, “stop self-indulgence, listen to Carlo, don’t run away from home without doing anything, and start going to school tomorrow.” Here's my advice. Otherwise, terrible dangers and terrible adventures await you. I won’t give even a dead dry fly for your life.
- Why? - asked Pinocchio.
“But you’ll see—pretty much,” answered the Talking Cricket.
- Oh, you hundred-year-old cockroach bug! - Buratino shouted. “More than anything in the world, I love scary adventures.” Tomorrow I’ll run away from home at first light - climb fences, destroy birds’ nests, tease boys, pull dogs and cats by the tails... I’ll just think of something else!..
“I feel sorry for you, I’m sorry, Pinocchio, you will shed bitter tears.”
- Why? - Buratino asked again.
- Because you have a stupid wooden head.
Then Pinocchio jumped onto a chair, from the chair to the table, grabbed a hammer and threw it at the head of the Talking Cricket.
The old smart cricket sighed heavily, moved his whiskers and crawled behind the fireplace - forever from this room.