The Real Pinocchio

A long, long time ago there was a carpenter living in a village outside of Milan and his name was Alberto Geppo. He was not rich, he was not poor, he got by selling his craft and occasionally trading goods at the market in Milan. He had a loving wife and about four children (it was a long time ago, so some details are lost to history), out of whom he loved his youngest boy Pietro the most.

Pietro was smart and funny, and smiled all day, making everyone’s lives so much better. The whole village loved him, so all the adults let him call them aunt and uncle, and all the children played with him. The children liked the adventures Pietro made up for them and went off on quests and missions into the nearby woods, the lake, the river, and the ruins of the chapel they called Vecchissima.

Sadly, Pietro went to Vecchissima alone one time and that was a huge mistake. You see, that day a vagrant set up camp there and he was an evil, evil man. When he saw Pietro, he fell in love with the boy’s curls and angelic smile and he did a very bad thing to him.

Pietro returned to the village crying and all dirty, bleeding from a series of cuts all over his body. The mother took the boy in while his father Alberto despaired in the village square and all the men took their pitchforks and scythes and cleavers and went to Vecchissima where they found the vagrant and murdered him in revenge.

Pietro was badly hurt, both in his body and his soul, but he was recuperating slowly, day by day. Unfortunately, some of the wounds on his left leg became infected and the doctor had to cut it off. The boy lived, but became very sad and withdrawn. He would spend most of his days in the upper floor of his father’s workshop, reading and drawing, while Alberto worked below.

Pietro did not want to use the crutches his father made for him, so he moved around as little as possible. Other children came to the workshop every day, but Pietro would not come down, so Alberto had to tell them to go play without him, and his heart sank lower each time. Alberto would always tell them Pietro would get better soon, but slowly he stopped believing it.

Then a solution came to Alberto in a dream - he would make Pietro a wooden leg. But not just any leg, the best leg there ever was. So he got to working and created many legs, but he was never quite happy with any of them. He knew he was doing something wrong, but he did not know what, until he had another dream which told him it was the wood. He needed the right wood.

So Alberto wandered the forest the next day, until he came upon a pine tree which looked like any other pine, but Alberto knew this was the one. He cut down the tree and brought the wood into his workshop. Little did he know that this was the tree where they killed the vagrant and his blood splashed the bark and fed the roots. Because of the evil man’s despair, the three awoke to ancient magic that had been known to its ancestors millions of years ago.

Alberto worked on the leg day and night for seven days, after which he collapsed from hunger and fatigue and it took him two more days to come to. During that time, his wife and her mother sat by his bed saying the rosary and praying to Jesus to save Alberto and have mercy on poor Pietro. When Alberto finally came to, he went to the workshop and saw that the leg was finished and it was perfect - it looked just like Pietro’s real leg before he lost it, even had veins and such, except it was made of wood.

It took Alberto several attempts to coax Pietro into attaching the leg, but when he did, a miracle happened. The leg came to life and started moving. It was still made of wood, but it worked as well as any boy’s leg would.

Pietro could now play with the other children and take them on adventures, only now they were not as innocent and pure. There was always evil in his stories now, it lived in the forest and it did not care about heroes and damsels. All it wanted was to satiate its primal hungers.

Meanwhile, Alberto became famous as a miracle worker, and amputees came from all over the land to beg him for replacement limbs. Alberto made the limbs and in return, people gave him all their money. None of the wooden legs or arms Alberto made afterwards were as perfect as Pietro’s, but they all came to life. So, Alberto made a fortune and the whole family moved to a great big house in Milan, and Pietro became a rich craftsman’s son.

As the boy grew, the leg grew with him. He grew up to be a fine young lad whom the ladies loved and who had plenty of friends, but he never loved anyone. He was always next to people, but never with them, as if thinking about something that he did not want to share

Then Pietro grew up and became a man who lived off telling stories - a poet. When he told stories, there was always a forest in them and in the forest there was something evil. And in those stories the hero could never defeat the evil nor change anything, for that matter. The hero always died in the end and the forest did not care.

Then Pietro grew old. He had no children of his own, so he always spent time with his nieces and nephews, and then with their children, telling them stories. But eventually all the children grew up and Pietro was all alone, living in a tower in the middle of the forest.

One day, the servants found him dead in his bed. He had died of old age peacefully in his sleep. When they moved him out of there they saw his wooden leg and they wondered about it, but one of them knew the story and told it to all of them. They cried for their former master and buried him in the woods that he loved so much.

Years later they would visit his grave and pray for his soul, and as they did, they observed a pine tree grow out of the ground. They said it was Master Pietro Geppo’s wooden heart which could not love people, but it loved the forest. They worshiped the tree until servants of the Church came and punished them for heresy, and burnt the tree with holy fire. But the forest did not care.

Posted by: Paweł Kowaluk