Well then, as I was saying, there we were with cricks in our necks from all the hours we’d spent looking up at Dailan Kifki, and still nobody had thought of a truly effective method for getting him down from the tree. To tell you the truth, since he liked it and he felt like a little birdie—which was completely unforgivable, according to my aunt—we could really have left him there and just sent food up to him somehow, except that we urgently needed to chop down the tree to get wood to make the furniture for my house. So there wasn’t a minute to lose.
I made a decision: I’d go fetch the Fireman. Who else would be better at thinking up clever ideas for getting Dailan Kifki down from the tree? No one, that’s who.
So I telephoned the Fireman, and before I’d even finished hanging up, there he was, in his lovely red jacket, his golden helmet with a plume, his polka-dot hose and his axe that shone as bright as the moon.
“What should we do, Mister Fireman?” I asked him, most distressed. And the Fireman replied, very serious:
“For hunting down an elephant who thinks he is a bird, there’s only one solution—just you wait—I’ll say the word…”
“Very well, Mister Fireman. Tell me your method.”
And the Fireman whispered, very secretly, in my ear.
When he had explained it properly, I almost fainted in wonder at such a clever fireman.
I put on my tulle hat with little flags and ran out to the street, which was still full of people nibbling on caramels and unwrapping lollipops.
I went straight over to the supermarket. I bought seven hundred and eighty dozen balls of thick twine, upholstery needles, tissue paper, paste, six hundred and seventy-eight kilometres of tulle in all kinds of colours, hat feathers, wooden rods, cellophane, silk ribbons and a kilo and a half of some thing or other I don’t remember now.
I took it all home, and in the garden the Fireman and I set to work, while everyone watched us in amazement and my brother Roberto just kept on repeating again and again like a parrot:
“We’re toast, we’re toast, we’re toast.”
Oh, how the Fireman and I worked!
For hours we sewed, glued, unglued, trimmed, darned and knotted, we did and undid, because the Fireman never felt the job was quite perfect.
Fortunately Mum felt sorry for us and brewed us some mate tea.
Every once in a while I would look up just to check how Dailan Kifki was doing.
“How are you doing, sweetheart?” I shouted.
“CHIRRUP CHEEP,” he replied.
When our work was finally ready, it was nearly dark.
And it was time to tell everybody what it was the Fireman and I had been making. A pair of wings!
A lovely pair of wings so that Dailan Kifki could fly down and land in the garden safe and sound.
See how clever the Fireman was?
And to think it hadn’t occurred to anyone else!
Those wings were very beautiful. Just picture them: tulle in all kinds of colours, with little feathers, cellophane trimmings, finished with silver paper, silk ribbons, and even a rosette the Fireman added at the last minute.
The most difficult job was still to come: climbing up the tree and putting the wings on Dailan Kifki. But the Fireman said bravely:
“Adorning Mister Elephant with such a pair of wings? It’s nothing too alarming, quite the easiest of things.”
As the Fireman was getting ready to climb the tree, my whole family came out to the garden to see him off, as though he were going to China or to Mars on a rocket.
My mother hugged him, sobbing, and gave him a noisy kiss.
My father clapped him on the back and said:
“Be brave, my friend.”
My Auntie Clodomira, at the very last moment, sewed a button onto his jacket, and my brother Roberto simply said:
“We’re toast.”
While we all waved our handkerchiefs at him and shouted encouragement, the Fireman started to climb the tree. It was difficult since he was loaded up with those wings, which were huge.
Fortunately, at that moment the Boy Scouts’ band showed up and set about playing a march that really helped to raise the Fireman’s spirits.
In the final stretch, when it was beginning to look like he was going to fall, defeated by the weight of the wings, and all twitchy because a butterfly had just settled on his nose, Dailan Kifki gave him a little help, picking him up with his trunk and setting him down beside him on top of the tree.
The Fireman got to his feet, struck his breast valiantly, let out a great yell like Tarzan and grandly flourished his golden helmet with a plume.
The hard part was over.