I hate needles. Not all needles, I like pine needles just fine, but I hate needles when someone sticks them into me. Vaccinations, that’s what Grandma used to call them. I have never enjoyed having blood drawn, or getting shots, or even the minor intramuscular injections with antibiotics.
The chemotherapy prescribed for me by my odious oncologist is administered through an IV. Ten minutes, no more, sitting in a small room, hooked up to a bottle and a tube. A cocktail of chemical substances that bursts into my veins and lays waste to all forms of life, wanted and unwanted. I imagine what’s happening to me like that old movie by Joe Dante, Innerspace, in which a miniaturized undersea vehicle is injected into Martin Short by mistake. The vehicle navigating through my veins makes no noise and doesn’t communicate with the outside world. I lay my head back on the armchair in the little room and close my eyes.
Ten minutes with a needle in your vein is an endless amount of time. Thoughts tend to wander. I disconnect from the real world. And I wind up in a dream world that I know very well.
* * *
“Who did it?”
Stromboli’s voice thundered throughout the wagon, echoing off the dozens of puppets that dangled, silent and motionless, from hooks along both walls.
Stromboli strode forward, bumping against them as he went, knocking Harlequin against the wall. The big man planted himself arrogantly at the center of his puppet kingdom.
“Come on, who was it?” he said, rolling his glinting fiery eyes around the wagon.
Harlequin slowly swung to a halt and held his breath. All the other puppets exchanged quizzical glances, doing their best not to attract attention.
Stromboli angrily waved one hand in the air, clutching an enormous leg of roast mutton.
“Who took a bite of this? If the guilty party willingly confesses . . . I won’t do nothing to ’im . . .”
“Sure, sure . . . ,” Pulcinella thought silently, “as if we didn’t know you better than that . . .”
“Ain’t you figured out that your thoughts are my thoughts, after all I made you . . . you’re just sticks of wood fitted together . . . you ain’t got thoughts of your own . . . you get it, Pulcinella?”
With those words he leaned down toward Harlequin’s face until his beard brushed it, while with his left hand he wiped away an oily, greasy stain from the corner of the painted mouth.
“I hadn’t even tasted that leg of mutton yet!” he said, staring the puppet right in its brown painted eyes.
“I was hungry . . . ,” murmured the brightly colored marionette, in a faint voice with a thick Venetian accent.
The other puppets exchanged stares of astonishment: Harlequin was speaking!
“I knew it . . . ,” said Stromboli, taking the marionette down and laying it on a steamer trunk. . . . “I knew it was you . . . what’d you think, that I didn’t notice that when I was out you liked to go for a stroll?”
Harlequin hung motionless, folded up and tangled in his strings.
“And now what are you doing? Cat got your tongue? My friends . . . maybe the time for puppets is over and just maybe . . . the time for puppeteers is over too. You, Harlequin, you’re just the first . . . I’ve already figured it out . . . one by one you’re all going to leave me . . . ah-ah-chooo . . . damned cold . . . ever since I first sneezed with that Pinocchio I haven’t stopped sneezing . . . am I getting old? What do you think, oh Harlequin my friend?”
Harlequin shook his head no.
“When I saw that bite taken out of the leg of mutton I already understood it was all over . . . maybe I should put the blame on that Blue Fairy Pinocchio talked to me about . . . the fact remains that you’re all about to turn into little boys and girls . . . my beloved puppets. You’ve all been infected.”
Pulcinella thought he’d glimpsed a tiny tear quivering on Stromboli’s cheek, but still mistrustful, decided he must have been mistaken.
“You’re right, too, Pulcinella . . . ,” the big man murmured as he ran his hand over his face, “you never thought you’d see me cry too . . . but I’m not doing it on purpose . . . they just pour out on their own . . . atchoo . . .”
Harlequin handed him a piece of colorful cloth to dry his tears. Stromboli took it, and as he did, he brushed the puppet’s hand: it was warm.
He raised his eyes and saw before him, amidst the strings and fabrics, a handsome young boy with a mischievous face.
“I knew it . . . ,” he said, wiping away the tears, “there’s been a sort of epidemic of humanity . . . another few days of this and my Grand Puppet Theater will no longer exist . . . and I’ll be gone with it . . . no one has ever seen a puppeteer without puppets . . . that’s like a wagon without wheels . . . it won’t run.”
Stromboli stood up and carefully began to gather his puppets.
“People paid for their tickets again tonight and we can’t disappoint them . . . as long as we can put on a show, they won’t notice . . .”
Stromboli, holding all his puppets in his arms, headed toward the door. He was about to walk down the steps of the wagon when he turned back around and looked at Harlequin, who was sitting on the trunk.
“I left you a plate of mutton in the other room . . . take as much as you want, I’ll just roast some more later . . . don’t wander away from the wagon . . . I’ll be back in an hour or so . . . if you get sleepy you can lie down over there . . . but remember to cover up with a blanket, because you’re not made out of wood anymore, and you can catch your death.”
With these words, and without waiting for an answer, the big man stepped out of the wagon, making the steps creak, and vanished into the fog that shrouded the hovels all around.
Harlequin sat there a little longer.
He didn’t know whether to eat a little mutton or go to sleep.
It wasn’t a particularly difficult decision.
He just wasn’t used to making decisions at all.
* * *
“Signor Battistini?
For a moment I’m afraid it’s Stromboli.
“Signor Battistini? Wake up!”
It’s not Stromboli. But she resembles him closely. It’s the talkative nurse who greeted me at the front entrance. She’s already slipped the needle out of my vein. I had a dream. A child’s dream.
I haven’t had a childhood dream in years.
“Just stay seated for a few minutes . . . ,” she tells me. “You might experience some dizziness.”
I nod my head and obey.
I go on fantasizing with my eyes wide open.
Pinocchio is my favorite story. It might have been the first book I ever read, outranked in my heart only by Treasure Island with its pirates. Who can say why it would come into my mind now, of all times. And who knows if Collodi would approve my dream sequel to his story.
I’ve always loved Collodi, the king of one-hit wonders, writers famous for just one book. Maybe they’ve written dozens, but one is so much more famous and successful than the others that it wipes out the rest of his production.
Dante? The Divine Comedy.
Swift? Gulliver’s Travels.
Defoe? Robinson Crusoe.
Manzoni? I promessi sposi.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry? The Little Prince.
Collodi? Obviously Pinocchio.
The last in the list has the most memorable beginning of any book ever written. A masterpiece of synthesis, fun, and metaliterature.
Once upon a time there was . . .
“A king!” my little readers will say at once.
No, children, you’re wrong. Once upon a time there was a piece of wood.
“Midway along the journey of our life” or “That branch of the Lake of Como, which turns toward the south”—these are amateurish first sentences in comparison, the work of Sunday poets.
Collodi beats Dante and Manzoni one-nothing. Move the pen to the center of the field.
* * *
An unexpected consequence of chemo: my mind tends to channel surf.
I think about useless nonsense, I dream up lost chapters of Pinocchio, I team up great geniuses of literature as if they were formations in fantasy soccer. Not bad, for the first day of treatment.
I leave the clinic and start walking. I don’t feel better, I don’t feel worse. I just wish I could wake up again and discover that this, too, is just a dream.