CHAPTER V
In Which Pinocchio Discovers That Sometimes When You Want to Advance You Have to Take a Step Backward
For a long while Pinocchio didn't know whether he was alive or dead. Then after a time he seemed to be dreaming, but the dreams were so queer that ... just imagine, he thought he was a puppet again, asleep on a chair with his feet resting on a brazier full of lighted charcoal, that one of his feet was on fire and that the flame, little by little, was creeping up his leg. And, just as once before when something similar had happened, the dream became a painful reality. However, there was another dream that comforted him. A lovely woman's smiling face would come close to him and he would hear soft, affectionate words. It was the queerest thing possible! It seemed to him that this face was set in a lovely frame of light-blue hair which came down like a veil, like a cape enfolding the graceful form of a young girl. Some one had told him that her name was Fatina, and he kept repeating the name, as once ... when he was still a little puppet and the girl with blue hair ... But what had happened to him?
One morning he opened his eyes and discovered that he was in a little white bed in a white room, and that to right and left of him in two other beds were two wounded men all enveloped in bandages.
"Bersaglierino! Bersaglierino!" cried Pinocchio, trying to raise himself up in bed. But a horrid pain made him fall back on the pillow and forced him to scream loudly. The door of the little room opened and a Red Cross nurse in her blue uniform entered swiftly.
"Oh! At last! But be good and don't try to move! The Bersaglierino is here on your right; he is better, but you must let him be quiet, and you, too, need to rest."
"Tell me, Fatina, is the Bersaglierino really alive?"
"Don't you see him? Here he is. When he wakes up you can say a few words to him. Yesterday he was so eager to know about you, but you couldn't speak to him."