This story was published nearly forty years ago in my book The Furniture of Heaven & Other Parables for Pilgrims. I wonder if it rings any bells for you today?
When the puppet Pinocchio finally made up his mind to change from being a bad, mischievous puppet into a good, obedient puppet, at that very point (so the story goes) he was transformed into a real live boy. But that, sadly, was not the end of the story.
As a real boy Pinocchio was freed from the indignity of having his wooden nose grow embarrassingly long any time he fibbed. Instead, as a warm, flesh-and-blood person, he found that whenever he became enmeshed in the telling (or the living) of lies, a different problem beset him—and that was the constant inclination of his living humanity to revert, little by little, to its original state as a block of wood.
At first it was only in the most trivial ways that this tendency announced itself. A bright boy full of energy, Pinocchio sailed through high school and university. Not until the day he marched up on stage to receive his Bachelor’s diploma did he become aware of a certain leprous, parchment-like substance that was spreading like papery fur over his fingernails. Soon after, the nails stopped growing altogether, thickened, and lignified. Though initially all this meant to the youth was that he was relieved of having to cut them anymore, their unsightliness made him increasingly self-conscious, and hence more prone to telling white lies.
An even more bothersome disorder, however, arose during his first year of post-graduate studies, when he began having trouble with moss growing between his toes. He now found that if he stood for too long in one place, it could be difficult to get his feet unstuck.
The next area to be affected was Pinocchio’s forehead, which gradually assumed a furrowed, barky appearance, and in time went hard as a stump. Not only that, but the young man felt his powers of concentration waning until eventually. having lost all capacity for studying, he made the decision to quit school and enter the business world.
Here he made speedy progress, advancing soon into a suite of oak-paneled offices where he spent his days sitting around the board table and shuffling stacks of paper. Unfortunately, so surrounded was he now by forest products—to say nothing of moral turpitude—that before long the skin all over his body began to take on a calloused, grainy texture, almost as if woodenness were a quality which could seep into the pores by osmosis.
Furthermore, like most of his colleagues, at this stage in life Pinocchio felt little attraction anymore toward his wife, who did not understand him at all. One day, while ogling another woman in the office, the young executive heard an odd clicking noise in his eyelids, and within a week he found to his wide-eyed astonishment that his eyeballs had frozen solid in their sockets! No longer was he able to blink, and whenever he wanted to look at a woman he had to turn his entire head. While this did nothing to curb his lust, it did diminish his dignity.
Accordingly, in hopes of somehow loosening up, Pinocchio began throwing himself into worthwhile community activities. He joined a local fraternal order, volunteered his fund-raising skills to various benevolent causes, and frequented a posh country club where he could take some exercise with like-minded humanitarian gentlemen. To his distress, however, he found that whenever he cheated at golf his legs and arms tended to stiffen right up like the shafts of his clubs, so that at the end of eighteen holes, it would be all he could do to bend his elbow for the nineteenth. Moreover, his handling of charitable funds, strange to say, seemed only to exacerbate a nasty arthritic condition in his hands, which in time rendered them gnarled and woody as tree roots. As for the fraternal order he joined, who would have guessed that a fellow could go on functioning in a more or less normal fashion (let alone stay alive at all) after his very heart had petrified into a cold, hard little billiard ball?
By this point Pinocchio’s bizarre condition was causing him not only physical discomfort and inconvenience, but a good deal of internal anguish. Unwilling to seek help, however, the more he bottled (or boxed) things up inside, the more wooden be became, and the less capable of expressing or even identifying his pain. It was as though suppressed feelings congealed his very blood so that it ran more and more sluggishly in his sclerotic veins, until finally it clotted to a standstill.
Geppetto, Pinocchio’s creator, watching this grim process at work in his beloved puppet, became increasingly troubled. How well the old craftsman recalled the day when his little mannequin had sprung to life, becoming a real live child before his eyes! For was it not in that same glorious moment that he himself had become a true father, with a longed-for son to call his own? Yet now, as time wore on and Pinocchio’s visits home grew fewer and further between, the forlorn Geppetto was again left feeling that he was no real father, but only an aging and deluded toymaker, the mere constructor of a heartless puppet.
Meanwhile, in a desperate bid to try and make something of himself, Pinocchio determined to toss his hat into the political ring and run for mayor of his city. After all, he was a well-respected man, with a high public profile, and who but Geppetto knew how close he was to being a total blockhead?
No sooner was the campaign underway, however, than Pinocchio’s condition took an alarming turn for the worse. He noticed it first in his neck, which one morning he was unable to turn either right or left (even to leer at a pretty girl). Then his bulbous nose stiffened into a shiny button, his jowled cheeks became like burls, and his two little ears went hard as pine knots. Naturally, none of this prevented the dapper Pinocchio from winning his election handily. But by the time it was all over, he found that his face was no longer capable of forming any expression whatsoever, save the one pasteboard smile that had been plastered all over town on his campaign posters. The only place he retained any movement at all was in his mouth, which he could still wag crudely up and down with a square-hinged, nutcracker-like motion.
After three terms in office, despite undimmed popularity Pinocchio was forced into early retirement by his crippling affliction. At this stage he was so far gone that there was little else for old Geppetto to do but to set the poor fellow back on his shelf in the workshop, and try to keep him comfortable. There for several more years the celebrated politician and financier sat prattling away about all his exploits, milking whatever meager enjoyment he could from his last ounce of animate human flesh, his tongue. Often this idle chatter caused his maker to wonder whether any true spark of genuine humanity could possibly be left inside him. Day after day the creator remonstrated with his creature, pleading with him to at least clean up his language and refrain from telling so many bald-faced lies. For once again the wooden nose had begun to grow—so long now, in fact, that it was bending and coiling around the room like a snake.
“My dear Pinocchio!” admonished the wise old man, after the nose had tied itself into an excruciating knot. “Lying has become your native language! It’s all you know how to do! But if only you could speak one solid word of truth, even now there might yet be hope for you.”
“What is truth?” replied the puppet in a voice like sawdust, as his nose lurched forward. And at that very moment, while the horrified Geppetto looked on, the nutcracker jaw closed for the final time, sliding shut like a coffin lid over the empty black hole of the square little mouth.
And Pinocchio, whether as puppet or as man, was never heard from again.
* * *
Idols have mouths, but cannot speak,
eyes, but they cannot see;
ears have they but they cannot hear,
hands, but they cannot feel …
All those who trust in them will become like them.
~Psalm 115:5-8
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