Bellarina, Geppetto's Lost Toy

Chapter One

TEARS ’N TUTUS

This story opens in a little town in a valley somewhere in the Swiss Alps. A single yellowed candle lights the inside of the workshop of a lonely old toymaker and makes his tears shimmer like diamonds in the dark. Memories fly from his heart like the wood chips rolling off the end of sad old Geppetto’s whittling knife.

At first he holds only a solid square knot of pine but soon, as he digs and sands and peals away layers, his old knife reveals a face; a little turned up nose appears, then large loving eyes, and finally a mouth as delicate as a quick knife stroke. Her chin becomes a rounded point and her neck is carved long and fragile like a swan.

As he carves her shoulders the old man falls asleep holding the unfinished toy to his chest and dreams of the love of his life, who has been gone so many years, but still burns a hole in his heart. A tear leaves his eye, runs down his cheek, and splashes onto the turned up wooden nose. Oh, oh! Here comes some magic!

In his sleep the toymaker finishes the ballerina, dressing her in a delicately laced blouse and a stiff tutu. He paints her eyes blue and her hair yellow and places her on a gilded music box. Geppetto takes the key he has made from melting down a tangle of old jewelry, inserts it in the proper hole, turns it gently, and releases the music.

It plays an old Tyrolean folk song and the ballerina begins to dance. Round and round she spins, with her left arm in the air and her right arm bent enough to allow her little hand to hold her tummy. One leg is thrown up and out from her tutu, long and straight, as her other leg balances all of her moves on the tip of one small gold slipper.

Magic happens, as it often does when a toymaker gives his heart to a dream, and the ballerina steps off the music box and dances around the table for her master. The magic gives her jumps and spins and leaps. When the music ends the ballerina performs a dying swan that brings tearful applause from the old toymaker.

“You are just like her!” he exclaims, holding his head in his hands. “You are what she was the first day we met. Oh, my, what you are doing to my heart again? I don’t know if I can bear it!”

The toymaker stands, turns his back on the toy and tries to control his emotions.

“I can not fall in love with you again. After all, you are just a wooden toy!”

The ballerina speaks and the toymaker turns back to the table in amazement. It is HER voice.

“Geppetto, you are my father. I am but a toy but I’m also the passion and the pain in your heart come to life. Please wind my music box again? I promise I will dance only for you.”

She dances again and again to the old folk song and Geppetto’s applause. Finally fearing for his ballerina’s fragile pinewood joints, the toymaker sadly turns off the music box. Staring into her large painted blue eyes he exclaims “You are ‘Bella,’ you are beautiful! And you dance upon the stage of my heart wonderfully.

You are my...’Bellarina!’”

Remembering the trouble with the last puppet that came to life in his shop Geppetto vows that he will never let the world see this toy so he locks Bellarina in a heavy wooden cabinet in the back of his shop.

“She will be ours alone,” he tells all the other toys hanging from the rafters of his shop, while waving the music box key in the air.

“And we will not share her, yes?”

Of course none of the toys speak up, and I can’t say they all agreed, but since this was not their night to entertain Geppetto they keep their opinions to themselves.

But can such love be locked away for long? It may already be too late.