The Perplexing Pineapple Read online

  First published in 2013

  Copyright © Text, Ursula Dubosarsky 2013

  Copyright © Illustrations, Terry Denton 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the

  National Library of Australia – www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 174331 257 5

  EISBN 978 1 74343 038 5

  Coco’s favourite tango is ‘Mi Buenos Aires Querido’

  (My Beloved Buenos Aires), 1934; music by Carlos Gardel, lyrics by Alfredo Le Pera, translation by Joseph del Genio

  Cover and text design by Liz Seymour

  Set in 16/21 pt Adobe Jenson Pro

  This book was printed in March 2013 at McPherson’s Printing Group,

  76 Nelson Street, Maryborough, Victoria 3465, Australia.

  www.mcphersonsprinting.com.au

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Para mi querida familia en Buenos Aires!

  Besos y amor, Ursula

  O-tiggle Anna-iggle, Ilary-higgle

  and Iz-liggle, from Erry-tiggle

  Note to reader: If there is a word in the story you haven’t seen before, it may be a Spanish word. Have a look in the glossary at the back to find out what it means.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Can You Find ...

  Clues For Puzzles

  Glossary

  Chapter One

  It was the middle of the night, and Alberta was just starting a jigsaw puzzle when a letter arrived with a bang at her door.

  ‘Great carrots!’ said Alberta out loud. This was what she said when she was surprised, which, being a guinea pig, was most of the time. ‘I bet that’s from my cousin Coco.’

  Alberta’s cousin Coco Carlomagno was Chief of Police in Buenos Aires, a big city in Argentina, South America. Alberta had a lot of relatives in South America. Millions, in fact. But Coco was her favourite.

  She scurried out to get the letter. It was from Coco. Whatever could he want at this time of night? She tore open the envelope. This is what it said:

  ‘Hmm,’ said Alberta.

  Coco had an unusual way of writing, but she was pretty sure she understood what he meant. It was true, she reflected, she had a gigantic brain. It was the biggest in her family. When she was born, her father peered inside her tiny pink ear, caught sight of her brain, and fainted on the spot.

  ‘Now, what could be this strange thing that’s upsetting Coco?’ wondered Alberta.

  Even though he was Chief of Police, Coco panicked easily. Alberta remembered the time he begged her to come over because of a sinister dripping sound in the apartment upstairs. That had turned out to be nothing more than a leaky lemonade bottle.

  ‘The jigsaw puzzle will have to wait,’ she decided at last. ‘I’d better go and see Coco straight away and find out what’s up.’

  She packed up the puzzle, put some lettuce leaves and a pack of cards in a brown-paper bag, and added her favourite red turban, just in case. Then she left a note for her neighbours, locked the door and headed off for South America.

  Chapter Two

  As soon as Alberta arrived in Buenos Aires, she didn’t waste any time. She went straight to her favourite pastry shop and ate several delicious little facturas with dulce de leche. Then she ran as fast as she could to Coco’s office.

  Coco was the most important guinea pig in all of Buenos Aires, so naturally his office was in the most important place in the city. It was right at the top of the famous Obelisco.

  Now, the good thing about having an office at the top of the Obelisco was that Coco never got lost going to work. The bad thing about it was the 206 steps to climb to get up there. Panting, Alberta finally reached the top and saw the familiar door with gold letters that read:

  Alberta knocked on the door. No answer. She knocked again. Still no answer. So she shoved at the door with her shoulder and somersaulted inside, tumbling across the shiny marble floor.

  After a few more tumbles, she came to a stop in front of a big wooden desk covered with impressive piles of paper and several glass inkwells. But sitting behind the desk on the leather swivel chair, instead of her cousin Coco, Alberta saw:

  NOBODY.

  ‘Coco?’ she said, peering around. ‘Are you here?

  There was a mysterious rustling sound.

  ‘Um,’ squeaked a voice deep from somewhere. ‘Maybe.’

  Alberta stood still, her whiskers quivering. Where was the voice coming from? Slowly she began to stalk about the room, looking up, down, round and round …

  Coco’s head popped out from the wastepaper basket.

  ‘Coco!’ exclaimed Alberta.

  ‘Alberta!’ said Coco. ‘It’s you, prima!

  You got my letter! You’ve come at last!’

  Coco jumped out of the wastepaper basket and rushed over to his cousin, giving her a big kiss on both cheeks. Alberta was not so sure about all those kisses, but she knew it was the South American way.

  ‘Now, Coco, what’s the trouble?’ she said, when the kissing finally stopped.

  Carlo burst into tears.

  ‘Oh, Alberta, I’m so afraid – I’m at the end of my carrots!’

  (He didn’t actually mean he’d run out of carrots – it was just his way of saying how afraid he was.)

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Alberta. ‘I wonder … Is it something to do with fruit?’

  ‘How on earth did you guess that?’ said Coco. ‘But you’re right!’ He leaned over and whispered in Alberta’s ear, ‘It’s a pineapple!’

  Alberta stared.

  ‘A pineapple?’

  ‘Oh, Alberta, yes, and it’s horrible!’ cried Coco, breaking down in tears again.

  ‘Now now, Coco,’ said Alberta sensibly. ‘It’s true not everybody likes pineapple. But horrible is going a bit far. Why, with a bit of ice-cream, and perhaps a cherry on top—’

  ‘You don’t understand, Alberta!’ Coco broke in. ‘It’s not that sort of pineapple.’ He lowered his voice and added in a gurgle, ‘It’s a floating pineapple.’

  ‘A floating pineapple?’ frowned Alberta. ‘It doesn’t sound possible.’

  ‘Exactly!’ agreed Coco. ‘But I’m telling you, every day for the past week, at exactly the same time, a pineapple floats past my window. Every day, I tell you! Then I hear this dreadful wailing sound. And then it turns into laughter – the cackle of a maniac! Oh, it’s dreadful!’ He clutched his furry cheeks with his claws.

  ‘But Coco, why would a pineapple—’ began Alberta.

  ‘Oh, who knows why a pineapple does anything?’ interrupted Coco, and what he said was not unreasonable. ‘The important thing is to stop it.’

  ‘Yes, all right, Coco,’ said Alberta, soothingly. ‘Now, you say the pineapple comes at the same tim
e every afternoon.’

  ‘Exactly the same time,’ said Coco, pointing at the clock on the wall. ‘It’s uncanny, I tell you!’

  Alberta looked over at the clock. In fact, there were three clocks. That was odd in itself, but there was something even odder.

  ‘Um, Coco,’ said Alberta. ‘Have you noticed that each of these clocks tells a different time?’

  ‘That’s right,’ nodded Coco. ‘The first clock tells the time in the Maldives, the second tells the time in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, and the third tells the time in New Orleans.’

  ‘It seems to me,’ said Alberta after a pause, ‘it might be more useful to have a clock that tells the time here, in Buenos Aires.’

  ‘Yes, well, unfortunately I lent that clock to Tía Abigail,’ said Coco. ‘And I’m too nervous to ask for it back. You know what a terrible temper she has.’

  Suddenly Coco’s whiskers became as still as stalagmites.

  ‘We can’t talk about that now!’ he squealed, diving back into the wastepaper basket. ‘It’s time! The pineapple is coming!’

  Some clues at the back of the book might help you if you’re stuck.

  Chapter Three

  The three clocks ticked and tocked.

  Alberta, who was not afraid of any pineapple, went to the window and, perching on a stool, looked out at the blue sky and the tall buildings and long avenues of Buenos Aires.

  ‘Poor Coco,’ she thought. ‘The strain of his job has become too much for him. He’s seeing things – and hearing things, too. I mean, really, a floating, moaning, cackling pineapple ...’

  Then, right in front of her, floating up past the window, came a shiny yellow and green pineapple.

  ‘Great carrots!’

  The pineapple sailed by, up and up, bobbing a little in the wind. And then, exactly as Coco had said, there arose a most terrible, tragic wailing:

  ‘AAIEIEHGHIGHAAAAGHIEE EEEE …’

  Followed by:

  ‘HAHAHAHAHHEHEHEHEHE HAHAHAHAHAHHEHA!’

  ‘Sapristi!’ muttered Alberta. ‘What can this mean?’

  Craning her neck out the window, she watched the pineapple fly away into the distance. The laughter grew softer and softer until both sound and sight had disappeared.

  Alberta shook her head. She went and sat down on Coco’s swivel chair behind his desk. Her gigantic brain was throbbing.

  ‘Could it be …’ she murmured. ‘Could it possibly be …’

  And PING! went something inside her brain. And PING! it went again.

  She stood up on the chair and called out: ‘Coco! Are you there?’

  ‘Yes,’ came a quavering voice from inside the wastepaper basket.

  ‘Please come out, Coco,’ said Alberta. ‘I feel like I’m talking to a rubbish bin.’

  Coco crawled out. He was trembling all over.

  ‘Now, Coco,’ said Alberta firmly. ‘I need you to calm down and think hard.’

  Coco sniffed, and nodded his head.

  ‘Is there a park near here? A big park, you know, where grandmothers take their grandchildren out for a bit of sunshine in the afternoon. Let’s say, about a ten-minute walk away?’

  She looked at Coco hopefully.

  ‘Well,’ said Coco, trying his best. ‘I suppose you could mean La Plaza de las Bananas Blancas.’ His eyes opened wide in terror. ‘Do you think that’s where my enemy is hiding? That accursed pineapple?’

  ‘I’m not saying for sure,’ said Alberta. ‘But I think we should get ourselves there, on the double. We have got some investigating to do. Vamos!’

  Coco put on the special red sash that he wore for emergencies, and the two little pigs scampered down the 206 steps of the Obelisco to where the police scooter was parked.

  They hopped on the scooter and headed into the wild traffic.

  The Obelisco was surrounded by a giant road, with hundreds of cars, trucks, taxis and motorbikes whizzing around it. But everyone pulled over to one side when they saw the Chief of Police coming on his scooter. Coco looked so handsome in his red sash. ‘Bravo, Coco!’ they shouted as he and Alberta sped away.

  Soon they arrived at La Plaza de las Bananas Blancas.

  Parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts with prams strolled about, and there was the pleasant sound of happy squeaking in the air, and little claws galloping across the grass.

  Scattered around the park were also several stalls selling all sorts of useful things – a plastic-windmill seller, a hot-peanut seller, a floppy-clown seller, a fluffy-socks seller – and …

  ‘Ha!’ said Alberta, pointing a claw. ‘Just as I thought! Look!’

  It was a balloon stall, filled with balloons of all colours, shapes and sizes, each held down by invisible strings. Next to the balloons stood a distinguished individual with long hair and an even longer curling moustache, clearly the balloon-seller.

  With a determined expression on her face, Alberta went straight over, Coco cautiously following.

  ‘Good afternoon, señor,’ said Alberta, with a charming smile. ‘I must say, this is a remarkable collection of balloons.’

  ‘Why, thank you,’ said the balloon-seller, with a twirl of his moustache. ‘The best balloons in Buenos Aires, so they say!’

  ‘Is that so?’ said Alberta. She raised her eyebrows, although it was hard to tell exactly where her eyebrows were. She took a deep breath, as she always did before saying something important. ‘The question is, what has happened to the balloon that you had earlier today in the shape of a … pineapple?’

  If you need a few clues to work it out, look at the end of the book.

  Chapter Four

  ‘Dear lady,’ replied the balloon-seller, amazed. ‘How on earth did you know that I even had a pineapple-shaped balloon?’

  ‘Well,’ said Alberta. ‘Your balloons, if read a certain way, spell out a friendly and useful message. But the letter P is missing. And what else could that missing balloon be, except a fruit beginning with P – in other words, a pineapple?’

  ‘It could be a pear,’ suggested the balloon-seller.

  ‘Or a peach,’ added Coco.‘

  ‘Or a pomegranate,’ said the balloon-seller.

  ‘Or a persimmon,’ said Coco.

  ‘Or even a pawpaw,’ said the balloon-seller.

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ interrupted Alberta, irritated, ‘it could be all those things, but I am right, am I not, that it was a pineapple?’

  ‘Yes, well, all right,’ agreed the balloon-seller mildly. ‘It was a pineapple. I’m sorry you have missed out, if you wanted one. I only have one a day, you see, and all this week it has been snapped up every afternoon by one of my regular customers, as soon as I start work at three o’clock.’

  ‘Intriguing,’ said Alberta. ‘Could you describe this customer? I am most interested in anyone who loves pineapple balloons as much as I do,’ she added quickly.

  ‘Certainly,’ said the balloon-seller. ‘She is a lady of senior years, who buys the balloon for her little grandson, Ernesto.’ He sighed. ‘Such a devoted grandmother! Every day she buys him a pineapple balloon, and then takes him to the Confitería Tortoni for a submarino.’

  ‘Every day?’ said Coco in tones of outrage, stepping out from behind Alberta. ‘Every day a balloon and a submarino?’

  ‘That’s right, señor,’ said the balloon-seller.

  ‘If you ask me,’ said Coco, ‘this Ernesto sounds dreadfully spoilt.’

  ‘Ah, well, you can’t spoil the little ones enough, that’s what I say,’ replied the balloon-seller with a smile. ‘What would happen to my business?’

  His face fell as he suddenly noticed Coco’s brilliant red sash.

  ‘Oh, Señor Coco, the Chief of Police, it is you! I hope this lady is not guilty of some terrible crime?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised,’ replied Coco in a dark voice.

  Alberta tugged on his fur.

  ‘Come on, primo. There’s no time to lose! To the Tortoni! We may just catch them!’


  By scooter, the Tortoni was only a few minutes away. Coco knew it well, as he’d spent many happy afternoons there in its cool splendour when it had got too hot in the Obelisco.

  Leaving the scooter on the pavement, the two guinea pigs pushed open the big glass doors and went inside.

  Customers sat at gleaming tables, drinking coffee, chatting, reading the papers or playing chess. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling and the waiters wore black bow-ties.

  ‘That must be them!’ whispered Alberta, with a surreptitious point of her claw.

  Sitting at one of the tables was an elderly guinea pig with pinkish fur and a pearl necklace. Next to her was a small, grubby guinea pig, happily spooning melted chocolate into his mouth from the bottom of a glass.

  ‘Nearly finished, Ernesto, darling?’ they heard the grandmother say dotingly, as she wiped chocolate from the little guinea pig’s face with a hankie.

  ‘Be careful, prima,’ Coco whispered back. ‘She looks dangerous.’ How he wished he’d brought his ceremonial sword! ‘I know – let’s sit down quietly at a nearby table for a moment first. That way we can watch and listen, and pounce when she makes a move.’

  There was a small, round table free, next to a pair of guinea pigs in purple hats playing chess. Coco and Alberta sat down, and looked at the menu. Alberta was just thinking it might be nice to have a submarino while they were waiting, when one of the chess-players at the next table hissed at his opponent.

  ‘Ook-liggle over-iggle ere-thiggle!’ he said in a low voice.