The Adventures of Toto
Storyboard Text
- Obviously, Toto was not the sort of pet we could keep for long. Even Grandfather realised that. We were not well-to-do, and could not afford the frequent loss of dishes, clothes, curtains and wallpaper. So Grandfather found the tonga-driver and sold Toto back to him — for only three rupees.
- Toto was a pretty monkey. His bright eyes sparkled with mischief beneath deep-set eyebrows, and his teeth were a pearly white often displayed in a smile that frightened the life out of elderly ladies. But his hands looked dried-up as if they had been pickled in the sun for years. Yet his fingers were quick and wicked and his tail, while adding to his good looks, also served as the third hand. It was capable of scooping up any delicacy that reached his hands.
- He's clever. Given time, I’m sure he could have tied the torn pieces of your blazer into a rope, and made his escape from the window!
- Grandmother always fussed when Grandfather brought home some new bird or animal. So it was decided that Toto’s presence should be kept a secret from her until she was in a particularly good mood.
- Grandfather and I put him away in a little closet opening into my bedroom wall, where he was tied securely — or so we thought — to a peg fastened into the wall.
- A few hours later, when Grandfather and I came back to release Toto, we found that the walls, which had been covered with some ornamental paper chosen by Grandfather, now stood out as naked brick and plaster. The peg in the wall had been wrenched from its socket, and my school blazer, which had been hanging there, was in shreds. I wondered what Grandmother would say but Grandfather was relaxed.
- His presence in the house still a secret, Toto was now transferred to a big cage in the servants’ quarters where several Grandfather’s pets lived very sociably together — a tortoise, a pair of rabbits, a tame squirrel and, for a while, my pet goat. But the monkey wouldn’t allow any of his companions to sleep at night.
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