Of Lions and Unicorns

by Michael Morpurgo

  The cowboy soldier leapt down off his tank. “You know what to do. I don’t want a building left standing. Understand? Nothing. You’ll find all the petrol you need in the garage. Use hay, faggots, anything that’ll burn. If it won’t burn, then blow it up.” The soldiers cheered at that. Whooping and yelling, they scattered in all directions, some diving directly into the houses on the square and others running off down the village streets. Soon the square was left to the cowboy soldier, who sat down on a bench and lit up another cigarette. He blew smoke rings into the air and poked his finger through them. Martha’s dog was snuffling around her body, his tail between his legs.

  Sofia could not look any more. She sat down. The blood had congealed on her leg. She took off her sock. Her ankle was puffed up and grey.

  A window shattered somewhere in the village, then another, then another. Some way away, a gun began to chatter and did not stop.

  “Are you still in there?” It was the soldier’s voice from below her window.

  “Yes,” she replied at once, without thinking.

  “For God’s sake, don’t try to run. You’ll be seen. They’ll kill you if they see you. They mustn’t leave any witnesses.”

  “My mother, my nan. They were in the lorry. Where have you taken them? Where have they gone?”

  “You don’t want to know,” said the soldier. “Just worry about yourself. And don’t look out of the window. They’ll see you. I could see the shape of your head from across the square. Keep down. I can’t stay.” Sofia heard him walk away. She wanted to ask him so much more but could not risk calling out. She sat down on the toilet and tried to gather her thoughts, but nothing would come but tears. Racked with sobbing, Sofia put her head between her knees and hugged herself into a tight ball and closed her eyes. So she sat for hour after hour as they burnt the village around her. Trying not to listen, not to smell.

  The first explosion was from far away, but all the same, it rocked the building, blasted her ears and left a ringing inside her head that would not stop. The next was closer, in the square itself, maybe the post office she thought, and the next shortly afterwards was even closer still. Perhaps the café. She bit her lip till it bled, determined not to scream, not to give herself away. When plaster crashed down from the ceiling on to her shoulders, she could stand it no longer. She lifted her head and screamed and screamed. Through her own screaming, through the whistle in her ears, she heard the whoosh and crackle of the flames outside, the roar of the roofs collapsing, and always the soldiers whooping.

  Then she saw smoke drifting in under the door, thick smoke that would stifle the life out of her. She had to get away. She climbed up on to the seat and put her nose to the window to breathe in the last of the cleaner air. That was when the tanks began to fire from under the trees, pounding, pounding, pounding. She fell backwards on to the floor, back down into the smoke. She rolled into a corner, covering her face, her mouth, her ears, clenching herself into herself as tight as she would fit. Then she prayed. The picture she had seen on television of the child without any legs flashed into her head. “Please, God, I want my legs. I need my legs. Let me die if you want, but I want my legs. I want my legs.”

  The smoke was thinning. Suddenly she could breathe without coughing, then there were voices outside.

  “The toilets. Don’t forget the toilets.” It was the cowboy soldier. “A grenade will do it.”

  “Hardly worth the trouble, Captain,” said another. Her soldier, her soldier’s voice. “It’s not as if there’s anyone left to piss in it, is there? And anyway, why don’t we leave it there as a monument? All that’s left of them, their toilet.”

  The cowboy soldier laughed. “Good. Very good. I like it. Some bonfire, eh?” They were walking away now. The cowboy soldier went on, “D’you see the mosque come down? Obstinate beggar, he was. Took twenty rounds to topple him. This heat gives a man a thirst, eh? Let’s get at the beer.”

  “Why not?” said Sofia’s soldier.

  There were no more shootings after that, no more explosions, but Sofia stayed where she was, curled up on the floor of the toilet. She could hear the soldiers carousing in the square and the sound of smashing beer bottles. One crashed against the window above her head, shattering the glass. Shortly after, their laughter was drowned out by the noise of the tank engines starting up. They were calling to each other. They were going. She waited a few minutes more until she was quite sure the tanks were on the move, their engines revving. Then she climbed up and looked out. The two tanks were rumbling away out of sight, belching black smoke out behind them. They were gone.

  Everywhere she looked was utter destruction. The village was a flaming, smoking ruin. Like all the other buildings, the café had no roof. Flames licked out of the windows, leaping across the road into the trees. The parked cars were blackened shells now, the tyres still burning furiously. The front of the shop had entirely caved in. Sofia got down, opened the door and hobbled out into the square. The minaret had fallen right across School Lane, obliterating the houses beneath. Martha still lay outside her café, but now her dog was beside her. He was not moving. Sofia sat down on the bench in the middle of the square where she was farthest from the heat of the fires. She had no tears left to cry.

  She was still sitting there late that evening when the reporters came in their Land Rover. She was rocking back and forth and there was a cow beside her, grazing the grass. She was humming ‘Raining in My Heart’. She looked up at them as they approached.

  “Hello,” she said. “That’s Myrtle. She’s come to find me. She wants milking.”

  “Is this your village?” asked a reporter, pushing a microphone at her. Sofia looked at him blankly. “What does it feel like to see it like this?” he went on. “And what do you think of the people who’ve done it? Where the hell is everyone, anyway?”

  “I’ve got my legs,” said Sofia, and she smiled. “I’ve got my legs. God is great.”

  he question I am most often asked is always easy enough to answer. Question: how did you get started as a writer? Answer: funnily enough, by asking someone almost exactly that very same question, which I was only able to ask in the first place by a dose of extraordinarily good fortune.

  I had better explain.

  My good fortune was, of course, someone else’s rotten luck – it is often that way, I find. The phone call sounded distraught. It came on a Sunday evening. I had only been working on the paper for three weeks. I was a cub reporter, this my first paid job.

  “Lesley?” It was my boss, chief arts correspondent Meryl Monkton, a lady not to be messed with. She did not waste time with niceties; she never did. “Listen, Lesley, I have a problem. I was due to go to Venice tomorrow to interview Paolo Levi.”

  “Paolo Levi?” I said. “The violinist?”

  “Is there any other Paolo Levi?” She did not trouble to hide her irritation. “Now look, Lesley. I’ve had an accident, a skiing accident, and I’m stuck in hospital in Switzerland. You’ll have to go to Venice instead of me.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible,” I said, smothering as best I could the excitement surging inside me. Three weeks into the job and I’d be interviewing the great Paolo Levi, and in Venice!

  Talk about her accident, I told myself. Sound concerned. Sound very concerned.

  “How did it happen?” I asked. “The skiing accident, I mean.”

  “Skiing,” she snapped. “If there’s one thing I can’t abide, Lesley, it’s people feeling sorry for me.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “I would postpone it if I could, Lesley,” she went on, “but I just don’t dare. It’s taken me more than a year to persuade him to do it. It’ll be his first interview in years. And even then I had to agree not to ask him the Mozart question. So don’t ask him the Mozart question, is that clear? If you do he’ll like as not cancel the whole interview – he’s done it before. We’re really lucky to get him, Lesley. I only wish I could be there to do it myself. But you’ll have to do.”


  “The Mozart question?” I asked, rather tentatively.

  The silence at the end of the phone was long.

  “You mean to say you don’t know about Paolo Levi and the Mozart question? Where have you been, girl? Don’t you know anything at all about Paolo Levi?”

  I suddenly felt I might lose the opportunity altogether if I did not immediately sound informed, and well informed too.

  “Well, he would have been born sometime in the mid-1950s,” I began. “He must be about fifty by now.”

  “Exactly fifty in two weeks’ time,” Meryl Monkton interrupted wearily. “His London concert is his fiftieth birthday concert. That’s the whole point of the interview. Go on.”

  I rattled off all I knew. “Child prodigy and genius, like Yehudi Menuhin. Played his first major concert when he was thirteen. Probably best known for his playing of Bach and Vivaldi. Like Menuhin he played often with Grappelli, equally at home with jazz or Scottish fiddle music or Beethoven. Has played in practically every major concert hall in the world, in front of presidents and kings and queens. I heard him at the Royal Festival Hall in London, five years ago, I think. He was playing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto; he was wonderful. Doesn’t like applause. Never waits for applause. Doesn’t believe in it, apparently. The night I saw him he just walked off the stage and didn’t come back. He thinks it’s the music that should be applauded if anything, or perhaps the composer, but certainly not the musician. Says that the silence after the performance is part of the music and should not be interrupted. Doesn’t record either. Believes music should be live, not canned. Protects his privacy fiercely. Solitary. Reticent. Lives alone in Venice, where he was born. Just about the most famous musician on the planet, and—”

  “The most famous, Lesley, but he hates obsequiousness. He likes to be talked to straight. So no bowing or scraping, no wide-eyed wonder, and above all no nerves. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, Meryl,” I replied, knowing only too well that I would have the greatest difficulty even finding my voice in front of the great man.

  “And whatever you do, stick to the music. He’ll talk till the cows come home about music and composers. But no personal stuff. And above all, keep off the Mozart question. Oh yes, and don’t take a tape recorder with you. He hates gadgets. Only shorthand. You can do shorthand, I suppose? Three thousand words. It’s your big chance, so don’t mess it up, Lesley.”

  No pressure, then, I thought.

  So there I was the next evening outside Paolo Levi’s apartment in the Dorsoduro in Venice, on the dot of six o’clock, my throat dry, my heart pounding, trying all I could to compose myself. It occurred to me again, as it had often on the plane, that I still had no idea what this Mozart question was, only that I mustn’t ask it. It was cold, the kind of cruel chill that seeps instantly into your bones, deep into your kidneys, and makes your ears ache. This didn’t seem to bother the street performers in the square behind me: several grotesquely masked figures on stilts strutting across the square, an entirely silver statue-man posing immobile outside the café with a gaggle of tourists gazing wonderingly at him.

  The door opened, and there he was in front of me, Paolo Levi, neat, trim, his famous hair long to his shoulders and jet black.

  “I’m Lesley McInley,” I said. “I’ve come from London.”

  “From the newspaper, I suppose.” There was no welcoming smile. “You’d better come in. Shut the door behind you; I hate the cold.” His English was perfect, not a trace of an accent. He seemed to be able to follow my thoughts. “I speak English quite well,” he said as we went up the stairs. “Language is like music. You learn it best through listening.”

  He led me down a hallway and into a large room, empty except for a couch by the window piled high with cushions at one end, a grand piano in the centre and a music stand near by. There were just two armchairs and a table. Nothing else. “I like to keep it empty,” he said.

  It was uncanny. He was reading my thoughts. Now I felt even more unnerved.

  “Sound needs space to breathe, just the same as we need air,” he said.

  He waved me to a chair and sat down. “You’ll have some mint tea?” he said, pouring me a cup. His dark blue cardigan and grey corduroy trousers were somehow both shabby and elegant at the same time. The bedroom slippers he wore looked incongruous but comfortable. “My feet, they hate the cold more than the rest of me.” He was scrutinising me now, his eyes sharp and shining. “You’re younger than I expected,” he said. “Twenty-three?” He didn’t wait to have his estimate confirmed – he knew he was right and he was. “You have heard me play?”

  “Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. The Royal Festival Hall in London, a few years ago. I was a student.” I noticed his violin then, and his bow, on the window ledge by the couch.

  “I like to practise by the window,” he said, “so I can watch the world go by on the canal. It passes the time. Even as a child I never liked practising much. And I love to be near water, to look out on it. When I go to London I have to have a room by the Thames. In Paris I must be by the Seine. I love the light that water makes.” He sipped his mint tea, his eyes never leaving me. “Shouldn’t you be asking me questions?” He went on. “I’m talking too much. Journalists always make me nervous. I talk too much when I’m nervous. When I go to the dentist’s I talk. Before a concert I talk. So let’s get this over with, shall we? And not too many questions, please. Why don’t we keep it simple? You ask me one question and then let me ramble on. Shall we try that?” I didn’t feel at all that he was being dismissive or patronising, just straight. That didn’t make it any easier, though.

  I had done my research, made pages of notes, prepared dozens of questions; but now, under his expectant gaze, I simply could not gather my thoughts.

  “Well, I know I can’t ask you the Mozart question, Signor Levi,” I began, “because I’ve been told not to. I don’t even know what the Mozart question is, so I couldn’t ask it even if I wanted to; and anyway, I know you don’t like it, so I won’t.”

  With every blundering word I was digging myself into a deeper hole. In my desperation I blurted out the first question that came into my head.

  “Signor Levi,” I said, “I wonder if you’d mind telling me how you got started. I mean, what made you pick up a violin and play that first time?” It was such an obvious question, and personal too, just the kind of question I shouldn’t have asked.

  His reaction only confirmed that. He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. For fully a couple of minutes he said nothing. I was quite sure he was trying to control his impatience, his rage even, that he was going to open his eyes and ask me to leave at once. When he did open his eyes he simply stared up at the ceiling for a while. I could see from the seriousness of his whole demeanour that he was making a decision, and I feared the worst. But instead of throwing me out he stood up and walked slowly to the couch by the window. He picked up his violin and sat back on the cushions with his violin resting on his drawn-up knees. He plucked a string or two and tuned it.

  “I will tell you a story,” he began. “After it is over you will need to ask me no more questions. Someone once told me that all secrets are lies. The time has come, I think, not to lie any more.”

  He paused. I felt he was stiffening his resolve, gathering his strength.

  “I will start with my father. Papa was a barber. He kept a little barber’s shop just behind the Accademia, near the bridge, two minutes from here. We lived above the shop, Mama, Papa and I, but I spent most of my time downstairs in the barber’s shop, sitting on the chairs and swinging my legs, smiling at him and his customers in the mirror, and just watching him. I loved those days. I loved him. At the time of these memories I must have been about nine years old. Small for my age. I always was. I still am.”

  He spoke slowly, very deliberately, as if he was living it again, seeing again everything he was telling me. My shorthand was quick and automatic, so I had time to look up at him occasionally as he spoke. I sensed
right away that I was the first person ever to hear this story, so I knew even as he told it just how momentous the telling of it was for him, as in a totally different way it was for me too.

  “Papa was infinitely deft with his fingers, his scissors playing a constantly changing tune. It seemed to me like a new improvisation for every customer, the snipping unhesitatingly skilful, so fast it was mesmerising. He would work always in complete silence, conducting the music of his scissors with his comb. His customers knew better than to interrupt the performance, and so did I. I think perhaps I must have known his customers almost as well as he did. I grew up with them. They were all regulars. Some would close their eyes as Papa worked his magic; others would look back in the mirror at me and wink.

  “Shaving was just as fascinating to me, just as rhythmical too: the swift sweep and dab of the brush, the swish and slap of the razor as Papa sharpened it on the strap, then each time the miraculous unmasking as he stroked the foam away to reveal a recognisable face once more.

  “After it was all over, he and his customers did talk, and all the banter amongst them was about football, Inter Milan in particular, or sometimes the machinations of politicians and women. What they said I cannot exactly remember, probably because I couldn’t understand most of it, but I do know they laughed a lot. I do remember that. Then the next customer would take his seat and a new silence would descend before the performance started and the music of the scissors began. I am sure I first learnt about rhythm in that barber’s shop, and about concentration. I learnt to listen too.

  “Papa wasn’t just the best barber in all of Venice – everyone said that – he was a musician too, a violinist. But strangely he was a violinist who never played the violin. I never heard him play, not once. I only knew he was a violinist because Mama had told me so. She had tears in her eyes whenever she told me about it. That surprised me because she was not a crying woman. He had been so brilliant as a violinist, the best in the whole orchestra, she said. When I asked why he didn’t play any more, she turned away from me, went very quiet and told me I’d have to ask Papa myself. So I did. I asked him time and again, and each time he would simply shrug, and say something meaningless like: ‘People change, Paolo. Times change.’ And that would be that.