Little Hands Clapping

by Dan Rhodes

  In the days that followed, people from the town came to visit the boy, who had been named Mauro. As is customary the men stood at the back of the room, blankly nodding their approval as the women got on with the business of leaning over the crib and offering exuberant compliments on the handsomeness of the child, telling the new parents that one day he would be breaking hearts. As they delivered these well-worn speeches they began to feel uneasy, wondering whether it was right for them to be saying such things about this boy. Even the men, who on these occasions would usually notice almost nothing about the baby as they drifted into daydreams, could see that this one was different. They had all been struck by the same quality that his parents had noticed that first night: as he lay there with a length that was sure to translate into height, a head of thick, black hair, flawless skin, and features already well-defined, the women found that for the first time in their life they truly meant the words they were saying, that he really was handsome, and that he really would break hearts. Whenever he opened his eyes they shone with an irresistible sparkle. Nobody had ever seen anything quite like it, and the visitors began to wonder whether such an incredible boy would ever find a match in this small town.

  It didn’t take long for the answer to arrive.

  When the boy was a few weeks old, just as it seemed as if the winter was never going to end, another child was born, this time a girl. At the onset of her mother’s labour an icy wind had been blowing through the town, but by the time the baby came into the world the air was still and warm. Everybody who visited in the days that followed was only half joking when they said she had brought the springtime with her. As they looked at her, wriggling and wrapped in a simple blanket, they saw that her nose was delicate and her eyes large, seeming to smile as she looked up at them. Mauro and Madalena were by no means the only new arrivals in the town, but without exception the visitors’ thoughts turned to the beautiful boy. Even the boy’s own mother knew, the moment she saw the baby girl. She held her son over the crib and said, ‘Look, Mauro. Look at Madalena. Isn’t she pretty? Maybe one day you’ll marry her.’ She would have said this anyway, but she found the words ringing true. The boy’s father had been standing at the back of the room, and even from his oblique vantage point he could see this as well. Neither of them said a word about it; they both knew that there was nothing they could do but wait for the story to unfold.

  The children began to steal glances at one another at school and in church, and soon afterwards they became playmates, racing through the fields and up into the mountains, at first with the other children and then, as they got older, dashing ahead or dawdling, just the two of them. At first neither really knew why they were drawn together, but this could never last. Words of warning were given and boundaries set, but one day there was a change between them, and from then on they found every opportunity to slip behind rocks and into gulleys, and one summer afternoon, when both were fourteen and the promise of their babyhoods had been confirmed beyond doubt, they were seen together in the town square, sitting in the shade of a tree in such a way that everybody knew that a vow of love had, at last, been exchanged.

  As they glided through the streets and the fields they were almost as unreal as images on a billboard, and life for everybody else in the town was able to go on as normal. Just as the people of Rome continue to hang pictures on the walls of their apartments in spite of the proximity of the Sistine Chapel, so were Mauro and Madalena’s neighbours able to look at their husbands, wives and sweethearts with as much fondness as if these two had not been breathing the same clean mountain air. The other young people formed romances among themselves, each knowing that the other was not technically the most attractive person in town, but never mentioning it and not letting it matter. Sometimes, though, an unfortunate youth would go through a phase of suffering pangs of longing for Madalena or for Mauro, but the pair bore their looks and their love graciously, and whenever one of them caught somebody gazing at them with yearning in their eyes they would smile back, a smile that gave no encouragement but was infused with a warm, benevolent pity. These smiles said, I know why you’re looking at me in that way, and I’m sorry, but don’t despair. You’ll find somebody right for you one day, I just know it. The unhappy soul would understand this wordless exchange, and take comfort until they found they could at last get on with their lives. At least that was what would usually happen. Not everybody in town was able to shake off their yearning so easily though, and one pair of eyes was the saddest of all.

  Every time Madalena saw these eyes they were blazing with a helpless love for her, and this love never faded with time, it only grew, flying at her as the boy gazed across the schoolyard. He left school to begin working at his family’s bakery, and every time she walked past the shop, his love would power its way through the glass before landing, unwanted, in her heart.

  The older generations noticed the young baker’s predicament with dismay. It’s such a shame he won’t be marrying any time soon, they thought to themselves. If only his heart hadn’t taken him down a dead end. From before he was born they had all been looking forward to his wedding day, but now it seemed they had been waiting in vain.

  Of all the weddings in a small town, one in a baker’s family is looked forward to more than any other. Guests leave the wedding of a butcher’s child with bellies weighed down with meat, their evening blighted by the knowledge that it will keep them awake and take days to pass through their systems. The marriage of the mortician’s daughter takes place under a cloud of darkness, the congregation seeing the young couple not as they are, but as they will be when the time to let go has finally passed and they lie, still and cold, in wooden boxes. The candlestick maker’s celebration is plagued by constant annoyance as guests singe their arm hair as they reach for condiments, and wax drips on to dresses that had been made for the occasion from a fabric so delicate that they know it will be beyond restoration. The hosts, quite used to being around so many flames, will be unaware of the torment that surrounds them, and will deem the day a great success. A wedding in a baker’s family, though, is a day of sweet tastes, and of pastry flakes that can be brushed to the floor with ease to be licked up by happy dogs. As the children of these families grow up there is a sense of impatience for them to marry so a wedding feast can be held. This pressure is never expressed, but it will be keenly felt, and this is at least partly why they have always married so young, and why the phrase a baker’s generation is used in so many languages to denote a period of time slightly shorter than a conventional generation. The family of the sad-eyed boy was no different. For baker’s generation after baker’s generation they had married when they were not long out of school, but as he entered his late teens it was clear to everybody that the boy who loved Madalena so hopelessly was going to depart from the tradition.

  The boy’s father had married as expected. A baker’s generation earlier he had barely begun shaving when the church bells had rung out for him and his bride. The whole town had turned out to wish them well, and the celebrations had gone on deep into the night, the couple glowing with the joy of it all. The only discordant note had come when the groom was taken to one side by his great-great-grandmother, who gripped his arm and said, in a voice at once firm and gentle, ‘While you children are away on your honeymoon I shall take every opportunity to pray that your marriage will be a fruitful one. My prayer will, however, contain a simple caveat, namely that you do not conceive a child while you are there,’ she pointed a bony finger diagonally downwards, ‘in your hotel by the sea. When you return, that will be the time.’

  He had not asked her to elaborate. He thanked her for her good wishes and her prayers, and went back to dance with his bride, to hold her in his arms and dream of what awaited them in their hotel by the sea.

  Shortly after their return home, his wife began to have unusual pains in her belly. A trip to the doctor confirmed that a baby was on its way, and they rushed to tell their families, who met up after hours at the bakery and fell
into an impromptu celebration. The festivities were interrupted by the great-great-grandmother of the father-to-be, who had been sitting alone in the corner and refusing all offers of food and wine. She stood up and banged her stick three times on the floor.

  The room fell silent.

  ‘This celebration is all very well,’ she said, ‘and of course we shall welcome the newcomer with all our hearts, but remember this: the child was conceived between the crisp cotton sheets of the honeymoon hotel.’ The young couple blushed, and everybody waited for her to continue. ‘This means,’ she said, looking from blank face to blank face, ‘that the baby is due to enter the world in early March.’ A chill emanated from the aunts and uncles. While some of the women had already estimated the baby’s due date, its significance had not struck them until this moment. The younger members of the party waited for the old woman to continue. ‘If the child arrives when it is due, it will be born under the sign of the fish.’ She drew the sign in the air with the end of her stick. ‘This town has not seen a Piscean child for many decades, and the last one . . . Well, maybe it’s time you young people were told about him.’

  The older relatives implored her not to tell. ‘Please,’ they said. ‘Not now. Not tonight.’

  But it was too late to stop her, and she told the story of the Piscean boy. He had fulfilled everything that might be expected of somebody with such a birth date: he daydreamed, he wrote poems, he wandered through the streets and fields as though in a daze, he shed tears at the sight of animals in distress, he played the accordion and he fell hopelessly in love with a beautiful girl who could never return his feelings. ‘Once a year he would play his accordion in church. I heard it when I was young, and it was as if the music was coming straight from heaven.’ She closed her eyes and swayed from side to side, her face transformed for a moment into a picture of serenity before she snapped back into the room. ‘But apart from those few minutes each year he was good for nothing. I am afraid to say he died young, at just twenty-two. It was on the day the girl with whom he had been so taken married another man. As the sound of church bells rang through the town he lay on his bed and closed his eyes. The doctor took one look at him and announced that the cause was simple: he had died of a broken heart.’

  The old woman looked at the grave faces. ‘But all is not hopeless, at least not yet. If my great-great-great-grandchild is a girl then things will of course be easier. We shall make sure her hair matches the somewhat distant look in her eyes, that she grows it long so it tumbles over her shoulders and down her back, and we shall encourage her to paint watercolours and play the harp. There are gentlemen, though I cannot for a moment understand why, who appreciate these somewhat ghostly qualities in a woman, so we can hope she will find a husband who will take care of her. But if you have a son, well . . .’ she shook her head, and sat down, ‘. . . it is in God’s hands. All we can do is pray for the child.’

  The party never really picked up again after this, and before long everybody had gone away, back to their homes or upstairs to bed.

  The young couple tried their best to shrug off what the old woman had said. They told themselves that it was the job of a small town great-great-grandmother to knock three times on the floor with her stick and make doom-laden pronouncements at family gatherings. And besides, suspicions had begun to spread that the old people were losing their touch.

  A year before this pronouncement, a bearded vulture had been seen circling above the rooftops, the first time one had been spotted in living memory. The old people knew the town was looking to them to make a declaration about the significance of this event, but they had no idea what to say. Previous generations would have united in a moment, and made an immediate announcement without recourse to conference, deeming it to be a portent of either good or bad fortune, but this generation was flummoxed. Some thought they had a hazy idea of the significance of the last appearance of such a bird, but their memories of the stories they had been told differed significantly from one old person to the next. One said it had presaged a landslide that had wiped out six goats, a mule and an olive tree; another said they vaguely recalled being told that the bird had been a friend to the town, that it had led people into the hills to a hidden ditch where a young boy was lying with a broken leg. Others had differing but equally indistinct memories of stories told to them in childhood by their own grandparents, and it wasn’t long before it was accepted that a formal meeting was required. They gathered in the town square, and before a consensus could be reached the vulture was seen once again. Those who had believed it to be a harbinger of good fortune had the opportunity to get a look at its claws and begin to reconsider, and those who had been sure it could only bode ill were struck by its rare grace, and they decided that its presence could, after all, mean that something good was about to befall the town. The discussion went on until nightfall with no conclusions drawn, and when they decided to sleep on it and reconvene in the morning, murmurs began to go around about how old people were not what they used to be.

  The ironmonger, a man in late middle age, felt very strongly that this vulture could only be good for the town in general and his shop in particular, and he wished he was old so he could go to the town square and tell them his views on the matter. At three in the morning he shook his wife awake, stood naked before her and declared that he had decided he was old enough. ‘Look at me,’ he said. ‘My hair is silver and my face has enough liver spots. And as for this,’ he said, pointing downwards, ‘it has certainly changed since our wedding night.’ His wife mumbled her agreement and went back to sleep, and in the morning he strode up to the huddle of old people, ready to join in. They fell silent and shook their heads, giving him no choice but to walk away.

  With the ironmonger gone, the old people resumed their symposium. Their discussion didn’t move on at all from the day before. They knew, though, that patience was running thin and they had to say something before sunset. In the early afternoon, just as they were ready to unite behind a line that the vulture was a straightforward symbol of good fortune to come, the bird returned, flying twice around the town square before swooping on a litter of puppies in a pen behind the ironmonger’s shop, taking one of them and flying off, almost low enough for the old people to hit it with their sticks as if it was taunting them with its prize. It flew into the distance until it was just a speck, and then could not be seen at all.

  The old people gave up. They declared that the episode meant nothing more than that a bearded vulture had come to town and had been at once impressive in its majesty and fearsome in its manner, and that while it had been somewhat unfortunate for the ironmonger, there was no further significance to the episode. Even this was not particularly convincing, because now everybody knew that the ironmonger had puppies to sell. There had been a card in his window for a week which had attracted little interest, but their sudden notoriety, combined with the pleading of children who had heard about them and wanted to keep them safe from future bird attacks, ensured that by the end of the day all six that remained had found new homes without a centavo lost to negotiation. The one that had been carried off had been the weakest of the litter, not quite a runt but certainly not a dog that would ever have been likely to sell. The day had ended with the ironmonger satisfied in his prediction, and a creeping sense throughout the town that the old people had lost their touch, that this was the first generation whose minds had been cluttered with television, radio and magazines, so much so that they were no longer able to recall each and every story they had heard as they sat at their grandparents’ feet.

  It was with this episode in mind that the young couple tried to dismiss the old woman’s prediction, but they couldn’t keep themselves from hoping that the baby would be born just a fortnight early, that it would be Aquarian, spontaneous and sturdy-ankled though occasionally a little on the stubborn side, or that it would stay inside just long enough to emerge an enthusiastic and confident, though sometimes impulsive Aries. They reached the middle of February with
no sign of labour, and every night, at the great-great-grandmother’s suggestion, they kept one of the ovens burning and placed a constantly replenished basket of the most delicious pastries at the foot of the bed in the hope that the smell would prove irresistible to the baby. The child remained unmoved.

  The first day of the sign of the fish, came and went without incident, and they knew in their hearts that they couldn’t wait another month. Their only hope was that the child would be a girl, but a few days later, in between the births of Mauro and Madalena, the baby arrived. The women of the town leaned over the crib and told the parents how handsome he was, and how one day he would be breaking hearts, glad to be telling comfortable lies about a plain, bald baby, a baby like any other who, they hoped with all their hearts, would grow up to be a man like any other.

  The parents vowed never to talk to their child about their worries, but one by one the old woman’s predictions came to pass. The first sign was a slightly glazed quality to his eyes, not the empty gaze of the simpleton but the distant look of the dreamer. By this point they had a good idea of what would come next: he would learn a musical instrument and write heartfelt lines of verse.

  They never saw his heartfelt verse, and they never mentioned it, but as they passed the door to his room they would often hear the sound of a pen scratching on paper, and of a deep sigh. One year when he was asked what he would like for his birthday he looked to the sky and replied, quietly, ‘A euphonium.’

  They scoured second-hand shops in nearby towns until they found an instrument they could afford. It was old, and scratched, and its bell a little dented, but the first time their son put his lips to the mouthpiece and blew, the note that came out was at once so clear and so fragile that they felt as if the sky was falling.

  One day they saw him standing in the town square, his gaze fixed on a point some way away. They noticed with despair where his eyes were leading him: straight to the town beauty. Straight to Madalena.