The Boy, the Bird and the Coffin Maker

by Matilda Woods

  “He?” Alberto asked. “Who’s he?”

  “My father.”

  Alberto gasped. “You never told me you had a father, Tito. I should contact him. Tell him you’re safe.”

  “But you can’t!” Tito’s eyes widened with a fear so great they doubled in size. “He can never know I’m here.”

  “But why not? What’s so bad about your father?”

  Tito’s eyes flickered around the room. He looked at the dusty roof. He looked at the empty coffin. He looked at the saws, in five different sizes, hanging from the wall. Then, finally, his eyes returned to Alberto.

  “Everything,” he said softly. “That’s why we ran away.”

  “From the north?” Alberto asked.

  Tito nodded. “We came from the other side of the mountains: just me and my mum. We travelled by train. We would get off at each station and try to live there. But wherever we stopped he found us. He found us hiding in the town of Trento. He found us sleeping in the stables outside Verona. He even found us hiding in the northern woods, ten miles from the nearest town. Then he’d drag us back home.”

  “Did he hurt you?” Alberto asked. Worry made the wrinkles on his face grow deeper.

  Tito shook his head. “My mum wouldn’t let him. She was my protector.” When he spoke of his mum, Tito’s face lit up like the sun shone upon it, but then a cloud rolled over. “He wouldn’t let us leave the house after that. But then one night, while he was on patrol, we escaped. This time when we got on the train we didn’t get off until we reached the end of the line. My mum used to call this place magical. She said that whenever anyone got hungry in Allora they just held out their hand and plucked a fish from the sky.”

  “Tito,” Alberto said. “You have been living here for over a year. Perhaps, just maybe, your father has stopped searching.”

  Tito shook his head. “He’ll never stop searching for me.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  For the first time since he came into the coffin maker’s house, Tito decided to tell Alberto a story of his own.

  One day a man broke into our house and stole three apples. My father is the lead Carabineer in all of Bolzano, so he knew the thief had to be punished. He offered a reward of one gold coin to whoever handed him in first.

  It did not take long. The next day a woman came to our house and said the man who had stolen the apples lived on a farm just outside of town.

  My father gathered his three best Carabineers and marched out to the farm. He found an old man standing in a small paddock that held one cow, one sheep and one chicken.

  The animals were the only three things that the old man owned. He would drink the cow’s milk for breakfast, eat the chicken’s egg for lunch and, in winter, knit himself a warm jumper made from the sheep’s wool.

  My father looked down at the old man and said, “Are you the thief who stole three apples?”

  Hunger had made the man into a thief, but he was not a liar. So he told my father the truth.

  “Yes,” he said. “It was me. I am the man who stole three apples from you.”

  “Every thief must be punished,” my father said. “You stole three apples so now you owe me three things.”

  Winter had only just passed and it was late in the day so the old man had already drunk the cow’s milk, had already eaten the chicken’s egg and had already made a jumper from the sheep’s wool. But then he had an idea.

  “Tomorrow you can have my pail of milk. The next day you can have my chicken’s egg. And, when winter next comes, I will knit you a jumper made from wool.”

  My father thought over the offer and then shook his head. That was not enough. He turned to the first Carabineer and said, “Take his cow.”

  Then he turned to the second Carabineer and ordered, “Take his sheep.”

  Then he turned to the third Carabineer and screamed, “Take his chicken!”

  “Please,” the old man begged as the Carabineers started to drag his animals away. “They’re all I have. Please, just take one. Just take the sheep. Or take two – the sheep and the chicken. Just leave me the cow. Please, you must leave me something.”

  But my father said, “You stole three apples. Not one.”

  And then he and the three Carabineers took the animals away.

  “You see,” Tito said, “that’s what my father’s like. When something is taken from him he doesn’t stop until he gets it back or he’s hurt the person who took it.”

  “But … but surely all that about the man and three apples is just a story,” Alberto said.

  Tito shook his head. “No it isn’t. It’s the truth.”

  The workshop grew so silent that they could hear a lone fish flapping about on the Finestra sisters’ roof. Alberto did not know what to say, but Tito did. He had a request. All this talk of his father had made him desperate to see someone else.

  “Alberto?” he said. “Could you take me to my mum?”

  Now that he knew who Tito was hiding from, Alberto wanted to keep the boy inside for ever. But then he looked at Tito’s hopeful face and knew he couldn’t say no.

  “Of course,” he said. “I will take you there tonight.”

  Alberto checked to make sure the lane was clear. Behind him, Tito peered out into the night. It was so late all the lights in lower Allora were out and two rounds of snores filtered through the shutters next door.

  “Come on,” Alberto whispered to Tito.

  Wrapped in a set of Antonio’s winter clothes Tito, for the first time, stepped into Allora Lane. Fia flew beside him, enjoying the late-night air flowing through her wings.

  The sound of giant whitecaps crashing into the black water below drowned out the clap of Alberto and Tito’s shoes as they climbed Allora Hill. When they reached the graveyard at the top, Alberto opened the gate. It creaked at the familiar touch of his hand.

  “She’s over here,” Alberto whispered. He led Tito to a small grave near the front gate. “I didn’t know her first name or her age, but I did the best I could.”

  Tito stared at the grey stone for several minutes, his eyes scanning the words engraved on top. “What does it say?” he finally asked Alberto.

  HERE LIES

  MISS BONITO

  WHO DIED ALONE

  BUT SHALL LAY ALONE NO LONGER.

  “But she didn’t die alone,” Tito said. “I was there with her, all the time.”

  Alberto’s mind travelled back to the night Enzo carried Miss Bonito into his workshop. Enzo’s wife had said the sheets of the bed had been warm. Alberto had dismissed her words, but now he realized she spoke the truth. The sheets were warm because of Tito. He must have been lying beside his mother. When Enzo and Santos carried her away, he had followed. That was how he had found himself at Alberto’s home.

  “Her name was Anita,” Tito said. “But her mum called her Ani.”

  “Her mum?” Alberto’s eyes widened. “Do you have other family, Tito? Do you have grandparents?”

  Tito shook his head. “They’re all dead. My father’s the only one left.”

  To give Tito some privacy, Alberto visited four special graves of his own. His family lay far deeper in to the graveyard. Though he attended at least two funerals a week, it had been a long time since he had visited them.

  When Alberto reached their plots, he knelt down and spoke to each one in turn.

  “Ah, little Aida,” he said to the grave that marked the smallest coffin. “I have been giving my scraps to the stray cats every day, just like you asked. And my little Antonio.” He turned to the next grave along. “Tito is taking very good care of your things. And Anna Marie, I have been brushing my teeth every night. Well, most nights, and you were right. They have started to look less green.”

  Alberto cast his eyes upon the final grave. When he read the words on top, his eyes began to water. “Ah, Violetta, my dear Violetta, what can I say to you? We always hoped for another child and now I have found one. Tito is his name. He’s a giant of a little thing. You
would have had your hands full with him.”

  Alberto stayed with his family until the clock tower chimed in a new hour. Then he kissed each stone goodbye and went to fetch Tito.

  ALBERTO HEARS A RUMOUR

  The rumour started two days after Tito and Alberto returned from the graveyard. Clara was the one Alberto heard it from first. He was cleaning the tools in his workshop one evening when he heard the sisters gossiping over the fence. Usually he ignored them, but when he heard two words in amongst so many – “Bonito” and “child” – he began to listen closely.

  “It’s true,” Clara was saying. Alberto could not see her, though he imagined she was nodding her head with an eagerness only good gossip could bring. “Miss Bonito had a child.”

  Oh no, Alberto thought. Someone must have seen him and Tito go to the graveyard.

  “What type of child?” Rosa asked.

  “A little one, like a small person.”

  “But what type of child, Clara?”

  “Rather small, I believe.”

  “No. You misunderstand. Is the child a boy or a girl?”

  “Oh. A boy, I believe, called Nito or Beto or Sito or – Tito. That’s it!” she exclaimed so loudly Alberto feared Tito would hear. “Tito Bonito.”

  Both sisters laughed.

  “What a silly name,” Rosa said.

  From where he stood inside his workshop, Alberto’s face darkened.

  “So where is he?” Rosa enquired when they had stopped laughing. “Where is this Tito Bonito? He didn’t die too, did he? Maybe we should ask Alberto.”

  At the mention of his name, Alberto pulled his head inside. When neither sister called out, he leant back out into the night.

  “No. No. He didn’t die. That’s the thing. The mystery of it all.” Clara paused for effect. She paused for so long, in fact, that it lost all effect and Rosa got annoyed.

  “Well?” she said impatiently. “What’s the mystery?”

  “The mystery is that … no one knows where he is.”

  “Then how do you know he even is?”

  “Because, I believe,” Clara said delightedly, “his father has come looking for him. He has come to Allora for the child. His child. He has come to take Tito Bonito home.”

  Alberto Cavello had never been one for gossip, but now he listened closely and learned all sorts of things. Though which things were true and which were false, he could not be sure.

  Apparently, or so Clara believed:

  “Mr Bonito has been searching for two years. His wife left with the child one night while he was working an—”

  “Working?” Rosa interrupted. “Working as what?”

  “The lead Carabineer of all Bolzano.”

  “Ooh,” Rosa said. “That’s almost as powerful as the mayor.”

  “He’s been following the train-line south ever since,” Clara said, continuing with her story, “stopping at every station and searching for the son who was stolen from him.”

  “She must have been crazy to leave a man like that,” Rosa added.

  “That’s what he said. She wasn’t right in the head. Kept on making up stories. Saying people were trying to hurt her.”

  The next night Alberto pressed his ear to the fence even harder than the sisters usually had theirs pressed to his, and he learned of what happened on the night Mr Bonito arrived in Allora.

  “He came asking for a Mrs Bonito and her son. He went all the way to the mayor who told him about our Miss Bonito. Said he was right there when they brought her body in. But he assured the man that she didn’t have a son.”

  “Then how did he find out our Miss Bonito was his Mrs Bonito?” Rosa asked.

  “Well, at first he didn’t think she was. But then he asked the mayor to describe her and said that was the one.”

  “But what about his son?”

  “Thought he was dead too, but then he went to the cottage and found a pile of blankets and a bowl of stew. He’s been living there in secret without her for all these mon—”

  “Twrp!”

  Alberto jumped and spun around. The back door had just opened. Tito poked his head outside.

  He was holding a large red book under his arm.

  Before Tito could speak, Alberto hurried inside and closed the door.

  “What were you doing?” Tito asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” Alberto said lightly. He checked to make sure the door was locked. “Just pruning the flowers.”

  “Come on.” Tito pulled on Alberto’s hand. “It’s time to read the story.”

  After all the rumours he’d just heard, Alberto didn’t feel like reading a story. But the look on Tito’s face made it impossible to say no. So when he had tucked Tito safely into bed and all the shutters were firmly closed, Alberto opened the big red book and continued to tell him and Fia the story of Isola.

  When the men armed with Gio’s map reached the Mountain of Isola their faces hardened with anger.

  “It was a lie!” they screamed.

  “I knew it was impossible!” they yelled.

  For the mountain rising before them did not look magical. Not at all. In fact, it looked just like every other mountain: plain and green and positively ordinary.

  They were ready to turn back then and there, when one amongst them recalled something Gio the Explorer had said.

  “Like a key that must be turned in a lock, we must climb the mountain to see its wonders.”

  And so, instead of turning back, they continued on. They climbed up the mountain, past trees made of wood, flowers made of petals and grass that was just grass, until finally they reached the peak.

  “Would you look at that,” the men said, as the true wonders of Isola were revealed.

  “He was telling the truth,” they all cried at once.

  Within seconds of their eyes falling upon the wonders, the men began to grab them for themselves. They filled their pockets with rocks of chocolate; stashed snowflakes made of pearl in jars meant for jam and put droplets of never-ending fire into their dark lanterns. Then they threw ropes into the sky and hauled flying horses to the ground, crammed dancing fish into their hats and pulled swimming birds from the ponds. When they could carry no more, they took the bright wonders of Isola down into the dull world below.

  The group of men had intended to keep quiet about the wonders they had discovered. But then one got drunk and told his wife who told another. And soon word got out. Isola Mountain was real and, for a small price, you could buy one of its wonders for yourself:

  A flower of rubies for five gold coins.

  A ball of chocolate for three.

  And, for ten gold and three silver, you could purchase a lantern full of light that never went out.

  But there was one item that was not sold in the streets. Instead, it was auctioned to the highest bidder for the price of three thousand gold coins.

  The map that led to Isola was won by a mayor from the north. But, strangely, the mayor had no intention of trekking to Isola Mountain himself. Instead he ordered an army of scribes to make ten thousand copies of the one map he had bought. Then he sent these copies out into the world and sold every single one. Without even setting foot on Isola Mountain he became the richest man in the world.

  But the number of maps did not stop there. For the men and women who had bought maps from the mayor made copies of their own. And soon, within five moons of Gio’s thirty-third birthday, every family in the land had seen a map that led to Isola.

  TITO LEARNS HIS A-B-CS

  After the rumours began, Alberto made sure Tito remained inside even more. He did not want the boy to worry, so he kept the sisters’ words to himself. For all he knew, Mr Bonito would leave – give up the search in Allora – before Tito even learned he was there.

  But luckily Alberto did not have to worry about keeping Tito occupied. As soon as the rumours started, he began to teach him how to read. Alberto had never seen anyone so excited to learn something new. Tito was like a sea sponge that had lain on l
and for ten years and now, finally, had been thrown into the sea and could soak all the churning knowledge up.

  Alberto gave Tito an old A-B-C book he had used to teach himself how to read fifty years before. On the first day, Tito learned the alphabet all the way to F. He was so excited by his progress he did not fall asleep until three o’clock in the morning and was up again at six to learn the letter G.

  Tito was so busy learning letters he did not have time to listen to any stories, not even the one about Isola. Instead, he spent every night sitting in bed with Fia who proudly listened as he recited his ABCs.

  While Tito practised his letters, Alberto would go downstairs and work on his coffin. But one night, as he shaped a piece of poplar into a handle, he paused.

  Alberto turned the wood over in his hands. He spun it. He touched it. And when his old fingers finally stopped he didn’t see the handle of a coffin any more but what could, with a little work, be something very different.

  A loud squeal woke Alberto at quarter past seven in the morning.

  “Look, Fia,” Tito exclaimed in the room across the hall. “It’s a boat. A real wooden boat. Too little for me, but just the right size for you.”

  Alberto heard footsteps crossing the hall. A moment later, a shy hand knocked on his bedroom door.

  “Alberto?” Tito whispered. “May I come in?”

  “Of course.” Alberto sat upright to the sight of Tito and Fia charging into his room.

  “Look,” Tito said, running over to the coffin maker. “Look what I found right at the end of my bed.” He held out a little wooden boat that smelt of fresh sawdust. “Did you make it?” he asked.

  Alberto nodded sleepily. He had been up all night carving the wood and fitting a piece of cloth to its mast for a sail.

  “Is it for me?” Tito sounded afraid like it would, in a moment, be taken away.

  “Of course it is for you.”

  “I’ve never had my own toy before.” Tito looked down at the boat and then up at Alberto. “What do I do with it?”

  “Why, you play with it.”

  “And where do I keep it when I’m not playing with it?”

  “Anywhere you like.”