“…the truth that the salamander tells you will be contaminated with apparent meanings, which are in fact no more than echoes of your own hopes and fears.”
Which? Hadn’t he just been thinking of what might have caused the fire, so the vision was only the echo of that thought?
And how could the salamanders know what had happened in the bakehouse, eight days’ journey away to the north?
Oh, for some proof, something outside himself, something the salamanders hadn’t told him, something he could see and touch!
There was a movement close beside him and a hand fell on his shoulder, and at the same moment he heard a soft, bubbling sound, anxious and querying, a voice from a human throat, but meaningless. Whoever it was moved sharply away as he pushed himself over. Toni was standing a few feet from him, clearly worried and puzzled, but still poised to run.
Alfredo pulled himself together and managed to smile, but Toni backed off as he rose.
“Would you like to try the recorder again?” said Alfredo, miming the action of playing.
Toni nodded eagerly, so Alfredo led the way back to the house with Toni following in little hesitant rushes behind. Just before they came out of the wood he gave an anxious mutter, and gestured to his right when Alfredo turned to see what the problem was. Apparently he preferred to use a barely visible track that led off through the trees toward the back of the house.
“All right,” said Alfredo reassuringly. “I’ll get the recorder and meet you in the rose garden. Like yesterday.”
Again he mimed playing, and pointed south beyond the house. Toni nodded even more vigorously and darted off along the track.
The recorder was one of a set of four. Alfredo tried another, whose A was painfully sharp, but the next one was in tune, so he took it with the one he’d played yesterday. Toni was already waiting for him in the rose garden. He put one of the recorders down on the bench and moved away round the fountain. Eagerly Toni rushed in, grabbed the recorder and came and faced him across the empty basin. So they stood and played, each for the other and both for the music.
Alfredo started with the song they had played yesterday. Toni joined him, in unison for the first few bars, but then, and without any apparent effort, harmonizing as though he had known and played the music all his life. It was the same when they moved on to other songs and even suitable bits of cathedral music, some of it difficult enough for Alfredo himself to have trouble with. When that happened Toni stopped him and confidently played the notes as they should have gone. Clearly he had no need of a salamander charm around his neck. He had been born with the gift of music in him, already unlocked.
After a while Alfredo paused to rest, but Toni played happily on, only stopping when he saw Alfredo put his recorder to his lips again. Cautiously, ready to stop at the first flutter of a fiery wing, he started on the music of the Persian chant. Stumbling several times, he played it right through. Toni watched him, frowning. What kind of weird music is this? he was thinking, as obviously as if he’d spoken.
All at once his face cleared, and before the last note faded away he had his recorder to his lips. He played the chant easily, without any mistakes. Under the touch of his fingers the music began to make sense. Before he reached the first repetition the air beside him shimmered, and one of the Angels of Fire was standing at his shoulder, visible in the glare of midafternoon as a kind of solidifying of the strong sunlight, an immense presence, an elemental power.
Alfredo opened his mouth to shout a warning, but stopped himself, afraid to interrupt the music now that the thing was there. Toni must have seen his reaction and, still playing, turned to face the Angel and stared up, seemingly unafraid, into its lightning-loaded eyes. The Angel bowed its head in a gesture of respect, and waited until the chant ended. Then it reached out with a flaming finger and traced what might have been a series of symbols, or fiery letters, in an arching line above Toni’s head. That done, it moved back a pace, bowed and vanished.
Toni stood staring at the place where it had been and began to weep. He didn’t seem to have changed, as far as Alfredo could see. He had the same hesitant stance of an idiot, the same lopsided down-drawing of the jaw. But then he turned, blinking through his tears, saw Alfredo, and with his half-crouching gait came round the basin toward him. When he stopped he didn’t seem poised to run. Instead he held out his recorder to Alfredo and withdrew it, clutching it against his chest.
Please, please may I keep it?
Why not? Why cause the poor man yet more misery? It wouldn’t be missed, surely. The recorder case hadn’t been opened for years.
“Of course,” said Alfredo, nodding and gesturing toward him with outspread palms. He hid his own recorder behind his back, pointed toward the house and put a finger to his lips.
“Don’t let my uncle know you’ve got it,” he said. “Don’t play it near the house. I think we’d better not play any more now. I’ve got to go and sing to my uncle soon.”
Toni nodded and hid the recorder under his shirt. Alfredo started off toward the house, with Toni shambling along only half a pace behind him, but as soon as the buildings came in sight slipping off along one of his private paths. Alfredo guessed he had a cache somewhere for his special treasures. He himself went round by the courtyard and into the kitchen, wondering whether he should tell Annetta what had happened. Not yet, he decided; not until he knew a bit more.
The wind had shifted, altering the draft in the flue. It wasn’t serious, but for something to do he put a small oak log on the fire and fiddled with the damper in the door. Before he’d finished Toni came in and, ignoring Alfredo, settled at the table. Annetta stopped what she was doing to give him some food, and Alfredo took advantage of her absence from the stove to get at the flue damper. He turned back to the room already raising his hand in greeting to Toni, but the gesture stopped, half made. For several thudding heartbeats he stood staring.
Toni was already intent on his food, but this time wasn’t crouched protectively over it. He sat sideways at the table, straddling the bench, tearing a piece off his bread to dip in his bowl. Oh, how well Alfredo knew that pose! That was how Father sat, and Uncle Giorgio, too. Normally, of course, they used chairs, where the oddity wasn’t so obvious, but he’d often seen Father sitting like that in inns and other places where there were only benches.
He realized Annetta was looking at him.
“He sits just the way my father used to sit!” he blurted. “My uncle does it too!”
She nodded calmly.
“My uncle’s son? My cousin?”
She nodded again.
Yes, of course! That was why Toni had been able to summon the Angel! The mind might be damaged, but the blood ran true. …
Another pulse of understanding. Yes again, this woman to live in his house, to bear his children—of course Uncle Giorgio would want her dumb, another barrier round his aloneness, his secrets. Perhaps some of those children would inherit the defect—what of it? One son who could speak, and sing to the salamander, would be enough. Nothing else mattered.
Only there was also a defect in the father’s seed. His own seed. He could sire child after child on whatever woman would let him, and he would finish up with a household of idiots—horrible! A punishment, a judgment, for what he had done and become? No wonder he had spoken of it with such anger and contempt.
Alfredo pulled himself together, walked round the table and put his arm round Toni’s shoulders and hugged him. Toni looked up at him with a surprised smile, hesitated and offered him his piece of bread. Alfredo tore off a morsel, dipped it in the bowl and ate. He looked across at Annetta and saw that she was smiling, though there were tears on her cheeks. At that moment the big clock in the hallway clanked the hour. There wasn’t much time before he’d need to go and sing the chant for Uncle Giorgio, so he gave Toni another hug, then went back round the table and hugged Annetta. She bent and kissed him on the forehead.
Halfway up the stairs he realized that his feelings had ch
anged. He had finally stopped trying to love and trust Uncle Giorgio. It wasn’t because of anything the salamanders had told him, or what Uncle Giorgio might or might not have done to Alfredo’s family, or his friends on the Bonaventura—there was still no way he could be sure about things like that. It was because of the way he had treated Annetta and Toni, and what he had said when Alfredo had asked about them. How could you love someone who spoke like that of his own son, or of the woman who had mothered that son for him?
Perhaps there might have been another Uncle Giorgio—the man Alfredo had glimpsed once, standing troubled at his study window, heard that very morning in a sigh and a few regret-laden words—but he was gone and would not come back. It was, as he himself had said, too late.
And something else. Uncle Giorgio was no longer the only family Alfredo had in the world. He had found a cousin, and an aunt, people who actually felt like family in a way Uncle Giorgio didn’t. People it would be possible to love.
But Uncle Giorgio mustn’t believe that anything had changed, so he settled into his window and read the words of the chant over and over, and found as he did so that since Toni had played it in the rose garden, the strange music had somehow become familiar and lodged in his mind. As he mouthed the unintelligible syllables they seemed to fit themselves naturally to the notes and cling there. He put the paper aside and whispered them through, half expecting to see the Angels of Fire floating quietly up across the long shadows toward the sunset, but there was only the breeze and the dry herby odors of the southern hills. When it was time he made his way down to Uncle Giorgio’s study.
Standing at the door, he paused, once again remembering that Uncle Giorgio could feel the comings and goings of the molten currents in the mountain, and wondering how much else? How closely did he watch? Was he already aware of all that Alfredo had done and seen that afternoon, of the singing of the salamanders in the lava flow, and above all, of the great Angel of Fire in the rose garden? No. Surely he would have done something about the Angel, had he known. …
That apart, Alfredo felt both tense and calm. He seemed able to sense that things were moving, moving fast, to whatever place they were going. He had no plan, no idea of what might happen, or what he would then do. The important thing was that when whatever was coming at last did so, it would not be wholly under Uncle Giorgio’s control, though he himself might believe it was. Uncle Giorgio had great power, but there were other powers around that were not his to command. Nor was Alfredo. Uncle Giorgio might believe he was completely under his control, but he wasn’t. Alfredo had knowledge his uncle knew nothing about, and friends where his uncle believed he had none.
He drew a deep, steadying breath and scratched on the door.
“One! Two! Three! Four!” shrieked the starling, drowning his uncle’s answer. He lifted the latch and went in.
Uncle Giorgio seemed unperturbed, indeed, almost eager to see him. He put his book down at once and looked up. “You are rested?” he said. “You have learned what you can?”
“Yes, I think I know it.”
“All of it? Well, let us see. Watch me. Stop if I hold up my hand.”
Alfredo straightened his shoulders, put his hands behind his back, drew breath and began, singing quietly, as if to himself, concentrating on his memory of the words, sure that the notes were there ready and waiting to hold them. Halfway through the first repeat Uncle Giorgio stopped him and he fell instantly silent, holding the next phrase ready in mind and throat, much as if he’d been holding his breath. The air in the study seemed to crackle, or prickle. His skin crawled. He recognized the nearness of the Angels of Fire.
Uncle Giorgio muttered a few words into the silence. The sensations faded. He nodded to Alfredo to sing on. He did so, and reached the end without further interruption.
“Excellent,” said Uncle Giorgio. “You have done very well, Alfredo, better than I could have hoped. This chant is not itself in your blood, only the ability to perform it. None of your ancestors, for many generations, since first we came out of Persia and settled on the mountain, had known it. I myself underwent much labor and danger to search it out. I traveled to the farthest East, to the Island of Fire, and there I found the last of those who speak that ancient tongue, and to gain their trust I underwent the Ordeal of Fire, so that they should teach me the chant, and other long-forgotten secrets, which one day you too will know. …
“Now, listen. Next Monday is the full moon in Leo, which is one of the three Houses of Fire. Furthermore it falls in the season when Sol is at his strongest. I had not expected you to be ready so soon, but now, on that day, we will perform the Second Great Work, you and I. Before we can do that, though, there is a test to make, which we must do as near to the full moon as we may come, and yet give ourselves time to rest, for the task we must undertake requires strength—strength of body, strength of mind, strength of will. So you must look after yourself, Alfredo—eat well, sleep well, rest. In two days we will go to town so that I may make my new will, and Wednesday you will sing again to the salamander. On Friday, we will make the test, and if that goes well, then on Monday, the Great Work!”
He spoke in his usual slow, precise, slightly grating voice, but his excitement throbbed within it like the fires in the mountain.
“And what then?” he whispered.
“I don’t know, Uncle. Is there a Third Great Work?”
“Who knows, Alfredo? Who knows? If a man in our pitiful little lifetime can come to control a mountain, then a man who lives forever might control the innermost fires of the earth!”
He turned away abruptly, snatched a crust from the bowl by the birdcage and fed it through the bars. “One! Two! Three! Four!” screamed the starling, and fell on it.
“Time for us also to go and eat,” said Uncle Giorgio, and opened the door.
ALFREDO WOKE EARLY, DRESSED AND SAT IN THE window, breathing the soft dawn air and letting the early sunlight stream over him. It was all the same as yesterday, the same sun, the same air, the same marvelous view. But everything had changed, himself included. He felt as if he had somehow grown two or three years older during the night. He was no longer a child, letting everything be decided for him by someone else. From now on he was a person who must think and decide and act for himself. From now on he was going to cope for himself with the responsibilities before him, to his dead parents and poor Giorgio, to Annetta and Toni, to himself. Only Uncle Giorgio must go on thinking he was a child, unquestioning and obedient. But he would be wrong.
The week inched by. Alfredo teased obsessively away at the sheet of notes about the salamanders. A few of the more carefully written bits began to make sense: They have great knowledge, but little power. …Of all things concerning fire, though far from the island, they know through the fires within the earth. …(Ah, so they could after all have known what had happened in the bakehouse.) …not things to come…cannot see into the minds of men…not like the Angels of Fire, both Lesser and Greater. These have many powers…One with the Knowledge can command the Lesser Angels, but neither the Greater, nor the salamanders. …
When he had unraveled all he could he started to read his way slowly on through Livius’s history. At other times he studied old musical scores and tried to learn some of the easier pieces on the recorder, so that he could teach them to Toni. Or he walked the mountainside, until he could join Toni in the rose garden each afternoon, when for an hour or more they improvised duets together and he could forget about his hopes and his fears. He didn’t run away from these. Indeed he tried to face them, mostly when he was sitting in the kitchen before supper while Toni ate and Annetta worked at the stove.
It was easier when they were there, because they reminded him of what sort of man Uncle Giorgio must be to have used them so, as if they existed entirely for his own purposes, and nothing else mattered. A man like that might well have used and destroyed his own brother with his family, and the crew of the Bonaventura, without a thought, simply because it suited him. It didn’t prove
he had—it just made it more likely—and more likely too that he was planning to use Alfredo in the same kind of way. It was going to happen next Monday as part of the Second Great Work.
How could he avoid taking part in that work? Run away? Where? Who would dare help him hide from the Master of the Mountain? How could he be sure his uncle didn’t have the power to find him, wherever he hid? And then he would have betrayed part of his own secret knowledge—and his one hope lay in his uncle’s not suspecting how much he knew. Kill himself, then? If the worst came to the worst, perhaps, but how? If he could find a cliff somewhere to throw himself over…
No. There must be a better way, if only he could think of it.
On the Tuesday morning Annetta came to his room early and laid out his church clothes for him. After breakfast he sang the chant again for Uncle Giorgio, who this time muttered a few words almost as soon as he’d begun. There were no interruptions from the Angels. Then they rode down the hill to the town. Uncle Giorgio stopped at a large, newish house opposite the church, where they were evidently expected, for a groom from the inn was waiting for them and led the mules away. Uncle Giorgio was raising his cane to rap on the door when it was opened by a wheezing old man in black, wearing a tatty wig, who showed them through a musty hallway, opened a door and announced, or rather muttered, “Signor Giorgio di Sala with the young gentleman, sir,” then stood aside for them and slipped away.
Just as they went into the room Uncle Giorgio gripped Alfredo’s shoulder and leaned heavily on it. He tottered forward.
A man rose from behind a table and started to greet them, but checked himself, stared for a moment and rushed round, pulled out a chair and helped Uncle Giorgio to settle into it, then went back to his place. He was younger than Alfredo would have expected, but stout and with heavy, dark features. His manner, like the priest’s last Sunday, was both fawning and wary.
“Signor di Sala,” he said. “I am much honored. You are …you are not well?”
Tears of the Salamander Page 9