The Magician's Elephant

by Kate DiCamillo

  “This is wonderful news,” sang the beggar, “wonderful news, indeed.”

  Leo Matienne smiled. “Yes,” he said, “wonderful news. I know a young boy who wants quite desperately to see the elephant. He has asked me to assist him, and I have been trying to imagine a way that it could all happen, and now here is the answer before me. He will be so glad of it.”

  “A boy who wants very much to see the elephant,” sang the beggar, “and he will be glad.” He stretched out his hand as he sang.

  Leo Matienne put a coin in the beggar’s hand and bowed before him and then continued on his walk home, moving more quickly now, whistling the song the beggar had sung and thinking, What if the countess Quintet becomes weary of the novelty of owning an elephant?

  What then?

  What if the elephant remembers that she is a creature of the wild and acts accordingly?

  What then?

  When Leo came at last to the Apartments Polonaise, he heard the creak of the attic window being opened. He looked up and saw Peter’s hopeful face staring down at him.

  “Please,” said Peter, “Leo Matienne, have you figured out a way for the countess to receive me?”

  “Peter!” he said. “Little cuckoo bird of the attic world. You are just the person I want to see. But wait; where is your hat?”

  “My hat?” said Peter.

  “Yes, I have brought you some excellent news, and it seems to me that you would want to have your hat upon your head in order to hear it properly.”

  “One moment,” said Peter. He disappeared from the window and came back again, his hat firmly upon his head.

  “And now, then, you are officially attired and ready to receive the happy news of which I, Leo Matienne, am the proud bearer.” Leo cleared his throat. “I am pleased to let you know that the magician’s elephant will be on display for the edification and illumination of the masses.”

  “But what does that mean?” said Peter.

  “It means that you may see the elephant on the first Saturday of the month; that is, you may see her this Saturday, Peter, this Saturday.”

  “Oh,” said Peter, “I will see her. I will find her!” His face suddenly became bright, so bright that Leo Matienne, even though he knew it was foolish, turned and checked to see if the sun had somehow performed the impossible and come out from behind a cloud to shine directly on Peter’s small face.

  There was, of course, no sun.

  “Close the window,” came the old soldier’s voice from inside the attic. “It is winter, and it is cold.”

  “Thank you,” said Peter to Leo Matienne. “Thank you.” And he pulled the window closed.

  In the apartment of Leo and Gloria Matienne, Leo sat down in front of the fire and heaved a great sigh and took off his boots.

  “Phew,” said his wife. “Hand me your socks immediately.”

  Leo removed his socks. Gloria Matienne took them from him and put them directly into a bucket filled with soapy water. “Without me,” she said, “you would have no friends at all, because no one would be able to bear the smell of your feet.”

  “I do not want to surprise you,” said Leo Matienne, “but, as a matter of course, I keep my boots on in public places and there is no need, then, for anyone to smell my socks or my feet.”

  Gloria came up behind Leo and put her hands on his shoulders. She bent and kissed the top of his head. “What are you thinking?” she said.

  “I am imagining Peter,” said Leo Matienne, “and how happy he was to learn that he could see the elephant for himself. His face lit up in a way that I have never seen.”

  “It is wrong about that boy,” said Gloria. She sighed. “He is kept a prisoner up there by that man, whatever he is called.”

  “He is called Lutz,” said Leo. “His name is Vilna Lutz.”

  “All day it is nothing but drilling and marching and more marching. I hear them, you know. It is a terrible sound, terrible.”

  Leo Matienne shook his head. “It is a terrible thing altogether. He is a gentle boy and not really cut out for soldiering, I do not think. There is a lot of love in him, a lot of love in his heart.”

  “Most certainly there is,” said Gloria.

  “And he is up there with no one and nothing to love. It is a bad thing to have love and nowhere to put it.” Leo Matienne sighed. He bent his head back and looked up into his wife’s face and smiled. “And we are all alone down here.”

  “Don’t say it,” said Gloria Matienne.

  “It is only that —” said Leo.

  “No,” said Gloria. “No.” She put a finger to Leo’s lips. “We have tried and failed. God does not intend for us to have children.”

  “Who are we to say what God intends?” said Leo Matienne. He was silent for a long moment. “What if?”

  “Don’t you dare,” said Gloria. “My heart has been broken too many times, and it cannot bear to hear your foolish questions.”

  But Leo Matienne would not be silenced. “What if?” he whispered to his wife.

  “No,” said Gloria.

  “Why not?”

  “No.”

  “Could it be?”

  “No,” said Gloria Matienne, “it cannot be.”

  At the Orphanage of the Sisters of Perpetual Light, in the cavernous dorm room, in her small bed, Adele was dreaming again of the elephant knocking and knocking, but this time Sister Marie was not at her post, and no one at all came to open the door.

  Adele awoke and lay quietly and told herself that it was just a dream, only a dream. But every time she closed her eyes, she saw, again, the elephant, knocking, knocking, knocking, and no one at all answering her knock. And so she threw back the blanket and got out of bed and went down the stairs in the cold and the dark and made her way to the front door. She was relieved to see that there, just as always, just as forever, sat Sister Marie in her chair, her head bent so far forward that it rested almost on her stomach, her shoulders rising and falling, and a small sound, something very much like a snore, issuing forth from her mouth.

  “Sister Marie,” said Adele. She put her hand on the nun’s shoulder.

  Sister Marie jumped. “But the door is unlocked!” she shouted. “The door is forever unlocked. You must simply knock!”

  “I am inside already,” said Adele.

  “Oh,” said Sister Marie, “so you are. So you are. It is you. Adele. How wonderful. Although of course you should not be here. It is the middle of the night. You should be in your bed.”

  “I dreamed,” said Adele.

  “But how lovely,” said Sister Marie. “And what did you dream of?”

  “The elephant.”

  “Oh, elephant dreams, yes. I find elephant dreams particularly moving,” said Sister Marie, “and portentous, yes, although I am forced to admit that I myself have yet to dream of an elephant. But I wait and hope. One must wait and hope.”

  “The elephant came here and knocked, and there was no one to answer the door,” said Adele.

  “But that cannot be,” said Sister Marie. “I am always here.”

  “And then another night, I dreamed that you opened the door and the elephant was there, and she asked for me and you would not let her in.”

  “Nonsense,” said Sister Marie.“I turn no one away.”

  “You said you could not understand her.”

  “I understand how to open a door,” said Sister Marie gently. “I did it for you.”

  Adele sat down on the floor next to Sister Marie’s chair. She pulled her knees up to her chest. “What was I like then?” she said. “When I first came here to you?”

  “Oh, so small, like a mote of dust. You were only a few hours old. You had just been born, you see.”

  “Were you glad?” said Adele. “Were you glad that I came?” She knew the answer. But she asked anyway.

  “I will tell you,” said Sister Marie, “that before you arrived, I was sitting here in this chair, alone, and the world was dark, very dark. And then suddenly you were in my a
rms, and I looked down at you . . .”

  “And you said my name,” said Adele.

  “Yes, I spoke your name.”

  “And how did you know it? How did you know my name?”

  “The midwife said that your mother, before she died, had insisted that you be called Adele. I knew your name, and I spoke it to you.”

  “And I smiled,” said Adele.

  “Yes,” said Sister Marie. “And suddenly, it seemed there was light everywhere. The world was filled with light.”

  Sister Marie’s words settled down over Adele like a warm and familiar blanket, and she closed her eyes. “Do you think,” she said, “that elephants have names?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Sister Marie. “All of God’s creatures have names, every last one of them. Of that I am sure; of that I have no doubt at all.”

  Sister Marie was right, of course: everyone has a name.

  Beggars have names.

  Outside the Orphanage of the Sisters of Perpetual Light, in a narrow alley, off a narrow street, sat a beggar named Tomas; huddled up close to him, in an effort to both give and receive warmth, was a large black dog.

  If Tomas had ever had a last name, he did not know it. If he had ever had a mother or a father, he did not know that either.

  He knew only that he was a beggar.

  He knew how to stretch out his hand and ask.

  Also, he knew, without knowing how he knew, how to sing.

  He knew how to construct a song out of the nothing of day-to-day life and how to sing that nothing into a song so beautiful that it could sustain the vision of a whole and better world.

  The dog’s name was Iddo.

  And there was a time when he had worked carrying messages and letters and plans across battlefields, transferring information from one officer of Her Majesty’s army to another.

  And then one day, on a battlefield near Modegnel, as the dog weaved his way through the horses and soldiers and tents, he was caught by the blast from a cannon and was thrown high into the air and landed on his head in such a way that he was instantly, permanently blinded.

  His one thought as he descended into darkness was, But who will deliver the messages?

  Now when he slept, Iddo was forever running, carrying a letter, a map, battle plans, some piece of paper that would win the war, if only he could arrive with it in time.

  The dog longed with the whole of his being to perform again the task that he had been born and bred to do.

  Iddo wanted to deliver, just once more, a message of great importance.

  In the cold and dark of the alley, Iddo whimpered, and Tomas put his hand on the dog’s head and kept it there.

  “Shhh,” sang Tomas. “Sleep, Iddo. Darkness falls, but a boy wants to see the elephant, and he will, and this, this, is wonderful news.”

  Beyond the alley, past the public parks and the police station, up a steep and tree-lined hill, stood the home of the count and countess Quintet, and in that mansion, in the darkened ballroom, stood the elephant.

  She should have been sleeping, but she was awake.

  The elephant was saying her name to herself.

  It was not a name that would make any sense to humans. It was an elephant name — a name that her brothers and sisters knew her by, a name that they spoke to her in laughter and in play. It was the name that her mother had given to her and that she had spoken to her often and with love.

  Deep within herself, the elephant said this name, her name, over and over again.

  She was working to remind herself of who she was. She was working to remember that, somewhere, in another place entirely, she was known and loved.

  Vilna Lutz’s fever receded, and his words began again to make a dull and unremarkable and decidedly military sense. He had risen from his bed and trimmed his beard to a fine point and was seated on the floor. He was placing a collection of lead soldiers in the pattern of a famous battle.

  “As you can see, Private Duchene, this was a particularly brilliant strategy on the part of General Von Flickenhamenger, and he executed it with a great deal of grace and bravery, bringing these soldiers from here to here, thereby performing a flanking maneuver that was entirely unexpected and exceedingly elegant and devastating. One cannot help but admire the genius of it. Do you admire it, Private Duchene?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Peter, “I admire it.”

  “You must, then, give me your undivided attention,” said Vilna Lutz. He picked up his wooden foot and beat it against the floor. “This is important. This is the work of your father I am speaking of. This is man’s work.”

  Peter looked down at the toy soldiers and thought about his father in a field full of mud, a bayonet wound in his side. He thought about his father bleeding. He thought about him dying.

  And then he remembered the dream of Adele, the weight of her in his arms and the golden light that had been outside the door. He remembered his father holding him, catching him, in the garden.

  And for the first time, soldiering did not, in any way, seem like a man’s work to Peter. Instead, it seemed like foolishness — a horrible, terrible, nightmarish foolishness.

  “So,” said Vilna Lutz. He cleared his throat. “As I was saying, as I was illuminating, as I was elucidating, yes, these men, these brave, brave soldiers, under the direct orders of the brilliant General Von Flickenhamenger, came around from behind. They outflanked the enemy. And that, ultimately, is how the battle was won. Does that make sense?”

  Peter looked down at the soldiers arranged carefully and just so. He looked up at Vilna Lutz’s face and then down again at the soldiers.

  “No,” he said at last.

  “No?”

  “No. It does not make sense.”

  “Well, then, tell me what you see when you look upon it, if you do not see the sense of it.”

  “I look upon it and wish that it could be undone.”

  “Undone?” said Vilna Lutz.

  “Yes. Undone. No wars. No soldiers.”

  Vilna Lutz stared at Peter with his mouth agape and the point of his beard trembling.

  Peter, looking back at him, felt something unbearably hot rise up in his throat; he knew that now the words would finally come. “She lives,” he said. “That is what the fortuneteller told me. She lives, and an elephant will lead me to her. And because an elephant has come out of nowhere, out of nothing, I believe her. Not you. I do not, I cannot, any longer believe you.”

  “What is this you are talking about? Who lives?”

  “My sister,” said Peter.

  “Your sister? Am I mistaken? Were we speaking of the domestic sphere? No. We were not. We were speaking of battles, you and I. We were speaking of the brilliance of generals and the bravery of foot soldiers.” Vilna Lutz beat his wooden foot against the floorboards. “Battles and bravery and strategy, that is what we were speaking of.”

  “Where is she? What happened to her?”

  The old soldier grimaced. He put down the foot and pointed his index finger heavenward. “I told you. I have told you many times. She is with your mama, in heaven.”

  “I heard her cry,” said Peter. “I held her.”

  “Bah,” said Vilna Lutz. His finger, still pointing heavenward, trembled. “She did not cry. She could not cry. Stillborn. She was stillborn. The breath never reached her lungs. She never drew breath.”

  “She cried. I remember. I know it to be true.”

  “And what of it? What if she did cry? That she cried does not mean that she lived — not at all, not at all. If every babe who cried were still alive, well, then, the world would be a very crowded place, indeed.”

  “Where is she?” said Peter.

  Vilna Lutz let out a small sob.

  “Where?” said Peter again.

  “I do not know,” said the old soldier. “The midwife took her away. She said that she was too small, that she could not possibly put something so delicate into the hands of one such as me.”

  “You said she died. Time and
again, you told me that she was dead. You lied.”

  “Do not call it a lie. Call it scientific conjecture. Babes without their mothers often will not live. And she was so small.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “No, no, Private Duchene. I lied for you, to protect you. What could you have done if you had known? It would only have hurt your heart to know. I cared for you — you, who would and could become a soldier like your father, a man I admired. I did not take your sister, because the midwife would not let me; she was so small, so impossibly small. What do I know of infants and their needs? I know of soldiering, not mothering.”

  Peter got up from the floor. He walked to the window and stood looking out at the cathedral spire, the birds wheeling in the air.

  “I am done talking now, sir,” said Peter. “Tomorrow I will go to the elephant and then I will find my sister and I will be done with you. I am done, too, with being a soldier, because soldiering is a useless and pointless thing.”

  “Do not say something so terrible,” said Vilna Lutz. “Think of your father.”

  “I am thinking of my father,” said Peter.

  And he was.

  He was thinking of his father in the garden.

  And he was thinking of him on the battlefield, bleeding to death.

  The weather worsened.

  Although it did not seem possible, it became colder.

  Although it did not seem possible, it grew darker.

  It would not snow.

  And in the cold, dark dorm room at the Orphanage of the Sisters of Perpetual Light, Adele continued to dream of the elephant. The dream was so persistent that Adele could, after a time, repeat verbatim the words that the elephant spoke to Sister Marie when she came to the door. There was, in particular, one sentence that the elephant spoke that was so full of beauty and promise that Adele took to saying it to herself during the day: It is the one you are calling Adele I am coming for to keep. She said these words over and over, as if they were a poem or a blessing or a prayer. It is the one you are calling Adele I am coming for to keep; it is the one you are calling Adele I am coming for to keep —