The Magician's Elephant

Chapter Nine

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 manoeuvre 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 a 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 heavenwards. “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 heavenwards, 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.