Tears of the Salamander

SURREPTITIOUSLY ALFREDO STUDIED UNCLE Giorgio while they ate. He was reading a book, but not in his usual steady, absorbed fashion. Instead he seemed to be flipping impatiently to and fro, reading a page or two, and then skipping to somewhere else. Alfredo realized that his uncle must be just as much on edge about the next few days as he was himself. Then, abruptly, he closed the book and pushed it aside.

“I hope you spent a pleasant morning,” he said.

Alfredo was taken by surprise. He had in fact been thinking about how he was going to manage both mules on the mountain path. Toni was very good with the mules, and could take the lead one, but it would have to be arranged so that Uncle Giorgio didn’t find out that he’d done so, and again, what could he say to Annetta to persuade her to let him? He stammered for a moment, then said the obvious thing.

“You told me to rest, so I went up to my room and read for a bit. Then I went out and just wandered about. I’m not used to having so much time. At the cathedral we mostly did lessons when we weren’t singing. And you said I mustn’t sing at all while I’m here.”

“Soon you shall sing all you wish. As for lessons, there is no suitable school in the town, but I will make inquiries for a tutor for you. You have something else on your mind, I think.”

He’d noticed! He’d guessed. Thoroughly rattled now, Alfredo again stammered the first thing that came into his mind.

“I, er—I know it’s none of my business, but what’s going to happen to Toni? I mean…”

“You need not trouble yourself about Toni. Such cases do not survive much into manhood. The idiot is not long for this world.”

His own son! Alfredo was appalled and shocked by the casual tone.

“That’s sad,” he managed to say.

“Nonsense! It is much better so! Much better!”

This time the tone was far from casual. The words were spoken with spitting venom. Uncle Giorgio snatched up his book and started to read, leaving Alfredo stiff and chilly with understanding. Nineteen years ago Uncle Giorgio had made his previous will, naming somebody as his single heir—Toni, of course, new born, and before anyone had realized what he was. But they must have known soon after that, and from then on Uncle Giorgio had begun to detest the mere existence of the son who had failed to be what he wanted, and he longed to see him dead.

In that case why hadn’t he done away with him years ago? He was perfectly capable of it. Because…because Toni had been all there was, until Alfredo came. But now, especially after next Monday…Once again he remembered the risks Uncle Giorgio had taken to get him here, not for family love or duty or anything like that, but because for his own purposes he truly needed to have him. He remembered the strange, intense look with which his uncle had stared at him on the mountain. Even then Alfredo had guessed at the need. On this coming Monday the need would be fulfilled. And after that he would no longer have any possible use for Toni. So Toni was not long for this world.

Alfredo munched his way through the rest of the meal, barely tasting a mouthful. When at last it was over he went up to his room to rest out the first heat of the afternoon. He tried to read, but his mind wouldn’t apply itself to anything but his problems, where it skittered uselessly to and fro between them. I must talk to Annetta again, he decided. I must tell her everything. Then she can make up her own mind what to do.

Long before the heat was any less he crept downstairs, took the recorder from its case and went out to the rose garden. Toni was already there, sitting on the bench playing softly—not anything Alfredo had taught him but a strange little tune that he seemed to be making up as he went along, because every now and then he would stop, go back to an earlier phrase and alter what he’d done before, fiddling with it several times until he was satisfied.

Alfredo leaned on the balustrade, watching and listening. After a while Toni seemed to be happy with what he’d invented and started again from the beginning. Alfredo took out his recorder and joined in. Toni looked up, but didn’t stop playing. The tune was trickier than Alfredo had realized, with unexpected time-changes. It was the sort of music that makes you want to dance, but you’d need to be a clever dancer not to make a fool of yourself. Alfredo made a lot of mistakes, but Toni held the tune firm all the way through. The last notes died into the breathless air and they laughed together.

Alfredo went down the steps and sat beside Toni on the bench.

“You made that up yourself,” he said, pointing at Toni as he asked the question.

Toni nodded and tapped his chest. Obviously he’d understood, but from the way Annetta talked to him and about him he’d always understood a few simple things. He was probably still like that. The Angel of Fire hadn’t cured him, hadn’t disentangled whatever was wrong with his mind, but it had done something else, even more important. It had set him free, freed his spirit, his soul, freed them from his terror of the world and his shame of what he was. It had given him a life worth living.

Alfredo thought about this as they continued to play—bits of church music, sailor songs, fairground dances, with Toni continuously decorating the music, as soon as he’d picked it up, in ways Alfredo himself would never have thought of. And he liked some things better than others, not necessarily because they were simpler; in fact rather the opposite. It depended on whether he found them interesting. So obviously there was nothing wrong with the music part of his mind. There must be some kind of kink, some blockage, somewhere else. If only…

“The tears of the salamander. Sovereign against all ills of body and mind.”

No, he couldn’t ask—in fact it would be a disaster. Uncle Giorgio hated his son. He wanted him dead. But…No, not yet. Wait until after Friday, when Uncle Giorgio was going to carry out some kind of test for the Second Great Work. Perhaps he’d know more then. There’d still be two days before Monday.

For the rest of the day every hour seemed to go slower than the one before. Alfredo took his History of Rome and the Latin dictionary down to supper, but could only pretend to read. Uncle Giorgio read in silence. Only as he rose at the end of the meal did he speak.

“Tomorrow, when we have breakfasted, you will sing the chant again to me. After that I will have preparations to make, so the rest of the day will be yours.”

The chant went smoothly. Uncle Giorgio muttered briefly before they began and the Angels of Fire did not appear, though Alfredo could sense the faint prickling of their nearness. The words still meant nothing to him, but he now seemed to feel them all as separate things, each of them full of its own dark import. Neither they nor the music were strangers in his mouth.

“Well done,” said Uncle Giorgio. “Now, as I told you, I have much to do. How will you spend your day?”

Alfredo had thought of going down to the town, hoping to find some friend to talk to, or at least a priest to whom he might confess his suspicions and terrors. But he guessed Uncle Giorgio wouldn’t have allowed it, and besides, who would dare lift a finger against the Master of the Mountain?

“I thought I’d climb the mountain again,” he said. “I’ll ask Annetta for some food. I promise you I won’t sing.”

“Excellent. But do not go far beyond the shade of the woods, or tire yourself, or stay too long in the sun. Take one of the mules to ride. It would in any case be best if you were elsewhere today. I will also send Annetta and her idiot son away.”

Alfredo hesitated, then seized his chance.

“They could come with me,” he said. “I need Toni, really. I don’t think I can manage a mule by myself.”

“If you wish for such company. Send Annetta to me and I will give her instructions.”

They climbed through the wood in silence, Toni leading the mule. Alfredo had wanted to dismount as soon as they were well away from the house, but Annetta had pushed him back into the saddle, shaking her head emphatically. She had been given her orders and she was going to obey them. It was still too early to eat by the time they came out of the trees, so they settled down for a rest, Annetta moving a little way off with Toni so as not to intrude on the gentry. It made no difference to her that Alfredo had come every evening to her kitchen and tempered her oven for her and chatted, nor that she had borne Uncle Giorgio a son. She was still, in her own mind, a servant, and knew her place, and did what she was told. Now Alfredo was going to try to persuade her not merely to disobey her master, but to help destroy him.

He watched them covertly. Toni was lying on his stomach, poking his finger into a tussock and peering with wonder at whatever it was he’d found there. Annetta was sitting bolt upright on a boulder, motionless, staring at nothing, her strong, proud face lined with the long endurance of grief. After a while Alfredo fetched his recorder from the saddlebag and started to play.

Annetta didn’t stir, but Toni instantly looked up. Alfredo beckoned to him and he rose and scampered across, drawing his recorder from inside his smock as he came. Alfredo patted the rock beside him, and Toni sat and took up the tune. Annetta was staring at them now, her normally expressionless features filled with astonishment.

They played on. The mule fidgeted, swishing at flies. Crickets shrilled. Otherwise it seemed that not a leaf or blade was stirring. Alfredo could feel the presence of the mountain behind and beneath him, the whole vast, churning inward mass of it stilled for the moment by their playing. It wasn’t something he was doing on his own—not even mainly his doing. It was the two of them together, here and for this short while come into their own, Masters of the Mountain.

Then Toni decided to switch to a tune that Alfredo had taught him and they’d played several times before. It was one of the rollicking airs that everyone used to dance to during the great Shrove Tuesday festival, waving their colored banners as they snaked in gaudy lines through the crowded streets. After a few bars Annetta rose, moved to a patch of ground where the slope eased almost level, raised her arms above her head and started to dance, twirling her skirt out and stamping to the rhythm of the tune. Alfredo almost stopped playing in amazement as she threw back her head and laughed with the joy of the dance. Her movements were quick, easy, definite, graceful. Every time she turned, her eyes came back to Toni. This was what life should be about, she seemed to be telling him, not drudgery, not fear, not power, not vengeance, but joy, the joy of being alive.

After a while Toni stopped playing, put his recorder down, rose and took a hesitant step toward her. Still dancing, she held out her hands to him. He walked across and took them and tried to copy the movements of her feet, clumsily at first, but then well enough for it to count as dancing. She linked arms with him and they whirled round each other, or she spun beneath his upstretched hand. Gradually Alfredo quickened the tune and they tried to keep pace, faster and faster, until they got into a tangle and collapsed and lay laughing and panting on the ground, while Alfredo applauded their performance and joined their laughter.

Before he’d even recovered his breath Toni came crawling back for his recorder, obviously ready to play on all day. He gave a disappointed shrug when Alfredo shook his head and rose, but then settled down and started to play softly to himself. Annetta was sitting up, watching him. This looked like as good a moment as any. She rose as Alfredo crossed toward her and pointed at her son with a gesture of questioning wonder. Toni was already improvising his own variations on the tune they’d been dancing to.

“He’s really good at it, isn’t he?” said Alfredo. “Much better than I am. …Annetta, there’s something I’ve got to talk to you about. …I think my uncle is planning to kill Toni.”

She jerked with the shock and stood rigid, then gently nodded her head three or four times. She had been startled by his saying it but not by what he’d said. She raised her eyebrows.

“It’s going to take a long time,” he said. “Shall we have our lunch while I tell you?”

She fetched the saddlebag and opened the food she’d brought and laid it out on its wrappings, then settled opposite him. Toni joined them and ate with his usual intentness, but Alfredo did so in snatches, chewing while he put the next bit of his story in order. Annetta took only a few unnoticing mouthfuls.

He started right back at the beginning with his uncle’s name-day gift, pulling it out from under his shirt and showing it to her. He left nothing out. Now for the first time he told her of the strange and wonderful moment when the Angel of Fire had appeared before Toni in the rose garden and affirmed his right to be numbered among the di Salas, and to inherit, when the time came, their long Mastership of the Mountain. He finished with his decision to talk to her now. The only things he left out were his own half-formulated plans.

“I’ll know a bit more after tomorrow,” he said, “when I’ve seen what happens in this test. And then with luck I’ll know if I’ve got to try and fix it so that I can’t help him on Monday—that’s why I wanted those leaves you gave me. I don’t think I can do anything unless I’ve got the mountain on my side—mine and Toni’s—and the best way of doing that is to get the salamander back where it belongs. I don’t know why—I just know. It’s a bit like knowing when your fire’s out of balance. But what I really want to know now is whether you’ll let Toni help me. It’s a risk, a terrible risk. If my uncle finds out…Look what he did to the Bonaventura.”

She glanced at Toni, once again intent on his tussock, and then sat with her head bowed, rubbing one hand slowly over the back of the other. She straightened and nodded decisively. There were tears on her cheeks.

“Have you got a spare key to the furnace room?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“You mean there’s just the one my uncle wears round his neck? Then we’re going to have to break down the door. I can’t do it alone—I’m not strong enough.”

She shook her head decisively and made a that’s-no-good gesture with her hands.

“You mean the door’s too strong? Or there’s something else—a spell or something?”

She nodded. That was bad news. Perhaps there was a way to undo a spell like that—he could ask the salamanders. But it might be one of the things they didn’t know, like they didn’t know what was going to happen. In which case…could he burn the door down somehow? There was probably a spell against that too. …

After a while he gave up trying to think of answers and went and fetched his recorder. Toni instantly leapt up and hurried over to join him. They spent the whole afternoon in the quiet shade, playing and resting and playing again, and only went back down through the wood when the sun began to move behind the mountain.

“Eat well,” said Uncle Giorgio as they sat down to supper. “There will be no breakfast tomorrow. We fast until the rite is over. Come to my office as soon as you are dressed.”

He seemed even edgier than he had that morning, and said nothing else throughout the meal. Nor did he read, but simply ate, silent and preoccupied, and left without another word. Alfredo had felt too nervous to eat much, but he dutifully filled his plate and then found he was hungry after his day on the mountain and polished it off without noticing. When he’d finished he went up to his room and sat in his window trying to read until it became too dark for that, then went to bed, but lay awake far into the night turning his problems uselessly over and over.