Tears of the Salamander

HE WOKE FEELING HAGGARD AND EXHAUSTED, dressed and went downstairs. Uncle Giorgio was in his study, and rose as Alfredo entered the room.

“One! Two! Three! Four!” shrieked the starling. It was answered by an angry chatter, and Alfredo saw that the brazier beneath its cage was gone and the other starling had now been brought down from upstairs and its cage was standing on the floor where the brazier had been. Uncle Giorgio ignored them both.

“Good,” he said. “First we must robe.”

He handed Alfredo a yellow garment stitched with red and green symbols. Alfredo put it on over his head and found that it reached almost to the floor. The sleeves were long too, with a tassel at the end. Uncle Giorgio’s robe was an even more elaborate version of Alfredo’s, and he wore a tall golden hat rising to a point and with a stiff upturned brim. Alfredo was bare-headed.

Uncle Giorgio picked up a crystal decanter and poured a little pale yellow liquid into two silver goblets. He spread his fingers over them, muttered briefly and handed one to Alfredo.

“Do as I do,” he said. “What we are about to attempt is only a test, but involves mighty powers and must be performed with due solemnity. Now, first, three sips, and then three sips, and then three sips to finish the cup. Say the words after me. This is the First Purification. We begin.”

He intoned a few syllables and waited for Alfredo to repeat them. The words were strange but sounded Persian, like those of the chant. A longer pause and he raised his goblet to his lips. Alfredo did the same. The liquid was intensely sweet in the mouth but fiery in the throat. Alfredo managed to judge his sips right and finished his goblet on the last one.

“Excellent,” said Uncle Giorgio. “Bring the other bird and follow me.”

Holding the cage high in front of him and moving as solemnly as a priest at Mass, he led the way along the corridor, round and down to the furnace room. He unlocked the door and locked it again behind him. The room had changed. The table beside the furnace where Uncle Giorgio kept his implements had been moved back to the wall, and some other objects had been shifted aside, leaving a clear space at whose center stood the brazier from upstairs. It was empty. Beneath it was a large tray spread with an even layer of fine sand, in which a single continuous groove had been scooped, making a five-pointed star enclosing the brazier. There was a lit lantern on a shelf beside the door.

Uncle Giorgio placed his cage on the lid of the furnace and took the other one from Alfredo. He opened its door, reached in, caught the shrieking bird, withdrew it and handed the cage back to Alfredo, pointing to show him he was to put it down against the wall. By the time Alfredo turned back Uncle Giorgio was holding the bird in a grip that caused it to gape upward. He picked up a small dropper, dipped it into a bowl and squeezed a single drop of liquid into the bird’s throat. He then put it into the cage on the furnace, caught and took out the first bird and did the same, and put it back in the cage with the other one. The two birds, which had screeched at each other almost continuously till this moment, fell silent. Uncle Giorgio picked up the cage and balanced it on the brazier, then took Alfredo by the shoulder, led him across to a point about three paces from the brazier and turned him to face it.

“Do not move from that spot and you will be quite safe,” he said. “Watch me. When I raise my right hand, sing the chant. Here are your dark glasses. You will need them later.”

Alfredo waited, his heart beating heavily with a mixture of wonder and terror, and the fierce excitement of being on the edge of strange knowledge. He watched Uncle Giorgio unstopper a large flask and very carefully, gripping the brazier for support and leaning out over the sand so as not to mark its surface in any other way, fill the star-shaped groove with glistening dark red granules. Finished, he restoppered the flask and stood back opposite Alfredo with the brazier exactly between them. He spread his arms wide, raised his head and began to speak.

Persian again, in a deep, strong voice, every syllable clear and exact. The room rang with the sound. It went on for a long while, but still the tension grew and grew. At last Uncle Giorgio fell silent. He drew his hands together before his mouth in a gesture of prayer. His lips were moving but the words were silent. He glanced at Alfredo, briefly raised his right hand and returned to his praying. Alfredo filled his lungs and sang.

He’d expected he might be too nervous to hit the first few notes, to have to steady himself into the chant, but the sound came strong and true. The air in the chamber prickled, and filled with a snowstorm of glowing flecks that swirled themselves into two tall fiery shapes, two Angels of Fire standing opposite each other one either side of the brazier, so that the four of them, two Angels and two humans, stood at the corner-points of a square. None of them stirred until the chant ended.

Then Uncle Giorgio spoke, two grating syllables. The Angels half-raised their arms. Fire streamed from their fingertips down toward the feet of the brazier. The pattern in the sand became a fiery star. Its flames were not red but an intense violet. They wavered as flames do, but did not spread and thicken. Instead they retained the precise outline of the star they sprang from, growing and growing until their tops bent inward and poured themselves into the bowl of the brazier beneath the cage and filled it.

The starlings showed no sign of being perturbed, but stood side by side on the single perch. One raised a foot and scratched under its chin. Then the flames shot up and enveloped the cage. There was no squawk from the birds, no sudden stench of burning feathers, only a faint odor, peppery but sweet, filling the chamber. The flames held the shape of the cage, increasing in intensity until Alfredo was forced to use his dark glasses. He could hear Uncle Giorgio’s voice now, a steady mutter, the same dozen words over and over but becoming louder and louder as the light intensified. Despite the protection of his spectacles Alfredo could scarcely see Uncle Giorgio through the glare, but he made out a movement of some kind and at the same moment the Angels stretched out their arms toward the brazier, so Alfredo followed suit. At once he could feel the power being drawn from him, down his arms and out through his fingers. The light blazed stronger than the sun. He had to screw his eyes shut, despite the spectacles. Uncle Giorgio’s voice was a harsh cry of triumph that suddenly snapped short. The light faded away and Alfredo could open his eyes.

Even without the spectacles he was blind. All he knew was that the Angels were gone.

“Stay where you are,” said Uncle Giorgio. “It is not yet safe to move.”

He started to pray again, different words, but again many times repeated with his voice dwindling away. Alfredo waited. Gradually his eyes adapted to the light of the single lamp. Now he could make out that there was only one bird on the perch. The other was lying on its side on the floor. He was unable to think about it. He felt extraordinarily tired and listless.

Uncle Giorgio’s voice faded into silence. His lips stopped moving.

“It is over,” he said in a weak and shaking voice. “Follow me. Bring the lantern.”

He picked up the cage with the birds in it, unlocked the door and led the way out, locking the door behind them as before. He used the hand rope to haul himself up the stairs, and stopped to rest halfway. Alfredo’s legs felt so weak that he could scarcely climb at all. It seemed a very long way back to the study. Uncle Giorgio hung the birdcage on its hook and fetched a different flask and two fresh goblets and poured some of the potion into each. While he waited Alfredo studied the birdcage. Yes, it was as he’d thought, but he hadn’t been able to see clearly enough in the furnace chamber. The bird on the perch was the one from upstairs, the smaller one with the mottled breast. The one that could count was lying on the floor. It didn’t stir. It seemed to be dead. Uncle Giorgio turned, and saw what he was looking at.

“Do not be alarmed,” he said. “They are only birds. This was a test of my powers, not theirs. The older bird lacked the strength to receive what was given it. I do not. For me, perhaps, there is still some risk, but the prize is worth it. For you, none. The younger bird, as you see, is physically unharmed.

“Now the Second Purification. Copy me as you did before.”

He handed Alfredo one of the goblets. They faced each other, intoning the words and sipping from the goblets. The warmth of the potion seeped through Alfredo’s body, making him feel a little less feeble.

“Sit now, and rest,” said Uncle Giorgio. “You are tired?”

“Yes, very.”

“I too. All exercise of power takes strength. No, on second thought, go to your room and lie down. Annetta will bring you some food.”

Alfredo staggered to his feet and left, closing the door behind him. But rising again so soon after sitting down seemed to have taken all strength out of him. He paused, leaning for a while against the wall to let his muscles recover. Behind him, through the door, he heard a scraping sound, and then the shriek of a starling. “One! Two! Three! Four!”

The final shock of understanding flooded his mind. It was like a sudden, fierce blow on the head, blanking out everything else. But for the wall he would have fallen to the ground. At last he pulled himself together and tiptoed away to his room.

He didn’t go to bed, but sat in his favorite place in the window, sorting the whole thing through in his mind, fitting his new knowledge in with the old. By the time Annetta arrived with a tray of food he had it all pieced together, a single clear structure, a working machine with one terrible purpose.

“I’ve got something to tell you,” he said. “Have you got time now? It’s important.”

She nodded and he told her what had happened that morning in the furnace room and the study, finishing with the cry of the starling.

“That was the young bird from his bedroom,” he said. “I heard him pushing a crust into its cage, and it did what the old bird always did and counted up to four. It couldn’t count before. Now it can. What he’d done, you see, was put the old bird’s mind, its soul, what makes it it, into the young bird’s body. That’s what he’s going to do on Monday—put himself into me. He ought to be dead, you see. The emanations from the furnace should have killed him long ago. He didn’t know about that when he started. It’s only the tears of the salamander that have been keeping him alive. But after Monday it won’t matter because he’ll have a new young body.

“That’s why he’s been so careful about me, seeing I had good food, shielding me from the furnace. And it’s why he pretended to be ill when he took me to make his will. He didn’t want people to be surprised when he died suddenly. And he wanted to make sure that Signor Pozzarelli was afraid of me, so he won’t try and cheat him when he thinks he’s only got this kid to deal with. And it’s why he had to keep Toni around when really he hated him, in case he couldn’t use me. There wasn’t anyone else with the Mastership in his blood. But he didn’t want to use him if he could possibly help it, in case what was wrong with Toni’s brain meant that his own mind wouldn’t work properly in it.

“And perhaps there’s something wrong with Toni’s seed, too, because he got it from my uncle—that’s important, because he wants to have a son later on who’s got the Mastership in his blood, so that when he’s an old man again he can put himself into a new body again. That’s how he’s going to live forever, you see. That’s the Second Great Work. But now he won’t need Toni anymore and he can get rid of him.

“Only I think we might be able to stop him. My uncle’s told me how to get into the furnace room. He doesn’t know that, but he has. But I’ll need Toni for that. And you, too, for other things. All right?”

She didn’t hesitate, but nodded firmly.

He told her his plan.

“I know it’s dangerous,” he said. “He’s so much stronger than me. He’s still Master of the Mountain. But we’ve got to try.”

She thought grimly about it, sighed, and nodded again. She patted his shoulder encouragingly before she left. It will be all right, she was telling him. And Thank you.

When the day began to cool he took his recorder out to the rose garden. Before he reached the sunken garden he heard the sound of Toni’s playing, a long, complicated phrase, repeated and repeated, but each time with small unexpected variations. For a while he stood and listened, astonished yet again by the ease and subtlety with which Toni performed. And all his own invention, utterly untaught. It was as if music was the air he breathed, and all he had to do was draw it into himself and breathe it out again as audible sounds, just as the salamanders did with their element of fire. And when Alfredo joined him and they played together there seemed to be no doubt in either of their minds who was the master and who the pupil.

Uncle Giorgio still looked tired at supper that evening and spoke little, but ate steadily and watched to see that Alfredo did the same. As he rose from the table he said, “Tomorrow I must again make preparations, and it would be better for you and Annetta and the idiot to be elsewhere. Do not climb the mountain again—that will overtire you.”

“I could go out along to the rose garden and read. It’s nice there, and there’s some shade from the cypresses. Annetta could bring me some food.”

“Good. But take some exercise. Walk in the woods a little to give yourself an appetite. Then on Sunday we will go to Mass and show ourselves to be good Christians, and to refresh ourselves. I am still tired and will need all my strength. And in the afternoon you and I together will begin the preliminaries to the rite, so that on Monday we are fully prepared.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Alfredo.

“You are an excellent boy. Indeed, you are all that I had hoped.”

As usual there were layers of meaning beneath the simple words, but now Alfredo understood what they might be.

He went to bed tense with expectation and hope and fear. Time had the feel of a river just before it reaches a weir. He could look back and see all that had happened laid out in order, full of swirls and crosscurrents and flurries. He could look forward, beyond the next couple of days, and see an unreadable tumult of foam. But between him and the lip of the weir the surface was almost smooth, tense, drawn silky taut by the pull of the coming drop. Despite that, he fell asleep at last, slept heavily, and woke in broad daylight.

Downstairs he found that Uncle Giorgio had already breakfasted, but the tension had returned in full force, and he longed to be out of the house, so he ate nothing and left by the front door. He didn’t immediately go out to the rose garden, but instead went northward into the old driveway, and stretched himself out once more on the lava flow.

He lay down and again molded his body to the night-chilled rock, imagining himself part of it, part of the mountain itself, letting his tension ease as that imagination became real, until he and the mountain were one thing, down to its white-hot roots, out to its farthest spurs and screes. The salamanders swam in his fiery veins, sang in his mind. It was a gift from the mountain. He guessed that even among the di Salas, only those whom the mountain had chosen could attain this understanding. You needed to give yourself to the mountain before it could return the gift. Perhaps, from the way Uncle Giorgio talked about the mountain and the salamanders, he had never himself achieved this, for all his skill and knowledge. He couldn’t give himself. But another di Sala, long ago—whoever it was that had written the book from which the notes in the dictionary had been taken—must have lain like this on another outcrop, and so come to his understanding.

Yes, he thought. Now I too understand. It all depends on the Master.

There were two mountains. There was one as he had first known it, full of the fury of fire, dangerous, unpredictable in its rages, vengeful, hated and feared. That was Uncle Giorgio’s mountain.

But if Alfredo’s father had been Master…He also had a furious temper. He was a true di Sala. Anger was his birthright. It was in his blood. But his mountain would not have been like that. Those who lived below it would have understood its power, and seen perhaps its fury. But the fury would not have fallen on them. They would have thought of it not with dread, but with awe. Not with hatred, but with love.

Yes, sang the salamanders in his mind. That is the mountain as it ought to be. That is our mountain.

Now it was Alfredo’s turn. He moved through the molten heart of the mountain and made himself known to the salamanders. Stilling their singing, they gathered round him. He sang to them in his mind, telling them everything he had seen and done and intended to do.

They answered with a burst of song, a complex polyphony of interwoven hopes and fears—eagerness to see their lost comrade freed, and the end of Uncle Giorgio’s hated Mastership, dread of his powers and the vengeance he might take if Alfredo failed. And something else, a different kind of excitement. Alfredo understood what it was only when their singing changed itself and became the strange repeated phrase that Toni had been playing, effortlessly improvising, yesterday in the rose garden. New music, a new Master, a new world.

He listened for a while and then withdrew himself into his body, still lying on the lava flow out in the world of air.

There was somebody there—Toni of course, but this time sitting on the rock beside him, peacefully waiting.

“You heard?” he said. “You were there too? They can’t help us, but they wish us well.”

Toni nodded, apparently understanding. Together they went out to the rose garden.

Later Annetta came with food. She had questions to ask. It was a slow process, though she was very clever about it, gesturing expressively with her hands and nodding or shaking her head as Alfredo guessed his way to her meanings. How was he so sure Uncle Giorgio would go to Mass?

“He’ll go if he possibly can. He’s still tired after Friday, and he needs to get himself away from the mountain for a bit. And I think he probably wants to act old and sick in front of everyone, too. He won’t worry about having to leave me behind, because the important thing for him is to get my body as strong as possible. The rest of me—my mind and so on—doesn’t matter, and that’s the bit the mountain wears out. I think he’s got to go.”

More gestures, more guessing.

“Yes, it’s a risk. I think the mountain will be aware of it as soon as we start to move the salamander, but he won’t notice as long as he’s in the church—he can’t feel the mountain there. As soon as he comes out he’ll know something’s happening, I’m fairly sure, but he won’t know what. He’ll feel it through the mountain and he’ll want to hurry home. If he takes you with him—I hope he will—anything you can do to slow him down a bit—make the mule go lame somehow, or give it some of those leaves while he’s in church…

“And he may still have some magic way of getting up the mountain, quicker than riding. Just walking, he’ll be going faster than us—our mules aren’t going to like it, are they? But if everything goes all right we should be way up into the wood before he comes out of church. After that…I don’t think we can possibly get to the top before he comes out of the wood, but provided we’re a good way up the slope…

“And stay down there, Annetta. I think there’s going to be an eruption. Don’t come back till it’s over. It’s going to be very dangerous anywhere up on the mountain. …”

And so on, anxiously checking things through, over and over, Alfredo more and more tense, longing for the evening to be here, Annetta frowning with thought but patient and determined, and Toni sitting with his recorder, fetching his music endlessly out of nowhere, utterly untroubled. Eventually, rather than brood and think any more, Alfredo fetched his recorder and joined him. Slowly the tension eased as he filled his mind with listening to Toni and trying to follow where he led, and by the time Annetta laid out the food she had brought he realized he was hungry enough to eat. That, he thought, grimly amused, was just as well. He must have food in his stomach. To throw up.

The afternoon crept by. For a while he joined Toni, watching the comings and goings of ants round their nest, and experimented with dropping obstacles, or crumbs of bread, in the trails. They scrambled around in the woods, which were full of twisting little paths that Toni seemed to know. They returned to the rose garden and played their recorders. Toward evening Annetta gathered what she had brought into her basket, except for four plums. She gave two to Toni and two to Alfredo, making signs that they were to eat them. Then she went back to get supper ready, holding up a finger before she left to show that the other two should wait an hour and then follow.

The shadow of one of the cypresses lay across the dry pool. Alfredo placed a pebble on the rim, along into the sunlight. They left when the shadow touched the pebble.

He’d judged it wrong and they were a little too early. He checked the fire with extra care, not because it would make the slightest difference to how things went, but because it might be the last time he’d do it. Annetta handed him a mug and he drank the contents. He’d expected the potion to be dark and bitter, but it looked almost colorless in the gray mug and tasted slightly sweet on the tongue and then sharper at the back of his mouth. He went up to his room, by now so sick with nerves that he couldn’t tell whether the drink was starting to do its work or not. When he went down to supper he found Uncle Giorgio already waiting for him. He looked even wearier than he had the evening before.

“You are rested?” he said. “I hope you have an excellent appetite.”

“I don’t know. I had a nice quiet day, but I don’t feel very hungry.”

“You must eat,” snapped Uncle Giorgio.

There was a real sharpness under the words. His nerves must be twanging too, Alfredo realized. Dutifully he put food on his plate, cut off a few small pieces, and started to chew and force his throat to swallow. The moment came like an eruption of the mountain. He flung back his chair, rushed to the window and vomited violently outside. The evening air filled with the vile stench of stomach stuff. When the spasms were past he stayed draped over the sill, shivering and sweating.

“What is this? You have been too long in the sun, you stupid child! What have you eaten?”

Uncle Giorgio’s voice, close above his head, shook with fury. Alfredo pushed himself up from the sill.

“Nothing,” he gasped. “Just what Annetta brought. It tasted fine. And I was careful about the sun. I wore my hat, but mostly I stayed in the shade. I really did.”

“Go to your bed. Put the chamber pot beside you. Can you climb the stair?”

“I think so. …I think it’s all gone, Uncle Giorgio. Out of me, whatever it was. I’ll be all right for Monday, I promise. I will.”

“That had better be the case. Very well. Go to your bed. I will come and see you later.”

Alfredo forced his weak and trembling legs to carry him up the stairs and along to his room, where he took off his shoes, placed the chamber pot handy and clambered into bed fully clothed. Despite that, and the warmth of the evening, spasms of shivering shook him every minute or two. Soon Annetta arrived with a basket containing a couple of stone bottles, a flask and a small bundle wrapped in a cloth. When she slid the bottles in under the bedclothes beside him he discovered they were filled with hot water, almost too warm to touch with bare flesh but wonderfully comforting through his clothes.

“Thanks,” he whispered. “That was worse than I expected. But I think it’s all right. So far.”

She put a finger to her lips, poured something from a jug she’d brought into a mug and placed it on the table beside him. Then she hid the bundle in the cupboard, put her finger to her lips again and left. The drink turned out to be lime water. He sipped a little and lay back.

A little later Uncle Giorgio arrived, still coldly angry but more in control of himself. He felt Alfredo’s forehead, took his pulse and made him stick out his tongue.

“You have a headache?” he asked. “You see correctly, without spots or blurrings? You came here without falling.”

“No. I mean my head’s all right. And my eyes, I think. I felt a bit dizzy climbing the stairs, but it went. I’m better already, just weak and shivery.”

“Tell me everything you have eaten today.”

Alfredo did so, in detail. Uncle Giorgio nodded.

“The plums are the most likely cause,” he said. “Some peasant with unclean hands may have touched them. So at least you ate them recently and the poison may not have worked into your system before you vomited it out. But if your bowels loosen in the night, eat nothing and drink all you can. I will see you in the morning before I go to Mass. You will stay here. Good night.”

Alfredo lay where he was for a while, enjoying the warmth of the stone bottles. The shiverings grew less, and ceased. By nightfall he felt fine, but ravenously hungry. As the last light faded he heard a soft footfall in the corridor outside, so he closed his eyes, slowed his breathing down and lay still. The door creaked gently. The footsteps crossed the room. A bony hand touched his forehead. He didn’t stir or change his breathing until the door had closed again and the footsteps dwindled along the corridor.

Still he waited, but at last rose, went to the cupboard, found Annetta’s bundle by touch and carried it to the window, where he opened it on the window seat, spreading the cloth round it. She’d provided a simple meal, slices of bread and soft cheese. He ate, crouching low over the cloth in case scattered crumbs might betray them when Uncle Giorgio came in the morning. When he’d had enough he carefully wrapped the bundle and put it back in the cupboard. He hadn’t discussed any of this with Annetta—it had all been her idea. So had the plums. If anything went wrong it wouldn’t be her fault.

He undressed, went back to bed and fell almost instantly asleep. It was as if, along with his stomach stuff, he had vomited out all the day’s anxieties and forebodings. He didn’t wake until Annetta opened the door in the morning, well past sunrise.