The Magician's Elephant (2 page)

But if
he
lies, then my sister is alive.

His heart thumped.

If he lies, then Adele lives.

“I hope that he lies,” said Peter aloud to the darkness.

And his heart, startled at such treachery, astonished at the voicing aloud of such an unsoldierly sentiment, thumped again, much harder this time.

Not far from the Apartments Polonaise, across the rooftops and through the darkness of the winter night, stood the Bliffendorf Opera House, and that evening upon its stage, a magician of advanced years and failing reputation performed the most astonishing magic of his career.

He intended to conjure a bouquet of lilies, but instead the magician brought forth an elephant.

The elephant came crashing through the ceiling of the opera house amid a shower of plaster dust and roofing tiles and landed in the lap of a noblewoman, a certain Madam Bettine LaVaughn, to whom the magician had intended to present the bouquet.

Madam LaVaughn’s legs were crushed. She was thereafter confined to a wheelchair and given to exclaiming often, and in a voice of wonder, in the midst of some conversation that had nothing at all to do with elephants or roofs, “But perhaps you do not understand. I was crippled by an elephant! Crippled by an elephant that came through the roof!”

As for the magician, he was immediately, at the behest of Madam LaVaughn, imprisoned.

The elephant was imprisoned too.

She was locked in a stable. A chain was wrapped around her left ankle. The chain was attached to an iron rod planted firmly in the earth.

At first, the elephant felt one thing and one thing only: dizzy. If she turned her head too quickly to the right or the left, she was aware of the world spinning in a truly alarming manner. So she did not turn her head. She closed her eyes and kept them closed.

There was, all about her, a great hubbub and roar. The elephant ignored it. She wanted nothing more than for the world to hold itself still.

After a few hours, the dizziness passed. The elephant opened her eyes and looked around her and realized that she did not know where she was.

She knew only one thing to be true.

Where she was was not where she should be.

Where she was was not where she belonged.

T
he day after the night that the elephant arrived, Peter was again at the market square. The fortuneteller’s tent was gone, and Peter had been entrusted with another florit. The old soldier had talked at great length and in excruciating detail about what Peter had to purchase with the coin. Bread, for one, and it should be bread that was at least a day old, two days old preferably, but three-day-old bread, if he could find it, would be the best of all.

“Actually, see if you cannot locate bread with mould growing on it,” said Vilna Lutz. “Old bread is a most excellent preparation for being a soldier. Soldiers must become accustomed to rock-hard bread that is difficult to chew. It makes for strong teeth. And strong teeth make for a strong heart and therefore a brave soldier. Yes, yes, I believe it to be true. I know it to be true.”

How hard bread and strong teeth and a strong heart were connected was a mystery to Peter, but as Vilna Lutz spoke to him that morning, it became increasingly obvious that the old soldier was once again in the grip of a fever and that not much sense would be had from him.

“You must ask the fishmonger for two fish and no more,” Vilna Lutz said. Sweat shone on his forehead. His beard was damp. Ask him for the smallest ones. “Ask him for the fish that others would turn away. Why, you must ask him for those fish that the other fish are embarrassed even to refer to as fish! Come back with the smallest fish, but do not – do not, I repeat – come back to me empty-handed with the lies of fortunetellers upon your lips! I correct myself! I correct myself! To say ‘the lies of fortunetellers’ is a redundancy. What comes from the mouths of fortunetellers is by definition a lie; and you, Private Duchene, you must, you
must
, find the smallest possible fish.”

So Peter stood in the market square, in line at the fishmonger’s, thinking of the fortuneteller and his sister and elephants and fevers and exceptionally small fish. He also thought of lies and who told them and who did not and what it meant to be a soldier, honourable and true. And because of all the thoughts in his head, he was listening with only half an ear to the story that the fishmonger was telling to the woman ahead of him in line.

Well, he wasn’t much of a magician, and none of them was expecting much, you see – that’s the thing. Nothing was expected.” The fishmonger wiped his hands on his apron. “He hadn’t promised them nothing special, and they wasn’t expecting it neither.”

“Who expects something special nowadays anyway?” said the woman. “Not me. I’ve worn myself out expecting something special.” She pointed to a large fish. “Give me one of them mackerels, why don’t you?”

“Mackerel it is,” said the fishmonger, slinging the creature onto the scales. It was a very large fish. Vilna Lutz would not have approved.

Peter surveyed the fishmonger’s selection. His stomach growled. He was hungry, and he was worried. He could not see anything alarmingly small enough to please the old soldier.

“And also give me catfish,” said the woman. “Three of them. I want ‘em with the whiskers longish, don’t I? Tastier that way.”

The fishmonger put three catfish on the scales. “In any case,” he continued, “they was all sitting there, the nobility, the ladies and the princes and the princesses, all together in the opera house, expecting nothing much. And what did they get?”

“I don’t even pretend to know,” said the woman. “What fancy people get is most surely a mystery to me.”

Peter shifted nervously from foot to foot. He wondered what would happen to him if he did not bring home a fish that was sufficiently small. There was no predicting what Vilna Lutz would say or do when he was in the grip of one of his terrible recurring fevers.

“Well, they wasn’t expecting an elephant – that much is for true.”

“An elephant!” said the woman.

“An elephant?” said Peter. At the sound of the impossible word on the lips of another, he felt a shock travel from the tip of his feet to the top of his head. He stepped backwards.

“An elephant!” said the fishmonger. “Come right through the ceiling of the opera house, landed on top of a noblewoman named LaVaughn.”

“An elephant,” whispered Peter.

“Ha,” said the woman, “ha ha. It most surely couldn’t have.”

“It did,” said the fishmonger. “Broke her legs!”

“La, the humour of it, and don’t my friend Marcelle wash the linens of Madam LaVaughn? Ain’t the world as small as it can be?”

“Just exactly,” said the fishmonger.

“But, please,” said Peter, “an elephant. An elephant. Do you know what you say?”

“Yes,” said the fishmonger, “I say an elephant.”

“And she came through the roof?”

“Didn’t I just say that too?”

“Where is this elephant now, please?” said Peter.

“The police have got her,” said the fishmonger.

“The police!” said Peter. He put his hand up to his hat. He took the hat off and put it back on and took it off again.

“Is the child having some sort of hat-related fit?” said the woman to the fishmonger.

“It’s just as the fortuneteller said,” said Peter. “An elephant.”

“How’s that?” said the fishmonger. “Who said it?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Peter. “Nothing matters except that the elephant has come. And what that means.”

“And what does it mean?” said the fishmonger. “I would surely like to know.”

“That she lives,” said Peter. “That she lives.”

“And ain’t that grand?” said the fishmonger. “We are always happy when people live, ain’t we?”

“Sure, and why not?” said the woman. “But what I want to know is what’s become of him who started it all? Where’s the magician?”

“Imprisoned him,” said the fishmonger, “didn’t they? Put him in the most terrible cell of all and threw away the key.”

The prison cell to which the magician was confined was small and dark. But there was, in the cell, one window, very high up. At night the magician lay atop his cloak on his mattress of straw and looked out of the window into the darkness of the world. The sky was almost always thick with clouds, but sometimes, if the magician stared long enough, the clouds would grudgingly part and reveal one exceedingly bright star.

“I intended only lilies,” the magician said to the star. “That was my intention: a bouquet of lilies.”

This was not, strictly speaking, the truth.

Yes, the magician had intended to conjure lilies.

But standing on the stage of the Bliffendorf Opera House, before an audience that was indifferent to whatever small diversion he might perform and was waiting only for him to exit and for the real magic (the music of a virtuoso violinist) to begin, the magician was struck suddenly, and quite forcibly, with the notion that he had wasted his life.

So he performed that night the sleight of hand that would result in lilies, but at the same time, he muttered the words of a spell that his magic teacher had entrusted to him long ago. The magician knew that the words were powerful and also, given the circumstances, somewhat ill-advised. But he wanted to perform something spectacular.

And he had.

That night at the opera house, before the whole world exploded into screams and sirens and accusations, the magician stood next to the enormous beast and gloried in the smell of her – dried apples, mouldy paper, dung. He reached out and placed a hand, one hand, on her chest and felt, for a moment, the solemn beating of her heart.

This, he thought. I did this.

And when he was commanded, later that night, by every authority imaginable (the mayor, a duke, a princess, the chief of police) to send the elephant back, to make her go away – to, in essence,
disappear
her – the magician had dutifully spoken the spell, as well as the words themselves, backwards, as the magic required, but nothing happened. The elephant remained absolutely, emphatically, undeniably
there
, her very presence serving as some indisputable evidence of his powers.

He had intended lilies; yes, perhaps.

But he had also wanted to perform true magic.

He had succeeded.

And so, no matter what words he may have spoken to the star that occasionally appeared above him, the magician could summon no true regret for what he had done.

The star, it should be noted, was not a star at all.

It was the planet Venus.

Records indicate that it shone particularly bright that year.

T
he chief of police of the city of Baltese was a man who believed most firmly in the letter of the law. However, despite repeated and increasingly flustered consultations of the police handbook, he could not find one word, one syllable, one letter, that pertained to the correct method of dealing with a beast that has appeared out of nowhere, destroying the roof of an opera house and crippling a noblewoman.

And so, with great reluctance, the chief of police solicited the opinions of his subordinates about what should be done with the elephant.