Tears of the Salamander Read online

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  for young people

  Inside Grandad

  The Ropemaker

  The Lion Tamer’s Daughter and Other Stories

  Chuck and Danielle

  Shadow of a Hero

  Time and the Clock Mice, Etcetera

  A Bone from a Dry Sea

  AK

  Eva

  Merlin Dreams

  A Box of Nothing

  Giant Cold

  Healer

  The Seventh Raven

  City of Gold

  and Other Stories from the Old Testament

  Tulku

  Hepzibah

  Annerton Pit

  The Blue Hawk

  The Dancing Bear

  Emma Tupper’s Diary

  Chance, Luck and Destiny

  THE CHANGES TRILOGY

  The Weathermonger

  Heartsease

  The Devil’s Children

  THE KIN

  Suth’s Story

  Noli’s Story

  Po’s Story

  Mana’s Story

  THE GIFT ARRIVED FOR ALFREDO’S SEVENTH name-day. It wasn’t like his other gifts—the basket of candied cherries, the hobbyhorse, the toy drum—not a gift for a child at all. He opened the little leather pouch and pulled out a fine yellow chain, like the one his big brother, Giorgio, had been given to wear round his neck for his First Communion, but instead of a cross on the end this one had a funny little animal, made of the same yellow stuff as the chain.

  He stared at it. The body was like that of one of the little brown lizards that lived in the cracks in the brickwork of the bakehouse, except that it had a long tail that curled under its belly, right round behind and over, with the end hanging down beside its front leg with a sharp hook at the tip. And the spread toes had small hooked claws, and not the sucker pads of the bakehouse lizards.

  The head and face were even more different, not like any lizard’s, but round and wrinkled, like the face of the little gray ape Alfredo had seen at the great Shrove Tuesday fair, sitting on a hurdy-gurdy with a leash round its neck. Except that the monkey had had a huge wide grin, but this thing’s mouth was a little round hole.

  “That’s a funny animal,” he said. “What is it?”

  Nobody answered. He looked up, puzzled, aware of an uncomfortable silence in the room.

  “What is it, Mother?” he said again.

  Mother sighed and looked questioningly at Father.

  “It’s a present from my brother, your uncle Giorgio,” said Father. “To bring you luck.”

  “You’re not going to let him wear it?” said Mother.

  “Better than not letting him,” said Father, in the voice he used to settle an argument.

  “He came to my christening too,” said Giorgio, “but he never came to my name-day, or gave me a present, and I’m named for him. He could’ve brought one when he came to Alfredo’s christening, but he never even looked at me. I knew he was my rich uncle so I was set to charm the heart out of him, but he pushed straight past in his posh getup and kissed Mama’s hand, all la-di-da. Then he hung over the cradle for a bit, and went off and stuffed himself at the sideboard like he hadn’t eaten for a month.”

  “He didn’t pay much attention to anyone,” said Mother.

  “Never does,” said Father. “Better that way. And you are named for my grandfather, not your uncle.”

  There was an edge in both his parents’ voices that Alfredo didn’t notice but remembered later, looking back to what had happened on his name-day. At the time he was busy puzzling over the gift his uncle had sent him.

  “Yes, but this animal,” he said impatiently. “What is it?”

  “It’s a salamander,” said Father, with a chuckle that Alfredo, also later, realized must have been forced. “Perhaps it will bring you luck, little son of mine.”

  After the excitements of his name-day Alfredo found it hard to sleep. Restless, he crept down to the kitchen for a mug of water. There were cracks of light around the kitchen door, and the sound of Father’s voice from beyond it. He hesitated. He caught a few words here and there.

  “…has no children, as far as I know…renounced my own birthright—I can’t do that for him…make up his own mind when he is old enough to understand…”

  Mother said something, too softly for Alfredo to catch, apart from the note of deep anxiety. Father sighed heavily and answered.

  “…must have its Master. That is the one thing on which he and I ever have been able to agree.”

  Alfredo crept back upstairs without his drink.

  But perhaps the salamander did bring Alfredo luck. Nobody had been able to tell him much about salamanders, except that they lived in the fire in the heart of certain mountains, and that if questioned they would tell you the truth. He was pleased by the bit about the fire. Though he lived in a hot country, he had always loved the bakehouse, especially the glorious moment when Father opened one of the fire-pit doors to add a fresh log, and the huge orange energy, a power like that of the sun, came streaming out. Oh, to live in the heart of such a fire, like a salamander!

  So he wore his uncle’s gift every day, hidden beneath his shirt, even for church, when Mother had asked him to take it off in case the priests found out. She was nervous of people, but especially priests, because Father distrusted and despised them and said so openly, and Mother was convinced the priests would learn about it and make the whole family do horrible penances. That was one reason why she was so bewildered when it was discovered that Alfredo had a singing voice.

  There was no musicianship anywhere in the family. Father would bellow popular songs, all on one note, to the rhythm of his dough-kneading. Neighbors said it was hard to believe anyone could sing so badly if he wasn’t doing it on purpose. And Mother would warble as she went about her work with a more varied but no more accurate use of the scale. When he was smaller, Alfredo’s attempts to copy his parents had combined the worst of both styles, but now he seemed more to be singing for the sheer joy of doing so, unconsciously putting the tunes to rights as he went. Before long he was singing, or attempting to sing, everything he heard, from the indecent ditties of the sardine fishers to some part in one of the convoluted polyphonies of the cathedral.

  Living near the center of the city, they went there to Mass. Shortly after they had emerged one Sunday, Alfredo was sitting on a low wall beside Mother, while Father argued guild business with a rival baker and Giorgio larked with some of his cronies across the square. As he waited Alfredo was trying to re-create something he had just been listening to, the Nunc Dimittis at the end of the service, with the high voice of a single choirboy floating like a gliding gull above the waves of sound from the rest of the choir, and then soaring on alone.

  “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,” he sang, “according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen…”

  A short, fat priest came stalking by, turned and stared at them. Mother gave her usual start of guilt.

  “Don’t stop, boy,” snapped the priest. “Start at the beginning. …Louder…”

  Astonished but delighted—nobody had ever bothered to listen to his singing before—Alfredo stood, filled his lungs and sang. The chatter around them stilled. People turned to listen. There were amused bravos as he allowed his voice to fade, as the choirboy’s had done, into the noon stillness.

  “The child has a voice,” said the priest. “Who has been teaching him?”

  “No one,” stammered Mother. “I don’t know where he got it from.”

  She made it sound as though Alfredo had picked up his talent in the street and was now being accused of having stolen it.

  “Bring him to the cathedral, the small
north door, tomorrow, a little before noon. Ask for me, Father Brava.”

  Father came striding across, his face stiff with anger.

  “No!” he said. “Absolutely not! My son is a man, and must remain a man, and beget sons of his own!”

  “The decision is not taken at this age,” said the priest calmly. “The voice may not develop. The Prince-Cardinal is both humane and generous. He does not go against the wishes of the parents, but richly rewards those who consent. Meanwhile, your son will go to school, learn to read and write, both Latin and the common tongue. These are gifts not to be despised. You are a baker, I see from your dress. The patronage of the Prince-Cardinal is not to be despised, whereas his disfavor…But you are a sensible man, sir. I do not need to tell you that. Come too, with the boy, if your ovens can spare you, and you will be able to discuss matters with the Precentor. …”

  Alfredo adored being a chorister. He made friends easily among the other boys, though they teased him for his southern accent, but he was more sober-minded than most of them and thus seldom in trouble. Several of them wore little charms and tokens around their necks, as well as their crucifixes, so he didn’t need to take special trouble to hide his salamander, though he didn’t go flashing it around. Even the schoolwork did not bore him. He was naturally neat and tidy, and soon wrote well and read Italian with fluency. Latin was harder, but he had the incentive of needing to know the meanings of the words he spent such long hours singing, because he felt in his heart that the meaning was part of the music, that even in the dispassionate, almost bloodless style of church music a word of grief must sound different from a word of rejoicing.

  But it was the music itself that truly mattered. Those long hours were not long to him. The dullest choir practices, with endless repeatings and repeatings of a few short bars with which the choirmaster was dissatisfied, were time contentedly spent. This was what God had brought him into the world to do. This was how he wanted to spend the rest of his life.

  He understood now what Father had been talking about when he had objected so strongly to Alfredo’s even being auditioned for the choir. Four of the adult choristers were castrati. That’s to say they’d had their testicles removed when they were boys, in the same way that farmers gelded young male sheep and cattle so that they never became normal rams and bulls and could never sire young; it kept them docile and improved the flavor of their meat. But in the case of the choristers it meant that their voices had never broken, and they now sang alto or countertenor, instead of tenor or bass. They, too, could never become fathers.

  The boys of course gossiped and joked about this, but as well as the castrati there were also four tenors and two basses in the choir, all of them once choirboys; some had taken only minor orders, and thus, not being true priests, had married and had children.

  This possibility had done little to appease Father. If anything, he felt extra contempt for these half-priests, as he called them. His plan was that he would simply refuse to let Alfredo have the operation, and then hope that when the boy’s voice broke, the resulting sound would cease to be pleasing to the ears of the Prince-Cardinal.

  In fact, it was this prospect that Alfredo himself most dreaded. He would have preferred to end up as a tenor or bass, but rather than leave the cathedral altogether he would have chosen to undergo the pain and danger of the operation, and then the lifelong derision involved, and sing on. One of the countertenors, though elderly, still had the most marvelous voice. The Prince-Cardinal’s favor had made him a rich man, but Alfredo could hear, plain in every note, that Brother Jesu-Maria sang for the pure joy of it.

  He was lucky, of course, with his family living so close to the cathedral, that he wasn’t entirely cut off from his old life. In midweek the Prince-Cardinal retired to his country estate for study and contemplation (in fact, as everybody knew perfectly well, to enjoy a nobleman’s normal home life with a faithful wife, children—not all of whom were hers—and at least one mistress). Cathedral services were simplified and reduced so that the canons and other priests could do the same sort of thing, according to their resources and status, and after midday Mass the choirboys were left pretty well to their own devices, but with the certainty of savage beatings if they were late for evensong. Alfredo went home, singing as he trotted the few hundred yards through the steeply twisting narrow streets, almost empty now in the afternoon heat.

  The day’s baking would by then be finished. Mother and Father would be having their siesta. He would go through to the bakehouse, where Giorgio would greet him with “Late again, kid? Sure you can manage on your own? See you,” before going off to join his friends and prowl, never with any success, for girls. Alfredo would then settle down to tend the ovens.

  There were three of them, each with its own quirks and needs. Everybody, except for the other bakers, agreed that Father made the best bread in the city and for miles around, and ultimately his success depended on his skill in the management of his ovens, his ability to reach and maintain an exact, even heat, different for each oven, throughout the baking process. Any change of wind affected the draft in the flues, as did the temperature of the outside air; logs from different kinds of trees burnt hotter or cooler; bone-dry logs burnt too fast and hot to be useful, but too much moisture was worse than too little; and so on.

  Father had built the ovens with his own hands, making them far more massive than those in any normal bakery, so that each, when thoroughly warmed through, would become a great block of heat around the hollow in which the pale dough magically turned itself into crisp and golden loaves. The ovens had first been lit long before Alfredo was born, and since then had never gone cold, but after each morning’s baking was over they were allowed to rest for a while and then slowly, slowly reheated to be at the exact temperature needed for the next day’s baking.

  Each daily cycle began in midafternoon, with the ash being raked out of the fire pit and sifted into the barrow; the larger embers, still twinkling with sparks and veins of fire, were tossed back over the fire-pit floor; a layer of laths was spread above them, the door closed to a crack and the dampers opened, and the ashes were barrowed out to the tip and fresh logs barrowed in on the return journey from the drying stacks behind the house. By now the laths in the first oven were roaring, and dry logs, already in the bakehouse, could be inserted above them with the long tongs, the oven door closed, and its dampers half closed, and a start made on the second oven. By the time the third had reached this stage Alfredo would hear his parents’ bed in the room above the bakehouse creak as his father heaved himself out, and a few minutes later that slow, distinctive tread would come down the stairs, and the door would open. Father would glance in each fire pit, open each oven and reach in to feel the heat, close it again and say something like “That’s fine. Where’s Giorgio? After the girls again? Fat chance. He shouldn’t leave all the work to you.”

  “But I like doing it,” Alfredo would say.

  This was less than the truth. The feeling had grown only gradually since he’d left home, but by the time he’d been away for a year he had come to see that, in some way that he didn’t understand, he would have missed looking after the ovens—by himself, without Giorgio—as much as he would have missed singing in the cathedral. Mysteriously it was the same kind of thing. He understood the ovens and their needs very much as he understood the music that he sang, the inwardness of it, its central nature. And not only the ovens. He could pick up a log from the stack and immediately sense the hidden heat within it, waiting to be woken by the flame, its intensity, its possible duration. He could sense the swirling climb of the drafts up the flues…

  …and then, after the family meal—two hours earlier than usual, so that he could be back at the cathedral for evensong—he would go back to the bakehouse and stand in the middle of the floor and feel the glowing fire pits of the three ovens around him as a single larger fire, with himself in the midst of it, in the heart of the living flame—just as, in the middle of some pulsing Gloria in the
cathedral, he was in the heart of the music. It was as though flame and music were only different ways in which a single, majestic power made itself manifest.

  IT WAS ON SUCH AN EVENING, IN ALFREDO’S twelfth year, that his whole world changed. He had left home a little early because he was singing one of the solos at evensong. With the Prince-Cardinal away the choirmaster was taking the chance to give the first-year seniors a turn so that when their time came to sing for the ears of His Eminence they would not be afraid. So Alfredo robed himself and settled into a corner of the vestry and bowed his head over his clasped hands in the attitude of prayer. He didn’t understand about real praying. It was just words, the same words repeated and repeated until they were emptied of meaning. What he was really doing was allowing the fire of the bakehouse that still surged and swirled through his mind to turn itself gradually into the music that he was going to sing. He was more than happy. There were no words for it. Only the blessed souls in the presence of the Almighty could know and feel anything like what Alfredo knew and felt.

  He heard a noise from the body of the cathedral. Not many people came to weekday evensong, often no more than a few old crones, but this was actual bustle, hurrying feet. A door must have been thrown open, because now there were sounds from outside, yells, clamor. More. Worse. The noises in themselves had nothing to do with Alfredo, with the fire and the music inside him. But these things too had changed. The music was gone. And the fire…

  There was madness now in the fire, the wildness of wild beasts, the fury of a howling storm. He couldn’t hold it. It would burst out of him, burn, kill…

  He leapt to his feet. Several of his friends were just coming in through the vestry door, teasing each other—in whispers because the choirmaster was close behind them. Alfredo charged through, dodged the choirmaster’s grab for him, ignored his bellow to stop, wheeled out into the chancel aisle, raced down through the screen and into the already darkening nave. Somebody had opened the great west doors, and through their arch he could see the orange glow of the blaze, the nearer roofs black against it, and above it the swirling tower of smoke, almost as black against the distant reds and golds and oranges of sunset.