The Life of Elves (7 page)

“Do you know what war is?” he asked. “Yes, of course you do . . . Alas, there is a war coming, a war that will be even longer and more terrible than any that has gone before, a war desired by men who are even stronger and more terrible than in the past.”

“The Governor,” said Clara.

“The Governor,” he said, “and others, too.”

“Is he the devil?” she asked.

“In a way, yes, you could say he is the devil, but it's not the name that is the most important.”

As an orphan raised in the presbytery of a mountain village, Clara had already heard about the devil, and all the inhabitants of the Apennines knew of the battles that had been waged and they all crossed themselves when they heard talk of those who had perished. But beyond the stories she had heard in her childhood, Clara thought she knew where the devil's desire for war came from. Living in tombs all lined up one after the other—that seemed enough to explain the intrigue in the voice of death, and she wondered whether the Maestro, this living rock, thought the same thing.

“Wars take place on battlefields, but they are decided upon in the chambers of those who govern, men who are expert at working with fictions. However, there are other places, too, and other fictions . . . I want you to tell me what you see and what you hear, the poems you read and the dreams you have.”

“Even if I don't know why?” she asked.

“You must trust music and poetry,” he replied.

“Who wrote the poem?”

“A member of our alliance.”

After a long silence he said, “I can only tell you that it is addressed to you. But I did not think you would be able to read it so soon.”

At that moment, she saw that Pietro was looking for the poem on the score, and from the way he was looking at them, she realized that he could not find it.

Across from her, Gustavo Acciavatti was smiling.

 

Before long Petrus led her back to her room; the windows had been closed, because the rain continued its stubborn percussion.

“They're not letting me do my work,” he said, as he was taking leave of her.

“Your work?” she asked.

“My work,” said Petrus. “They are all so serious and cold. I am here because I am sentimental and talkative. It's just that they have you playing all day long and in the evening they bore you to death with wars and alliances.”

He gracefully scratched his scalp.

“I like my drink and maybe I'm not so clever. But I at least know how to tell a story.”

He went away and she fell asleep, or at least she thought she was asleep until, with a clarity that cared little for walls or closed blinds, she heard Pietro say, all the way on the far side of the patio, “The little one is right, it's the devil.”

And the Maestro's voice, in reply, “But then who tricked the devil?”

Then she fell into a deep sleep.

 

It was a strange night, of strange slumber. Her dreams were unusually vivid, turning to visions rather than nocturnal chimeras. She could let her gaze encompass a vista in the way one takes the measure of a panorama, and she found herself exploring the byways of a foreign land as if she were setting off along the passages of her familiar slopes. Although there were no mountains to be seen, there was a pervasive charm about the landscape, and she could feel the force of its prosperous terrain and enjoy the variety of its trees. While its gentle attraction was not like that of the lovely peaches, there was a sort of suppleness about it that was unknown in the mountains, and ultimately this conferred an equilibrium which Clara found exhilarating—a vigor without harshness, a rigor that, deep down, was favorable. Consequently within two months she had seen the entire spectrum of geographies—neatly tilled fields, velvety peaches of pleasure and, at the opposite extreme, her rugged and proud-standing mountains. What was more, while she was admiring the careful juxtaposition of the enclosures she became aware of a powerful, invisible enchantment that went well beyond the favor granted more opulent regions, and which transformed the landscape of thriving trees and shady paths into a scene of foliage and love. She also saw a village that was halfway up a hill, with a church and houses whose thick walls testified to the harshness of the winters. And yet you could tell that in the spring a fine season would begin, and last until the first frosts of autumn, and perhaps it was the absence of mountains, or the profusion of trees, but you knew that there would always come a time when you could rest from your chores. Finally, she perceived fleeting shadows, neither forms nor faces, that passed by indifferently while she would have liked to ask the name of the village, and what fruit grew in its orchards.

 

It was like an arrow. She didn't know where it had come from nor where it went, but she had seen her flash by and disappear around the corner. However fleeting the apparition might have been, its every feature had been etched upon her with a painful precision that caused her to see that face again, with its dark eyes and sleek, yet thin, features, and golden skin with lips like a splash of blood. She searched for its trace and discovered the little girl at the edge of a plantation of trees, just as a tall gray horse approached. The entire panorama lit up, and superimposed on the frosty countryside was a landscape of mountains and mist. They did not overlap but were enmeshed, rather, like clouds: she saw panoramas coiling together but also weatherscapes merging—clear skies, and snow falling from a storm tossed above a clear sky. And then a tornado funneled into sight. In a blazing vision that condensed action and time Clara could see the great stormy turmoil, the evil whirlwinds and black arrows that rose raging toward the sky, while a little old woman brandished a stick above her disheveled crown. Just as dream tipped into waking she saw another scene, where the little girl was eating her dinner in the company of six adults who surrounded her with a shimmering peaceful halo, and for the first time in her life, Clara beheld, in that halo, the material manifestation of love. Finally everything disappeared and she lay there awake in the silence of the dark room. In the morning she told the Maestro what she had seen in her dream. At the end of her story she added the name of the little stranger, because it came to her in a sudden flash of clarity.

Gustavo Acciavatti smiled at her for the second time.

But this time his smile was sad.

“All wars have their traitors,” he said. “As of yesterday, Maria is no longer safe.”

 

 

 

*
the hare and the wild boar watch over you when you walk beneath the trees / your fathers cross the bridge to embrace you both when you sleep

W
ho is the traitor?” asked the Maestro.

“I don't know,” said the Council Head. “We can no longer be sure about half of the inner sanctum. It could be any one of the ten members. I did not get the impression I was being followed, and my tracks were erased very quickly.”

“I did not see that you were followed. There is after all another bridge and another pavilion,” said the Guardian of the Pavilion. “We must reinforce Maria's protection.”

“No,” said the Maestro. “Her powers must grow, and Clara must consolidate their bond.”

“We have no idea what we are doing,” said the Council Head. “And yet we are transforming our daughters into soldiers.”

“To say the very least,” said Petrus. “You don't leave them any time to play with dolls and you don't help them very much either.”

“You wrote the poem just after Teresa's death,” said the Maestro to the Guardian of the Pavilion, “and she found it today. I shall send it to Maria.”

“A poem here, a score there, scarcely a glut of explanations,” said Petrus. “How are they to understand who the hare and the boar are?”

“Maria saw me on the day of her tenth birthday,” said the Guardian of the Pavilion, “the wild boar will speak to her. And her people are cut like diamonds. They have exceeded all our expectations.”

“And Clara's people, what do you think of them?” asked Petrus. “No friends, no family, no mother. An irascible, sibylline professor, and she has work up to her ears. But Clara is the artist on your team of little warriors. You must nurture her heart and her sensibility, and that is not something that can be done by training her like a recruit.”

“Clara needs a woman in her life,” said the Council Head.

“When Pietro is satisfied that her safety can be guaranteed, then they shall meet,” said the Maestro.

After a short silence, he turned to the Guardian of the Pavilion and said, “Did you hear her play . . . yes, I know, she's your daughter, and you heard her before I did . . . It is heart-rending . . . and so marvelous . . . ”

A
fter the excitement with the gray horse and the assault by tornado, life on the farm returned to its country ways, filled with the hunt, salted cheese, and walks through the woods. Now that the fine season had been confirmed by the farms and the church steeple, everyone could count on it serenely while contemplating the billowy snow which, that winter, would cover the land whenever they were thinking of going to fetch the firewood; or while enjoying the many early mornings that were crisp as a cracker, dawn shooting its rosy fingers into skies more transparent than love; or while salting and preserving the fine hunks of game that seemed in never-ending supply; and when the villagers thought of all this, they never failed to nod and exchange a glance, before returning to work, without comment.

 

One evening when talking of the hunt, the father made a remark that caused Maria to raise her eyebrows. They were supping on bacon and beets cooked in ash, garnished with a spoonful of cream laced with coarse salt.

“The game's more plentiful, but the hunt is fairer,” he said.

Maria smiled, then turned back to her steaming beets. The father was a man of the land, rough and taciturn; he walked with a heavy tread and always took his time. When he split logs, he did so at a tempo that anyone in the village could have surpassed, but when they saw that his regularity, together with his tenacity, were even more remarkable than his pace, the widows in the region began to turn to him, requesting he prepare the firewood for them, in return for a modest sum, although they were prepared to pay five times as much. He moved at the same pace in all his activities, including more private ones. He expressed no great sorrow in the face of the ordeals and losses, although they had been terrible, for he and his wife had lost both sons in infancy. But sorrow kept him in its cruel grip longer than it should have. Fortunately, this was also true of joy, and Maria was a blessing late in life, although he never expressed it through any demonstrative display of love; instead, he spread that love equally, in the same manner he used to rake the garden, or plow a field, without haste or interruption, and thus he took pleasure in it as in a gift that graced each year uniformly. Likewise, when he spoke he took care to ensure that his words did not disturb the equilibrium of emotions but rather embraced their contours naturally. Maria knew all this, so she greeted her father's remark with no more than a smile as it passed over the dinner like a flight of young thrushes.

But he was right: the hunt had become fairer. Anyone who might have thought that the abundance of game would lead to the pleasure of indiscriminate killing must consider the facts: this was not the case. The generosity that was flooding their woods and offering them a more bountiful catch than their ancestors had ever known also instilled restraint in the men of the village, and they chose their prey with care. Over recent winters they had put a stop to a few routs of boars that had been unearthing the potatoes; they had filled their cellars with salt meat for storing; and each had taken his share of fine victuals, but no more than what was required to replenish the body for the cost of its labor. What was more, they had the feeling they were sending the whips as emissaries rather than scouts, having them order the positions with unusual gentleness, which turned the hunt into a new art of exchange. Oh, of course the men did not start their prey in the thickets waving a white flag and politely asking the rabbits to assemble in front of their rifles, but still: they drove them out respectfully and did not do away with a greater number than was reasonable. In truth, the father's comment was inspired because that very morning they'd had to chase some hunters from the neighboring canton out of the municipal territory. Due to a penury of game these neighbors had come to poach from our hills, where they had found an abundance of hare and pheasant, and even a few deer, which they sniped at like savages, their rough laughter disgusting the villagers, who reacted in kind by pelting them with lead shot. But the worst of it was that this time their ploy did not elicit the virile vainglory which was ultimately its true purpose, because our men felt somehow defiled, a defilement which one of them (Marcelot, appropriately) summed up very eloquently once they got back to the farms after they'd chased out all the ruffians and checked every corner of the woods:
bloody miscreants, they've no respect for work.
Whence the father's remark; but Maria could tell that the conclusions he had drawn from the day's events surpassed indignation.

 

Maria did not suffer from any lack of affection, however, for the women in the village were as generous in lavishing it as they were in dispensing the Lord's Prayer and helpings of milk in their relentless efforts to strengthen the little girl, who was too thin (but so pretty): she could not remember ever coming back to the farm without being met with a serving of
rillettes
. But what Maria liked best of all was the cheese from their cows, and to Jeannette's everlasting despair, she who was the best cook in the six cantons, Maria was not fond of stews or anything that was prepared by mixing ingredients together. She would go up to the stove and help herself to her share of dinner in the form of separate products: she would nibble on a carrot, and they would grill a little piece of meat for her that she ate on its own with a pinch of salt and a sprig of savory.