The Life of Elves (19 page)

He suddenly seemed to remember that he, too, was thirsty, and he poured another glass.

“After he saw Pietro's painting, Sandro did paint one last canvas,” he continued. “It was the color of flax, and on either side of a big splash of ink there were two horizontal lines made with a scarlet pastel crayon. In some places the ink was very black and dull, in others it was brown, almost lacquered, and certain powdery, shifting reflections made it look as if the dust of a forest bark had been added.”

Although this canvas was as abstract as the first one, neither representing anything nor suggesting any form of writing, in the motionless journey of ink deployed in depth and not over distance Clara recognized the bridge she had already seen when she had plunged into the waves of Maria's power, and she was astonished that a dark spot with neither contours nor features could also be a red bridge suspended between two shores. “The bridge,” she said.

“The bridge,” Petrus said, “which focuses the powers of our plan, and connects our Pavilion to this world. Sandro had recreated its soul as surely as if he had crossed it, even though he had never seen it. How could this be? You can see it because you are your father's daughter. But Sandro? Just as he had written the sign for mountain without knowing it, he had captured the quintessence of an unknown place with the silk of his brushes, and those who knew the bridge were stunned by this miracle that recreated it without representing it.

“Then Alessandro burned all his canvases, and everyone thought he had lost his mind because two women he loved had died in the space of two days. Marta had thrown herself in the Tiber, and at the same time we learned of the death of Marta's sister, Teresa, whom Sandro had loved with a friendship as intense as any that can exist between two flesh-and-blood creatures. Later on I will tell you about the circumstances of her death. The fact remains that Sandro burned his entire oeuvre, then he left Rome and went to his brother, the priest in Santo Stefano, where he stayed for a year, and after that he lived as a recluse in his aunt's house in L'Aquila, where he lived up on the third floor until the piano brought him to you, nine years after his return to Abruzzo. How are we to explain it? Sandro had only ever loved, or been loved, by weeping women, and that same melancholy lies in the heart of the sons of weeping mothers who then go on to love other weeping women. But I don't think experience is as important as who we are inside, and I think that Sandro's true story is not one of a man who has been burned by love, but rather of a man who was born on the wrong side of the bridge and who has been seeking to cross. This is what his first and last canvases tell us.” He sighed. “No one understands better than I do the feelings of people who are unsuited to the world into which they have been born. Some have ended up in the wrong body, others in the wrong place. Their misfortune is blamed on a flaw in their personality, when in fact they have merely gone astray in a place they shouldn't have been.”

“Then why doesn't the Maestro make him cross the bridge?”

“I don't think he can,” said Petrus. “We are pioneers, and we must forge new alliances. But the footbridges must be built in the right place at the right time.”

“Do elves paint?” asked Clara.

“Yes,” said Petrus, “we are calligraphers and painters, but we only depict what we see before us. Just as we only sing or write poems to move our souls—something we do very well, I might mention. But that is not enough to transform reality.”

“What does it take to transform reality?”

“Stories, of course.”

She observed him for a moment. “I thought elves were different,” she said.

“Ah, yes, elves, fairies, wizards in folklore, all that sort of thing. I suppose even the Maestro does not correspond to your idea?”

“A bit more. Tell me about the world you were born into.”

“What do you want to know?”

“What does it look like?”

“It's a world of mists.”

“You live in a fog?”

“No, no, we can see perfectly well. The mists are alive, they let us see what we need to see and they change according to need.”

“Whose need?”

“The needs of the community, of course.”

“The community of elves?”

“The community,” he echoed, “the elves, trees, stones, ancestors, animals.”

“Everyone lives together?”

“Everyone
is
together. Separation is a sickness.”

Then, sadly pouring another glass, “Alas, that paradise is lost now.”

With his eyes slightly crossed, he added, “I'm good at telling human stories, but I think the Maestro will do a better job explaining the life of elves to you than I can.”

She shrugged. “What I feel doesn't seem to interest him,” she said. Imitating Acciavatti she added, “Come now, play, play, I'll turn the pages.”

Petrus burst out laughing. “High-ranking elves are not known for their sentimentality,” he said. “But he is more concerned about you than you know.” He paused for a moment, as if thinking about something. Then he gave a quiet laugh. “I'm dead drunk now,” he said. And after a moment's silence, “But I've done my job.”

She wanted to ask him some more questions, but he stood up, and with some difficulty in staying on his feet, he said with a yawn fit to dislocate his jaw, “Let's go and get some rest. The days ahead will be turbulent.”

 

Clara did not sleep all day. The rain fell relentlessly over the city, and on the far side of her dreams she was keeping watch over Maria. I won't see Eugénie again, she thought, and she summoned tears of relief which did not come, either that day, or in the evening, when they ate a light meal at the villa before, drowsy and lugubrious, they endured the night. Early the next morning, she did not rise until Maria's father went to his daughter's bed—she knew, without being told, why he had come. But the tears still evaded Clara even as she followed the little French girl's wanderings through the cold rooms and the hard icy fields. Then it was again bedtime, after a day of idleness to which anything would have been preferable, even battle. Another lost day between two eras passed, more long hours when she was alone again, and even Petrus did not show up; but at dinner, which she ate with Leonora, the Maestro put in a brief appearance.

“The funeral will be held tomorrow,” he said, “and you must speak to Maria.”

“I cannot speak her language,” said Clara.

He left without replying.

Then morning came and it was time to consign Eugénie to her grave. It was the first day of February, and, on waking from a gloomy night, where it seemed to Clara that she had neither slept nor been awake, she saw that the ancestor had disappeared. She ran first to the empty lunch room, then to the piano room. The ancestor was on the left-hand side of the keyboard. Petrus was snoring in the wing chair. The Maestro was waiting for her.

“He was here when I arrived,” he said, pointing to the ancestor.

In silence, they followed the preparations on the farm for the funeral. Then everyone set off for the church where the beloved corpse was waiting. Clara was impressed by the crowd gathered outside the church, how many they were, how quiet and thoughtful. During mass, she could hear a little bit of Latin, but above all she saw in the people's gazes that they were pleased with the service, and she discovered a growing interest in the character of the priest, whom hitherto she had thought was made of the same stuff as her own priest. Father Centi was a scrupulous and dreary man: you were grateful that he was not bad, yet you couldn't exactly thank him for being good: in his dealings with everyone and everything there was something missing, which left him incapable of meanness but did not make him capable of greatness. Now on seeing Father François preaching from his pulpit with unsuspected frankness and simplicity, she was surprised by an intuition that made her follow him with her gaze when he took the lead of the funeral procession, and she went on observing him when he stood before the tombstones and the peasants and began the homily, competing with the icy onslaught of the wind. The Maestro translated his words for her, and in his speech she sensed a familiar music which had as little to do with her own priest as the monotonous musical scores had to do with the generosity of peaches and steppes.

“There's a man for you,” said the Maestro, with respect in his voice.

Those were the words that best described the emotion that was continually growing inside her. At the same time, André made a gesture toward the good priest which precisely transcribed their feeling, and Clara said to herself again,
there's a man for you.

“
A loro
la gloria, nei secoli dei secoli,
amen,” translated the Maestro.

Then he fell silent. But after a time where they watched people greeting each other, speaking effusively, the Maestro said, “There will indeed be surprises before the end, and there will be unnatural allies.”

Then, his voice now graver, “Look.”

And she saw the black wall.

“The first battle,” he said.

She peered at the gigantic wheel slowly advancing toward the village.

“A storm?” she asked. “There aren't any soldiers?”

“There are soldiers to the rear, but they don't really count.”

“Is Raffaele's leader commanding the clouds?”

“Yes,” said the Maestro, “the clouds and the elements of the atmosphere.”

“And can you do that?”

“All our kind can do that.”

“Then why are you leaving Maria all on her own?”

“We have always protected the village. But if we want to know her strength, we have to refrain from intervening in the battle. It was a difficult decision, but necessary, if we are to gauge her powers. They have never yet been dissociated from our own.”

“And if she dies?”

“If she dies, it will mean that we have been wrong from the start, and there will be little hope that we survive this war, either as individuals or as a species.”

Clara looked one more time at the monstrosity lurking on the horizon of the southern lands.

“It's a colossus,” said the Maestro, “but it's only a very small part of what the enemy can create. We were right to think they would not take our wager seriously.”

“But there is traitor informing them.”

“There is a traitor who followed one of our people and who learned about Maria.”

“Who followed the gray horse.”

“Who followed the head of our council, who appeared as a gray horse, because in this world we can only keep one of our essences. He's a gray horse, but he's also a man, and a hare.”

“Why did the head of the council want to see Maria?”

Then, although she did not understand why, she knew the answer.

“Because he is her father.”

“And your father's power of prescience is great,” said the Maestro, “and goes hand in hand with his power of vision. Now look at the enemy's power, try to understand its nature and its causes.”

“It is distorting the climate.”

“And each of its distortions feeds off the others. Marcel was meant to die. When forces are distorted, changes in balance are created. Even when the intention is pure, as was Eugénie's.”

“But how are we to resist if we cannot use the same weapons?”

“That is the whole point of the alliance.”

Silently, they observed the men who gathered around Father François and André, then dispersed in orderly fashion, some helping their families into a cart, some leading women and children into the church for protection, and some heading along the road to the Marcelot farm with the men from the first circle. The farm was bigger but also more cluttered than that of Maria, who was greeted by a woman with copper hair whom Clara immediately took to. They sat down around a big table spread with bread, honey, and the summer's plum jam, and, while Goodwoman Marcelot and her daughter prepared the meal, time became sluggish and seemed to contract.

Outside, the men were deep in conversation, and saw their defeat looming larger, but inside, it was as if a gentle mood hung over them in the form of a floating reminiscence, stitched with old embroideries and faint smiles, a serpentine stream of tall grasses, and tombs no longer graced by flowers. What trail am I following? wondered Clara, her gaze riveted to the slow gestures of the woman with the flaming hair. She could have spent her life there and never tired of this wonder; then, when she saw Lorette's gesture as she placed a glass of warm milk in front of Maria, she understood the nature of her wonder, because the gesture had the same texture as Leonora's in placing her hand on Clara's the day of her eleventh birthday.

“One day you will go back to your community,” said the Maestro. “I am sorry you were taken away from it. But the women are waiting for you and will welcome you among them.”

Long minutes passed while the village prepared for the siege.

“What must I say to Maria?” asked Clara.

“You will find the words,” said the Maestro, “and I will translate.”

“Who does the Governor serve?” she asked again.

“One of our kind.”

“Where does he come from?”

“From my own house.”

“What is his name?”

“Unlike men we do not have names we are given and which we keep. But since our friends have a fantasy about ancient Rome, let us say that his name is Aelius.”

“What does he want?”

And without waiting to hear his reply she said, “The end of human beings.”

P
etrus is going to have to sober up a bit.”

“But his storytelling is never better than when he's drunk.”

“There is no doubt that he is sharpening Clara's clairvoyance. What a terrifying wager.”