Vango

by Timothee de Fombelle

  Since that time, all swallows seemed to feel a mysterious gratitude toward Vango. A dancing gratitude that brushed against him at a hundred miles an hour, whipping up breezes in his direction.

  Sometimes Vango found them a bit too close for comfort. “All right, all right,” he would say to them when they flew between his legs. Swallows grow to a ripe old age — much older than the oldest horse — and their affection for the boy showed no signs of abating.

  Vango turned back toward the sea. In the middle of the huge expanse, he could make out a sail in the distance. It was the big merchant ship on its way to Palermo, the same ship that had dropped him off when it passed close to the island of Arkudah.

  Just as the vessel was leaving the port of Malfa, Vango had jumped aboard. The captain was a Frenchman. He had been taken aback by this boy who spoke to him in his own language, with no trace of an accent and a refined way of speaking that seemed to date back to another era. Vango explained that his uncle lived on the island they could see across the way and that he’d missed the fisherman who usually took him there every Sunday.

  “But it’s not Sunday today,” the captain had pointed out, “it’s Wednesday.”

  Vango had confidently stared him out.

  “Wednesday is called Sunday over here,” he had explained very seriously. “You’re not in France now, remember!”

  In just a few days, Vango had caught up in the game of lying. He was enjoying beginner’s luck.

  He spent the few hours of the crossing explaining to the crew that his uncle lived on the island with a bear and a small monkey. Vango had never been so talkative in all his life. When a Russian sailor inquired where the monkey came from, Vango told him, in Russian, that the monkey had been found in a barrel that had washed up on the pebbles.

  “You speak Russian?”

  Vango hadn’t replied, as he was too busy explaining how the bear had swum to the island. It was hard for him to resist the thrill of talking complete and utter nonsense.

  He had left a note for Mademoiselle, letting her know that he would be away for a few days because he was going to “court somebody.” He still believed this meant he was going to give a hand, which, for once, wasn’t far from the truth. Pippo Troisi was in danger.

  Above all, his real goal was to understand if what he thought he’d seen on this island really existed.

  But when he got to the top, there was nothing.

  He looked around and couldn’t see any sign of human life. He’d been expecting to find a dirty encampment, a few caves: the pirates’ hideout he had imagined as he had repeated the name of Arkudah over and over again.

  As far as he was concerned, the man he had talked to in the dazzling light of that morning back then was the pirate chief, and Pippo Troisi was their prisoner.

  But there wasn’t a single three-cornered pirate’s or corsair’s hat on the island, no black flag with a skull and crossbones, no rude loud parrot, no human skull carved into an ashtray.

  There were just stones and shrubs.

  He couldn’t quite admit it to himself, but Vango felt let down.

  “Of course, I knew it.”

  He kept repeating those words over and over again, and for once in his life, he sounded just like any other ten-year-old boy.

  He headed off down the gentle slope. A single tree had sprung up among the rocks. He decided to establish his base there and to draw up his plan to leave this island and get back home to Mademoiselle. He leaned against the trunk and stared out to sea.

  The green terrace where he was sitting was in perfect contrast to the glassy mirror of the sea. Suddenly, in the distance, along the line separating the grass from the water, Vango saw a burst of color. He thought it must be a sail on the waves. Screwing up his eyes, he recognized a flower. A blue flower just like the one he had picked last time, the flower that proved he wasn’t on his island. He stood up, strode the five paces that separated him from the flower, and crouched over it.

  Down on his knees, he found a lot more than he had bargained for.

  It wasn’t a pirates’ hideout but a garden. An enchanted garden on a desert island.

  Just below Vango, the valley looked like the palm of a hand. Mysterious stone architecture framed the lush vegetation, and this hidden paradise was surrounded by a blue haze. The heat of the sun was causing steam to rise up from the garden soil.

  Vango had never seen or dreamed of such a place. He felt as if he’d been born between two stones and all he knew about was broom, dry herbs, and the thorns of prickly pear trees. Whereas here, thriving hedgerows alternated with perfectly kept squares of lawn, alongside strips of vegetable garden embroidered onto the black earth, while semi-invisible buildings were tucked away beneath the palm trees. Two low towers appeared like rocks, perched over the greenery.

  And yet there was no human presence on the garden’s pathways, not a single being, not a voice. There was no trace of these green-fingered pirates who knew how to make the stone burst into bloom.

  Vango decided to take advantage of there being no one around by heading down to take a closer look.

  Where had they locked up Pippo Troisi?

  Vango immediately recognized the smell of jasmine and the sound of the water. This was where they had led him during that gap in time. Back then, he hadn’t been able to see the place at all, but scent and noise can mark the memory forever.

  Vango slid beneath the lemon trees and walked, crouching down, along a row of late tomatoes. The air in the garden’s pathways was exceptionally fresh. There was water everywhere. It circulated through a system of hollowed-out wooden pipes, came to a stop in the stone troughs, climbed by the magic of mechanics to the top of a reed wheel, and set off again in a myriad of thin babbling channels.

  Vango couldn’t believe his eyes. This island of Alicudi had been deserted because it had no water source, no protected port, because nothing would grow and even the mules died of heat and boredom. And yet here he was discovering a place that was more clement, damp, and fertile than anything he could ever have imagined.

  Pippo Troisi was sitting alone on a chair, tugging at the loops of a big net that completely covered him. Vango caught him unawares, out in the bright sunshine of the paved pebble terrace. Troisi was concentrating hard on the task at hand, sometimes even using his teeth.

  Lying on the ground watching him, Vango felt sickened by the bad luck of this man who had dreamed of freedom in Zanzibar but who instead found himself living like a bird in a cage, trapped beneath this fishing net. The young boy started crawling between the rosemary bushes before coming out into the open, his stomach flat on the stone path.

  “Signor Troisi . . .”

  The farmer didn’t hear him. Vango kept edging forward. Pippo Troisi almost had his back to him.

  For the second time, Vango tried to save his life. Even though there wasn’t a sound in the garden, Vango was still on his guard. He knew that the prisoner wouldn’t be left alone for long. The pirates would be back. He needed to act quickly.

  Troisi felt the net slipping between his fingers. Twice, he tried to hold on, but the movement was too strong.

  “Hey!”

  He ended up putting his foot down in the middle of the net to jam it. A sharp tug released the hemp string and lifted the net.

  “Over here! Come this way,” a voice whispered.

  Pippo Troisi turned around and saw Vango at his feet.

  “Don’t be afraid; we’ll escape together. . . .”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here to help you.”

  “No, Vango.”

  “Follow me, Signor Troisi. Come on.”

  Troisi was writhing on his chair as if he needed help.

  “Go away, Vango!”

  “Cheer up — I came just for you.”

  Vango grabbed hold of Troisi’s wrist and wouldn’t let go.

  “Leave me alone! Go back home!” said Pippo.

  His face was twisted with fear.
/>   “Stop, Vango!”

  But the boy had decided to save Pippo Troisi at any cost. He tugged with all his might.

  “Never!” shouted Pippo. “Never!”

  And, with his free hand, Pippo grabbed hold of the back of his chair, hesitated a second because he felt sorry for what he was about to do, and then, closing his eyes so as not to see, he hurled the chair at Vango.

  “I’m sorry, little one. I did tell you. I gave you fair warning.”

  Pippo picked up the chair. Trembling, he sat back down and looked at Vango, who had blacked out on the terrace.

  “Never . . .” he said again. “No one will ever tear me away from here.”

  His only fear was having to leave this place one day.

  Pippo folded up the net he was busy mending. He turned it into a makeshift bed to transport Vango’s body. He pulled out a cloth that was tucked into his belt, went to wet it in a fountain where papyrus reeds grew tall, and returned to lay it on the child’s forehead.

  “I didn’t want to hit you.”

  He was leaning over Vango when he sensed someone behind him. Pippo Troisi turned around and said almost in tears, “Padre, oh, Padre! Forgive me, I think I’ve hurt him. I hit him on the head. But he was the one who started it. Please, I want to stay here. Can you tell him I want to stay here?”

  Padre Zefiro was not a pirate. He was a forty-two-year-old monk.

  He was nearly six and a half feet tall and carried off his monk’s cowl better than any film actor. He was accompanied by four other monks, with hoods on their heads and faces burnished by the sun. They had wicker fish traps strapped to their backs that were alive with fish.

  “He’s come back. . . .” stated the padre, looking at Vango.

  “Before you can so much as say Arkudah!” answered Pippo, who had heard this expression from Zefiro and was now using it ten times a day out of devotion to the great monk.

  “He’s come back. . . .” the padre repeated, his face betraying his curiosity.

  “Carry him to Brother Marco, in the kitchen,” he told Pippo. “Let him put some oil on his head.”

  Pippo Troisi was startled.

  “You’re . . . you’re going . . .”

  “What’s the matter, Fratello?” asked Zefiro, who was already heading off.

  “You’re going to eat him?”

  Zefiro stopped. A smile from Father Zefiro was rare, but when one appeared, it truly shone.

  “Yes,” he replied. “Before you can say Arkudah!”

  In reality, Marco, the brother responsible for cooking, was something of a doctor. He nursed Vango’s head with camphor oil and settled him in the warmth, close to his oven.

  Zefiro was now standing in his bedroom. The monks lived in tiny cells that flanked the garden. The cells were almost completely empty, just a simple straw mattress rolled up in one corner and a horizontal slit that served as a window the full width of one of the walls. Zefiro was looking through this notch in the stone, at eye level.

  He wondered what he should do with the young visitor who had come to disturb the life of the monastery.

  Arkudah was Zefiro’s life’s work. It was what he called his invisible monastery.

  For five years, thirty monks had been living there around the padre, undetected by the rest of the world. During the initial period, they had constructed the buildings and dug the gardens with their own hands and made themselves selfsufficient for food and water, and then the life of the community had taken on the rhythm of every monastery. Work, fishing, prayer, reading, gardening, meals, and sleep were allocated their hours of the day and night according to a set timetable. It was a peaceful human clock.

  But Vango was a grain of sand caught in the cogs.

  Nobody knew about the invisible monastery except for the pope (who had encouraged Zefiro to found it) and a dozen contacts on the Continent and across the world.

  Keeping it secret was a matter of life or death for Zefiro and his brothers.

  The arrival of Pippo Troisi could already have been a serious cause for concern, but, having heard what he had to say for himself, the community had decided to keep him. The portrait he painted of his wife, the fearsome Giuseppina, made the assembly of invisible monks quake with fear and laughter.

  They had accorded Pippo the title of “asylum seeker from marriage,” and they treated him as a survivor.

  When he found out that they were going to let him stay, Pippo had jumped with joy. He felt as if he’d landed in paradise, before he could so much as say Arkudah!

  But Pippo Troisi’s first day nearly went disastrously wrong. He took the considerable risk of not going to mass.

  He was still asleep at half past six in the morning, when Zefiro came out of the chapel to fill a bucket of water from the cistern and empty it over the head of the poor novice.

  “Are you sleeping in, Fratello Pippo?”

  From the next day, Pippo, who had never set foot inside a church, was on his knees before five o’clock in the morning, with a meditative expression, hands together. Zefiro warmed to him. He had fun watching his lips move during the Latin cantos, which he pretended to know. Pippo mumbled, into his beard, the couplets of sailors’ songs, which weren’t strictly speaking liturgical: “What shall we do with the drunken sailor . . .”

  Vango, the newcomer, was of more concern to the padre.

  Zefiro had been observing him for three days now.

  Vango was starting to feel better and was able to leave the kitchen more often. He spied on monastic life, following the monks’ every gesture. He had been spotted on the chapel roof listening to evensong.

  Zefiro had found out Vango’s story from Pippo Troisi, including the boy’s mysterious origins and the existence of his nurse. It was all fascinating. But he couldn’t keep a child in a monastery. On the other hand, how could he make Vango keep the secret of Arkudah outside these walls?

  Zefiro didn’t hear the knocking at the door. Brother Marco, the cook, entered and walked over to him.

  “Padre.”

  He broke off his thoughts.

  “Yes?”

  The conversation that followed between these two men of the church would have made their guardian angels blush.

  “I’ve found your queen,” said the cook.

  “My queen . . .”

  Zefiro carefully pushed the door shut.

  “Really? You’ve got my queen?”

  “I believe I’ve found her, Padre.”

  Zefiro pressed his hand against the wall. He seemed to be losing his balance.

  “You believe so? Is this merely a belief?”

  The cook stammered as he fiddled with his glasses, which were already half broken: “I b-b-believe so. . . .”

  “Believing isn’t enough!” pronounced Zefiro.

  Coming from the mouth of a man who had chosen to make believing his vocation, these words represented something of a blunder. Zefiro was aware of this. He tried to calm down before his guardian angel collapsed behind him.

  “You have to understand, Brother Marco . . .” he went on. They were almost whispering. “I’ve been searching for my queen for such a long time.”

  “I understand, Padre. That’s why I’m telling you about it. I believe — I think she could be with us in just a few days, if that’s what you wanted.”

  This time, Zefiro turned very pale. He was smiling.

  “In a few days . . . my queen, my God! My queen!”

  “On one condition.”

  “Yes?”

  “You’ve got to let the little one go.”

  Zefiro stared hard at Brother Marco and his mischievous face.

  “The little one?”

  “Yes, young Vango. As of today.”

  Zefiro made a show of accepting these terms against his better judgment. In reality, he was ready to do whatever it took.

  “Is this blackmail?”

  “More or less.”

  “All right. Let him go.”

  “And then . . . you
’ve got to let him come back.”

  Padre Zefiro was stunned.

  “What? Are you insane?”

  “No Vango, no queen.”

  “I repeat: Are you insane, Fratello?”

  “No, I’m not insane. Vango is the one who knows where she is. He will bring her here.”

  By this stage in the conversation between the two monks, there was only one way to revive their guardian angels, who would have passed out in a cold faint from the shock, their halos askew.

  The only way was to explain a few facts.

  Zefiro, who had become a wise man in all matters, nonetheless kept one vice hidden, a single crazy and chaotic passion. For many years now, he had had in his service an army of young and vigorous buccaneers, which he dispatched to pillage the other islands in the archipelago.

  They would come back in the evenings, trembling, laden with gold and sweet delicacies, exhausted from the many miles they had covered, and they would unload their booty in front of their master.

  These pirates were bees.

  Zefiro was a beekeeper.

  On the first day he’d arrived on the island, he had established five hives. These roaming bees consoled him for the journeys he would no longer be able to make, since a secret had condemned him to found the invisible monastery and to stay there until his final breath.

  And so for many years, alongside his life as a monk, Zefiro had been a pirate chief, seeking out his bees morning and evening on their return from an adventure. But they had all died a few months ago, destroyed by a late-summer storm. Zefiro had kept his despondency well hidden and had even managed to cheer up the cook, who wept on account of there being no more clear honey for his gingerbread.

  In the aftermath of that catastrophe, Zefiro had been looking for a queen. He needed a queen bee to attract a new swarm and to build up his hives again.

  From his base in the kitchen, Vango had heard Brother Marco complaining about the situation. He had told the cook that he knew of at least three or four bee colonies in the cliffs of Salina. He could easily find a queen so that the apiary on Arkudah could be reborn.