Vango

by Timothee de Fombelle

  “Who was singing?”

  “Give me time, please, Vango.”

  She put her hands together on the table.

  “That night, the boat was gleaming like a gold coin. There were garlands of lights strung between the mast cables, and flares along the bridge. It was a big boat, nearly sixty meters long, with only six sailors. When night fell, the wind picked up. We were enjoying the breeze after the heat of the day. But it began to whip the sea into motion. The rain came down on the carpets on the bridge. We took shelter inside the cabin.”

  “Who took shelter, Mademoiselle?”

  “You, me, . . .”

  She closed her eyes and hummed the sirens’ song to summon the strength.

  “And your mother . . .” she said at last.

  A sort of gentle shifting noise could be heard coming from Vango’s direction. A breeze sent a piece of dried grass gliding to the floor.

  “And your father . . .” Mademoiselle added in a whisper.

  Her pupils shone as she spoke these last words. She carried on with her storytelling.

  “We were in the small cabin belowdeck. The storm was taking its hold on the sea. We weren’t afraid. There wasn’t a more reliable boat in the world. It had sailed over wild seas to Denmark. A more reliable boat did not exist. That’s what your father always used to say.”

  She smiled again.

  “And I’m sure he was right. Your mother sang again, to help lull you to sleep. Your father was sleeping too, his head on his wife’s knees. He loved her. He’d had the boat’s previous name removed from the prow, and he had a star painted with five points, because your mother’s name — and the boat’s — was Stella. I admired your father. He spoke to me as if I were a lady, even though I was just a French nanny, while he was every inch a prince.”

  Night fell over the house at Pollara. Vango was barely present inside those walls. Instead, he was rediscovering a past he had forgotten all about. In his stomach he could feel the rolling motion of that October night in 1918.

  “The sailors came in to dry off. We heard them talking in their cabin at the front of the boat. That’s why it happened. Your mother didn’t want them to stay outside in the rain. She told them to go into their cabin. She took them some hot water.”

  Vango thought of those hands carrying the kettle. His mother. How sweet to hear that forbidden word. His mother was named Stella. The star. Vango’s eyes were shut now.

  “I was sitting near one of the portholes,” Mademoiselle explained. “I was the only one to realize that something strange was going on. At one point I said, ‘There’s a light out there, on the waves.’ Your father went outside for a moment. He came back in and reassured me. He hadn’t seen anything. He said there was very little risk of a stray boat crashing into us in the storm on this stretch of sea. He pointed to a dot on the map. He said, ‘We’re here.’ I can remember that very clearly.”

  She put her finger on the blue handkerchief that lay unfolded in front of her.

  Vango could sense the impending catastrophe, but he was clinging to the picture of those fingers on the map, the heat of the cabin, his mother’s singing. A little while longer, he thought. A bit more tenderness before the end of the world. . . .

  “You fell asleep at the same time as your mother. Through the porthole, I was watching the rain lashing the waves as the white foam flew up. Then came the first explosion.”

  Vango opened his eyes.

  “Your father stood up. I think he understood right away. There hadn’t been any jolt. Just an explosion at the front of the boat. Another followed. Then several more. Your mother got up and asked, ‘Is it a rock? A boat?’ Your father didn’t answer. He went over to a drawer and rummaged around in it. Your mother asked him what he was looking for. He said, ‘A weapon. I’m looking for a weapon.’ There wasn’t one. You were still in my arms. You were sleeping. Your mother wanted to hold you again, but that was when the door opened.”

  And, seventeen years later, she began to describe the men as if they were still standing there in front of her.

  “There were three of them, armed with hunting guns. Three jittery men. They spoke a mix of Sicilian and Italian, and they wanted to know where the money was. I translated for your parents. The first intruder was behaving like a madman. Another was trying to calm him down. And the third kept quiet. Your father told them there wasn’t any money. So he offered them his watch and the gold chain around his neck, and took off the four rings he was wearing. The madman snatched them and cast them to the floor with a derisory laugh. And then . . .”

  Mademoiselle started sobbing.

  “Yes?” Vango prompted her.

  “He . . .”

  “What did he do?” whispered Vango.

  “He fired.”

  She was still sobbing.

  “The madman fired his gun. He knew what he was doing. He didn’t want to kill your father before getting what he wanted. And since I was carrying you in my arms, he didn’t shoot at me either. . . . No . . . He fired . . . and your mother fell to the floor.”

  Vango went over to Mademoiselle, squatted down, and pressed his cheek to hers.

  “You didn’t even wake up,” she said. “You stayed asleep in my arms. It was because of me. If you’d been in your mother’s arms, she might have survived. A child should be in his mother’s arms. Why didn’t she take you in her arms? Why?”

  “But then you wouldn’t be here.”

  She had folded the blue handkerchief on the table. She couldn’t take her eyes off it. She was reeling.

  Vango took Mademoiselle’s hand.

  “They tore your father away from his wife’s body. They made all three of us go outside. . . .”

  She fainted.

  Aeolian Islands, October 1918

  They shoved them toward the bow of the boat.

  A salty rain was pounding down.

  None of the three pirates knew what they were doing. None of them, the day before, would ever have imagined that they’d be mixed up in this madness. They were peasants and fishermen. One of them had a wife and three daughters in Santa Marina. Another had an elderly father waiting for him back on dry land, on the other side of Salina.

  Who would have thought they would dare to attack a boat with their blackened hunting guns, to wreak carnage, to murder the crew in cold blood and strip the passengers of their possessions?

  They had no idea whether there was a single silver coin in the hold.

  Only Gio, the leader of the group, had discovered his true nature. The smell of gunpowder was going to his head. He acted the part, spoke overexcitedly, and fired in every direction.

  The other two had lost all control of the situation. Egged on by Gio, they were chancing this desperate act in order to seize what they needed to leave their lost island and reach America, like all the others, except by force. America! They had received the letters and the photos. It was real life over there. But the first shot had started a nightmare from which they would never wake up.

  “Show us where your money is!” shouted Gio.

  As he spoke, he held the flare up to his victim’s face. The rain hissed as it came into contact with the flame.

  The little boy’s father was still wearing indoor clothing. Barefoot, he had an old red Cossack scarf around his neck, his hair was sopping wet, and he held his sleeping son in his arms.

  It was as if a magic spell had been cast over the child, keeping him sheltered in his citadel of sleep. He was smiling, and his hand clutched a blue handkerchief.

  The father said a few words.

  The nanny translated for Gio.

  “He’ll take you to it provided you don’t touch a single one of the three of us. Swear you won’t.”

  The pirates looked at one another.

  “Swear,” she insisted.

  Gio was the first to swear, touching his medallion. His eyes were bloodshot.

  The father thought for a moment. What was it worth, the word of a man possessed?

/>   The two others made the sign of the cross.

  Delicately, the father finally entrusted his child to the nanny.

  He kissed his son’s hair. He walked backward so that he would keep seeing him for as long as possible. His hand was gently held out toward him. His soaked waistcoat, embroidered with gold thread, gleamed in the lamplight. He kept mouthing the words “I’ll be right back” over and over again. Then he vanished into the darkness, beyond the stern, followed by Gio and one of the others.

  They had left the nurse and child with the pirate who hadn’t spoken a word since the beginning. He was a tall, thickset man in a crude pigskin jacket that still had traces of black bristles on it. Slung over his shoulder was the rope he’d used to board the boat.

  Just then the child woke up. He looked at the man, who averted his gaze.

  “Sleep a little longer,” the nanny kept saying to her charge. “Sleep, my angel.”

  The minutes ticked by.

  They were sitting on a bundle of oars and planks tied together.

  Every now and then, the nanny would glance at the tall fellow with the shoulder-length hair. Their lives were in his hands.

  He was their only hope.

  “Your friend will kill us,” she said. “You know that your friend’s going to kill us.”

  The man pointed his gun at the woman. She spoke Italian the way they speak it in the northern towns.

  “He swore,” he barked.

  “He swore on the Madonna,” she replied, “but he had a mother’s blood still fresh on his hands.”

  The man was petrified.

  “When he’s got what he wants,” she went on, “he will kill the father of this child. You’ll hear the sound of the shot to the rear, and it will already be too late. It’ll be our turn next.”

  “Be quiet — that’s enough!”

  “That’s what’s going to happen.”

  “Shut up!”

  The child was listening to what they were saying. He was sitting bolt upright. He kept his lips tightly shut so they couldn’t see his teeth chattering.

  The man in front of him looked like an ogre. It was hard to know where his sweat stopped and the rain began. He was straining his ears.

  “Listen,” the nanny said.

  The wind started to drop.

  After a long pause, they heard the gunshot.

  The pirate leaped to his feet with a roar.

  He pushed the woman and the child aside, bent down to the deck, managed to lift up the bundle of wooden planks, went over to the edge of the bridge, and hurled the raft into the water. The timber clattered against the hull.

  The ogre made the woman lower herself down with the rope. He took the little boy in his arms and threw him toward the waves. The nanny caught him before he plunged into the black water. With the other arm, she was clinging to the wooden raft for dear life.

  The ogre was watching them.

  A wave carried them off.

  Just then, the others appeared with a haunted look in their eyes. Gio was carrying a duffel bag that was almost full. His body kept going into spasms. He was laughing. The two pirates seemed roaringly drunk, despite not having had a drop to drink. They couldn’t even speak.

  Gio held on to the ogre’s clothes to stop himself from falling over.

  “Look!”

  Trembling, he opened the bag and held his flare over it.

  “Look!” he boomed again.

  All three of them stepped back.

  The whole bag was gleaming with gold and precious stones. The rain added fiery pearls to the mix.

  “Look! Look!”

  Treasure. Treasure just like in the storybooks.

  Gio was whooping at this spectacle.

  He plunged his hand in, all the way up to his shoulder.

  “And the man?” asked the ogre. “Where’s the man?”

  Gio simply flashed the Cossack scarf he’d tied around his neck, a crimson scarf with silver tassels.

  “He didn’t need it anymore,” he said, shaking his head like a demon.

  Gio burst out laughing and made for his boat, ranting, staggering, without even asking where the two hostages were. He had the bag slung over his shoulder, and he was defying the sky with his fist.

  Gio’s dreams were already drifting far from there.

  He was muttering about building a diamond-encrusted bridge that would stretch from the port of Malfa all the way to Manhattan.

  Once he was back in his small fishing boat and feeling a little calmer, Gio barked at the ogre, who had started to row next to him, “What’s your problem? You don’t even look happy!”

  Then he hurled an oil lamp over onto the big boat, where it smashed over the piles of hemp rigging. He threw in his flare for good measure.

  The fire gained hold of the stern bridge.

  Gio gave his blessing by tossing a handful of gold toward the fire, as if bidding farewell to a departing ocean liner.

  “Buon viaggio!”

  His two fellow pirates, who were facing the other way, were horrified.

  Only one end of the boat had time to burn. The hull was soon springing leaks. The painted star on the prow was the last thing to disappear. The sea and the storm took pity, engulfing the glimmering flames and memories before it was too late.

  Gio couldn’t stop laughing. One last time, before everything turned dark on the sea, he called out to the man rowing, “What’s your problem, eh? Why aren’t you happy? You and your donkey have a whole new life ahead of you!”

  Arkudah, September 20, 1935

  One day, when it was flying over the jungle that plunged into the sea at Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, the zeppelin had gotten very close to the treetops. So close, in fact, that Vango had brought on board one of the small monkeys with sideburns that had been staring at the airship, completely mystified.

  Hauled up by its tail into this gray cloud, the monkey wondered where it was. It had taken refuge in the saucepans of Otto the chef. For a few hours, it had been the spoiled child of the crew and the passengers.

  On their return leg, as they passed over Rio once again, Vango had released his simian friend into the creeperentangled branches on the sugarloaf mountain dominating the bay.

  Marco, the cook at the invisible monastery, was the spitting image of that monkey. He was hopping from one oven to another with a mock-scared look in his eye that was a cover for mischievousness. It was eleven o’clock.

  Marco was talking to Vango in the monastery kitchens.

  Brother Marco’s apron was cut from the same waxed cloth that covered the tables at his father’s trattoria in Mantua. He was wearing pink dancing slippers suited to the flurry of kitchens. His fingers were always stained with spices. He wore his sleeves rolled up and held in place by teaspoons bent in half, like tongs.

  On his forehead was a pair of glasses in the final stages of life, covered with string and sticky tape, glasses that had been ground down, washed out, worn out, as patched up as a bicycle attempting the Tour de France with a dairy cow on the back rack.

  “So, Zefiro didn’t show up when you were supposed to meet at the Gare d’Austerlitz?” he asked, rolling his eyes at Vango.

  Marco never spoke with empty hands. This time, despite the gravity of the situation, he was pummeling a fish.

  “No, Zefiro did come to the train station as planned,” Vango confirmed.

  “Well, then, where is he? Where is he?”

  Brother Marco sounded traumatized. He had taken on responsibility for the invisible monastery since Zefiro’s departure. He was itching to return the keys to its founder.

  “Where did he go?” Marco insisted.

  The poor fish was being subjected to a rough quarter of an hour.

  Vango had just arrived at the monastery. He had left Mademoiselle at her house in Pollara. She had collapsed before finishing her account of the final night. He had carried her to her bed. She had appealed to Vango for forgiveness, promising to finish the story the next day.


  “I’m begging you, dear Vango. I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  “But what about my father? Just tell me. . . . Did he . . . as well?”

  She had closed her tear-soaked eyes and nodded. Vango had stayed there for a long time with his forehead pressed against the pillow before being able to get up. Now he knew. He had finally pushed open the gates to the past. They opened onto a mixture of relief and pain. For him, any kind of grief was better than not knowing. Vango had a slightly better idea of the world he came from.

  He still had to find out the basic facts: the days and years that had preceded those events. His parents’ story before that stormy night. Where had they traveled from? Where were they going? Mademoiselle must know all that.

  She hadn’t told him anything about the three pirates, those men who had surely grown up in this very archipelago. What did they gain from their crime? Was there anything worth stealing from that boat? Seventeen years had gone by. They might be dead by now. Or not.

  Do not foster a desire for revenge.

  From now on, as far as Vango was concerned, that monastic rule no longer meant anything.

  Before leaving the hamlet of Pollara, a shaken Vango had promised Mademoiselle that he would return the following night. He had to break some painful news to the invisible monastery.

  “I’m going to tell you the truth, Brother Marco. I saw Zefiro at the Gare d’Austerlitz, but we didn’t leave together.”

  “Why?” Marco wanted to know as he opened the wood oven. “Why were you both so stupid?”

  A huge basket of freshly cut herbs scented the room.

  Brother Marco picked up the fish with his monkeylike hands.

  Vango had noticed the way he always stared his dishes in the eye before popping them in the oven. This was Marco’s furtive homage to his fellow creatures — whether they had scales, fur, or feathers — before he cooked them with a vengeance.

  “Something odd happened,” Vango went on.

  “Pass me the salt.”

  Vango did as he was told. Catching his eye, Brother Marco exclaimed, “What’s the matter? I know you think I always add too much salt! Well, so what? I’m no culinary genius. I just turn out tasty home cooking!”