The smile deserted Zorelli’s lips. He studied the specter. Was he speaking of foul play? Naturally, he’d heard of such things. But the polished Boccas? The thought was absurd.
Nervously, Zorelli clutched the reins, guiding the wagon down the road toward its unknown destination.
“I recall that you mentioned working with Vito Varentino as well,” he spoke up. “Employed in matters of state, I believe.”
“Aye, matters of state,” said the ghost.
Zorelli smiled respectfully. “Of what sort, if I may be so bold?”
“Finding out,” said the spirit matter-of-factly.
“Finding out?”
“That’s right,” the ghost replied. “Whatever the old man wanted to know. Listening behind doors, searching rooms, paying the servants for what they knew. Aye, he kept me busy, he did.”
Zorelli stared at the specter in shock. Varentino, the renowned thinker and statesman — secretly engaging spies? Surely this mist of a man was lying. And yet, the sculptor asked himself, why should a ghost depart from the truth?
“Turn off to the left there,” commanded the spirit. “Aye, that’s where my poor bones be.”
“Your bones?” said Zorelli. “Why here, of all places?”
“I wasn’t consulted in the matter,” snapped the ghost.
Zorelli guided the horses off the road and into a rocky meadow.
“Dead ahead, there. Aye, that’s the spot.”
The wagon banged and bounced over the ground, till Zorelli brought it at last to a halt.
“Fine!” exclaimed the spirit, hopping down. “The earth being soft as it is from the rains, I thought you could tip out the statue feet first and let it plant itself in the ground.”
Zorelli climbed into the bed of the wagon, anxious to be rid of the statue and its subject. He breathed in deeply, and with the sum of his strength shoved the sculpture along the bed till it teetered, swung upright, and plunged into the earth.
“Well done,” cheered the spirit. “Well done, indeed.” Smiling, he studied the statue before him, running his fingers over the forms.
“Perfect!” he whispered. “Already I can feel it!” Blissfully, he gazed at the marble.
“Is this to be your gravestone?” asked Zorelli.
“In a manner of speaking,” murmured the spirit. He reached into a pocket, pulled out a coin purse, and handed it to Zorelli.
“The rest of your payment. You’ll find it all there.”
Zorelli watched, flattered and awed, as the ghost returned his gaze to the statue. Mounting the wagon and grabbing the reins, the sculptor felt suddenly loath to leave.
“If I might ask but one question,” Zorelli spoke up. “Why was it you wished to be shown feeding an infant?”
The spirit turned. “I wasn’t feeding the tyke.” He fixed his eyes on the stone carver. “On the contrary, I was murdering it.”
“Murdering?” gasped Zorelli.
“That’s right. The cup I put to its lips held poison.”
Zorelli stared at the ghost, speechless. He felt suddenly weak. His hands took to trembling. A murderer — celebrated in stone? Stone that he, Zorelli, had carved?
“Whatever — possessed you,” stammered the sculptor, “to pay to have such a scene depicted?”
The specter smiled, “A peaceful sleep. I was murdered myself, you see, that same night. Before I had time to get home to my cat and properly confess my crime.”
Zorelli’s thoughts whirled. “The cat?”
“That’s right.” The spirit’s eyes brightened. “The one you carved. Oh, he was a fine companion, and whenever I did something that troubled my sleep, I told him about it. Aye, and slept sound.”
Zorelli’s gaze rested on the cat, then slowly traveled up the statue.
“And the infant?” he faltered, struggling with the words.
“Just six months old. Alessandro, they called him.”
“His full name!” the stone carver demanded, determined to know the full truth of the crime.
“Alessandro Ferrante.”
The sculptor paled. “Lorenzo’s nephew?”
“Aye, that’s him.”
“Impossible!” Zorelli jumped to the ground. “He died of a cold! A chill in the night! I carved the tomb for the child myself!”
The specter snorted. “A chill, was it now?” He grinned, revealing his crooked teeth. “It was Lorenzo himself who paid me to do it. Paid me those ducats I gave to you.” He glanced at the rip down the front of his doublet. “And him who had me stabbed, as well.”
In disbelief, Zorelli plucked out the coin purse and gaped at it in horror.
“Lorenzo Ferrante?” he murmured hypnotically. Wide-eyed, the stone carver stared at the coin purse, begging to disbelieve his own words.
“Aye.” The ghost chuckled. “That’s the one. How else could he come to rule Genoa?”
Zorelli stood motionless. He felt chilled and stiff, as if his own flesh were turning to stone.
Slowly, he climbed back onto the wagon and settled his gaze on the ghost. Dazed and disoriented, Zorelli finally took up the reins, shook them, and left the ghost behind.
As if spellbound, the stone carver bounced along. While he entered Genoa, the moon rose in the east, illuminating the Boccas’ mansion, before which Zorelli paused awhile. It lit the Varentinos’ villa as well, where the sculptor halted once again. He passed the fine homes of his other fine patrons, then brought the wagon to a stop at the plaza. In the stillness he gazed at his statue of Lorenzo, astride his steed, glowing in the moonlight.
Shaking the reins, he drove on to the harbor. And there the sculptor climbed down from the wagon, shuffled out to the end of a wharf, and dropped the coin purse into the sea.
Ruing stone’s durability, he scanned the horizon and smiled to see clouds. Then he turned around, walked back to the wagon, mounted, and urged the horses homeward. And that night Zorelli the stone carver fervently prayed for rain.
I have two predictions to make: (1) Some of you reading this will write books of your own. (2) Those who do will be barraged with the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” Understandably. The mystery of something coming out of nothing fascinates us. Dr. Seuss used to reply that he bought his ideas from a supply house in Ohio. It’s a question with quite a few right answers. Consider the three stories gathered here.
I’d been writing a book about sealers — the men who scoured the South Atlantic in the nineteenth century for seals. That book struck a rock and sank in chapter 3. But one detail from my research stuck in my memory: the photograph of a binnacle boy. A binnacle is the metal housing for a ship’s compass. And in that age of ornament, rather than merely mounting it on a stand, sometimes it was held by a boy carved from wood. The boy in the photo wore a cap bearing the words MIND YOUR HELM. But it was the caption that captured me. It said that the eyes of this particular binnacle boy were believed by the sailors to move and follow them. The crew finally demanded that the carving be removed.
Like many writers, I keep a notebook of ideas. I entered the binnacle boy under “Story Ideas.” In biology, fertilization usually takes two parties; I’ve often found it to be the same with books. About that time, I chanced to watch a television show about South America — and what should I see but a long line of people waiting to approach the statue of a saint, into whose ear they whispered their prayers.
That statue heard wishes. But what about a statue that heard secrets, one that held an entire town’s hidden thoughts and deeds? I thought back to the binnacle boy. And then began that marvelous magnetism that writers exult in, when an idea draws toward it all manner of memories and materials that suddenly have a role to play. I remembered the year I’d lived across the street from a school for the deaf. I remembered my own years in New England, living in a house built in 1770. I recalled a mention of sailors’ prodigious tea-drinking. I was reading the Old Testament at the time and had an idea in my notebook for a character who took on godlike airs.
A collection with only two stories? And what about the repetition of statues? I couldn’t figure out what to do about that fatal flaw, until one day it hit me: Turn it to advantage. Write another story about a statue — a comedy of errors to provide variety of tone — and put the three together in one book. Some ideas are brought into being simply out of need, as writers soon discover. You might have little interest in writing about a butler, but if you want him to be one of the murder suspects, you find yourself adding him to the cast.
Graven Images might have gone unpublished. Its length suggested grammar school, but its reading level was higher. Collections of short stories were quite rare. The mix of supernaturalism with historical research and comedy with tragedy was unusual. I was lucky in having Charlotte Zolotow as my editor — a believer in letting her authors’ talents unfold according to their own laws rather than the market’s dictates. When it was named a Newbery Honor Book, her vision was confirmed. At the time, she was considering an even stranger manuscript of mine — a book of poems about birds scored for two voices. She decided to take it, and a few years later published its sequel, Joyful Noise, which won the Newbery Medal. Some books open a door for the author onto another book. Graven Images opened onto the rest of my career.
This book holds a special place on my secret shelf for another reason. Though it was my third book published, it was the sixth I wrote, not counting the sealing book and others never finished. Every author is a melting pot of earlier authors, and for years I’d been reaching for this particular sound and style — a mix of Greek myths and Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe and Dylan Thomas, and many others. Finally, in this book, I’d grasped it. I can still recall that private jubilation. It’s a feeling no one else can give you, and no one can take away.
A third prediction: Some of you will know that feeling. Just typing those words, I find myself smiling for you.
PAUL FLEISCHMAN received a Newbery Honor for Graven Images, then went on to win the Newbery Medal for Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices. Since then, he has crafted an ever more innovative library of books, including Zap, a play for high-school students that intertwines seven plays in one, and Dateline: Troy, which juxtaposes an absorbing account of the Trojan War with newspaper clippings of modern events from the First World War to the War on Terror. He is also the author of several picture books, including Weslandia, illustrated by Kevin Hawkes; The Birthday Tree, illustrated by Barry Root; The Dunderheads and The Dunderheads Behind Bars, illustrated by David Roberts; and The Animal Hedge and The Matchbox Diary, both illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline. Paul Fleischman lives in Aromas, California.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either
products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 1982 by Paul Fleischman
Afterword copyright © 2006 by Paul Fleischman
Illustrations copyright © 2006 by Bagram Ibatoulline
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First Candlewick Press electronic edition 2014
First published in 1982 by Harper & Row
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fleischman, Paul.
Graven images : three stories / by Paul Fleischman;
illustrations by Bagram Ibatoulline.
p. cm.
Summary: A collection of three stories about a child who reads the lips of those who whisper secrets into a statue’s ear; a daydreaming shoemaker’s apprentice who must find ways to make the girl he loves notice him; and a stone carver who creates a statue of a ghost.
ISBN 978-0-7636-2775-1 (hardcover)
1. Children’s stories, American. [1. Statues — Fiction.
2. Supernatural — Fiction.] I. Ibatoulline, Bagram, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.F59918Gr 2006
[Fic] — dc22 2005054283
ISBN 978-0-7636-2984-7 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-7636-7427-4 (electronic)
The illustrations were done in acryl gouache.
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