The Magician's Elephant
Page 7
As the snow fell, Sister Marie, who sat by the door at the Orphanage of the Sisters of Perpetual Light, dreamed, too.
She dreamed that she was flying high over the world, her habit spread out on either side of her like dark wings.
She was terribly pleased, because she had always, secretly, deep within her heart, believed that she could fly. And now here she was, doing what she had long suspected she could do, and she could not deny that it was gratifying in the extreme.
Sister Marie looked down at the world below her and saw millions and millions of stars and thought, I am not flying over the earth at all. Why, I am flying higher than that. I am flying over the very tops of the stars. I am looking down at the sky.
And then she realized that no, no, it was the earth that she was flying over, and that she was looking not at the stars but at the creatures of the world, and that they were all, they were each — beggars, dogs, orphans, kings, elephants, soldiers — emitting pulses of light.
The whole of creation glowed.
Sister Marie’s heart grew large in her chest, and her heart, expanding in such a way, allowed her to fly higher and then higher still — but no matter how high she flew, she never lost sight of the glowing earth below her.
“Oh,” said Sister Marie out loud in her sleep, in her chair by the door, “how wonderful. Didn’t I know it? I did. I did. I knew it all along.”
Hans Ickman pushed Madam LaVaughn’s wheelchair, and Leo Matienne had hold of Peter’s hand. The four of them moved quickly through the snowy streets. They were heading to the home of the countess.
“I do not understand,” said Madam LaVaughn. “I find this all highly irregular.”
“I believe the time has come,” said Hans Ickman.
“The time? The time? The time for what?” said Madam LaVaughn. “Do not speak to me in riddles.”
“The time for you to return to the prison.”
“But it is the middle of the night, and the prison is that way,” said Madam LaVaughn, flinging a heavily bejeweled hand behind her. “The prison is in entirely the opposite direction.”
“There is something else that we must tend to first,” said Leo Matienne.
“And what is that?” said Madam LaVaughn.
“We must retrieve the elephant from the home of the countess,” said Peter, “and take her to the magician.”
“Retrieve the elephant?” said Madam LaVaughn. “Retrieve the elephant? Take the elephant to the magician? Is he mad? Is the boy mad? Is the policeman mad? Has everyone gone mad?”
“Yes,” said Hans Ickman after a long moment. “I believe that is the case. Everyone has gone a little mad.”
“Oh,” said Madam LaVaughn, “very well. I see.”
They were silent together then: the noblewoman and her servant, the policeman and the boy walking beside him. There was only the sound of the wheelchair moving through the snow and three pairs of footsteps striking the muffled cobblestones.
It was Madam LaVaughn who at last broke the silence. “Highly irregular,” she said, “but quite interesting, very interesting indeed. Why, it seems as if anything could happen, anything at all.”
“Exactly,” said Hans Ickman.
In the prison, in his small cell, the magician paced back and forth. “And if they succeed?” he said. “If they manage, somehow, to bring the elephant here? Then there is no helping it. I must speak the words. I must try to cast the spell again. I must work to send her back.”
The magician paused in his pacing and looked up and out his window and was amazed to see snowflake after snowflake dancing through the air.
“Oh, look,” he said, even though he was alone. “It is snowing — how beautiful.”
The magician stood very still. He stared at the falling snow.
And suddenly, he did not care at all that he would have to undo the greatest thing he had ever done.
He had been so lonely, so desperately, hopelessly lonely for so long. He might very well spend the rest of his life in prison, alone. And he understood that what he wanted now was something much simpler, much more complicated than the magic he had performed. What he wanted was to turn to somebody and take hold of their hand and look up with them and marvel at the snow falling from the sky.
“This,” he wanted to say to someone he loved and who loved him in return. “This.”
Peter and Leo Matienne and Hans Ickman and Madam LaVaughn stood outside the home of the countess Quintet; they stared together at the massive, imposing elephant door.
“Oh,” said Peter.
“We will knock,” said Leo Matienne. “That is where we will begin, with knocking.”
“Yes,” said Hans Ickman. “We will knock.”
The three of them stepped forward and began to pound on the door.
Time stopped.
Peter had a terrible feeling that the whole of his life had been nothing but standing and knocking, asking to be let into some place that he was not even certain existed.
His fingers were cold. His knuckles hurt. The snow fell harder and faster.
“Perhaps this is a dream,” said Madam LaVaughn from her chair. “Perhaps the whole thing has been nothing but a dream.”
Peter remembered the door in the wheat field. He remembered holding Adele. And then he remembered the terrible, heartbroken look in the elephant’s eyes.
“Please!” he shouted. “Please, you must let us in.”
“Please!” shouted Leo Matienne.
“Yes,” said Hans Ickman, “please.”
And from the other side of the door came the screech of a dead bolt being thrown. And then another and another. And slowly, as if it were reluctant to do so, the door began to open. A small, bent man appeared. He stepped outside and looked up at the falling snow and laughed.
“Yes,” he said. “You knocked?”
And then he laughed again.
Bartok Whynn laughed even harder when Peter told him why they had come.
“You want — ha, ha, hee — to take the elephant from here to the — ha, ha, hee, wheeeeee — to the magician in prison so that the magician may perform the magic to send the elephant — wheeeeee — home?”
He laughed so hard that he lost his balance and had to sit down in the snow.
“Whatever is so funny?” said Madam LaVaughn. “You must tell us so that we may laugh along with you.”
“You may laugh along with me,” said Bartok Whynn, “only if you find it funny to — ha, ha, hee — think of me dead. Imagine if the countess were to wake tomorrow and find that her elephant had disappeared, and that I, Bartok Whynn, was the one — ha, ha, hee — who had allowed the beast to be spirited away?”
The little man was shaken by a hilarity so profound that his laughter disappeared altogether, and no sound at all came from his open mouth.
“But what if you were not here, either?” said Leo Matienne. “What if you, too, were gone on the morrow?”
“What is that?” said Bartok Whynn. “What did you — ha, ha, hee — say?”
“I said,” said Leo Matienne, “what if you, like the elephant, were gone to the place you were meant, after all, to be?”
Bartok Whynn stared up at Leo Matienne and Hans Ickman and Peter and Madam LaVaughn. They were all holding very still, waiting. He held still, too, and considered them, gathered together there in the falling snow.
And in the silence he at last recognized them.
They were the figures from his dream.
In the ballroom of the countess Quintet, when the elephant opened her eyes and saw the boy standing before her, she was not at all surprised.
She thought simply, You. Yes, you. I knew that you would come for me.
It was the snow that woke the dog. He lifted his head. He sniffed.
Snow, yes. But there was another smell, the scent of something wild and large.
Iddo got to his feet. He stood at attention, his tail quivering.
He barked. And then he barked again louder.
&nbs
p; “Shhh,” said Tomas.
But the dog would not be silenced.
Something incredible was approaching. He knew it, absolutely, to be true. Something wonderful was going to happen, and he would be the one to announce it. He barked and barked and barked.
He worked with the whole of his heart to deliver the message.
Iddo barked.
Upstairs, in the dorm room of the Orphanage of the Sisters of Perpetual Light, Adele heard the dog barking. She got out of bed and walked to the window and looked out and saw the snow dancing and twirling and spinning in the light of the street lamp.
“Snow,” she said, “just like in the dream.” She leaned her elbows on the windowsill and looked out at the whitening world.
And then, through the curtain of falling snow, Adele saw the elephant. She was walking down the street. She was following a boy. There was a policeman and a man pushing a woman in a wheelchair and a small man who was bent sideways. And the beggar was there with them, and so was the black dog.
“Oh,” said Adele.
She did not doubt her eyes. She did not wonder if she was dreaming. She simply turned from the window and ran in her bare feet down the dark stairway and into the great room and from there into the hallway and past the sleeping Sister Marie. She threw wide the door to the orphanage.
“Here!” she shouted. “Here I am!”
The black dog came running toward her through the snow. He danced circles around her, barking, barking, barking.
It was as if he were saying, “Here you are at last. We have been waiting for you. And here, at last, you are.”
“Yes,” said Adele to the dog, “here I am.”
The draft from the open door woke Sister Marie.
“The door is unlocked!” she shouted. “The door is always and forever unlocked. You must simply knock.”
When she was fully awake, Sister Marie saw that the door was, in fact, wide open and that beyond the door, in the darkness, snow was falling. She got up from her chair and went to pull the door closed and saw that there was an elephant in the street.
“Preserve us,” said Sister Marie.
And then she saw Adele standing in the snow, in her nightgown and with no shoes on her feet.
“Adele!” Sister Marie shouted. “Adele!”
But it was not Adele who turned to look at her. It was a boy with a hat in his hands.
“Adele?” he said.
He spoke the name as if it were a question and an answer both, and his face was alight with wonder.
The whole of him, in fact, shone like one of the bright stars from Sister Marie’s dream.
He picked her up because it was snowing and it was cold and her feet were bare and because he had promised their mother long ago that he would always take care of her.
“Adele,” he said. “Adele.”
“Who are you?” she said.
“I am your brother.”
“My brother?”
“Yes.”
She smiled at him, a sweet smile of disbelief that turned suddenly to belief and then to joy. “My brother,” she said. “What is your name?”
“Peter.”
“Peter,” she said. And then again, “Peter. Peter. And you brought the elephant.”
“Yes,” said Peter. “I brought her. Or she brought me, but in any case, it is all the same and just as the fortuneteller said.” He laughed and turned. “Leo Matienne,” he shouted, “this is my sister!”
“I know,” said Leo Matienne. “I can see.”
“Who is it?” said Madam LaVaughn. “Who is she?”
“The boy’s sister,” said Hans Ickman.
“I don’t understand,” said Madam LaVaughn.
“It’s the impossible,” said Hans Ickman. “The impossible has happened again.”
Sister Marie walked out through the open door of the Orphanage of the Sisters of Perpetual Light and into the snowy street. She stood next to Leo Matienne.
“It is, after all, a wonderful thing to dream of an elephant,” she said to Leo, “and then to have the dream come true.”
“Yes,” said Leo Matienne, “yes, it must be.”
Bartok Whynn, who stood beside the nun and the policeman, opened his mouth to laugh and then found that he could not. “I must —” he said. “I must —” But he did not finish the sentence.
The elephant, meanwhile, stood in the falling snow and waited.
It was Adele who remembered her and said to her brother, “Surely the elephant must be cold. Where is she going? Where are you taking her?”
“Home,” said Peter. “We are taking her home.”
Peter walked in front of the elephant. He carried Adele. Next to Peter walked Leo Matienne. Behind the elephant was Madam LaVaughn in her wheelchair, pushed by Hans Ickman, who was, in turn, followed by Bartok Whynn, and behind him was the beggar, Tomas, with Iddo at his heels. At the very end was Sister Marie, who for the first time in fifty years was not at the door of the Orphanage of the Sisters of Perpetual Light.
Peter led them, and as he walked through the snowy streets, each lamppost, each doorway, each tree, each gate, each brick leaped out at him and spoke to him. All the things of the world were things of wonder that whispered to him the same thing. Each object spoke the words of the fortuneteller and the hope of his heart that had turned out, after all, to be true: she lives, she lives, she lives.
And she did live! Her breath was warm on his cheek.
She weighed nothing.
Peter could have happily carried her in his arms for all eternity.
The cathedral clock tolled midnight. A few minutes after the last note, the magician heard the great outer door of the prison open and then close again. The sound of footsteps echoed down the corridor. The steps were accompanied by the jangle of keys.
“Who comes now?” shouted the magician. “Announce yourself!”
There was no answer, only footsteps and the light from the lantern. And then the policeman came into view. He stood in front of the magician’s cell and held up the keys and said, “They await you outside.”
“Who?” said the magician. “Who awaits me?” His heart thumped in disbelief.
“Everyone,” said Leo Matienne.
“You succeeded? You brought the elephant here? And Madam LaVaughn as well?”
“Yes,” said the policeman.
“Merciful,” said the magician. “Oh, merciful. And now it must be undone. Now I must try to undo it.”
“Yes, now it all rests upon you,” said Leo. He inserted the key into the lock and turned it and pushed open the door to the magician’s cell.
“Come,” said Leo Matienne. “We are, all of us, waiting.”
There is as much magic in making things disappear as there is in making them appear. More, perhaps. The undoing is almost always more difficult than the doing.
The magician knew this full well, and so when he stepped outside into the cold and snowy night, free for the first time in months, he felt no joy. Instead, he was afraid. What if he tried and failed again?
And then he saw the elephant, the magnificence of her, the reality of her, standing there in the snow.
She was so improbable, so beautiful, so magical.
But no matter, it would have to be done. He would have to try.
“There,” said Madam LaVaughn to Adele, who was in the noblewoman’s lap, wrapped up tight and warm, “there he is. That is the magician.”
“He does not look like a bad man,” said Adele. “He looks sad.”
“Yes, well, I am crippled,” said Madam LaVaughn, “and that, I assure you, goes somewhat beyond sadness.”
“Madam,” said the magician. He turned away from the elephant and bowed to Madam LaVaughn.
“Yes?” she said to him.
“I intended lilies,” said the magician.
“Perhaps you do not understand,” said Madam LaVaughn.
“Please,” said Hans Ickman, “please, I beg you! Speak from your hearts.”
“But will I walk again?” said Madam LaVaughn.
“I do not think so,” said the magician. “But I beg you to forgive me. I hope that you will forgive me.”
She looked at him.
“Truly, I did not intend to harm you,” he said. “That was never my intention.”
Madam LaVaughn sniffed. She looked away.
“Please,” said Peter, “the elephant. It is so cold, and she needs to go home, where it is warm. Can you not do your magic now?”
“Very well,” said the magician. He bowed again to Madam LaVaughn. He turned to the elephant. “You must, all of you, step away, step back. Step back.”
Peter put his hand on the elephant. He let it rest there for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said to her. “And I thank you for what you did. Thank you and good-bye.” And then he stepped away from her, too.
The magician walked, circling the elephant and muttering to himself. He thought about the star on view from his prison cell. He thought about the snow falling at last, and how what he had wanted more than anything was to show it to someone. He thought about Madam LaVaughn’s face looking up into his, questioning, hoping.
And then he began to speak the words of the spell. He said the words backward, and he said the spell backward, too. He said it, all of it, under his breath, with the profound hope that it would well and truly work, and with the knowledge, too, that there was only so much, after all, that could be undone, even by magicians.
He spoke the words.
The snow stopped.
The sky became suddenly, miraculously clear, and for a moment the stars, too many of them to count, shone bright. The planet Venus sat among them, glowing solemnly.
It was Sister Marie who noticed. “Look there,” she said. “Look up.” She pointed at the sky. They all looked: Bartok Whynn, Tomas, Hans Ickman, Madam LaVaughn, Leo Matienne, Adele.