Kate DiCamillo: The Magician's Elephant

“No. Yes.”

“Which is it, please? No? Or yes?”

“Sir, have you yourself ever told a lie?” said Peter.

“I?”

“Yes,” said Peter. “You. Sir.”

Vilna Lutz sat up straighter in his chair. He raised a hand and stroked his beard, tracing the line of it, making certain that the hairs were arranged just so, that they came together in a fine, military point. At last he said, “You who spend money that is not yours – you who spend the money of others like a fool – you will speak to me of who lies?”

“I am sorry, sir,” said Peter.

“I am quite certain that you are,” said Vilna Lutz. “You are also dismissed.” He picked up his papers. He held the battle plan up to the light of the candle and muttered to himself, “So, and it must be so, and then … so.”

Later that night, when the candle was quenched and the room was in darkness and the old soldier was snoring in his bed, Peter Augustus Duchene lay on his pallet on the floor and looked up at the ceiling and thought, He lies; she lies; he lies; she lies.

Someone lies, but I do not know who.

If she lies, with her ridiculous talk of elephants, then I am, as Vilna Lutz said, a fool – a fool who believes that an elephant will appear and lead me to a sister who is dead.

But if he lies, then my sister is alive.

His heart thumped.

If he lies, then Adele lives.

“I hope that he lies,” said Peter aloud to the darkness.

And his heart, startled at such treachery, astonished at the voicing aloud of such an unsoldierly sentiment, thumped again, much harder this time.

Not far from the Apartments Polonaise, across the rooftops and through the darkness of the winter night, stood the Bliffendorf Opera House, and that evening upon its stage, a magician of advanced years and failing reputation performed the most astonishing magic of his career.

He intended to conjure a bouquet of lilies, but instead the magician brought forth an elephant.

The elephant came crashing through the ceiling of the opera house amid a shower of plaster dust and roofing tiles and landed in the lap of a noblewoman, a certain Madam Bettine LaVaughn, to whom the magician had intended to present the bouquet.

Madam LaVaughn’s legs were crushed. She was thereafter confined to a wheelchair and given to exclaiming often, and in a voice of wonder, in the midst of some conversation that had nothing at all to do with elephants or roofs, “But perhaps you do not understand. I was crippled by an elephant! Crippled by an elephant that came through the roof!”

As for the magician, he was immediately, at the behest of Madam LaVaughn, imprisoned.

The elephant was imprisoned too.

She was locked in a stable. A chain was wrapped around her left ankle. The chain was attached to an iron rod planted firmly in the earth.

At first, the elephant felt one thing and one thing only: dizzy. If she turned her head too quickly to the right or the left, she was aware of the world spinning in a truly alarming manner. So she did not turn her head. She closed her eyes and kept them closed.

There was, all about her, a great hubbub and roar. The elephant ignored it. She wanted nothing more than for the world to hold itself still.

After a few hours, the dizziness passed. The elephant opened her eyes and looked around her and realized that she did not know where she was.

She knew only one thing to be true.

Where she was was not where she should be.

Where she was was not where she belonged.

The day after the night that the elephant arrived, Peter was again at the market square. The fortuneteller’s tent was gone, and Peter had been entrusted with another florit. The old soldier had talked at great length and in excruciating detail about what Peter had to purchase with the coin. Bread, for one, and it should be bread that was at least a day old, two days old preferably, but three-day-old bread, if he could find it, would be the best of all.

“Actually, see if you cannot locate bread with mould growing on it,” said Vilna Lutz. “Old bread is a most excellent preparation for being a soldier. Soldiers must become accustomed to rock-hard bread that is difficult to chew. It makes for strong teeth. And strong teeth make for a strong heart and therefore a brave soldier. Yes, yes, I believe it to be true. I know it to be true.”

How hard bread and strong teeth and a strong heart were connected was a mystery to Peter, but as Vilna Lutz spoke to him that morning, it became increasingly obvious that the old soldier was once again in the grip of a fever and that not much sense would be had from him.

“You must ask the fishmonger for two fish and no more,” Vilna Lutz said. Sweat shone on his forehead. His beard was damp. Ask him for the smallest ones. “Ask him for the fish that others would turn away. Why, you must ask him for those fish that the other fish are embarrassed even to refer to as fish! Come back with the smallest fish, but do not – do not, I repeat – come back to me empty-handed with the lies of fortunetellers upon your lips! I correct myself! I correct myself! To say ‘the lies of fortunetellers’ is a redundancy. What comes from the mouths of fortunetellers is by definition a lie; and you, Private Duchene, you must, you must , find the smallest possible fish.”

So Peter stood in the market square, in line at the fishmonger’s, thinking of the fortuneteller and his sister and elephants and fevers and exceptionally small fish. He also thought of lies and who told them and who did not and what it meant to be a soldier, honourable and true. And because of all the thoughts in his head, he was listening with only half an ear to the story that the fishmonger was telling to the woman ahead of him in line.

Well, he wasn’t much of a magician, and none of them was expecting much, you see – that’s the thing. Nothing was expected.” The fishmonger wiped his hands on his apron. “He hadn’t promised them nothing special, and they wasn’t expecting it neither.”

“Who expects something special nowadays anyway?” said the woman. “Not me. I’ve worn myself out expecting something special.” She pointed to a large fish. “Give me one of them mackerels, why don’t you?”

“Mackerel it is,” said the fishmonger, slinging the creature onto the scales. It was a very large fish. Vilna Lutz would not have approved.

Peter surveyed the fishmonger’s selection. His stomach growled. He was hungry, and he was worried. He could not see anything alarmingly small enough to please the old soldier.

“And also give me catfish,” said the woman. “Three of them. I want ‘em with the whiskers longish, don’t I? Tastier that way.”

The fishmonger put three catfish on the scales. “In any case,” he continued, “they was all sitting there, the nobility, the ladies and the princes and the princesses, all together in the opera house, expecting nothing much. And what did they get?”

“I don’t even pretend to know,” said the woman. “What fancy people get is most surely a mystery to me.”

Peter shifted nervously from foot to foot. He wondered what would happen to him if he did not bring home a fish that was sufficiently small. There was no predicting what Vilna Lutz would say or do when he was in the grip of one of his terrible recurring fevers.

“Well, they wasn’t expecting an elephant – that much is for true.”

“An elephant!” said the woman.

“An elephant?” said Peter. At the sound of the impossible word on the lips of another, he felt a shock travel from the tip of his feet to the top of his head. He stepped backwards.

“An elephant!” said the fishmonger. “Come right through the ceiling of the opera house, landed on top of a noblewoman named LaVaughn.”