Kate DiCamillo: The Magician's Elephant

The chief pulled very hard at his hair.

“Leave me,” he said softly. “All of you. I will solve this without your help.”

One by one, the policemen left the police station.

The small policeman was the last to go. He lifted his hat to the chief.

“I wish you a good evening, sir,” he said, “and I beg that you consider the idea that the elephant is guilty of nothing except being an elephant.”

“Leave me,” said the chief of police, “please.”

“Good evening, sir,” said Leo Matienne again. “Good evening.”

The small policeman walked home in the gloom of early evening. As he walked, he whistled a sad song and considered the fate of the elephant.

To his mind, the chief was asking the wrong questions.

The questions that mattered, the questions that needed to be asked, were these: where did the elephant come from? And what did it mean that she had come to the city of Baltese?

What if she was just the first in a series of elephants? What if, one by one, all the mammals and reptiles of Africa were to be summoned to the stages of opera houses all across Europe?

What if, next, crocodiles and giraffes and rhinoceroses came crashing through roofs?

Leo Matienne had the soul of a poet, and because of this, he liked very much to consider questions that had no answers.

He liked to ask “What if?” and “Why not?” and “Could it possibly be? ”

Leo came to the top of the hill and paused. Below him the lamplighter was lighting the lamps that lined the wide avenue. Leo Matienne stood and watched as, one by one, the globes sprang to life.

What if the elephant had come bearing a message of great importance?

What if everything was to be irrevocably, undeniably changed by the elephant’s arrival?

Leo stood at the top of the hill and waited for a long while, until the avenue below him was well and fully lit, and then he continued walking down the hill and onto the lighted path, towards his home.

He whistled as he walked.

What if? Why not? Could it be? sang the glowing, wondering heart of Leo Matienne.

What if?

Why not?

Could it be?

Peter stood at the window of the attic room of the Apartments Polonaise. He heard Leo Matienne before he saw him; always, because of the whistling, Peter heard Leo before he saw him.

He waited until the policeman appeared, and then he threw open the window and stuck his head out. He shouted, “Leo Matienne, is it true that there is an elephant and that she came through the roof and that she is now with the police?”

Leo stopped. He looked up.

“Peter,” he said. He smiled. “Peter Augustus Duchene, fellow resident of the Apartments Polonaise, little cuckoo bird of the attic world. There is indeed an elephant. It is true. And it is true, also, that she is in the custody of the police. The elephant is imprisoned.”

“Where?” said Peter.

“I cannot say,” said Leo Matienne. “I cannot say, because I am afraid that I do not know. They are keeping it the strictest possible secret, you see, what with elephants being such dangerous and provoking criminals.”

“Close the window,” called Vilna Lutz from his bed. “It is winter, and it is cold.”

It was winter, true.

And true, also, it was quite cold.

But even in the summertime, Vilna Lutz, when he was in the grip of his strange fever, would complain of the cold and demand that the window be shut.

“Thank you,” said Peter to Leo Matienne. He closed the window and turned and faced the old man.

“What were you speaking of?” said Vilna Lutz. “What manner of nonsense were you shouting from windows?”

“An elephant, sir,” said Peter. “It is true. Leo Matienne says that it is true. An elephant has arrived. An elephant is here.”

“Elephants,” said Vilna Lutz. “Pooh. Imaginary beasts, denizens of bestiaries, demons from who knows where.” He fell back against the pillow, exhausted by his diatribe, and then jerked suddenly upright again. “Hark! Do I hear the crack of muskets, the boom of cannon?”

“No, sir,” said Peter. “You do not.”

“Demons, elephants, imaginary beasts.”

“Not imaginary,” said Peter. “Real. This elephant is real. Leo Matienne is an officer of the law, and he says that it is so.”

“Pooh,” said Vilna Lutz. “I say ‘pooh’ to that mustachioed officer of the law and his imagined creature.” He lay back against the pillow. He turned his head first to one side and then to the other. “I hear it,” he said. “I hear the sounds of battle. The fight has begun.”

“So,” said Peter softly to himself, “it must be true, mustn’t it? There is an elephant now, so the fortuneteller was right, and my sister lives.”

“Your sister?” said Vilna Lutz. “Your sister is dead. How often must I tell you? She never drew breath. She did not breathe. They are all dead. Look out over the field and you will see: they are all dead, your father among them. Look, look! Your father lies dead.”

“I see,” said Peter.

“Where is my foot?” said Vilna Lutz. He cast a wild look around the room. “Where is it?”

“On the bedside table.”

“On the bedside table, sir,” corrected Vilna Lutz.

“On the bedside table, sir,” said Peter.

“There,” said the old soldier. He picked up the foot. “There, there, old friend.” He gave the wooden foot a loving pat and then let his head sink back on the pillow. He pulled the blankets up under his chin. “Soon,” he said, “soon, I will put on the foot, Private Duchene, and we will practise manoeuvres, you and I. We will make a great soldier out of you yet. You will become a man like your father. You will become, like him, a soldier brave and true.”

Peter turned away from Vilna Lutz and looked out of the window at the darkening world. Downstairs, far below, a door slammed. And then another. He heard the muffled sound of laughter and knew that Leo Matienne was being welcomed home by his wife.

What was it like, Peter wondered, to have someone who knew you would always return and who welcomed you with open arms?

He remembered being in a garden at dusk. The sky was purple and the lamps had been lit, and Peter was small. His father picked him up and tossed him high and then caught him, over and over again. Peter’s mother was there too; she was wearing a white dress that glowed bright in the purple dusk, and her stomach was large like a balloon.

“Don’t drop him,” said Peter’s mother to his father. “Don’t you dare drop him.” She was laughing.

“I will not,” said his father. “I could not. For he is Peter Augustus Duchene, and he will always return to me.”

Again and again, Peter’s father threw him up in the air. Again and again, Peter felt himself suspended in nothingness for a moment, just a moment, and then he was pulled back, returned to the sweetness of the earth and the warmth of his father’s waiting arms.

“See?” said his father to his mother. “Do you see how he always comes back to me?”

It was fully dark now in the attic room of the Apartments Polonaise. The old soldier tossed from side to side in the bed. “Close the window,” he said. “It is winter, and it is cold.”

The garden that held Peter’s father and mother seemed far away, so far that he could almost believe that the memory, the garden, had existed in another world entirely.

But if the fortuneteller was to be believed (and she must be believed; she must, he thought), the elephant knew the way to that garden. She could lead him there.