Peter Dickinson - Tears of the Salamander

These feelings deepened and hardened as the mules plodded steadily up between the vineyards. He was conscious of Annetta following on foot, but falling farther and farther behind. Why should he be allowed to ride and Annetta have to walk? She was older than he was, and worked all day long while he did almost nothing to help. It wasn’t right, any more than it had been right that Uncle Giorgio should have talked about her and Toni the way he had when he’d told Alfredo their story. Two harmless and unlucky people—but if Uncle Giorgio both used and despised them in the way he seemed to, how could Alfredo—how could anybody —learn to love and trust him?

Not that these thoughts came to him in a steady, reasoned flow. They were more a muddle of slowly changing feelings that shaped themselves into glimpses of thought that then hardened into ideas. And now something else, something from outside himself, worked its way into the confusion. When he and Uncle Giorgio had first climbed this path everything had been swamped by the overwhelming presence of the mountain, and the huge energies surging inside it. Then, two days ago, when they had climbed to the crater, he had begun to perceive some of its inner shape, the movements of its molten currents, the places of power where they came closer to the surface, and where their energies could be summoned and directed by someone who had the power and knowledge—Uncle Giorgio now, Alfredo himself, perhaps, later.

It was one of these places, not on the path itself, but up the slope to their left, that now broke into his chain of thought. He looked around and saw that this was where he had waited on that first afternoon while Uncle Giorgio had climbed up between the vines. This was the point from which he had watched the Bonaventura burst inexplicably into flame.

Uncle Giorgio rode past without pausing. Alfredo was following with no more than an inward shudder when the memory worked its way into his vague doubts and discomforts to produce a definite question. A question with two possible answers.

According to Uncle Giorgio, the mountain had been furious with the Bonaventura and his friends for returning its Master to it, and so had destroyed them. If so, then why at that particular moment, when the Master was closest to a place of power, and had most hope of preventing the destruction? Was the mountain just a brainless embodied anger, which had burst out at that moment, regardless of where its Master happened to be?

Or had Uncle Giorgio caused the mountain to do it, choosing this place because, despite his illness, here he still had the power? If so, why? Surely not just out of revenge on the captain for speaking to him as he had. No, it would be because he was determined to remove any witnesses of their journey. Nobody must know that this was where he had brought his nephew. That was how much Alfredo mattered to him, that he would kill four innocent men to preserve his secret. Not for Alfredo’s sake, but for his own.

Either was possible. Alfredo’s mind wavered to and fro. He reached the house with his determination to trust Uncle Giorgio badly shaken, and only one decision made. He must talk to the salamander as soon as he got the chance.

Luck was with him for once. Annetta and Toni were still way down the mountain, but she had left food in covered dishes for them. They had both brought books to the table, and Uncle Giorgio helped himself, sat down and at once started to read, but as soon as Alfredo was seated he closed his book and pushed it aside.

“You ask remarkably few questions,” he said. “Have you no more?”

“Oh, yes, but…I didn’t want to bother you, but…Well, I was wondering about the salamanders. Somebody once told me that if you ask them something they will tell you the truth. Is that right?”

“Yes and no. The truth is in their music. For us, truth exists almost entirely in words. The salamanders do not use words. How can they speak our truth? I have heard you sing, Alfredo. You have an excellent voice and a good understanding, but you sing with the human emotions that are in the words, and this, as it were, contaminates the music. Even our unsung music may be contaminated by the human emotions of the player. But for the salamanders, their truth is in the notes, not in the manner in which the notes are sung. So if you would converse with the salamanders you must train yourself to sing without any emotion that can be put into words. When I converse with my salamander I normally use the fiddle. Before you came I used to sing to it only when I needed my hands to collect its tears. You must learn to treat your voice purely as a musical instrument, like my fiddle. Otherwise the truth that the salamander tells you will be contaminated with apparent meanings, which are in fact no more than echoes of your own hopes and fears. I have so far allowed you to sing to the salamander in that fashion because your singing achieved what was necessary, but before you can attain true understanding of the mountain, and of the task before you, you must train yourself to do as I say. Do you understand?”

“I think so. The organist in the cathedral used to have arguments with the Precentor about it, but the Prince-Cardinal agreed with the Precentor, so that’s what I’m used to—singing as if I meant it, I mean.”

“Whereas I agree with the organist, so you must do your best to unlearn what you have been taught.”

“Last time I sang to the salamander I thought it showed me what it used to be like, living inside the mountain.”

“Of course. But in fact it showed you no more than your own imaginings. When I was a boy I used to have such imaginings, but I trained myself to reject them. When we have eaten you can sing to the salamander again, and practice as you do so.”

“ Super flumina? Psalm One Thirty-seven?”

“What you sing is irrelevant, provided it is expressive of sadness.”

“I felt very sad today when we were coming back up the hill. I was thinking about the sailors on the Bonaventura, and me singing the bit about the storm for them from Psalm One Hundred and Seven. It was only last Sunday, and now they’re dead. Would that be all right?”

“Why that? It is a psalm of praise, I think. The music is not in itself sad.”

“I could sing a requiem first.”

“That would be better. And then you may sing the psalm if you wish.”

Uncle Giorgio spoke flatly, as if he’d forgotten all about the Bonaventura . He was opening his book when he seemed to realize what they’d been talking about, and looked up again.

“I am truly sorry about what happened to our friends on the ship,” he said. “But we must start to put all that behind us. We have great work to do, Alfredo, you and I.”

He returned to his book and read for the rest of the meal.

There was now a curved sheet of metal supported on a wooden framework a little distance back from the furnace. Uncle Giorgio stationed Alfredo behind it.

“Lead,” he explained. “It will shield your body from the harmful emanations of the furnace. Your head I can do nothing about until I have more lead, but it should not matter for the moment. It is frequent and prolonged exposure to the emanations that is dangerous. Here are your spectacles.”

Alfredo put them on and the chamber was in darkness. The darkness cracked apart in a glaring line as Uncle Giorgio raised the lid of the furnace unaided. Against the glow Alfredo watched him pick up the little ladle.

He nodded, and Alfredo began.

He started with the saddest requiem he knew, but trying to do as Uncle Giorgio had suggested, and almost at once the salamander emerged, weaving its plaintive sweet piping exquisitely into the music, filling Alfredo’s mind with thoughts of the dead sailors, and of their evening concerts, and their gossipy good nature. Together they wept for Benno and his friends while Uncle Giorgio collected the salamander’s tears with no more apparent emotion than if he’d been milking a goat. At a suitable moment Alfredo prolonged the note and modulated into the psalm. The salamander followed as if it had been expecting the switch.