Alfredo went reluctantly. He wasn’t in the mood for grief. Doubt and fear left no room for it. But sing he must, sing the music of sorrow.
“By the waters of Babylon I sat down and wept…”
For once in his life the music didn’t seem to be part of him. Some of the adult choristers had been like that, singing their way through the services by rote, steady on the note from endless repetition, while their minds were on other things—a woman they were keen on, a bit of gossip they’d heard, their next meal. Nevertheless the salamander rose and wept. The sorrow was in the music, as Uncle Giorgio had said. That was all it needed, and its own grief, the grief of exile, which was real, and apparently unending.
How did it come to be here, in this prison? he wondered.
Alfredo hadn’t intended to ask the question—to question it at all—but it answered. As they sang on together he saw it swimming in the fiery currents of the mountain with its comrades, none of them yet fully grown. They were exploring, as young creatures tend to, the edges of their territory, daring each other to see how far they could go. A music reached them, strange and powerful. The rock above them split open and the current that carried them welled into the world above. Still the music held them, compelling them upward. The salamander raised its head above the surface and looked around. Something seized it from behind and lifted it clear of the molten rock into the killing cold of air.
It had struggled desperately, but it was gripped firm between two meshes of metal and was carried to where two huge creatures were waiting—Alfredo recognized these as a pair of horses or mules—with a large object slung on poles between them. An arm reached from beneath the salamander and opened the lid of the object, which was filled with glowing coals. It was lowered into the life-giving heat and there released. As the lid was closed upon it it could hear, close by, two human voices, loud with anger, and farther off, the horrified wails of its comrades mourning its loss.
Then darkness and endless jolting, and the embers cooling, cooling, until it lost consciousness. And finally waking to find itself in this furnace, also then filled with coals which were just enough to keep it alive, and were constantly replenished until out of its own natural process it had transmuted what was fed to it into the true stuff of the sun in which it now lived, and had lived for thirty long years.
It was an account of cruelty and horror and loss. The salamander wept, but Alfredo did not weep with it or for it. Deliberately he used his thoughts of vengeance as a kind of harness to hold his tears and his voice in check, to stay dry-eyed, to sing the notes clearly and truly. So as he watched Uncle Giorgio coolly harvesting the tears of his prisoner, his resolve seemed to harden. That his uncle should treat the wonderful creature so! And Toni, too, and Annetta. And probably, all too probably, Alfredo himself.
Yet still it was not quite enough. Some final, definite proof must be found, and then he would have vengeance on his uncle, and part of that vengeance would be somehow to free the salamander, take it back up the mountain and release it into the fiery torrents that were its home.
At last Uncle Giorgio closed the lid of the furnace and removed his spectacles. Alfredo did the same and wiped his eyes.
“That is better,” said Uncle Giorgio approvingly. “But there is still too much feeling. You must not exhaust yourself so. There is more important work waiting for you.”
He tipped the little draught of tears into his phial and started to tap off the molten gold from beneath the furnace. Trying to look as if he were simply waiting for him to finish, Alfredo let his glance wander round the chamber, all dim and shadowy after the furnace glare, in case there was anything here that would help him in his enterprise. Yes, in the corner to his left what looked like the selfsame large lidded iron bucket that Uncle Giorgio had used to carry his captive down the mountain; beside it a similar smaller bucket; and propped behind them a heavy ladle, an instrument like a large pair of tongs, each arm ending in a circular metal grill, and a stout pole with a hook at the center so that two people could carry the buckets between them.
Uncle Giorgio rose from his crouch, holding the little pan into which he had been running the gold from the bottom of the furnace, and put it back on the table. A thin film of still-molten metal covered what he had collected five days ago. Uncle Giorgio turned the full pan over, rapped it sharply with a wooden mallet and pocketed the little ingot that fell out.
Lost in his thoughts of vengeance, Alfredo gazed vaguely at the two pans, one now empty, one half full, as if they, too, might help him somehow to free the salamander, until Uncle Giorgio broke the trance.
“Yes, Alfredo, pure gold. The First Great Work,” he purred, and turned to leave.
Alfredo pulled himself together and on the way out took a good look at the door and its lock. Both seemed formidably sturdy. As usual Uncle Giorgio put the key back in his pocket as soon as he had locked the door.
“I have work to do now,” he said. “You will be able to amuse yourself until luncheon?”
“Yes, of course, Uncle. I’ll go for a walk in the woods. So I don’t need to take my hat.”
“Good boy.”
Alfredo wandered in a seemingly aimless manner out to the driveway in case Uncle Giorgio was watching from the study windows. For a while he simply stood and stared at the lava flow, lying massively inert in the dappled shade. At length he lay down once more, molded his body to the coarse rock and waited. This was not something he could make happen in a hurry, or even coax into happening. A bird fluted and was answered from deep among the trees. A faint breeze blew and died away. And then, slowly, slowly, the mountain drew him into itself as it had done before, and they became one. Far off and faint, he heard the singing of the salamanders.
Again he waited. The music changed, telling him they were aware of his presence. He shaped his question formally in his mind.
You have shown me how my father and my mother and my brother died, and who killed them. What proof can you give me that what you tell me is true?
The answer came instantly, in a rapid burst of excited song, and he was back in the furnace room, gazing, as he had done barely half an hour ago, at two small rectangular pans, one empty, the second half-full and with a thin molten layer covering the solid metal beneath, and a hand closing round a small gold bar.
That was all, and the salamanders showed him no more.
What did it mean? The answer came like a thunderclap. He lay and forced his mind to do the sums. Five days ago Uncle Giorgio had drawn a pan and a half from the furnace. In those five days enough more matter had passed through the salamander’s body to add little more than a film of gold to what was already in the pan. How many such fillings to fill a whole pan? Eight? Call it six, to be on the safe side. Five sixes were thirty, plus half of that was forty-five, so it had taken forty-five days to produce the gold that Uncle Giorgio had drawn the day after his return to Casa di Sala. Perhaps it was less. Call it forty, to be on the safe side again. And perhaps he hadn’t drawn any in the last few days before he left, so call it thirty-five. He must have been five weeks away from Casa di Sala, at least.
But sixteen days after the fire in the bakery Uncle Giorgio had told the priests in the cathedral that he had come posthaste on hearing the news of the tragedy. That can’t have been true. A house fire in a distant northern city? Not the sort of news that travels fast. But suppose Alfredo’s father had made arrangements for his brother to be told at once if anything should happen to him—in that case how long for the news to get to Sicily? Say five days. That would leave eleven days for Uncle Giorgio to travel north, setting up the elaborate arrangements for their escape route. Yes, it could just be done.