He had stood and stared round it, aching with longing for some whisper of a voice, the ghost of a footfall, a presence, however faint. Nothing. The ache still filled him now as he sat—how often his father must have done the same—staring out at the soft calm night, smelling the sweet calm odors. He needed Father. Father had filled his life. The world was empty without him. Now, Father would have told him what to do, what to think, what to believe, as dread wrestled with amazed excitement in his mind. And all the time he could sense, through the deep layers of rock behind his back and beneath his feet the implacable fiery power of the mountain.
They had climbed back up from the cellars and the silent woman had brought them supper in a small room that seemed only to be used for eating. The food was peasant stuff, but excellent and plentiful, and the forks and spoons were silver, well polished, and there were fine white napkins. Uncle Giorgio ate in silence, as if eating were all that mattered to him in the world. He filled his plate three times, taking small mouthfuls and chewing them well but swallowing without difficulty. Alfredo felt too tense to eat but was too hungry not to, so chewed and swallowed, barely noticing the taste. When they had finished, Uncle Giorgio pushed his chair back and looked at Alfredo for the first time since they had sat down.
“I am too tired for questions,” he said. “I have been very near death. I miscalculated. It is a long time since I was away from here for more than a few days. I was aware that the tears of the salamander begin to lose their virtue once they are shed, but I did not guess by how much. Is there anything you need to know now?”
“Someone … something sang … in the … I don’t know what to call it. …”
Uncle Giorgio smiled for almost the first time since Alfredo had known him.
“In the furnace?” he said. “That was my salamander. It answered your singing and wept for me, so that I could drink its tears and be healed. Is there anything else?”
“The…the Bonaventura…it wasn’t ordinary fire. The mountain did something. I felt it,” said Alfredo.
Uncle Giorgio sighed and shook his head sadly.
“Yes, it is in your blood to feel it,” he said at last. “The mountain destroyed the ship in vengeance for its having brought me back. I am the Master of the Mountain, as our ancestors have been for more than a thousand years, and in full health I could have restrained it. I did what I could, but to my grief I was too feeble. That is my task, to control the rages of the mountain. One day it will be yours. I will tell you more tomorrow.”
And that had been all.
So Alfredo sat at his window while the night wheeled on, trying to think about the salamander, and the mountain, and his uncle. Master of the Mountain! Yes, that was what Father had been saying on the evening of his name-day. “The Mountain must have its Master. …” It had been an extraordinary relief to have even that little explained, however strange the explanation.
And it didn’t even feel all that strange to Alfredo. In fact, it felt somehow familiar—something he hadn’t known but had, so to speak, been all along waiting to know. …And in the same way the terrible thing that had happened to the Bonaventura made sense to him since Uncle Giorgio had explained it.
He thought about Uncle Giorgio—how like he was to Father, and how different. When Father had smiled you could feel how pleased he was. When he had sighed you shared his sadness. His feelings beamed out of him, like the heat from his ovens. But Uncle Giorgio was like the salamander’s furnace—there were great fiery energies inside him—Alfredo was sure of that—but they stopped at the surface. You couldn’t feel them, not in his smile, not in his sigh.
His thoughts went round and round, until he fell asleep where he sat. He woke in the dawn chilled through, though the fire of the mountain had raged through his dreams. He crept shuddering into the bed, his bed, and fell asleep again, this time with no dreams, and didn’t wake until the sun was high. And still he didn’t know what to do or think or feel. There was food in the eating room—bread, fruit, oil, dried fish, water flavored with lime. He was eating with furious hunger when the silent woman came in, nodded and left. She returned a little later and simply stood waiting. Her presence was uncomfortable, so Alfredo pushed his plate away unfinished and rose.
“Please, where is my uncle?” he asked hesitantly.
For answer the woman opened her mouth and pointed her finger into it, shaking her head as she did so. She then beckoned to him to follow her. The room where they ate was down a side passage at one end of a wide corridor that ran the full length of the house. The woman led him along this, past the hallway and the stairs and then down another side passage. At the far end of this she scratched on a door, waited for an answer, then opened the door and held it for him.
Inside Alfredo found a fair-sized room. One window looked toward the mountain, invisible behind woods. Outside the other one the trees stood closer, almost brushing the panes. Uncle Giorgio was working at a desk, apparently copying something out of a thick book. He glanced up and nodded to the woman. She left, closing the door, and Uncle Giorgio returned to his writing. Alfredo gazed round the room. Apart from the two windows, every inch of the walls was covered with shelves, most of them filled with books, but the ones at the farther end held dozens of labeled jars and flasks, like those in a pharmacist’s shop. There was a long table with glass and brass apparatus on it, delicate scales and small implements. Beside that stood a small brazier, unlit. Above it, hanging from a hook in the ceiling, was a birdcage, containing what looked like a starling.
The bird seemed to notice that Alfredo was looking at it and eyed him back, cocking its head a little to one side.
“One! Two! Three! Four!” it screeched suddenly. And again “One! Two! Three! Four!”
Alfredo jumped at the harsh, inhuman cry and the unmistakably human words. Uncle Giorgio wiped his quill and laid it down, sanded his paper, closed the book, marking the page with a scrap of paper, and rose.
“One! Two! Three! Four!” shrieked the starling as he took a crust of bread from a bag hanging on a peg and wedged it between the bars of the cage. The starling fell on it.
“A reward for speech,” said Uncle Giorgio.
“Can it say anything else?”
“There is no need. Come with me.”
He led the way down to the cellars and along to the furnace room. This time he took a second pair of the black–lensed spectacles from his pocket and gave them to Alfredo.
“I made these for you before you woke,” he said. “Wear them always before I open the crucible, or it will destroy your eyesight. Stand well back, but be ready to sing the psalm when I tell you.”
Alfredo put the spectacles on and could see nothing. The glass seemed totally opaque, but as soon as Uncle Giorgio raised the lid of the crucible the glare struck through, as strong as that of the glowing embers in the fire pit of one of the bakehouse ovens, but now bearable. The fierce orange surface was as smooth as liquid but didn’t boil or churn, even when Uncle Giorgio, using tongs, fed it with two or three dark lumps, too heavy to be charcoal. They might have been pit coal, but didn’t look like that, either, and didn’t smoke or crackle, despite the intense heat immediately below the surface. Instead they settled slowly into it and sank out of sight.
“Stand still farther back,” said Uncle Giorgio. “This fire is the fire of the inmost sun. It sends out an emanation that alters the nature of the flesh, making it cancerous, as has happened in my own throat. Good. Now sing.”
Fear and excitement dried Alfredo’s mouth. His whole body seemed to be fluttering like the air in the bass pipes of the cathedral organ. He wasn’t sure he could sing at all—there would be none of the usual joy in it—but he sucked and swallowed two or three times, pulled himself together and almost listlessly began.