13
IN THE MIDST OF WAR, many things had become scarce, but if you wanted them badly enough, it wasn’t very difficult to find cigarettes. Prices had gone up, of course, and there were many shops that couldn’t seem to get them in stock, but persistence would be rewarded. Father Gaetano had given up the habit over a year before, though in the months that followed his fingers and lips sometimes tingled with the absence of a cigarette. This was more than a craving. There were times he thought of it as a haunting.
He stood on the rocky shore at the edge of the church property, looking out at the sea and smoking a cigarette. While the Germans had been ensconced in their bases on the island of Sicily and the war had raged, tension had been high, and yet he had managed to give them up. But this afternoon, when he had walked into the big back kitchen and seen Sister Franca slipping a pack into the folds of her habit, he had asked for one without hesitation or remorse.
Habit. He smiled to himself at the word play. It was a small thing, but he would take his amusement where he could find it.
Father Gaetano stared out at the sea and took a long draw on the cigarette, the tip flaring orange in the dark. When he blew the smoke out through his nostrils, it plumed like warm breath on a cold winter’s night. But such nights were rare in this part of the world; already it was December, and though the night had a chill, the breeze off of the Mediterranean was warm.
There would be cold nights, however. In January and February, there would be nights that required heavy blankets and working furnaces, and he intended to be sure that all was in order in the orphanage and the convent, including the repairs to the corner where the late Sister Annica’s room had once been. Now that he’d thought of it, he realized he hadn’t looked at the progress of those repairs for two or three days. Taking a pull on his cigarette, he turned to glance past the orphanage. From this vantage he could not see the convent, but he recognized the treetops above it. He could stroll up there right now; he could grind his cigarette on the shore and take a quick walk into the woods. No one would notice him if he did nothing to draw attention to himself. It must be at least a quarter past ten; long after lights-out. The children would be asleep. Sister Veronica was there with them, probably asleep herself, on the girls’ floor.
He wondered if Teresa was also asleep, in her bed up at the convent.
And then he laughed at himself and shook his head, exhaling a cloud of smoke.
Sister Teresa, he thought. Not just Teresa. Sister.
The breeze picked up, making his black coat billow behind him. The waves crashed on the shore, white foam ghostly in what light the crescent moon provided. Father Gaetano looked at that moon, and then past it, to the stars and farther to the heavens, and he gave a dry chuckle and puffed on the cigarette again.
“All a part of your plan, is it? This thing I’m feeling?” He let the cigarette dangle at his side, wind dragging the burnt ash from its tip. “You have quite a sense of humor. I never realized. I feel like a fool, and maybe that’s your intention, but isn’t this the path I was supposed to take? I feel as if I’m meant to be here for these children. They need me. That feels right. But every time I look at her, that feels right as well, and that can’t be your intention, can it?”
The heavens gave no answer, as he expected. Gaetano always found it so hard to know God’s plan. The priests who had taught him had always seemed so sure, but he had rarely felt that certain about anything except the need to give the orphans at San Domenico some sense of hope. Something to believe in.
He glanced at the cigarette. Its soothing qualities had abruptly vanished, and he flicked it into the surf, turned his back, and started up toward the rectory. The church loomed silently off to his left, empty now but somehow still resonating with the voices of the faithful, raised in prayer. It was only a building, just stones and mortar, but it seemed aware of him, as if its windows watched him pass by. He could feel its disapproval, but in the morning he would stand upon its altar once again, saying mass for his flock. If the church deserved, or desired, a more worthy priest, there were none to be found.
The key to the rectory’s front door felt heavy in his pocket. Not the rectory, the orphanage. After lights-out, the door was always kept locked, although the people in the village of Tringale had their own concerns these days and even a thief was unlikely to wander far from home. The hinges groaned with the weight of the heavy wooden door, but he slipped inside as quietly as he could and locked it behind him.
Many nights, Sister Veronica would still have been sitting in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, unwinding after a long day. Several times, Father Gaetano had joined her, and wondered aloud if she missed the companionship of her fellow nuns at the convent. But Sister Veronica professed to enjoy the quiet that fell over the orphanage once the children were asleep. The sisters of San Domenico were far from raucous, she said, but several of the younger women were quite loquacious, and tended to become more so toward bedtime, rather than less. This desire for quiet made Father Gaetano reluctant to disturb Sister Veronica’s late-night coffees, even when she invited him to join her.
More than once, Sister Teresa had come down from the convent to join Sister Veronica, two old friends sharing coffee and gossip. Father Gaetano had worried about Sister Teresa walking back to the convent alone, but had to balance his concern for her safety with his sense of propriety.
Tonight, as he walked through the foyer, he saw no light coming from the corridor that led to the small kitchen at the back of the building. Sister Veronica had told him she was turning in for the night. No coffee this evening.
Yet he felt unsettled. A building in which all were sleeping had a unique quietude about it, as if the very stones breathed deeply along with the sleepers, as if it dreamed with them. Even as a child, Father Gaetano had liked the way it felt to be awake when all others slumbered, had often risen to get himself a drink of water and imagined he was walking the halls of his mother’s dreams.
The orphanage did not feel asleep to him tonight. Something disturbed the air.
As he climbed the stairs, a whispering circled around him like an errant breeze, but as he reached the third floor, it resolved itself into voices. Father Gaetano smiled softly. These were not the stirrings of ghosts, but of boys. Not errant breezes, but errant children.
Putting on his sternest face, he strode along the corridor, letting the floorboards creak beneath his tread. As his footfalls announced his coming, he heard a scrambling in one of the rooms ahead, and faltered slightly as he realized the room belonged to Sebastiano. Perhaps his roommates, Giovanni and Carmelo, were to blame. He hoped it was so.
As he turned into the room, his brows knitted more deeply. His mind had been on other things, not focused on the voices, which had now ceased. But a moment ago, in the midst of the chatter, he’d heard at least one voice—one small voice—that did not sound as if it belonged to a child. Playacting, he told himself. Make-believe.
There on the floor before him was the evidence.
Father Gaetano counted seven marionettes, including the Noah he had worked so hard on. They were strewn across the boards, but there were no strings in evidence, which infuriated him the most. He would have to reattach them all. Jaw tight with anger, he glanced up at the frozen faces of the boys in the room—not just Sebastiano and his roommates, but Enrico and Matteo as well—and tried to imagine how they could have thought this was a good idea.
“What…” he began, then took a deep breath, tamping down his fury. “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?”
Shaking with fear and remorse, Giovanni tried to speak, his lower lip trembling.
“Father, it isn’t what you…” Enrico began, but he trailed off. All of the boys were looking at him expectantly, but he only lowered his gaze and huffed out a breath.
Father Gaetano laughed drily. “It isn’t what I think? You didn’t go up into the classroom and take these puppets from their crate without permission? You didn’t wait until after lights-out when you thought I’d be asleep and sneak around? You didn’t yank off all their strings?”
Sebastiano looked at him with wide, guileless eyes. “No, Father. We didn’t.”
Had one of the older boys looked at him like that and lied so blatantly, Father Gaetano might have slapped him. But Sebastiano was only nine years old.
“You disappoint me, Sebastiano,” he said. “I’d have believed this of you the least of all. We were working together on the puppets. You know how much work goes into them, that they aren’t simply toys. And even if they were, to sneak about after bedtime—”
“But we didn’t!” Giovanni wailed, tears springing to his eyes. “They came to us. They woke us up!”
Father Gaetano shot a hard look at Enrico and Matteo, who were already denying it, waving their hands as if they could shoo the guilt away.
“Not us,” Matteo said. He pointed at the discarded marionettes. “Them!”
“That’s enough!” Father Gaetano snapped. The worry that he might wake Sister Veronica was the only thing that kept him from giving full voice to his anger as he glared at the five boys.
He took a deep, calming breath. “Pick them up. Right now. And put them back where they belong.”
The boys exchanged glances, as if wondering if they should continue to argue their case, but then Sebastiano fell to his knees and picked up one of the animal puppets and the other boys followed suit. They gathered up the unstrung marionettes and filed out into the corridor, headed for the stairs. Father Gaetano searched the room for any puppets that might have been left behind. Finding none, he followed the young miscreants into the hall.
Sebastiano stood on the bottom step in worn, faded pajamas that were two sizes too large for him, letting the other boys pass him by. He wouldn’t meet the priest’s eyes.
“We should’ve made them go back, Father,” the little boy said. “But don’t blame the animals. They were just playing. Mostly it was Noah that woke us up. He’s very upset, just talking and talking about how the Flood is coming and he’s got to build his ark. We told him it wasn’t even supposed to rain tomorrow, but he wouldn’t listen. He says God commanded him to build—”
“Hush.”
Father Gaetano dropped to one knee in front of the boy, narrowing his eyes. Was Sebastiano sick? Had the other boys been playing with the puppets and their voices had infiltrated his dreams? What else could possibly explain the innocent openness of his face and the utter belief he obviously held in his own words? The priest had not lost his anger, but it dissipated slightly as he tried to deduce the level of Sebastiano’s complicity in the evening’s misbehavior.
Then he noticed that the little boy held two puppets, the elephant he’d picked up in his right hand, and his clown, Pagliaccio, in the left. A memory of the night before returned to him, half-lost in the haze of dreams. For a moment he wasn’t sure if finding the clown puppet in his room had actually occurred, but when he recalled the tickle of dust in his nose when he had reached under his bed, he knew it had been real.
He reached for Pagliaccio and Sebastiano pulled away, tucking the puppet behind his back.
Father Gaetano regarded the child carefully. “I’m going to ask you a question, and I expect the truth.”
Sebastiano nodded vigorously. “Of course, Father. Lying is a sin.”
“Yes. Yes it is. Have you been in my room this week? Were you playing in there?”
“No, Father.”
He looked confused, and Father Gaetano shared that confusion.
“Have any of the other children borrowed Pagliaccio from you?”
Sebastiano shook his head. “He’s mine. I don’t like it when other people touch him.”
Was the boy capable of looking him straight in the eye and lying this persuasively? Was any nine-year-old? Perhaps, Father Gaetano thought, but not this one. Someone had been in his bedroom and left Pagliaccio there, perhaps one of the other children hoping to get Sebastiano in trouble. And certainly it was possible that Sebastiano had not been a part of the plan to sneak out tonight and play with the puppets. But without any way to know for sure, he had to treat them all as equally guilty.
He stood and called up to the boys who were making their way up the stairs.
“As soon as you’ve put the puppets away, go back to your beds and go to sleep. If anything like this happens again, I’ll have to report it to Sister Veronica. You can be certain there would be unhappy consequences.”
Father Gaetano looked at Sebastiano and lowered his voice. “And you can be sure that she would take Pagliaccio away from you, perhaps permanently.”
Sebastiano’s eyes went wide and his mouth quivered as though he might cry.
“So much for free will,” a voice muttered above them.
Father Gaetano turned and glared. Enrico had stopped on the landing, the Noah puppet in his hand, and gazed at him with a defiant expression.
“Do you really not understand, Enrico?” the priest said. “The message of all of the stories I’ve been teaching you in catechism is about what you do with free will. It’s about taking this gift that God gave you and making wise choices.”
Something moved in his peripheral vision, and Father Gaetano tore his gaze from the boys on the stairs to look down the hall. In the second doorway beyond the stairs, the tall, slim figure of a boy stood in shadow, watching him. The unruly crop of hair was unmistakable; it belonged to Marcello.
“Go,” Father Gaetano said, gesturing for them all to hurry about their task. He waved at Sebastiano, who finally began his ascent, Pagliaccio clutched protectively to his heart.
As he strode down the hall toward Marcello, the boy ducked back into his bedroom. When Father Gaetano reached the doorway, he found Marcello seated on the edge of his bed, his hands fidgeting together in his lap. The boy seemed more haunted than ever, as if he’d just woken from a nightmare and was afraid to go back to sleep, lest he descend back into that terror.
Father Gaetano felt for him, but his patience had ended.
“I know Sister Teresa spoke to you earlier,” the priest said. “And I know that you told her that I must have been imagining things, that you weren’t frightened during my catechism lessons with the puppets.”
“Why did you have to bring them up from the basement?” Marcello pleaded. “It was all fine until you brought them up.”
Father Gaetano sighed, tired now. “I don’t understand, Marcello. Help me with this, please? The other boys break the rules to go up and sneak the puppets back to their room to play with, and you can’t even look at the things or speak of them without trembling in fear.”
Marcello stared at his own feet. “The boys didn’t break the rules.”
“What?”
For a moment, Marcello’s eyes flashed with an anger that burned away his fear. “Don’t you see? They aren’t toys. They aren’t what puppets are meant to be. They’re alive, Father. Awake, now that you brought them back upstairs. When Luciano did his puppet shows they would always come and play with the younger children during the night. The others would laugh but I would hide under my covers. It isn’t right. There’s magic in them, Father, and that can only be an evil thing.”
Father Gaetano thought he might be the one going mad. He pushed his hands through his hair.
“Marcello, listen to—”
“I want to be a priest, Father. Like you. I know that I could be a good one, too. I talk to God all the time. I pray to Him and I can feel Him in my heart, helping to guide me, especially when I’ve let my anger get the better of me and been cruel to one of the other kids. But whenever you bring out those puppets, whenever I see one of them, I can’t feel Him anymore.”
For the first time, Father Gaetano was speechless. Thoughts swirled in his mind and he heard again things that Sebastiano had said, not only tonight but the first time he had ever mentioned the old caretaker’s puppet theatre. The animals were playing, but Noah had been frantic about the ark that the Lord had commanded him to build. It sounded like a child’s fancy, but the other boys had made similar claims. Even if they were all concocting an outrageous lie to protect themselves, how did that explain Marcello’s terror?
“Listen to me,” Father Gaetano said, forcing himself to remain calm and reassuring. “This is pure imagination.”
Marcello lifted his gaze, beginning to argue.
“No, just listen,” the priest interrupted. “This caretaker, the puppeteer Luciano … he played a trick on all of you. He had a gift, this man. I can tell that by the artistry involved in the creation of his puppets and the love he put into his theatre. I’m sure he had only good intentions. You had all lost so much and he wanted you to feel as if the world held some happy magic, like a visit from Father Christmas, and so he found a way to make you all believe the puppets visited you at night, when all along it must have been Luciano himself.”
“Father, no—”
“There is no other explanation.”
“They’re evil. Unholy things. This is the devil’s work—”
“We’re in the midst of the most horrible war the world has ever seen, son,” Father Gaetano said gently. “The devil is busy elsewhere.”
“I suppose.”
“You were in shock when you came here, Marcello. Stricken with grief. Luciano couldn’t have known that instead of joy, he would be filling you with fear. But now you must see this all for the flight of fancy that it is. Puppets are wood and cloth and string. Nothing more. Do you understand?”
Marcello dropped his gaze again.
“Do you?”
“Yes, Father,” the boy said weakly.
“I’m not asking for you to overcome your fear in a day. What’s important is that you learn your catechism. For the time being, I will excuse you from attending lessons on the mornings when I intend to use the puppets, and I will set aside time to teach you those lessons separately, without them.”
At last, Marcello breathed a small sigh of relief. “Thank you, Father.”
“Now, please, get some sleep.”
They wished each other good night, and Father Gaetano stepped back into the corridor, where he spotted Enrico and Matteo standing with Carmelo outside their room. They were whispering amongst themselves, but stopped when they caught sight of him.
“Go to bed!” he barked, and they scurried to do so.
But he could not help thinking of Sebastiano and Marcello, and wondering if all of the orphans believed this fancy about the puppets. If Luciano’s tricks had been that convincing, that the children would continue to perpetuate the illusion amongst themselves, even with the caretaker long gone from the orphanage.
Some of them were much too old to believe in such things, Marcello included.
Just what sort of magician had this caretaker been?