8
SEBASTIANO FELT TROUBLED. He had Pagliaccio tucked into a pocket as he bent over the work table, using a fine-tipped paintbrush to create the illusion of a thick black beard on the puppet who had once been Hercules. He wasn’t Hercules anymore; Father Gaetano had seen to that. Dark yarn on his head gave him a shaggy mane of hair and he held a club in his right hand. Really, the club was a wooden peg from a cribbage board, and Sebastiano felt proud that he’d thought of it. Father Gaetano had grinned and ruffled his hair when he’d made the suggestion. But the lightness in the boy’s heart at that moment had given way to worry.
He stepped back from the table to examine his handiwork, allowing himself a moment of pride. When Father Gaetano had told him that he could help with the puppets, he had never imagined that the priest would trust him with something as important as the beard. Repainting the puppets’ clothes, yes, but the marionettes’ faces were the most important part, and in transforming the Hercules puppet into Goliath, a mistake with the beard would ruin everything. It would be a distraction from the story Father Gaetano would be telling, and—worse, by far—if the others found out it had been his mistake, they would tease him horribly.
But he hadn’t made a mistake. He might only be a little boy, but he knew the difference between a good job and a sloppy one, and he’d done a good job.
“Excellent work!” Father Gaetano said, appearing just behind him.
Sebastiano jumped, shuffling a step away even as he turned to face the priest, worry rippling through him again, prickling at his skin.
“Thank you, Father,” he said.
But the priest saw his hesitation, and must have also recognized the concern that weighed upon him.
“Is something wrong, Sebastiano?” Father Gaetano asked. “You seem … unhappy. I thought this work would please you.”
“It does,” the boy said quickly.
He liked the whir of the sewing machine and the rhythm of its foot pedal as Father Gaetano created new clothing for some of the caretaker’s old puppets, rather than repainting them. In his mind, he could already see what the puppets would look like when they were finished, could imagine the way they would sound when all of their voices were Father Gaetano’s voice. As much as he liked the priest, catechism lessons were boring. Puppet shows would be much better.
“Is it only that I startled you, or is there something else?” the priest went on.
Sebastiano shook his head, forcing a smile. He could not tell if Father Gaetano believed him or not. The priest watched him a moment, then gave a small shrug and turned to the worktable, where the Goliath puppet lay with its painted beard drying. Father Gaetano picked it up and examined it, a small smile of approval touching his lips. He nodded in satisfaction, and that made Sebastiano feel good.
“This will be perfect,” he said. Which was nice, because nobody had ever told Sebastiano that he had done anything perfectly.
The priest walked the puppet to a side table and set it down with several others. He would be doing the finishing touches there, untangling the strings and making any fine-detail changes to the faces. The workroom had once been the province of the caretaker, but there was no caretaker left to defend his territory. Sister Teresa had told them that one of the old priests who had lived in the building before the war had done much of the mending for the others, a skill taught to him by his seamstress mother, and they had found the sewing machine still in excellent condition, covered beneath a sheet to keep the dust off of its workings. Father Gaetano hadn’t had a seamstress for a mother—Sebastiano guessed that the moment he saw the first piece of puppet clothing the priest had sewn together—but he managed well enough.
Most Sicilian marionettes were painted wood, but Luciano had made his puppets in a variety of ways, with wood and cloth and paint in whatever combination he felt suited that particular character.
Sebastiano watched as Father Gaetano studied the Goliath puppet, where it lay with the others. He wondered if the puppet had done something it wasn’t supposed to.
“What do you think?” Father Gaetano asked. “Should he have a belt?”
The boy pondered this a moment, then nodded. “Maybe just a bit of twine.”
“Good idea, but I’ll get to that in a moment, while I’m finishing his clothes. Meanwhile, how would you like to start work on the animals for Noah’s ark? The wolf could be a tiger easily enough. And some of the monsters Luciano made—”
“Are you going to use them all, Father?” the boy blurted, unable to contain the question another moment.
Father Gaetano frowned. “The puppets, you mean?”
Sebastiano nodded vigorously.
“Well, I’ll probably…” the priest began, and then he blinked and inhaled deeply before letting the air out, eyes narrowing. “You’re concerned about Pagliaccio.”
Another urgent nod. It made Sebastiano’s neck hurt, but he couldn’t help it. He felt like all of the muscles in his body were locked up tightly, the ones in his throat worst of all, for they wouldn’t let another word out until he had his answer.
“I’ll be using all of the caretaker’s puppets eventually,” Father Gaetano said. “With Luciano gone, they belong to the orphanage now. To San Domenico. But Pagliaccio doesn’t belong to anyone but you, Sebastiano. He’s yours, and I would never try to take him from you.”
Sebastiano smiled so wide that his cheeks hurt. All of his worry evaporated, replaced by a merriment he had previously only felt on Christmas mornings, and never had expected to feel again after losing his parents. This fear had been weighing on him, but with it now removed, he could allow himself to take real pleasure in working on the other puppets, using his imagination.
He plucked Pagliaccio from his pocket, still grinning, and as he looked at the clown puppet, it seemed to him that the smile sewn into that cloth face seemed wider than before, a few extra stitches added to indicate Pagliaccio’s joy at being able to stay himself. To stay with Sebastiano.
“Did you hear that?” he asked the clown puppet.
Pagliaccio did not reply, but the boy knew he was only being shy with the priest in the room.
“All right,” Father Gaetano said. “I’m going to finish with Goliath. Why don’t you go through the box and see which puppets you think would make good animals. We need at least four, I’d think. A lion, a tiger, a giraffe, and a zebra. If there’s something big enough to be an elephant, that would work, too.”
“Yes, Father,” Sebastiano said.
He raced to the puppet box. Its heavy lid had been removed and set aside, and as the boy drew near to it, he thought he heard a faint scratching noise. With a frown, he glanced around, wondering for a moment if mice or rats had made their way into the workroom. Then he knelt by the box, bending curiously to look at the puppets piled within.
They had been all a jumble before. Now each and every one lay faceup, as if silently yearning to be next out of the box.