10
SEBASTIANO DREAMED OF FISHING. He stood on a stone breakwater that jutted out into the sea, waiting patiently for a bite. The sun gleamed on the rippling water and shone warm upon his skin, and he could taste the salt air on his lips. With patience, he knew, the fish would come. There were blue and white rowboats pulled up onto the shore and several small fishing boats moored in the gentle surf, but he saw no fishermen. A tremor of alarm passed through him as he wondered if he might be alone out here, and he began to turn around, panic rising.
A strong but gentle hand settled upon his shoulder.
“It’s all right, Yano,” his father said. “You’re all right.”
The little boy exhaled, feeling the warmth and love passed through the light pressure on his shoulder. His father was here. They were safe. All was well.
Smiling, he turned and looked up, but the bright sun made him squint and he could not see his father’s face. Silhouetted with a burning halo of sunshine, Sebastiano’s father seemed like little more than a shadow—a hole in the world where a man had once been.
A dreadful feeling twisted in the boy’s gut. He frowned, sadness closing up his throat.
“Father?” he managed to say in a tiny, strangled voice.
But his father did not speak. Shadows had no voices.
The sky rumbled. Somehow it had turned dark without Sebastiano noticing. They were no longer on the breakwater, but standing instead in front of their home. Searchlights slid across the indigo curtain of night, and the rumble he’d heard was not thunder, but the clamor of engines. Airplanes. Bombs whistled down and people screamed. Sebastiano shook his head, refusing to believe, and his tears flowed freely.
The hand on his shoulder nudged him. Shook him. He yearned for his father’s reassurance, but if he turned, he would see only shadows, and he would know he was alone with the bombs and the screams and the broken people.
As the thought entered his mind, he saw rubble, a home shattered, a pile of debris and, in its midst, a girl. He guessed she must have been only a few years older than he was, but the girl would celebrate no more birthdays. She lay still, her arms and legs at impossible, heartbreaking angles, so that she didn’t even look human anymore, but like some ragged, bloodstained marionette, discarded by a dejected puppeteer.
Sebastiano’s heart ached for her. He loved puppets.
The hand on his shoulder shook him again, then began to tug at his shirt. His father wanted his attention. He could feel how much the shadow wanted him to turn and look again, but he no longer wanted to see, no longer drew comfort from that touch. He felt ice filling him up, so that even his tears felt cold upon his cheeks.
And then he frowned. The hand on his shoulder … had lost its weight. Its size. This hand was too small to be his father’s hand, if it had ever been.
A small, paper-thin voice spoke his name, and Sebastiano flinched. His father no longer had a voice. Fear filled him, clutching at his heart, bathing him in a dread that soaked through his flesh and sank down to his bones, and he wished for a cave to hide inside, or that he were still on the dock and might dive into the ocean to lose himself amongst the fish.
“Sebastiano,” the urgent voice said, shaking him again.
He blinked. A bomb screamed down from the sky, but it exploded in silence. He blinked again, and the only sounds he could hear were the soft snoring of his roommates and the distant purr of the sea through the open window.
His heart hammered in his chest. The little boy lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling. A dream, he thought, and the realization brought first relief, and then a fresh wave of sorrow. He could recall the comfort he had taken in that moment when he had dreamed his father’s presence was with him. The details of the dream were already fleeing, both frightening and wonderful, but he would hold on to that.
He’s with me.
“Sebastiano,” a voice said, and a tiny hand shook him.
The boy let out a yell and rolled out of bed, taking the clovers with him. He banged his elbow on the floor, then scrambled onto his knees and peered over the top of the bed.
Pagliaccio sat on his bedside table, swinging his tiny feet where they dangled over the edge.
“Finally,” the clown said, his stitched mouth unmoving, though the word came out clear enough. “I thought you’d never wake up.”
The clown pushed off of the table and dropped to the ground. When he passed out of view, Sebastiano had a moment when the whole thing might have been a continuation of his dream. But then Carmelo began to stir in the next bed, muttering sleepily, wondering what Sebastiano was doing awake.
“Shush,” Sebastiano said. “I’m praying.”
A lie. But this was something he did not want to share. Pagliaccio spoke to him almost every day, but the puppet had never woken him from sleep, and he hadn’t seen the little clown move since Luciano had left the rectory and the theatre had been carried down to the basement and forgotten.
Sebastiano stood. Carmelo muttered again and he heard the rustle of the other boy turning over, but now Sebastiano ignored him. His attention, his fascination, was entirely focused on the tiny, brightly colored figure that ran across the wooden floor, stopped in the open doorway, and turned to beckon him to follow.
“Are you coming?” Pagliaccio asked.
The little boy smiled. “Don’t be silly,” he said. “Of course I’m coming.”
He started to follow.
“Who are you talking—” Carmelo rasped, and then he cried out.
Sebastiano turned, shushing him again, purely by instinct. He did not want to share this with anyone, his roommates especially, but he knew there might be trouble if Father Gaetano or Sister Veronica awoke.
He looked at Carmelo, who had crawled backward and pressed himself in fear against the headboard of his bed. His eyes were wide, his curly hair a wild mop.
“You saw him?” Sebastiano asked.
Carmelo gave a quick, terrified nod, and excitement and fear flooded Sebastiano in equal portions. He thought a moment, and then waved for Carmelo to follow him.
“Come on, then,” the little boy said. “But be quiet. I don’t want to scare him, and I don’t want to wake anyone up. He’s my friend, but I suppose he could be your friend, too. But not your best friend. That’s just for me.”
Sebastiano hurried into the hallway in his stocking feet. It didn’t get very cold, even with December approaching, but he liked to wear his socks to bed. Somehow it made him feel safer, protected, and when nobody was watching he liked to slide across the wooden floor. Skating, he called it. Skating always made him smile, and there were so few things that had that power anymore.
He didn’t skate now, but he appreciated the added measure of silence that his socks gave him as he crept down the hall. He had lost sight of Pagliaccio, and the only places near enough for him to have vanished were the stairways that led both upstairs and down. Descending would mean going to the girls’ floor, but he had a feeling that wasn’t the puppet’s destination. Instead, Sebastiano padded to the base of the ascending stairs and peered into the shadows, where he saw a small patch of color pass through a patch of moonlight that streamed from the window at the landing.
Moving swiftly.
Pagliaccio was climbing fast, scaling each step in a sliver of a second. Amazement and admiration made Sebastiano pause a moment. The clown was his friend, but still he waited until Pagliaccio had reached the landing and made the turn to go up the last few steps before starting his own ascent. Floorboards creaked behind him and he turned to see Carmelo there. Entranced, Sebastiano had nearly forgotten he was not alone. He offered the terrified boy a reassuring smile, knowing only that if Pagliaccio had something to show him, he wanted to see it … but the idea of not doing so alone gave him a certain comfort.
“Come on,” Sebastiano whispered, beckoning to the other boy.
Carmelo looked back, perhaps feeling alone himself, despite Sebastiano being with him. Then Carmelo frowned a little, and Sebastiano could see him mustering his courage just before he started up the steps.
The puppet moved so quickly that by the time Sebastiano reached the landing, Pagliaccio was nowhere to be seen. The boy had been taking care not to put much weight on the stairs, fearful that too much creaking of wood might awaken Father Gaetano or draw the attention of some malicious presence that he knew must be lurking in the shadows. What else were shadows for, after all, if not to play host to malice? Now, though, he lost all hesitation and scurried the rest of the way to the top floor, more worried about losing track of Pagliaccio than he was about drawing unwanted attention.
At the top of the stairs, he paused and looked both ways along the short fourth-floor corridor. There were no more stories beyond this one. Wood groaned behind him, but Sebastiano did not turn. He felt Carmelo there, sensed the boy’s arrival on the last step, heard the soft whisper of his own name, but his focus was on the open doors up and down the hall.
There were storerooms up here, and a music room, and several rooms that the nuns used for the orphans’ schooling. He had never been up here at night but had often thought it would be terribly frightening; in reality, there was something quietly beautiful about the fourth floor in this abandoned, silent state. Late autumn drafts whisked along the floorboards, and the building sighed and moaned with the power of the ocean breeze. Doors hung open, allowing pools of moonlight to spill into the hallway.
“Where did he go?” Carmelo asked, grabbing hold of Sebastiano’s arm.
The contact made Sebastiano wince, and the surreality that had momentarily mesmerized him passed. He glanced at Carmelo, saw the cautious courage in the other boy’s eyes, and felt a conspiratorial smile forming.
“Listen,” Sebastiano said.
Carmelo cocked his head, and then his eyes widened. Sebastiano had heard them already, the voices that seemed to slip along the corridor along with the draft and the sigh of old stone and dusty mortar. Small voices. Some of them hissing with excitement.
“This way,” Sebastiano said.
In truth, he would not have needed to hear the voices to guess which way Pagliaccio had gone. It only made sense, didn’t it? Where else would the puppets congregate, but around the theatre?
The boys approached the open door to the classroom warily. Sebastiano dropped to one knee, edging forward to peer inside, while Carmelo stood above and behind him, bending forward to do the same. Father Gaetano sometimes covered the puppet theatre with the blanket beneath which he had hidden it that first day, just to keep the dust from accumulating. Tonight, there was no sign of the blanket.
Moonlight cast a warm golden glow throughout the room, making the chairs and desks and the theatre and the ornate puppet box look flat and false, as if they were two-dimensional props and the entire classroom a stage. The actors who capered on that stage were the reverse: things meant to be without the fullness of life, somehow now living, speaking … performing. Somehow, as they always had while Luciano was still the caretaker here, the marionettes had slipped free of their strings. In the morning, or the next time someone opened their box, they would be bound once more, but tonight they were unfettered.
And it did seem like a performance, even to young Sebastiano. His uncle Vincenzo had been an actor, before he had gone off to war. When he had left, he had told Sebastiano the uniform was just another costume, “soldier” just another role. The boy had only vaguely understood what he meant at the time.
Now, watching the stringless puppets moving, speaking, living, there in Father Gaetano’s catechism classroom, he thought of Uncle Vincenzo and his uniform again, because the first thing he had noticed when he peeked through that doorway had not been Pagliaccio—who sat perched on the apron of the puppet theatre’s narrow stage—nor had it been the various animals or the heroes and monsters left over from Luciano’s puppet shows. No, the first thing Sebastiano had noticed was the conflict that seemed to be transpiring on the floor in front of the theatre.
David and Goliath.
Uncle Vincenzo had put on his uniform, and the role had transformed him into a soldier. Now these puppets—one small and one much larger, almost monstrous—faced one another warily, circling, their weapons at the ready. Goliath laughed, and the huge puppet’s voice was a low, grinding rasp that sent a shiver through Sebastiano. The puppet David had a small cloth sling, but there were no rocks inside. Sebastiano had urged Father Gaetano to put a rock in, had known that the students would want to see David actually hit Goliath with it, but the priest had patiently explained and demonstrated his inability to make the puppet David actually hit Goliath with anything. It had to be what Father Gaetano called implied.
Pantomime, he had said.
Puppet David was unarmed.
“It’s magic,” Carmelo whispered.
Leaning against the door frame, still in a crouch, Sebastiano glanced up to see the enchanted expression on the face of his roommate and sometime nemesis. Carmelo didn’t seem frightened anymore, and Sebastiano was glad. It was, after all, just another sort of puppet show. And perhaps the boy was right about it being magic. Sebastiano believed in all kinds of things that adults would have called magic, scoffing at the word. But they wouldn’t be scoffing if they could see the way David and Goliath moved around, each watching the other, or if they heard the soft voices of the other puppets, some of whom called for the fighters to stop and others who egged them on, hoping for real battle.
When Goliath began to beat puppet David with his club, Sebastiano let out a little gasp. He feared for David, worried that he might get broken, but he needn’t have been concerned. As he watched, barely breathing, knowing that he should be afraid but somehow only fascinated, the other puppets swept in and began to pull Goliath away. The animals bit him. The heroes and villains and saints restrained him. A lion ripped the club from Goliath’s grip, and Sebastiano knew Father Gaetano would have to fix it tomorrow.
“That’s enough,” a soft voice said.
A voice so familiar.
All of the puppets turned to look up at the theatre’s apron. Pagliaccio stood there now, looking down upon them. The clown had his hands on his hips, and somehow the threads of his smile had turned into a stern grimace.
“Goliath,” he said angrily. “That is not how the story goes.”
The huge puppet hung his head as if ashamed, but after a moment he slowly raised it and looked at the others.
“The clown wants you to think he is wise because he was never put to sleep in the box. But that is luck, not wisdom.”
Goliath lifted his head to glare at Pagliaccio.
“I,” said the puppet, “am not a story.”
Much muttering followed this, but whatever playful mood had drawn them out of their box to begin with had dissipated. The puppets began to gather beneath the box, scrambling up its ornate molding and then dropping inside.
Sebastiano looked up to see Carmelo watching them with an expression of sheer delight. He touched the boy’s wrist, but had to tug on his hand to get him to look down.
“We should go,” Sebastiano said.
Reluctantly, Carmelo allowed himself to be pulled away. As they retreated, Sebastiano took one final look through the open door and saw Pagliaccio sitting on the edge of the puppet theatre’s apron again. His head was cocked in such a way that his tiny expression was lost in shadow, but he seemed to be pondering something. So was Sebastiano, for that matter. He was glad that Pagliaccio had shared this with him, had given him the gift of this moonlit magic, but he could not help but wonder why. And, though he was tired now and sleep called to him, it occurred to him that if Pagliaccio was worried about something, perhaps he ought to be worried, too.
Downstairs, outside their bedroom, Sebastiano caught Carmelo’s wrist. The boy still wore the same grin he’d had before. Sebastiano felt too tired for grinning, or even for worrying. He’d consider it all in the morning. But one thing needed to be said.
“I shared this with you,” Sebastiano said. “But it’s a secret thing. Don’t tell anyone.”
“Why not?” Carmelo said, his grin souring.
“You said yourself it’s magic. The sisters won’t understand. If you talk about it, you’ll ruin everything. Please?”
“Okay, okay,” Carmelo said, tugging his hand away and heading for his bed.
Sebastiano watched him slide under the covers before trudging tiredly to his own bed, the floor cold now even through his socks. He might only have been nine, but he knew the sound of insincerity. Carmelo would not keep this secret, that seemed a certainty. Sebastiano tried to tell himself that it would be all right if the other orphans knew. They all had enough to be sad about. It would be nice if they could be delighted the way Carmelo had been tonight.
It’ll be all right, he thought, hoping.
He lay in bed, eyes burning with the need for sleep, and he tried to force himself to stay awake, waiting for Pagliaccio to return. But soon enough the softness of his pillow overcame him, and he drifted off with no sign of his friend. His last thought was to wonder if the clown had always wandered about the building at night, and where he might go, and what mischief he might get up to when no one else was looking.
It must be fun, he thought, having such a secret life.
And then he slept.