and I will be done with you. I am done, too, with being a soldier, because soldiering is a useless and pointless thing.”
“Do not say something so terrible,” said Vilna Lutz. “Think of your father.”
“I am thinking of my father,” said Peter.
And he was.
He was thinking of his father in the garden.
And he was thinking of him on the battlefield, bleeding to death.
Chapter Ten
The weather worsened.
Although it did not seem possible, it became colder.
Although it did not seem possible, it grew darker.
It would not snow.
And in the cold, dark dorm room at the Orphanage of the Sisters of Perpetual Light, Adele continued to dream of the elephant. The dream was so persistent that Adele could, after a time, repeat verbatim the words that the elephant spoke to Sister Marie when she came to the door. There was, in particular, one sentence that the elephant spoke that was so full of beauty and promise that Adele took to saying it to herself during the day: “‘It is the one you are calling Adele I am coming for to keep.’” She said these words over and over, as if they were a poem or a blessing or a prayer. “‘It is the one you are calling Adele I am coming for to keep; it is the one you are calling Adele I am coming for to keep—’”
“Who are you talking to?” said an older girl named Lisette.
She and Adele were in the orphanage kitchen together, bent over a bucket, peeling potatoes.
“No one,” said Adele.
“But your lips were moving,” said Lisette. “I saw them move. You were saying something.”
“I was saying the elephant’s words,” said Adele.
“The elephant’s words?”
“The elephant from my dreams. She speaks to me.”
“Oh, of course, silly me, the speaking elephant from your dreams,” said Lisette. She snorted.
“The elephant knocks at the door and asks for me,” said Adele. She lowered her voice. “I believe that she has come to take me away from here.”
“To take you away?” said Lisette. Her eyes narrowed. “And where would she take you?”
“Home,” said Adele.
“Ha! Listen to her!” said Lisette. “Home.” She snorted again. “How old are you?”
“Six,” said Adele. “Almost seven.”
“Yes, well, you are very exceptionally, amazingly stupid for almost seven years old,” said Lisette.
There came a knock at the kitchen door.
“Hark!” said Lisette. “Someone knocks! May be it is an elephant.” She got up and went to the door and threw it wide. “Look, Adele,” she said, turning back with a terrible smile on her face. “Look who is here. It is an elephant come to take you home.”
There was not, of course, an elephant at the door. Instead, there stood the neighbourhood beggar and his dog.
“We have nothing to give you,” said Lisette in a loud voice. “We’re orphans. This is an orphanage.” She stamped her foot.
“We have nothing to give,” sang the beggar, “but look, Adele, an elephant, and this is wonderful news.”
Adele looked at the beggar’s face and saw that he was truly, terribly hungry.
“Look, Adele, an elephant,” he sang, “but you must know that the truth is always changing.”
“Don’t sing,” said Lisette. She slammed the door shut and came and sat down next to Adele. “You see, now, who comes and knocks at the door here? Blind dogs. And beggars who sing meaningless songs. Do you think they have come to take us home?”
“He was hungry,” said Adele. She felt an unsolicited tear roll down her cheek. It was followed by another and then another.
“So what?” said Lisette. “Who do you know who isn’t hungry?”
“No one,” answered Adele truthfully. She herself was always hungry.
“Yes,” said Lisette, “we are all hungry. So what?”
Adele could think of nothing to say in reply.
All she had were the words of a dream elephant. They were not much, but they were hers, and she began again to say them to herself: “‘It is the one you are calling Adele I am coming for to keep; it is the one you are calling Adele I am coming for to keep; it is the one you are calling Adele—’”
“Quit moving your lips,” said Lisette.
“Can’t you see that no one intends to come for us?”
Chapter Eleven
On the first Saturday of the month, the city of Baltese turned out to see the elephant. The line snaked from the home of the Countess Quintet out into the street and down the hill as far as the eye could see. There were young men with waxed moustaches and pomaded hair, and old ladies dressed in borrowed finery, their wrinkled faces scrubbed clean. There were candle makers who smelled of warm beeswax, washerwomen with roughened hands and hopeful faces, babies still at their mothers’ breasts, and old men who leaned heavily on canes.
Milliners stood with their heads held high, their latest creations displayed proudly on their heads. Lamplighters, their eyes heavy from lack of sleep, stood next to street sweepers, who held their brooms before them as if they were swords. Priests and fortunetellers stood side by side and eyed each other with distaste and wariness.
Everyone, it seemed, was there: the whole city of Baltese stood in line to see the elephant.
And everyone, each person, had hopes and dreams, wishes for revenge, and desires for love.
They stood together.
They waited.
And secretly, deep within their hearts, even though they knew it could not truly be so, they each expected that the mere sight of the elephant would somehow deliver them, would make their wishes and hopes and desires come true.
Peter stood in line directly behind a man who was dressed entirely in black and who had atop his head a black hat with an exceptionally wide brim. The man rocked from heel to toe, muttering, “The dimensions of an elephant are most impressive. The dimensions of an elephant are impressive in the extreme. I will now detail for you the dimensions of an elephant.”
Peter listened carefully, because he would have liked very much to know the actual dimensions of an elephant. It seemed like good information to have; but the man in the black hat never arrived at the point of announcing the figures. Instead, after insisting that he would detail the dimensions, he paused dramatically, took a deep breath and then began again, rocking from heel to toe and saying, “The dimensions of an elephant are most impressive. The dimensions of an elephant are impressive in the extreme…”
