might be easier, instead, to despair.
“Come away from the window,” Vilna Lutz called to Peter.
Peter held very still. He found that it was hard now for him to look at Vilna Lutz’s face.
“Private Duchene,” said Vilna Lutz.
“Sir?” said Peter without turning.
“A battle is being waged,” said Vilna Lutz, “a battle between good and evil! Whose side will you do battle on? Private Duchene!”
Peter turned and faced the old man.
“What is this? Are you crying?”
“No,” said Peter. “I am not.” But when he put a hand to his face, he was surprised to discover that his cheek was wet.
“That is good,” said Vilna Lutz. “Soldiers do not weep; at least, they should not weep. It is not to be borne, the weeping of soldiers. Something is amiss in the universe when a soldier cries. Hark! Do you hear the rattle of muskets?”
“I do not,” said Peter.
“Oh, it is cold,” said the old soldier. “Still, we must practise manoeuvres. The marching must begin. Yes, the marching must begin.”
Peter did not move.
“Private Duchene! You will march! Armies must move. Soldiers must march.”
Peter sighed. His heart was so heavy inside him that he did not, in truth, think that he had it in him to move at all. He lifted one foot and then the other.
“Higher,” said Vilna Lutz. “March with purpose; march like a man. March as your father would have marched.”
What difference does it make if an elephant has come? Peter thought as he stood in the same place and marched without going anywhere at all. It is just some grand and terrible joke that the fortuneteller has told me. My sister is not alive. There is no reason to hope.
The longer he marched, the more convinced Peter became that things were indeed hopeless and that an elephant was a ridiculous answer to any question – but a particularly ridiculous answer to a question posed by the human heart.
Chapter Five
The people of the city of Baltese became obsessed with the elephant.
In the market square and in the ballrooms, in the stables and in the gaming houses, in the churches and in the squares, it was “the elephant,” “the elephant that came through the roof,” “the elephant conjured by the magician,” “the elephant that crippled the noblewoman”.
The bakers of the city concocted a flat, oversized pastry and filled it with cream and sprinkled it with cinnamon and sugar and called the confection an elephant ear, and the people could not get enough of it.
The street vendors sold, for exorbitant prices, chunks of plaster that had fallen onto the stage when the elephant made her dramatic appearance. “Cataclysm!” the vendors shouted. “Mayhem! Possess the plaster of disaster!”
The puppet shows in the public gardens featured elephants that came crashing onto the stage, crushing the other puppets beneath them, making the young children laugh and clap in delight and recognition.
From the pulpits of the churches the preachers spoke about divine intervention, the surprises of fate, the wages of sin, and the dire consequences of magic gone afoul.
The elephant’s dramatic and unexpected appearance changed the way the people of the city of Baltese spoke. If, for instance, a person was deeply surprised or moved, he or she would say, “I was, you understand, in the presence of the elephant.”
As for the fortunetellers of the city, they were kept particularly busy. They gazed into their teacups and crystal balls. They read the palms of thousands of hands. They studied their cards and cleared their throats and predicted that amazing things were yet to come. If elephants could arrive without warning, then a dramatic shift had certainly occurred in the universe. The stars were aligning themselves for something even more spectacular; rest assured, rest assured.
Meanwhile, in the dance halls and in the ballrooms, the men and the women of the city, the low and the high, danced the same dance: a swaying, lumbering two-step called, of course, the Elephant.
Everywhere, always, it was “the elephant, the elephant, the magician’s elephant”.
“It is absolutely ruining the social season,” said the Countess Quintet to her husband. “It is all people will speak of. Why, it is as bad as a war. Actually, it is worse. At least with a war, there are well-dressed heroes capable of making interesting conversation. But what do we have here? Nothing, nothing but a smelly, loathsome beast, and yet people
“Elephant,” muttered the count.
“What did you say?” said the countess. She whirled around and stared at her husband.
“Nothing,” said the count.
“Something must be done,” said the countess.
“Indeed,” said Count Quintet, “and who will do it?”
“I beg your pardon?”
The count cleared his throat. “I only wanted to say, my dear, that you must admit that what occurred was indeed truly extraordinary.”
“Why must I admit it? What was extraordinary about it?”
The countess had not been present at the opera house that fateful evening, and so she had missed the cataclysmic event; and the countess was the kind of person who hated, most horribly, to miss cataclysmic events.
“Well, you see—” began Count Quintet.
“I do not see,” said the countess. “And you will not make me see.”
“Yes,” said her husband, “I suppose that much is true.”
Unlike his wife, the count had been in attendance at the opera house that night. He had been seated so close to the stage that he had felt the rush of displaced air that presaged the elephant’s appearance.
“There must be a way to wrest control of the situation,” said the Countess Quintet. She paced back and forth. “There must be some way to regain the social season.”
The count closed his eyes. He felt again the breeze of the elephant’s arrival. The whole thing had happened in an instant, but it had also occurred so slowly. He, who never cried, had cried that night, because it was as if the elephant had spoken to him and said, “Things are not at all what they seem to be; oh no, not at all.”
To be in the presence of such a thing, to feel such a feeling!
Count Quintet opened his eyes.
“My dear,” he said, “I have the solution.”
“You do?” said the countess.
“Yes.”
“And what, exactly, would the solution be?”
“If everyone speaks of nothing but the elephant, and if you desire to be the centre, the heart, of the social season, then you must be the one with the thing that everyone speaks of.”
“But what can you mean?” said the countess. Her lower lip quivered. “Whatever can you mean?”
“What I mean, my dear, is that you must bring the magician’s elephant here.”
When the countess demanded of the universe that it move in a certain way, the universe, trembling and
