The Best of Gene Wolfe

back into her home and slam the lid, the driver said, “That was very good. You are an artist indeed.”

“I forgot to mention that I call her Charity because that’s what I have to ask of my audiences.”

“No, sir; you are very skilled. The skipping down the road—anyone can make them to skip for a few steps, but to do so for so long, over the uneven ground and so rapidly, I know how difficult it is. It deserves applause.”

I wanted to see how far he would go, so I asked, “As good as the signor?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Not as good as Signor Stromboli. But I have seen many, sir. Many come here and you are far better than most. Signor Stromboli will be pleased to talk to you.”

 T

he house was smaller than I had expected, of the Italian Alpine style. There was a large, informal garden, however, and a carriage house in the rear. The driver assured me that he would see to my baggage, and Madame Stromboli, who I assume had been following our progress up the road from a window, met me at the gate. She was white haired now, but the woman she had once been, olive skinned and beautiful with magnificent dark eyes, still showed plainly in her face. “Welcome,” she said. “We are so glad that you could come.”

I told her that it was a great honor to be there.

“It is a great expense for you; we know that. To travel between the suns. Once when we were much younger my husband went, to make money for us. I could not go; it cost too much. Only him, and the dolls. For years I waited, but he returned to me.”

I said, “It must have been lonely.”

“It was, very lonely. Now we are here where very few can come and see us. It is beautiful, no? But lonely. But my husband and I, we are lonely together. That is better. You will wish to wash, and perhaps change your clothing. Then I will take you to see him.”

I thanked her.

“He will be kind to you. He likes young men who follow the old art. But be content with what he shows you. Do not say: How do you do this? Or Do that! Let him show you what he wishes and he will show you a great deal.”

 H

e did. I will not pretend to condense all the interviews I had with Stromboli into a single scene, but he was generous with his time—although the mornings, all morning, every day, were reserved for his practice, alone, in a room lined with mirrors. In time I saw nearly everything of his that I had heard described, except the famous comic butler Zanni. Stromboli showed me how to keep five figures in motion at a time, differentiating their motions so cleverly that it was easy to imagine that the dancing, shouting people around us had five different operators, provided that you could remember, even while you watched Stromboli, that they had an operator at all.

“They were little people once, you know,” he said. “You have read the history? Never higher than your shoulder—those were the biggest—and they moved with wires. In those days the most any man could do well was four; did you know that? Now they are as big as you and me, they are free, and I can do five. Perhaps before you die you will make it six. It is not impossible. As they pile the flowers onto your casket they will be saying, He could do six.”

I told him I would be happy just to handle three well.

“You will learn. You have already learned more difficult things. But you will not learn traveling with just one. If you wish to learn three, you must have three with you always, so that you can practice. But already you do the voice of a woman speaking and singing. That was the most difficult for me to learn.” He threw out his big chest and thumped it. “I am an old man now and my voice is not so deep as it was, but when I was young as you it was very deep, and I could not do the voices of women, not with all the help from the control and the speakers in the dolls pitched high. But now listen.”

He made Julia, Lucinda, and Columbine, three of his girls, step forward. For a moment they simply giggled; then, after a whispered but audible conference, they burst into Rosine’s song from The Barber of Seville—Julia singing coloratura soprano, Columbine mezzo-soprano, and Lucinda contralto.

“Don’t record,” Stromboli admonished me. “It is easy to record and cheat; but a good audience will always know, the amateurs will want you to show them, and you can’t look at yourself and smile. You can already do one girl’s voice very good. Don’t ever record. You know how I learned to do them?”

I expressed interest.

“When I was starting—not yet married—I did only male voices. And the false female speaking singsong, the falsetto. Then I married and little Maria, I mean Signora Stromboli my wife, began to help. In those days I did not work always alone. She did the simpler movements and the female voices.”

I nodded to show I understood.

“So how was I to learn? If I said, ‘Little Maria, you sit in the audience tonight,’ she would say, ‘Stromboli, it is not good. It is better when I do them.’ So what did I do? I made the long tour outworld. The cost was very high, but the pay was very high too, and I left little Maria at home. When I came back we could do this.”

Columbine, Lucinda, and Julia bowed.

 T

he signor and I said our good-byes on the day before I was to leave Sarg. My ship would blast off at noon, and the morning practice sessions were sacred, but we held a party the night before with wine in the happy, undrunken Italian way and singing—just Stromboli and his wife and I. In the morning I packed hurriedly, and discovered that my second best pair of shoes was missing. I said to hell with them, gave my last suitcase to Stromboli’s man of all work, said goodbye again to Maria Stromboli, and went out to the front gate to wait for the man of all work to bring the buggy around.

Five minutes passed, then ten. I still had plenty of time, a couple of hours if he drove fast, but I began to wonder what was keeping him. Then I heard the rattle of harness. The buggy came around a curve in the road, but its driver was a dark-haired woman in pink I had never seen before. She pulled up in front of me, indicated my luggage, which was neatly stowed on the back of the buggy, with a wave of her hand, and said, “Climb up. Antonio is indisposed, so I told the Strombolis I would drive you. I am Lili. Have you heard of me?”

I got into the seat beside her and told her I had not.

“You came here to see Stromboli, and you have not heard of me? Ah, such is fame! Once we were notorious, and I think perhaps that it was because of me that he retired. He lives with his wife now and wishes the world to think that he is a good husband, you understand; but my little house is not far away.”