elephant to the door of the basilica and he doesn't kneel down, Nothing, unless we suspect that you're to blame, And if I was, You would have good reason to repent. The mahout thought it best to give in, At what time do you want me to bring you the animal, he asked, At midday on the dot, not a minute later, Well, I hope I have enough time to get the idea into suleiman's head that he must kneel at your feet, Not at our feet, for we are unworthy, but at the feet of our saint anthony, and with those pious words, the priest went off to tell his superiors the results of his evangelical work, Is there any hope of success, they asked, Very much so, even though we are in the hands of an elephant, Elephants don't have hands, That was just a manner of speaking, like saying, for example, that we're in the hands of god, The main difference being that we are in the hands of god, Praised be his name, Indeed, but getting back to the point, why exactly are we in the elephant's hands, Because we don't know what he will do when he arrives at the door of the basilica, He'll do whatever the mahout tells him to do, that's what education is for, Let us trust in god's benevolent understanding of the facts of this world, if god, as we suppose, wants to be served, it will suit him to help his own miracles, those that will best speak of his glory, Brothers, faith can do anything, and god will do what is necessary, Amen, they chorused, mentally preparing an arsenal of auxiliary prayers.
Meanwhile, fritz was trying, by all possible means, to get the elephant to understand what was required of him. This was no easy task for an animal of firm opinions, who immediately associated the action of kneeling with the subsequent action of lying down to sleep. Little by little, though, after many blows, innumerable oaths and a few desperate pleas, light began to dawn in suleiman's hitherto obstinate brain, namely, that he had to kneel, but not lie down. Fritz even went so far as to say, My life is in your hands, which just goes to show how ideas can spread, not only directly, by word of mouth, but simply because they hang about in the atmospheric currents around us, constituting, you might say, a veritable bath in which one learns things quite without realizing. Given the scarcity of clocks, what counted then was the height of the sun and the length of the shadow it cast on the ground. That is how fritz knew that midday was approaching and, therefore, the moment to lead the elephant to the door of the basilica, and then it would all be up to god. There he goes, riding on suleiman's back, just as we have seen him do before, but now his hands and heart are trembling, as if he were a mere apprentice mahout. He need not have worried. When he reached the door of the basilica, before a crowd of witnesses who will, forever after, confirm that the miracle occurred, the elephant, obeying a light touch to his right ear, bent his knees, not just one, which would have been enough to satisfy the priest who came with the request, but both, thus bowing to the majesty of god in heaven and to his representatives on earth. Suleiman received in return a generous sprinkling of holy water that even reached the mahout on top, while the watching crowd, as one, fell to their knees, and a shiver of pleasure ran through glorious saint anthony's mummified corpse where it lay in his tomb.
...
THAT SAME AFTERNOON, two carrier pigeons, one male and one female, set off from the basilica in the direction of trent, taking with them the news of this marvelous miracle. Why trent and not rome, where the head of the church is to be found, you will ask. The answer is simple, because, since fifteen forty-five, an ecumenical council has been taking place in trent, engaged, according to them, in preparing a counterattack on luther and his followers. Suffice it to say that decrees had already been issued on the sacred scriptures and tradition, on original sin, justification and the sacraments in general. It is understandable, therefore, that the basilica of saint anthony, a pillar of the faith at its purest, needs to be kept permanently informed about what is going on in trent, which is so close, only twenty leagues away, a mere vol d'oiseau, appropriately enough, for pigeons, who have been flying between the two locations for years. This time, however, padua is the first with the news, because it isn't every day that an elephant solemnly kneels at the door of a basilica, thus bearing witness to the fact that the message of the gospels is addressed to the whole animal kingdom and that the regrettable drowning of those hundreds of pigs in the sea of galilee could be put down to inexperience, occurring as it did before the cogs in the mechanism for performing miracles were properly oiled. What matters now are the long lines of believers forming in the encampment, all eager to see the elephant and take advantage of the chance to buy a tuft of elephant hair, a business rapidly set up by fritz when the payment he naively assumed he would receive from the basilica's coffers was not forthcoming. Let us not censure the mahout, for others who did far less for the christian faith were nonetheless amply rewarded. Tomorrow it will be claimed that an infusion of elephant hair taken three times a day is a sovereign remedy for cases of acute diarrhea and that if the same tuft of hair is soaked in almond oil and the oil massaged energetically into the scalp, again three times a day, it will halt even the most galloping of alopecias. Fritz can barely cope with the demand, the purse tied to his belt is already heavy with coins, if the camp were to stay there a whole week, he would be a rich man. His customers are not all from padua, some are from mestre and even venice. It is said that the archduke and archduchess are having such a good time at the doge's palace that they will not return today, or even tomorrow, a piece of news that makes fritz very happy, indeed, he never thought he would have so many reasons to feel grateful to the house of habsburg. He wonders why it had never occurred to him before to sell elephant hair when he lived in india and then he thinks to himself that, despite the ridiculous number of deities, subdeities and demons infesting that country, there are far fewer superstitions in the land where he was born than in this particular part of civilized and very christian europe, which is capable of blithely buying some elephant hair and piously believing the vendor's lies. Having to pay for your own dreams must be the most desperate of situations. In the end, contrary to the prognostications of the so-called barracks gazette, the archduke and archduchess returned on the afternoon of the following day, ready to resume their journey as soon as possible. News of the miracle had reached the doge's palace, but in somewhat garbled form, the result of the successive transmissions of facts, true or assumed, real or purely imaginary, based on everything from partial, more or less eyewitness accounts to reports from those who simply liked the sound of their own voice, for, as we know all too well, no one telling a story can resist adding a period, and sometimes even a comma. The archduke summoned his steward to clarify what had happened, not so much the miracle itself, but the reasons that had led to it. On this particular matter, the steward lacked sufficient information, and so it was decided to summon the mahout fritz, who, given the nature of his role, should have something more substantial to tell. The archduke did not beat about the bush, They tell me that a miracle took place during my absence, Yes, sir, And that suleiman was involved, That is so, sir, You mean that the elephant decided, of his own volition, to go and kneel at the door of the basilica, That isn't quite how I would put it, sir, How would you put it, then, asked the archduke, Sir, I was the one who took suleiman there, So I thought, although that's not what interests me, what I want to know is in whose head was the idea born, All I had to do, sir, was to teach the elephant to kneel at my command, And who gave you the order to do so, Sir, I'm not allowed to discuss the matter, Did someone forbid you to, Not exactly, but a word to the wise is enough, And who proffered you that word, Forgive me, sir, but, If you don't answer my question at once you will have reason to regret it most bitterly, It was a priest from the basilica, And what did he say, He said that they needed a miracle and that suleiman could provide that miracle, And what did you answer, That suleiman wasn't used to performing miracles and that the attempt might result in failure, And what was the priest's response, He said that I would have reason to repent if I didn't obey, almost the same words that your highness just used, And then what happened, Well, I spent the rest of the morning teaching suleiman to kneel at a signal from me, which wasn't easy, but I managed it in the end, You're a good mahout, You're too kind, sir, Would you like some advice, Yes, sir, Don't tell anyone else about our conversation, No, sir, That way you'll have no reason to regret anything, Right, sir, I won't forget, Off you go and be sure to remove from suleiman's head the idiotic idea that he can go around performing miracles by kneeling down at the doors of churches, one expects much more from a miracle, for example, that someone should grow a new leg to replace one that was cut off, imagine the number of such prodigies that could be performed on the battlefield, Yes, sir, Off you go. Once alone, the archduke began to think that perhaps he had said too much, that his words, if the mahout let his tongue run away with him, would be of no benefit whatsoever to the delicate political balance he has been trying to keep between luther's reforms and the ongoing conciliar response. After all, as henry the fourth of france will say in the not too distant future, paris is well worth a mass. Even so, a look of painful melancholy appears on maximilian's slender face, perhaps because few things in life hurt as much as the awareness that one has betrayed the ideas of one's youth. The archduke told himself that he was old enough not to cry over spilled milk, that the superabundant udders of the catholic church were there, as always, waiting for a pair of skillful hands to milk them, and events so far had shown that his archducal hands had a certain talent for that diplomatic milking, as long as the said church believed that the results of those matters of faith would, in time, bring them some advantage. Even so, the story of the elephant's false
