miracle went beyond the bounds of what was tolerable. The people at the basilica, he thought, must have gone mad, after all, they already had a saint who could make a new pitcher out of the fragments of a broken one and who, while living in padua, was able to fly through the air to lisbon to save his father from the gallows, why then go and ask a mahout to get his elephant to fake a miracle, ah, luther, luther, you were so right. Having vented his feelings, the archduke summoned his steward, whom he ordered to prepare for departure the following morning, traveling, if possible, directly to trent or, if necessary, spending at most one night encamped en route. The steward replied that he thought the second option more prudent, for experience had shown that they could not count on suleiman when it came to speed, He's more of a long-distance runner, he concluded, adding, The mahout has been taking advantage of people's credulity and is selling them elephant hair so that they can make potions that won't cure anyone, Tell him from me that if he doesn't cease doing so this instant he will have reason to regret it for the rest of his life, which will certainly not be a long one, Your highness's orders will be carried out at once, we have to put a stop to this fraud as quickly as possible, this elephant hair business is demoralizing the whole convoy, especially the balder members of the cuirassiers, Right, I want this matter resolved, I can't prevent suleiman's so- called miracle pursuing us for the rest of the journey, but at least no one will be able to say that the house of habsburg is profiting from the crimes of a lying mahout and collecting value-added tax as if it were a commercial operation covered by the law, Sir, I will deal with the matter forthwith, he'll be laughing on the other side of his face when I've finished, it's just a shame that we need him to get the elephant to vienna, but I hope, at least, that this will teach him a lesson, Go on, put out that fire before anyone gets burned. Fritz did not really deserve such harsh judgments. It's only right that the criminal should be accused and condemned, but true justice should always bear in mind any extenuating circumstances, the first of which, in the mahout's case, would be that the idea of the fake miracle came not from him, but from the priests of the basilica of saint anthony, who thought up the hoax in the first place, if they hadn't, it would never have occurred to fritz that he could grow rich by exploiting the capillary system of the maker of that apparent miracle. In recognition of their own greater and lesser sins, given that no one in this world is blameless, and they far less than most, both the noble archduke and his obliging steward had a duty to remember that famous saying about the beam and the mote, which, adapted to these new circumstances, teaches how much easier it is to see the beam in your neighbor's eye than the elephant's hair in your own. Besides, this is not a miracle that will linger long in people's memories or in those of future generations. Contrary to the archduke's fears, the story of the false miracle will not pursue them for the rest of the journey and will quickly fade. The people in the convoy, both noble and plebeian, military and civilian, will have far more to think about when the clouds building up over the region around trent, above the mountains that immediately precede the wall of the alps, become, first, rain, then possibly hard-hitting hail and, doubtless, snow, and the roads become covered in slippery ice. And then it is likely that some members of the convoy will recognize, at last, that the poor elephant was nothing but an innocent dupe in that grotesque entry in the church's accounting records and that the mahout is merely an insignificant product of the corrupt times in which we happen to live. Farewell, world, you go from worse to worse.
Despite the archduke's express wishes, it was impossible to cover the distance between padua and trent in one day. Suleiman tried his hardest to obey the mahout's urgent commands, indeed the mahout seemed determined to take it out on him for the failure of a business that had begun so well and ended so badly, but elephants, even those who weigh four tons, also have their physical limits. In fact, it all turned out for the best. Instead of reaching their destination in the half-light of evening, in near-darkness, they arrived in trent at midday, when they were greeted by people in the streets and by applause. The sky was still covered from horizon to horizon by what seemed like solid cloud, but it wasn't raining. The convoy's meteorologists, who are, by vocation, the majority, were unanimous, It's going to snow, they said, and hard. When the cortege reached trent, a surprise was awaiting them in the square outside the cathedral of saint vigilius. In the exact center of that square stood a more or less half- life-size statue of an elephant, or, rather, a construction made out of planks that bore every appearance of having been hastily nailed together, with little attempt to achieve anatomical exactitude, although they had included a raised trunk and a pair of tusks, the ivory of which was represented by a lick of white paint, this, one assumes, was intended to represent suleiman, well, it must have, since no other animal of his species was expected in that part of the country nor was there any record of another elephant having visited trent, not at least in the recent past. When the archduke saw the elephantoid figure, he trembled. His worst fears were confirmed, news of the miracle had clearly arrived in trent, and the religious authorities of the city, which had already benefited, materially and spiritually, from the fact that the council was being held within its walls, had found confirmation of, how shall we put it, a kind of shared sanctity with padua and the basilica of saint anthony, and had decided to demonstrate this by erecting a hasty construction representing the miracle-working creature in front of the very cathedral where the cardinals, bishops and theologians had been meeting now for years. When he took a closer look, the archduke noticed that there were large holes in the elephant's back, rather like trapdoors, which immediately made him think of the celebrated trojan horse, although it was perfectly clear that there wouldn't be room in the statue's belly for even a squadron of children, unless they were lilliputians, but that was impossible, because the word hadn't even been invented yet. To clarify the situation, the anxious archduke ordered his steward to go and find out what the devil that worrying, cobbled-together monstrosity was doing there. The steward went and returned. There was no reason to be alarmed. The elephant had been created in order to celebrate maximilian of austria's visit to the city of trent, and its other purpose, and this was true, was as a frame for the fireworks that would erupt from the wooden carcass when darkness fell. The archduke gave a sigh of relief, the elephant's actions were obviously deemed to be of little importance in trent, apart, perhaps, from providing an object capable of being burned to a cinder, for there was a strong likelihood that the fuses attached to the fireworks would ignite the wood, providing spectators with a finale that would, many years later, merit the adjective wagnerian. And so it was. After a storm of colors, in which the yellow of sodium, the red of calcium, the green of copper, the blue of potassium, the white of magnesium and the gold of iron all performed miracles, in which stars, fountains, slow-burning candles and cascades of lights poured out of the elephant as if from an inexhaustible cornucopia, the celebrations ended with a huge bonfire around which many of trent's inhabitants would take the opportunity to stand and warm their hands, while suleiman, in the shelter of a lean-to built for the purpose, was finishing off his second bundle of forage. The fire was gradually becoming a glowing heap of embers, but this did not last long in the cold, and the embers rapidly turned into ashes, although by then, once the main spectacle was over, the archduke and the archduchess had both retired to bed. The snow began to fall.
...
THERE ARE THE ALPS. Yes, there they are, but you can hardly see them. The snow is falling softly, like scraps of cotton wool, but that softness is deceiving, as our elephant will tell you, for he is carrying on his back an ever more visible layer of ice, which the mahout should have noticed by now, were it not for the fact that he is from a hot country where this kind of winter is almost unimaginable. Of course in old india, in the north, there is no shortage of mountains and snowy peaks, but subhro, now known as fritz, never had the money to travel for his own pleasure and to see other places. His one experience of snow was in lisbon, a few weeks after arriving from goa, when, one cold night, he saw falling from the sky a white dust, like flour being sieved, which melted as soon as it touched the ground. Nothing like the white vastness before his eyes now, stretching for as far as he can see. Very soon, the scraps of cotton wool had become large, heavy flakes which, driven by the wind, beat against the mahout's face. Sitting astride suleiman and wrapped in his greatcoat, fritz did not feel the cold partic ularly, but those continuous, endless blows to the face troubled him as if they were some kind of dangerous threat. He had been told that from trent to bolzano was a mere stroll, some ten leagues, or a little less, a flea-jump away, but not in this weather, when the snow seemed to be possessed of claws with which to grasp and delay any and every movement, even breathing, as if unwilling to allow the imprudent traveler to leave, as suleiman knows, for despite the strength given him by nature, he can only drag himself painfully up those steep paths. We do not know what he is thinking, but, in the midst of these alps, we can be sure of one thing, he is not a happy elephant. Apart from the occasions when the cuirassiers ride past as best they can on their frozen mounts, uphill and downhill, to see how the convoy is coping and to avoid any dispersals or diversions that could mean death to anyone who might lose their way in that icy place, the path seems to exist only for the elephant and his mahout. Having grown used, since their departure from valladolid, to being close to the carriage carrying the archduke and archduchess, the mahout misses
