back at me. “Now go. I hear my father coming. The awful old goat.”
I backed away and my heels struck the stair behind me. I was in such a hurry to get away I fell sprawling across the granite steps. The bird on my shoulder took off, rising in widening circles through the air, but when I found my feet it glided down to where it had rested before on my
shoulder
and I began
to run back up
the way I had come.
I
climbed
in haste for
a time but soon
was tired again and
had to slow to a walk.
I began to think about what
I would say when I reached the
main staircase and was discovered.
“I will confess everything and accept
my punishment, whatever that is,” I said.
The tin bird sang a gay and humorous ditty.
It
fell
silent
though as
I reached the
gate, quieted by
a different song not
far off: a girl’s sobs.
I listened, confused, and
crept uncertainly back to where
I had murdered Lithodora’s beloved.
I heard no sound except for Dora’s cries.
No men shouting, no feet running on the steps.
I had been gone half the night, it seemed to me but
when I reached the ruins where I had left the Saracen
and looked upon Dora it was as if only minutes had passed.
I
came
toward
her and
whispered
to her, afraid
almost to be heard.
The second time I spoke
her name she turned her head
and looked at me with red-rimmed
hating eyes and screamed to get away.
I wanted to comfort her, to tell her I was
sorry, but when I came close she sprang to her
feet and ran at me, striking me and flaying at my
face with her fingernails while she cursed my name.
I meant
to put my
hands on her
shoulders to hold
her still but when I
reached for her they found
her smooth white neck instead.
Her
father
and his
fellows and
my unemployed
friends discovered
me weeping over her.
Running my fingers through
the silk of her long black hair.
Her father fell to his knees and took
her in his arms and for a while the hills
rang with her name repeated over and over again.
Another
man, who held
a rifle, asked me
what had happened and
I told him—I told him—
the Arab, that monkey from the
desert, had lured her here and when
he couldn’t force her innocence from her
he throttled her in the grass and I found them
and we fought and I killed him with a block of stone.
And
as I
told it
the tin bird
began to whistle
and sing, the most
mournful and sweetest
melody I had ever heard
and the men listened until
the sad song was sung complete.
I
held
Lithodora
in my arms as
we walked back down.
And as we went on our way
the bird began to sing again as
I told them the Saracen had planned
to take the sweetest and most beautiful
girls and auction their white flesh in Araby—
a more profitable line of trade than selling wine.
The bird was by now whistling a marching song and the
faces of the men who walked with me were rigid and dark.
Ahmed’s
men burned
along with the
Arab’s ship, and
sank in the harbor.
His goods, stored in a
warehouse by the quay, were
seized and his money box fell
to me as a reward for my heroism.
No
one
ever
would’ve
imagined when
I was a boy that
one day I would be
the wealthiest trader
on the whole Amalfi coast,
or that I would come to own the
prized vineyards of Don Carlotta, I
who once worked like a mule for his coin.
No
one
would’ve
guessed that
one day I would
be the beloved mayor
of Sulle Scalle, or a man
of such renown that I would be
invited to a personal audience with
his holiness the pope himself, who thanked
me for my many well-noted acts of generosity.
The
springs
inside the
pretty tin bird
wore down, in time,
and it ceased to sing,
but by then it did not matter
if anyone believed my lies or not
such was my wealth and power and fame.
However.
Several years
before the tin bird
fell silent, I woke one
morning in my manor to find
it had constructed a nest of wire
on my windowsill, and filled it with
fragile eggs made of bright silver foil.
I regarded these eggs with unease but when I
reached to touch them, their mechanical mother
nipped at me with her needle-sharp beak and I did
not after that time make any attempt to disturb them.
Months
later the
nest was filled
with foil tatters.
The young of this new
species, creatures of a new
age, had fluttered on their way.
I
cannot
tell you
how many birds
of tin and wire and
electric current there
are in the world now—but I
have, this very month, heard speak
our newest prime minister, Mr. Mussolini.
When he sings of the greatness of the Italian
people and our kinship with our German neighbors,
I am quite sure I can hear a tin bird singing with him.
Its tune plays especially well amplified over modern radio.
I don’t
live in the
hills anymore.
It has been years
since I saw Sulle Scale.
I discovered, as I descended
at last into my senior years, that
I could no longer attempt