Chapter Forty
"A waif on this earth, sick, ugly, and small, condemned from my birth and rejected by all, from my lips broke a cry, such as anguish may wring, Sing—said God in reply, Chant poor little thing."—Toru Dutt, from a translation of a French poem by Jean-Pierre de Béranger.
Memories
Emilian left the tent when he was sure his parents and two sisters were asleep. Barefoot, he moved through the quiet, empty camp as quickly and noiselessly as he could. As he approached the opposite end of the camp he began to hear the chattering of the monkeys in their cages, and the snoring of the ancient lion in his. Their traveling fair didn't have as many animals as some—the only others they had were a talking parrot and a few well-trained dogs, but they had something none of the other fairs had. At least that's what Emilian had heard. He hadn't yet laid eyes on the new member of their camp—his parents had forbidden him to go near the cage.
He had overheard some of the men who worked with the animals. They said the newcomer would make them richer than they'd ever been before. Emilian had heard many other things, too.
He'd heard the newcomer was a devil.
Or at least half-devil.
How did they ever catch a devil? Young Emilian wondered. Maybe tonight he would find out. He had to see this creature for himself.
As he made his way toward where the devil-child was kept, Emilian noticed that the monkeys had grown silent. The lion had woken from his sleep and was staring at the cage on the other side of his.
What could have gotten Cesar to wake up? The boy thought. There were no whips in sight to get the old lion off his feet.
And then Emilian heard it.
Somewhere, someone was singing a wordless melody. It sounded like a child's voice, only it was nothing like the voices of any children Emilian knew. It was the sweetest sound he had ever heard.
That was what had woken Cesar up, and had made the monkeys go quiet. Sure enough, they were all looking in the same direction the voice was coming from. But…surely it couldn't be coming from the cage on the other side of Cesar's.
The devil-child was supposed to be kept there.
Emilian ran past Cesar's cage as fast as he could. Then, breathless, he found he stood face to face with the devil-child.
Or not. The now silent creature before him looked much smaller than Emilian had imagined. Its form looked human enough, but it wore a strange cloth mask over its face that had three little holes cut out where its eyes and nose were. The moonlight helped Emilian get a good look at it, but he could not see its eyes, and that was unnerving. Emilian just stared for a while, until he could no longer keep his questions to himself.
"What are you?" he asked.
The creature did not answer; it only moved further back into the shadows.
"I want to talk to you!" Emilian said in a loud whisper. "I've heard a lot about you. That you'll make us all rich. All the animals love your singing…that was you singing, wasn't it? Is that why you are here?" The boy wasn't sure about that part. He had heard nothing of any newcomer singing.
Once again, the creature gave no reply. It only sat there, unmoving.
"What are you?" The gypsy boy repeated. "Why do you wear that mask?"
The creature remained silent but it reached its hands up to touch the cloth mask for a moment.
It understands me, then. "Are you really a devil?" Emilian asked, determined to get an answer from the creature. "Or a half-devil?"
It shook its head forcefully.
"You look like a boy to me," said Emilian. The other child nodded. "Then what is your name?"
This time there was no answer.
"Why do they call you a devil if you're just a boy?"
The child touched his mask again, and the gypsy began to understand. "You're not a devil. You just have a devil's face…that's why you have to wear that…"
The child gave a slow nod. Emilian saw him reach up to where the eye holes were cut into the mask, and saw him wipe something from his eyes. He was crying.
Emilian had never felt so confused in his life. He couldn't understand what this strange, masked child was doing locked up in a cage like an animal. The boy was sad. Emilian wanted to cheer him up. "I know that was you singing," he said. "You have the nicest sounding voice I've ever heard."
The boy in the cage rushed forward, grasping an iron bar in each hand.
"You think that?" He finally spoke. He sounded just like any other boy when he talked, except his voice was slightly muffled by the cloth.
"Yes!" Emilian said. "What were you singing?"
"I don't know," the boy in the cage said. It was strange, eerie even, to see this masked figure speaking like an ordinary child. "It's a song I made up."
"You make up your own songs?"
The boy nodded. "I don't know the words to this one yet. Maybe I will soon. I still like to sing it without the words." He turned his head to the lion cage. "The animals like to hear it."
"They sure do. Old Cesar there hates to wake up for anything," Emilian laughed. The boy did not laugh with him, though. "Why don't you take your mask off so I can see your face?"
The boy immediately retreated into the shadows.
"No! Wait! Come back! I'm sorry! I still want to talk to you!" Emilian paused. "If you show me what you look like, I promise I won't laugh!"
The boy moved forward a little.
"You can see me, can't you? Look at my hair…the way it sticks up all crazy! And my nose! It's so big my sisters say I'll never grow into it…and look! I have this scar on my chin from where a cruel boy threw a rock at me…everybody has something about them that looks strange! That's normal, I think," said Emilian. "So you can show me what you look like and I promise I won't laugh or run away."
The boy came forward again where he could be seen clearly in the moonlight. "Look," he said. He pointed to a scar on the side of his neck.
"Did someone throw a rock at you, too?"
The boy nodded. "Lots."
Emilian shook his head sadly. "People can be terrible sometimes."
"I know." The boy hesitated for a moment. "Do you promise…you won't be like the others if I take my mask off?"
"I promise!"
Slowly, the child lifted the cloth mask up a bit, and then he tore it off and flung it into the straw on the floor of the cage.
Emilian let out a gasp, taking a few steps backward.
The boy hid his face in his hands and sank miserably into the straw.
"Wait! Don't be sad!" Emilian recovered himself. "You are ugly…it's the truth. But you're not a monster!"
The boy in the cage looked up. One side of his face was hideous, but the other side was perfect, more perfect than any part of Emilian's face would ever be.
"Did you get born looking like that?"
The boy nodded.
Emilian smiled. "Don't be sad," he repeated. "Lots of people are born ugly. Just look at me! I'm not handsome at all! At least one half of your face looks good."
The boy just stared at him in shock.
"You don't have any friends do you?"
"No."
"Well you do now. I'll be your friend!" Emilian spoke excitedly. "And I'll come to visit you whenever I can!"
"Will you really?" The boy asked, doubtful.
"I promise!" said Emilian. "And," he lowered his voice. "I'm going to try to find a way to help you get out of that cage."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Nearly every night, Emilian would sneak out to talk to the boy in the cage. After many failed attempts to talk to his new friend about his past, Emilian had learned that the boy's name was Erik. He had been born ugly, and his mother was unkind and had sold him to Emilian's uncle, who was in charge of the animals.
"I don't understand why you are treated like this," Emilian said one night. "We have a bearded lady and another woman with tattoos all over. There's even a man with skin like clay who can make horrible faces and bend his body in any way he wants. I don't know why you are here with the animals instead of with them."
Erik did not answer him.
During the day, Emilian would try to ask his parents or the other grown-ups why they were keeping a child like he was an animal. They would brush him off, or tell him to stay away from the devil's child.
"He is dangerous," Emilian's uncle said to him. "More wild than some of the animals, even. Stay away from him, nephew."
"Why is he here, then, if he is so dangerous?" None of this made any sense. Erik was nothing like the grown-ups said. He was just an ordinary boy on the inside, Emilian could tell. The only difference was that he looked strange, scary even. And that he could sing more beautifully than anyone in the world. But nobody talked about his singing, except the few that had heard it for themselves, and they said it was frightening and disturbing that such a creature sang like that.
"Surely it is the devil's music," they would say. "Beautiful, but evil."
Now Erik was beaten if someone heard him sing. Emilian never heard his singing anymore, but he thought that maybe Erik still did, when everyone was sleeping but the animals. The animals always seemed to want to be near him. Kaspar, the trained monkey that belonged to Emilian's uncle, was often found by Erik's cage at night or in between performances.
"It is better here than it was at my mother's house," Erik told Emilian one evening.
"How could it be? You are locked up, and people beat you or pay to come and look at you. It's not right, what my family has done to you! But nobody will listen to me!"
"It is not so bad," Erik said softly. "At my mother's house I had no one. But here I have you to be my friend." He smiled, his mask off as it usually was at night when he spoke with Emilian. "And I have Kaspar." The monkey was holding onto the bars of the cage, and Erik stroked Kaspar's arm. "And Cesar." Erik grinned at the noble old lion in his cage a ways off. "Well, if we were ever able to live outside these cages, I think we would be friends."
It was then that Emilian decided once and for all that he was going to help Erik escape.
The only problem was getting the keys to the cage. Emilian knew his uncle had them, but he'd made several attempts to find and steal the keys. Each attempt ended in failure and two with him being caught. He'd gotten off relatively easy because of his reputation as a prankster, but he was despairing now, worried that he would never be able to free Erik.
One day there was a large crowd of people at the fair to see the freaks, fortunetellers, animals, and performers. Emilian was collecting the money that people gave one of his cousins for reading palms, holding out his hat for coins, when suddenly he heard a loud commotion.
He rushed in the direction of the noise, which he realized with a sinking feeling was towards Erik's cage. Emilian pushed through the crowd until he could see his uncle in the cage, whipping his friend. It was a scene of horror. There was blood running down Erik's back. To Emilian's surprise, his uncle was bleeding, too, from a strange looking gash on the arm. Then Erik lay still, and his uncle stopped. The crowd stared in stunned silence along with Emilian as the gypsy man left the cage and locked it behind him, holding the wound on his arm to try to stop the bleeding. Emilian's aunt ran to her husband and they rushed off to get the wound treated.
"Something should be done about…about…that…" an onlooker tried to say.
"That boy is a devil!"
"He should be locked up in a real prison or an asylum!"
"He's too dangerous to be kept here…"
"Terrifying to think such people exist…"
Emilian just stood there, listening to the things the crowd was saying about Erik. Apparently the devil's child had refused to take his mask off, so Emilian's uncle ripped it off and pushed him forward towards the audience. The devil's child had glared wickedly at the crowd and suddenly he snapped. He'd turned on the gypsy man and lunged at him, sinking his teeth right into his arm. He'd looked at the shocked audience, blood dripping from his mouth, and then Emilian's uncle took the whip from his belt and began to beat him until he stopped moving.
Eventually the disturbed crowd tapered off, muttering amongst each other. Emilian was left standing there. Kaspar the monkey, who had been by the cage throughout the whole spectacle, left too, leaving the boy alone and confused.
"Erik…" he dared to ask, though he feared the worst. "Are you…all right?"
Erik stirred where he lay, and to Emilian's amazement, slowly rose to a sitting position. He winced with pain, but he answered. "Yes." His back was covered in dried blood, and he still had the gypsy man's blood on his deformed face.
"I…don't know what to say…" Emilian was at a loss.
Erik had nothing to say either. Neither boy looked at the other for a long time.. Suddenly Emilian felt a tug on the leg of his trousers. He looked down, and there was Kaspar, back again.
"What is it?" Emilian asked.
The monkey held up a set of keys, then dropped them at Emilian's feet and jumped up to hold onto the bars of Erik's cage.
"By the saints," Emilian whispered.
Erik looked up, curious.
Emilian bent and picked up the keys, counting them. Yes, his uncle carried a set of five keys. "I'll be back, Erik!"
He ran off to do some quick investigating. His uncle had received a nasty bite wound to the arm, and was taking the rest of the day and night off. He refused to have anything to do with the devil's child or the rest of the animals, and was already lying in bed while his wife kept him well fed and with plenty of drink to help him recover from his nightmare of a work day.
The fair was closing for the night, and Emilian had dinner with his family as usual and pretended to go to sleep early. Once he was confident he could make it to Erik's cage unseen, he hurried there as fast as he could.
Kaspar was still with Erik when he got back. The boy in the cage was humming quietly to the monkey. Kaspar chittered softly back, and reached out his hand to take hold of Erik's human one.
Emilian couldn't wait another second. He rushed up to the cage door, put the key in the lock, and turned it. The door swung open, and Erik looked up. Kaspar chattered excitedly. "Quiet, Kaspar!" Emilian whispered. "I told you I would get you out of here, Erik."
The other boy got to his feet surprisingly quickly for someone who'd just been beaten so badly. He slowly walked out of the cage, limping a bit, but less than Emilian would have expected. Clearly Erik was tough, and stronger than he looked.
"It has been good to be your friend, Erik, but I want you to go. Get out of here, and find someplace where you can be free."
Erik said nothing.
"I...I couldn't stand it anymore. I've been wanting to let you out for so long, and somehow, Kaspar got the keys. I guess he wanted you to be free too."
The monkey chattered his agreement and climbed up onto Erik's shoulder, wrapping his tail around the boy's neck. Erik stroked Kaspar's hand, and then went back in the cage to retrieve his mask. He put it back on and turned his head toward Emilian.
"Goodbye, Erik." Tears welled in Emilian's eyes, happy ones because Erik was free, and sad ones because he was losing a friend. Emilian turned his back on that place and ran home Maybe if he just returned to his own warm bed and went to sleep, he would wake up and find that this had all been a dream, and there had been no devil's child, no Erik, no fight, and no beating. Everything would be as it had been before.
Instead, Emilian found only nightmares.
He woke to the smell of smoke, and his mother shaking him awake. "Emilian! Get up now! The camp is on fire!"
She pulled him out of bed and they ran outside. Nearly half of the tents were being engulfed by flames, and the smoke was rising up into the night sky. People were running everywhere, either away from the fire or towards it with buckets of water. "Quick, son! Towards the trees!"
The camp was bordered by a large forested area, and the mothers and children were all headed towards it.
"Where are my sisters?" Emilian asked as they ran.
"They are already in the woods, with the others!"
Suddenly they heard screaming. It came from the woods. All at once the same women and children who had run towards the trees came dashing back, eyes wide with terror.
"Stop!" A woman called out to Emilian and his mother as she ran. "The lion is loose! Stay away from there!" The fleeing gypsies were now stuck between a flaming campground and a forest with an uncaged lion. They all gathered there, huddled together. Emilian's youngest sister had joined them, one of the last to emerge from the woods. But there was still no sign of his older sister, Nadya.
"Just wait, children. Nadya will be here soon. And Papa and the others will put the fire out. Everything will be alright," their mother tried to reassure them, though her own voice shook. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Emilian was too confused and frightened to make any sense of what was going on. All he knew was that everyone had made it out of the woods except Nadya.
He couldn't take it anymore. "I have to go find her!" And he broke free of his mother's grasp and rushed into the forest. He heard his mother's cry of protest, and her command for Emilian's cousin, a boy of about sixteen, to follow and bring back both of her children.
It was so dark in those woods at night. He could hear noises everywhere, rustling in the bushes and in the trees, and he jumped at every sound. He glimpsed shapes leaping from the branches above, and he realized that the monkeys had gotten loose as well. He shuddered. Cesar could be anywhere, and he could be angry from all those years of being locked up. Nadya could be anywhere too.
Oh, how will I ever find her?
"Nadya!" His cousin Marko called out.
"Quiet!" Emilian hissed. "Do you want to get eaten by a lion tonight?"
"No," Marko scoffed. "That's why I brought this." He pulled a revolver from his belt. "I grabbed it when the fire broke out, just in case things got worse. Which clearly they did." He called out for Nadya again, and the two of them wandered through the forest, searching.
Suddenly there was the sound of a muffled scream. Both of them burst through the undergrowth and found Nadya. She was on her knees with someone's hand on one side of her throat and a knife blade on the other.
Emilian was filled with horror. Erik was the one holding a knife to his sister's throat. The moonlight shone down on his unmasked face, and he had a desperate, almost wicked look in his eyes.
"Come any closer and I'll cut her throat," said the Devil's Child. He looked fearfully, hatefully at Marko, whose revolver was pointed right at him.
"Erik, what are you doing? That's my sister! Let her go!"
Erik's eyes darted from Emilian to Marko and back again. "I will. If he stays away. Lets me go."
"Do you really think I'm going to let you walk away from this? After attacking one member of our family and threatening to murder another?" Marko took a step forward.
Nadya screamed. Blood dripped from her throat where the Devil's Child had nicked her with the blade.
Emilian was stunned. "You hurt her!" The he realized. "You did all this. You started the fire. And set the animals free."
Erik did not answer.
Emilian felt his face burning with rage. This was no friend of his. No friend would hurt his sister, would try to kill people.
"You really are the Devil's Child," Marko spat.
"Shut up!" Marko was just making it worse. "Please, let my sister go," Emilian begged. "Don't hurt her any more! She didn't do anything wrong!"
"Neither did I…" Erik began. "But I was hurt…"
Nadya was crying, and Emilian was on the verge of tears himself. This was all too much. It was a nightmare. Maybe that's all it was, a bad dream. Maybe Erik was still his friend, and not some vicious devil-child. But Emilian knew all this was real.
Nothing was right here.
Suddenly there came a roar. Cesar leapt out of the undergrowth, snarling. Nadya cried out. The Devil's Child jumped and let go of her, moving away.
Then a shot rang out.
Nadya ran to her brother's side and hugged him tightly. The Devil's Child fell to the ground, clutching his leg. Marko charged toward him but Cesar, spooked from the gunshot, jumped and ran in between him and the Devil's Child. Marko hesitated, and the Devil's Child got to his feet and dashed off into the darkness in the same direction Cesar had run.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
The fire was put out, and no one was hurt. Nadya, Emilian, and Marko all returned to their family. A search party went out into the forest. They tracked the Devil's Child, and were able to catch up with him in his wounded state. Cesar and the monkeys were never found. Only Kaspar remained.
After a long debate, the gypsies decided to lock the Devil's Child back in his cage again, and this time they would keep him chained up. It took a lot of arguing, but it seemed to them to be more profitable to keep him than to kill him or surrender him to prison or an asylum. And now they had a dark story to tell the people who came to look at him.
He deserves to be locked in that cage now, Emilian thought to himself, shaking his head in disgust as he gazed at the Devil's Child behind the metal bars. The boy who had once been his friend held his face in his hands, and reached out to pick up his cloth mask. The Devil's Child stared at the mask, humming the tune that Emilian had heard him sing the night they met. Only this time, there were words.
Paper faces on parade…
Hide your face so the world will never find you…
Emilian felt as if his heart was breaking and turning to stone all at the same time. He covered his ears to drown out the sound of the singing. Then he turned away and never once looked back.