Tears of the Salamander

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THE GIFT ARRIVED FOR ALFREDO’S SEVENTH name-day. It wasn’t like his other gifts—the basket of candied cherries, the hobbyhorse, the toy drum—not a gift for a child at all. He opened the little leather pouch and pulled out a fine yellow chain, like the one his big brother, Giorgio, had been given to wear round his neck for his First Communion, but instead of a cross on the end this one had a funny little animal, made of the same yellow stuff as the chain.

He stared at it. The body was like that of one of the little brown lizards that lived in the cracks in the brickwork of the bakehouse, except that it had a long tail that curled under its belly, right round behind and over, with the end hanging down beside its front leg with a sharp hook at the tip. And the spread toes had small hooked claws, and not the sucker pads of the bakehouse lizards.

The head and face were even more different, not like any lizard’s, but round and wrinkled, like the face of the little gray ape Alfredo had seen at the great Shrove Tuesday fair, sitting on a hurdy-gurdy with a leash round its neck. Except that the monkey had had a huge wide grin, but this thing’s mouth was a little round hole.

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