Extract from THE BANK OF INFINITE RESERVES

CHAPTER ONE

Last summer, unbeknown to the heft of humanity, a boy called Deodato was living in a mountain village in the south western corner of Europe. Deodato means Given by God and his parents christened him with this name because he was their firstborn.

At the time Deodato, or Dedo as folk called him, was fourteen. He already had nine brothers and sisters and thewhole family lived in a stone cottage on the estates of theDuke of Contra-os-Montes. The Duke owned all the mountains thereabouts, and much of the plains beyond as well. He owned all the houses in the villages and, directly or indirectly, most of the businesses. But no one ever complained about theDuke because things ran smoothly and, anyway, very few people had ever seen him. He certainly didn’t live in the castle and had never been there as long as Dedo could remember. Perhaps he had forgotten that he owned it, folk thereabouts sometimes thought.

Each morning Dedo would rise before the sun, milk the cow, draw water from the well, feed the chickens and prod Toothbrush into wakefulness. Toothbrush was the family donkey and a dour, splenetic, acid-tongued beast he was too. He had acquired this name because of the texture of his mane which did bare resemblance to a bristly, rather grubby toothbrush.

Dedo would ride Toothbrush to the centre of the village a couple of kilometres from his home, to serve the eight o’clock Mass of Padre Jose. After Mass Padre Jose’s housekeeper would give him breakfast in the presbytery kitchen and lecture him on how boys should behave, as if he was still a seven year old instead of fourteen and bit. It irked him but Dedo never yawned in the housekeepers face nor told her what he thought. He was a modest lad with a native sense of courtesy.

After breakfast his daily task was to ride up to the castle behind the town. The castle was hidden in a fold of hills surrounded by a forest of tall cypress trees and oaks and acacia and eucalyptus. Beside the great gate which marked the grounds of the castle proper was a wooden door which was usually unlocked and Dedo would enter this and pass along an avenue that was a tunnel of foliage to the back of the vast building where he would tether Toothbrush in the kitchen courtyard.

There was always activity in and around the castle kitchen. The castle kept a staff of maids and butlers because often visitors would arrive in large cars to hunt deer and wild boar or take picnics to the mountain lakes. They were rich people who used words which clearly showed that they didn’t come from those mountains, the staff said. They all seemed to drink a lot of wine but Dedo had only ever seen them from a distance.

His job was to collect a list of the day’s needs from the cook and ride to market to buy them. He’d find the freshest vegetables at the best prices, the juiciest cuts of meat, the breads and the pickles and the fruits and stack them all in bags on the back of Toothbrush. Sometimes he would have to scour the back street stores for obscure items such as sesame seed, booklets of gold leaf and camphor sticks. Then he would collect the castle mail from the Post Office and with everything well strapped up he would walk the donkey back to the castle set among the hills.

Dedo always accounted for every item and delivered the correct change to the cook who would press a silver coin into his hand by way of payment. This money he dutifully gave to his mother and it was a great boon to help her meet expenses for such a large household because his father earned little enough as a forester.

For most of the year there was school in the afternoon which Dedo didn’t like much because he was far ahead of the others of his age but his teachers were wise and appreciated this and often gave him advanced work to do on his own. And, of course, Dedo needed to study because he wanted to be a priest when he was older. It had never occurred to him to want to be anything else.

After school, if the weather was fine, he would mount Toothbrush and ride to a lake near his house to swim or fish but when it was cold or wet he would sit in the fine public library in the town and read books, any books, all books, books about God and the saints, books by and about famous men and women who had said and done things that people remembered. He read books on travel and could point out most of the countries of the world and their cities on a map. He could show where the Panama Canal was, and Mount Kilimanjaro, and where reindeer were to be found. He carried the globe, and a smattering of its languages, in his head even though he didn’t expect to be ever much more than a donkey ride from the village, unless, of course, he became a missionary priest.

No, given a choice, he’d prefer to be a priest in a parish with the sort of people he knew. Yet it was all in the hands of God for the training took many years and cost money, like everything else, and there was no money in his family and very little in the parish. Padre Jose told him that the Sacred Heart Academy in Lisbon sometimes took poor boys on diocesan scholarships if they were promising but Dedo never thought of himself as being clever enough for a scholarship. And there was the possibility that God didn’t want him to be a priest. Maybe, after all, God wanted him to marry and become a forester like his father. He’d like that, he thought, but not as much as he’d like to be a priest.

One warm morning as Dedo sat on the back of Toothbrush who was dreamily plodding through the tunnel of foliage towards the castle kitchen, the donkey said, “Don’t get too comfortable, Fathead. Your troubles start as from today.”

“What do you mean, my troubles start as from today?”

“You’ll find out. At least it might get you off my back for a while. You get heavier each year.

I’m growing up,” said Dedo.

Is that what they call it?” and the donkey brayed mockingly.

Dedo was always put out by Toothbrush’s insolent manner, yet he knew from experience that the donkey had an uncanny knack with predictions and assessments of people’s characters. But there was no getting anything out of Toothbrush unless he himself chose to divulge it. It was better to appear uninterested. Sometimes that annoys an ass into imparting more information than it intends. Dedo began to whistle a country air.

Don’t try to pull that stunt on me,” Toothbrush snapped. “The Duke is back in residence; just mark my words.”

CHAPTER TWO

As Dedo and his donkey wandered into the courtyard a man appeared standing at one of the high windows of an upper floor of the west wing. Dedo saw the tall, gaunt figure partly hidden by a curtain but didn’t give it any thought until he was in the kitchen receiving instructions from the cook when a maid flustered in, curtsied and said, “Master to see boy, Miss.”

Does he, indeed!” said cook looking Dedo up and down as she might look at a chicken that was too scrawny for the pot. “Can’t think why. The Duke must have taken leave of his senses.”

The maid led Dedo through halls hung with tapestries and huge portraits in gilded frames. They ascended a staircase wide enough to take ten donkeys abreast and on the landing at the top she knocked timidly and fled.

“The door is not locked,” said a very solemn, slow, sepulchral voice from within.

Dedo gave the door a push and stepped inside. The room was vast and furnished as splendidly as the palace of a king. At the window opposite the door stood the tall, gaunt man who had been watching him. He was dressed in black and Dedo thought immediately of an undertaker. He had a very small mouth with the tips of the front teeth resting on the lower lip, which was curious enough, but Dedo didn’t pay much attention to this irregularity because it was the man’s eyes that held his attention. The lids were heavy, like a frog’s, but the irises were not blue or brown or hazel like other people’s, but red. Dedo wondered if perhaps he was ill and needed him to fetch medicine from town.

The man continued to stare at Dedo without speaking. Dedo then considered that he might trying to intimidate him, as adults who were unsure of themselves sometimes did, but Dedo, though he stood modestly with his beret in his hand, was not in the least intimidated, only slightly annoyed that his time was being wasted.

Eventually the man spoke. The voice had an echo as if it was issuing from an empty tomb and there was a strain of contempt in it such as might be found in the voice of a judge addressing an unwashed criminal. “What’s you name, boy?” he asked.

Dedo wasn’t sure why he found this funny but he laughed and said, “’Boy’ will do.”

The man was clearly not used to being laughed at. He stepped forward until he was towering over Dedo and said very sternly, “I am the Duke of Contra-os-Montes and Raposa and Tralha and you will tell me your name and address me as ‘Excellency’.”

As these titles, in Dedo’s language, sounded very much like fox and junk he considered that maybe the master of the castle might be a little mad so he refrained from laughing further and said, “Deodato, Excellency.”

“Well,” said the Duke, softening a little now that his dignity had been acknowledged. “Tell me about yourself. Tell me everything. I have good reason to want to know.”

Dedo told the Duke how old he was, and that he was the first of ten children of the forester on the Duke’s estates. He told him how he shopped for the castle in the mornings and went to school in the afternoons. He rounded these brief details off by saying, “I’ve got to go now, Excellency. My donkey will be getting restless.”

“Donkey!” boomed the Duke. “Donkey! Why, boy, don’t you know that I can offer you silver limousines, and ocean-going yachts, and jet aircraft to whisk you around the world at a whim. And all that your provincial insignificance can entertain is a wretched donkey.”

The Duke strode the length of the room at suprising speed for one so slow of speech. “Come here, boy. Come here. Stand before this mirror. Stand straight and proud. Now tell me what you see.”

Dedo did as he was bid. The mirror was bigger than an entire wall of the cottage he lived in and was surrounded by gold cherubs with lapis lazuli wings. “I see me,” he said. “You little fool!” shouted the Duke. “You see beauty, health, vitality. You see the hope of the world. Take off that peasant’s shirt, sickening symbol of serfdom, and study your own body glowing with strength and stamina.” Dedo did so reluctantly, but it was preferable to seeing the Duke grow angrier at having his will thwarted. He looked at himself in the mirror. He had seldom looked at himself intently in a mirror before. There was only one small mirror in the communal bathroom at home and the only times he ever consulted it were to tidy his hair and check that his teeth were clean.

He was handsome, he supposed. He liked his hair which was long and curly and black. The irises of his eyes were brown and the whites were opal white with no discolouration. The brows above them were balanced like the wings of a bird hanging against the sky. His mouth was broad and his teeth gave his smile a particular lustre. The skin of his body was paler than most of the people of his village and as he looked at it he saw how the muscles were forming on his arms and chest. Yes, he supposed he was handsome, but so were most of the boys of his age, just as most of the girls were beautiful.

But when I’m your age I wont look like this, Dedo thought, looking at the Duke.

The Duke picked up a piece of purple brocade which was draped across an armchair and threw it about Dedo’s shoulders. “Look!” he cried. “Look! You could be a young prince with the whole world at your feet. I have never had a son. You could be my son. I could have you educated at the best colleges in the world. You would never have to work. You would have servants at your feet if you so much as dropped a handkerchief. You would mix only with beautiful people. Your wife, when it is time to marry, will be the most desirable, the most accomplished woman of her times.

In the mirror Dedo saw a shape materialising on the wall behind him. It was indecipherable at first but gradually it took lines and form. He gaped at it spellbound, no longer listening to the Duke’s prattle which was sounding more and more like a politician’s speech - not that he had ever heard one.

“You say that your father is one of my foresters and that you live in a cottage somewhere in the woods well, there’ll be no more of that. I shall move your family into a fine house in the town. Your father will receive a salary in accord with his new station...”

The figure on the wall had become a man. He had a purple cloth, similar to that which Dedo wore, over his shoulders. His arms were outstetched and seemed to be nailed to the wall. He was dripping with blood. He seemed to be looking directly at Dedo.

Dedo stared aghast at the figure in the mirror. Then he swung from the reflection to face the wall but there was nothing there. He threw the cape to the ground, picked up his shirt and ran from the room without so much as giving a thought to the red-eyed Duke who was still disclaiming on the glories likely to obtain to his adopted son.

“Now, you’ve got yourself in a tangle, you berk!” said Toothbrush as Dedo tried to spur him to speed along the tunnel of foliage. “They don’t come much nuttier than that one and once he gets a grip on you it’ll take an army to rid you of him. Look what happened to Vaza Semti.”

“Who’s Vaza Semti?” Dedo asked, but Toothbrush said nothing. He just plodded on at his own sweet pace, disdainful of anything even remotely human.

“The day I take you to the knacker’s yard,” said Dedo. “Will be the happiest day of my life.”

Review by well-known children's author Hilda Van Stockum

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