War Games (14 page)

It took a few minutes more for the last of the household goods to be packed on the trucks, and for the soldiers to board. They took the pitchfork and the pointed hoes with them. Except that Grandmother Lemos kept on crying, both families watched in a kind of stunned silence.

The trucks left with an even greater noise. The fumes hung in the air like a cloud. Petros ran for the house.

Papa came out, hurrying to Mama. But Grandmother Lemos got to her first. The women hugged as if they hadn’t seen each other in weeks. Grandfather Lemos grabbed Papa around the shoulders in the same way.

Petros crossed the veranda and stepped into the strangely naked-looking parlor. Zola looked pink around the eyes but otherwise the same. Smaller, but then, the parlor looked so much larger.

“You thought fast, looking so angry and afraid at the same time,” Petros said. “I don’t know that I could pretend so well.”

Zola’s face reddened. “I wasn’t pretending.”

“That’s what I mean, then,” Petros said. “You did exactly right.”

Elia’s mother and father stood across the road for perhaps a full minute, Elia and his sister beside them, before they joined the rest in Mama’s parlor. Everyone spoke at the same time, and questions went unanswered; no one seemed quite capable of really talking to each other.

The boys followed this confusion from room to room, as if they were much younger and weren’t sure how to behave, even Zola. The dog came in from the hallway, and Zola bent to scratch his ears. No one asked where the dog had gone when the Germans came. The last thing they needed was a dog brave enough to get shot in front of their eyes. The dog only needed to face stray cats trying to get into the chicken house.

“We’ve been to more cheerful funerals,” Zola whispered to Petros.

The families walked through each other’s houses, now emptied of treasures and looking hardly like the places they’d lived in that morning. Soon they were joined by the Omeros family from down the road.

“We’re to guard the phone lines for three miles,” Mr. Omeros said. “My boys and me. Guard them from our own army.”

This news had been on the radio, Greek citizens made to do the German army’s job, keep the phone lines safe, keep roads clear, and if they failed, they were killed.

Papa told them Mama was expected to cook and clean for the commander, and Zola added that he’d be arriving one day soon. Even Papa looked surprised.

“How do you know this?” Mr. Omeros asked.

Out of habit now, their family spoke only Greek. Zola hesitated, then said, “I heard them say so.”

Mr. Omeros nodded. In this way the neighbors ignored
Zola’s mistake. But also, Petros saw that Mr. Omeros considered this to be worse news than his own.

Sophie said, “The commander will be much like this one, an animal.”

Grandmother Lemos suggested poisoning him slowly, and for an instant Petros saw on his mother’s face she wished it was something to be considered. “No,” she said. “The minute he falls ill, we’ll be expected to take the first bite. After him, there would come another.”

Mrs. Omeros began to cry. The women gathered around her and moved to a bedroom to talk. Old Mario walked outside and turned off the well, giving the boys their first opportunity to escape the adults. Going to the veranda, Papa lit his cigarette, and the other men sat down with him.

Settling themselves under the arbor, Petros, Elia, and Zola brought out their slingshots and tried to put holes in the leaves, a trick of shooting the tiniest stones very hard.

Once in a while a small bunch of unripened grapes hit the ground. “Those were yours,” the shooter would say to the others. The boys buried them hastily, before Papa could complain of the grapes he wouldn’t get to harvest in midsummer.

The air began to be sweet with odors of Grandfather Lemos’s pipe tobacco and frying onions. In the back of Petros’s mind, always, there was knowing Lambros was cold and probably hungry, but there was no way to hurry anyone home.

When now and again Papa’s eyes met and held Petros’s glance, he knew that Lambros was in the back of Papa’s mind too. Lambros was safe—that was the important thing to be glad for. They were all safe. When the Omeroses left, all of Elia’s family crossed the road to go home. Going off with Zola to milk the goats, Petros asked, “Do you think Lambros could hear the trucks?”

“Either that or he thought we had an earthquake,” Zola said.

Old Mario joined them at the goat pen to help with the milking. “When people are upset, sometimes they stare out of windows,” he said quietly. “We must do the things they expect to see.”

Petros thought that meant they all had to go back to work until nightfall. It wasn’t that far off. Already the sun was low in the sky.

But Papa came over as they finished with the goats and said, “Go inside, Petros, and ask Mama for a dark blanket and to boil some coffee.”

Petros found Mama in the kitchen. She and Sophie were heating water so they could wrap Lambros with hot wet towels. “Take those rolled blankets up to the roof,” Mama told Petros.

“Lambros will sleep on the roof?”

“Old Mario will sleep on the roof,” Mama said. “Lambros will have a bed until sunup.”

“Papa wants one of these blankets for Lambros now.”

Zola had gone out to the roadside and was hacking at weeds with a rusted scythe found at the back of the garden. Papa had already helped Lambros into a wheelbarrow and covered him with the blanket. Petros walked alongside them with an armful of rakes as Papa pushed Lambros to the kitchen door.

Once inside, Papa and Old Mario tended him. There was a constant exchange of hot and cooled towels at first, and no shortage of stories to tell.

Petros asked, “What was it like to climb the Needle, Lambros?”

“Hard work, little cousin, at first. But also clean. The wind was strong, the air fresh, my muscles glad.” Lambros chewed through another bite of hot fried potato. He could devour anything set before him.

He went on, saying, “The hardest part came at the end,
where the top is chopped up like stair steps. My feet were wet with blood and sweat. It was all I could do not to slip off. Also to remember I’m not an angel.”

Everyone in the kitchen stood fearfully quiet.

“An angel?” This was Mama.

“It was the shirt billowing at my back,” Lambros said. “After hours of climbing, in my fevered mind I thought I had wings. I imagined I could fly.”

“What did you do?” Sophie asked him.

“I reached the top,” Lambros said. “I lay on my back to let my heart get on with the business of beating. I heard the swoosh of blood in my veins. Looked at the blue curve of the sky where it met darkness. Felt the earth turning as if the Needle runs through the center like an axle. I floated like a dandelion seed. It’s a climb I must do again one day.”

“You have to do it with ropes,” Papa said.

Lambros shook his head. “It will never be the same.”

“No,” Sophie said, almost sadly. “But at least we’ll know you’ll live through it.”

Lambros laughed. “You’re going to be a practical woman, cousin.”

When Zola came in, Mama and Sophie set dinner out on the table. The family kept Lambros company in the shadows of the kitchen until a late hour, the only light coming from the stove.

*   *   *

No one got a good night’s sleep.

When Mama finally sent Sophie and the boys to bed, Zola sat up in the darkness of the bedroom.

“What are you up to?” Petros whispered.

“Nothing,” Zola said. “Go to sleep.”

Petros sat up.

“You must go to sleep,” Zola said. “Papa wants to bring the radio upstairs again.”

“Again?” Little bumps came out on Petros’s arms.

“He brought it upstairs in the middle of the night once and listened in the dark,” Zola said. “I know because I helped him move my bed. You slept through it all. Mama too.”

“I don’t believe you,” Petros said. Zola didn’t argue.

Petros lay down to think the matter over, recalling he’d thought he dreamed this one night, and he began to believe Zola. After a few minutes, he pretended to be asleep.

When Papa came in to move the bed, Zola helped. They went to the kitchen together, and then Petros heard the low but definite voice of someone on the radio. There was also a little clatter of bread pans. Petros sat near the door, trying to hear.

A few minutes later he heard Mama hurry along the hall in bare feet, and then she scolded Papa in whispers. When she didn’t come back and the radio voice went on, Petros crept out into the hall. Soon all but Petros and Sophie sat in the kitchen, listening to the radio station from Cairo.

An hour later Lambros went out to sleep in Old Mario’s
bed and Petros hurried back to his own, to pretend he was sleeping again. He dreamed all night of fighting planes and German soldiers built of rock.

They were all up again before daybreak. Papa and Old Mario sat quietly, drinking hot coffee with Lambros. Mama dropped a whole loaf of the bread into a sack, to be eaten with cheese and tomatoes belowground.

“A knife,” Sophie said, trying to think of everything.

“I have a knife,” Lambros said quietly.

“Grandfather’s jacket,” Petros said, and Old Mario made an approving sound in his throat.

The jacket hung by the door. Grandfather had died four years ago, but his sheep’s-wool jacket passed from hand to hand around the house as needed, to be used as baby blanket, knee warmer, shawl. He would like that it kept Lambros warm. Zola lifted the jacket off the hook.

When everyone would have gone outside, Papa halted them. “Old Mario will take you out there,” Papa said. “We shouldn’t have a parade at this hour.” He stood in the doorway, Petros and Zola at his side.

When Lambros had climbed down, Papa said, “We must think of how to keep him in the sunshine. But we must also think of how we might be safe at the same time.”

“The roof,” Petros said, the first thought to pop into his head.

“To be trapped up there if the trucks come again?” Papa said. “He must be able to get to the well from wherever he is.”

“I’ll think, Papa,” Zola said.

“We’ll think of a plan,” Petros agreed.

Zola looked as if he were about to remark on this, but Papa gave them both a hard look. No fighting, the look said.

Because Lambros was in the well, Mama told Petros and Zola to go no farther away from the house than the garden. Even the mulberry tree was out of the question—Papa kept the gate locked.

Instead of eating at midday, Old Mario took his old bones to his bed. Zola slept through the high heat of the afternoon, the dog lay on the cool marble floor. Papa snored in the bedroom at the other end of the house.

Mired in the first quiet hour of the high heat, Petros spent several minutes thinking, but not about Lambros. Then he tiptoed into the parlor.

Only slivers of the afternoon light seeped into the room between gaps in the blue velvet drapes.

Easy chairs sat in the gloom like thoughtful elephants, floor lamps stood on one leg like strange birds. Where the chandelier used to hang, only a memory remained.

Behind him, somewhere in the house, Petros heard a sound like the scuff of a sandal on the floor. Possibly Sophie. Petros scurried across the room and slipped into the space behind the drapes. He had enough room to stand without touching them.

He listened, holding his breath.

The parlor windows started close to the floor and rose
nearly to the ceiling, so that he felt the sill at the back of his leg, above his ankles, and the bottom of the open window at the back of his head.

He listened for footsteps in the hallway, but could hear nothing more. When he relaxed, he made a discovery. Even though the shutters were closed behind him, the light was brighter here than inside the room. Bright enough to work by.

Petros sat so he fitted into the space between the window and the folds of the soft fabric, and he was hidden from anyone who might pass by on their way to the kitchen. Because the shutters were closed against the light, he couldn’t be seen from the outside.

He had perhaps an hour to do his work, maybe a little more.

At the bottom of the drapes hung a thick silk fringe, twelve inches long at least. It was this fringe that interested him. Petros separated one thin silk cord from the many, gave it a hard tug, and was thrilled to feel it pull free quite easily. A small miracle.

He traced the strand to its other end with his fingertips and tugged again. Now he had about two feet of thin silk cord to call his own. Carefully, he singled out another strand.

When Petros had four strands of cord, he inspected the fringe. It didn’t look especially thinner. He couldn’t even find the exact places he’d taken the pieces from. His mother would never notice the missing strands either.

This was exactly as he had hoped but doubted it would be.
Still, it would take many such afternoons to get enough strands of the fringe knotted together and balled up. Thinking this, Petros looked at the place where the fringe joined the velvet.

A deep row of several narrow braids of the same silk covered the stitching at the top of the fringe. Petros suspected he’d get much longer strands from the braid.

He’d spirited Mama’s embroidery scissors out of her sewing box, but he hadn’t yet gotten up the nerve to use them. What if this row of braids was all connected somehow like the goat bells in the garden? What if with one snip the whole decoration fell off the drapes?

Mama would kill him.

He snipped a few of the stitches holding the braid. It didn’t fall off. He worked at unraveling a single cord of the twisted silk. It took a few minutes, but it could be done.

Petros wrapped one whole braid into a ball. He could unravel it later, sitting someplace where he wouldn’t be taking the chance of being discovered.

He found he needed to snip a few stitches again about six inches farther along, but this was no trouble. Petros followed the broken stitches through the folds of the drapes, telling himself over and over that he would work here only a moment more. Only one more strand.

But he never stopped at one more strand. He moved to the next window and the next, and worked until the chain on the gate rattled. Petros stopped breathing for an instant. He didn’t
have to worry about being seen from outside—the shutters were closed. But being caught, this was a worry.