War Games (15 page)

Down the hall, Papa’s bare feet hit the floor and he ran along the hall and into the parlor. He crossed to a window at the other end of the room, where he could see more of the yard. Petros allowed himself a silent sigh of relief that he hadn’t worked his way to that end of the room.

As Papa flipped a shutter so he could peer between the slats, Mama came to stand in the parlor doorway. “It’s Elia’s grandmother,” Papa said in a low voice.

“I’ll go,” Mama said. She asked Elia’s grandmother in, Papa went back to bed, and Sophie got up to go into the kitchen.

It wasn’t likely Mama would come to the parlor to sit—her sofa was gone. But Petros felt relieved to hear the women settle in the kitchen. He thought about sneaking back to his room, but not very hard. He couldn’t resist stealing another few minutes in the parlor.

He’d worked up a good-sized ball of cord when he heard Mama and Grandmother Lemos coming, talking in serious tones. Petros stopped pulling at the braid. He sat frozen in shock and fear as they came into the parlor.

Only now did this plan appear to have serious flaws. He hadn’t thought things through properly. If he was discovered now, with so much blue braid balled up in his lap, Papa would make it that he couldn’t sit down for days.

Worse, his mother might never forgive him. He might be
made to sleep in the shed with Old Mario, whose breath filled the room as he snored.

Grandmother Lemos talked of the changes in the parlor as if she spoke of the dead. Mama said she couldn’t use the room since the soldiers had handled her things. Sophie called out that she’d poured the lemonade. Mama and Grandmother Lemos went back to the kitchen. Petros wasn’t discovered. He made up his mind to be especially nice to Sophie when he had the chance.

He didn’t move. He couldn’t leave the room just yet. While the women were drinking lemonade, they might look toward the parlor and see him leaving it. Best to remain where he was.

He snipped away at the next few stitches. He pulled at the braid, being careful not to make the drapes quiver, nothing anyone might notice. After several minutes, he had another ball sizable enough to stuff into his pants pocket. Still the braid, the fringe, looked no different.

When Petros had several more inches of the cord he needed, he wrapped it around the ball he’d already begun. He moved on to another area in the fringe. Every so often, Petros scooted along the cool marble floor to the next window. He sang a whispered little song under his breath as he worked.

From the space of three windows, he made half a dozen small balls. The sight of them filled his heart with happiness. All of them unraveled and spooled together would make one fine ball of kite string.

But one more would make it finer.

Petros began a new ball. He heard the faraway rumble of a truck, hardly noticing it, really. The ball had grown a bit before he realized there couldn’t be only one truck. It took several trucks traveling together to make such a noise. His heart beat faster at the thought.

Petros couldn’t see through the shutters. When the trucks didn’t pass but stopped in front of his house, he was glad he couldn’t be seen from the outside.

He snipped his thread, hoping to make his escape unseen.

The lemonade glasses clattered. Hurried footsteps moved along the hallway. His mother’s small scream startled him. Petros could taste his stomach acid—it burned his throat.

The weight of booted feet hit the veranda.

Someone pounded on the door.
BAM BAM BAM
.

Petros didn’t move.

Papa shouted that everyone should remain in their beds.

The front door opened, and before his father could say another word, the soldiers were inside. One soldier’s voice was low, but as hard and cold as the marble floor. Petros could understand little of what he said.

Another voice firmly made himself understood with excellent Greek, telling the family to go into the kitchen. To stay there. Petros tried to quiet the pounding of the blood in his ears.

Again he had only the warning tramp of boots before the drapes were thrown back from a nearby window and a fist knocked open the shutters. Light broke through, bright harsh light. The German soldier saw him then, still hidden behind the drapes. Petros felt the soldier saw everything—the strand of cord dangling from the fringe, the balls in his lap.

And Petros saw too.

The clean, smooth look of his uniform, like it was made of something other than cloth, the road dust hadn’t touched it.
The large gun he wore at his hip. He carried a short stick of some kind with a leather loop on the end. And his eyes, they flashed like sunlight on water.

This was the commander.

Neither he nor Petros moved. Petros didn’t even breathe. The faintest smile touched the corners of the commander’s mouth. And then he winked.

Petros’s whole being felt a greater shock than he’d once gotten from a battery, and that had knocked him clear across the shed. The commander reached behind the drape to give the shutters beside Petros a thump with the heel of his hand and they too opened wide.

Several soldiers stood gathered at the gate, but none were on the veranda. The commander had opened these shutters. So that Petros—this seemed hard to believe—might escape before he was discovered by Mama?

Petros gathered his shirt around the balls in his lap as the commander turned away and pointed with his stick. “Put the bed there, desk there. I’ll arrange the rest,” he said in too-perfect Greek that reminded Petros of the English family, the Walkers. It was the Greek of newcomers who meant to stay.

The commander said more in German, probably repeating what he’d said in Greek so his men would understand him. Petros heard this as he fled the window. He leaped off the side of the veranda, getting some nasty scratches from the bloodred roses his mother favored.

Ignoring the sting of the scratches, he walked around the
corner of the house as if he’d been directed to do so. Not one of the soldiers at the gate reacted.

Petros started running.

He ran and dropped to the ground behind the well, breathing heavily. Petros listened for any further sound from the house.

And thought of Lambros.

Below him, by at least fifty or sixty feet, Lambros knew nothing of the changes occurring above. He was safe. So long as no one took an interest in Petros, Lambros would continue to be safe there.

Petros tucked his shirt into his pants and stuffed the balls down the front. If he crawled toward the garden, he’d be hidden from the house. So he crawled for a little time on hands and knees, but the gravel bruised his knees.

He stood and ran for the grape arbor. Reaching the safety of the arbor, he listened to the mix of voices coming from the house, nothing alarming. Perhaps no one had noticed he wasn’t there. He pulled the rock aside and put the balls of cord next to the mulberry juice. He slid the rock back into place.

Petros gave in to his desire to run back to the house and see what was going on. He followed Old Mario inside, the old man muttering curses meant to rain upon German heads.

“He speaks Greek,” Petros said into the good hairy ear, and the curses stopped.

The commander walked through the house as if he owned it, or at least had to memorize it. He looked out at the yard
from each window. Before leaving the room, he took a piece of furniture for his own: a dresser belonging to Papa.

A young soldier was told to take care of it. He scooped up a handful of shirts, emptying a drawer, but the commander saw his careless manner and stopped it. He pointed to the bed, and the soldier began to put things down there neatly. This much Petros saw as he stood in the hallway. Mama grabbed Petros and held on to him as if he were a small boy.

The commander never looked at Petros, probably on purpose, although Petros couldn’t be sure. It was as Zola said, the boys knew nothing about him. They’d have to learn something of his habits, figure him out. Although he’d done Petros a kindness, he hadn’t come as a friend.

Crates of wine were placed in the root cellar, to be poured only for the commander and his guests. “Guests?” Sophie whispered. “What guests?”

Papa answered. “He’s a colonel. Other officers may come to visit.”

“A colonel,” Zola repeated, not so much to inform as to impress. Petros was already impressed, and was nearly tempted to tell Zola what the man had done.

The commander’s desk was carried in, his bed set up. His books were unpacked and put on Mama’s shelves. Old Mario and Zola were sent out to pick vegetables for soldiers to eat.

There were more insults to come.

The commander asked Sophie to bring him a coffee and
settled himself on the veranda. She stomped off to the kitchen, causing Mama to tighten her grip on Petros.

An odd iron-bar arrangement was pounded into the ground between one of the persimmon trees and Papa’s treasured pear. No one could imagine what this was for.

When the soldiers got back into the trucks and drove away, they left the parlor ready for the commander. Papa herded Petros and the others into the kitchen.

It was a little dizzying. They’d expected this for days and now it was done, at the worst possible moment for the family’s safety—when Lambros was in the well. And yet they felt safe enough, they weren’t threatened at that moment. It left them with very little to say.

Although the parlor door stood closed and the hallway empty, Papa shut the kitchen door as well. Mama poured the rest of the coffee for him.

As the family sat at the table, little by little, beginning with whispers, they discovered how to be together in a house that was no longer just theirs. “What of Lambros?” Zola said under his breath.

“He won’t come out until he hears three stones drop into the water,” Old Mario said.

“Good plan,” Papa said.

“I can’t take credit for it,” Old Mario said. “The boy has learned a great deal about going to war.”

The commander knocked on the kitchen door some time later, waiting for permission to enter. Papa opened it as formally as if it were the locked front gate.

“Good evening, family,” the man said. “It’s my hope you will feel free to use your veranda. That you use the remainder of your house freely. I’ll shut the door to my room so I may remain private. I expect to open the shutters for the light when I am at home.”

Petros glanced at Mama. The commander used the words
at home
. Her distrustful face didn’t change. The same couldn’t be said for Sophie, whose mouth fell open like a baby bird waiting for a worm.

“About your meals …,” Papa said.

“I’ll eat what your family eats.”

Papa cleared his throat but didn’t ask the question uppermost in Petros’s mind. The commander answered it anyway. “In my room.”

The commander looked them over, gathered at the table, as if he were memorizing them the way he had the house.
“Place a tray on a small table I’ll set outside the door. That’s how we’ll arrange it.”

Mama spoke up. “If there’s no meat?”

“I don’t demand meat,” he said. “Please be comfortable to serve what you will.” Before he closed the parlor door, he set a lamp table outside.

Mama put vegetables in the oven, then stood over a pot of rice pudding, stirring. “When he goes out, how will we know when to expect him back?”

Papa said, “He’s not a guest. He won’t tell us what to make of his comings and goings.”

Mama put her hands on her hips, ready to argue. “How am I to know when he wants to eat?”

“We’ll make a plate and cover it with a towel if he misses a meal,” Papa said. “This is probably a matter of giving us no warning, of being sure we can give no one else any information ahead of time.”

Mama’s eyes looked wild. “Do you think the Germans suspect us?”

“I think they must suspect everyone equally,” Papa said. “Except for those they suspect more. We, however, are above suspicion, being right under the commander’s nose.”

Zola set the first tray on the lamp table an hour later and closed the kitchen door again.

Over their evening meal of roasted vegetables and cheese, Sophie complained and Zola teased Petros over nothing at all.
Mama scolded and Papa glared when the scolding didn’t take. Fifi sat on the top back step, looking in, and the dog lay flat under the table. Soon the family felt much as if the commander were not there at all.

After dinner Petros was reminded.

Papa said, “The boys and I will do the dishes, Mama. You and Sophie go out to the veranda, take the air. You must accept the commander’s invitation to be in your home.”

Mama’s fingers trembled, but Sophie assumed an air of injury and indignation, usually saved for Petros or Zola. “It’s our house,” she said firmly, “and our veranda.”

She left the kitchen, letting the door swing open, and Mama followed her.

The dog came out from under the table, hoping to get some scraps. Old Mario gave him a couple of parings from the cheese.

Papa spoke to Petros and Zola in a low voice. “Your cousin must stay where he is, of course. For the safety of everyone, he must not try to leave.”

Petros said, “All night? Papa, he’ll freeze.”

“I hope he’s hardier than that,” Papa said. “We’ll try to bring him out. But everything will depend on—” He finished with a nod of his head. “Tonight he’s better off below.”

“How can we warn him?” Zola asked.

“Petros will have to do it,” Papa said.

“He’s too little,” Zola said. “Let me.”

“The commander will ask where you are if you’re gone for an hour,” Papa said. “No, you’ll join Old Mario and me in a
card game. But the commander must believe he also knows where Petros is, even when he’s out of sight.”

“You can’t go on treating me like a child,” Zola said.

“Ssh.” This warning came from Old Mario.

“I’m treating you like a man,” Papa said quietly, and Zola’s neck flushed red. Petros felt apologetic, as if he’d been shorter only to thwart Zola’s desire to be a hero. “You’ll leave a sack for Petros at the far wall of the property. Because of this, your brother won’t have so far to crawl dragging a sack.”