When the Summer Was Ours

by Roxanne Veletzos

  Wiping wetness from the corners of her eyes, Eva nodded. She had to admit that she, too, was growing fond of his brothers. She liked their openness, their toughness, their acceptance of her. Loved the way they doodled alongside Aleandro as he sketched her at the pond, the way they carved all of their names inside a giant heart on a chestnut tree after Aleandro had shown them how to do it. They wanted to be like him. And the others looked at him the same way in the gypsy camp, where lately, they walked together unabashedly. She’d never in her life seen someone so willing to help out his neighbors—chop wood, carry buckets of water—not out of obligation but because his people were everything to him. And they loved him back. They loved him enough to tolerate her presence, to ask her what she wanted them to play at the bonfire, to let her inside the folds of their customs, which they protected so dearly. Even if it was just for the moment, they did it for him.

  All this time, Aleandro still did not kiss her. Sometimes the desire to touch him, to be in his arms and press her lips in the dark, shallow groove at his throat, was unbearable, yet she knew that they’d be crossing a fault line that couldn’t be uncrossed. And it frightened her. It frightened her as much as the fact that summer was slipping away.

  * * *

  One afternoon, instead of going into town to find Aleandro, Eva headed directly toward the gypsy camp. She knew that Aleandro’s brothers would tag along with the other children to the pond in the afternoon, and hoped she could find Lukas. Her father had left for Vienna just an hour earlier and would be gone until the next day, which opened the window for what she had in mind. Still, she had to hurry. The day was almost over, and the stables back at the estate would be closed soon, the horses brought in for the evening.

  It was Lukas who spotted her first and came running up to her, shaking droplets of water from his black curls, pulling up on the band of his oversize shorts, which had no doubt belonged to his brothers.

  “Eva, Andro’s not back. But”—he held up a finger in a very adult sort of way, which she imagined she’d learned from Aleandro—“I, Lukas, is a great entertainer!” He pondered. “If you wait here for Andro, I can sing you some songs! Or! I can teach you cartwheels. Cartwheels are fun!”

  “They are,” she agreed. “I love cartwheels! But, you know, today I thought we’d do something different.”

  “Different?”

  “Yes, sort of an adventure.”

  “Ah, adventure!” His eyes widened with excitement. “Yes, let’s do adventure! I love adventures.”

  “Well, come on, then,” Eva said, clasping his tiny hand. “You always said that you wanted to ride a horse. And I’ve got one just the perfect size for you.”

  A half hour later, she watched the way Lukas smiled seeing the pony, the way his face beamed with joy and how he kissed its moist nose, caressed his mane. He had no shoes on, but when he scaled the horse, it was with confidence, curling the soles of his feet close to the pony’s flank to keep him in place. He leaned his whole body against him as if melting with him.

  “He likes me! Don’t you, boy?” Another noisy kiss landed between the pony’s ears.

  “Go slow, Lukas,” she told him, holding on to the pony’s reins. “He is young like you, and you will need to ride him slowly. You will need to let him trust you.”

  They went around the pen, in a brisk trot at first, then in a gallop, stirring dust. A squeal came from Lukas, even though she told him that they needed to be quiet, to not draw attention. But she didn’t care. All she cared about was this moment of happiness she was making possible for a boy whose parents had died, who only had a good meal on occasion and was prone to fevers, yet loved life.

  At sunset, after returning the pony to the stable, Eva walked Lukas back to the camp. It was a warm, beautiful evening, and as they ambled through the vineyards and grass bathed in gold, Eva found it impossible to keep up with Lukas’s enthused chatter. She’d worn her favorite summer dress—the same red dress she’d worn in the square when she and Aleandro had met—but the hem had become caked in mud, and she knew there wasn’t enough time to go back to the villa to change. Her hair had also come loose from its French braid, but her skin was warmed by the sun, and after all, she hardly thought that Aleandro would notice. Still, she wanted to look pretty tonight. She wanted to look her best when she delivered her news.

  “Today I became a man!” Lukas interrupted her thoughts. “I harnessed him good, didn’t I? Did you see how that big ol’ horse listened to me?”

  “A pony,” Eva corrected as she ruffled his hair. “A pony, just like you!”

  He beamed. “That pony, is he yours?”

  “Yup. He’s mine, all right.” She bent down to find his eyes. “And perhaps, Lukas, if you can give me a little time to arrange it, I could bring you back to see him soon.”

  “Tomorrow!”

  “Well, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, Lukas, soon. Anyway, it’s good to have things to look forward to, don’t you think?” Eva said as they came up the hillside.

  Then she saw him, saw a figure approaching, and she knew it was him. Aleandro. He, too, saw them and rushed in their direction. Putting one arm around Eva and the other around Lukas, he led them through the final stretch of the valley toward the bonfire already in bloom, and all the reasons Lukas was offering why tomorrow was an ideal day to return to the stables scattered around Eva like dust blown from a palm.

  * * *

  After the bonfire, after the usual brandy and songs, after the children had been brought home and tucked into their beds, Eva and Aleandro strolled through the darkened valley. The fire had long gone out and the air smelled of pine and honeysuckle, and he was unusually silent, no more than a shadow beside her. All night he’d been looking at her a bit strangely, although not less lovingly, his gaze shifting often to Lukas with something she couldn’t quite read. She was glad she could be alone with him at last. Glad she could tell him what she was thinking, what she’d been thinking all afternoon. Yet it was him who spoke first.

  “Thank you, Eva. Thank you for what you did today. For Lukas.”

  “It was really nothing. I know how much he hates that all the horses in the camp are too big for him to ride. I hope you don’t mind me not asking you first. Truly, I wanted to, but there was no time.”

  “Of course not. To see Lukas in such high spirits, how could I ever mind? It’s just…” He stopped speaking. Stopped and lifted his hand up toward the breeze as they walked. “Do you feel that? Do you feel the change in the air?”

  She did. She, too, had felt it for several days. “Aleandro, I’ve been meaning to tell you… I don’t think I’ll leave for Budapest as planned. Not yet. I can delay maybe until the end of September, October even…”

  He halted. Turned to her slowly, with effort, as if willing his whole body into the movement.

  “Eva.”

  A slow breath. “Yes?”

  “Tell me about him. Please. We talk about everything else but him. So tell me what he is like. I need to know.”

  It was so direct, but she liked this about Aleandro, liked that he didn’t mince words, and she also knew he had every right to ask. She couldn’t pretend that Eduard wasn’t here between them in these stolen moments, that things had not already gone too far.

  “He is…” she began, weighing how much to reveal or to hold back. “He is not like many people I meet in my everyday life. He loves his work as a doctor, much as you love your painting or your violin, and he’s generous, kind. He respects me. I suppose that’s what I like most about him. He treats me as an equal, and always would.”

  “And you will marry him. You will go back to your life eventually and marry him. Whether you delay leaving here or not.”

  What could she really say? What assurances to give?

  The truth was that she had no idea what she would do in the fall. Her whole world felt as though it was splintering before her. “Look, Aleandro, this is so very new, so… unexpected. I didn’t expect any of this to happen.” She h
eld her hands out to him as in a plea. “I don’t know, honestly, what I’m supposed to do.”

  Again silence. He didn’t try to comfort her; rather, he drifted farther into the depths of the valley, into a place that was apart from them, and she couldn’t bear this distance between them. It was she who came to him and draped her arms around his waist, burying her face in his back, inhaling his smell. He smelled of beer halls and fire, he smelled of Sopron, of home. Whatever stood between them, nothing would alter this simple truth.

  “I don’t know what to do, Aleandro,” she repeated against his shirt, tears rising in her eyes. “Please tell me what I should do.”

  Turning to her, he took her hand and they resumed walking. There was an oak, a sturdy trunk a hundred years old, and he drew her against it, with her back to his chest. She felt his fingers below the clasp of her necklace, tracing an invisible line over her sunburned shoulder, slowly, as if to imprint its curve. Then he spoke. Softly he spoke into her ear:

  “You know exactly what to do, Eva. There is nothing I can give you, nothing at all beyond a small measure of happiness, and in our world, that’s hardly enough. If you stay, there’s a good chance that you’ll regret it someday. And I don’t want regret between us.”

  “But how can I leave now? And what about your brothers? What will happen to them?”

  “The Romani, you know, we are survivors. But you have a bright future ahead, a wonderful life that I can’t offer you.” A pause stretched, Aleandro steeling himself for what he would say next: “So go. Go now, Eva. Please. I’ll stay here and watch you go. I want to remember you like this, in your red summer dress.”

  For a long moment, she didn’t move, couldn’t move, and she remained against him, her heart thundering against his chest in this great empty valley where there was no sound now, no glow of fire. She knew he was right. There would be no place for them in this divided world. She didn’t belong with the Romani any more than he belonged in her world; they’d both been stealing time. Still, she couldn’t accept that this was the last time she would see him, couldn’t imagine what it would be like to wake the next day knowing they wouldn’t meet again.

  When she finally forced herself to step away, she couldn’t look at him, and kept her back turned as she walked off, shivering in her thin dress. After a few steps, she broke into a full run, back to her old life, her sandals in her hands, the soggy earth underneath her feet. Halfway through the valley, she could go no farther, and she sank into the grass, letting her tears flow.

  10

  SHE HAD BEEN SO CAREFUL. So careful to leave the house unseen, to not leave behind a trace of her absence, to lock the front door. To disguise fatigue into preoccupation, to conceal the torment of her heart behind smiles. So when her father called her into his study the next morning, the last thing she expected was to be confronted with proof.

  Four photographs in all. All black-and-whites, blurry, taken with a cheap camera. All lined up in a neat row in front of her, cataloging the trail of her deceit.

  “It’s not what you think, Papa.”

  “Not what I think?”

  “No.”

  She couldn’t tell him that, in fact, it was over—that these photographs meant nothing now and how her heart, seeing them, was raked fresh with regret and longing. He had changed her, changed something fundamental in her, and even though she would never see him again, the whole thing was serious indeed, more serious than he could imagine.

  “I’ve sacrificed everything for you, Eva,” her father shouted. “I’ve given you the best of everything. I’ve raised you to be a lady! A lady, Eva! And this is how you repay me? By disgracing me? By compromising my reputation, our family name?”

  He scooped up the photographs and scrunched them in his fist, shoved them in her face. “Look at these! My very own daughter, running around in plain sight with this parasite! I know what he is, Eva! I saw the way you looked at him at the party, while everyone no doubt laughed behind your back! Laughed at you, at me.”

  “Papa, please try to calm down—he’s only a friend,” she tried to reason. Her father was still in his robe, unshaven, something unhinged in his gray eyes, which normally regarded her with a glassy, impersonal aloofness. There were papers strewn on the rug near the desk, a shattered crystal tumbler, a picture of her mother in a silver frame—which she bent down to pick up.

  “Leave it!” he roared. “Don’t you dare move from that chair, Eva!”

  “Why don’t you go up and change and we can talk about this a little later,” Eva went on in that same mild tone even though she was shaken with fear. “I’ll have Dora put on some coffee and clean up this mess and we can talk a little later.”

  “Dora? Oh, no, no, my dear, Dora isn’t here. I sent her home just an hour ago. While you were sleeping off your little… escapade, I threw her out of the house. She’s gone. She’s never to come back.”

  “What are you talking about?” She couldn’t blink suddenly, couldn’t breathe. So this was how he would punish her. He would take away the only person in the world who cared for her. “Papa! How could you? Dora had nothing to do with this! Nothing! You had no right!”

  “No right? Oh, I had every right! Every right, when you comport yourself with no regard for anyone but yourself and your cheap little whims, with no regard for me or even for your fiancé.” He paused. “When my own associate throws it in my face as a bargaining chip meant to demean me. Dora covers for you! She enables you to behave like a whore!”

  She stood, still under his enraged gaze, and steadied herself on the edge of the desk. Then without further word, she turned toward the door. All she saw was the oak paneling with the squares of stained glass; she just needed to reach and walk through it. She was nearly there when he came for her. His hand gripped her hair, yanking it, and his open palm struck her face. She was crying, yet she knew she had to remain still, very still. A single movement would only provoke him more. Provoke him to do a great deal worse.

  He forced her to turn, shoved her forward into the depths of the room. She stumbled but regained her balance and as she did, something unleashed inside her. All her angst, and guilt, and heartbreak, and humiliation bundled inside her into a tight vortex and exploded from her. She straightened her dress, tucked her hair behind her ears, and wiped her tears.

  Then she said aloud the words she’d been dying to say ever since her mother had died and her father had become this stranger, this person who reeked constantly of gin and spoke about racial purity, whose bitterness and contempt was born out of cowardice. Cowardice to face his own loss.

  “And what are you, Papa? Don’t you see the way that people look at you? Don’t you know what you have become? If I’ve soiled your reputation, it was at least for something good, something that filled my heart with all that you’ve denied me, all that you’ve made impossible for me to gain in any other way.” She gave a laugh. “A whore and a drunk. That makes us a perfect match. Now get out of my way!”

  She knew what would come, didn’t care in that moment about anything at all. She closed her eyes, perhaps even smiled. And still, she hadn’t expected the full force of it. All she was suddenly aware of was his fist colliding against her cheek, the spinning of the room, and the surface of the door as she slid down the full length of it. And a pinprick of blackness expanding in her field of vision, growing as an approaching meteor. Engulfing her.

  11

  ALEANDRO KNEW SHE WOULDN’T COME. Yet here he was for the second night in a row, leaning on a large oak near the wine cellar. It wasn’t hope that pulled him back, but more that he knew a decision of his own had to be made. She would go on with her life, marry, think of him someday with pleasant detachment—a transient attraction in the final weeks before her marriage that had been, after all, mostly innocent. Eventually, even that would fade, but for him, it would always continue—beyond this night, beyond this summer. Here in Sopron, there would always be her.

  And so he would say good-bye to their meeting place,
to all they’d been to each other, to the town he’d intended to leave before Eva had come into his life. There was nothing to keep him here now, and he’d already delayed too long. So he would pack up his brothers and head out on the old, familiar road he’d traveled in another lifetime with his parents, when it was only the three of them. How he missed that road.

  For a little while, Aleandro sat against the tree, letting his mind drift back to those early days of his life and all they contained: starry skies, open fields with scorched grass, hawks gliding through the golden translucence of sunsets. Through it all, the sound of hoofs beating the gravel, day melting into night, towns opening on the horizon, towns fading. They were the travelers, they were their own gods, they were masters of their destiny. They were free, as he hoped to be again.

  In daytime, as they closed the distance between villages, his mother had made medicinal potions from herbs she collected along the way, and he would sit alongside his father as he guided the horse-drawn wagon. The sun beat down mercilessly, making him light-headed, and they passed the time talking. There were stories about the taverns in which his father played, about where their music came from, and Aleandro often picked up his violin and played for him. “Like this?” he would say, and his father would lean in closer, or ask him to move to the other side of him to hear him better. “You are getting there,” he would tell him, although the way his face beamed with pleasure was enough encouragement for Aleandro to keep sliding the bow over the strings.

  In town markets, his mother sold her potions while he accompanied his father to the taverns. It was in those early days that someone had spat the word Cigányok at him and he asked his father what it meant. “It means you play from the soul,” his father explained, even though Aleandro knew that it meant nothing of the kind. He’d heard it thrown in his father’s face, too, despite the beautiful sounds that emerged from his violin, but by then his father, still young and towering, could no longer hear those words. He couldn’t hear anything anymore.