‘Can a woman ever become the Black?’
‘Never,’ he sounded surprised. ‘With us, women are the lesser. It makes no difference if they are born royal or not.’
‘Us, Albert?’ Marie chided. ‘Us! You left the clan over thirty years ago.’
‘Yes, yes, I know,’ he replied sounding agitated. ‘As I told you, it’s a difficult habit to break, especially when my senses are troubled, like today. It seems there’s still a part of me that belongs. I believed it gone for good, totally content with my lot. It hasn’t. I suppose it’s this business with the children … it has awakened so many emotions. As the Black, Zande will be granted extra years of life but not Yöst. What is he going to think, when he learns the price we pay, for being one of Zeus’s children? And what about TaTa? If she is carinatae, her life will also be cut short. She is such a gentle child and I love her so very much, I truly cannot bear that thought.’
23
Yöst couldn’t remember exactly when it happened, when his restless chafing against his new life, stuck indoors on rain-soaked days, his thoughts constrained by the needs of others, fell away, replaced by a burgeoning contentment.
Maybe, unwittingly, it had begun that day on the hillside when Ramon had abandoned his suspicions and accepted him without reservation into his home. Maybe it was that day in winter, when the lanes were flooded and he couldn’t bear being indoors a moment longer, and Rico had magicked capes made out of oilskin. Or perhaps it was summer, when the sun had poured its light into the sky, so early night had barely time to scurry away before it appeared. Then, after a hurried cup of coffee, the entire family chased off to the fields, Pepe pushing the handcart in which Maestro and the two youngest sat, because Ramon had planned on harvesting the early crop of potatoes that day, and wanted to take them to market. And when he had knelt down to dig up his first plant, as anxious as Tatania and Zande to see the tubers, the earth had been warm and welcoming.
It certainly didn’t happen all at once, this sense of belonging. Recognition of it emerged slowly in a series of pictures, Yöst discovering both peace and pleasure in revisiting them: the house and meadow, the great dining table with everyone seated around it, talking and arguing, their laughter ringing out; the silence that accompanied the vibrancy of Katarina and Adelita’s dancing or the melodies that flowed from Maestro’s fingers on the guitar.
Although, not until the last sound had faded, leaving the pictures Maestro had drawn indelibly printed in his mind, did he understand their significance. At the farm, surrounded by trees and water and earth, they were safe. It could snow or rain, hail the size of pebbles might lash the ground, it made little if any difference. The farm would remain, with its animals and crops that needed tending regardless of any outside influence. And twice a week, maybe more, Pepe and Rico and Ramon would go to market. Even Ramon, as obdurate and stubborn as he was, added to that feeling of security; his tongue lashings could be counted on, they weren’t going anywhere either. So very different from the carinatae with its history of migrations and massacres, fleeing from one country to another, leaving their dead behind. Even Monsieur and Madame Meijer as much as he loved them could provide no real security. Only here did it exist – and, for a minute or two, he was saddened it had taken so long for him to realise it.
Yet, that autumn or maybe it was the following spring, when Zande tore into the house, breathless from running, his eyes glistening with excitement, to tell him about a pair of weasels he had just seen, if someone had suggested removing them from the farm or indeed either of the children from his care, he would have fought tooth and nail to stop it happening.
‘They were fighting,’ Zande gasped out his story, ‘tumbling over and over.’
Anxious to recreate them on paper before he forgot about their needle-sharp canines, bright black-button eyes, and frolicsome whiskers, there would be a frantic search for his drawing pad which he’d misplaced somewhere, the young boy as eager to bring the animals to life with his pencil as his tongue was to describe their encounter. His drawing book was full of birds and animals that lacked final touches, his attention constantly drawn by something even more interesting. Maybe a wasp’s nest, a cocoon of paper-thin fibres tucked behind a hinge in a shutter, discovered when the shutter was opened with the arrival of warmer weather.
Tatania, too. Each new step or addition of a new word to her vocabulary, Yöst shared with Pascual and Rico, both as delighted as he was with her progress; her first somersault spawning the statement she would be as nimble as Zande.
‘Hopefully not as talkative,’ Rico teased, a frequent victim of Zande’s non-stop questioning. ‘He makes me feel guilty I didn’t listen more in school.’
And when Rico smiled, he forgot to remember Willem, thinking how linked their lives were becoming and how good it was to have a friend.
Rico’s voice reached through the somnambulant warmth of the afternoon. ‘You’re very quiet.’
In the distance Yöst could hear Zande and Clara arguing but felt too lazy to find out why. Besides, whenever did they do anything other than argue? Almost overhead, he spotted the twin kites, their tails twisting and swaying in the breeze, and guessed Zande was teaching Clara how to gain more height, and she was resenting his advice.
Leaning up on one elbow, he casually checked on Tatania, adjusting the sunhat Adelita had bought for her birthday, to protect the back of her neck, rays of sunlight spinning her tousled locks into a web of gold. That’s what she was good at – waiting. Refusing to be left behind, she ran to keep up, clapping her hands as a hawk dropped close, chasing its prey. The one visible effect of her ordeal, a need to be with the people she loved. When she was tired, Yöst and Rico took turns giving her a piggyback. She was there now, her attention fixed on the sky where a solitary lark carolled its song. Whatever interested her, she never strayed far. No one ever needed to ask, where’s TaTa? It was as if an invisible thread existed between them, the little girl content to stray to its tip but no further, waiting patiently ’til he and Rico had finished their jobs or their conversation. Nevertheless, it was her thread and her decision. Yöst would have been happy for her to wander; danger didn’t exist in the places Rico took them. That was one of the first things he had learned about his friend; accepting without question that any relationship with Yöst included his baggage, and making it his business to keep them safe. Yöst didn’t fear Tatania falling either; her feet skimming over rocks and crevices as lightly as a bird’s.
Sometimes, when the silence between them had lasted hours, he wished he might ask, ‘What are you waiting for, TaTa?’
She wouldn’t have replied to his question even if he had asked. After regarding him thoughtfully, her eyes would shift focus and with a slight twist of her body she’d return to the place she inhabited with her fairy friends, her stillness encouraging birds and animals to venture near to her, unafraid.
‘I love Sundays.’ He reached an arm touching Rico lightly on the chest. ‘No Ramon chasing us.’
Rico nudged him with his foot by way of a reply.
Yöst often wished he might say more, except that might have made things awkward between them. Yet, right from the beginning when they climbed the ridge behind the house, Rico had made Sundays special. That summer they had seen a litter of fox cubs playing outside their den and brown lizards sunning themselves on rocks, their tongues lapping up errant mosquitoes and flies; also, the apple tree where a poisonous spider had built its web, and a cave of bats sleeping away the daylight. At night, when sleep evaded him, his muscles stiff and aching from a day spent digging potatoes or picking grapes or apples, he often revisited those memories, grateful for their bright images that had finally replaced those of death, eventually ushered into sleep with pictures of Rico drifting past, his expressions as numerous and as joyful as motes of sunlight creeping through cracks in the shutters.
‘I was just thinking …’
Yöst stared down at the sleepy figure, annoyed at being so careless. Fortunately,
Rico hadn’t been paying attention, his body relaxed, absorbing the sun.
Even now, after nearly two years, that particular phrase, I was thinking, might elicit a sulky response and spoil their day, Rico’s resentment at being excluded from his secret thoughts a barrier of thorns; something each visit from the Meijers did nothing to dispel. Tante Marie had confided in him the cobs return, admitting that his own father hadn’t been among them. That snippet of information hadn’t bothered Yöst, why should it? The people in his life had been his grandmother and his friends rather than his father. Now he added Pascual and the children, Katarina and Rico, to the list.
‘I wish we could stay here for ever.’
‘The winter would freeze us solid,’ Rico argued.
‘No, it wouldn’t.’ Yöst leaned up on one elbow, his eyebrows dancing a duet of merriment. ‘We’d have starved to death long before then.’
‘Still, it would be nice if you could. You belong here.’
‘Anyway, it might be our last Sunday until the end of summer.’
‘Why so?’
‘I overheard Pascual asking Pepe to put up the awning. Either she’s expecting visitors or Adelita is forecasting a hot spell. She’s bound to stop TaTa coming up here. Says she’s too fair for our climate. And if she doesn’t come …’
‘You don’t either. I got it.’ Opening his eyes a crack, Rico smiled sleepily up at Yöst, before blinking them shut again. How different they were, Willem and Rico: Willem, the older brother, the first to step forward when his grandmother died, totally dependable and never out of humour; Rico, his mercurial personality reminiscent of the gorse bushes on the island, their fragrant yellow flowers exquisite, yet concealing long, jagged thorns, capable of piercing flesh. Yet he wouldn’t change a single thing; not now, even if he could. He no longer needed an older brother, and with Rico, right from the off they’d been on a level. Like two pieces of a puzzle with different images on them. Nevertheless, their edges still fitted.
Abruptly, Rico shot upright, shrugging away the last vestiges of sleep, and growling out, ‘Next time I go to town I shall go right up to that priest and shake his hand, you see if I don’t.’
Yöst eyebrows crashed together in alarm.
Rico chortled. ‘That’ll teach you to say you’re thinking and not explain what about. And don’t say you did; I’m like Léon, I can smell a lie at ten paces.’
‘Why the priest?’ Yöst ignored the phrase about lying.
Rico’s smile swept over him, outdoing even the rays of sunshine. ‘You’re dim all of a sudden. Without him, we’d never have met.’
A brief silence swept through both boys as if they were reaching out for something; something tangible, yet still only hinted at and gone next moment.
Rico jumped to his feet. ‘Come on, TaTa, let’s creep up on Clara and shout ‘Boo’. Then we’ll go home, I’m hungry.’
24
High among the rafters, the rope taut under his weight, Yöst swung back and forth, his swing as evenly balanced as the pendulum of a clock. When he reached the apex, he released his hands, flying free, delighting in his buoyancy, and counting out the seconds before earth retook control. Reaching out, he grasped the rope. To fall would not be helpful, although Duchesse in the stall below had become accustomed to his unorthodox manner of descent, scarcely bothering to turn her head when Yöst mistimed his flight and crash-landed onto the straw bedding. In the past year, he had bruised almost every bit of him, which had earned him many a tongue-lashing from Pascual.
‘If you don’t want me to put my life at risk,’ he ignored her anger, ‘ask Ramon if I can go with them to the market.’ ‘I have asked,’ she retorted. Undoing the lid on a jar of salve, she smoothed the soft paste over his elbow which was already swelling. Cure all, she called it. ‘At the beginning of this year, exactly as I did the previous one and the one before that.’
‘And?’
‘He says no. You are more use here.’
‘I could be just as useful in the market. Besides I’ve grown.’
He wasn’t sure why he said grown when he meant changed, except Pascual might query his use of the word. But he’d done both, he was different now … both inside and out. Even Tante Marie had admitted no one would ever recognise him; even she would pass him by on the street.
‘Rico says I remind of a grass-hopper that jumps out of one skin into another.’
Pascual raised her eyebrows at him. ‘You really want me to tell Ramon you’re a grasshopper?’
His moaning was half-hearted, aware of the answer to his question even before Pascual gave it. Once Ramon had decided something, it was never undecided, however inconvenient or unpalatable its outcome. Like the granite outcrop behind their house; when rain or snow swept the mountain side only its surface was affected, never its heart. Of course, he wished it could have been otherwise. On days when Rico vanished with his father, it left him with an empty feeling, conscious a part of him had gone too.
Scrambling up the pile of straw bales, he launched himself off again, the rope spiralling under his weight. Pumping his feet, he increased the arc, soaring heavenwards as if he really were true child of Zeus. Loosening his hold, he crash-landed onto a pile of springy straw bales as gravity once again resumed control.
He wasn’t lighter or capable of freeing himself from the confines of earth. As much as he pretended otherwise, if he fell onto packed earth from this height, his bones would break as easily as those of anyone else. Even the momentary feeling of weightlessness, swinging free before taking control of the rope again or dropping down onto the pile of straw, was a sham, not to be compared with the real thing. The joy of ascending into the heavens, with nothing apart from the night sky for company, still existed only in his imagination. It had been a good summer, very different from their first at the farm when daily encounters with a coterie of new experiences had felt like the wearing of new clothes, stiff and awkward. Getting used to living as a family had proved the toughest, learning how to mix with girls and ignore their teasing, and to speak freely with Ramon without waiting for him to open the conversation; eventually accepting that in this little enclave everyone was considered equal … even Tatania. His body had also taken time to adjust to the new regime, resenting the constant demands on its muscles that work had brought with it. Pascual had been his rock, patiently teaching him how to acquire the rules of family life and to stop beating himself up whenever he failed.
This year too, even the weather had cooperated, sending kindly showers of rain whenever they were needed, the sun restrained, disinclined to scorch the earth to dust.
‘I even wake each day excited at what might happen,’ he confessed to Pascual.
‘You mean cleaning out stables and dragging horse dung out to the fields to rot down, you find exciting?’ she had teased.
He hadn’t replied, not wanting to admit he had hoped this year might have mirrored the previous one for weather, when the sun had blazed down for months on end. Ramon had bought an awning, and they had pretty much lived outside, the beehive house, even with the shutters wide open, an inferno. Most nights they had dragged their pallets out under the stars, and spent the evening splashing about in the river, even the dogs, as anxious as anyone else to stay cool. And while ground crops had suffered, there’d been a glut of fruit, even the grape harvest advanced by a couple of weeks. Overwhelmed, Pascual and Katarina had brought in the girls to help, awarding Adelita the task of straining left over-grapes for jelly, while Maestro peeled a mountain of apples. Eventually running out of bottling jars, Pascual complained she never wanted to see another apple as long as she lived and Ramon, discovering the larder shelves full, had ordered the pigs loose a month early to eat any windfalls. Despite the extra work, none of that had bothered Yöst, celebrating every minute of the long evenings, not doing much, whiling away the time with Rico, content to be alive.
Being the butt of Adelita’s sharp wit was something he no longer dreaded either, aware it was an indication of affect
ion rather than dislike; even Maestro, understanding his crippled frame to be nothing more or less than the vessel, responsible for creating the musical pictures that gave so much pleasure to his audience.
He had shot up again this year too, his muscles hardening with the physical demands of an eight or ten-hour day, hoeing and planting in the spring, harvesting in summer, logging throughout autumn and winter, whenever weather permitted. As Ramon had assured him, at the end of a day’s work he looked forward to a good dinner, listening to stories about their homeland where the bull was a creature of adulation, laughing and talking, Pascual and Katarina frequently setting up a teasing confrontation with Maestro, until a cutting quip from Adelita left them in stitches again. Some nights, when there was energy enough, and Delors and Tatania were in bed, Katarina and Adelita would dance. Occasionally, Maestro forgot his audience and played for himself alone, bringing pictures never before seen to life. While his melodies sounded out, no one moved or spoke. Even Pascual rushing between table and kitchen would pause, hypnotized by images of pine forests and blue seas, the dwarf creating patterns of notes which left those listening breathless with emotion.
Yöst waited for the rope to still, his body now a smooth line of sinew and muscle. Did he? Did he belong? More and more often, when he wasn’t thinking about anything in particular, the idea crept over him that perhaps, after all, he wasn’t particularly bothered about changing. Let someone else experience the world’s wonders, he’d be quite content to remain here, exploring the wonders in this tiny corner.
A rich peal of bright laughter crept into his hearing. He smiled; he’d never get used to that joyous sound arising from someone as dainty as Tatania.
The Click of a Pebble Page 28
