They sat down to an early meal of spaghetti with fried greens and olives. Mama and Sophie and Old Mario had come home with news of the village, but all of it had the ring of complaints, not of news.
“Isn’t it strange that we don’t hear any talk of the war?” Zola asked.
“No one’s talking about anything but the weather and their bunions,” Papa said. “They wait.”
“Don’t rush bad news,” Old Mario said from his end of the table, and Papa agreed. As if Old Mario’s words were a prediction, they heard the growl of trucks coming down the road and the squeal of brakes at the gate.
For a moment no one moved. Sophie began to cry.
“Shah!” Mama said.
Two trucks and a jeep carrying officers came to a halt in front of the house, the motors running.
“Don’t turn off the well,” Papa said. Petros wondered if Lambros could hear the trucks or if the clank of the buckets covered the noise.
Half a dozen German soldiers, boys of about Zola’s age from the look of them, followed a leader up to the veranda. They looked as weary as Old Mario had looked after losing the night’s sleep in burying their belongings.
There were no apologies as they carried Mama’s furniture out to the trucks, but it was done quickly. Petros stood with his family in the yard, feeling oddly embarrassed. He could see Zola’s frustration at their helplessness, could see the determination with which Papa met that same helplessness.
Just as the ordeal should have been over, the leader went into the house. He opened the door as if the house were his, and he let the others in. Mama and Papa—in fact everyone—followed him inside.
He pointed at the china cabinet and the chandelier.
“No,” Mama said, and Papa put a hand on her arm, reminding her. A soldier who’d come to the doorway signaled to the others, and in a moment the parlor was invaded.
The leader sent Petros outside with a wave of his hand. Papa nodded. Petros stopped beneath one of the persimmon trees flanking the gate. From there he could see everything that happened at his house and at the Lemoses’ house.
The air stank with the fumes from the growling motors.
The china cabinet, emptied of the pottery Mama had placed there to disguise the lack of dishes and crystal, was carried away in two pieces. Petros had never thought of it as something that might be moved.
The soldiers weren’t dressed for this work. Their uniforms stretched over their backs so tightly Petros heard stitches pop more than once. Sweat streamed down the soldiers’ faces, and wet patches began to appear on their jackets.
Mama scolded the two soldiers who first attempted to roll the chandelier over the edge of the veranda. Despite the leader, who moved to stop her, Mama didn’t hesitate to grab another young soldier by the arm and enlist his labor.
In very short order, two men were carrying the chandelier overhead like Cleopatra’s couch. His mother followed them out to the truck with an odd mixture of pride and heartsickness etched on her face. Out in the road, Grandmother Lemos ran to meet Mama with outstretched arms.
Her furniture was being loaded onto a truck too. Elia stood near his mother. An officer coming from the Lemoses’ house crossed the street to oversee the men. When this one’s gaze touched Petros, he felt a chill, like leaning over the well.
It felt as if the man didn’t see Petros and his family as people but as male goats, not useful for very long. The officer didn’t go into the house but pointed to the shades on the veranda. He spoke sharply to Papa, who didn’t appear to understand.
Petros saw it all happen.
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The officer climbed the steps, repeating what he’d said. When Papa didn’t move, the officer raised a hand. Zola quickly stepped forward to reach for the roller shades the officer had pointed at. Their father moved then too, to help Zola take the shades down.
When the shades had been put into the arms of one of the sweating soldiers, the officer focused on Zola. It was the same question over and over that Zola didn’t answer, and the officer’s voice rising.
Petros stood on one foot, then the other, wanting to help. But what should he do, what would Papa want him to do?
Mama grabbed Petros around the shoulders and held on to him so tightly he could hardly breathe. “Don’t move from here,” she said. “Let your papa take care of this.”
The officer finally screamed the same words in frustration. He slapped Zola with the back of his hand.
Petros flinched.
Sophie shrieked, then fell silent.
Zola had cringed away from the officer and begun to cry. He said something in Greek—words so garbled by furious tears, Petros could understand nothing. He couldn’t think of a time when he’d known Zola to cry.
Petros was dimly aware of the sound of guns being shaken into position to defend the officer. Of the Lemos family calling to each other. Papa put his arms around Zola the way Mama still held Petros, Papa looking both humble and outraged.
Old Mario came around the house with a pitchfork in his hand. Immediately a soldier pointed a rifle at him, forcing him to put the pitchfork on the ground.
Papa stood with his shoulders hunched in a manner Petros didn’t recognize. He spoke continuously in a low, calming voice, always looking at the soldier.
Zola pointed, over and over, to the place where the shades had been, saying he’d given the officer what he’d pointed at. Zola spoke only Greek.
Another officer and a translator came through the yard, the translator shouting in Greek that no one was to move. There were explanations on the veranda, but no apologies.
The officer shouted things at his men. A soldier shouted at Papa, something Petros didn’t understand. But he saw the way his father straightened up, pushing Zola into the house and out of sight.
The soldiers marched back across the yard and out through the gate, heavy boots making the ground tremble. The metal they wore clashed in Petros’s ears as they passed by. He got the strong idea he’d be full of bruises if they only brushed against him.
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.
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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 mus
t 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.
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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.
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