Do I remember? The steep meadows strewn with the earliest flowers, the yellow stars of avalanche lilies and the pale anemones too tender, you would swear, for the harsh high winds; and the black cliffs with their feet buried in the rubble of stone broken by ice in the winters when no one was there to see it fall; and the sharp-horned chamois like patches of dirty snow where no snow could cling, until they moved, leaping, as my son says, from nothing to nothing, or so you would swear. The chamois made my neat-footed goats look clumsy and earthbound, the tame and more than tame cousins condemned to valley life: debased. Or was that how I felt, trailing in the wake of my husband and my son, who seemed to have been born for the heights? But even they were banned from the steepest cliffs.
It was the challenge, Mama. You don’t know, you don’t know …
The longing for the high places, the hot-blooded joy of risk.
The chamois came across the rooftops in the full noon of the moon. Did they ever touch the city ground? Perhaps they stepped from the mountain slope onto some steep outlying roof and leapt from there to the next, roof-edge to ridgepole, gutter to gable, never dropping to the mortal earth. I can see them under the moon, skirting the dome of some palace on the hill, leaping over skylights with a patter of hooves. I wonder what they thought, those people living in the topmost floors. Maybe they heard it as a sudden fall of hail. And then the airy descent to the window-box gardens, the heady herbs, the alarm of the reflection in the moonlit window glass, and the far greater alarm, the shock of prey, when the window slides up and the young man tests his weight on the high iron landing loosened by bomb blasts and eaten by rust.
You have to keep moving. It’s the only rule: keep moving, and always go up instead of down.
The chase, the glorious moonlit chase. Buildings are crowded here on the seaward face of the Mondevalcón hill. They press upwards like trees starved for sunlight, confined by the streets that are so narrow, some of them, a strong boy can leap from gutter to gutter like a mountain chamois, that nimble goat with horns so sharp they can stab through a wolf’s hide like a twin-bladed spear. So the chamois fled before the silent hunting pack, a light thunder of flinty hooves that drowned the quieter thump and pad of bare feet; running in fear, perhaps, but in challenge, too, the challenge their kind has always offered the would-be predators of the mountain heights. They fled across the hill and upwards, the way instinct led them, and the moon followed to its setting among the clouds trapped by the western peaks, and the late dew fell, the heavy dew of the ocean shore—
—and when we looked he was gone. Just gone. He must have fallen without a sound. We didn’t know until we looked down and saw him on the street there, ten stories down.
Lydia Santovar’s son. Lydia Santovar, my friend, who came from a village on the flat plain far inland, and whose son had never even seen mountains before the end of the war.
“It was the war,” Elena Markassa says outside the church on the funeral day. “These poor boys, too young to fight—thank God! —but old enough to know what the fighting meant. And always with the threat of a bomb falling or the wrong partisan band coming through any day or night, the end of the world, for all a child knows, coming maybe today, maybe tomorrow or next week, next year. No wonder they grew so reckless. Poor boys!”
“They need their fathers,” Agnola says, and we stand in silence a moment before going in, the three of us already in our widow’s black, ready for a funeral any day, today or tomorrow or next week. A funeral every day.
My boy has come with me, as all the boys have, and I can feel him beside me as we stand and sit and kneel to the priest’s sure direction. He is a reassuring presence, the solid living weight of him, and it is hard for a widow with an only child not to clutch him, not to scold in mingled relief and fear. But I can feel the restlessness in him. For the first time, I see his father’s hunted look in his clear young face, the dark wariness that prepares itself for fight or flight at any moment. (Maybe today, maybe tomorrow … Elena’s words haunt me, drowning out the priest.) What does this mean for him, for his future life? I watch the priest, I watch my friend Lydia, stony in her grief, but I see our mountain-shadowed home, the roofless house and weedy fields, the green pastures hemmed not by fences but by the dark mass of the trees. At the same time I see a doubled image, a shadow, the dark tenements hemming in the greening bomb sites, and I remember my son saying, Mountains, buildings, it’s all rock, Mama. Either way, it’s only rock. But this place cannot be home to my Georgi’s son. Surely this tragedy proves as much? No matter that the wilderness has followed us—followed him—into the city. Surely, to such a boy, such a man, the city can never be home. Yet, even as he ducks away from Lydia’s accusing, tear-washed stare, my son refuses to admit we must go.
Well, it is my mistake. It was my doing that brought us here, fleeing the burnt house and the ex-partisans and the hunger. It is my fault. I have no one to blame but myself. Perhaps even this death should lie heavy in my hands.
The sun is shining above the inland peaks, the last long slant of sunlight before the mountain shadow comes, the last bright heat of the first warm day of spring, and we have made a feast of farewell. There are peroshki, of course, stuffed with potato and bacon, potato and sauerkraut, potato and onion, and drenched with melted butter. There are roast beets and sour cream. There is the stewed pork, red with hot paprika, and the baked cockerel, and the leek and rabbit pie. There is soft white bread and bread as dark and thick as molasses, and hard cheese, and pink sausage reeking with garlic, and red sausage studded with black peppercorns, and butter packed in a little bowl of ice. There are pies, tart rhubarb and sweet apple, with crusts bubbled with golden sugar. And there is wine, the harsh, sour country wine that is as familiar and as vital as the blood in our veins. The boys follow us, half-unwilling, drawn as much by the smell of the food as by any sense of obligation to their fallen friend. He has been buried nine days, Lydia’s son, and it is time to make his final good-byes before he moves on.
We have spared no expense, and two black taxicabs carry us up to the cemetery gates and stand there while the drivers, bemused, help us unload our hampers. The city parishes have long since run out of room for their dead; the Mondevalcón cemetery stands high above the city, above even the palaces, on the first slope of the mountains. The grass is very green here, well fed and watered by the heavy fogs that haunt this coast, and there are flowers among the graves, roses and irises already blooming, and tiny white daisies scattered across the lawn. The black mountains rise above us in their scanty dress of juniper and pine; below us the city swells in a wave of dark roofs to the shining palaces with their towers and domes, and falls, roof piled against roof, to the blue water of the harbor; and beyond the dark headlands lies the sunlit blaze of the sea. There are seagulls crying, even this far from the water, and a clanging from the train yards, but there is still a great silence here, the enduring quiet of death and the open sky.
The three boys are abashed by the amusement of the taxi drivers (this farewell feast is a country rite, it seems, and the men make them feel so young), but they help carry the big hampers through the iron gates and down the gravel path we all trod nine days ago. The smell of the food follows us, mingling with the scent of cut grass, mouthwatering in the open air. Seagulls perch on monuments nearby, white as new marble on the grimy little palaces of death.
The boy’s grave is humble, still showing dirt beneath the cut sod, with only a wooden stake leaning at its head. Lydia straightens this with a countrywoman’s practical strength, as if she were planting a post for a new vine, while Elena Markassa, Agnola Shovetz, and I organize boys and hampers, and spread blankets politely between the neighboring graves. There will be a headstone in the fall, once the turned earth has settled; they don’t know it yet, but the boys will be saving the money they have been spending on liquor and cigarettes to help Lydia pay for a good marble stone.
We spread the feast upon the blankets and the grass, open the bottles and toast the dead boy
’s name. Lydia tells stories of his none-too-distant childhood, and the living boys seem to shrink in their clothes, becoming even younger than they are, until they are children again, enduring their mothers’ company. They eat, guilty for their hunger; we all eat, and for us women, at least, there is a deep and abiding comfort in this act. There is no mystery here, and no great tragedy, just another family meal. We are all family now, with this spilled blood we share among us, and Lydia is at once ruthless and kind to the living boys, speaking bluntly about the life and death of their friend. There are four mothers here, and four sons, though one of them lies silent in his bed and leaves his plate untouched.
The sun makes a bright crown on the mountain’s head, and then falls away, spilling a great shadow across the city as a vanguard of the night. We feel the chill even as the sunlight still flashes diamonds from the distant sea. The food has cooled, sparrows have the crumbs. The air is sweeter than ever with the smell of turned earth and new grass, and even the haze of coal smoke from the train yard adds no more than a melancholy hint of distance and good-byes. The first stars shine out. The wine has turned sad in our veins. It is nearly time to shake out the blankets, stack the plates and pots and sticky pie tins, find the corks and knives and cheese rinds that have gone astray in the grass, and begin the long walk home.
My son stands and looks above the monuments with their weeping angels to the mountains. They are very black now, clothed in shadow. He moves towards them, weaving among headstones and walking softly across the graves. I am struck again by how like his father he walks, that supple prowl, and in the fading light he looks older, almost a man, walking away from us, the mothers, old already in our widow’s shawls. I watch him with a pang in my heart, as if to see him thus is to lose him, as I lost his father, who walked away one day and never came home. I will call him in a moment to come and help me fold the blankets. The other boys have also stood, watching with a bright attention that excludes their mothers, and soon they have followed him, vanishing among the tombs, leaving us in the ruins of our feast while the color drains out of the world, into the deep clear blue of the sky.
The moon is rising, out on the eastern rim of the world. The horizon gleams like a knife’s edge, the ocean catching the light even before the moon herself appears. So beautiful, that white planet, that silver coin. They tell us she is barren, nothing more than rock and dust, but there must be something more, something that calls out to the heart. How else could she be so beautiful? How else could she exert such force over the oceans of the world, and the hidden oceans in our veins? She rises, and all my longing comes over me again. Maybe here, whispers my most secret hope. My Georgi has been lost for so long. But maybe here, at last, he will follow the moon’s call to the eastern edge of the world and find me once again.
We watch the moon rise, silent at last, while the boys wander out of sight among the graves. And as we sit here, wrapped in our nighttime thoughts, we hear the first voice lifted in a long lament. A voice to make a stone weep. Surely the moon herself would weep to hear such a cry! A rising and a falling note so long it seems it will never end, and then a silence so deep we can hear the grass rustling to the passage of the worms. And then the voice sings again, and is joined by another, and a third, in a chorus of grief, of longing, of love so wild it trembles always on the edge of death. They sing the moon up into the zenith, and fall still so that the silence folds gently about us, as deep and as peaceful as the grave. The rustling comes again, so quiet you would swear it was beetles or mice, but then we hear the paws striking the gravel path, the huff of breath and the faint clicking of claws, as the wolves follow the moon’s path into the city. We see them for only an instant, two shadows, three … four? … we sit a while, waiting to see if there are more to come. One more is all I pray for. Oh, please! Do I pray to God or the moon? One more of those quiet gray shadows come down from the mountains to pass among the graves. Please, let there be one more. But we are alone now, four widows with absent sons, and soon we must rise and pack away the remains of our feast, and make our last good-byes.
A Most Unusual Greyhound
A HARRY THE BOOK STORY
MIKE RESNICK
How it begins is that I am sitting there in my office, which is the third booth at Joey Chicago’s 3-Star Tavern, sipping an Old Washensox and taking care of business, which this particular evening concerns doping out the odds on the Horrendous Howard—Kid Testosterone rematch. Gently Gently Dawkins, all 350 pounds of him, is sitting across from me working out a crossword puzzle, and for the past fifteen minutes has been stumped trying to come up with a three-letter word for “morbidly overweight.” Dead End Dugan, who is still not used to being a zombie, is standing in a corner, wondering why he isn’t thirsty anymore. It is at that precise moment that Joey Chicago tells me that I’ve got a phone call.
“Should I come over to the bar to get it?” I ask.
“The cord is four feet long,” says Joey. “What do you think?”
So I walk over to the bar and pick up the receiver, and who should be at the other end than Benny Fifth Street, but it is hard to hear him because there is a lot of barking and even more yelling going on, and I remark that I did not know they brought telephones along on fox hunts and that, unlike Joey Chicago’s, it must have a mighty long cord.
“I am at the dog track,” says Benny. “Tell me that you do not book bets on dog racing.”
“I am Harry the Book,” I say with a note of pride. “I book bets on everything.”
“All right,” says Benny. “Tell me you do not book a bet on tonight’s dog races for Tabasco Sanchez.”
“As a matter of fact, Tabasco Sanchez bet five large on the feature race of the night,” I tell him. “Is there anything else I should not be telling you?”
“Yes,” says Benny. “Tell me that Tabasco Sanchez does not lay the five thousand dollars on an animal called Devil Moon.”
“I cannot tell you that,” I say, “and I do not think I want to hear what you are going to tell me next.”
“What odds do you give him?” asks Benny.
“Twenty to one,” I say. “After all, the dog is a first-time starter. He has never run before.”
“Well, he is now a first-time winner, though he has still not broken out of a trot,” says Benny. “It is a most unusual race and this Devil Moon is a most unusual greyhound, which is why I have called you.”
“What is unusual about Devil Moon?” I ask.
“I have never seen a shaggy brown greyhound before,” says Benny. “Furthermore, he has a pot belly, just like Sanchez himself.”
“Maybe I am hearing you wrong,” I say, “because otherwise I would be inclined to ask how a shaggy, pot-bellied dog can beat all the fastest greyhounds at the track.”
“It is somewhat out of the ordinary,” agrees Benny. “He is in an eight-dog field.”
“And?” I say.
“He kills five of them on the way to the post.”
“This is clearly a new form of strategy,” I say. “But that still leaves two healthy greyhounds, does it not?”
“They are two healthy, terrified greyhounds,” confirms Benny. “Devil Moon just stares at them and shows his teeth. One of them climbs into the stands and will not return to the track. He is still whimpering when last I see him.”
“And the other?” I ask.
“He jumps the outer fence and is still running. I figure he must be nearing the state line by now.”
“The New York state line is not that close,” I say.
“I am referring to the state line of Colorado, or maybe Burma,” says Benny. “I have never seen a dog run that fast. Devil Moon has turned him into the Secretariat of dogs. Unfortunately, he has also turned him into the Wrong-Way Corrigan of dogs. Anyway, the race begins and Devil Moon starts trotting leisurely around the track. The mechanical rabbit makes a complete circle and is bearing down on him when Devil Moon bites its head off. He crosses the finish line and goes back to the barn, which they call a
kennel here, and then he seems to vanish, because nobody can find him, although between you and me I don’t know why anyone goes looking for a dog that eats his rivals and damages valuable track property.”
“Do you know who owns him?” I ask.
“It says right in the program book,” answers Benny. “He is owned by someone called Sylvester Sanchez.”
“That is Tabasco Sanchez,” I say.
“It says Sylvester,” insists Benny.
“Mighty few mothers christen their children Tabasco,” I note.
“You know,” says Benny thoughtfully, “now that you point it out, I’ll lay plenty of nine-to-five that Kid Testosterone is also an alias.”
“I would stay on the phone and discuss aliases all night with you,” I say, “but who should I see entering Joey Chicago’s other than Tabasco Sanchez himself?”
“Perhaps he will solve the mystery of his real name,” says Benny hopefully.
“I think he is more interested in collecting one hundred large from me,” I say, “which I do not have any intention of paying off until all the circumstances have been explained to my satisfaction, which I put on a probability scale right up there with anacondas tap-dancing and politicians turning away from cameras.”
I hang up the phone just as Tabasco Sanchez enters the bar.
“Hello, Harry,” he says with a big smile on his face. “I trust you have heard the results of this evening’s sporting events.”
“Yes,” I say. “Benny Fifth Street was out at the dog track and has so informed me.”
“Have you got my money?” he asks.
“Before we talk money,” I say, “we have to talk about the race, because the condition book says it is for greyhounds and I am told that Devil Moon does not exactly resemble your everyday greyhound.”
Full Moon City Page 12
