War Games (7 page)

“What are we doing?” Elia wanted to know.

“Something dangerous,” Petros said. Elia’s eyes lit up as if he’d said,
Something fun
.

People carrying their belongings continued to pass the house throughout the morning and made Petros feel a little sick. Perhaps anyone who
could
was leaving. Those who didn’t have good farms or sure businesses and were often hungry figured things would only get worse.

After the midday meal, Mama lay down for a nap. Sophie read a book. Papa and Old Mario sat on the porch smoking, and Zola joined them.

Petros met Elia at the well and told him what Zola had in mind. Elia said, “Why do we need Stavros?”

“We’ll make it look like a game. Someone watching will be interested in the boy throwing, or the boy catching. Who’ll see the third boy drop a piece of paper?”

Zola peeked around the corner of the house and waved them over. Elia ambled over to Zola, making it clear that he wasn’t going to be bossed around.

Zola waved a harder
come on
. “Are you ready?” he whispered impatiently when the boys stood in front of him.

Zola’s printed messages were wadded to make tight little
balls. A folded piece of paper might tempt the wrong people to pick it up—what proud soldier would pick up a piece of wadded paper out of mere curiosity?

On the way to town, Elia and Petros decided Zola’s plan was excellent. They agreed not to tell him they thought so.

Petros expected Stavros to pretend a lack of interest at first. Instead, Stavros acted like he’d been in charge all along and made them practice. They stood in the corners of his room, tossing a small cloth bag of sand around as they chanted, “Throw, catch, drop.”

Auntie looked in once, saw boys playing ball, and asked them no questions. In only a few minutes they got the rhythm of it down. Each one of them put notes in his pockets and left the house.

Italian soldiers were everywhere in clusters, more than ever before. Lounging on doorsteps. Having a coffee at an open café. Strolling. All around the soldiers, the village moved on in its usual way.

A boy only a little older than Zola stood at a windowsill, flirting with a girl. Old men played cards at a table in a garden. Women bustled from shop to shop, carrying boxes of paper money, their fingers hooked under the heavy twine. There were soldiers in the village, but everyone had learned to live with this.

Elia, Stavros, and Petros ran through the village, calling to each other, tossing the sand ball back and forth. Boys at play didn’t look disciplined. Hot, and panting whenever they
stopped moving for a moment, how could they hold secrets? The soldiers hardly noticed them, and after a few throws, the boys relaxed.

They ran into yards and into doorways where they shouldn’t go. Once, a soldier caught the sand ball, then threw it onward to Stavros. With the soldier’s easy smile upon them, war seemed only a game everyone was playing.

Zola had fallen asleep on the veranda, and they found him there when they got back home. Papa and Old Mario had already gone back to work. “Be careful,” Zola said after they described their adventure. “The Germans are playing to win.”

Petros knew how to read his brother. He agreed with Stavros and Elia. It had gone well. But Elia said, “We’re careful and smart.”

“You have to be both,” Zola said, frowning. “You have to be everything but too sure of yourself.”

At bedtime, Zola sat in the darkness, waiting for the household to sleep. He planned to write his next message.

Petros asked, “What will you write?”

“You’ll see tomorrow,” Zola said.

Petros rolled onto his side, glad he, at least, could sleep through the night. Also, Petros knew Zola would soon talk about anything he did well.

“I might deliver these messages myself,” Zola said.

Petros pretended to be asleep for a few moments before he really was.

Petros woke with one thought already in mind.
The Germans haven’t come
. He knew this was best for everyone, and yet it was as if he, having tripped over a rake, was still waiting to fall.

His next thought had to do with Zola’s notes. He wanted to play this game with Elia and Stavros again. He was brave and he was bold—that felt good. More, he’d put a proud gleam in his brother’s eyes.

Zola’d dragged himself off his pillow as Petros sat up. Already the skin between Zola’s eyebrows looked knotted with a fight between the desire to keep the secret of his new message and the need to tell it.

“I guess you want to know what I wrote.” Sleep slurred the words.

Petros did, but it was necessary not to look too eager. He headed out of the room. “Food first.”

In the kitchen, Sophie asked, “Why are the Germans taking so long?”

Mama made the usual annoyed click of her tongue. “You’re impatient for them to get here?”

“It’s only because this waiting is so hard.”

“Be glad we don’t live in a city like Athens or a port like Piraeus, or even too close to the railways,” Mama said to her. It was said in the village that the Germans took those cities first.

“Then why do they come at all? Why not stay there?”

“The mountains,” Mama said. “The Germans want Lambros and the soldiers like him to be cut off from food and medicine.”

“If that’s true,” Sophie said, “Lambros and the others should have stayed home and done nothing.”

“The Germans would still be in Athens and Piraeus,” Mama said as if the subject tired her. “An army must be dealt with.”

Petros understood the war to be something large and rolling toward them like an avalanche. Something they could do nothing about. But it made so little noise, he could sometimes forget it was coming.

At breakfast Papa told Zola he could no longer walk about town alone. He’d grown tall very fast, taller than Papa. He’d grown some pale down on his chin that made him look even more grown-up.

“Let me use your razor,” Zola said.

Papa said, “You’ll still be tall.” Zola stormed out of the house and to his work in the garden, his dog trotting worriedly behind.

Petros worked all morning to clear a bit more of his land. He put in several more pepper plants. When someone called his name, he looked up to see Mr. Katzen, who bought cheese
and eggs from Mama, waving his cane. “You’ve lost a pepper plant. Do you see?”

Petros looked where Mr. Katzen pointed. The pepper plant was nearly covered by the weeds he’d pulled. “I stepped on it and the top broke off.”

“So that’s it? You won’t plant it?”

Petros picked up the pepper plant and his hand rake and dug a hole for it. What did it matter?

“Don’t give up on it, Petros,” Mr. Katzen said. “Not just because it’s a little bit crippled.”

“Are you leaving?” Petros asked.

“Leaving for where?”

“The Germans are coming.”

“I’ve heard,” Mr. Katzen said. “But there’s nowhere left to go.”

“To one of the islands,” Petros suggested. “To Crete.”

Mr. Katzen shook his head. “I already live in the hills. I’m too old to start living somewhere else.” He sounded like Papa. Petros guessed he was too old for the German army to bother with anyway.

When the morning’s work was done, Zola stopped to talk to Petros before going on to the house. “This next message is excellent.”

Petros didn’t rise to the bait.

“I’ve said we must lock arms to stand against the wind,” Zola added.

This was the note they would take such trouble for? “Don’t you have anything better to say?”

“It’s a more careful note,” Zola said.

“It doesn’t mean anything.”

“The wind is on its way to Crete,” Zola said. “It was on the radio before Lambros came home. Didn’t you understand what they were saying?”

A fresh stubborn anger rose in Petros. “Surely there are a few things you don’t understand,” he said to Zola. “If you knew everything, you would have been the fellow speaking to us from Cairo.”

Zola sighed heavily, as if to say,
Well, of course not everything. But this much!
“It all comes down to the canal,” he said.

“The Suez Canal,” Petros said, to show he’d listened to the news.

“The British control the canal. If the Germans could fight from Crete, they could overcome the British.”

“So it all comes down to Crete,” Petros said. “The Germans want to go there.”

“Everyone goes there,” Zola said.

Petros wanted to burst Zola’s self-important bubble. “It’s the only way out of here now.”

“Isn’t that what I said?”

“Why don’t you put that in the note?”

Zola smacked his forehead, making a little show of rolling his eyes. “Because everyone knows that already.”

At the midday meal, Petros swallowed a boiled egg, hardly bothering to chew. Old Mario put two eggs on his own plate.

Petros slowed down to fill up on macaroni with olive oil and garlic. The others ate zucchini and beans and tomatoes with this, but Petros was tired of eating vegetables.

Then, as the meal was nearly finished, the murmur of something like rocks falling could be heard in the distance. The family put down their forks as one, listening.

“Trucks,” Old Mario said, and Petros swallowed his last bite whole.

Papa said, “Old Mario, go up to the roof and count them. See if they all go to the village. Everyone else remain at the table.” He went to the front of the house, and from there, outside.

Mama sat just long enough to make up her mind to go with Papa.

Zola was right behind Mama as she left the kitchen.

Petros dashed out the back door. He eyed the bushes critically. The gravel looked fresh to his eyes, but it covered all the
signs of digging. A few of the smaller flowering plants still looked a bit wilted, but only a gardener might notice the roots had been disturbed.

At the corner of the house, Petros stopped and concentrated on what he’d really come to see. A jeep was stopped in the road. Trucks rumbled past, going toward the village, raising dust.

Papa stood at the gate, Mama and Zola right behind him, facing two soldiers. A few more stood at the ready in the road. The soldiers looked exactly as Zola had told him they would, as Lambros had described them. Their faces set as if carved in stone. Bodies so upright they appeared to be tall, even though neither one was taller than Zola.

They started for the house. Petros froze, watching, but in his head, he screamed. If the Germans searched the house, they’d find the notes drying on the shelf over his bed. All that Papa had done to save them would be lost.

Papa argued and shook his head no. They brushed past him, stiff with importance. Petros felt as if his arms and legs had filled with sand, but he turned and ran clumsily back to the kitchen.

Ignoring Sophie’s shrill scolding, he snatched up Mama’s scrap bucket. He heard the soldiers’ boots on the veranda, and then in the parlor, as he ran to the room he shared with Zola. If his arms and legs were filled with sand, it drained from his fingers and the bottoms of his feet with each step.

Petros scrambled onto his bed, reaching high to scoop up
the notes into the bucket. Several of them floated to the floor. He made sure the shelf was clean, then climbed down to capture the rest of the slippery notes.

In the parlor, someone spoke in a harsh tone, and then another voice followed like a shadow, saying everything again in Greek because Papa and Zola both pretended not to understand German.

Petros was only grateful this conversation took so long. Some of the notes had floated under the bed.

“Some of this furniture must be removed. The commander needs this room.”

“Someone sleeps here.” A lie.

Petros nodded. Sometimes a lie was necessary.

The shadow followed more closely on the harsh voice, saying, “Whoever sleeps here can use another room. The commander will bring his own bed.”

Papa said nothing. Someone moved around the parlor, wooden boot heels loud on the floor.

Petros dropped the last note into the bucket. Remembering the way Papa had reacted when Zola suggested hanging a flag, he lifted Zola’s mattress and yanked the paper flag out from under it.

His hands shook as he rolled it up and threw the rolled paper out the bedroom window like a spear, where it would fall into the bushes at the side of the house. This war was no longer a game—Petros saw that now.

Petros grabbed the bucket and peeked out to see Sophie
standing just outside the parlor. Without looking his way, she motioned with her hand to hurry him.

Petros ran toward her quietly.

“Your family will stay and tend your farm. Your wife will cook. Is this understood?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, sir,” the shadow said, and Papa echoed, “Yes, sir.”

One soldier—Petros realized he was an officer—was pointing to things around the room. “These chairs, the sofa, put them outside. A truck will come for them. Empty this chest. We’ll take that table.”

His mother made a small sound.

“I don’t understand why this matters,” Papa said, reminding Mama there was nothing of any importance but their lives. The hard voice didn’t reply, but the shadow spoke.

“We need them at the command post,” the officer said, and Mama gripped Papa’s arm. But Papa nodded and the officer said, “Put everything on the veranda before morning.” He turned away, reading the list in the shadow’s hands.

Petros hurried into the kitchen, where he stopped to scrape his plate over the notes in the bucket. Sophie followed him, whispering, “What are you doing?”

A soldier stepped into the back doorway, a dark form blocking the sunlight. “What do you do here?” he said in poor Greek. Something inside Petros stood still. Even his hands forgot to shake.

“For the pig.” Petros was glad his father and brother and
Old Mario ate as if they were in a race. Their plates looked as if he’d already scraped them. The soldier didn’t look closely at the bucket. Sophie stood against the wall, watching, as Petros scraped her plate clean and Zola’s.

The soldier crossed the kitchen and started down the hall toward the bedrooms.

Petros left the bucket and ran outside, heading for the other end of the house. He pushed his way behind the bushes, looking for the rolled paper flag. At the sound of voices in the room above, he dropped to a squat under the thickest bush. He sat still, even when the shutters flew open over his head.