War Games (8 page)

The officer gave orders Petros didn’t understand. He moved to the corner of the house and saw the doors to the balcony off Mama’s room thrown open. Papa was right—the Germans were looking all through the house. Petros ran quickly to hide in the shadows of the arbor.

From the goat pen, Fifi saw him and bleated.

He stopped at the far end of the arbor, gripped one of the rocks at the base, and pulled against it with all his weight. The rock slid out and dropped heavily to the ground. Petros brushed his hand around inside the cavity to be sure it was dry. He found a few jars of mulberry juice that Zola had secreted there.

Each summer he and Zola picked several bunches of grapes and hid them here. Once hidden in the cool, dark hollow, the grapes lasted and could be enjoyed long after the crop had been crushed for wine or dried for raisins. It was the best hiding place they had. Petros angled the flag into the narrow space.

It was a struggle to get the rock back into place. Petros finally sat down and pushed with both feet. He felt great satisfaction, hearing a last scrape as it settled in. He would tell Zola later on, when they met in their room, and his brother would be pleased.

The crunch of boots on the gravel warned Petros of a soldier close by. His stomach tightened, his breath caught. He didn’t want to be found here, questioned. But his arms and legs were no longer made of sand. Excitement thrummed in his veins.

The soldier gave a shout.

Petros gathered his feet under him but didn’t try to run. He knew the names of some things in German and felt certain the German had shouted something about the truck, Papa’s truck.

He hid while the first German was joined by another, along with Papa, who told them he used the truck to take his vegetables to market. He told them twice, because the interpreter had stayed at the house and the soldiers didn’t understand. All of them walked back as Papa repeated his remarks about the truck.

Petros stayed there under the arbor, thinking about the soldiers and their tone of voice, hard and cold. Papa made his voice not afraid exactly, but hesitant as he pretended not to understand the soldiers, either.

Petros knew Papa felt small facing the soldiers and their cold manner. It bothered him. Papa could be as bossy as the soldiers, but his voice never made Petros feel small.

He heard the jeep start. Petros got up, reaching the driveway in time to see the Germans leaving, five of them looking straight ahead like the tiny carved figures in the toy trucks he’d buried.

Sophie, Mama, and Papa were all on the veranda. He could hear their voices. Zola was just coming into the kitchen as Petros stepped in through the back. “Did you take my notes?” Zola whispered.

Petros saw the awful white of his brother’s face and knew he was scared. He lifted the scraps bucket.

Zola snatched the bucket away, his fright turning suddenly into anger. Petros could hardly believe it and would have said so, only everyone started coming inside and the moment to fight was gone. Old Mario, coming from the roof, was shouting curses on the German army as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

“How can we live with a stranger in the house?” Mama clapped a hand to her forehead. “A German officer!”

“Papa, we are—” Zola was shouting. Whatever else he said couldn’t be understood through everyone else’s voices, but Petros gathered it had to do with going into town.

“Enough!” Papa said with a fast motion of his hands that suggested parting the waves. Mama crossed her arms.

Old Mario said, “Soldiers stopped at Lemos’s house at the same time. There were four trucks that drove on, then another, five in all. One remains down the road at Omeros’s.”

“I want to phone Lemos,” Papa said, speaking of Elia’s grandfather.

“Be careful what you say,” Old Mario said. “Someone may be listening in from Omeros’s house.”

Many times Mama believed the Omeros grandmother
listened in on the party line, hoping to hear gossip. Lately Papa worried that gossip wasn’t all she listened for.

Papa said, “We’ll say only the things everyone else is saying. Then we make the parlor ready.” He picked up the telephone to dial.

Mama moved to the sink to wash dishes, working noisily, roughly.

Papa said to Lemos, “Are you well?” and then listened.

Sophie tried to look into the scraps bucket. Zola yanked it away. But it was Petros he punched in the shoulder. “Don’t you know better than to touch my things?” he whispered fiercely.

Petros ignored the hit. “Would you rather the soldiers touched them?” he said.

“You.” Sophie poked Petros with a sharp fingernail. “What were you up to?”

Zola answered for him. “Nothing.”

“No fighting,” Mama said. “Make yourselves useful.”

“I’m feeding the pig,” Zola said. He strode out, slamming the bucket against the doorway. Mama shouted at him, but Papa hissed at her to be quiet, and Zola was forgotten.

Petros stood rigid and swore to himself he would never tell where he’d hidden the paper flag. Zola could twist his arm and bend his little finger back, and Petros would never tell.

Papa said, “Good.” He hung up and asked Mama, “Now what is it?”

Mama shrugged. “Boys.”

“I think we’re the only ones to be honored with a house-guest,” Papa said heavily. He and Mama headed for the parlor.

Old Mario and Petros and Sophie followed them.

“Lemos’s wife is badly upset,” Papa said. “Her dining room, their bed. At least we have our bed.”

Old Mario nodded, but Mama sat down hard on the sofa that would be gone soon. She leaned like someone who’d been standing a long time in a strong wind. “What will we do?”

“We’ll put the furniture they want out on the veranda,” Papa said as Zola came back inside. Zola was put right to work.

No one could sleep that afternoon.

Elia came over to Petros’s house to escape his grandmother’s complaints. “Let’s play marbles next to your well.”

They’d no sooner begun than Stavros showed up. “Auntie’s spending her afternoon in the church,” he said. “It’s cool in there, but I’m surrounded by grandmothers.”

They each tried to win the game. But they also shouted encouragement to each other as they’d never done. All at once Mama stood over them. “What’s this?” she asked, scooping up the glass marble.

Elia was flushed with the happiness of winning. “Petros’s shooter.”

Petros groaned. Mama turned a warrior’s eye on him. “Where’s a switch? I’ll beat all of you and feed you to the pig. Where was this?”

Elia looked an apology at Petros. “In my pouch,” Petros said. Where he hadn’t given it one thought.

“This came from Spiro?” Mama asked. “Are there more?”

“No.”

Mama turned, her arm coming up, and the boys screamed, “No!”

She threw the marble into the well. Stavros dropped to the ground in despair.

“You couldn’t keep it,” Mama said in a loud whisper, as if the Germans had already arrived. She left the boys slumped down beside the well.

Petros felt drained somehow, made flat, like something run over on the road. He and Elia dropped to sit beside Stavros, all of them with their backs against the well.

“I should have said it was mine,” Elia said.

“No, you should have said it was
mine,”
Stavros told him, and they laughed.

Later in the day, Papa sent Petros and Zola to clean the chicken house. This was hot, smelly work that disturbed the chickens. They flapped and squawked and made a trundling run or two at the boys’ ankles before escaping outside.

At first Petros and Zola didn’t speak, only scraped their shovels across the floor and sweated. The chill of fear was fading fast. Their bellies were full, and the Germans gone. No one hurt. Perhaps things weren’t so bad after all.

As the minutes wore on and Zola didn’t trouble him, Petros thought Zola now realized he’d been right to throw the notes into the bucket. He’d no sooner decided this was true than Zola said, “The notes we fed to the pig don’t matter. We must send out a more urgent message now.”

“Look for the other nests,” Petros said, because several of Mama’s chickens persisted in setting up housekeeping
under
the henhouse.

“Being commander is a big responsibility,” Zola said. He stopped working and leaned on his shovel.

Petros could see how this was going to go. His brother had
done nothing to help when the Germans came and now acted as if he hadn’t gotten angry that Petros had. He thought enough time had passed that the whole matter would be forgotten.

It wouldn’t be forgotten—Petros promised himself that much.

Zola said, “He’ll go out each day like a man of business, I think.”

Petros stopped scraping and sat on his heels, leaning against the wall. He was in the mood to torture his brother just a little. “What if he searches our room?”

Zola looked at Petros from the corner of his eye. “There will be nothing for him to find.”

Petros thought this was Zola’s way of asking what he’d done with the flag. But he wasn’t ready to tell. He wouldn’t
be
ready until Zola was prepared to be grateful. “So no more notes?”

“The Germans are big,” Zola said. “We are small. We must be small and smart. Lambros said this to Papa.”

Again, Petros wished he’d gone inside to hear Lambros. He forgot about torturing Zola. “What are you planning?”

“To send a different message,” Zola said, sweeping his shovel across the floor, coming close enough to Petros to bump his sandal.

Petros ignored this. “What news do we have?”

Zola said, “Victory for Greece. For Lambros.”

Petros shot to his feet. “What have you heard?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Zola said with a wave of his hand. “But it’s a cheering message, isn’t it? So if it’s more than a month until we can send another message, people’s spirits are stronger.”

“I suppose.” Petros wished his brother would be a little more careful of his spirits, which were now somewhat lowered.

“Such good news will make everyone more hopeful,” Zola said.

Petros allowed himself to be convinced. It gave him a thrill to think of running through the village again.

That night, as before, Zola worked when everyone else slept. He waited until he heard Papa snoring before he lit a candle to work by. Petros woke to the scratch of the match, the unexpectedly sharp light from the candle, and the rustling of paper.

Zola worked carefully to avoid stains on his fingers or clothing. When he pulled the little bar on the pen, it sucked up just the right amount of juice and no more. The spills on the sheet of stiff brown paper covering his desk came from setting the pen down when he needed to stretch. Petros’s eyelids drooped.

“I worked in the garden this morning,” Zola said, waking Petros again. “And worked through the entire afternoon without resting.”

Petros pulled his sheet over his head.

“While you’re sleeping, I’m printing.”

Petros pushed the sheet down. “When will you be done?”

“When I am, that’s all,” Zola said, and then relented. “Tonight. I’ll finish tonight. Then we must watch for a chance. You’ll wait till Mama sends you to town.”

As he wrote, Zola blew on the paper, helping the juice dry.

“Good.” Petros thought he might care more in the morning, but for now, sleep came to him with the breeze coming through the window, smelling of lemon balm and lavender and thyme.

Zola spoke directly into his ear, waking him.

“I’ve been thinking,” Zola said. He enjoyed a good plan, and he liked Petros to know when he’d planned well. “You should pick the last of the mulberries. We need enough ink to last us until next year’s mulberries. For now that we’ve begun this way, no one will trust a message written in pencil or black ink.”

“Probably they don’t care.”

“They will,” Zola said. “My messages are the ones they’ll take notice of.”

Petros turned away from Zola’s voice.

“You shouldn’t get juice on your fingers,” Zola said, pushing at Petros’s shoulder. “In case the notes are found by the Germans, none of us must have stains.”

Petros narrowed his eyes and thought it might be pleasant to eat the rest of the berries Zola wanted, they were so ripe. It might be said making ink of the sweetest berries was a terrible waste.

This never crossed Zola’s note-writing mind. Nothing else mattered—Petros smiled a little. Perhaps Zola hadn’t realized his flag was gone after all.

If he’d noticed, he wouldn’t be bothering Petros about mulberries. The bed jiggled as Zola bumped it, moving away. Petros almost fell back to sleep happy.

But then a worry settled heavily on his shoulders. If they made more ink, Zola would have to hide it somewhere. Under the arbor, in the space between the rocks, where he already had some hidden, was the likeliest place.

Early the next morning, Petros woke up as Zola wadded up his messages, rolled them in his palms until they were smaller than clay marbles, and stuffed them into his pockets. “This way …,” he said, but didn’t finish.

The arbor wasn’t an easy place to visit secretly in the middle of the day. It was too easy for Sophie or Mama to look out a window and know a boy was up to something. More than that, it wouldn’t be easy to hide the flag in another such excellent place.

Zola sat, then fell into his bed as if it swallowed him up. He didn’t even move to make himself more comfortable. Petros waited five minutes more, until Zola was sleeping deeply, before feeling his way through the dark hall and kitchen, carrying his sandals. He put them on after he’d crossed the veranda.

There was no morning light, but the inky darkness of night had given way to a strange purple color in the air. Petros plucked the flag from its hiding place. He hurried to let himself into the pump house, careful not to wake Old Mario, who
slept nearby. Petros wrapped the roll of paper in a scrap of oilcloth he found in a pile of useful things.

Climbing the rough shelves in the pump house, Petros placed the flag at the top. Anyone who looked there would pay the oilcloth no attention at all. He got only one small splinter for his trouble.