A Dream of Kings

by Harry Mark Petrakis

  He stood there knowing he was clearly outlined against the room behind him. Then she looked up. He could not see her face but he felt her eyes. He felt the quickened stirring of her breath. She turned and walked back inside. The door closed slowly. He saw her peering out, a sliver of light narrowing behind her, and then the darkness returned.

  He felt suddenly a fierce desire to lay his hands upon her. His palms felt dry and he yearned to moisten them on the wild juices of her body.

  He turned and started from the office. He knew in a great tearing fever that this was the night he would have her, make her feel the roaring of his love, this night, this matchless night, when he stood on the threshold of his dream.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Drizzle of rain upon the evening city. Across the street from the light-dimmed windows of the bakery, Matsoukas, shaken with assorted hungers, huddled in the doorway of a vacant store. The broken gutter above him released a stream of rain past his face. Through the cascade he impatiently watched old lady Barboonis wiping the empty glass showcases. He could almost hear the creaking of her rusty joints as she bent and stooped. Now and then, when a car passed and momentarily obscured his view, he closed his eyes and breathed the scent of a small sprig of violets he had bought from a street vendor.

  He stood furiously impatient, afraid his mood of exultation might be dulled by waiting. The old lady disappeared into the kitchen. She returned carrying her coat. Matsoukas felt a tingle of anticipation careening through his tense body. She stood for what seemed an eternity struggling into her coat and waited, peering through the front door.

  She is afraid her wretched prune-pit teats will melt, Matsoukas thought in despair. As he was about to groan she moved to flick off the last lights in the window. Only a small bulb still burned in the front of the shop, and the narrow doorway to the lighted kitchen in the back where Anthoula worked.

  The old lady finally emerged from the shop, locking the door behind her. She hesitated with her head darting back and forth between sky and street like a petulant chicken. From her side she snapped up an umbrella and it burst into a black peaked shroud over her head. She disappeared beneath it and sped down the street with quick brittle steps.

  When she turned the corner Matsoukas sprinted from the doorway. He darted across the street and passed the bakery going in the opposite direction from the old lady, his head bent into his collar, a sprinkle of rain whipping across his cheeks and ears. He walked rapidly up the alley to the back door of the bakery. He listened at the door and heard faint sounds of movement from within. He felt his flesh bunch in layers of excitement and he knocked softly on the frame of the door. When there was no answer, he knocked again, harder.

  He heard her voice raised in inquiry and edged sharply with caution. He spoke with his lips pressed almost against the wood.

  "It is Matsoukas," he said slowly.

  There was silence from the kitchen.

  "Matsoukas," he said more loudly. "Your neighbor, Matsoukas."

  He waited for moments in a fretful disorder. He was about to knock and call out again when he heard the grating of a bolt snapped back and then a narrow strip of light tightly harnessed by a strong chain. The light blinded him and gave the visible portion of her white-clad body a strange luminosity.

  "Forgive me," he said softly. "I did not mean to frighten you. I would like to talk to you."

  "The store is closed," she said. "I am baking now." He sought in vain for a trace of warmth in her voice.

  "I came to see you," he said.

  She did not answer. He held himself stiffly, not wishing to make another move forward or even a motion to retreat until she had given him a sign. She closed the door and he groaned softly. Then he heard the spring of the chain and the door opened in a great burst of light.

  He entered the dry hot scents of flour and yeast, the sweet aroma of walnuts and honey. He closed the door quickly behind him. She stood watching him, her hair bound up in coiled braids, the metal of comb and pins glistening within the dark waves. There were smudges of flour on her bare arms and a black currant glittered like a dark jewel at her throat. He was disconcerted by her eyes. He had never seen them as close before and there was a dark and enigmatic quality about them.

  Before she could speak he mutely extended the sprig of flowers to her. The rain glistened on the purple petals and reflected the light of the kitchen with tips of flame. She stared at the flowers and then slowly looked back at him. A strange shaken distress was in her cheeks.

  She did not reach for the flowers and he withdrew his hand. He walked toward a sink in the corner and picked a tall glass. He filled the glass with water from the tap and put in the violets. He set the glass on a small ledge. Then he turned and walked to a chair against the wall and sat down.

  She had not moved but stood watching him. For an instant more they remained like that, she standing and he sitting, looking at one another. He felt the whole of the earth receding to leave them enclosed within a warm cocoon.

  "Mr. Matsoukas ..." she began slowly.

  He cut her off with a quick wave of his hand.

  "Matsoukas, please," he said. "Call me Matsoukas. All my friends do." He smiled. "Now please go on with your work. I will not disturb you."

  She stared at him for another moment and then turned to the large pan of raised dough on the heavy center table. She bent slightly and assaulted the dough with a sudden burst of vigor, kneading it within her strong fingers.

  In the beginning she worked stiffly, conscious of his presence, uneasy under his eyes. After a little while she caught the rhythm of the kneading and worked almost as if he were not there.

  Matsoukas was massively moved by the splendor of the images she made burst into life. There was something of a shepherd's dance in the way she swayed, the sensual force of a peasant woman bending to draw water from a well. The light sweeping at intervals across her cheek and throat recalled for him the blinding circles of the moon across an open sea. He felt a raging in his blood.

  "We live in a dark age," he said, and his voice trembled. "An age where men say one thing and mean another. A time of dwarfs afraid of life. A time of robots who cannot laugh or cry."

  She made no sign that she heard. Her fingers pulled and tugged at the dough. A dark strand of her hair fell loose across her cheek.

  "I am not ashamed of what I am going to tell you now," he said. "I am a man bred of the Cretan earth and my emotions are violent. Let those who squeak of life feel shame. I feel no shame because for months I have watched you from my window, entered the bakery a hundred times to catch a glimpse of you, written numerous poems to you that I have destroyed. I feel no shame because I have come to love you."

  She caught her breath. She paused, her hands buried to the wrist in the dough, and stared at him for a strange shaken moment. A pulse stirred in her throat and he felt himself swept by a quiver of tenderness.

  "I love you, Anthoula," he said. "I have waited all these months to speak because I respected your grief. I have a wife, daughters, and a son. I have no right to speak. But I tell you now that I love you. And I feel no shame for that."

  He thought then she was going to speak but she could not seem to find the words. She bent back to her work in distress. But a change had come over her. Her movements were sharp and driven, her arms taut, her fingers almost savage. She tugged at the dough with a kind of fury and defiance, seeking to subdue the thrust of her nipples against her blouse, the swell of her hips beneath the skirt of her shift. But her body trembled with a resurgence she could not control, a released ardor sweeping her limbs, washing the blunt edges of cold grief in a healing balm.

  He watched in awe the immensity of her struggle. She walked from the table to the ovens, and on the walls her harried shadow rose and fell and like a frantic wraith would not be shaken loose.

  And then suddenly as if she could endure it no longer, she turned to him. The stains of flour rose like foam at her wrists.

  "Will you go now," she sa
id and the words came from her lips in a distraught plea. "Will you please go now?"

  "I do not want to go," he said quietly. "And I do not think you want me to go."

  He was sorry for the pain of anguish upon her cheeks, an anguish evident in the way she stood and in her tumultuous silence.

  "I am not the woman you seek, Matsoukas," she said. "You come in here and speak of love and I am not the woman you seek I am not even beautiful."

  "You are not beautiful?" he cried. "Listen to me! I cry out your dimensions. Here, I say, everyone listen. Anthoula is five feet six inches tall. Her waist is twenty-five inches, her bust and hips forty inches."

  "These figures mean nothing."

  "They are of immense significance to me," he said. "They define the space in which you move. Wherever you are this is the amount of space you require and this is the amount of space I will love."

  "You speak easily of love," she said.

  "Love unites us with all that is divine," he said.

  She was silent for a moment and when she spoke, a cold weariness swept her cheeks.

  "Is this then divine?" she asked. "The two of us poised like a ram and a sheep? You with a wife and family. I, with memories of my dead."

  "There are laws of the heart," Matsoukas said, "which transcend the laws of men."

  Her face across the table gleamed like a distant moon. "You do not know me," she said. "You do not really know who I am."

  "I know you," he said softly. "I know you and my heart is clay waiting to be fired in the flame of your affection."

  She stirred uneasily and brought her hands together, her fingers pulling helplessly at the cord of her shift.

  "I live in darkness," she said. "Darkness is all around me."

  "You cannot live in darkness," he said, "like a small hard fruit, rotting away, going into death with all your sweetness drying up. Your husband would not have wanted that."

  "You did not know my husband," she said. "Many times he told me he would rather have me dead than in another man's arms."

  "He could not know he would die," Matsoukas said.

  "I think sometimes he died to make me his forever," she whispered. Her fingers rose and touched the chain at her throat. She pulled it slowly from the bodice of her dress. For the first time he saw the glittering gold ring suspended from the chain, a solid heavy band that was mate to the slimmer golden band on her finger. He stared at it uneasily.

  "I am weary of life," she said, and shook her head in despair. "I pray that death will come to take me. I will go gladly and I will be at peace and my husband will rest as well."

  "You must not talk like that!" Matsoukas cried and went to stand directly across the table from her. "Life is a chain and when people love the chain is strong. Defeat and despair are broken links. When enough links are broken, all the chain comes apart."

  "I am talking of death," she said.

  "Sorrow and fear are a kind of death too," he said.

  "I know them well," she said.

  He walked around the table and went to stand before her. There was a blossom of silence over the moment, a silence that concealed many things. He raised his hand to her cheek and felt her flesh cold beneath his fingers.

  "Let me love you," he whispered. "Let me return you to love and to life."

  She moved her cheek slightly and his fingers fell away.

  "You must love," he said. "Love is in your long and shapely neck which carries your head with pride and grace. Love is in your mouth which turns down at the corners like the mouths of some of Michelangelo's women, mouths made to bite into a lover's lips. Love is in your body which is a bountiful orchard, a blending together of the rich juices and wild scents of numerous fruits, the orange and the lemon, the peach and the persimmon."

  He saw the bonds of the past falling from her face, leaving her cheeks unfettered, her eyes reflecting him.

  "You are even more than all that," he said. "You are like the scarlet thread woven into the white sails of old ships. You are a comfort and a solace. You are answer to the dark and dreadful lie that life is bondage, for to love you is to be free of loneliness and free from grief."

  He knew she was listening more intently than she had ever listened to him before. Emboldened, he raised his hands again and placed them lightly about her arms, feeling her flesh tingle through his fingers. A vein throbbed against her throat, dark within the paleness of her flesh.

  "Matsoukas," she said, and the name came in a strange and tearstained tenderness from her lips. He could never remember hearing his name spoken in that way before.

  She reached up then to pull the cord of the center light. He saw the musky glitter of hair in her armpit and was filled with an ache of desire. The kitchen sprang into shadow and she stood outlined darkly under the single bulb from the small stairway that he knew led to her flat. He saw the glitter of her eyes, misted and shining, and realized that she was crying. She moved toward the stairs and walked up slowly. He followed closely behind her.

  He waited, naked, between the sheets of her bed while she undressed and washed behind the closed bathroom door. He could hear the water running in the basin.

  A pale wan glow of light fell from the parlor into the shadowed bedroom. In its shimmer he saw the room was a nest, warm and scented and cluttered. The walls were papered in patterns of coiled flowers. There were fragile-stemmed lamps adorned with shades of tear-shaped crystals. A large oval mirror glistened on the wall, a remnant of some baroque magnificence. At the foot of the bed were a dozen assorted pillows.

  And the room contained as well that which was not visible but was there, a scent of powder and loneliness, a vapor born of all the nights she had lain alone, stirring fitfully in the futile embrace of memory.

  He felt himself caught in a sweep of melancholia and thought with a sudden resurgence of spirit of the journey. He was filled again with such jubilation that he could not bear to remain still. He threw back the sheet and walked on bare feet to the curtained window. He pulled the curtains apart slightly and peered out at the darkened window of his office across the way. Rain glistened against the glass. Something stirred at that window and he had the startled impression he was being watched. He drew back quickly and closed the curtains. After an instant he opened them warily again. He felt strangely disembodied, standing at both windows, occupying both rooms at the same time. For a confused second he was not sure where he really was. Then he sneered at the image of the familiar fool across the way.

  "I am here," he said softly. "I am the one who is here. You are the shadow."

  The water in the bathroom was turned off and he hurried back to the bed. He had just gotten beneath the sheet when the bathroom door opened. Anthoula emerged and she was wearing a long peignoir, her body outlined through its sheerness. She had taken down her hair and it hung in two long gleaming tusks over her shoulders. She moved once more into shadow and then she was at the bed. She sat down on the edge and he moved from beneath the sheet and put his hands on her shoulders and drew her slowly down beside him.

  Her head hung back against the sheet and the skin of her face gleamed with a dreadful whiteness as if all her blood had drained away. His fingertips moved along her nape and into the great soft coils of her hair. He reached down through the strands and embraced her breasts, pulling aside the silk of the robe so they sprang free, large juice-heavy fruit with nipples chilled like buds denied the sun. He bent then and gravely kissed each nipple in consolation. He twisted then to find her mouth, rolled hard upon her, and with his chest leveled the firm high slopes of her breasts. Something cold and hard cut against his flesh, something he felt like the tip of an unsheathed knife.

  He sprang back from her body and knelt trembling with the chill of the touch. He peered closer and around her throat, esconced on the chain, he saw the dead husband's ring glittering with an eerie light.

  He moved upon her again but however he sought to embrace her, the chain with the ring was there. It lay between her breasts, flowing t
oward him with each crest of her breath. And before it the hard thrust of his desire wavered and a worm of weakness shattered his core.

  Finally, hung with failure and futility, he caught his fingers angrily in the chain, closed tightly upon it. He wanted to tear it off although he knew it would cut her flesh. He began to pull, slowly at first and then with mounting urgency, hoping the clasp would break. When she sensed what he was doing he was not prepared for her frenzy.

  She cried out from some hidden core of her being, a terrible cry of betrayal and fear. She raised her hands to her throat to protect the ring. When she could not withstand his strength she let go the chain and with her fingers bent in the shapes of claws flew at his face. He felt her nails like the talons of a wild bird claw at the flesh of his cheek. He cried out then and released the chain.

  For a few dreadful moments they lay like that, naked and divided, and he plotted furiously the way to assault her again. He felt her stiffen beside him, a cold fear radiating from her body.

  "Holy Jesus," she said, and her voice was shredded with terror. "O Holy Jesus."

  "What is wrong?" he cried, and pain and despair added fire to his words. In that instant he was conscious of another presence within the room.

  He leaped from the bed to crouch naked, his muscled arms extended in a wrestler's stance, waving a challenge toward the shadows in the corners. He sensed the presence behind him, whirled around, and could see nothing. Yet something was in the room, something neither animal or human, a malignant and mocking wraith capering about their heads.

  "Who are you?" Matsoukas cried. "What do you want?"

  Even as he watched with the hair of his testicles bristling, the wraith simulated every gesture of some savage dance, leaps, spins, somersaults, backbends, all to the tuneless scream of some wild music.

  He turned back to Anthoula, snatching at her flesh with a frenzy of his own, assaulting her nipples and her loins. In terror of the demon she fought back fiercely, while around their heads the desiccated tail lashed like a whip, and the discordance of bells, rattles, and bull bladders beat against their ears.