In the silence, the barking dogs could be heard, the dogs on the hill barking for the moon behind the clouds. The captain took advantage of the pause to observe the orderly there by the door. He let another second go by, drumming his fingers on the desk top, then put both hands behind his neck.
“So you’d say it was a satisfactory visit, all the way around?”
Yes, sir. He believed that the visit had accomplished all its intended objectives. He could assert, since he was being asked, that without a doubt the trip had been more than satisfactory. Much more.
She dropped the pebble.
“You are,” she said, and though her body didn’t change, her voice spat it out, “a pig. A pig.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“The answer is no.” And now she scrambled away from him and looked back in a rage. “No. And no. And no again. I’m not pregnant. I’m not expecting any baby. Not yours or anyone’s. Are you happy now? Now are you satisfied? You want to go off with another woman now? You want to? Is that what you want?”
“Silly girl. You’re jealous. It was a game, that’s all. Nothing but a game.”
“Pig, pig. Our baby’s not a game.”
He tried to approach her but she backed away. She stopped at the edge of the tree’s shadow.
“I didn’t know what was wrong with you, love. You were acting so strange. I thought that was why.”
“Well, that wasn’t why. Are you happy now?”
“Yes, very happy. I don’t want him to be born here.”
“Couldn’t you have asked me in a different way, directly, with trust, like we’ve always done? You don’t trust me anymore, do you.”
Something hardened in Emmanuel’s tone. “I told you I didn’t want him to be born here. That’s all. I thought that was why you were acting strange.”
“I’m not acting strange,” she said.
He got up, brushing his pants off with his hand. “Fine. You’re right. You’re not. But then, what’s wrong with you? Will you tell me what in hell’s going on in your head?”
“Nothing’s going on in my head,” said Cecilia, watching the river that kept on flowing into the valley where she had been born. “Absolutely nothing.”
But she didn’t pick up the pebble.
x
[My father had indicated here the existence of a section in the original manuscript, coinciding with the above number. As there seems, in fact, to be a gap at this point in the text, it’s preferable to advise the reader of this omission. There is no way of knowing what might have happened or what was planned for this section of the novel.]
chapter seven
xi
Before they take the hood off, well before that, Alexis already knows where he is, he remembered this place.
You know those stairs where you stumble, this damp air that smells of shit, the harsh sound of footsteps along this endless stone corridor. They pull the hood off, and your eyes try to adjust to what ought to be darkness, they try to recognize the cell they’ll see, that they’ve already seen once before.
“Light, goddamn it,” orders the voice. Someone flicks a switch, a bulb lights up. This sudden blaze blinds you and leaves your retinas white with pain. Your eyelids shut involuntarily. Patiently, focusing your attention on something else, on the pain in your lacerated shoulder, you wait for the circles of fiery color to subside.
Again, the voice and soldiers pushing suddenly from behind. The automatic gesture of your hands is useless. You can’t protect yourself. They’re tied behind your back. That shoulder, the bad one, bangs against something, hard, long. Bars, it’s the bars. Now the burning begins, your shoulder begins to burn.
“All right, woman, let’s see if your tongue loosens up enough to say good-bye to your grandson. We’ve brought him here.”
Beyond where the bars come together, leaning, resting against them, you can hear laborious movements approaching. You suppose it’s her. Then, your grandma’s voice, husky, grave, worried.
“The boy, Captain?”
“Boy? What boy? He doesn’t look much like a boy to me. He’s big enough to know how to go into hiding. We went looking a week ago, a whole week and it’s only now we’ve managed to find this … boy.”
Now you feel Grandma’s hand. It starts on your hair, your cheek, goes down along your neck, as if it were she whose eyes were submerged, a blind woman confirming your features. That hand is remarkably hot and bony, and it stops there, gently massaging your neck muscles.
“What good can a boy do you, Captain?”
It isn’t too hard to imagine the captain smiling, his mouth stretched tense, his teeth barely showing with every sentence, the upper lip twisted.
“What good can he do us? He can do a lot. To start with, we’ve got you talking. He’s almost a miracle, this … boy. It’s the first time we’ve managed to get a peep out of you, woman, and that’s something already.”
“So I’m talking, Mr. Captain, here I am.”
Grandma’s hand goes back up into your hair, then down to your neck, the nape, with a different rhythm, far from her voice, exploring, rocking, humming, with an urgency her voice doesn’t have, feeling your ear, going around it, and again down the clean slope of your neck. Your eyes open, and despite the light’s poisonous immediacy, they begin to distinguish your grandma’s face close by, her eyes shining and near and heavenly with hunger, the cell behind her lightless.
“Tell your grandma why we’re going to send you to the capital—hey—we told you before, did you forget already?”
what’s grandma whispering with her hand. what would be blowing into your ear, spilling into you, if her words could get to you through some secret tunnel, like sap through a tree trunk, like a stream through a hollow, what whispered advice? that you speak as little as possible, child, she’d start with that. that you keep to yourself half, more than half, of what you’re thinking. and that’s why she dared to talk to the captain? she wasn’t afraid? because what she was thinking, child, was infinitely worse. you mustn’t forget there are several things they can’t do, many things, many: one of them is to read our minds.
and the fear?
All of a sudden the hand comes down like a claw, the captain’s hand, right on the screamingly painful shoulder, and yanks you backward. You almost fall, but with an effort keep your feet. Grandma’s hand stays where it was, like a wren frozen in the air, a few inches off. She sees that the captain is looking at her hand, capturing it with his cold eyes, and then she slowly withdraws the hand, grabs hold of one of the bars.
“You forgot already what boys your age are good for in the city? We just explained it to you and you forgot already?”
The pressure on your shoulder is becoming unbearable.
“I’m talking to you, punk. Didn’t they ever teach you to answer when somebody asks a question?”
You focus your attention on Grandma and don’t say a word. Can she know, can she tell, how much that shoulder hurts?
“Captain,” says Grandma, “what do you want me to do?”
“Advise the women to go back home. The ones in your family and the others. We don’t want to resort to force, Mrs. Angelos. You can bear witness to the goodwill of the nation’s army. But our patience has a limit. In exactly six hours, at dawn, we’re going to move them out of there … with arms if necessary. They’re better off going on their own, and that way the boy goes free. You have my word of honor.”
Her voice isn’t trembling when she asks; “And if not?”
“Outside there are two army trucks …” The captain’s fingers dig into your shoulder, stressing each word with a bitter, crippling clench. He doesn’t even know, he can’t know, has no way of knowing that you can feel those fingers all the way down your back, all the way along that shoulder you dislocated trying to get away, those tong-like fingers maiming your bones. You have to clench your teeth and bite hard and think your shoulder belongs to someone else, that all this is happening to somebody else’
s body, far away and getting farther. “Tomorrow morning one of them leaves for the capital. Your grandson is going to be on that truck as sure as there’s a God. The other one leaves day after tomorrow, and you can guess who we’re going to put on that one.”
Grandma comes still closer to the bars. He almost has the impression she’s going to go through the iron, going to turn herself into a shadow and pounce on the captain. Her body sticks there, furious, powerful, as if driven by a strong wind. But her voice isn’t hostile or aggressive.
“Captain, do you have children, Captain?”
“What kind of question is that? Or are you threatening my family? Are you threatening my family?”
Grandma’s voice grows even softer, hoarsening with emotion. It’s been years since you heard her like this. You search your memory, but you may never have heard her like this before. Maybe to put you to sleep some night when Mama or Papa weren’t there, maybe so you and Fidelia would sleep. Maybe.
“I’m not threatening anyone, Captain, who could I threaten? I was going to ask you a favor, in the name of your children. That’s all.”
“A favor?”
Now yes, inexplicably, the rage disappears from that voice and now yes, now yes, his hand lets go of your shoulder. For a second it’s impossible to believe the relief flowing from your shoulder, that the commotion in your shoulder is easing, calming down.
He stands up straight, clears his throat, arranges his uniform. “Since you’ve mentioned my children, ma’am, and invoke them, go ahead, ask what you will. I hope I can satisfy you.”
“Captain, tomorrow you’ll be taking Alexis away. That’s already decided. I can do nothing, sir, to prevent it.”
You start to feel your heart beating, beating hard and rhythmically and mad, under your skin is the muffled shaking of what must be your own heart, which everyone must hear by now, a banging that can’t be stopped. There’s nothing Grandma can do to prevent what will happen tomorrow, nothing, nothing, there’s nothing she can do, thoughts you have no way of canceling.
“You’re refusing to cooperate, then. Are you refusing?”
She goes on as if she hadn’t been interrupted. “All I can do, therefore, is ask you for a few hours, so we can say good-bye to each other. It isn’t much to ask for, Captain.”
Agitated breathing in the captain’s chest, and the words boiling out. “So you’re not going to go to the river? You’re not going to cooperate?”
“There are things I should talk to my grandson about, Captain. A few hours, it isn’t much.”
a few hours, grandma? things to talk about?
until they’ve heard those footsteps, the old woman and the boy, those footsteps fading, leaving them alone, they won’t attempt to speak. you’re going to look at her serenely, not touching her, not yet hugging her, simply lingering in the quiet nocturnal company of one another, entranced by the growing silence, enjoying it and the darkness which shelters and protects them, and the absence of the soldiers, enjoying even the echo of the echo of those footsteps, until the echo’s gone. she’ll speak first, that’s certain, before they come closer and touch, she first.
alexis?
yes, grandma.
alexis, she wasn’t going to come back from the capital. you’ll blink briefly, then a timid smile, quick, that she can’t see. you’ll take a step toward her, your arms extended, grandma, you …
no, alexis, she knew it, this is one thing she knew for certain. but she also knew for certain that he would. you are going to come back, alexis.
maybe, grandma, and then they’d embrace. there was no time to lose. any minute now the captain could return in a hurry to take these last few seconds from them, any minute the soldiers.
“And you,” asks the captain, “what will you give me for this favor? What do I get out of it?”
“A bit of tranquility, Captain. Does that seem so little to you?” She’s talking to him, but the calm in her voice is for you, as if she could protect you, steady your heartbeat, make that pounding take off forever, so the banging of your heart might subside like wings, so the soldiers at your back wouldn’t know where the sound came from, so the captain, so that she herself and you, so no one in the world, and so no one could know what you’re thinking and you don’t want to keep thinking and aren’t going to think.
“Something more substantial, Mrs. Angelos, more tangible. I believe in what I can touch. All right. I give you the kid for a few hours, what do you give me?”
“Captain, you’ve taken me from the river by force. I couldn’t become your messenger now. The other women wouldn’t take it well. And you know that already. I have nothing else to offer you.”
“The truth is, really, that you never cease to amaze me. Gheorghakis told me, but I never believed it. You have an inexhaustible capacity to surprise me. Tell me something, there’s something I’d like to know, out of sheer curiosity. What have you gotten out of all this? Have you got anything, one positive thing, out of this whole mess? One thing?”
Grandma looks at you when she speaks, not at him. The look goes into you and stays, very clear, very open, these words that can’t be addressed to you the only ones she’ll be able to say to you, the captain a pretext, a piece of wall. There could be something like the transparency of a smile on your grandma’s lips, expanding these seconds, keeping the clock from ticking off time, this scarce short miserable time to go on being together.
“My men, Captain,” Grandma pronounces severely, accenting every syllable. “And Captain, if you let me go, do you know what I’ll do?” He doesn’t answer. “I’ll do it all over again, Captain. Everything. I don’t regret a thing.”
grandma?
yes, alexis.
did she really believe what she’d said to the captain?
what?
that we’d done everything right, that we’d do it all again if we had the chance?
maybe, alexis, it would be better if he were to give his opinion. did he believe they’d done the right thing? tell the truth, go ahead. the truth is, not so good, grandma.
you’ll feel the fatigue in her body, the way it’s suddenly she who’s resting her body on yours, it’s she who is now in need. you’re right, you hear her say, you suppose you will hear her say. she will admit it, and then she’d take a step back and you’d miss those skinny and bony and warm arms. but what choice did we have, alexis?
i don’t know, grandma.
but someday he’d know, isn’t that so? someday?
yes, grandma, i hope so, someday.
“She doesn’t regret a thing,” the captain says, shaking his head. He looks at the two soldiers, then at you, looking for some invisible interlocutor, some company. The soldiers exchange slight and cautious grins. “She doesn’t regret a thing,” repeats the captain. “This country’s hopeless. They’ll have to depopulate it and bring in other people, people from outside, people with some other kind of mind. With this race, there’s no way, there’s no place.”
The captain makes a peremptory gesture, as if to leave. The soldiers react immediately. You feel the cord cut into you like a whip. Your grandma doesn’t take her eyes off your face.
“And if I were your own wife, Captain, wouldn’t you be content with her, wouldn’t you ask her to do the same?” The words crawl out quickly, Grandma stopping time, Grandma looking at you.
The captain slowly lowers his hand. The cord loosens accordingly.
“You insist on mixing my family up in this. Nevertheless, I’m glad you ask. You know what I’d say to my wife? I’d tell her not to endanger the health of my children for anything in the world. Or my grandchildren, if I had any. War is men’s business, isn’t that right, Alexis?”
You don’t say a word.
“A woman’s place is in the home. Or in bed. That’s where women belong, madam. Or don’t they, soldier?”
One of the soldiers gives a nervous laugh, the other nods his head enthusiastically yes. They don’t know what to do, what to say.
&nb
sp; “All right, then, enough of this bullshit. Let’s go.”
Your body tenses, anticipating the blow on your shoulder, the cord cutting into your wrists. Your grandma keeps on looking at you, as if you were already up on the truck, as if you were up there and they’d started the motor.
“Captain,” your grandma tries one last time. “We want very little. Just two things. Take care of them, Captain, and everything will work out.”
The captain gives a signal and the soldiers stop, right behind you, you can feel those hands so close, a few inches, like eagle talons, ready.
“Let’s hear the first one.”
“Give us back the bodies of our men. That’s the first thing we want.”
what would he have done, grandma? to begin with, never that. never. it was wrong to say that papa and the rest were dead. he wouldn’t accept that till he saw it with his own eyes, grandma, and even then he wouldn’t believe it, he’d never believe it.
so he believed dimitriou was alive, is that right, alexis?
in the capital i’m going to find him, grandma. i’m going to look for him everyplace they take me. i’m going to ask every prisoner.
like serguei? and if they answered like serguei, child? mistakes, grandma, more mistakes. uncle serguei couldn’t be treated like that. as long as she was asking him for the truth, why judge people that way?
then in the darkness you’d notice grandma straightening herself into a powerful posture, you’ll feel her body turning hard again, only her skeleton there, her skin and flesh and guts and brains lifted off, shaded out, spirited away, a sheer invulnerable shadow, grandma. if we start to forgive, alexis, if we start justifying, we’ll end by forgetting our own strength, we’ll fall apart, we’ll lose sight of the difference between right and wrong. in times like these that’s how things were. and you as firm as she, with your pair of full-grown legs on the ground. no, grandma, in just these kinds of times you had to know how to forgive, you had to give a hand to those who were weaker than you.
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