The Goddess Under Zakros

by Paul Moomaw

  “So you poke around in caves?”

  “What better place to hide something?”

  “That’s what Londos says.”

  Julian cocked an eyebrow, then waved one hand dismissively. “Your cop. Fuck him. Sooner or later I’m going to find her, and if Fugger’s money helps for now, all the better.” Julian placed the photo gently on the table and pushed it toward his brother, his fingers still touching its border, as if he couldn’t stand to let it go completely.

  “Look at her, Adam.”

  Pray looked, but all he could see was a rather odd statue. He tried to understand Julian’s passion for it, tried to imagine how he himself might react if it were carved from jade, his own private obsession.

  “A person could die for her.” Julian’s voice was close to a whisper. “Maybe even kill for her.”

  Pray looked up from the photo and into his brother’s eyes. “You mean that,” he said. It was not a question.

  Julian nodded while his fingers continued to stroke the picture.

  Chapter 38

  Milos Argyros and his son stood outside Irene’s bedroom, Milos shifting from foot to foot, Andreas alternating between leaning with loud sighs against the wall, hands jammed into his pockets, and standing away from it, slapping his fingers against his thighs. Both shifted their gazes continuously from floor to wall to ceiling, never looking at each other.

  Lydia sat cross-legged near the door, her chin propped up by her thumbs, her index fingers rubbing absently at her nose.

  They look like they are waiting for the bathroom, she thought, and had an impulse to laugh. Then she scolded herself for finding anything humorous in the situation they were in.

  Irene lay beyond the door, attended at that moment by the physician, the expensive one, whose name was Doctor Keftos, with the emphasis on Doctor when he introduced himself, in a way that said he had no given name, probably not even for his wife and children, and by old Nausika Pandreou, whom Milos paid to do for Irene the things she could no longer do for herself—bathe, go to the bathroom, change into clean gowns—the basic things, Lydia thought, that define one as human and adult.

  The door opened with a cracking sound, and Keftos stepped into the hallway, accompanied by a foul smell from the bedroom. Lydia jumped to her feet and started to enter the room. The physician raised both hands, palms forward, and shook his head. He closed the bedroom door.

  Milos stepped toward him. “Is the baby still alive?” he asked.

  “Kyrie Argyro,” the physician said. He moved with short, quick strides toward the far end of the hall, and motioned to Milos to follow. Lydia settled down again and watched the two man as they stood, half in shadow because the light at that end was burned out, had been forever as far as she knew. The physician spoke earnestly, one hand on Milos’ shoulder, while the other man’s head bobbed up and down, up and down. It reminded Lydia of those little birds they sold in tourist shops, the kind whose beak you dipped into a glass of water, after which it dipped in and out on its own for as long as you let it, or as long as the water lasted.

  “But the baby,” she heard Milos say. The physician grasped Milos’ other shoulder, and said something inaudible.

  Milos shook his head violently from side to side. “Don’t change the subject,” he said, his voice going up to a raspy tenor. “What about a Caesarian operation to save it?”

  The physician threw his hands skyward and held them there for a moment, clenching his fists as if he might strike Milos. Then he let them drop, pivoted and marched back toward Lydia and Andreas.

  Milos followed him. “Open her up!” He caught up with the other man, placed himself between him and the door to Irene’s sickroom. “You must save the baby. It is mine!”

  Lydia leaped to her feet and launched herself against Milos, flailing at his face and chest.

  “That is my sister in there, you despicable bastard, not one of your prize sows. Go cut yourself open.” She kneed him as hard as she could between the legs. He gasped in pain and tried to cover himself. Andreas grabbed Lydia, jerked her away from his father.

  “This isn’t your business, bitch! Leave us alone. Go home and whore around with your American some more.” He grabbed her by the hair and flung her against the wall. She shrieked and fell. Something felt as if it had snapped in her left shoulder. She touched it with her hand, moved it cautiously, and winced as a sharp pain lanced through it. She glared up at Andreas, who stood over her, one foot raised.

  “Go ahead and kick me, slimy worm. If I had a knife, I would cut your nuts off and feed them to my dog.”

  Andreas shot his foot toward her head, pulling it up short before it hit her, and laughed as she flinched away. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a large clasp knife. He opened it and dropped it into her lap.

  “Go ahead and try, bitch.”

  Lydia rose slowly to her feet, the knife clenched in her right hand. She stepped toward Andreas, and grinned to see him back away. She took another step.

  A scream sounded from behind the bedroom door, which flew open and crashed against the wall. Nausika stood there, her hands grasping her forehead, her eyes round and pale. The scream came again, loud, piercing, but recognizably Irene.

  Nausika’s eyes got wider. “Something is happening,” she said.

  The physician pushed the old woman back into the bedroom, then stepped quickly through the door and closed it behind him. Lydia, Milos and Andreas were left in the hallway to stare at each other as the screaming increased in volume. Later, Lydia could not remember how long it went on. An hour could have passed, or only a minute, as she tried not to hear her sister’s agony. And thinking back, she realized that she was not aware of the moment the crying stopped, but at some point everything was quiet, and then the silence seemed to go on forever. Finally the door opened again, slowly this time, and the physician stepped out.

  “She is gone,” he said. “It is a mercy.”

  Milos lurched toward the door. “Did . . . ?” he began. The doctor held up one hand, like a policeman of the dead.

  “She had the child,” he said. His voice was cold, his eyes hard. “Go in and see it, if you like.”

  Milos passed through the door. Lydia stared after him, then followed. The sound of crying filled the room again. She had heard a sound like that once before. It had been on a walk in the hills, when a farmer’s dog had caught a fawn. The fawn had died slowly, of a broken neck, spasming and bleating in terror, while the stupid farmer grinned and petted the dog.

  As she entered the room, Milos rushed back out, nearly knocking her down. She stepped to the bed. Irene lay there, soaked in blood, her stick-thin body twisted like tangled twine. One eye remained open in death, terror in its blind gaze. Between her legs lay the source of the crying, something that should have been a baby. It had no arms or legs, just a torso covered in wrinkled skin so dark red it was almost black. One ear stuck out, looking oddly large on the head. The other ear was only a hole. Blank skin covered the face where a baby’s eyes should have been, and the mouth and nose had fused together into one, gaping maw, from which the animal sound came.

  Lydia wanted to vomit, and feared momentarily she might faint. She forced herself to stand erect, and looked away from the misshapen lump, back toward Irene’s face. Nausika had closed the open eye, and Irene seemed finally to have found rest. Someone else had begun to wail, and she looked around the room in confusion, then realized she was hearing her own voice.

  The physician had collected his things and closed his bags. “I will send a death certificate,” he said. He started toward the door, then stopped and gazed at Lydia. “She was your sister?”

  Lydia nodded.

  “I am truly sorry,” he said. Then his eyes hardened again. “Tell him,” he said, and jerked his head toward the hall. “She gave him a son.”

  * * *

  ROMANIA, 1945

  In the Transylvanian Alps of Romania, at a place called Petrosani, fate offers back to Manfried Hummel t
he sense of manhood that has slipped away in the days since Berlin. Fear has become his normal state, a background noise in his mind that he can usually filter out until something—a suspicious face, an aircraft flying too low along the road, waking in the night to the sound of Russian echoing in a barn in Czechoslovakia—increases the volume and reminds him.

  He wants to go south, and west, as far from the Russians as possible. He fears the Americans, and hates the French, but the Russians terrify him beyond all reason.

  No, the woman insists. They must go to Greece. That means east and south, through Czechoslovakia and Romania, always closer to the advancing columns of the Red Army. But she seems to know her way, sitting quietly as he drives, responding minimally when he tries to make conversation until he finally gives up. She speaks only to direct him onto this country lane, or that unpaved road that seems little more than a cow track. Most of them do not appear on the map they carry. But always at the end they reach as safe place, a barn, or a cottage, with gasoline, and food, and sleep. Always there seems to be someone waiting for them, and always, the woman is able to speak with them, frequently in different languages.

  Gradually, Hummel has stopped trying to play the officer, has ignored, or at least gotten used to, his discomfort at taking direction from a woman. He finds himself slipping into a state that feels oddly familiar. Somewhere in Hungary he identifies it.

  I am a passenger without a ticket, he thinks, and realizes he has felt that way for a very long time, since some time after the fall of France, in fact, when despite all the evidence to the contrary, a growing sense of disaster came upon him. In those days he distracted himself from such thoughts with the business of war, carrying documents, licking boots, and avoiding combat at any price. Now, with nothing to do but drive, the sense of doom returns.

  I am on a journey that has taken turns I never intended, and sooner or later, someone will see that I have no ticket, and then only God knows what will happen to me.

  They pass through Hungary without incident. At times, the war seems not to exist; at least it has not visibly visited these parts, and the country people display at the most a stolid curiosity. In Romania, whose government has broken with Germany, but most of whose people probably neither know nor care, their German plates get a quick salute from a village policeman.

  They have climbed into the Transylvanian Alps, surrounded by the mud and lingering snow of a wet spring, driving for once on a paved road. At Petrosani, the woman points to the left.

  “Turn here,” she says.

  Hummel stares dubiously at the rutted, muddy path.

  “That stuff looks deep,” he says.

  “It will be all right.”

  It is what she says every time he questions her directions, and up to now she has been correct. He shrugs and turns onto the side road. They have gone just far enough—over a couple of rises and across a small stream—for a walk back to the highway to be miserable. The track tilts, and the car lurches to the right, then swings its rear in a half circle and comes to a squishing halt. Hummel guns the engine and the tires spin in a slick whine. He works the gear shift, jumping quickly between low and reverse, trying to rock the car out of place. It sinks deeper. He turns off the engine and looks at the woman, who sits calmly as always.

  “What now?” he asks.

  “One of us must go for help.”

  “You, then.” The countryside around them seems suddenly large and empty.

  She shrugs and gets out. Hummel re-starts the engine and turns the heater on, then hunches deeper into the seat as he watches her trudge off in the same direction they have been driving. She seems unbothered by the sticky mud that cling to her shoes. Hummel feels a vague sense of disappointment in that. Even as a child he always hated getting his feet muddy, and would go to extremes to avoid it.

  She has been gone just under an hour when a wagon approaches from behind, drawn by a pair of huge draft horses, and carrying three men. The wagon pulls up a couple of meters from the car, and one of the men calls out something unintelligible. Hummel turns the engine off and rolls down the car window.

  The man speaks again, more audibly now, but still only noise to Hummel.

  He gets out of the car, trying to keep to patches of grass and away from the mud. “Do you speak German?” he asks.

  The man grins and shrugs. He points to the car’s rear tires, which have sunk to the axles. He turns and speaks to his companions, and they all laugh loudly. The other two men jump down and one of them drags a heavy rope from the wagon. He wraps it around the rear axle while the other man hitches the horses to the car. Then, with a great deal of shouting and laughing, all three urge the horses forward. The rope tautens, and then the animals surge forward so quickly that one of them stumbles as the car breaks free with a sucking sound.

  Two of the men leap onto the horses. The one who spoke to Hummel jumps to the running board of the car and motions for him to come. Hummel steps quickly to the car, wincing at the sound his shoes make in the mud, and climbs onto the other running board. He clings there as the car moves, slipping and tipping unpredictably in the ruts, back toward the main road. The other man keeps up a loud, running conversation with his companions, turning occasionally to Hummel with abroad grin and a brief comment in what Hummel assumes is Romanian. Once the man winks, and Hummel wonders what the joke is about.

  On pavement again, the horses and car turn right. In the distance, Hummel sees a small, brightly painted cottage and a cluster of dilapidated outbuildings. The man on the running board points toward the buildings, says something to Hummel in a loud voice, and nods vigorously. Hummel searches the yard of the cottage for a sign of the woman, but the place appears to be empty. The horses pull the car to the rear of the house, and the two riders remain mounted as the third man unhitches the vehicle. Then they wheel the animals around and canter out to the road. The third man says something to Hummel and motions toward a tree stump. Hummel looks at the stump and back to the man, who steps toward the stump and motions with his hand again, then grins and nods as Hummel walks to the stump and sits. Still nodding and grinning, the man disappears through the door of the cottage.

  When he returns, he still grins. He also carries a worn but well oiled rifle. His finger is wrapped around the trigger, and the barrel is pointed at Hummel’s face.

  The man speaks and jerks his head skyward, making an upward motion with the barrel at the same time. Hummel stares uncomprehendingly, not able to put the man’s cheerful grin and the menacing firearm together in a way that makes any sense.

  “You are mistaken,” he says. “You must talk to my companion.”

  The man step across to Hummel and pokes him in the shoulder with the muzzle of the rifle. Then he steps back and motions with the barrel again, this time toward one of the outbuildings, a small shack with its door hanging ajar. Hummel rises and walks toward the shack. When he reaches the door, he turns around. The inside stinks overwhelmingly of sour shit. The man pats Hummel’s clothes and locates the pistol. He takes it, then motions with the rifle in a clear sign that Hummel is to enter. Hummel shakes his head.

  “My friend will explain,” he says.

  The man stops smiling. He swings the rifle stock in an upward arc into Hummel’s jaw. Hummel straightens and covers his face, and the man swings the rifle again, underhanded like a shovel, and buries the stock in the German’s breadbasket. Hummel doubles over as the force of the blow carries him into the shack, where he lands on his back in the soft slime that covers the floor.

  Day passes into evening, and darkness brings fear, but with it determination to do something to free himself. Hummel has no idea what he might do once he is free of the shack, but the thought of sitting quietly in filth, awaiting fate, has no appeal. He reaches into his pocket, where his only remaining weapon lies—a knife, with a steel handle and a thick, heavy gravity blade, the kind issued to paratroopers. He habitually keeps it razor sharp, even though he has never put it to much use beyond hammering tack
s into bulletin boards. But something about its weight, and the way the blade slides out and locks into place with a thunk when he presses the catch and swings the handle, has always pleased him.

  He pushes against the door. It moves outward a short distance, then meets resistance. There is enough space to put a hand through, and Hummel’s meets rope. The door has been tied shut. Hummel pushes the knife through the opening and saws at the rope. It parts quickly, and he pauses, forcing himself to breathe slowly and evenly as he listens for any sign of life. Everything is quiet. He pushes the door open and slips through.

  The yard is empty, but light glows dimly through the dirty window of the cottage. Hummel creeps across the muddy ground and peers through the glass. The man who locked him up sprawls at a rickety table, his head in his arms. An oil lamp stands on one corner of the table, providing the only light in the room, and next to it Hummel sees a bottle. In the far wall, a door stands open, but the room beyond lies in shadow.

  “Drunk,” Hummel mutters. He moves quietly to the front door of the cottage, which stands wide open. Taking a deep breath, he slips inside and inches his way toward the man, then relaxes and moves more quickly as he hears snores. He stands behind the man, knife in his hand, staring down at the sleeping form. He has never killed anyone before, has not killed anything at all, in fact, since the age of ten, when his grandfather forced him to wring the neck of a chicken, as a lesson in what he was fond of calling the natural order of things.