The Wildcat Behind Glass, page 6
“Why are you blubbering, you crybabies?” Nolis said, but his voice was quavering, too.
* * *
We all walked in silence toward the rocks where the crabs like to gather; only Pipitsa was chattering away. She was going to ask her father for another barrel, so we wouldn’t have to argue about whose turn it was for a ride, and we could call the new one David Copperfield, just like I wanted … We let her talk as much as she liked. When we got to the little cove, Nolis and Myrto grabbed her by either arm and Nolis looked her straight in the eye.
“Eeey, Pipitsa, why did you snitch?”
“Me … what did I say?” Pipitsa stammered, terrified.
The others must have squeezed her arms too tight, because she shrieked:
“I’m going to tell my father what you’re doing … He’ll put you all in jail …”
“Why did you snitch about our games?” Myrto growled.
“I just … I just said … I didn’t say anything,” Pipitsa whimpered.
We could all tell she was lying. She’s a liar. Who cares if she goes to a real school and her father has a bunch of cellars. The kids from the shanties have never studied anything at all, and they sometimes let out a naughty word, but none of them ever tells lies!
Then all of us got so angry, even little Avgi. We shoved Pipitsa down and started to cover her in sand. She screeched, but she couldn’t move, because Nolis and Myrto were holding her arms and legs tight. Artemis, Avgi, and I pushed the sand over her as quickly as we could, trying to bury her whole body. The sand was hot, and the sun beat down on our heads, but all we could think about was how Nikos was going to get in trouble with the grownups and it was all because of Pipitsa, our pain in the neck.
A shadow came and stood over our heads.
“What’s going on here?”
It was Nikos. He pulled Nolis and Myrto off and started unburying Pipitsa, who by then was covered with a little mountain of sand. The only part of her sticking out was her head.
We’d never seen Nikos so angry … He didn’t even speak. He pulled a snotty, crying Pipitsa to her feet, washed her off with water from the sea, then looked at the rest of us severely, one by one.
“You should be ashamed of yourselves!” he finally said.
“You don’t know, Nikos, that’s why you’re mad,” Nolis was the first to speak.
“I know perfectly well,” Nikos answered.
Pipitsa started in again on her fancy swears: “I swear on my mother’s life, I’ll never do it again …” And though no one had asked, she started to tell us how her parents had bought her a bath for her doll with a real water tank, and they promised her a toy piano, if only she’d tell them what Nikos said to us and what games we played. But if we swore not to bury her anymore, she’d never say another word, even if they promised her a bicycle.
But Nikos still didn’t get angry at Pipitsa, who was a liar and a snitch. Instead, he turned on us:
“Just imagine, trying to bury a person alive! That’s something only fascists would do!”
We cried the whole way home, even Nolis.
At lunch we didn’t feel like eating, even though besides the stuffed tomatoes there were snails, which Myrto and I adore. The grownups didn’t have much of an appetite, either, and no one was talking. Finally, Aunt Despina asked Nikos:
“Have you decided when you’ll leave?”
“The day after tomorrow, on the Fridon,” he answered.
Nikos was leaving, and so soon! Myrto kicked my foot under the table. Our signal. We ate our fruit quickly and got up from the table.
“There’s no point heading to the kitchen,” Aunt Despina declared. “Stamatina doesn’t know any more than we do.”
We froze. Grandfather and Nikos laughed.
“What a nose your Aunt Despina has!” Grandfather said. “She knew right where you were headed, didn’t she?”
It relieved us to hear Nikos laugh, because we were upset that he still hadn’t said a single word to us.
“The wildcat opened its black eye for good,” Nikos said, “that’s why I’m leaving.”
“Please, Nikos,” Aunt Despina said sharply. “I don’t want any more talk of that animal.”
That made Nikos really laugh.
“Don’t tell me you believe the wildcat comes to life at night, too?”
“You’re terrible!” she scolded again, but more gently that time.
CHAPTER SIX
Theseus’s Sails; Dictatorship; the Secret of the Windmill with the Broken Blade
NIKOS didn’t say anything else to us about Pipitsa. Not a single word, as if nothing had happened. He played with us kids late into the evening, then decided that since the next day would be his last in Lamagari, he’d take us on an outing to the old castle. We’d set out at seven. A ferry would be arriving at the port in town at the crack of dawn. Mr. Antonis would pick up his passengers, then come back to Lamagari and lend us his boat for the day. The idea of the outing made us kids feel a bit better about Nikos leaving. Grandfather was going to come, too. Otherwise Aunt Despina wouldn’t let us go anywhere.
“So I won’t worry,” she said.
“What, am I under observation?” Nikos joked, then added, “Of course, I’d rather have Grandfather as a chaperone than a constable.”
We didn’t mind at all for Grandfather to come along. We knew he’d bring one of his ancients with him, sit in the shade of some tree, and spend the whole day reading. At most he might tell us a myth or two.
The next morning we started getting ready at dawn, but the sun was high in the sky and Mr. Antonis and the Krystallia still hadn’t arrived.
“Maybe the ferry hasn’t come in yet?” I asked.
“I heard the whistle while it was still dark,” Artemis said.
Finally, the boat appeared. But you’d have thought Mr. Antonis wasn’t in a hurry at all: he was pulling on the oars as slow as could be, and there was no wind, so he hadn’t even bothered to open the sails.
“Something must have happened to him,” Artemis said, worried. “My father always keeps his word.”
“Like what, Artemis?” Nikos laughed. “Maybe he had an extra ouzo or two and lost track of time.”
“He didn’t even hoist his sails,” Grandfather joked, “so we can’t tell if they’re white or black and know if he’s bringing good news or bad.”
“Why would he have black sails?” we asked.
“I’ll tell you a myth,” Grandfather said, “and you’ll understand.”
We were glad, because a myth would make the time pass more quickly. We couldn’t wait for the Krystallia to arrive, but we also love Grandfather’s myths.
“On Crete,” Grandfather began, “a long, long time ago, there was once a king named Minos.”
“Like the barrel maker at the taverna,” Odysseas marveled.
“Well, this Minos had a beast in his kingdom,” Grandfather continued, “a kind of bull, which of course was called the Minotaur, and the king kept it in an underground building called the Labyrinth, which was full of tunnels and archways. Whoever went in could never find his way out. King Minos won a war against the Athenians, and every nine years he made them send a tribute of seven young women and seven young men for the Minotaur to eat.”
“He’s coming, he’s coming!” Nolis started shouting just then.
“The Minotaur?” Avgi asked, scared.
“Never mind,” said Nolis, who’d thought he’d seen the Krystallia coming into the harbor.
“Just like Nolis, standing tall on that rock,” Grandfather continued, “stood Aegeus, the king of Athens, scanning the horizon for the boat belonging to his son, Theseus. That year, Theseus had decided to go as one of the young men and women, to see if he could kill the beast. Many had tried before him, but they all died trying. The ship that carried him off to Crete had black sails, since everyone assumed he was going to a certain death. Aegeus told the captain that if his son was brought back alive, he should swap the ship’s sails for white ones, so the king could see from a distance that his son was safe. Theseus went to Crete and killed the Minotaur, but the captain was so full of joy on the return trip that he forgot to change the black sails for white.”
“Can joy really make you forget?” I asked.
“Of course,” Nikos answered. “You can even die of joy.”
“Really?” Artemis said doubtfully. “You’d never catch me forgetting or dying of joy!”
We all laughed again at Artemis.
“When Aegeus saw the ship approaching,” Grandfather said, “he saw the black sails and thought the Minotaur had eaten Theseus, so he jumped off the cliff where he was standing and fell into the sea and drowned. That’s why we now call those waters the Aegean Sea.”
If he’d had black sails on board the Krystallia, Mr. Antonis surely would have opened them. That’s what Grandfather said a little while later, as we were headed home. We never went on our outing, not because it was now late morning and the sun was too high in the sky, but because as soon as Mr. Antonis stepped out of the boat, he told us the news:
“Mr. Nikos, they’ve declared a dictatorship.”
* * *
At midday in August, the cicadas in Lamagari make a racket like you wouldn’t believe. Every time Father comes it drives him up the wall, he says the cicadas won’t let him take his afternoon rest. But we kids can’t imagine Lamagari without cicadas. We brought an old blanket outside and spread it under a pine tree to listen to them. I grabbed one, cupped it in my hands, and it went wild with its cicada song.
“There’s a dictatorship now,” I whispered into my hands, then let the cicada fly off to tell its cicada friends.
“What do you think is going to happen, now that there’s a dictatorship?” Myrto asked.
“Nikos said everything will be different,” I answered.
At our house, at least, things really did change, from the moment Mr. Antonis brought the news. First of all, the grownups let us do whatever we wanted. No one made us wash our hands before we ate, no one sent us for our afternoon nap, and they didn’t even say a word when they saw us dragging the old blanket into the yard. Grandfather changed, too: for the first time in our lives we heard him speaking unkindly to someone—and to who? Aunt Despina, his sister!
“If the king decided to declare a dictatorship, I’m sure it’s for the best,” Aunt Despina had said.
“Enough of your claptrap, you’d be better off keeping your mouth shut!” Grandfather had snapped angrily.
Aunt Despina started to cry, then for some reason turned on Nikos.
Now, outside on the blanket under the tree, Myrto asked, “Since there’s a dictatorship now, you think they’ll just let us kids do whatever we want?”
“Should we test it out?” I said. And we went off to find the other kids, even though it was the middle of the day and was supposed to be “rest time,” as Aunt Despina called it.
We weren’t even out of the yard when Nikos caught up with us. He was sad, very sad, his brows knitted together so tightly that they looked like a solid dark line on his face.
“Girls,” he said, “you’re too young to understand, but today is a day Greece will remember forever with tears in its eyes. What’s today’s date?”
“August 4, 1936,” Myrto answered.
Then Nikos left for town, but we didn’t have the heart to tease him anymore and ask if he was on his way to say goodbye to his fiancée.
* * *
That evening Father and Mother came to Lamagari. Father gave us a hundred commandments this time, so many there was no way we could remember them all. Be careful, keep quiet. Never say the word “democracy,” don’t talk about grownup things, and a whole bunch of other “don’t”s and “never”s. Because otherwise he could lose his position at the bank and then we’d have to live in a shanty, too, summer and winter.
“Wouldn’t it be great if he lost his job?” Myrto and I thought. “Then we could live with the kids in Lamagari all year round.”
But then we remembered how we were supposed to start school in the fall and decided to do as we were told, so Father could keep his job.
Father had brought a whole pile of newspapers. They all had huge photographs on the front of a fat man with glasses, and Father said he was our dictator.
“A toad if I ever saw one!” Stamatina muttered.
Father shot her a glance that shut her up at once.
I don’t know why, but Mother kept kissing us all the time, tears streaming from her eyes. What a strange thing dictatorship is.
Nikos, apparently, didn’t come home until late that night, after we’d gone to bed. And when we woke up the next morning, we learned that he’d left again very early, this time for good. We were mad at Stamatina for not waking us up to say goodbye. Apparently he’d left at dawn; not even Artemis knew, since she’d slept through Mr. Antonis getting up and slipping out to bring him to the ferry.
“I can’t believe he didn’t say goodbye!”
“You’re so mean,” we said to Stamatina, “for not waking us up.”
Even Aunt Despina scolded her: “You let him sneak out like a thief at the crack of dawn, without a goodbye to any of us!”
Stamatina insisted it wasn’t her fault, Nikos had told her not to bother us.
“He shouldn’t have left just yet,” Grandfather said. “They might send word to Athens, and as soon as he steps off the boat …”
Aunt Despina gave Grandfather one of her pincushion looks that stopped him in the middle of his sentence. But we were determined to find out what would happen as soon as Nikos stepped off the boat.
“Tell us, Grandfather! Tell us, please!”
“Go and play, and don’t keep sprouting up where you weren’t sown,” Aunt Despina said. We could tell she didn’t want us to know any more than we already did.
I don’t know why, but whenever the grownups don’t want us to know about something, they send us off to play.
We went to find Artemis. She was sitting on a low wall outside their shanty, her back to Mr. Antonis, who was standing beside her.
“Why hold it against me?” he asked in a pleading tone. “I only did as Mr. Nikos asked.”
When Artemis saw us, she hopped down off the wall and ran over to us.
“I’ll bring you a red calico dress the next time I go to town,” her father went on, trying to win her over.
“I don’t want it,” she shot back sulkily. “I’m never talking to you again as long as I live.”
Then she turned to us.
“Let’s go, girls.”
“Artoula, I’m going to fry some fish for lunch. Come back early so we can eat together,” Mr. Antonis called when we’d run a little ways off.
“I’m never eating again as long as I live!” she shouted, loud enough for him to hear.
Artemis really loves her father, even if sometimes she’s mean to him. I wish we could talk like that to Aunt Despina or Father every now and then.
The three of us went to the beach, but we didn’t feel like doing anything. Not even burying our pain in the neck, if she’d let us. So we started grumbling about Nikos, who hadn’t let us bury her the other day, and then snuck out at dawn like a thief, as Aunt Despina had said, without even saying goodbye.
Pretty soon we saw Nolis running toward us, so out of breath that for a minute he couldn’t speak.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” he finally said. “Stamatina told me to come and get you.”
“Who cares,” Myrto fumed. “She’s the one who didn’t wake us up this morning.”
“Melia, you two should go,” Nolis said, turning to me. “Stamatina said me and Artemis should come, too.”
“If she has something to say, why didn’t she say it this morning?” Myrto snapped.
“Eeey, let’s go,” Artemis said. “What’ve we got to lose?”
We found Stamatina in the kitchen. When she saw us, she gestured for us to be quiet.
“Your aunt has a headache and went to her room. She said: ‘I don’t want to hear so much as a fly!’”
“That’s what you wanted us for?” Myrto asked grumpily.
Stamatina didn’t answer, just stuck her hand in the pocket of her apron and pulled out a scrap of paper folded in quarters. She handed it to Myrto and told her to read it.
Myrto read out loud:
“THIS AFTERNOON, SEARCH IN THE ROCKS BEHIND THE THRONE. OPEN THE MUSSELS YOU FIND THERE. FROM, THE WILDCAT.”
My heart started beating so loudly it scared me.
“I found it in one of my pots,” Stamatina said when she saw us looking at her like fools. “I opened the lid to start cooking and there it was, at the bottom of the pot.”
We know that the stories about the wildcat are fairy tales. But sometimes, when Nikos is telling them, we wonder, what if they’re actually true? And now, here was a letter from the wildcat itself, in one of Stamatina’s pots.
“Well, what are you going to do?” she asked, looking at us slyly. “Will you go?”
“Of course we’re going to go. Right, guys?” said Nolis.
Poor Nolis. I think he’s the saddest of us all that Nikos left. Not just because Nikos didn’t take him along to Athens, but because, when Nikos is in Lamagari, he often goes in the evenings to visit Nolis’s father, who never says a word to anyone else but will talk to Nikos for hours on end and not just sit there staring at the sea. Sometimes Nikos even brings his guitar, and Nolis and his father sing.
I’m not afraid of Nolis’s father when he’s like that. He laughs and seems so different I can almost imagine him tossing his crutches away and taking off at a run.
“Let’s meet at four,” Nolis said, glancing at the big, grownup watch he was wearing around his wrist. It was Nikos’s watch! He must have given it to Nolis before he left!
“So, you’ll go?” Stamatina asked again, and then, not waiting for a reply, she started to give us her advice: “Just the four of you should go, leave the little ones behind, Odysseas and Avgi. And not a word to Pipitsa! Make sure none of the grownups see you. And don’t tell anyone about the wildcat’s note. You heard what the prefect said, right? ‘We’ll find out about the wildcat, and then …’”
