The Darkening Dream (4 page)

“I apologize if my gunfire disturbed you.” His voice was slightly accented. “I only just arrived in America this summer, and in my homeland a little target practice is almost a national pastime.”

Sam examined the gun on the young man’s shoulder. “I haven’t seen a bolt action like this before.”

The young man swung the weapon off his back. “It’s a Mannlicher-Schönauer, Austrian-made for the Greek army.” He fussed with the mechanism. “There’s an interesting rotating bolt action—”

Anne directed her horse’s nose onto Sam’s shoulder and her attention to the newcomer.

“Aren’t you in my Natural Science class?”

He studied their faces. “Indeed, and we’ve forgotten our manners! My name’s Alexandros Basileus Palaogos.” He performed a funny little bow, leaning on the rifle for support. “But please, call me Alex.”

Sarah tried to visualize each of her own classes. No wonder he looked familiar. She found him sitting in the back right corner of first period Senior English. Her own desk was in the front left, near the teacher.

Sam smiled. He shared that science class with his sister. “I’m Sam Williams, the corrector of our manners is my twin sister Anne, and this young lady is Miss Sarah Engelmann.”

Alex — who she’d never really paid attention to in school — shifted his attention to her now, and Sarah felt more heat on her skin than the morning temperature warranted.

“Have you been to the Acropolis?” Of course she was showing off her conversational Greek. “Or to the Oracle’s cave at Delphi?” She’d never traveled beyond Boston, but she desperately wanted to visit Europe.

“Yes, on all accounts, although your grammar is more suited to Sophocles than the streets of Athens.” His Greek was perfect — and why shouldn’t it be? “But your charms bring to mind golden Aphrodite.”

At once prickled and flattered, Sarah wasn’t about to let the newcomer get the upper hand. Using a proper if awkward dactylic hexameter, she said, “Good thing I’m laughter-loving Aphrodite as well, if you’re going to throw epithets from Homer around.”

Alex laughed. “I’m being rude yet again,” he said in English and glanced at the twins.

Anne moved her horse closer to Sarah’s. “We’ve come out of town for a ride and a picnic,” she said. “If you’ve had enough of killing innocent cans, you’re welcome to join us.”

Sarah felt a little stab of jealousy. Ridiculous. Realistically, she was going to have to start considering Papa’s
yeshiva bucher
selections soon enough.

“Bring the gun,” Sam said. “I’ve a pistol. After we eat we can shoot targets for pennies.”

The newcomer had better have money. Sam had taken the state fair marksmanship prize three years running.

“Let me fetch Bucephalus,” Alex called back over his shoulder as he turned toward his barn.

Now that took the cake. The young man had named his horse after Alexander the Great’s stallion.

Four:

Picnic

Near Salem, Massachusetts, Sunday, October 19, 1913

A
LEX JOGGED TO THE BARN
and started the process of wrestling Bucephalus into his tackle and harness. He wanted to rush back as fast as he could. His life right now was boring, and he knew it.

The move to America had been exciting: the train ride across Europe followed by the luxurious ten-day party that was the steamer crossing. But after unpacking last May, he’d settled into a monotonous regimen. He read, wandered around the yard, rode Bucephalus, or played chess with tight-lipped Dmitri. In the evening or early morning Grandfather was more likely to be awake, but even when they did talk, the old man was usually distant and distracted.

All summer Alex had planned a sojourn into town to see the modern shopping district, old colonial houses, and the nineteenth-century wharfs that once received pepper from Sumatra. He’d even read the
Scarlet Letter
and
The House of the Seven Gables
.

But he never went. He didn’t relish outings by himself and couldn’t convince Grandfather or Dmitri to join him. At school, whether Irish, Italian, French, or Polish, everyone stuck with their own, and while there were other Greeks, he’d nothing in common with them.

Today’s excursion would make for a welcome change. Sam seemed nice enough, and hell, if he’d been bound to a post and forced merely to watch either young lady, he’d have counted the day well spent.

After cinching the saddle tight, he paused for a moment to give Bucephalus a carrot. The stallion was everything you could ever want in a horse, but it was good to remind him of that sometimes. Alex grabbed his rifle, mounted, and trotted the big black out to the gate.

Fortune was with him, they’d waited.

The blond girl was terrifyingly beautiful. Slender except for the bountiful, beautiful curves of her hips and breasts, her skin carved from alabaster.

“With that outfit,” she said when he and Bucephalus pulled up, “we’d better not run into the police. They might think we’re out to rob a train.”

But it wasn’t Anne who’d really caught his eye.

It was Sarah — lovely too, if not in the same league. She was a little thing, barely five feet tall, with fiery energy and quick motions that made the dark coils of her hair quiver. In riding clothes she looked different than the girl in his English class who always had her hand up, and today, while batting at him with her pedantic Greek, the intensity of her gaze had made him feel something he rarely did with others: noticed.

“I think he looks more like
Battle for the Balkans
,” the object of his attention said.

Alex glanced down at himself. Perhaps the vest and the two crossed ammunition belts were a bit much for Massachusetts.

“Pay the chittering birds no mind.” Sam’s face was all grin as he nimbly dodged a swing of his sister’s riding crop.

They set off down the road, Sam leading his bay into a graceful trot. He straddled that Apollonian line between handsome and pretty — and Apollo had a twin sister, too, but Anne didn’t look much the huntress. When Sam casually flipped himself around to speak to her, riding backward for a moment, Alex was impressed. He’d ridden as long as he could remember and he would never think to try such a maneuver.

After thirty or so minutes they crested a gentle slope strewn with wild grasses and autumn flowers. At the bottom a small cow pond was ringed by trees and low brush.

While Alex and Sam wiped down the horses and posted them to graze, the girls spread some blankets and unloaded the packs. There were sandwiches made from thick beef, pickled cucumbers and tomatoes, an extra loaf of bread, fig jam, a glass jar containing what looked to be noodles, something akin to apple strudel, and a jug of cider. Each item was carefully wrapped in butcher paper, right down to plates, silverware, and even three small glasses.

“Whoever prepared this lunch was both generous and assiduous,” he said.

“My mother,” Sarah said, “is a woman who holds any task to exacting standards.”

“So, Alex,” Anne said as they settled on the blankets with their food, “what brought your family to Salem?”

“It’s actually just my grandfather and his manservant Dmitri. My parents died when I was little.”

An uneasy silence hung in the air.

“I’m sorry,” Anne said.

“It’s not a problem.” There was a time when this subject had made Alex angry, but in recent years the feeling had faded to a hollow ache. In some ways, he missed it — even a negative emotion might be better than none.

“I don’t remember my parents. And Grandfather, he’s an antiquarian, a dealer and collector of old things, a historian of sorts. The market is poor in Greece. Salem has old houses and people who buy old things.”

“He’s a historian?” Sarah said. “My father teaches religion and history at the college.”

“Greek history is Grandfather’s specialty.” Alex chuckled. “And that’s full of religion. He loves the late Middle Ages so much he takes the fall of Constantinople to the Turk rather personally. Every year on May 29th he lights candles and mourns.”

Anne uncrossed her legs and stretched luxuriously across the blanket. “Pardon me for asking, but what happened on May 29th?”

Sarah’s arm half rose, as if she were in school. Alex swallowed his smile.

“In 1453, the Turkish Sultan Mehmed II captured and sacked the city of Constantinople, modern Istanbul. The Byzantine Empire collapsed, and the last Roman Emperor, by this time really a Christian Greek king, was killed.”

Alex was speechless. He’d never met a boy who could rattle off such facts — let alone an American girl — and Sarah’s animated hand movements were mesmerizing.

Anne elbowed her in the ribs. “Sarah’s father isn’t the only lecturer in the family.”

Sign him up for her class. “She’s correct,” he said, “and it was a very sad day, when my people came to be ground under the heels of the Ottoman Turk.” He stood up. “Since you’ve been so generous with your morning and your lunch, I’d like to share a tradition from my homeland.”

He walked over to his saddlebag and rummaged for the small cloth-wrapped bundle.

“Ouzo, from the island of Lesbos, birthplace of Sappho.” He returned to the group with a dark green bottle. “Our national drink. It’s traditionally consumed with friends before or after a meal.”

He dumped the water from each glass and poured the clear liquor.

“Foreigners often find the taste… unusual.” He held his cup toward the group. “To new friends,
opa
!”

They clinked glasses. Alex tossed the contents down his throat and awaited the reactions of the uninitiated. Sam, who had also taken his in one gulp, rewarded him with bulging eyes.

Five:

Afterglow

Near Salem, Massachusetts, Sunday, October 19, 1913

A
FTER
S
AM’S REACTION,
Sarah gave her cup a sniff and discovered a licorice-like smell with a medicinal note. She took a sip. A warm anise fire burned its way into her mouth and spread through her sinuses. The sensation was more like a tonic than wine. She forced herself to swallow, and a ball of sinking fire traveled down her throat. She took another sip.

The conversation continued, but Sarah soon felt light-headed and distant. She drank wine on holidays or at Sabbath dinner with her family, never anything out of doors or in the daytime. Alex was asking the twins about their family. Anne told him about the boarders at their house in town. Sam told him about the horses he tended. Their voices sounded like a phonograph with the volume turned too low. Sarah looked around. The whole world felt lazy. Even the gnats churned above the grass in languid gyrations. She stood up, her feet swollen and prickly.

“I’m going to take a walk around the pond to clear my head. Anne?”

“Why not? You boys can talk about guns or dynamos or something.”

“Ladies, enjoy yourselves.” Alex turned to Sam as soon as they moved away. “I’ll get my rifle. We can put some pine cones on a stump. What firearm did you bring?”

“A Schofield Model 3 revolver, like Jesse James used. My uncle brought it back from out west.”

“A genuine cowboy weapon,” Alex said. “May I try it?”

“As long as you’ve got coins to wager.” Sam’s face was all grin.