The Clover House (29 page)

He was with her parents in the sitting room, telling them who he was and how he had arrived at the farm. Her father eased himself into an armchair and motioned to the young
man to do the same. Her mother left the room after the young man had been speaking for some time and reappeared with a pitcher of water.

His name was Lambros Skourtis, and he was from a hardworking family in Aigio, he said. His parents had sent him the thirty-five kilometers west along the coast to Patras to train as a tailor. He had recently begun working as an assistant to an elderly tailor in the city, a man who had sewn a few of Clio’s father’s suits. Skourtis rented a room in a hotel near the harbor, and the place had been struck by an Italian bomb. He had salvaged a few things that he had brought with him in a suitcase; he waved toward the farmyard, where it appeared he had left the bag. Though he wanted to return to Patras, he was hoping to wait until the bombing was done. He leaned forward eagerly to say he guessed it would be only a matter of days before Greece pounded the Italians on the Albanian front and shut them up for good.

“Let them go fight in Africa,” he said. “They can’t handle us Greeks.”

Clio wondered why he hadn’t become part of the
us
himself, why he wasn’t fighting in the Albanian snow like every other young man.

“Are there others like you?” her father asked him.

“How could there be?” Clio murmured. “He’s gorgeous.”

“The roads are crowded,” Skourtis said. “Some carriages and cars, but mostly people on foot. I don’t think I’ll be the only one to ask you for a favor.”

Clio could see what her parents were thinking. In the glances they exchanged while Skourtis turned his hat in his hands, she saw the calculation they were making. Theirs was a simple equation concerning refugees, beds, and social standing. No matter how high his social standing, a lawyer, for instance,
would be of little use now. But a tailor who could mend socks and trouser seats could be very useful indeed.

“We can make up a bed for you in the overseer’s rooms,” her father said, and Skourtis leapt to his feet and shook his hand in both of his.

Clio pulled away from the window as Skourtis and her father came through the door. She leaned over the porch railing, staring out at the pasture, where the family’s small herd of cows was grazing.

“Clio,” her father said, “tell Irini that Mr. Skourtis is going to be moving in to one of their rooms for a short time. Irini will show you where to go,” he said to Skourtis, and went back inside.

“We haven’t been introduced,” Clio said.

“You’re Clio,” he said.

“Miss Clio Notaris.” She extended her hand.

“Lambros Skourtis,” he said, taking her hand as if to shake it and then, after a quick glance to the house door, kissing it lightly.

“Wait here,” Clio said, turning bright red as she snatched her hand away.

In the city, Yannis and Irini had their own home somewhere. But on the farm, their home was a collection of small rooms in a long and low outbuilding, almost all of which opened directly onto the farmyard. Skourtis was installed in a room at the corner of the building, giving Irini and Yannis some privacy but taking away the one space where they had sunlight from two windows.

A few days after Skourtis arrived, a grizzled older man with broad shoulders and only a loose jacket over his shirt limped up the steps to the porch. Seeing him through the window, Clio at first thought he might be the stranger who had tried to
attack her in the clover houses. She ran to bring her father to the door.

“What do you want?” he said, holding the door in his hand, ready to shut it.

“A place to sleep.”

“I’m sorry. I have no room.”

“I’m hungry and I’m willing to work.”

Something in the way the man stood made Clio’s father look down at his legs.

“You’re hurt.”

“It’s a bruise,” the man said, and turned to go.

“Let me see that.” The man was dragging his right leg. “Lift your cuff.” He did so and revealed a wide gash of spreading flesh. Leonidas pulled his head back sharply and turned to her.

“Clio, tell Irini to bring some first-aid supplies. This man is wounded.”

Clio brought Irini from the kitchen to the porch, trailing Sophia and the other two children behind her. Skourtis stood watching from the farmyard as Irini rolled the cuff up, swabbed at the hairy grime on the man’s leg, and wrapped the wound with cloth bandages. Irini didn’t say anything to the man as she worked. When she was finished, she looked at Notaris and nodded.

The wounded man rose to his feet and straightened his cuff around the new bandage. Her father asked him his name.

“Manolis Vlachos,” he said. “I work at the docks. I got hit during a raid. I’m old, but I’m still hauling cargo. I would go fight Italians if they’d take me.” He aimed a glance at Skourtis. “But they only want young men. Like that one there.”

Irini left, then returned with a bedroll and a pillow and led him over to the cottage, where he would share Skourtis’s room.

Clio watched Skourtis’s face for a sign of irritation, but he simply smiled vaguely as Irini led Vlachos away. Skourtis and Vlachos fell into a rhythm of work on the farm. Skourtis carried bags of grain to the barn so that Vlachos, whose wound still made it difficult for him to walk, could heave them up and dispense the grain slowly between the millstones for grinding. Skourtis went out to the woods to cut firewood, and Vlachos stacked it up into neat cords. Clio would watch the two of them sometimes, wondering what charming Skourtis made of this glowering and silent old man.

She fell into step with Skourtis as he emerged from the kitchen one afternoon, dusting flour from his trousers.

“Miss Notaris,” he said, with a flourish of the hand.

“Mr. Skourtis.” She gave a little curtsy. “Where are you off to?”

“More wood for the stove. Irini’s orders.”

“Is she working you too hard?” She made a face of mock concern.

“No,” he said brightly. “Just earning my keep. What are you doing to earn yours?”

“Mr. Skourtis! I am shocked at your impudence!”

“My most sincere apologies, Miss Notaris.”

He stopped and made a deep bow.

“Apology accepted.”

They reached the woodpile along the side of the barn, and Skourtis began to stack skinny logs of cedar and ash into a small wooden cart.

“Shouldn’t Vlachos be doing this?”

Skourtis shrugged. “He’s around somewhere.”

She watched Skourtis work, noticing that he lacked Vlachos’s compact efficiency. Skourtis carried one log at a time,
compared to the bundles of four or five that she had seen Vlachos loading. But while Vlachos worked like a piston, up and down from the knees, Skourtis made graceful sweeping movements with his arms, swinging his body as if in a dance.

“Here,” she said, taking a log from him. “I have nothing else to do.”

They worked together. Skourtis lifted the logs from the woodpile, swung them over to Clio, and she set them down into the cart.

“You’ve got enough wood here to last the whole war,” he said. “You’ll be all right here.”

“You don’t know how long the war will last.”

“How long can it take?” he said. “We’ll get them. You’ll see.”

She thought for a moment.

“Mr. Skourtis.”

“Lambros.”

“Lambros,” she said, blushing. “Why aren’t you fighting?” She remembered what Vlachos had said when he first arrived. Skourtis’s youth alone was enough to raise the question.

He laughed. “Someone has to repair the uniforms,” he said. “Might as well be me.”

“There aren’t uniforms here.”

“Well, the clothes, then. Someone’s got to repair the clothes you all wear.”

He stepped past her and added the log to the pile. But she watched him, not sure what she was looking for. Perhaps guilt or shame draped over his shoulders.

The next morning, Urania sent the children to gather apples, handing each of them a small basket and chiding them ahead of time not to eat everything they picked.

“I expect to see those baskets full of apples, not cores.”

Clio led the way through the farmyard, beyond the almond grove, where the apple trees stood in six short rows. The day was cold for November, and the sky was a dark gray as if it might snow.

“What if we were fighting here?” said Nestor in an awed voice.

“The front is a whole country away,” said Sophia.

“No, I mean what if it’s like this, and you have to hide behind the trees so the Italians won’t get you.” He began to stalk along beneath the branches.

“I don’t think the trees would be much protection,” Sophia said.

“Why would you say that?” Clio snapped. “Are you trying to scare him?”

“I’m just saying what’s a fact. They could bomb the farm just as easily as they bombed the city. I don’t know why we came here.”

“And I don’t know how you can take everything so literally.”

Sophia made a face.

“I know how to hide in trees, Sophia,” Nestor was saying. “We learned camouflage with the Scouts. And I bet I know how to cover my tracks better than you do.”

“Nestor,” Thalia called. “Take my picture.”

The boy had been given a camera for his tenth birthday a few weeks ago and had used it mostly to photograph battle arrays among his tin soldiers. He would set up miniature ranks of the Italian Julia Division where they could be easily shot down by the Greek soldiers he arranged behind rocks and on the edges of ravines. In Nestor’s war, as in reality, the Greeks were winning.

Thalia threw her arms around a tree trunk and kicked one
heel up. In the sunlight, her hair showed hints of the auburn in her mother’s hair. Nestor pulled the camera out of his jacket and held it at his chest, fiddling with a switch on the side.

“Hurry up!” Thalia switched her pose.

“Stay still.”

“Well, hurry.”

“I’m doing it.”

The camera’s viewfinder snapped open and Nestor stared down at it, shuffling from side to side as he tried to frame the image.

“Come on, Nestor!”

“Wait!” He pressed the shutter. “There.”

“Can we go now?” Clio asked.

Nestor folded the flaps of the viewfinder back into place and jammed the camera inside his jacket.

“Wait,” Clio said. “Chin up.” She took hold of Nestor’s collar and gently tugged his zipper all the way to the top. “You can take my picture later, all right?”

“All right,” he said, pouting.

The apples were too cold to eat, so within a short time they had almost filled their baskets with green and red fruit. Clio heard a crackling nearby and spun around, ready to bolt for the safety of the farmhouse.

“Stop eating!” Skourtis emerged from behind a tree, holding a large empty basket. “I’ve been sent by your mother to make sure you’re not eating everything in sight.”

“Look,” Nestor said, showing him the apples he had collected. “See?”

“Well done, young man. What’s the matter?” he said conspiratorially to the boy. “Aren’t they any good?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s see.” Skourtis held an apple up with suspicion. “No
worms. No poison—that I know of.” He took a large bite. “Very tasty,” he said, with his mouth full.

Nestor snatched an apple from his basket and did the same, so that both of them were talking to each other through mouths full of apple.

“Nestor Notaris!” Sophia snapped. “That’s enough. Where are your manners?”

“Come on, Sophia,” said Thalia. “It’s funny.” She grabbed an apple and took an enormous bite.

“They’re behaving like slobs. Like animals.”

“Sophia,” said Clio, glancing at Skourtis.

“Why should I care what he thinks?”

“Sophia!”

“All right, you two,” Skourtis said, pretending not to have heard Sophia’s insinuations. “Let’s clean ourselves up.”

Sophia sidled up to Clio.

“I don’t care if you like him,” she whispered. “He’s low class, and he’s teaching Nestor to be an animal like him.”

“He is not an animal. There’s something refined about him.”

Sophia rolled her eyes. “Is that why he’s not fighting?”

“I don’t know why,” Clio said. “Maybe he’s ill. Maybe he couldn’t pass the test. But I like him.”

“Can I take your picture, Mr. Skourtis?” Nestor said.

Sophia began to say something.

“Let him,” Clio said.

“Of course you can, if you call me Lambros. Here,” he said. “Make it look like I’m being useful.” He poured some apples into the large basket and held it up on his waist.

“Hold still, Lambros,” Nestor said, and this time he found the controls with confidence. As he cranked the film, he gave his sisters a look of vindication.

The children went back to work, refilling their baskets that
had been emptied into the larger one. Skourtis started near Nestor, picking from the high branches and setting the fruit in the boy’s basket. But as the children spread out across the trees, he ended up at Clio’s side, where he stayed as the others could be heard later agreeing to head back.

“I’m coming,” Clio called, but she made no move toward the house.

“You’re not cold?” Skourtis said.

“A little.”

“I don’t need this.” He tugged his scarf off and wrapped it loosely around her neck, pulling her hair out from under it. He grazed her skin with his fingers.

“My hands are still cold.”

He took them in his and blew.

“Let me see,” she said. His fingers were long and delicate, not at all the rough hands of the lower class. “Lambros, you cut yourself,” she said. There was a fresh scrape across the top of one knuckle.

“Must have been a branch.”

“Here.” She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed at the cut.

“That’s better.”

She turned her face up to his, and they stood for a moment with their lips a tiny distance apart, like two opposing magnets. And then something flipped and their lips were pressing together and then pressing open. Clio had kissed Takis and Thanassis, before his awkward mustache had sprouted, but never like this. Skourtis was three years older than she; he was a man. The feel of his mouth confirmed for her her own maturity and, because she was enjoying it, the rightness of what they were doing.