Page 229 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

resume her studies when school opened in a couple of weeks—at home, of

course—with Mamá. She said she would send us postcards and letters, and
pictures of the film set. She said more, but I didn’t hear much of it. What I was
feeling was enormous relief and outright giddiness. My dread of the coming end
of summer was like a knot in my belly, winding tighter with each passing day as
I steeled myself against the approaching farewell. I woke every morning now
eager to see Thalia at the breakfast table, to hear the bizarre sound of her voice.
We barely ate before we were out climbing trees, chasing each other through the
barley fields, plowing through the stalks and letting out war cries, lizards
scattering away from our feet. We stashed make-believe treasures in caves,
found spots on the island with the best and loudest echoes. We shot photos of
windmills and dovecotes with our pinhole camera and took them to Mr. Roussos,
who developed them for us. He even let us into his darkroom and taught us about
different developers, fixers, and stop baths.
The night of Madaline’s announcement, she and Mamá shared a bottle of

wine in the kitchen, Madaline doing most of the drinking, while Thalia and I
were upstairs, playing a game of tavli. Thalia had the mana position and had
already moved half her checkers onto her home board.
“She has a lover,” Thalia said, rolling the dice.
I jumped. “Who?”

“ ‘Who?’ he says. Who do you think?”
I had learned, over the course of the summer, to read Thalia’s expressions
through her eyes, and she was looking at me now like I was standing on the
beach asking where the water was. I tried to recover quickly. “I know who,” I
said, my cheeks burning. “I mean, who’s the … you know …” I was a twelve-
year-old boy. My vocabulary didn’t include words like lover.
“Can’t you guess? The director.”
“I was going to say that.”

“Elias. He’s something. He plasters his hair down like it’s the 1920s. He has a
thin little mustache too. I guess he thinks it makes him look rakish. He’s
ridiculous. He thinks he’s a great artist, of course. Mother does too. You should
see her with him, all timid and submissive, like she needs to bow to him and
pamper him because of his genius. I can’t understand how she doesn’t see it.”
“Is Aunt Madaline going to marry him?”

Thalia shrugged. “She has the worst taste in men. The worst.” She shook the
dice in her hands, seemed to reconsider. “Except for Andreas, I suppose. He’s
nice. Nice enough. But, of course, she’s leaving him. It’s always the bastards she
falls for.”