Read Online Olympia by Dennis Bock - Free Book Online Page A

don’t run,” and she takes off through the open barn door, screaming with delight. Her footsteps run across the compound towards the house and the kitchen door swings open and slams shut.

    That first night, after supper, my mother and Willy sit apart from us. They linger at the kitchen table while the rest of us settle into other parts of the house. There’s no sign of the laughing I’ve come to expect of these summer nights with relatives and friends. Instead, from the kitchen comes the hushed talking, the unintentioned clink of a spoon against china. My father’s accordion remains tucked away in the trunk of the car.

    Ulla goes upstairs. In the living room my father and I study maps of Europe. His eye and finger speed along red and black highways to parts of the country we haven’t been yet. I’m kneeling beside him. He traces down into Italy, France, and Spain.

    â€œWe’ll see all of these places,” he says. Then, “Look at this.” He pulls the map closer to him over the hardwood floor. “The great seaports and rivers of Europe. See how all the important towns are collected along the rivers and natural harbours. Here and here and here,” he says, pointing to Bremen, then London, then Barcelona. I lean closer. “This is where we were last week,” indicating the small blue dot near Hanover where we rented a sailboat while Ruby and my mother walked in the trees along the shoreline.

    Beside us Ruby sits talking to herself. A family of dolls spread out before her, presents from Uncle Helmut and his wife in Frankfurt. I got a boomerang and a drafting set. She picks up the baby doll. “This is Gertrude,” she says to herself. “But she doesn’t mind when you call her ‘Bertha,’ either.” Then there’s a soft moan from the kitchen, like the sound of a child blubbering. My father looks over his shoulder. His finger curls in the middle of the Danube.

    Ruby and I are assigned a spare bedroom with a view looking up to the mountains. But by the time we get in there to sleep, it’s too dark to see. I sleep on the cot my father’s brought up from the basement. It smells musty, like rain and earth and snails. Before the lights go out I notice the wallpaper, green and red cartoon horses standing like people, holding each other around the waist. The checked curtains blow
into hollow mouths over the open window. After the lights go out I think about Willy
.
I imagine a yellow
gas caught in his lungs, playing his limbs like a marionette’s. I think about the handful of medicine he took at the supper table. I wonder if his pills have anything to do with us. A cuckoo clock ticks over Ruby’s bed, on the wall that separates my parents’ room from ours. I think about the story my mother told us on the drive here. How Willy fought in the war, and the Christmas Eve truce when time stopped. Before I fall
asleep I hear talking coming from my parents’ room. But I don’t hear what it is they’re saying. I dream about horses stuck in mud up to their chests, unfathoming eyes turned upward.

    The next day after breakfast we hike up the side of the valley. We stop to rest often, for Willy mostly
.
But for my mother and Ruby, too. Not because they’re tired but because they keep wandering off the trail to pick the blue bell-like
Enzian
that grow over these mountains. My father carries the picnic basket in his right hand, his camera looped around his neck. It’s a hot day and he’s not saying much. When Ruby and my mother disappear into the woods for the first time, he grows a pained look on his face. He looks over to the opposite side of the valley and snaps some shots, then sits down on a rock and waits. He fiddles with his camera and looks at his watch. I know he’s thinking about the part of the country we’re not going to be able to see because of this stopover, the storms we’ll miss back home. He