THE LITLE TERRORIST

By Sheila Schwartz

CHAPTER ONE

Elizabeth and Stephen had carefully planned every detail of their first vacation in fifteen years. They set off for Greece with Annie, their daughter, the day her summer vacation began. Everything went well. The plane ride was smooth, the sleek, newly painted boat was waiting for them at the dock in Athens, the Greeks were polite and accommodating, and the weather was glorious.

They followed the path of Odysseus, but wee spared his terrible experiences. Calypso held him captive for seven years, the Cyclops ate some of his shipmates and hurled a mountain peak at him, and Circe changed his men into swine. But for Elizabeth’s family; pragmatic, modern Americans, there were no monsters, no traps, no enemies, no obstacles, only long, lazy days of hot sun, cloudless sky, perfumed salty air and the eternal sea, rhythmically rocking them to sleep, night after night.

Their luck was good. It always had been good. They took it for granted. "This is Heaven," Elizabeth said.

"As close as we’ll come," Stephen answered, his arms around his two girls.

On Crete they explored the ruins of Knossus, the ancient palace of King Minos; on Mykonos, they ate roasted lobsters on tables beside the sea and on Delos, as a fierce, dusty wind blew against them, they gazed at the stone dog sentinels, all that remained of a lost civilization. Elizabeth shivered at the desolation, although the air was warm, thinking that even the greatest civilizations can fall apart. Nothing lasts. Not the good and not the bad. On Delos, only stone dogs remained, guarding nothing, revealing nothing, impassive forever beneath the howling wind.

"I don’t like it here, Mommy," Annie said. "It’s sort of depressing."

"I don’t like it either," Elizabeth agreed.

Their moods lifted again on the island of Santorini, when they rode donkeys up hundreds of steps to the charming, whitewashed town. "I love this," Annie screamed, completely without fear.

Leisurely, they ate grilled lamb at an outdoor cafe and listened to local legends about the lost city of Atlantis, supposedly located right beside Santorini, until 1623 B. C., when it sank as a result of a massive volcanic explosion that also buried Santorini under ash, nine hundred feet deep.

In 360 B. C., Plato, wrote a detailed account of Atlantis, with its location, history, culture and the terrible explosion that led to its destruction. "In a single day and night of misfortune," he wrote, "Atlantis disappeared in the depths of the sea."

Strange to contemplate the rise and fall of civilizations, Elizabeth thought. At one moment, hundreds of peaceful, ordinary people were just going about their business; buying food, weaving cloth, baking bread, making love, giving birth, talking, laughing, arguing over nothing, and the next moment everything was gone.

Behind the facade of these cheerful, friendly, sunbaked, whitewashed villages, ran the knowledge of fate and the acceptance of the omnipresence of tragedy, always lurking there beneath the surface, always possible for anyone, for everyone, as had happened on Atlantis. The Greeks knew it and accepted it. Fate! Destiny! The Hindus called it dharma.

But Americans do not accept fate, she thought. Our legends are different. American myths are about Paul Bunyan, Davy Crockett and John Henry; extroverted, cheerful, enthusiastic, strong, unafraid people, capable of subduing a continent. Americans do not shiver before the gods.

For Americans, nothing was determined. Everything could be changed, improved, fixed-up, replaced, controlled. This was what gave them their characteristic auras of innocence and optimism. Americans dream about the future, not the past. Unlike Oedipus, American heroes don’t kill their fathers or sleep with their mothers. American heroes drove steel on the railroads, tore down forests, bet on jumping frogs, invented electricity, automobiles and computers, and believed that they, not quarrelsome gods, controlled the world. One could beat the odds, win on the long shot, expect the salvations of the deus ex machina. Why Old Dan'l Webster had tricked and beaten even the devil himself.

Two ways of thinking, the old world and the new. So very different. What did she believe? Mainly, based on past experience, that she and Stephen controlled their lives and that Annie would be able to control hers. At least they had, thus far and there was no reason to think this would change. In America, at the end of the millenium, Annie could be anything she wanted to be. And each of them might well live to be a hundred, or even older.

On the last day of vacation, Annie said, "I don't want this vacation to end. I want to stay here forever, just sailing around. Can we come back next year?"

"Maybe," Elizabeth said. "We'll see."

"Can we Daddy?"

"Maybe," he echoed. "But there’s a great big world to explore."

She put her head on his shoulder. "I’m real lucky," she said. "Some kids’ parents don’t take them with them on trips. I’m glad you do."

"We couldn’t enjoy ourselves away from you," Elizabeth said. "We’d miss you too much."

"I’d miss you, too, if you went without me. We’re a great family, aren’t we?"

"We sure are," Stephen said. "The best."

"The absolute best," Annie echoed.

They took a cab to Athens airport, checked their luggage through, and strolled through the terminal to their gate. "Give me some money, Daddy," Annie said. "I want to get some candy for the plane."

She took their remaining drachmas, walked over to the counter, and stood there debating what to buy, while Stephen and Elizabeth waited for her. Just ordinary people--talking, laughing, waiting to board their plane, engaging in the little acts of ordinary life that seem so heartbreakingly precious after they have gone. Ordinary people engaged in ordinary tasks, like the people of ancient Pompeii or Atlantis.

And then, suddenly, out of nowhere, defying the odds, as terribly and irrevocably as the volcanic explosions of Mt. Helens, Krakatowa or Santorini, disaster struck. Elizabeth heard strange, alarming explosions, from a distance, before she saw anything, heard poppoppops of explosive, chaotic sounds from somewhere in the airport, and wondered what they were.

But Stephen knew they meant trouble and screamed, "My God. Gunfire, get down," as, almost immediately, a horde of men in ski masks; slim, agile, demonic, came running toward them, screaming, cursing, indiscriminately mowing down everyone in their path; men, women, children. Running, moving, shooting volley after volley, in a scene familiar from hundreds of movies.

"Annie, come here," Stephen yelled, reaching out his hand for her. As she bounded toward him, an enormous fusillade rang out, riddling their bodies, jerking them about like puppets, up and down and sideways, and finally sending them crashing to the hard, marble floor, where they seemed to bounce once or twice before being still. It happened in a moment. Pain without sin, murder, regardless of virtue. No sanctuary! No hiding place! No hiding place anywhere.

Elizabeth saw it happen, saw every moment of it, lived every moment of it, died every moment of it.

With a final barrage, the gunfire stopped, the men disappeared, an eerie silence filled the airport, and new sounds began; screams, groans of agony, shouts, sirens, and a horrifying chorus of weeping and lamentation. Dazed, in shock, Elizabeth pulled herself up. A river of gore flowed across the marble floor and she crawled and slipped, then crawled again through the obscene sea of blood, to where her beloved family lay.

Stephen and Annie rested against each other, blood spurting from their wounds and gushing out into puddles around them. She knelt in the blood and keened over their bodies pleading, "Wake up, get up," even though she knew it was of no use. She was a doctor and she knew that they were dead. Her stalwart husband and her bright, precious, tender little girl were dead. They would never be together again, never, never, never. She flung herself across their bodies and kissed their still-warm faces, then sat there keening in shock. This hadn't happened. It couldn't have happened. It was only a bad dream. It was impossible. It couldn't have happened. Soon she would wake up.

She never lost consciousness. She was not that lucky. She sat there, unable to move, drenched in their blood. Police, rescue workers, doctors, attendants carrying stretchers, hurried around her, and she sat there keening. Her pain was so fierce that she wanted to rend her clothes, wail and scream, tear out her hair by the roots. Her anguish was so intense that she thought her heart would crack with it. Crack, she begged. Crack now. I want to die, too. But it didn't crack and she could not lose her mind. Nothing could still the pain. Completely conscious, she had to live through this horror, totally aware of what she had lost and con­demned to life.

The next few hours passed in a daze. She rode in the ambulance with them to the morgue, made arrangements for their bodies to be flown back to New York, and the next day flew back on the plane with their coffins.

On the plane, she thought she’d go mad. She couldn't read, couldn't rest, couldn't sleep, couldn't eat. Her mind kept feverishly turning, trying somehow to alter what had happened. If only they had come earlier and been on the plane before the terrorists came, if only Annie hadn't stopped for candy, if only, if only, if only....

Why had they been there at that precise time? Why had she been left alive? Why had this happened to them? Why had they died and why was she still alive? Why did things happen the way they did? Why had she been foolish enough to believe that she controlled her life, that she was different from ordinary people? Was she being punished for that? For challenging the gods? For daring to think she could keep her family safe?

Before this, she’d been an innocent; now she understood the Greek myths that they had studied before leaving for Greece. "Oh Annie, Annie darling," she wept, "those terrible stories weren't fairy tales after all. Those terrible stories were true; I'm glad you didn't know. Glad that neither of you knew."

Now Elizabeth was Cassandra, Hecuba, Andromache, the Trojan women bereft of husbands, sons, brothers, fathers, children. Now she was part of the history of all women who lose their families, but are condemned to go on living. Now she knew what she had always known in her heart, although she had always pushed that knowledge away from her. Everything withers, decays and dies and all that are left are the stone dogs of Delos, howling to the empty wilderness, as she now was. At the heart of every stone is just a pile of dust.

As suddenly and surely as Adam and Eve had been expelled from the Garden of Eden, she had been thrust from perfection into Hell. Happiness was transitory, a temporary illusion. Only tragedy and death were true. No one escaped her fate. In one split second she had become an outsider to the world's happiness. Joy was over. The dream was over. She was alone. After this, there would be nobody for Thanksgiving, nobody for Chanukah, nobody for New Year's Eve, nobody for birthdays or anniversaries, nobody for picnics, barbecues or boating, nobody to care if she were sick or well, happy or unhappy, successful or unsuccessful. Nobody to laugh with. No little arms around her neck. No, "Mommy I love you." No sticky kisses.

No tall handsome husband at her side, his long legs beside hers in bed, his arm beneath her shoulder, his smell, his taste, his body as familiar to her as her own. Stephen, stretched out on the couch in front of the big stone fireplace, confidently doing the Sunday Times' crossword puzzle in ink. Stephen, avid to hear her stories about the hospital, comforting her for the deaths of patients, taking her for root canal, giving her strength to face daily problems. No lovemaking any longer to keep her safe against the winter winds howling against the house. Oh Stephen. The one person in the world with whom she could be herself. Ah Stephen! My long-legged love.

Perhaps he was not dead. Perhaps he would be waiting for her at home. Perhaps Annie was on her way home from school. But they would not be. She knew that. Nobody would be waiting for her at home, or anywhere else, ever again. She would never have another husband, another family, another child. Oh Stephen. Oh Annie, she wept. Your faces, your bodies, your smiles, your laughter, your love.

For the rest of her life she would wander in the desert, like Hagar and Ishmael, haunted by the memory of all that she had lost. The good times were over. What remained were loneliness, emptiness, regret, anger, bitterness, and nothingness. The rest of her life could only be denouement. That was all that remained. Nothingness and sorrow.

During the flight home she alternated between titanic rages and pitch-black depression. "Please," she prayed to the god she didn’t believe in, "Let me die. Let the plane crash. Give me unconsciousness."

But the plane moved onward, inexorably, bearing home its cargo of suffering and death. It hadn’t happened. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. But it had.