Achilles and the Beautiful Land

Roy enjoyed listening to the old guy who fixed zippers tell stories. The man would come through the back door into the kitchen of Roy’s house and sit down on the rickety little wooden chair with the left rear leg that was a quarter of an inch shorter than its other three. Roy’s mother kept the crooked chair because it had belonged to her grandmother and when his mother was a little girl she would sit on it. A daffodil had been painted in yellow on the inside back of the chair but it had faded badly over the years and Roy knew the vague shape was once a daffodil only because his mother told him so. Roy asked her why one leg was shorter than the others and she said she didn’t really know but that her grandmother had owned a brown and white mutt named Blackie who liked to chew on the chair’s legs; teeth marks, presumably Blackie’s, decorated all four of them.

The man who fixed zippers called himself Achilles. He was eighty-eight years old, he said, when he first appeared at the back door and asked Roy’s mother if she had any zippers that needed repairing. He spoke English but with a strange accent punctuated by a cloudy cough that sometimes made it difficult for Roy to understand him. Roy was five when he met Achilles, who remained a regular visitor for more than a year. Even when there were no zippers on Roy’s mother’s dresses or jackets to fix Achilles would come in and sit on the crooked chair by the door and talk to her and Roy, often telling stories about his childhood in a place he called the beautiful land. The beautiful land, said Achilles, was in another country, much smaller than America, a half-step from the Orient, where he had been born. Roy asked him what the name of the country was but Achilles said he didn’t know any more; the country had been invaded by soldiers from many other countries over the years and each time the name had been changed. The old man preferred to recall it only as the beautiful land, describing the forests and rivers and hills and villages where a boy such as he had been was welcomed into any hut or house to eat or sleep.

“Why did you leave there?” Roy asked him.

“When an army wearing helmets sporting blue feathers arrived from the East everyone in every village was forced to abandon their homes and belongings and march together for many days and nights to a train station. I was thirteen years old then and I had never seen a train, so I was curious, and even though I did not want to leave the beautiful land, I did not really mind going. I had heard people describe trains and when I finally saw one I was thrilled that I was going to ride on it. The train was puffing white smoke and hissing like a big long dragon.”

“Where did it take you?”

“Far away from the beautiful land to a place I have forgotten.”

“Did your parents bring you to Chicago?”

“My parents were made to travel on a different train. One day I did not see them and ever since there has been another day.”

“What kinds of animals were there in the beautiful land?”

“Deer, tigers and birds, and fish, of course, in the rivers and lakes.”

“Didn’t the tigers eat the deer?”

“Yes, Roy, and hunters killed and ate both of them, as well as the fish.”

“Did the tigers ever eat the people who lived in the villages?”

“A tiger once spoke to me. I was walking in the woods, looking for mushrooms, when a magnificent orange and black and white beast appeared in my path.”

“How old were you?”

“No more than ten. I was a small boy, only a bit bigger than you are now.”

“You’re still small, Achilles. For a grown man, I mean.”

“Being small has its advantages. I assumed the tiger was going to eat me but he just stared with his yellow eyes and said, ‘Come back when you are larger and will make a better meal.’ Then he disappeared into the trees.”

Roy told his mother that a tiger had spoken to Achilles and she said, “That was in a time when people and animals were still polite to one another.”

“Achilles said the tiger wouldn’t eat him because he was too small.”

“That’s what I mean,” she said.

Roy did not see Achilles for a while so he asked his mother if she had.

“No, Achilles has gone back to the beautiful land. He told me to tell you that he looks forward to seeing you there in about a hundred years.”

“Can you show me on a map where the beautiful land is?”

“Achilles said, ‘Tell Roy that when the time comes he’ll know how to get there. I’ll be waiting for him.’”

“A hundred years is a long time to wait,” said Roy.

“Maybe not,” said his mother, “not if you’re in the beautiful land. Achilles won’t ever leave there again.”