(ELENA’S DIARY) “My mother’s suede beret went to a farmer today for a bag of potatoes. He will make a pair of nice shoes and we will have a few meals. He must have liked it because he threw in a head of lettuce and didn’t even haggle with Mother. And that is rare. So, yesterday we had a royal lunch: potatoes and a few leaves of lettuce sprinkled with a little oil and vinegar. We picked up the dishes and Mama, as usual, crossed herself ‘...the good Lord will take
care of tomorrow’.
I walked out. Today the
beret, tomorrow, what? Later, when the dishes were done and we were all upstairs again, the two boys did their homework -always the last minuteand I opened a book pretending to study. My work was done, but I needed the luxury of being alone in a small room with three other people. I needed to think and try to understand Mama giving thanks for the miserable few potatoes. It seemed that the idea of the Supreme God was taking another meaning, not church and icons and sermons but a material substance, possessions to sell so we could survive a brutal occupation by armies who also were the same God’s children, but somehow they could do away with the Ten Commandments. Why the fasts, the liturgies, the holy communion? Why kiss the icon when at that minute there was an airplane over my head ready to blast both me and the icon? With all that human intelligence, the efforts, the miracles of science and art, why does He allow this double standard? Victims and victors should not even be in the same planet. Childish thoughts! Maybe He knows what He is doing -I hope-! My thoughts were interrupted by loud pounding on the door downstairs.
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Aristos ran to the window to check and the rest of us crowded behind him, we didn’t expect anyone. We had a glimpse of a pretty face as she looked up and asked with strange familiarity to open the door. We looked at each other; Aristos went down to open. The woman came into the room like a breeze of fresh air, bleached blond hair and face neatly made-up. I really wished she had been looking for us; I noticed that the ugly, drab room was transformed, and she smelled so good! I gave her our one and only steady chair, and took her coat. She looked a bit frivolous for our war-oriented minds, but her whole appearance was a vision of peace. In front of the four stunned people, she dug into her bosom and extracted a crumbled paper. “Here,” she said sitting down. “A letter from Popi; I had to hide it because they searched my bag.” Suddenly we were howling and jumping up and down, even Aristos, while waiting for Mama to tear the envelope open; her hands were shaking. This, I thought, is nothing but a miracle! Aliki, -that was her name- is a midwife at the hospital where Aunt Popi is interning. We looked at her and then we looked at Mama respecting her right to read the letter without making it public. We kept the young nurse busy asking her questions and I could see Mama squirming probably thinking that we have no refreshment to offer her, we had eaten all the potatoes she had cooked. But Aliki was only interested in divulging the news seeing how isolated we were and starving for news. She told us of the first two winters of the siege, her eyes dilated as though witnessing the drama anew, the corpses littering the streets of Athens and Piraeus, the hellish nightmares at the hospital, mothers dying while giving birth to dead embryos; dead children picked up by garbage trucks each morning,
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packed sardine-like. The more she spoke and the more she gesticulated, the stuffier the air in the room became, even her perfume evaporated. At some point, I guess she saw our faces and stopped talking. She raised both palms, as in prayer, and smiled diffusing
some of the gloom.”
“This Spring things are different,” Aliki said with a sigh of relief.” Stores began to open their doors; the Red Cross managed to get some supplies into the country; the black market thieves are thriving. Thankfully, the people are not dying like flies in the streets. “Look,” she said after a pause trying to guess from their faces if they were shocked, “Hitler and Mussolini can’t control certain biological functions...” Anna bit her lips and looked out the window and then at the children, Aliki laughed and winked at her. Children shouldn’t hear about births and babies Anna’s look seemed to convey to their visitor.
And I condemn Ourania’s mother, Elena
thought. But the children laughed because their guest laughed and her glee was contagious. For a few awkward moments Aliki played with her gloves. Elena wished that one day she would have a pair exactly like those soft, cream colored kid gloves. Right now her fingers were blistering and freezing in the morning going to school. Elegant and fashionable, she thought, not having the slightest idea of what ‘fashion’ meant in times of war. She knew from Signorina Tescari that luxury items such as silk stockings, beautiful shoes, the gloves, were ‘social status’, she lost herself in her reveries only to come out with a start and hear her mother tell Aliki about their daily struggle for survival, the worthless money. .
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like Athens minus he bodies in the streets, Aliki thought. “The children are very thin,” Aliki said looking at each of them
taking a
mental picture for Popi. Anna lowered her head; whatever is happening, the lowered head seemed to imply, is my own fault. “Tell me about Popi,” she finally said changing the subject. “How is she managing
all alone?
“Except for our spinsterhood,” Aliki said bursting in laughter, “we are both fine. The hospital feeds us whatever garbage the Red Cross can’t get rid of –all
joking aside they are responsible for almost stopping our
and we
annihilation-
save our petty salaries and gratuities; naturally, if we don’t spend
it immediately,” she stopped for a moment and took a long breath. “Look,” she continued, ”some people sold their homes and all they got in return
the next day
was a gallon of olive oil...” “How much money is ‘much’?” Nicky asked. “When I left Athens we were moving from billions to trillion drachmas. God only knows what it is today.” “How do you carry that much money around?” asked Aristos. “Not in our pocketbooks, I assure you; it’s the same paper, only much
more and we have to carry it in bags, or carts. The money is ‘inflated’, has lost in valu “When will this end?” sighed Anna. Aliki shrugged. Anna was murmuring under her breath. “God, you have abandoned us.” She crossed herself.
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY)
“I thought of the cycle of religion as I was taught in school. God is life! Life is sustained with money that is man-made, inflationary paper. People speak of the English pound as being durable; I wonder if it’s
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because it is gold and does not rot like paper. Dollars are also paper, my mother said; so God has taken some sides, after all and closes the cycle and let the best man win! I felt absolutely brilliant! I will never allow myself to be involved with their money, their gold or their inflation! That is if I get out alive.”
In the few hours Aliki stayed with them they learned happenings of which they were totally unaware. Like how the people coped with hunger and the humiliation and hardship; how they managed to survive from day to day under the oppression of the madness of an international affliction, She realized that those people were as far from reality as if they were living on the moon and faced their own misfortunes only. Gently, she changed the subject. Concentration camps was a subject unknown to their world, except as something that existed like a prison camp; she knew they were unaware of the tragic reality of the word ‘crematorium’ which she avoided. She told her shocked audience of trains were taking prisoners to Germany which was something they knew, the Nazis, they were told, took them to labor camps since all their men were ‘busy’ otherwise in the various fronts. When Alice mentioned ovens and human beings, women, children, old and young men being incinerated, a deathly silence was the reaction. Then they turned to look at Nicky who hid his face against the wall and cried as if he had lost something very valuable. He has, Aliki thought; part of his humanity. Aristos walked outside of the room and stayed there. That’s why she came, he was thinking, to start trouble. Burning people, indeed, what are we, cannibals, in this day and age? This is a war, bombs will fall, people will die, but throw them in the oven? Ha! He walked
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back into the room which was immersed in thick funereal silence. Anna sat like a statue long forgotten, and Elena was looking out the window tears rolling down her cheeks. Aliki seemed to be at a loss as to how she could deal with their emotions; She had made a mistake, she thought and looked at Anna for some help. Anna took a long breath. “How do you deal with money?” She asked getting the message. “We share our earnings with ‘inflation’” she tried to laugh and the children looked up; she had managed to bring them back from their sad reveries. “ More than inflation, our biggest and more terrifying problem are the Germans...” “What’s ‘inflation’?” Asked Nicky. Elena was glad that he asked, she had no idea what it meant; to her the word related to
bicycle tires; Nicky must
have thought it was something edible but hostile, wouldn’t care to learn about financial escalation
or de-escalation. Aliki began to think of a way to
explain economics to a child. “It’s like this,” she said finally breathing slowly as if to gain time. “Let’s say that I get paid this morning for fifteen days of on
work and at the end of my shift I run to the market where I can load
groceries
–we’re assuming now, right?-I can buy a toy, clothes and save some pocket money or pay half my rent. At the market, I find that values had changed since yesterday. Now my money can buy maybe a pair or cloth slippers and two oranges, because the money was inflated, it had lost its value, the 1000 drachma bill became something like 100 drachmas worth. Do you understand?” Nicky nodded and whistled in amazement. It was too much for him. Anna was to first to stir.
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“What was the crime of those people?” she asked, bringing back the subject. “They were Jews!” For the second time Aliki saw the family go to pieces. “Leila!” Elena cried remembering her aunt’s friend. “Your aunt told me about her,” Aliki said. “She was taken New Year’s Eve. She
had been hiding but someone denounced her.” “So they are burning the Jews only,” Aristos said as if relieved. “They
crucified Christ.” At that, his aunt got up and stood in front of him ready to strike. Elena caught her hand. “No mama, no, he doesn’t know any better, let him be.” Aliki was stunned. She knew the terrible poison of anti-Semitism, she just couldn’t imagine it had
such deep roots to affect a young boy in a village.
hadn’t left my village
If I
she thought, I, too, might be saying the same stupid
things now. “Actually,” she said trying to sound casual, “in the crematories they are not burning only the Jews, there are others, too. In fact, they could very well take you one day, or your father, God forbid. They have taken thousands of Greeks in their camps.” She looked at him long and sternly. “What are those ‘crematories’?” Elena asked. “Something like very large factories I understand from what I hear, I haven’t seen one even in a picture; I guess they are ovens of some sort.” Elena shuddered and gasped. “But tell me about you, your school, after all your aunt will expect to hear your news. “We have no Germans here,” Aristos shouted and walked out again. Elena was quiet. Aliki thought that she had to break the horror that she brought to this peaceful family before she left them. “I have a surprise for you,” she said merrily, unnecessarily loud. “It’s a
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secret but I will tell you if you promise not to tell your aunt.” She saw that the mood changed immediately, they warmed up to her and came closer. Anna bent to re-kindle the coals
and Nicky stopped crying.
“Popi is getting married,” Anna said raising her hands in prayer. Aliki laughed and moved her head. “The Germans are leaving,” Nicky offered half-heartedly, hopefully. “To each his own,” Aliki laughed; “sit, sit.” “If Hitler died don’t keep us in suspense,” Elena said and sat on the floor close to her. “No, no, you didn’t hear any mourning bells, did you? No, the devil is protecting him. The secret has to do with Popi. She is preparing a trunk for you.” She looked at their faces that seemed happy enough but didn’t show the enthusiasm she expected after such deprivation. “There will be something for each one of you, shoes, clothes and whatever food she has hoarded. You have no idea how this woman scrimps and saves like an ant. She buys anything she can afford, nothing for herself, and locks it in that trunk; it’s like madness. She locks her door and stares at her treasure. I guess she is imagining your faces when you open the trunk.” “How is she sending it, when?” Elena asked already feeling the warmth of a new coat enveloping her emaciated body. “You know that the Italians will not let it
go through.”
“She has applied for an ‘export permit’ because you are not Greeks and she
will probably bribe someone to get it through. Documents take a while in a
trilingual bureaucracy, but it will get here. Won’t that be a miracle?” She clapped her hands with happiness, tossed her head back and laughed. They laughed
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with her, though
Elena, the ‘sourpuss’ as Nicky called her, thought that yes,
laughter is very
good and it was too bad they had no cause to laugh more
but to laugh for something that’s not funny, is just frivolous. On the
often, other
hand, Aliki used her laughter to squirm out of situations when they got her in a mess. “You look well after the voyage,” Anna told the visitor recalling their adventure of two days and two nights on that miserable craft that almost drowned them. “Listen,” Aliki answered. “I would allow nothing, no man, no God, no nature, to interfere with the way I look, come what may.” Elena looked at her mother, but in at the
Anna was looking at the door, probably expecting to see Aristos come wrong moment. “After all the years I spent in civilized Athens, the
sophistication, manners and education I had earned, I expect to come home and practice them, dazzle some men, me to
make women envy me...you know...You don’t expect
come out of that wretched caique looking disheveled and sick like a
scrambled egg?” At least, she has strength and purpose, Elena thought, though that ‘purpose’ seems to be directed towards snatching a male. Yet, she admired her sense of humor. Anna got up and rekindled the coals. Little flames shot up as she put the little pot on them to make her famous ersatz coffee she saved with care for the rare visits of her quarrelsome brother. The room, already in semidarkness, was filled with the aroma of the brew, but still the melancholy persisted. Too much for such little time, Aliki thought. She found them dispirited, hopeless. “What is the matter with you people?” she finally exploded. “It’s just a
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war. If they don’t kill us all we have an obligation. We can’t just sit down and wait to die. A whole continent shares our misfortunes but they fight back. What’s a little hunger compared to what others go through?” A ‘little hunger’, Elena thought. Days, weeks, years of constant starvation, looking at our bodies disappearing daily, having to watch a vicious nut swallow the world day by day; ’just a war’, indeed! ”You live outside history,” Aliki continued with a lower voice suddenly very serious. “It’s our choice sometimes. The whole land has taken up arms.” Anna looked at the door again hoping Aristos was far away. “You haven’t heard that the partisans are fighting the Nazis throughout Europe; “Greece, too?” Nicky shot up like an arrow. Elena giggled when she saw him. He was either in shock or he had sat on the broken spring of the mattress. “Against the Nazis?” He asked incredulously, his voice hoarse. “Yes, and the Italians, and their collaborators. Bridges and supply trains are blown up, convoys, trucks dynamited. There are leaflets in the streets of Athens daily, slogans on the walls...” Anna thought of Mitsos’ blown body. “We have an idea,” she said mournfully. “We have just lost a cousin in one of those trains. Don’t tell Popi.” “Whose walls?” Elena said and was immediately sorry when she saw Aliki’s looks. “Any wall; any house or building and stone fences. It feels so good to open your window first thing in the morning, and a fresh
writing greets you. She
spread her arms to show the length and breath of the slogan: LONG LIVE FREEDOM, or DEATH TO FASCISM... or call for a demonstration which is usually bloody. The Germans aren’t in a jocular mood.” “People go!” Anna was aghast. “Even knowing they may get killed, they go?” “You should see… by the hundreds of thousands, the streets of Athens and
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Piraeus look like rivers, no one can get through, no car no trolley, no human. There are arrests, that’s to be expected, and injuries, even deaths.” Anna crossed herself. The other war wasn’t like that, she thought, but then they didn’t have foreign armies occupying their land. “What makes those people think that they can fight tanks and bullets? “The can’t kill us all,” Aliki answered, we are many. They also fear us, believe it or not, because they are killers and know that one way or another, we’ll never allow them to destroy us. You really must hear of what is going on in the villages and mountains with the guerilla units to appreciate the fear of the enemy.” “They fight? With arms?” Nicky was getting an education; He didn’t hide his excitement. “Yes, don’t forget Nicky, Greece is full of mountains and we are used to those mountains. And then, the 1821 revolution against the Turks, is pretty recent and fighting on those mountains is nothing new to us. On the other hand, war is the enemy’s game; he will be the last one to admit defeat.” “Are they losing the war, then?” Anna asked not believing it. “That means that we are winning; if this is winning I hate to think what ‘losing’ means.” “Isolation is bad,” Aliki resigned with a sigh. “Don’t you people have a radio any place, a secret one? Doesn’t anyone have one? Don’t you get any leaflets from someplace? That’s what the ‘super-race’ wants. To see you totally demoralized.” “We have no radio,” Elena said. “That’s really bad; no wonder you feel hopeless. Look, ‘wishing does not freedom breed’. You must go out, get involved, do something, raise a voice with
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the rest of the world, challenge the enemy.”
Aristos walked in at that.
“And get killed”, he added with sarcasm. “They can’t kill us all, we are not that stupid. The enemy chases us, we run from street to street and through alleys and over rooftops. They arrest, they torture, they execute but whoever is still alive must fight. Aristos, no one will offer us freedom on a plate. Liberation, freedom is earned and at a painfully high price, too.” “I say let the big forces with their tanks and airplanes do the fighting,” Aristos offered. “It’s stupid to go against the Germans. They have the arms, people don’t fight with their bare hands.” “It would be ideal for the Germans if everyone thought as romantics. Unfortunately, the big forces are only directing the theatrics and the people of every occupied country, towns, villages, suffer, starve, are executed; men, women, children, the victims. You are the victim,” she pointed a finger at the children, “that’s why it is always up to the people to do the fighting breast to breast.” “Is my sister involved in all that?” Anna asked to shut Aristos up. “Your sister is involved only with her trunk,” Aliki laughed. “And you?” Aristos was looking at her hard. “Are you fighting? Are you marching in those silly demonstrations?” Aliki tried staring him down but then she realized that he was only a boy showing off. “No my boy,” she said evenly, “I am not! Or to be more precise, I am as involved as any human being who lives under a Nazi occupation. I see, I hear, I am aware of what is going on and if I can help in any way, I do. But I am a working woman who did not go to the mountains like thousands of other women have.
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Personally, I leave the fighting to young, brave men like you!” She was bitingly sarcastic but then she laughed that crystal laughter of hers that sounded like a cool breeze over the waves and it was contagious. “Women have no place in wars.” He said stubbornly. “Neither did Bouboulina and those women in Epirus just three years ago, or haven’t you learned anything from your history books,” Elena couldn’t help it. No matter how hard he tries, she thought, he comes through as the little resentful boy he is. “Oh, I agree, I agree,” Aliki mocked him. Don’t tell me though, go tell those crazy women who climbed the icy mountains a couple of years ago in Epirus...I don’t think you had objected then Aristos, right?; What am I saying, you were too young to know. And how about those idiotic women who became captains and sank the Turkish Navy in the war for independence? I forgot, you were not born then, that was last century.” Aristos smarted under the verbal attack; he shook his head and sat next to Nicky who listened open-mouthed. He turned to the wall and said under his breath: “I still think people should mind their own business, stay home and wait for the end of the war. Someday the Germans will leave.” Anna signaled to Aliki to get off the subject. Elena needed breathing space and time to digest what she had heard. She felt a little silly when she thought of the childish ‘resistance’ they had put up at school to celebrate Independence Day compared to what was going on in the rest of the land. Still, in a way, it was resistance.
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “Aliki left before curfew; she found a carriage that would pass through
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her village. I feel quite different today, I think we all do; her visit was like sunshine after a storm. I dare believe that she is aware of the fact that she brought us hope; that she is leaving us in a better mental shape than the one she found us in. It was like reading the news in a dozen newspapers all at once; we haven’t seen one for years. For me, the news about real resistance has opened a different scope to my thinking. It’s good to know that the whole world are not on their knees as I believed before, frightened or indifferent. Boy, am I getting older by the minute. Now I have to find out if there are people in this island who are doing something other than think and hope. How does one find that out?”
C H A P T E R
THE AEGEAN SEA Thousands
of little islands are dotting the Aegean Sea on the eastern side of
the mainland. Some, mere rocks, others inhabited by people, some inhabited by wild goats or the remnants of ancient Gods. Some still carry signs of a unique ancient past and civilizations. One such group, the twelve Islands of the Dodecanese, had been in custody of Italy since the end of World War 1, so decreed by the brainless ‘big powers’ of the era. In 1941, the Nazi Alliance decreed that the group of seven islands on the Ionian Sea on the western side of the mainland, should also be given to Italy since they, too, had been in Italy’s or rather
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Venice’s custody in the Middle Ages. Growing older and trying to identify herself as someone, Elena understood that she, among others, were in a way, parts of history at hand; but an American girl with a passport identifying her as Italian, living on a Greek island that was part of Italy, using worthless paper money issued just for those newly acquired islands, and studying under Italian professors, was the funny part of history, she mused; it’s simply ridiculous, my social balance is unsettled. A country belongs to the people who live and work in it. It’s not a football to be tossed from one tongue and flag to another. It’s not a toy or consumers’ goods to be traded in the world market for blood; or is it? She could really lose it thinking like that. She brought to mind things that went unnoticed before the war, like the teacher not being sure which country belonged to whom in the late thirties trying to locate its place on the map, where the new conqueror was, to pin the little flag. The students believed the time that it was the norm, but
at
adults must have known, she thought, they
misled us, they made us believe in country and God as inseparable and someone comes along, takes your house and says, what country? Too much thinking, empty; going on around the world a million times a day in as many childish brains. Her thoughts always left her with a bruised soul.
In the morning of the bright day the boys left for school, running as if someone was chasing them, and disappeared around the corner before Elena got downstairs. She opened the door and the sunlight
left her shadow on the narrow lane; she
noticed the little paper by her feet, a luxury item, no one was throwing paper senselessly those days; she wondered why the boys didn’t pick it
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up. In their haste, it was a wonder they had even found the door, she thought and opened the little paper. It was as if a hammer hit her over the head. She wondered if that was a coincidence, or if someone had sensed that she I waited for it. A leaflet! One of those things Aliki spoke about; her heart beating, she stopped to pick up Ourania and as they turned the corner, she let her read it. Ourania folded it and gave it to her looking around to make sure no one saw them; Elena shrugged. She let the girls in her class read it. It was only news of the war from BBC that someone in some attic or cellar had retyped and mimeographed God knew where, and at night made sure that it was slipped under every door. Elena could imagine all kinds of people, boys, girls, shop owners, priests or seamstresses slipping surreptitiously in and out of narrow, dark lanes endangering their lives to distribute the leaflet for which some girls showed enthusiasm and others indifference, as Aristos would. Still some, like Ourania, were frightened, as if they were committing a crime. Elena caught a couple of enigmatic expressions and glances that left her with the impression that they might have a hand in the process. That night after dinner, she read the precious leaflet to her family, trying to contain the excitement from her voice. Nicky, nonchalant, looked elsewhere, her mother remained silent, and Aristos raised a storm. He snatched the paper from Elena’s grasp and burned it in the flickering flame of the oil wick. It took only seconds for the words to become a charred little nothing, the noble words crumbled into a wisp of black ash on the table. The message, the hope, ashes, Elena thought sadly. Does he know any better? No one spoke; suddenly, the room was darker as if the leaflet’s death took part of the light with it.
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“Preposterous,” Aristos shouted. “My father warned me about this.” “And if you keep raising your voice,” his aunt told him calmly, “you will have to return to your father.
I run this house, not you. Please keep this in
mind and a civil head on your shoulders.” “This is dangerous,” Aristos continued as if he hadn’t heard her, but with his voice substantially lowered, “we cannot get involved, we can’t pretend to be heroes, let the fools be heroes; you can’t possibly believe that dizzy blond...” “Enough!” Anna got up menacingly. “You are behaving like an uncivilized peasant. As for the fools, I haven’t been to school as you have, but I can name a few dozen of those ‘fools’ who luckily didn’t think as you do and that’s why you are here, still a Greek despite the war, and the land has enjoyed freedom for over a century. I suggest you wash your mouth when you call them ‘fools’ because no one knows if some day that term doesn’t fit our names. Do you understand me Aristos?” Instead of an answer he made ready for bed. No apology, no good night.
A series of explosions shook them late in the night; they knew they were at the mercy of planes and/or anti-aircraft. They shook under the covers praying, hoping. This time Elena did move close to Aristos’ pillow, to keep him from panic;
something had changed. The little boy found it comfortable in the
daylight to hide behind the image of a know-it-all strong ‘man’! But in the darkness under the explosive fury of bombs or canons, it was Elena who felt superior because the shroud of ignorance was torn and she knew that they were not, could not, be silent much longer; she couldn’t feel compassion for her cousin who, in a few minutes as the city was shaking and the explosions deafened them, had turned himself into a little ball hiding under the covers
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trembling
from head to toes and taking as little space on the bed as a small puppy, and making hardly audible sniffing noises. Let him cry, Elena thought with malice, the smart one! Since the fools were heroes and those heroes were masters of the sky enjoying the fireworks, let him be the smart one and control his fear. She, too, was afraid; she was getting even with her cousin so that she could disperse her own despair. She got up and went to the window fighting the tears. Her mother came close and gently pushed her to the side. “ Keep away from the window,” she warned her, “the glass.” The northern sky was brightly lit by red flames. The explosions followed a certain pattern, yet, she
heard no plane. From the direction of the fires, she judged that the
warehouse had been hit. These, she surmised, were no home explosions. A house usually crumbles with a moan that was like a knife in one’s guts. “That was no bomb,” she told her mother. “What else in the world could that be then?” Anna whispered to herself. “If it’s the warehouse, it’s full of gasoline and ammunition; maybe somebody threw a stick of dynamite.” Her mother shook her and Elena tried to cover a giggle. “Shh, do you want Aristos to think that he knows what he is talking about?” “I really think they were saboteurs,” Elena whispered and then she listened to the hurried footsteps underneath their window. They didn’t dare look. Elena ran back to her bed and began to pray, her lips glued to her pillow, please God save him...run, oh, please, run...Another loud explosion awoke them towards morning, but it was just loud, no shaking no after tremor, like a small earthquake. There were some shots, more running and shouting, and then it was morning and the sun came up on a clear sky; the harbor was calm and blue. The next day a loudspeaker going through the neighborhoods, informed them
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that curfew
would be 6 P.M. until further notice. No explanation, but the huge
Italian supply ship in the middle of the harbor was sunk to its top deck and it was to remain there until the end of the war. They never found out who gutted the warehouse, either. The grapevine had it that a young student had swam to the boat with the explosive in a tin can tied on the top of his head, and his clothes tied over it. He attached the tiny but lethal cargo to the ship’s keel and swam back, got dressed and ran. His night swim in the icy waters was a success. The people had some amusement at least, looking at the top of the riggings of the Italian boat. “People will always invent many fairy tales to explain the unknown and unexplainable,” Anna Said wisely. “Yes,” Elena whispered back, “but someone did it, right?”
C H A P T E R
SIGNORINA
TESCARI
{FROM ELENA’S DIARY} “Nicky and two other boys were caught placing fliers inside the heavily guarded Theater which is used solely by the Italians as a cinema nowadays, and were arrested today by the Italian Police. Signorina and Signor Rufini, the Minister of Education, have initiated a musical revue made up of local
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talent, a salute to the Italian Armed Forces. Huge posters announcing the event have been erected for sometime; most had to be replaced frequently because they were torn during the night. Boys and girls, mostly girls, were encouraged to audition for the play. The bait, which more or less hinted a career in the Arts, was seriously debated at school, in the streets, and I’m sure in the homes of those who dreamed of a glorious future in the theater. The seniors, and the non-students who thought they had undiscovered talent, silenced their consciences; some heads or ribs were broken by enraged, old-fashioned fathers who did not approve of their offspring’s’ talent or his/her decision to emancipate in of all places, the enemy camp! Arguments entered our classrooms by those same girls who wished to defy their fathers’ advice and fists. Before the war, we hear, there were authorities for this kind of unheard of behavior but now only the fist and the knife work. Too many girls who defied their parents found to their sorrow that such defiance in times of war, especially, usually leads to disaster. I personally think that the real emancipation, the sense of freedom is in the mountains, but who do I tell this! ‘…you fight me because you are too ugly to try yourself..’ one girl told me, ‘you are ugly like a...like a...bat... or a weasel.’ There was a knot in my throat, I know I couldn’t be that ugly, the blow was unfair. I mustered my pride and did not cry, I only said that everyone can audition and that I’m just not interested. Anyway, had I even remotely thought about it my
whole family
would behead me and feed me to the vultures. What really came as a shock, though, was when Ourania sprang to my defense. She half-closed her eyes and showed her little sharp teeth. ‘You accuse Elena,’ she told the girl, ‘but
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you must know that beauty is only skin deep. Look at her grades and look at yours.’ I thought that was unfair, too. ‘The truth is,’ she continued, ‘that you are working with the enemy.” I stood there watching her. She looked like an angry, hissing cat. ‘Don’t listen to her,’ she whispered in my ear as she pulled me away, ‘she is just jealous. You are really retty.’ I don’t mind Ourania lying. I liked the fact that she rose to defend me. As for the lying business, she will confide to her priest and he will ease her conscience. And I have called her a ‘scared rabbit’! More out of maliciousness than of patriotism, I began a one-person campaign to convince some of those girls not to
participate in the revue, though
they were already rehearsing...I caught them on the way home from school because I know if Ourania got involved she would get too excited and bring in God and religion as her aides, and then she would begin to stutter and blubber. And on top of everything, I have a very painful boil on my right heel; it’s sheer torture to stand or walk, so I was in great pain when
the
Principal called me into her office. Without preliminaries she told me off. ‘I understand you are not auditioning,’ she said while I
stood
respectfully in front of her trying to keep my weight off my
sore foot. I
answered that I wouldn’t audition because I have no talent and she sighed. ‘Elena, Elena,’ she said, ‘do you take me for a fool?’ She waved me to a chair and I thankfully sat on its edge. ‘You teacher...’(frankly, I think that she is
think that I am just a silly
a spy, too). ‘You believe that I
was sent from Italy to make fascists out of you...’(she knows!) ‘...that I don’t know your ways, in other words that I am stupid. Well, you are wrong!’
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I tried to get up, I was going to miss my class, but she again raised her hand
impatiently.
‘Sit down, sit down,’ so I sank back into the leather chair that is for teachers only, wincing in pain. ‘Youth is universal, you do not patent for it, it has not been discovered by anyone.’ I had
hold the
no idea what
she was getting to. I had done nothing wrong and my grades were good. I hate to admit it, but she uses the language eloquently, the bitch. I envy her. I looked at her trim legs, the exquisite hairdo, the beautiful hands carefully manicured, her gray
suit. She was beautiful. But I couldn’t
imagine what she wanted of me
and I was squirming because she seemed as if
she wanted to take me
into her confidence and I don’t like that because it
means that she wants me to tell my friends; which means that she will be using me, I thought, and I was right. Just to spite her, I will not tell anyone
what she confided that morning; I listened politely.”
{As a young student, Signorina Tescari was in love with a young lieutenant but her widowed mother strongly opposed the union and made her take a vow that she would forget love and continue with her studies, because her dream was to see her daughter a nun; her daughter’s faith was not as strong as to sacrifice her life. Meanwhile, the young lieutenant disappeared and after
her mother
died, she accepted a teaching position at the Catholic Mission in Salonika without tasking the vows for the monastic life. }
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“. . .Signorina Tescari tried to find a kinder word to describe ‘uncivilized’ pre-war Greeks of Salonika and I was getting angry.
Look who
is talking of civilized behavior, I was thinking, and she an intelligent, educated woman! She was talking and I was following my thread of thinking, feeling somehow elated that I wasn’t afraid of her. I was persecuted by the enemy! I do remember the end of it, that she was in a nun’s habit for fifteen years and that was how she learned the language well, as if I hadn’t noticed, (and military installations, I added, my mind racing with the wild espionage stories I had heard of World War I, and later in Salonika, and when they were preparing the ground for fascism.”
(‘I know much about Greece and its people,’ she said. ‘I do not approve of silly romances between Greek girls and Italian soldiers; the girls, good girls I’m sure, are not Italian. Nothing personal but there are cultural and religious differences. (And how about ‘civilized?’ I wanted to ask.) As a woman I think of their reputation, too, I’m sure you agree. As an educator and a Principal, I must put a stop to it. Her tone as getting sarcastic, I gave no indication that I understood. ‘And now, about you.’ I almost jumped. She got up and began to pace the floor; I was getting nervous. ‘Granted, you have no talent, but I know the real reason why you create problems for me.’ She stopped; her suede shoes were on the worn carpet
front of me;
Once, the carpet that looked bald in places, was adorned with fruits and flowers. Nice shoes were now resting on a cluster
of grapes which
age made them look half-eaten, as if someone in his hunger tried to
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eat the fibers. The stylish shoe tapped the worn spot
impatiently.
Something was wrong, I felt it; she tried to act collected. Maybe, I thought happily, they are losing the war faster than
I had hoped. She
lit another cigarette and now that she was so close the foreign smell annoyed me. Her eyes clouded with anger stared down at me hard. I didn’t lower mine. ‘In the name of God,’ she exploded, ‘leave me be, stay out of my way. You don’t want to join -frankly, I would be disappointed if you did- don’t interfere and pester those who wish to participate because someone put silly ideas in your head. That does not make you a hero, but it shows that deep inside you are silly and spiteful.’ I realized that someone had spoken to her of my secret campaign. Well, I thought, anything bad the enemy says about you, must be a medal of honor. I continued to look at her, she was losing control, not I! ‘I am going on with the show in spite of you and all the other stupid Greeks. Now,’ she dismissed me very theatrically, ‘go and tell them what I told you, and if the carabinieri ever get hold of you, I won’t lift a finger to help.’)
“. . .As if I cared! All I could think of was that my foot hurt very badly, so without a word I got up and limped out with my head high, leaving her seething in anger. I had missed my class, but it was only boring Physics taught by the most boring teacher, who also doubles for religious studies. But I forgot; I was writing about my brother being arrested. Some men got hold of small sized boys and raised them to the windows and that’s how they
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got in and eventually caught.”
The performing girls walked to the entrance of the theater between two rows of Italian police, no one tried to molest them. The Greeks stood silently on both sides of the road. In the days preceding the show, human excrement was tossed at them from balconies; their homes had been smeared with the same. The performance began while Nicky and the others were being interrogated at the Police Station. Aristos was fuming. “I was right,” he shouted at his aunt, “wasn’t I? I always said that we must not bother the enemy so they won’t bother us. Now we are involved...” He kept going while Anna was getting ready to go to the station to pick up her son and She paid no attention to him. She put on the only pair of silk stockings she still had, leftovers from a past era, the patent leather shoes that had survived the long wear and the black market, and her suede hat with the feather. Her prewar suit, now worn only for funerals, was pinned and tucked around her emaciated body. With powder and lipstick, a caricature of her old self, she went down the stairs and onto the road to do a battle. Elena watched her from the window the once beautiful woman, now a wispy figure turning the corner. Aristos came close and shook his prematurely old head. “You’d think she was going to a party,” he murmured. “Jailbirds, that’s what we will end up being; there goes my father’s reputation. What will he say? What will the neighbors think? After all the sacrifices my father makes...” “Shut up, you idiot!” Elena exploded. She couldn’t hold back her anger. Her mother had warned her before she left not to go out and not to pay attention to whatever her cousin said. She said nothing about a fight, Elena thought. “You are
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nothing but an ass,” she told her cousin who looked at her surprised. “You are an excuse for a human being, get lost!” She got out slamming the door. Nicky went home with his mother; he promised the authorities to behave. Innocent, hungry, gawky Nicky, was to report home at sunset every day. That night as they were having dinner, Nicky innocently passed to his sister under the table the latest flier. He never said where he had found it!
C H A P T E R
ANOTHER SUMMER The school year though Anna
ended without additional problems. All three passed the grade
had doubts as to whether they had learned much with teachers missing
and students staying away in their villages. Death had taken a serious toll and classes were diminished. The last few weeks she really thought that no one would be promoted. The foolish children had taken into their heads to boycott the Italian lessons -and most of the subjects were taught in Italian- to show that they were ‘true Greeks’, as if learning the enemy’s language would make them traitors. First, they told the authorities that their parents had no money for books and when the Italians brought the books and distributed them free to the three secondary schools, as if by a telegraphic code, all three schools had bonfires the same day. Once more the Italians watched the fires and said nothing, but two weeks before the final exams the students were told that only those who
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passed the Italian exams would be promoted. And that was where the parents got involved. Patriotism notwithstanding, being left back was a serious setback in a family’s plans for the future, plus an embarrassment that no parent would accept. The children were told by parents in no uncertain terms that since they had been victorious once, they didn’t have to prove themselves again. Prudence prevailed. Youngsters disappeared from the streets for two weeks; they used their allotment of oil keeping the lamps all night, they crammed and toiled, but no one was left back. The schools congratulated the students and the students had the satisfaction that they had taught the enemy a lesson, or so they thought. All year they heard that Greek children are ‘too stupid’ to learn, or they are ‘unteachable’. They had proved that children learn when ‘they’ must for the sake of educating themselves, not when they are forced to by the enemy.
Anna began packing. She was going to make sure that when she returned in the Fall, she had an apartment so she left it the way it was, taking just what was an absolute necessity in a few suitcases. Once in the village they moved straight into the rooms they had the summer before, now practically empty just bare walls and floors, no chairs or beds, just a couple of mattresses made in haste with sackcloth filled with corn husks that rustled awfully at night and they pricked, too. They have to do, Anna thought as she searched the smiling faces of her nephew and nieces; they had grown very
little and were much thinner, and of
course, hungrier.
From the first day Elena became moody and withdrawn. She must have grown
a
little in the past winter, she thought, though she doubted that, otherwise why
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did everyone look at her, practically never leaving her out of their sight; and, once again, no friendships were encouraged. The same invisible wall was still engulfing her, choking her. She couldn’t understand what kind of sin or crime they expected her to commit. There was no book in the house, all she could do was write her own poems and hide them together with her precious diary that never left her body; she
was afraid they were spying on her. She had to be frugal in
her writing, paper was scarce and was rationed at school. She wondered what they would do in the future, write on rocks? She imagined ancient civilizations doing that. There have been worse times, she thought sitting
on the floor in the
balcony, unseen, in the early morning hours watching the girls of the village her own age and even younger, going to work in the fields, or take the animals to the pasture or to water them. She heard their songs while they worked, and wondered what made them happy, and why isn’t everyone happy. They are not any better off than I am, they are hungry, they, too, live under oppressive situations, internal and external, why are they singing and I’m not? And the fishermen; they don’t always bring in fish and most of what they bring the Italians confiscate, anyway, why the song? Is it possible that the sea with its dangers make them happy, that the earth makes the girls happy with its smells and fruits? The voice of her uncle leaving, gave her the answer. He had spotted her as he was leaving for his morning visit to the coffee house and told her to go back inside. She went in to see if she was needed with whatever it was they were doing but they wouldn’t let her do it, anyway!
More than ever she wished she had writing paper, she was aching to write, to communicate with her diary; she looked everywhere for bits and pieces of
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whatever looked as if once it was paper. The birds sang as if the world wasn’t in flames, donkeys brayed, goats had kids and gave milk, the children played, screamed, Elena walked the rooms. In despair, she sent a message to her father’s village up in the mountain, and her uncle’s white horse and mule driver arrived early one morning to fetch her. She mounted the horse without the undignified performance of the summer before and rode joyfully, feeling the freedom of the open fields that stretched to her left and right, all the way to the incredible bulk of the great mountain. The horse, unaware of her fear, followed the path at the edge of the precipice as it always did; she decided not to look down, think of other things like the fact that no one would be watching her every move and look, spying on her; everyone is occupied otherwise, she thought and her mood changed. The thought of getting away elated her. The horse entered the village and the moment it stepped on the small square, Elena was arrested for not saluting the Italian flag. There we go again, she whispered miserably; she had forgotten about it, it really had slipped her mind; maybe she wouldn’t have saluted even if she remembered. The Italians were more bored than she was; a temporary visitor was a good scapegoat and less dangerous. Inside the office they questioned her while the man took the horse to her uncle and told them the news. She stayed there a few hours frustrating them with the language barrier because the Italians got the message that she didn’t speak Italian; she made a few futile attempts at French and could hardly suppress a smile at their few mispronounced words, probably from their school days; she was fluent. They gave up. Meanwhile, something wonderful was happening outside. The people left their fields and homes and were gathering outside on the little
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square, used not frequently for dances, weddings and festivals before the war upset
and altered their lives. Their disgruntled murmur reached Elena’s ears
like music. The Italians were upset, they were only four and those peasants may have hidden guns. Well, they wanted a show and the peasants gave it to them. One of the people assembled there said something and then they all sang the National Anthem. Imagine if they were schooled, Elena thought, but there has never been a school in the village. The young lieutenant took her outside; he faced the people scowling. The hard etched dark unshaven faces, prematurely old-looking children and women’s worried faces half hidden under kerchiefs stared back at him without emotion. “What is it that you want?” He asked roughly, and, “this is none of your business. “It is so,” they answered, “let the girl go; she is ours and we are taking her.” Elena remembered her grandmother the summer before when she warned her that she was not to provoke the enemy. Whatever is happening in the cities and the mountains is happening here, too, she thought, they have awakened. She came to with a resounding slap across her face; her glasses flew away, and the sudden slap made her lose her balance and fall. As she tried to get up the lieutenant bowed in mockery, gave her the glasses and showed her the road. She walked away with a light heart and her cheek burning. Hands were extended, the girls embraced her and one by one the men went back to their fields and the women to their work in their homes and their looms as if they had completed another day’s work as the good Lord commands. These glasses will always be my Nemesis, Elena thought. In the next two weeks, she walked fields and hills, visited her father’s grave daily, took care of it, and went to the homes of friends when invited. She
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was the only idle person in the village. These mountain people, she thought, are really closer to God. Fancy clothes or trains and cars were luxuries they had scarcely heard of; they knew only what they missed, like sugar, coffee, soap, shoes and material for clothing. The war took those things away and they had to make the best of it. At least, they were not hungry. Elena missed many things only because she had lived differently and because she did not have their peace. Still, the girls told her that they envied what they called her idle life.
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “I am free, f r e e ! Free to walk outdoors, to roam the valley and walk down into the deep gorge. No one is following me, I seem to intimidate people in my father’s village and that makes me feel old and ‘wise’. What surprised me was that I didn’t get the explosion I expected from Uncle Philip when he learned about my arrest. Maybe he feels that as long as I’m not in jail and I eat well, he can overlook the little incident, that’s nice of him; I still would like to see my cousin Aristos’ face, I have no hunger pains now, the food is adequate. Nature is beautiful, though a bit wild for my taste, the bulk and height of the mountain whose top I’ve yet to see as it’s capped by eternal clouds, scare me especially at darkness when the stillness magnifies strange animal noises I’m not used to
accompanied by my uncle’s sonorous recital. I also feel a little
more lonely because I am away from the sea promises. It seems to whisper to anyone willing to listen, about other shores, different people, joys and adventures; The mountain is solid, dark and scowling. After they blow out the oil wick I do not venture outdoors. In the privacy of the
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‘company room’ where I sleep, I hide my fears under the rough sheets and await for dawn to paint everything pink and to dispel the shadows. Then the leaves on the olive trees turn silver and even the stones become colorful and happy. Grandmother has too many great-grandchildren, I can’t keep up with them. She occasionally feeds them, or some of them if she is occupied
not
with her own efforts for survival. Otherwise, they are roaming
the fields, eating wild fruits, playing, mostly unwashed and always hungry. They are cute these cousins of mine, but too much on their own because their mother works in the fields with their father as they will do themselves in a few years, and there is no one to care for them. There is no school about, I must ask if they send them to the hear there is a school there but they don’t seem to
next village
I
have shoes and the
mountain weather is no joke, they have a lot of snow. Half a century ago when my father left for America there was no school either! children
come into my uncle’s house
When the
they are shooed away like the
chicken because they steal, I was told. What can they steal but something to eat? I tried to make friends with them grandmother ‘crazy nonna’, but they
and told them not to call our
innocently told me that their mother
lets them. They are shrewd, fast and filthy. I talked them into taking a bath in huge vats under the hot sun and shiny
they liked it, they emerged
and pretty with corn silk hair; when their mother returned from
the fields their hair
that evening
she shaded her eyes in disbelief. I had combed
nicely until it shone but when my mother arrived a few days
ago and saw me scratch my head, she almost tore my hair out. How was I to
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know that
those little things on the children’s hair were lice? I thought
they were
particles of dust and dirt. My mother was angry! I would not go
to Uncle Panos’ wedding with a head full of lice, she said. She gave me a choice: either I had a severe haircut which meant one inch away from my scalp, or the usual local treatment that never fails: three days and three nights with my head wrapped in a kerosene soaked towel! Rather than lose my curls, I chose the three days of disgust, stench and humiliation. It worked, I am free of lice!”
C H A P T E R
A WEDDING Panos was
a young man living in a village up the hill; he was a distant cousin
of our with a personality that made everyone love him in the surrounding villages where he plied his trade come hell or high water; for Panos, the young, exuberant lad was an itinerant cobbler winter or summer, peace or war. He had seen war at the Albanian front
and came out of it alive. But his prolonged engagement was in
everyone’s mind since it had lasted about six years which broke every record in the known villages. When the news broke that he was finally getting married, there was jubilation all around and wine drinking in the coffee house instead of coffee. Philip would have objected, war time and all, except that he thought that the situation was getting scandalous. He knew that they were too poor to marry; that Kevi, Panos’ fiancée, worked in the fields during the day and did embroidery
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evenings to support her invalid mother and young brother after their father died. The obligation and the poverty the young couple faced, made the wedding wait for years. The
mother eventually died
and Kevi’s brother was old enough to earn his
living. Since there was no currency except the Ionian lirettas, useless in the villages, Panos was getting paid mostly in goods, which he had been trading until he managed to buy a small farm. If nothing else, the farm would feed them. On a pay-as-you go plan, food or lirettas, that he arranged with an old man in the village, Panos built a small house and a cousin of his donated the material which he had not sold and was in his warehouse since before the war. Kevi, a strong young woman; her hands and muscles showed the wear and tear of hard work and frugal eating. Enthusiastically, she
whitewashed her new house,
placed her loom in the best room and burned incense to exorcise the evil spirits while harvesting wheat, tending her vegetable garden and knitting for the winter. Everyone in her village agreed that she would make a good wife and mother. Panos, tall and lean like a bamboo, was extremely happy and his burning black eyes were smiling as he looked at her and thought of the dream coming true, the day they would be husband and wife. “You cannot come,” Philip told Elena Sunday morning; Elena’s throat went dry, she couldn’t even ask why. She didn’t want to hear the excuse, but she did, anyway. “People are not to rejoice in these hard times.” He tapped his cane nervously on the flag stone and put his straw hat on ready to start. Nicky and Aristos came down all clean and dressed for a party. He wouldn’t allow me to go to a funeral if he thought that it, too, was a form of marry-making! She watched her uncle making his way slowly up the road, the boys on each side of him, somber, trying to match his step. They would walk uphill for about an hour to get
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to Panos’ village; the clouds were heavy and lower and her uncle wore the only suit he now had since he had sold everything else he possessed to buy medication and food for her when she was seriously ill. I mustn’t forget that, she thought feeling guilty. A marriage, especially this one, she reasoned, was after all, due, even if “the world is burning”. Of course, this doesn’t mean that one must enjoy it, according to her uncle. ‘These times’ a wedding was a mere obligation. Nicky and Aristos were no problem; they were as somber and straight laced as he was. She followed them with her eyes from behind the half-closed balcony doors until they disappeared at the bend, and she hated them for being so narrow minded, insensitive and hypocritical. “You would think it was a gun wedding.” Melania cried. She leaned her scraggy breasts on the window sill and wiped her eyes. She wanted to go! She had sent two of her best linen sheets and a set of unused towels as a wedding present, and was told that she couldn’t go. Philip managed to find a handful of rice which he considered an absolute necessity for a wedding, wrapped it neatly and gave it to his son to carry along with the wedding presents. Aristos would represent his mother. He would sit for hours next to his father nodding seriously as the others danced and the adults who passed them would voice their compliments which went straight to his heart: “May God preserve this son of yours, Philip; mature beyond his years.” The fact remains, Elena thought bitterly, that women, who do all the work, not only don’t get credit for it, they don’t even count as being human. She looked at her mother and aunt, the ‘frivolous’ women the men had left behind, and imagined them and herself, too, wearing chains. This way, they were safe from danger or embarrassment. Was it always that, she wondered, or is it intensified by the international disaster of World War II? I swear, she
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promised to herself, if I outlive this war, I will do everything in my power to end this terrible state of affairs, at least within my family. There must be civilized countries where this shameful conduct is not tolerated. Unless, she stopped cold, this state of affairs is universally accepted. My God, I don’t even want to exist in such a world... She walked inside and as she passed her uncle’s shaving commode and glanced at the mirror, she saw the old woman looking back at her, pale, wrinkled, worried, eyes sunk. The glasses and the dark curls identified her. She hid her face and cried.
FIRES (FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “Across old Simeon’s orchard and over the tree tops I can see the large field
that belongs to the building where Uncle Philip has his store. It’s
also the garden where we grow our vegetables and fruits and where the old Ford is still half-buried in its past glory and mud. How well I remember the wasps that almost consumed my face years ago! Uncle Philip has build a makeshift storeroom for coal and enclosed it in corrugated tin on whose roof the sun shines late in the afternoon. Inside, the charcoal makes everything dark. Earlier today, I had the shock of my life. Two Italian trucks got into the field smashing the gate they rode over the zucchini and tomato plants and stopped in front of the coal storeroom. My uncle ran, small and faceless among the uniformed men flaying his arms. Aunt Melania rushed there too, from wherever she was, and so did some of the neighbors, curious to see what was going on. The soldiers took out shovels from their trucks, broke the door and began shoveling the coal.
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“Thieves,” my aunt shrieked; the whole village heard, but the soldiers paid no attention, not even when my uncle asked to see the commander’s requisition order. They were taking our fuel that would see us through the winter, and my uncle would exchange much of it for food. My God, they’ll starve us to death. But how does one stop an enemy? He can take our lives without having to answer to anyone...I went down the stairs feeling sadder than I have felt for some time, crossed Simeon’s property and stood in the garden, as far as I could go trying to be inconspicuous, but not so far as not to hear the shovel strike something hard with a dull thud. A small wooden barrel rolled down the side of the coal mount. I recognized the barrel where ‘feta’ cheese was stored in brine. This, I thought, is my uncle’s death warrant. We are not allowed to hoard food. I didn’t know about the cheese being there. Another little barrel rolled, then another like little pigs, landing at the feet of the sergeant...Uncle Philip started to go towards the barrels, changed his mind, shrugged and froze on the spot, his face a tight death mask. I shuddered. There was a very uneasy silence around me. The sergeant picked up an axe and broke one of the barrels. We held our breaths. The planks fell to the ground without a groan; dozens of rats leaped out and ran into the crowd that screamed and ran in all directions. The Italian soldiers roared; they laughed and began shooting the rats as they scrambled dazed here and there with little sounds. The whistling of the bullets hurt my ears. Uncle Philip was laughing a harsh, unnaturally loud laughter. I have never seen him crack anything more than a smile even when times were not ‘hard.’ I went close and shook him because he was getting hysterical. Tears were rolling down
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his freshly shaven cheeks. He looked at the people around him, the soldiers and his family, then, clutching his stomach, he sat on the fence carefully, watching the crease on his pants. I knelt by his feet and held his hand, begging him silently to stop laughing. At that moment he was my whole world, and I have been so bad with my evil thoughts...I wanted to kiss his hands to show my affection, but Uncle Philip cannot tolerate emotional exhibitions. “What was in the barrels, Uncle?” I whispered. My question seemed to penetrate through his hysteria because he stopped laughing. He looked at me and his eyes were tender and moist; a tear fell and rested on the tip of his blond mustache. Mechanically, I wiped it off. “Food, my child,” he said hoarsely. “Pasta, rice, flour. Food for the winter.” There was despair and resignation in his voice; he sounded old, defeated. And I thought it was cheese. “The rats had a feast,” he whispered. “We are now at the mercy of the Lord.” He stood up with an effort and a sigh. I thought of the Lord’s whereabouts and how terrifying it really is to have to depend on an abstract force, a God who is so far away and can’t even keep his books straight. But then, I figured, He has the entire globe to think of. “Don’t worry,” I tried to console him, “it won’t last very long, we’ll make it.” “With food, perhaps, with words, never. You always think with your mouth, Elena.” I swallowed my hurt pride, he is hurt enough. Around me dead rats, stones and scattered coals, made a macabre setting. Not wishing to leave empty handed, the Italians loaded their trucks with our coal and backed out of the garden which now looked as if a fire had swept the field. The
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authorities had promised payment for the coal before they left but we all know it will never come; we also know that Uncle Philip will never remind them of it. I wonder who informed the Italians of my uncle’s secret storage.
After his loss, Philip used another place to store the coal brought to him. He was slowly stowing sacks in the ground floor, one on top of the other, all the way to the ceiling, which was directly underneath the floor of the house upstairs. That ground floor was just collecting cobwebs ever since his father gave up the horse and carriage he kept for his tourist business. It still smelled of horse and leather. Philip’s wife, was not very happy about it; the coal dust seeped into her bedrooms from the cracks leaving a perpetual film on the bed and the floor. She nagged to no avail; but there came one morning when Philip saw, to his regret, another almost disaster. It was a hot Sunday morning. Philip’s older daughter was sick and Melania who wanted to go to church, was dosing the girl with her miraculous castor oil. The girl was still burning with fever. Anna was preparing the iron with coals to press her skirt so she can go to church. Everyone else was outside looking for a cool shade under some tree. Elena was trying unsuccessfully to get rid of the dust with a wet rag. A new load of coal, straight from the kiln had been brought at dawn and raised more dust. “It’s hot”,
the sick child whined.
“Of course it’s hot,” Elena told her and changed the compress on the girl’s brow. “You feel hot because of the fever.” “The floor is burning, too,” the girl said, “does it have fever?” Her
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cousin was delirious. She was sticking a little finger into a hole on the floor. As she lay on the cot she had pushed the little knot in. She must have done it many times, otherwise how would she know that there was a knot there? Elena wondered as she paid more attention. “It feels like fire downstairs”, she mumbled drowsily. Melania, always barefoot, complained: “It’s very hot today, the floor is burning.” Elena knelt and peeped into the little hole and began to scream. The floor was literally burning under their feet. The little orange flames were licking the dry, old beams stealthily, quietly as if trying not to attract
attention. There
was no smell, no smoke, but the ground floor looked like the engine room of a steamship.
“Fire!” she yelled again and her aunt acted accordingly: she ran out
onto the balcony pulling her hair, shouting at the top of her lungs: “Help, neighbors! Fire! We are being burned alive! Help!” Elena asked her mother to get her aunt out to safety, and picking up her sick cousin went down the stairs to leave her in Maria’s house, then ran to the neighbor’s house to alert them and send word to the surrounding houses to start a fire brigade as she had seen done in Athens years ago when she had witnessed the first and only fire of her life. Philip was at the harbor for his morning tea; he had the only key to the ground floor, so the neighbors broke the door down, and the chain of buckets filled at the fountain, thankfully across the road, made fast trips to and from the fire. By the time Philip arrived deathly pale and out of breath, it was over, the fire was out and all were safe, thanks to the neighbors who played hooky from church that morning, and had sent their wives instead. Elena took off her sandals and stepped into the ditch that was full of water. It felt good. She watched her uncle, the agony on his face so soon after the first ordeal in the field. That
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was the last straw for him, she thought, we are doomed. Her uncle was staring at the black void clutching his stomach; then with an animal howl he tossed the key into the black ashes screaming curses at all the saints in heaven, the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, while his wife covered her ears.
Elena left the ditch and climbed onto the stone fence under the almond tree to sit and blow the soot from her nostrils. The Italian patrol passed by, stood for a few minutes asked some questions and went on their way. One by one, the neighbors left. Some stopped with Philip momentarily to offer a few words of courage, but Philip was crushed. He walked away unsteadily. Little Lenaki climbed the fence crawling on her fours like a little teddy bear to reach Elena. She sat next to her older namesake and pulled her dress over her knees as she had seen her cousin do. “Were are your pants?” Elena asked indifferently but still trying to sound serious. “Sh-h-h!” she put her little finger over her lips. “Over there, on the fig tree. I climbed for a fig and tore them, so I left them there and Mama doesn’t know.” “The truth now; were they wet?” “Hm...hm...But look!” She held up her hand and opened the little fist. “I got something,” she said with a mischievous glint in her eyes. At that moment, as Elena looked at the little black shiny, wrinkled thing in her cousin’s palm, she loved her more than anything in the world. The dirty palm was secreting an olive. “Take it,” she said. She remembered that the year before she had taken her older cousin under her wing so she wouldn’t die. “I ate the fig,” she admitted lowering
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her eyes, “but I found olives. Here, I have more, eat, we share!” She screwed up her eyes surprised; a horrified Elena, had thrown her olive between the stones of the fence. The child had given Elena a bullet but shrugged when she saw her gift go down between the stones thinking that maybe her cousin didn’t like olives. Elena’s heart beat faster, but she showed nothing to the child
whose attention
once again concentrated on the women cleaning up the ashes. Elena kissed the little conspirator, the most precious jewel in their drab war-torn lives and held her for a few minutes still terrified at the idea that their baby held a death message in her little palm. She examined carefully the rest of the olives Lenaki still held. They were real olives. “After we eat the olives, you must tell me where you got them from.” Lenaki looked up at her with those huge beautiful eyes that were trying to remember. “The donkey, and the man with the sacks.” She was making no sense. “I walked to donkey and hid under the saddle and I made a little hole...they are good, yes?” She smiled at the thought of how smart she was. “They were good, yes, but it was a bad thing you did. It was a sin.” “But I did it when you were sick.” Now what? Elena thought. ”Remember?” She continued, “the sack under your bed… I found it, I made a little hole…” “You didn’t tell me, you shouldn’t have!” She tried to sound stern. “Are you telling my mother?” “Not if you promise never,
never to do this again.”
“Are you mad?” “A little.” “I promise.”
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After the clean-up Philip said he would never use the storeroom again; they had lost one bushel of rice in that fire; again he began cursing the greedy man who couldn’t wait for the coal to cool off completely before he brought it to him. He would kill him if he ever set foot in his village again, he said but Elena and everyone else knew that for all his words and threats, killing was mot his game, not even hunting. He continued on his way down the now empty street towards the cafe, a hunched figure, bent with worry. Elena looked at the man who was her uncle wondering if she could still rely on the mercy of the Providence for their survival.
C H A P T E R
SEPTEMBER 1943 (FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “September 1943- Warm days, cool nights, lazy breezy afternoons, all winter preparations finished and we await for the first rains. Of course, I am just waiting to get back to school, but I know that before this
happens
there will be the plowing and the olive picking (and oil hiding) etc. Meanwhile, the Italian patrol still walks by, the moon continues to pop suddenly from behind the hill bursting into a starlit sky with the suddenness of a catapulting eagle, and the sea is blue and calm. Nature
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does not care a bit what we are doing and how, it just goes on; I wish we could get the message. The village, obscure and peaceful, lies
between two
hills that hold the harbor in their arms. Nights are beautiful even the enemy cannot erase its peacefulness. All these until last night, when the crickets were rubbing away their monotonous chirping in the almond tree, the children were asleep and Uncle Philip was at the coffee house. Mama and my aunt were sitting at the door front downstairs gossiping with neighbors. I was sitting right above them, in my secret place in the balcony, what else, crying. Lately I cry a lot, I don’t know why. I heard the shuffling of the Italian patrol as they murmured good-night to the women, meaning that they should be going inside. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a blast shattered the night. The tremor was quite strong; it threw me off my low chair and badly frightened, I rushed inside to see that the little ones were not scared, and Mama and my aunt were scurrying upstairs. The children were already awake; people were coming out silently, sleep cancelled by a new fear, ready to face whatever was coming. They gathered in little groups and murmured, questioned without an answer. I wondered if it was some holiday and they expected a miracle, something like British or American troops landing a few blocks away. Words like ‘invasion . . . invasion’ reached my ears in whispers. They crossed themselves, they prayed silently. I thought they knew something. Then someone shouted: “The British have landed”! How wonderful if that were the truth, I thought. I would love to see them in the moonlight; witness the triumph, see the enemy cower, shout that I made it alive... Historically, the British were the island’s enemies. They were cruel, inhuman masters, hated, despised, cursed for more
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than a century. Now, everyone anticipated their arrival -all is forgiventhey were mythical heroes, blessed, our allies...There was a loud happy greeting and
I crept downstairs directly into my uncle’s arms.
“Upstairs,” he ordered with a no-nonsense voice. His face was dark. I obeyed and went back to my place in the balcony. The street had emptied; no commotion, no lights gave any evidence of anything extraordinary happening after the initial blast. Suddenly, there was a new noise unknown to me, filling the void. A gentle pat-pat-pat like a motor boat trying to dock secretly; but it was not coming from the sea. It was a shore sound at the edge of the village, that flooded the village. Electric light! Dead for years, the power was resurrected. A miracle! People rushed outside again and fell on their knees, praying in the dust, thanking God for their deliverance, the unmistakable sign of peace. In the light the trees looked different, the faces looked different, happier, with smiling eyes, the moon lost some of its brilliance. The windows looked again like windows and not like black holes. The harsh reality of electricity showed the angularity in objects that the moonlight softened. Who cares? I felt like a condemned person who suddenly is told that his cell in open. I cannot describe the immensity of relief light brings in the totally darkened world. A military truck rolled slowly underneath. The round faced, apoplectic Italian Marshall was in the back of the truck holding a loud speaker. “Amicci!” he called. ‘ Friends,’
now? “La guerra e finita, viva la
pace!” The war is finished, long live peace, I shouted his words as I rushed inside to bring the news. “Sure is finished,” Uncle Philip offered, “now that they lost it. The
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worst is yet to come for them and for us. I sat down losing heart again. Lenaki crept into my arms half asleep, sucking her thumb. “Is it peace?” she asked, as if she knew what peace is. “Yes, oh yes,” I whispered into her blond curls holding my tears, trying desperately to believe it. I picked her up and took her to bed. I held her close to my heart, the two ‘victorious Elenas’, I thought and I smiled. Her eyes were closed. “Can I have chocolate now?” she was asleep instantly. I cried then; Lenaki knew that peace meant chocolate! I moved her cot far from the window in case there was no peace really and shells visited us instead. In the dining room my uncle was busy giving a lecture. “Don’t get carried away by those clowns out there.” He pointed out toward the village, the sea. I was confused. Did he mean the Italians, or the British? Or was he warning us of the hysterical crowds? “But the war is over,” I whispered and he didn’t miss the tears in my voice. “For them, Elena, not for us.” The sadness in his voice, cleared my confusion. He had meant the Italians. But that ‘not for us’ was a shocking revelation, my official initiation into adulthood. It was a painful moment when hope faded and reality surged into my brain with all its ugliness. That instant I think I aged ten years. If it is true, I am, we are, part of history; a history which I have to accept though I hate it, as I have accepted and at the same time hated my uncle’s logic that threw my childhood into the garbage bin. I went back to the balcony for another dose of utopia, because the sound truck was making another round with the news this time. Italy had that day signed a treaty with the Allies. A guy named Badoglio had taken over which meant that Mussolini was out
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and officially,
Italy was not at war with the allies. Germany was their enemy. God, how things
twist and turn in a war! I still don’t know why though...They, the
Italian Armed forces, were not our enemies any more, the amplifier told us. The people lining the streets laughed. They were not afraid any more. “Yea,” one shouted, “now you are our guests!” The word ‘guests’ sounded somewhat sinister to me. “Show us your guts now.” Shouted another one. “Come inside,” my uncle ordered harshly. Why was he angry at me, I hadn’t shouted. “I want everyone to hear what I have to say.” I didn’t dare tell him that I wasn’t interested. The little flame of the oil wick lamp enlarged the shadows on the wall. Just when I began to think that electricity will finally find my uncle’s house! There are houses in the village that never had the luxury of electric light. “It is highly unlikely that the British will land,” he said in a somber voice. “I cannot see this happening. I believe that we are in for some problems. If the Nazis take over, we may have to pay a heavy price, because these fools,” again he pointed outside, “will bring us more grief. I want everyone of us to be calm and stay clear of anything going on; do you understand? Completely and definitely out of everything, as if we do not exist.” He shouted the last words. Remember, I’m still the village council’s president and if something goes wrong, I, get executed.” I shivered. His mustache twitched as he bit his lip and knit his eyebrows. He listened to the loudspeaker for a while. The voice was now Greek. The Italian Army are our friends, he said, and we should help them to preserve the island for the British. Therefore, all able bodied men should report to take up arms against a possible Nazi invasion.
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“Fool,” Uncle Philip roared and went to the balcony to see. ”Who is that idiot?” The truck had left already. “The fools...” Uncle Philip was mumbling, “the fools...” We went to bed. Coastal villages were to be evacuated of women and children and old people to villages up in the hills and the mountains, we learned next morning. Once again the electricity would be cut off for the duration -like a dream, lasted too little. Life was to continue as before except that there would be no conqueror and slave. Just a big, happy family! We also received a more detailed account of the realities of the war. We learned that the Americans had landed in Italy, that the Soviet front hadn’t collapsed as the enemy had informed us; the long Nazi siege was broken. Now, I hope that they speed it up so that the Nazis would go home instead of invading our island. I was dreaming about that all night that second day and it was still dark when I was forced awake. I remembered: “It’s time Elena, get up.” “ Yes, Mama,” I answered gruffly. We were being evacuated. Is that history, or am I still dreaming?”
C H A P T E R
BACK TO THE MOUNTAIN Anna and her children
ate hastily one fig and one walnut each, picked up
their bundles and left quietly closing the door behind them. They were not alone,
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they found out and shouldn’t bother with making noise; shadows were creeping from doors and paths, rushing secretly to a secret meeting, Elena’s imagination was working. And why not, she reasoned, we’re all going to a secret meeting, we don’t know why or for what, but it’s a secret, ha! Aristos and his father stayed home to ‘look after things;’ Melania and the other children were to stay with relatives in her village close by on the hill. By the time they reached the forked road the stars began to fade and the shadows lost their eerie angles. Then they were alone, the other families had gone into lanes and country roads to other villages. Anna and the children followed their road, the long, rough, tiring road, upgrade all the way. One hour later when daylight had broken bright through the mists, they stopped at the ‘Bottomless Lake’ to rest perspiring and soaked from the dew. The mysterious surface reflected the early morning sky; looking back down the hill, they could see the gray shredded mists rolling downwards. “I dived here last year,” Nicky boasted throwing a stone into the lake. He exaggerated, Elena was sure; maybe he is using this brave deed so that he can deal
with fear. He, too, is exhausted. She looked at her mother, she won’t make
it, she thought sadly, this is too much for her. The ‘Bottomless Lake’ was a natural phenomenon that had for many years attracted local and foreign scientists in a quest to discover its origin and destination. Weeds and other strange plants floated on the rather slimy surface which looked deceptively calm. It wasn’t larger than three rooms put together, but swimming wasn’t allowed, it was extremely dangerous. Warning signs were posted along the road after someone drowned not long ago probably because of the hidden whirlpools. “Aristos and I made a bet,” Nicky continued his bragging, “and
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I proved to him that I wasn’t afraid.” “Did you know that you could have drowned?” His sister asked and he shrugged. Aristos who knows everything, she thought. She looked at her mother sitting nearby panting; luckily, she hadn’t heard her son bragging, if that was just bragging. Anna picked up her bundle and started uphill. The road was steeper now with sharp bends, the packs made their hands numb their fingers did not have time to get warm, the sun hadn’t hit their side of the mountain yet and the dew chilled them. The day grew brighter, now
they met people from the surrounding
villages bringing their animals to pasture, or on their way to their fields unaware of what went on since the day before. When they heard the news they were confused and didn’t know what to do; the animals had to graze, still, some turned around and went back to their villages. The most adventurous continued on down to the harbor when they heard that arms would be supplied. Uncle Philip was right, Elena thought. They’ll get the rifles and disappear. After a few more stops to rest they arrived at the village; it was noon. The village, close to the top of the mountain, was sunny and cool. Elena’s sore feet had began to bleed because of the straps of the heavy clogs; she had tried walking barefoot but the sharp stones hurt until tears ran down her cheeks and she lagged behind so that her mother wouldn’t see her cry. After all, she had sacrificed her wedding bands for those clogs last Easter. The young Italian officer who had slapped Elena the summer before for not saluting the flag, was sitting on the front steps of the house under the tricolor flag, as dejected and forlorn and just as vanquished as the Greeks. The flag was still there, Elena noticed but it wouldn’t matter any more; if anything, it represented a vanquished nation. The young office got up to greet them, but
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Elena turned her head the other way and walked ahead; his false humility embarrassed her because history had taken such turn as to make her feel smug and superior, and him docile. Oh, how funny history is, she thought once again. I will never understand it. The moment I think I grasped something a little thing, something else springs up and erases what I thought I had learned. “Buon giorno, Signorina,” he shouted after her and all she could think of as a salute was a hearty ‘you go to hell,’ which shocked her mother. But the Italian thinking it a greeting, saluted and smiled. Elena led the way hurriedly up the stone path to the house wincing in pain, and Nicky, close behind her, raised his right hand toward the new ally, spread his five fingers majestically and expressed his feelings with the most contemptuous gesture while his mother hid her face embarrassed. The Italian hunched his shoulders, put his cap on and walked back to his stoop. Nicholas was not surprised to see them arrive uninvited, nor did he welcome them; he mounted his horse and returned to his fields. His older son had already taken the flock of goats and sheep to their summer paddock. Elena had realized already that nothing could change her uncle; he was as mean as ever, but as long as he didn’t bother them or repeated the threats of the past, she could take him or leave him; after all, they were imposing. “Not so,” her mother said for the hundredth time; “all these are yours, I don’t want you to feel that you owe anything to him, other than respect.” The village seemed to have been chiseled in a rocky plateau on the sharp grade of the mountain in time immemorial. Everything was rocks! The goats uprooted anything that grew and bread was
not plentiful because those who had
fields in the valleys below, used the land either for pasture or for planting
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potatoes and lentils; the Italians confiscated their share of the oil, cheese and the occasional meat when they slaughtered animals. Nevertheless, there was always something to eat; no one had died of hunger as yet. Elena knew that soon her aunt Xanthi would bring her husband his lunch and wine, and would stay there to help, then return with him and other workers at dusk. She remembered seeing her uncle Nicolas the year before straight and proud on his white horse, his unshaven face fierce-looking; his wife was dragging her crab-like feet behind the horse, carrying a load of kindling on her head. She was
knitting as she walked,
never
wasting a minute. How could she knit and walk and carry that load, Elena could not understand, but it seemed to be the norm. Her grandmother at ninety, walked with the help of a cane, and that only when she surprised her sheep tenders in the mountain. She had most of her teeth and senses
but her eyesight was failing because of cataracts.
“Good thing there are no weddings now,” she often complained to herself only. “How can I sing at a wedding or a funeral blind like a bat?” That voice, shaky now, had made her famous in the surrounding villages, there could be no wedding or funeral without her. Nicholas, her eldest, had made a few attempts on her life mostly for money. She was fold of saying that she didn’t like going to her grave
with bones
that had mended haphazardly. Her son notwithstanding, she outran a chicken when she was after it for the daily examination of its posterior; if the hen was found ready to lay her egg, she was in her own coop until her duty was done. After the hen announced its feat, the grandmother would sneak in the stable to sip the warm egg raw; after that, she usually came out wiping her mouth and complaining about the cursed hen which had gone sterile on her.
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“Grandma steals the eggs in the shed,” Elena told her mother. “She doesn’t steal,” her mother scolded her, “the eggs are hers, or rather yours.” She mumbled the last words because she knew that Elena was tired of listening to the same story. “Old people know they have reached the end of their road and try desperately to hold on,”,” she continued, “but if I ever get like that, find a way to kill me. You see, death from hunger is so terrifying that they cannot think they are doing something bad when they take the food out of the mouths of children which could mean their death.” How could my mother be like that, Elena thought; she lies to us that she already ate so we can have her food. Now she forgives my grandmother who does the opposite. “Don’t mind her, Elena,” Anna continued, “she believes she is fooling death.”
The days went by in restless agony anticipating some development of events, not knowing what to expect or what was happening in the rest of the island; There was no sign of the British landing, thus foiling the café
strategists’ plans.
Suddenly, unexpected things began to happen and the waiting came to an end. The German planes that appeared over the sharp tips of the mountain and over the villages tearing the blue sky, covered
hillsides and fields with thousands of
leaflets which fluttered in the wind like so many dead pigeons. Written
both in
Italian and Greek, the leaflets posed the new danger. The Italians were urged to surrender to the German Army so they can go home in peace. They were also given useful information about the character of the ‘Greek’ with the warning: ‘If you arm them, they’ll shoot you! Have no misconception.’ The ultimatum was that “. . . the island will be blown to bits!’
The warning to the Greeks
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was to stay out of
this skirmish if they didn’t want to suffer repercussions and a repetition of the Cretan massacre. The mere memory of that made the Greeks shudder. The Italians at the garrison collected most of the leaflets and tore them shaking their fists at the departing planes and cursing loudly at their ex-allies then sat on the front stoop looking suspiciously around them as if expecting the dagger of the treacherous Greek to pierce their backs as the Germans had projected. The harbor wasn’t heard of, there was quiet at the village while the antiaircraft and all three canons were poised against the eastern horizon waiting to blast the Germans had they initiated an invasion. And, as was expected by all except the Italians, those Greeks who took up arms had disappeared. When the Italians realized that they had been betrayed, it was too late; still, they vowed to fight to death. They didn’t have long to wait, the Stukas came in waves, endless formations
covered the sun from morning to sundown without letup. A
holocaust like the one in the island of Crete was expected. Blasts continued to shake the earth relentlessly, a never ending earthquake. At night the skies were lit, the red flames died with the breeze at dawn which blew in ashes, the harbinger of extinction. The world beyond the great mountain seemed to be blown away. Isolated in her father’s village, Elena felt like a trapped animal that can smell danger but doesn’t know from whom to hide or where. She walked around in the dusty fields searching for last summer’s ‘security’, whatever that was, sniffing the wind, scanning the lonely road for someone who would be passing, to break the wall of silence. She had heard that horrible things were happening beyond that mountain; hillsides of groves of olive trees were burned to the
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ground as the Germans tried to extricate the Italian soldiers hiding there hoping that the similarity of color between the leaves and their uniforms would fool the pilots; the Italian soldiers didn’t know that their ex-allies had already dug out the remaining Italians from homes and fields, and from wherever they were hiding and were executing them en masse. What had the Italians done to them so they massacred them with such vengeance? They were their allies, she tried to reason, they were not responsible for their government’s decisions. She realized that reasoning and madness were two sides on one and the same coin, that of war; and the more she thought, the more unanswered questions came up, the more confused and frightened she got. The Italians were her enemies until recently and now she was worried that they were to be massacred by their common enemy. She lay sleepless at night, afraid, waiting for the end of the world, as her grandmother was predicting in her semi-lucid moments. She worried about Basil and Ourania in the city, also, and the home they had left; she may never see them or the apartment again; and what if they were to be homeless, too, come next winter. Days became shorter and darkness came down from the mountain early; the moon failed to soften the fear and harshness. The whole village blew out lamps early and went to bed as if nothing extraordinary was happening, and the chickens, the cow and the horses did the same. Only the crickets kept watch. When morning came, life began anew, going on as usual. Cheese making could not wait the milk had already turned thick and buttery, it was undrinkable; the cheese process had to begin immediately, or the milk would be wasted. For most of the sheep and goat folks, cheese was a livelihood. For a few days Elena watched her uncle and the men working until everything was finished, sheep returned to their cotes in the mountain and strong dripping
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masses of milk and thickening agents were hanging from the beams in the stable and the shed further out in the yard. She helped pour the sour drippings in the large vats to be mixed with corn flour to feed the pigs. That finished, there was nothing else but worry and take to the paths in the morning chewing on a piece of bread dipped in olive oil, to scan the road. Sitting on her favorite rock under the shadow of an oak tree whose age no one could guess, she wrote in her diary, if she found some paper or just took mental notes, looked around, daydreamed, listened and waited. Before sunup one day she saw shadows coming up the winding road; gradually she could make out horses, carts, and men
emerging from the woods. Before long,
they materialized on the path below her rock leading or pulling the heavily loaded carts up the unyielding terrain. They must have been traveling all night, she thought, refugees, no doubt, from the burning city; she stood up to see if there was anyone she knew. When they came closer, she realized that there was no woman or child in the group, only wild unshaven men looking dangerous; dirty, shabby, angry. A conglomeration of household items were heaped helter-skelter on the strange caravan. Suddenly, she was afraid. “Have you come from town?� She asked shouting from the safety the rock and its height offered her. They noticed her but the leader ignored her and walked on looking straight ahead. Her voice was shaky; the others hadn’t heard her. She repeated her question pressing them for any information she could get but the bad-tempered men pulled at the bridles impatiently and walked on. Less afraid now, she climbed down and walked alongside the last one of the group looking furtively at the velvet drapes, the gilded mirrors, the rugs, period chairs and tables, the silverware, a mount of home furnishings on each cart. She gave up the
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idea that they were refugees; they didn’t look the ‘velvet drape’ kind. She wondered where all that wealth had come from. The young man, about nineteen, smiled at her. There was a hint of beard on his chin and one of his front teeth was missing, but his eyes looked kind. The sun came out from behind the mountain and bathed them in an orange light. He was almost good looking, she decided and fell in step with him. She wanted to talk to him, he blushed and looked at her sideways, shyly. With a sudden movement, he extracted a black box from his pocket and tossed it to her, then turned to see if she was impressed. She caught it in the air; he hadn’t answered any of her questions yet and the nasty group was approaching the fork that led to the two villages. Elena pushed the little silver button of the box and whistled in amazement. A pair of incredibly beautiful opera glasses inlaid in smoky ivory with gold rims was resting in pathetic insensitivity on its red velvet lining. “So,” he asked, “what is it?” “Opera glasses,” she said looking at him suspiciously. “Where did you find them?” “What’s opera?” He looked at her perplexed. And then innocently: “It must be a church; I didn’t find them, I took them.” He looked a bit crushed. He shrugged and waved his arms, then with the tip of his whip he touched his possessions. A cold hand gripped Elena’s heart, the shock almost paralyzed her. These people are looters, she realized for the first time understanding the full meaning of the word. “You are a thief!” she shouted shrilly. “I don’t like thieves, here, take your stupid glasses.” She threw them at his feet. “What glasses, he said, you have glasses on, you wear them. And if you must
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know only thieves are in the city today,” he boasted, “unless you think that the rats are human. Not too many people have the guts to get into a burning city; it’s fifty-fifty with the stukas overhead. Homes are burning! Stores are burning, everything will be destroyed. What’s wrong trying to save something for oneself?” “Oh, nothing,” she said sarcastically, trying not to cry in front of the horrible man. “Maybe they should give you a medal for rescuing all those things.” She spread her arms over the loot. I suppose you will look for the owner after the planes leave to tell him that you rescued his possessions. Maybe he’ll give you an award, she said with heavy sarcasm which he didn’t seem to understand. “Someone would get them, why not me?” “But they are not yours, they belong to other people. What are you going to do with such luxury in the mountain?” “Sell them! I’ll buy food and stuff.” “Food and stuff. . .” she shook her head sadly. The man began to climb faster to catch up with the others who were shouting for him to hurry up. He disappeared behind the trees. Elena climbed up the path and sat on her rock in tears. They passed underneath again on the second bend of the road. The young man saw her and threw the little black box back to her; it landed at her feet in a clump of oregano. How odd, she thought, that this inanimate thing seems to know that it doesn’t belong here, and those men don’t. She picked it up and held it lovingly, as she would an injured sparrow. She wished then that the Germans would come; that the entire filthy, thieving globe would be overrun by them and, eventually, annihilated so that the air would be cleared of greed. It was too horrible to witness the state of people after a few years of hardship. If a human being could in an emergency push a fellow human being to his death in one way or
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another instead of giving him a hand, then what’s the point of going on, of fighting, hoping, building civilizations? The word ‘civilization’ brought up an ugly truth. Wasn’t every civilization built on the ruins of another? She thought with sadness. The Nazis, too, were thought of as ‘civilized’! The sun had risen well above the horizon and the thorny hillside was getting hot. She walked home on the sun-baked path.
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “I hardly see Nicky nowadays. As soon as he wakes up he disappears and doesn’t return until supper time. I do the same, but at least, I come home before noon and stay here. My mother is always busy; she looks busy but outside of washing and ironing, I can’t see what else she can do. I try to speak with her but lately she has gone back to her silence; she can’t understand that I agonize about so many things. I’m sure she has more anxieties than I have, but I wish she could talk to me. This is a sample of adult communication. (I must consider myself an adult; during a war, I hear, there are only children and adults, and since I’m no child, I’m an adult; whenever it’s convenient to the ‘adult’ adults.) “Fist,” Mama said, “you are too young to be so inquisitive, and second, I don’t understand what you want from me, why are you always after me as if I hold and can solve the world’s problems. We are born, we live, we die. In between, we do everything else...eat, sleep, love. Life is just a symptom!” I couldn’t believe my ears, I couldn’t understand my mother, where did she get that from? I asked her: ‘A symptom of what?’ And she said, of all things: ’I don’t know, of events? Death maybe.’
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“But we kill”, I said and steal,” She gave me an angry look. “That, too, it’s in the scheme of things, but not all of us do,” she said. “Then, why live? Why go to church? Why believe the ‘thou shall not kill’, or take what is not yours, and all the other commandments?” “That is for the individual to answer. I can’t answer for the world, I tried to raise my family with those values. What am I, a judge for the world’s sins?” I
could not answer her; she usually shuts me up like that.
“And, further more,” she continued, “Why don’t you try to yourself first, try to live questioning until you have
understand
as a good person and stop this philosophical learned enough. Then you can tell me, too.
Remember, no one has come back from the dead to tell us all we need to know.” “Thanks a lot,” I said but she did not get the sarcasm, she
was busy
thinking of a way to end the sermonizing. She ended as she usually did. “God’s will be done!” “He let them nail His own Son on the cross.” I told her in anger and she glared at me. I let it go at that. I know it’s unfair of me to pester her, but who else is there to talk to? Mama’s mother died at childbirth; she, and her brothers and sisters had a tough life.
They, too, did not have
anyone to answer their questions. Who would, their stepmother? She only knew how to beat them. That’s why she fights for my education, she says, because they did not let her have any, and she, too, needs some answers. Sometimes I feel that I annoy her, but I’ll make it up to her; When older and smarter, I will give her all the answers.’
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I grow
C H A P T E R
GEORGE The people
of the village thought of George as a ‘character’ and treated him
as such by holding him at bay, calling him insane afraid that one day he might explode and kill someone. George lived in his own world, a cocoon that never “exploded”. He was just a man whose irrationality touched on the genius. At least Elena thought so. About forty, the son of a disrobed priest who had lost his place in church when he disclosed a bishop’s shady deals, George was a scholar, a poet, a philosopher; too much for that village where everyone grabbed a scythe or tools or flocks early in the morning before sunup and left for the day’s ‘bread’, while George delivered speeches to the fir trees and the wayward goats in the ravine. The simple people did not understand his literate manner of speech or his strange ways, and thought him more than odd since he had never done a day’s work. George had never gone to school but got his education from his father’s holy books to which he was more devoted as he grew older; then he studied philosophy
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and a few languages, no one knew how, while his father worked in the fields. His mother died many years ago. Occasionally, sympathetic neighbors who remembered his saintly mother, left food at their door, or passed a plate from behind barricaded windows as George went by. Elena was warned to avoid him and to look the other way if he speaks to her not to encourage him. She had seen him go off down into the ravine by himself.
From behind a stone fence, high up and safe,
she saw him on a rock, much like the one she used to sit and write; he was preaching to the goats that were busy destroying the bushes totally deaf to his lecture. His deep voice echoed and reverberated strangely through the dark gorge. When she left an hour later, he was still ranting.
In the village windows were
shut, the people she met were crossing themselves and hurried home murmuring: ‘he’s at it again.’ When she went back for a walk in the afternoon, he was still orating. One day at noon, George opened their yard door, walked in without asking and sat on the cement stoop under the walnut tree where Elena was resting. Her mother was sitting nearby and her grandmother was asleep. Both women sat up suddenly and remained motionless waiting for what was coming next. George sat quietly. It was the first time the three people came face to face. Then he spoke. He began asking questions without waiting for answers. Questions about life, death, religion, truth, murder, sin. Elena realized that the man did not give a hoot about religion, and he, the son of a priest. Yet, she was told that he was to be a priest but no one knew why that did not materialize; the man is a walking encyclopedia, Elena thought knowing that her mother was secretly praying for him to get up and leave so she could bolt the door. She even offered him wine, hoping that he would drink it and go. Instead, George began to recite in Latin. Elena
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recognized it only because she had to study Virgil in school. How in the world did George know about Virgil, in a village where the people could hardly articulate their own language? “What’s he talking about?” Anna whispered to her daughter. “Latin poetry,” she whispered back. “You are kidding!” “I’m not! I have never been able to understand Virgil as I’m doing now.” “Please,” her mother pleaded, “don’t let him hear you. He’ll never leave.” George recited poetry most of the afternoon with his grand gestures and intonations and Anna, thoroughly bored wondered why he didn’t go to his favorite place in the ravine to impress the goats. After the Latin poets he began with the Greeks of ancient times. Homer was not easy; Elena had a tough time translating the ancient bard into modern Greek let alone learn it by heart, but George seemed to have full command of ancient Greek. She didn’t know if he understood everything, but he had found his audience. Elena liked to listen to him; she could see her mother’s eyes drooping. “Why did you want to become a priest?” She interrupted the torrent of words and her mother sighed in despair. “Because,” George answered louder than he should, “religion, that poison of the mind, is the only language that’s simple enough even for idiots to understand.” She was instantly sorry she had opened Pandora’s box. “My mission is to spend my life educating these people.” Elena shivered. The man was really crazy. Her mother got up, took George by the arm and walked him to the door. “Time to do some chores,” she said gently, “my brother-in-law would be coming soon. Nice of you to drop by!” George did not resist, he walked out still
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talking. Anna bolted the door; looking out for the last glance, she saw George walking backwards. “Either he doesn’t know that he was led out,” she told Elena, “or the mention of your uncle scared him off.”
No one in the village remembered exactly when or how it happened, or if it happened at all, but the explanation for George’s strange behavior was that at a very early age he had fallen off the church bell tower did not grow up normal. Another version was that an evil spirit was residing in his body. The village treated him accordingly. They knew that he occasionally had fits but he had never been to a doctor; the more books he sent to Athens for, the stranger he became, they were sure of that. He had been arrested before the war for speaking against the dictator in the coffee house; he was tortured, force-fed with castor oil and, handcuffed, was forced to sit on a
block of ice until his intestines were ready
to drop out of his rectum. After that, he was sent to an exile island for two years. In the confusion of Italy’s surrender and the German take-over of the land, he escaped in a fishing boat and appeared at the village when everyone thought he was dead. He was more uncommunicative than ever. He took to wearing the flowing black robes of a priest, perhaps his father’s from when he was a priest, and walked from field to hillside and gorge preaching during the day. The children threw stones at him, but that was a sort of exorcising something evil they could not understand and feared, because their parents said so. Anna knew well that her daughter’s understanding of human mind was less than nothing and warned her. “More than a sympathetic ear, George needs a psychiatrist,” she said, not
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even sure herself how that works out and what good that would do for George since the saint for those diseases was so close in the valley beyond the great mountain. Just to be on the safe side, she took to bolting the yard door from that day on.
(ELENA’S DIARY) “It has been a scary day! One may read about it when it happens somewhere else, or consider it fiction. But I saw it with my own eyes. My uncle Nicolas, half insane with fear rushed into the house leaving his horse unattended in the street; I thought he had suffered a heart attack or something, he had left for the fields only half hour before. He was shaking his wife who was speechless and had foam in his mouth. I got the message that ghosts were falling from the sky and that they were white like angels. ‘The angels of death,’ murmured my grandmother and lowered her black kerchief over her eyes as if to separate herself from the world. “Crazy old woman,’ my ‘gentle’ uncle shouted at her, “I tell you the heavens have opened and those...whatever they are, are
dropping from the
skies under umbrellas.’ He was stuttering, his eyes searched the room either for a nook to hide in or maybe seeking to locate the place where he had hidden his hunting gun. He could see nothing but the white washed walls, the clean swept earth packed room with the rough hewn table, chairs, a washstand and a wreck of a sofa. My mother walked out of the room and looked over the mountain ridge. ‘German paratroopers,’ she announced, her voice icy like steel. ‘Flying men, we are lost,’ my uncle moaned and at
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that moment we heard Nicky as he ran through the village shouting the news: PARATROOPERS...GERMAN PARATROOPERS. Trust Nicky to be the first one to spread panic! But my uncle could not fully comprehend the reason or the presence of such people falling from the sky and he sat on the sofa like a caged animal while his wife holding her head as though trying to cure a gigantic headache, cried and prayed, her thin lips drawn together, coarse hairs jutting from inside her nostrils. I think that this family is the only family in the land that haven’t heard of the 1941 massacre in Crete when the German paratroopers really spread total destruction. Grandma has lived a long time; she has seen wars, blockades, earthquakes, epidemics, starving and other disasters including Haley’s Comet! I believed that she would be immune to one more calamity, but now I realized that she is possessed by a metaphysical fear. She seems to have turned to stone, that’s the only description I can give. Her rheumy eyes were shedding tears of despair. She knows that her end can’t be far off and is constantly mumbling prayers and prophesies when she is not nodding under the
walnut
tree. I shook her and tried to get her outside to see the paratroopers but I don’t think I got through to her... She just sat cement stoop her black toenails protruding from
in a corner on the
under the innumerable
yardage of black skirts, clawing the floor. ‘...death will fall from the skies on the sinners’ heads,’ her monotonous voice droned on, ‘men will fly but angels they will not be...rivers overflowing with the blood of the innocent...woods and towns incinerating; they melt like candles from fires from the sky and calves will drown in their mothers’ wombs...liquid fire will consume the waters of the earth...’
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‘Shut up you old fool,’ her son shouted at her; she kept quiet I stood in front of him in a very ugly mood. How can
after that.
this man talk to his
mother like that, such an old woman! I ran outside but the spectacle was not to be seen as the others saw it. I just saw one white shadow dropping behind the mountain and then the German planes flying aloft going East. I began to shiver. Paratroopers, I thought, as if hunger and war aren’t enough, why paratroopers? To kill us as they did the Cretans? To conquer? But we are conquered. And those prophesies of my grandmother...they are enough to make someone wish for a quick, painless death. Why wait if all those horrible things are in out future?”
A German invasion was imminent; everyone knew that but had no idea what the Germans had in mind for them, or how important the island was for the Axis or the Allies. They were scanning the skies neglecting fields and flocks. Those black death spitting birds in the sky seemed to be nailed there. Under the hot sun insects buzzed, cicadas chirped and crazy George was threatening the skies in Latin, fist raised at the planes. The cold fear of something hanging overhead was almost palpable and as loud as the crack of thunder. Elena climbed down to the crossroads waiting for anyone bringing news from her village down below. No one passed by the fountain, not even a goat. Further down in the valley, two donkeys grazed uninterested. The soft breeze brought up field and forest smells that had nothing to do with war and danger, or with men dropping from the skies. A bent figure was slowly climbing coming up the stony path pulling a stubborn mule behind him. When he came closer she recognized her
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uncle Philip’s friend. He looked at her not even greeting her, then watered his mule, washed his face and hands, and drank thirstily out of cupped palms wiping his hands on his pants. He sat on the stoop, his lined brow showed a pained face. Elena was following every movement silently praying that he would finish with his toilet and give her some news before she burst. Finally, the man spoke. He had come from the harbor, he said, and yes, he had seen the paratroopers and left right away. “One doesn’t know what to expect in times like these,” he said. “The Germans have landed in some parts of the island; the Italians tried to resist but were rounded up and taken behind the ruins of the old school together with the village council. We heard shots.” “My uncle!” She screamed. “How about my uncle?” She began to tremble. The man shrugged. “I don’t know, I left immediately.” She had to learn, but from whom? The man could only tell her about her grandfather’s wife who was being evacuated to a nearby village but she apparently had gone berserk when she saw a parachutist land on top of the apricot tree in her yard and as he attempted to untangle himself she went for his gun. He was faster and shot her. The man couldn’t tell if she had died. Elena walked back to the village with him. There were people waiting at the crossroad. Before she finished telling her mother what she had heard, a man walked into the house, this time with a message from Aristos whose orders were to stay where they were until further notice. Elena got mad. Aristos was in charge with his ‘don’t bother the enemy and the enemy won’t bother you’ policy; not a word about his father who was in enemy’s hands. Crying, Elena ran to the stable
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to be alone, to scream her fears but even there she could hear her mother’s moans from inside the house, lamenting her brother’s fate. Then she thought of Nicky. She went outside looking in every path and yard, asked everyone she met, but people were mostly interested in the city situation. Nicky was nowhere, her mother would go crazy. She had an eerie feeling that suddenly she had been transplanted to a foreign country, in another era. She kept calling her brother but the emptiness of the mountains only echoed her plea. She passed the Italian garrison; it was deserted. The Italians had taken to the mountains afraid of the Germans, afraid of the Greeks. She started for home to face her mother. Then she saw him. He had a smug smile on his face and walked like a cowboy. My God, a gun, she almost said it out loud. “Throw it away, right now,” she yelled. “Don’t take another step.” She was dead serious so much so that he froze, but he wouldn’t let go of the little gun. “But I found it,” he said. “So, if you find a bomb are you going to pick it up? Remember the bomb under the house in the city? I didn’t see you pick it up.” “I was too small then.” “Yeah, you would have picked up the bomb. Listen, You still are a kid. Grown people aren’t that stupid. If the Germans make their way up here, you are a goner. Throw it back into the ravine and let’s go home.” Reluctantly, Nicky threw it with vehemence as if aiming at a bird. They didn’t hear it fall. Elena was relieved. They went home.
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “The days follow one another empty and frightening and no one dares go down
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to the shore; the world beyond the mountain has grown remote, distant and scary to terrifying proportions. Sleep and food have lost meaning, I hardly stay in the house, I feel that the end is near and need to breathe free air, and not to bee trapped in useless limbo within the stone walls. I visit my father’s grave every morning and sometimes I walk into the woods to listen to the birds and the insects as if I have never heard them before. My mother thinks that I’ve lost my mind, maybe I have! I pretended I was asleep in my cot one night
and
Mom was bending over me
making the
sign of the cross over my body. Nicky has found a friend who has a horse and we hardly see him. He leaves in the morning and returns at dusk, but at east we know where he is. If nothing
happens soon, I’ll lose my mind for
sure.”
PARATROOPERS AND ITALIAN PRISONERS Two figures climbed the path, a shortcut known only to the natives and their horses who could walk it blindfolded, as their masters bragged. The two people took careful steps, unfamiliar with the terrain. As they emerged onto the road they came face to face with Elena who looked at them stunned and frightened. The men were in ragged uniforms and trench coats; she knew then that they were Italian officials in some civil capacity; they carried no arms. From their bruises, she surmised that they had come in contact with
hot headed peasants on
their way. In a few broken Greek words they asked her where the road led and she told them in Italian that they had reached the end of the road. “We are not soldiers,” they rushed to inform her, “we are Army doctors.” She recognized them then. The tall one who had visited their school when a
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schoolmate of hers was desperately ill and took her to the hospital at the request of Signorina Tescari. This doctor had saved her life, she thought, how ironic. Now he needs my help. She told the one doctor that she had recognized him from school and he smiled and thin smile; then she led them into a thicket of wild bushes that would protect them from wind and curious peasants, told them to wait and left wondering what her next step would be. She wanted to save them, but how? Why did I accept this responsibility? She thought. Their fascist leader is dead, their recent leader have signed a treaty with the allies; what have I got to do with all this mess? She wondered. Duty and resentment clashed inside her tearing her apart. Again the questions. Why are men so arrogant as to choose the time to kill and the
time to ask for mercy as if nothing happened in between?
Why did she feel humiliated for them?
Who is weak, who is strong and who decides
where the fine line between compassion and vindication lies? “Remind me some day to talk about sociology, the people need education.” She came to with a start. Without realizing it, she had taken the road that passed from George’s door. It must be God’s will, she thought and told George what she had just seen. If he heard he gave no indication. He had his back turned to her and she waited. After a while, fearing his ‘divine madness’, she started to go away. She turned to look at him. “Yes, or no, George?” she asked. “What do your books say about social justice?” George raised himself and tied the rope around his waist, folding the black robe tightly around his thin body. “Do we aid an enemy who is no longer an enemy?” he mimicked her. Hot blood rushed to her cheeks. It’s my fault, she thought. What happened to my head, how can I trust a man who is crazy? George tucked his hands into the rope like
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imprisoned pigeons and looked at her. “Let’s go,” he said calmly as if he had just awaken from a deep sleep. He led the way. The two slender, tall figures under the scrawny fig tree were dark against the late afternoon sky. They bowed when they saw them. “The row-boat leaves Friday at dawn,” George told them without any ceremonies. “When you get to the mainland people will take you to the guerilla forces on the mountain.” Elena translated, fascinated by the eloquence and logic of the man who was supposed to be crazy. The revelation was stunning. The man was recruiting. He had spent a lifetime cloistered in his own world in the ambiguity of questions without answers. He now spoke with authority. The Italians did not greet his life-saving plan with the anticipated enthusiasm. “Friends,” George said emphasizing the word with caustic alacrity, “I’m afraid you have no choice. You are at war with Germany. Germans are all around us, this is not a Red Cross Station. We have suffered you, we will suffer the Germans if they do not annihilate us. It is different for you. Let’s face it, you haven’t been exactly angels all these years and blood will be shed on both sides. If the Greeks spare you, the Germans will get you. The Greeks don’t forget that easily, don’t let appearances fool you. Only the civilized hypocrites forget, we don’t.” The two men nodded, one doctor was looking at his nails carefully. The other was scratching the ground with his boot. “We are very hungry,” the first one said suddenly. “It’s been three days since we last ate.” In the darkness that was slowly enveloping everything, his face looked more lined and sad. “We’ll get you something,” George said and left. Elena followed him afraid
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of the responsibility she now shared with George, an unstable mind to say the least. “Where are we getting food from, George?” She asked. George shrugged, and rushed home whistling. Elena knew it was up to her, she had to make plans to secure some food; but from where? She had been starving for years and never stooped to stealing food, but she had an obligation and like an expert thief she crept into the stable. The smell hit her in the stomach, the cow shed was worse. The animals sensed her presence but did not make a sound, only the hens stirred when she took the evening’s product: one egg! A couple of onions, a few quince hidden for winter when they would be ripe and perfect for eating, two dried apples, some dry beans, a small head of cheese and two horse blankets were all she could scrounge as she frantically searched in the darkness driven by smell. She made a bundle and leaped over the back fence landing in a small clearing, someone else’s ‘bathroom’, to her bad luck. She picked herself up and began to run. The warm egg in her palm gave her stomach a wistful tug. What’s an egg? She asked herself. Can it save a person? The Italians were eating our eggs up to a few days ago, and I haven’t had one for months. The distance to their shelter was short, the desire big. As the supreme luxury of the velvety liquid rolled down her larynx, she forgot about conscience qualms. ‘War times,’ she murmured philosophically. Tonight not only I stole, but I ate something that was going to charity. But charity begins at home, my mother is right, please God, forgive me. The elegant officers munched the raw juicy onion and the still unripe quince without wincing, but struggled with the dry beans. Elena couldn’t watch. She went home; on the stony path, her clogs sounded like bullets; a dog was alerted, his bark terrified her, what is someone came out to look? She took of
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her clogs and biting her lips in pain slipped inside the yard noiselessly. The house was as dark as the mountain, the only sound was the powerful duet of snoring
in her uncle’s room. Nicky and her mother were sleeping in the other
room thinking that she, too, was safe in her bed. Next morning, Nicolas missed the two blankets and asked everyone about them but no one had seen them. “The horse must have eaten them,” he said looking suspiciously at Anna. Elena imagined herself shrinking; she was sure that everyone knew she was the guilty one; the thought made her cringe, her crime loomed large. Her uncle did not mention the blankets again. Two days later the weather changed; a slow, thin drizzle covered homes and stables, the church and the big walnut tree in their yard. The mountain, immersed in its mists had disappeared in the gray wet sky. A prelude to winter. People huddled around their fireplaces thinking peaceful thoughts and past days when there was no enemy and no men dropped from the sky. The warmth, the food, little as it was, made their hunger pains at least bearable.
It’s so peaceful, Elena thought, I can almost
forget there is a war and two miserable Italians out there getting soaked. She had momentarily forgotten about them; she jumped. Outside she shivered without a jacket and in the darkness her feet were pricked by thorns as she stepped anywhere. In her pocket she carried her share of corn bread that she had saved from supper. A dark figure sat on the rock; he was drenched, disoriented and didn’t recognize her. He didn’t stretch his arm to take the bread. “Where is the doctor? She asked. “Morto,” he answered with a sob. My God, she thought, dead! The man pointed at a balk nearby covered with one of the moth eaten blankets. “Killed in his sleep.”
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“Who?” He shrugged. How couldn’t see in the darkness; the bulk of the rock saved him otherwise he, too, would be killed. Strange, Elena thought, I didn’t hear shooting. “I have no tools to dig a grave, he sobbed. “Leave him, then, let him rot so the crime will haunt the killer.” “No, no, no...”
he crossed himself and cried “Oh, Dio mio, Dio mio, I
can’t do that, the vultures will eat him; it’s terrible, terrible...” “You’ve been together a long time?” She asked. All our lives; he’s my brother.” His voice cracked. Elena began to cry, she ran away, she had fallen into another pit.
C H A P T E R
ESCAPE Perched atop a hill
on the side of the great mountain famous for its cedar
trees, the village was insignificant and poor and seemed to exist in a different world. Only a handful could afford to send children to a one-classroom school in another village, an hour’s walk away. Generation after generation they went on tending their flocks and small plots of land for their food and their flocks, almost illiterate, except for those who chose to live in a city or emigrated to another country. Some have been to other cities to buy merchandise, others to jail because as it happened in
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other villages as well, the village of peaceful people had its professional goat nappers who were used to jail when caught with someone else’s goat. The logic was what if I go to jail for a couple of months? My children’s bellies will be full. That little, hidden, insignificant village, unknown to map makers, was destined to become a beacon for the resistance, and that, because of the Italians. Those who the Germans didn’t manage to catch, found their way up to the village scaling mountainsides, stumbling through goat paths where no German trucks or cars could go; they walked nights to avoid surprises both from irate Greeks and Nazi killers, and hid under trees or in bushes until a kind soul would point the way from where they would be rowed to the mainland in a small fishing boat to join the partisans. It was the only means they could count on to save their lives, and that, if they made it alive. Of the thousands Italian troops that surrendered to the Germans that September of 1943 hoping to be repatriated, or at worst, sent to a concentration camp, a few hundred survived the massacre. The rest perished under machine gun fire in one day’s mass blood orgy in the valley of the island’s Saint with a silent question in their young eyes, stupefied by the murderous, unanticipated act of their ex-allies. They fell into that bloodbath with hardly a whisper or even a mental final word to their loved ones,, without the slightest attempt of valor. Some had time, just to make the sign of the cross, others were spared by thinking fast, that is, dropping on the ground where their slaughtered comrades would fall and cover them. “Cowards,” George exploded, “only they would let a few Germans exterminate a whole army. They knew the Germans would show no mercy, it was a game for them to machine gun a whole unarmed Army, for God’s sake, Ten, twenty, one hundred of
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them could rush the Germans even before they got to the machine guns...but each one was thinking on his own precious life.” “Would you have done that?” Someone asked him. “Ask someone else,” George answered seriously, “I’m crazy, I could do anything; I most certainly wouldn’t go to my death in their hands that easily.” “In such a case, all Greeks are crazy, George,” the man said, and he meant it. The leftovers of the vanquished, trapped Italians roamed hills, valleys and villages weaponless, stripped of arms bearing signs of local vengeance
on their
bruised bodies, those who had not surrendered and took to the mountains, and those who had waited for days under the corpses of their comrades, breathing the stench of death. Elena and the priest’s two daughters secretly took care of those who straggled wounded into their village, hid them as much as they could and gave them what little food they could muster, mostly their own rations; they stole for them. The priest’s girls, seventeen and eighteen, good, simple girls worked in the fields with their parents, did not allow themselves the luxury of a bruised conscience. They went to church almost daily as befitted the children of a priest, to clean, to light the votive candles and rub the bronze and silver sacred items until they shone; they fasted at Lent and waited for the matchmaker while spinning and pedaling on their looms late into the night. At that point, the Italians to them were neither friends, nor foe. In the back of their minds, there was the suspicion that it might, just might be possible for Christ to test them by appearing as a beggar or a wounded Italian. So, they stole as any good Christian would, for a worthy cause, for the charity of the Lord. Elena envied and admired their placidity; she wondered whether her sin of stealing would seem more justifiable if she crossed herself , as they did, each time she stole.
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(ELENA’S DIARY) I feel happy; I want to giggle, to do something crazy, but the The happiest thing is that Uncle Philip is alive; we heaved a relief. Some
craziest, sigh of
many days fearing for his life! He sent for us. When we left
before daybreak the dew was still on the petals of the wild flowers on the stone fences, the ground. The mountain was still asleep under its foggy mantle but looked reborn, nevertheless, everything looked reborn. Going down the rough road was easier than coming up. Summer is leaving us; the dew chilled our bones; As we passed under the olive trees we heard the twittering of the birds. The olives would be ready for picking in a month or so. I fell in step with Mama who seemed too anxious to get away from the mountain. My clogs were cutting into my flesh
as always and I was hurting.
I would be better off if I could walk barefoot, but the stones are worse. I told Mama the discussion I had with Uncle Nicolas the day before we left. He is a bit
taken aback whenever I speak to him about anything at all,
which isn’t so
often. I took advantage of it. (A neighbor told me that she
thought that was true; that I had a way of looking at him like my father did, and that since I looked like my father, he was slightly overwhelmed. Well he might be, I said, seeing what injustices he had committed to almost everyone around him). I faced him and asked him point blank to help us with food this coming
winter so we could continue with school. Mama stopped in
her tracks. ‘You
did what? You? You wouldn’t ask if your life depended on
it. So? What did he
say?’ She began walking again. ‘It isn’t just my life,
Mom, it’s all of us, we have to make it, to push a little, I believe this
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year will be the last we have to suffer.’ ‘Yes, yes, I’m fed up with your fantasies, go ahead, what did he say? ‘He said that he would be in the city before Christmas and he will bring us food.’ ‘So much for that!’ Anna sighed. ‘Elena, my child, if there is taking, your uncle will be there with a gun. But he wouldn’t give water to his guardian angel. The man is totally heartless...Anyway, let’s not talk about it; after all we ate at the man’s table and he took us in when we were in danger...We mustn’t be ungrateful, even though what we ate is yours and mine and he stole it...’ What have I started! ‘It’s your bread they are eating...’ I fell
back a bit to undo
the straps of my clogs; she kept murmuring as she walked ‘...and they are raising that flock of children and grandchildren with what is rightfully yours...Nicky!’ She screamed. ‘Stop running, your feet will bleed again.’ Nicky, the silly, pre-war pampered kid, has developed a perfect insensibility not only to the soles of his feet but to everything that went on around him, as though he is protected by an invisible
shield;
that’s his way of coping. He slowed his pace and I fell in step with him. He seemed thoughtful, strange, I knew it was still too early in the morning but still his mood should be more exuberant since we were going home. I hardly saw him in the past few weeks, he was always with Yiannis, his new friend. Suddenly, Nicky he has developed this love for horses, he is now an expert, he claims. He walked next to me kicking stones with his bare feet, or aiming at tree trunks or a runaway goat. When he exhausted the subject of horses I told him about the Italians and the escape route. He turned his face to look at me and squinted as the sun hit his face. I recognized the impishness in his dark smiling eyes under the blond lashes.
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‘Don’t tell Mama,’ he said, ‘I was there with every boatload that left the island.’ I stopped cold in my tracks, was he bragging? he dragged me back in case Mama got close. ‘I helped bury some bodies that were washed ashore after a storm,’ he whispered and I gulped. The doctor, I thought, dead under the bushes. ‘We buried one right in the village,’ he continued and my heart began
to pound. He had buried my Italian!
‘Remember the tall doctor in the city?’ I nodded. ‘They killed him in our village you know, they say it’s someone from the village up there,’ he pointed back and up without turning his head. That ‘up there’ could be any of the dozen villages perched on the hillside. ‘They say one of those who looted the houses when the city was bombed killed him. You should see the stuff they brought!’ He whistled. I saw his children take apart a mandolin right in the street...They didn’t know what it was, but, anyway, they say he is the one; they thought the Italian had guns...’ ‘I brought them food,’ I said, my voice hardly audible. He gasped. He looked at me and whistled. ‘So, you are the one.’ His surprise was no greater than mine was. Here we were, two people, brother and sister, who have never agreed on anything, unknowingly working for the same cause. Nicky was looking at me hard; I had the feeling he was seeing me for the first time, or that he saw someone he never bothered to look at before. He was so preoccupied staring at me he forgot to watch the road and stumbled and hurt his; he le tout a yell and cursed coarsely not thinking about Mama; she heard and came to us with the inevitable umbrella that never left her armpit on trips. Nicky was nimble and ran down ahead of s forgetting the pain. ‘You really did, then.’ He shouted back as he ran. I ran after him feeling
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the straps of my clogs dig
into my flesh. ‘For those two only once; the second time I found the doctor dead and his brother crying...’ ‘That was his brother? God, that’s why he wouldn’t let go of him. He refused to be evacuated until the body was buried, so Yiannis loaded the corpse on the horse and we buried it in the killer’s wheat field. I like to see his face when the rains come next month and he starts plowing, boy, oh boy...can you see him running
like a madman
possessed yelling ghost... His laughter had something macabre in it, like the laughter of a hyena; It brought in my eyes. ‘One foot deep, that was the trench we were able to dig,’ he continued. ‘The bastard will be punished.’ ‘First, you don’t really know that he is the killer, the man you say.’ I told him. ’Second, it is too cruel to treat death this way even if it is the burial of an enemy. How could you do that?’ ‘Do what?’ he asked innocently.‘That was a sacrilege and it makes me sad.’ ‘Everything makes you sad or ashamed,’ he told me getting annoyed. I didn’t congratulate him for his ‘brave deed’ and was angry. ‘You and your sensitivities, What did you expect me to do, ask Father Dimos for a funeral? Anyway, Yiannis said that they are heathen, at least he was buried’. ‘Nicky, did you think that the man him, a son
may have a family waiting for
like you; would you like to have that happen to Uncle Philip?’
I remembered how close to death our uncle had been...‘Then he should have stayed in his country,’ he said. ‘Death is inviolable.’ I said weekly. What’s the use, Nicky still needs to
find out things and concepts he
doesn’t know exist. He was silent, his exuberance evaporated. I was too upset to feel sorry for him, his prank scared me; it was a prank, I felt,
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not a patriotic or humanistic gesture. It was scary; in the course of our daily lives violent death has become an everyday occurrence, it fails to faze us. But mockery of death to me
means mockery of life and I don’t want
my brother to lose the value of life and whatever shreds of decency is left in us... ’We had no decent tools to dig with,’ he murmured looking at the ‘and I didn’t have much strength..’ All his bravado was gone; I let him and Mama walk ahead so I can cry without witnesses to my ‘sensitivity.’
C H A P T E R
NICKY’S SECRET Hardly anyone
remembered that her name was Sofia. All the years that she had
been in the village, children and adults called her Nona. Nona Sofia! She had been the final achievement of the matchmaker’s numerous trips across the bay to the little island of Ithaca facing the port of her future village. Finally, Sofia decided to be Elena’s grandfather’s third wife. Elena at the time was one year old and thousands of miles away. Sofia was a widow, years before, the sea had taken both husband and son in a vicious storm. From the very beginning, it was obvious that she didn’t wish to belong; she never smiled, didn’t
make friends or encouraged visits. In good
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ground,
weather she walked alone after sunset and if she met someone she just nodded and walked on head bent. She observed Sunday services alone because her husband didn’t bother; as usual, she walked looking ahead, her flaming hair high on her head, her body straight. She attended funerals only, never christenings or weddings, but was devoted to husband and God and lived inside her house and yard busy with her housework, her yard and her knitting, or sat on the balcony surrounded by her silent
loneliness. Even the children shied away from her, she
didn’t manage to warm up to them. The upper floor had two
apartments connected
by the dining room door which she always kept locked. That door was unlocked twice a day only so that
food could pass. As the food scarcity grew worse,
Philip made it clear that even if they all starved, the old folks eat first. That, they all understood.
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “Nona Sofia is dead! Her proud figure was pierced by machine gun bullets and now she rests on the hillside facing her island across the bay amid laurel bushes and wild honeysuckle. My Grandfather has now become more remote and morose, dwelling in his isolation with delight. The gradually the world is
masochistic
broadening chasm between himself and the rest of
now more evident. He refuses to unlock the door and Uncle
Philip has to yell
and bang at noon and dinner time. Sometimes during the
night we hear him calling Nona. His temples are now suddenly white and the doctor told us that he has suffered a slight stroke because he stutters, drags his leg and has a
slight tremor. He is now 78 and
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I don’t even know
him, he has always been aloof, even at his best. I don’t feel that I have a grandfather, not as I imagined a grandfather to be. When I meet him in the street I run to kiss his hand, but I doubt he knows who I am. His face
is the same stony countenance without the friendliness of recognition or love. Evenings he sits in the balcony, nodding his head sadly; most of the day he sits downstairs in front of his door leaning on his cane as if he is waiting for someone. The war with Italy is over; there will be no more bombs or
frantic running
about, at least we hope not; things are happening with such speed I don’t have enough brains to categorize or understand them. People say that the Germans’ rule
will be different, that they won’t interfere with our lives.
We have been totally isolated in the village and in the dark about the happenings in the rest of the world; by now, we have all, more or less heard of atrocities; in the minds of simple folks, the word ‘atrocities’ is synonymous with the Middle Ages, certainly not committed by an educated, industrialized people in the twentieth century -to quote my aunt Popi- and certainly not to us. The whisperings of brutal crimes that reach us are more pronounced, more terrifying as time goes by. We also know that the city has suffered many damages in the heavy bombardment and Mama decided to make the trip to find out if the contents of the ‘apartment’ we had left in June are still there. She had a hunch that even if the apartment was still standing, it would be looted. ‘Who would want those miserable possessions?’ argued Uncle
Philip. He was
afraid to let her go, but he knew his sister. ‘Just the same,’ she answered, ‘I have to go.’ ‘You can’t, there is no way to get there; the taxi
and all
animals have been appropriated by the Germans. There is
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simply no way to get to the city.’ ‘I’ll walk,’ she said and I began trembling, I knew she meant it. ‘Maybe Aristos can come with me...’ ‘Aristos is not available for foolishness,’ my cousin replied readily. ‘Very well,’ she said, icky and Elena will come with me.’ I too much for her but for us, too, it would be an
knew it was
almost impossible feat.
‘Mama,’ Nicky said, ‘if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather go up to the village to talk to Uncle Nicolas. Maybe if I talk to give us some provisions for the winter.’ Mama
him again, he will
nodded absentmindedly but I
knew, and Nicky knew, that our uncle would never give us a crumb. When I looked at
Nicky he lowered
his eyes. I knew what he had in mind. The
Italian had to be decently buried. I was to go with Mama. Before retiring, Mama asked Aristos to prepare our bread ration for the next day and add an extra piece food is for then
for the road. He fingered the keys importantly and said: “The survival, not for foolish expeditions.” Mama bit her lip,
pleaded and I wished she would stop; I wanted to slap that priggish,
conceited face of his. Totally unemotional, he left to join his father at the harbor cafe. The love I still had for Aristos walked out the door with him when I saw tears in my mother’s eyes. Humiliation and bitter disillusionment replaced
my love. Nothing will cure this terrible
transition. I walked outside to be alone in my anger and feelings of total solitude, to convince myself that we are not in a prison camp where everyone is looking out for himself. I see the phantom of hunger sowing hate. What, I wonder are we
to reap when the war ends, if, indeed we
survive it?”
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Anna, Nicky and Elena stepped quietly down the stairs and waited inside the yard door for the last night German night patrol to pass towards their base. As soon as their booted steps faded away and the street grew quiet, they stole out of the house in the shadows and walked briskly to the main road higher on the hill. The dew drenched dawn was chilly and a heavy mist hung low over the fields and covered the stars. It was the island’s melancholy season, when all is gray and wet. At the fork of the road outside of their village Nicky left them and took the road through the village with the cherry trees on the way to his father’s village. His mother looked after him for a few minutes, then she and Elena crossed the ancient stone bridge to face the lesser bulk of the mountain which was immersed in its own misty darkness. “The mountain is notorious for sudden rainstorms and thunder,” Anna said to no one in particular, turning her head for a last look at her son climbing the path to the higher road. Elena had heard the mountain lore before; she understood that her mother was just saying something because she was nervous. The air was heady; pines, wild flowers and thyme fused into an intoxicating aroma. The two women climbed higher and higher; breathing became difficult, walking painful. They took off the clogs that were already cutting into their flesh, but the stones hurt more and Anna cursed under her breath. What, she thought, made us think that this time it would be different. “We’ll never learn”, she sighed wincing in pain; God, will I ever see the day when I can wear a normal pair of shoes again?” she complained. Elena turned her face not to see her mother’s swollen feet, forgetting her own.
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“It’s not that we don’t recall past experiences, Mama, she said, it’s because we keep hoping against hope that somehow, miraculously, the straps won’t hurt, that enough is enough,” She forced a smile. Hours later they reached the pass to the other side of the mountain and found themselves in another world, one of golden sunshine, not a cloud in the sky, just a huge blue sky above and around them, and a blue green sea below them. Along the shores that looked far away and insignificant, the sunlight reflected the world like a huge mirror. Exhausted, they sat under a tree to rest. Suddenly, Elena began to shiver, a painful contraction hit her stomach as if someone had whispered a death warning. Looking around her at the lush green of the bushes, the oak trees and the cloudless skies, she began to wonder how can death be lurking nearby on a day like this? Above her, the ancient oak tree made her feel tiny, a figure shrunk in comparison, her presence pitifully incidental. Yet, that small figure dared to hope and dream of a better world where one doesn’t have to beg for food; where there is light and a warm bed. If only I can make it, she wished feeling her lids heavy. Up there, away from the reality of enemy troops, guns, blood, with the world spread under her feet, she could dream though her feet ached and her mother sitting nearby was crying silently. When that happened, when her mother lost courage, Elena was scared but as the sun rose and the air grew hot, the despair she felt was somehow dissipated. She looked toward the road to avoid looking at her mother. The stooped figure of an elderly woman coming up the road they had traveled, was advancing towards them pulling a loaded mule behind her. With the peasant’s thick, black ankle-long skirt and her head covered with the traditional black kerchief, she looked like a figure from an eighteenth century lithograph or, Elena thought, like a woman from her father’s village. The
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newcomer left the road and climbed the path to where the two women were sitting. She tied the mule to the tree and dropped on the ground next to Anna panting and sweating profusely. Elena looked at the thick socks and home-made sandals of cloth and rope. “Good morning,” she said eyeing them with curiosity. “And a good day to you, too!” Anna said looking up. “Tell me,” Elena asked the newcomer, “why do you walk when you have an animal?” she felt sorry for the woman, she knew she was sparing the animal on the rough upgrade road and killing herself.
The woman pointed to the animal grazing
behind them with the back of her palm and a movement of her head. “There is no room, the animal is loaded; I’m bringing an offering to His Holy church.” She sighed and sat near Anna nodding ready to doze off. “I must say,” Anna murmured, “that’s a large offering.” .
“A terrible sin; a covenant I made with Him.” She crossed
herself and pulled the kerchief over her eyes. She spotted the discarded clogs and peered at the two women’s sore feet, then began to scrutinize their faces, clothes, and hands
with the open, honest curiosity of a peasant. She watched
Elena wiping her glasses. “You are strangers,” she decided. “Are you pilgrims?” Elena opened her mouth to speak but her mother was quicker. “Why...yes, yes, we are. How did you guess?” “It’s not hard; His name-day being tomorrow and you walking without shoes. I figured you have your covenant, too.” She slid closer to Anna and spoke to her in a conspiratorial manner. “Your girl here don’t look so good. You going for a cure?” She crossed herself again as Anna nodded leaving Elena speechless. The woman looked at her strangely. Elena had heard the whispering and felt like
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kicking the old woman; she did look undernourished but not insane. “Have faith,” the woman was telling her mother, you’ll see the miracle yet.” Anna nodded shamelessly. Elena couldn’t understand her mother’s game but when Anna shot back that look, she kept quiet and sat back leaning against the tree. The woman seemed friendlier after she had made her diagnosis of Elena’s mental state. “My daughter fell in love with a bum,” she began and looked at Elena as if warning her. “He was not exactly a bum, but he was poor, he had nothing. We found her a good, respectable man a bit older, but kind. He had a mill, vineyards, a house...she would want for nothing. You think she was happy? She cried all the way to the priest...” her eyes filled and she wiped them with the edge of her head kerchief. “A year later, she died at childbirth. It was the will of God, blessed be His name. He punishes the sinners...Three more years to go. I made a covenant to bring Him
prosfora* and oil every year on His name-day for five
years. That basket is full.” She pointed at the animal again and the two women were stunned thinking of the round aromatic loaves of the sacred offer, the precious prosfora, the offering of bread the woman was bringing to the monastery. How can a saint eat all that bread, Elena thought, and Anna, the nuns will have a feat! “Why?” Anna said aloud;. “He
took your daughter!” Elena listened quietly
but felt like laughing when she recognized her mother’s funny side coming up. “No, it’s not like that,” the woman said sadly. She came closer as if afraid that the saint down at the valley could hear her. “I have that young man’s soul in my conscience. The fool went and hanged himself.” Elena shuddered. The things she was learning! “How can I meet my Maker,” the old woman continued, “knowing that his mother has placed a curse on me...she burns black-ribbon
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candles every Friday night so that my soul will find no peace when I go. The whole village don’t talk to me on Fridays. But I fixed her. With the prosfora and the oil, our blessed Saint will take care of me...” Anna glanced at her daughter; there was mischief in her eyes, but warning, too. “I know how you feel,” she told the woman mournfully. I, too, had made a promise to His Grace, but, unfortunately, I can’t keep it, may God forgive me.” The woman looked at her in disbelief. She was shocked. She moved slightly away as if expecting the Saint to throw a bolt and she didn’t want to be in the line of fire. She felt contaminated, she crossed herself again; her shrewd eyes were dilated. “Why not?” she asked. “Because there is no bread, not even for us to eat and I’m afraid that the girl will be sick again.” Elena finally got the point. Her mother’s look told her to shut up and let her conduct her business as she saw it fit. This is stealing, she thought, it’s terrible, but she kept quiet and then decided to play along. “You want to see what I can do?” she said getting up. “Look...I can somersault in the middle of the street and the boys gather round to look at my pants; look!” Her mother’s face reddened. “Now, now child,” the woman said, “just sit tight, everything is fine, sit down...” She got up with difficulty and forced Elena to sit on the ground again. Good thing, too, Elena thought. She felt dizzy already and for the life of her she didn’t know how to begin a somersault. There was fear and concern in the old woman’s eyes. “The Lord is merciful,” she whispered. “He’ll make you well.” Elena looked at her mother in triumph. If she could play a dirty game, she could play a dirtier one; how far can the apple drop from the apple tree? Her sense of victory
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vanished when she saw her
mother’s scowl and tight lips. The woman went to her
animal. She is leaving, she thought despairing. The mule was munching peacefully, her mother’s guile didn’t work. The woman uncovered one of the hampers took out two shiny, beautiful round loaves of bread and went to Anna. “Here, take this.” She offered the loaves but Anna, suddenly felt guilty because of her lies and wanted no more part in the comedy; she pulled back, after all she had hoodwinked the woman! (Take it, take it, Elena pleaded silently) “Give it to the nuns for your own covenant,” the woman said seeing Anna’s reluctance, and when they open His sepulchre, make sure to mention my name.” Elena looked at the gnarled hands still holding the shining bread stamped with holy signs and the cross and it dawned on her that even after a two year constant hunger she still hadn’t grasped fully the meaning of real starvation as she was experiencing it that moment. This is indeed a miracle, she thought, a trophy that my mother’s ingenuity earned. She looked at her mother pleading with her eyes. Anna finally took the bread rather reluctantly, and placed it in her large bag. Elena thought she saw her mother’s eyes glisten. Was it embarrassment for the deception, pity, remorse, or was it compassion for the woman who was bribing her way to heaven? But the woman didn’t look any the worse for it; she rather felt good, she had done a good deed. She smiled, then cut another loaf in three pieces with swift movements and sprinkled it with olive oil. She gave each of the thunderstruck women a piece murmuring prayers; it was, after all, His oil and His bread that she offered to strangers, Elena thought. Anna and her daughter chewed carefully and slowly as if they were doing the woman a favor. There is a God, after all, Anna kept thinking, Aristos refused us a piece of bread and it came from heaven. If that isn’t a divine retribution, I
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don’t know what is. That was luxury beyond her wildest imagination. “Time to go,” the woman said. She insisted on Elena riding on the mule
and
rearranged the coffers. Elena sat gingerly hoping the mule would keep in the middle of the road as they reached the road going downhill; Anna followed the mule and the woman leading it. Elena caressed the oil jugs and the roundness of the bread some of which had filled her stomach and heightened her spirits. The Ionian Sea far below stretched calm, blue into the infinite horizon to other lands and for a moment, as the animal made its way on the stone road moving her gently back to front, she envisioned herself on those shores without despair or thoughts of death. Funny, she thought smugly, life is smiling at us on the crust of a piece of bread. But, oh, those ‘other’ lands, she thought with envy, that never knew war and hunger! They stopped again for a short rest facing the magnificent sunset of early Fall so colorful, so stationery as if the strangest colors conspired to dye the sea, the city, snug at the bottom of the hill under the cliffs by the harbor. Unearthly, magical hues bathed the world around her; she held her breath. It was the best time of the day for Elena; what lasted but a few minutes seemed to her an hour and in that hour she lived her charmed life, that of a princess or Deana Durbin in that land of her past far away. When the sun finally disappeared, it left a strange light that lingered a little. Soon everything will become night, she thought; stark, irrevocable. The magic gone, Elena looked at her mother who was still puffing while resting on the side of the road, and returned to reality: the crickets beginning their night concert, the enemy boots that would soon be heard on the cobblestones, the fear and the hunger. And the nagging questions always present, how about school, how long is this going to last, what kind of new dangers will she face. Slowly, they began
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their descent to the city that in the semi-light did not show evidence of human cruelty as she was told, other than the houses that were now gutted by enemy fire but still had some presence. At the fork of the road Anna paused and at her signal Elena stopped the animal and dismounted fearing the woman’s
reaction. She
saw the alarm in her eyes. “Aren’t you coming?” She asked in disbelief. “Yes, yes, we are,” Anna lied. “Tomorrow. We have to pick up a few things from the city and we’ll be along.” Her tone of voice did not leave room for an argument. Elena saw not the hungry, discouraged woman, humble in the realization that she was unable to feed her children. Instead, she saw
that a metamorphosis
was taking place. This, she thought, is a strong person who knew the answers, who had risen to the occasion like a black marketeer; a cunning woman who deceived the woman and tricked her into giving her the holy bread. The peasant in her was now looking at her Anna in bewilderment. “But...but...” she began but Anna cut her short. “Until tomorrow, then! We will meet with you at the church.” Somehow reassured, or trying to believe her, the woman tied another knot under her chin and the black kerchief shaded her wrinkles. She threw a wistful glance at Anna’s bag and Elena’s heart missed a beat. What if she changed her mind and took the bread? But Anna was holding on fast. She grabbed Elena’s hand and said: “Come child,” a command that made Elena follow meekly as if she really meant it. “Thank you so much,” she shouted to the woman as she took the path that would take her to the saint’s monastery. “Don’t forget tomorrow, “ she said. “ Meet me under His oak tree, by the well.” She disappeared down the path whipping the animal unnecessarily.
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“We are such terrible liars,” Elena told her mother pulling her hand away angrily. But in her mind she knew, that she, too, was a liar. Self- preservation, she thought bitterly. “The biggest lie,” her mother answered thoughtfully, “is what is going on down there in the valley; and next time, if there is a next time, don’t interfere when I do something. You are too young to be rotten.” Her mother’s statement had the affect of a thunderbolt’s delayed reaction. Sixteen years of careful religious indoctrination was going down the drain. Anna, guessing her daughter’s confusion said sternly. “Let that lay on my head, Elena. The blessed Saint has been dead for four hundred years. He doesn’t eat nor does He talk. The property around Him is enough to feed all the villages for miles around. The nuns get the offerings; they are fed, after all they have to survive, too, but there are so many sick people
living inside that monastery and they are hungry; they can’t
possibly feed them all, they do the best they can. But may His holiness forgive me, we need this bread more than He does. When I meet with Him up there,” she pointed at the sky and wiped the sweat off her face, “I’ll explain. I’m sure that He will forgive me.” “Don’t forget to mention the woman’s name,” Elena joked. “Now, you are being sarcastic,” her mother scolded her. By the way, what did she say her name was?” “She didn’t. We didn’t ask, and neither did she.”
The City was unrecognizable; the first view when they crossed the long stone bridge, was shattering. When they saw it from above, it gave them the wrong impression, certainly not that of such destruction. They stood in the darkness in
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awe in front of the church at the end of the bridge, a heap of rubble now, the tall steeple lying on its side perfectly intact as if placed there, or as if it had refused to die. Anna crossed herself much like the old woman up the hill had done. Again she felt too tired to go on now that they had arrived. “Let’s sit for a while to catch our breaths,” she said and sat on the bridge’s parapet still unable to take her eyes off
the steeple.
“We’re almost there,” Elena complained. It crossed her mind that her mother was afraid to look at what remained from their own place. She sat next to her, impatient to move on. The German guard was looking at them suspiciously. “That woman is a religious fanatic...” Anna murmured to herself. Except for the guard, guarding the access to the bridge, no other human being was around. ”Imagine, practically killing her daughter because she ‘sinned’ by falling in love, marrying her off to a strange old man and causing her death without meaning to, and on top of it, causing the death of the young man. What a mess! Now she tries to buy forgiveness by feeding the nuns. Ah, why doesn’t He wake up for a few minutes to take charge?” Elena remembered a few years back when her mother had donated all her jewelry, a small fortune, to that same Saint during a family crisis; subsequently everything was stolen from the holy bier; she decided not to remind her. Too much familiarity with one’s parents is not good, she thought, and regardless of the distance Elena couldn’t trust her mother’s hand. Too nervous to sit on that parapet, she took off the clogs to rest her sore feet and jumped into the shallow water stepping on the slimy stones and barnacles. She opened her mouth to say something but seeing the tears rolling down the emaciated cheeks, tiny jewels that melted into her sagging bosom, she climbed over the parapet instead and
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hugged her. Suddenly, she was very, very small; with a little effort she could crawl back into the womb of the woman that bore her, she thought. Please, dear God, she prayed, don’t let me forget this. Tucked between two bodies of azure water, lay the city like a raped woman.
The ‘apartment’ looked normal in the darkness, normal in an eerie sense with an odor of mice and mildew. Still, both the door and the window were locked; It would be unthinkable for someone to burglarize the place, there was nothing to be taken. Ourania opened the window; the night sky, the stars gave them a better view; then they saw. Everything that could possibly be moved
had been taken: the
few chairs, the little table, the cracked dishes and bent silverware, the pot was gone, the brazier. Elena looked frantically for the watch, the only thing of her father’s they had. That
was foolishly, accidentally forgotten there but, as if
by accident, miracle or stroke of luck, was found with its chain tucked under a kitchen towel. Elena was overjoyed; the last remnant of her father’s
memory that
has escaped the black market up to now, she thought and was happy. The beds, stripped, were left in place. “Look,” Ourania said. “They even took the tin oil lamp and the chamber pot.” She giggled, then knelt next to Elena and both rummaged under the bed. They pulled the suitcase covered with webs. It was heavy. They felt like dancing. Elena cried; it was good that her mother had chickened out and refused to come upstairs after seeing Ourania’s apartment. “We are saved,” she whispered. “Our winter clothes in naphtha...they missed it. Thank God.” The loaded carts driven by plunderers climbing the hillside next to her village with all kinds of city treasures came to her mind. Some of their
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things were there or on someone else’s cart in another part of the island. The raincoats and galoshes were taken from the closet but at least they wouldn’t freeze totally. She really wanted to thank God personally for her intuition to force her mother to take the fur coat. Without any preconceived notion, both looked at the adjoining rooms of the landlord simultaneously; any fool could see who the thieves were and where they had come from.
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “Yesterday we sat in Ourania’s bedroom once again, two strangers that met in a battlefield after the storm. ‘Do you think we are direct descendants of the ancient Greeks?’ She asked me suddenly; her questions threw me off, that was the last thing in my mind. I personally don’t think that the ancients were such angels. My uncle was right. Arm a man, he had said, and he is an instant killer, no matter who he is, he has power. ‘I hope so,’ Ourania answered her own question; ‘I hate to think that my forefathers were Turks, Venetians, or even English.’ I thought she had gone crazy seeing her house looted like that. I asked her: ‘Why are you concerned
about your forefathers at this point? Look at today’s Greeks;
look at your room, our house, the city, what’s the difference? The English bombed, the Germans burned, the Greeks looted. For my part, I hope I am not a direct descendant of any one.’ ‘It’s easy for you to say, you are a... you are a ...foreigner.’ I felt like laughing but then I got upset at her and I scolded her: ‘I resent that! I said, I am as much a Greek as you are. My birth place has nothing
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to do with my lineage.’ Ourania said nothing; her nationalism makes her a bore. She looked at the stripped walls and floor, her bed without a canopy and fancy pillows, the empty drawers, the gaping trunk. ‘My castle,’ she murmured. I felt sorry for her. By now I was unable to function as a civilized human being, I was nothing more than a cave person, trying to be grateful that the brutes who had consumed what little we had, had spared us, at least and we can still see the sun... ‘I feel naked,’ she cried, ‘I don’t have the energy to clean up the mess and Mama nags all day. Look at those rotten planks.’ She pointed to the carpetless planks “I never knew this house was so ugly, I never saw it naked like that.’ I imagined her mother stripped of everything she held dear except this fine jewel, Ourania. The girl was pampered, fussed over, caressed. I don’t remember ever getting so much attention. The first day of the war I was told that I am a child no more, but on the other hand I was given to understand that I was too much of a child to understand. In the long run, maybe I’m better off; I had missed youth, by being thrust suddenly into a childhood adulthood. We tip-toed past the kitchen where our mothers were discussing the inexhaustible topic of food, and went down to the wine cellar which hasn’t seen a barrel in decades. The old musty air greeted us once again as we opened the door, and the odor of mice and years of neglect. Strangely enough, (and luckily) the looters hadn’t been in the cellar and the stored food was intact. It was their bulwark against famine for the coming winter. Hidden under piles of rags we found the radio. Its dials stared at us like the wise, shameless eyes of a conspirator... I couldn’t hold my delight. A
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little box could connect me with the world, I could hear the news and other languages; I could dream with it and begin to hope again. ‘Let’s try it,’ I said. “Are you crazy? We haven’t declared it, we could be shot.’ ‘Come on, we’ll listen to BBC. Do you ever listen, nights?’ ‘You are out of your mind; my mother? listen to clandestine broadcasts? She only hid it because she had paid a lot of money for it. She is afraid, so we let it rot here.’ What wasted messages, I thought, what hopes never heeded...A world of truth hidden under rags. We made our way back to her room where the broken clay pots awaited Ourania’s broom. She kicked a pot, her face the image of white fury.. ‘If I were a man,’ she said between clenched teeth, ‘I would tear them to pieces.’ ‘Who?’ ‘Those hyenas who did
this.’ She pointed at the mess with the end of the broom. ‘No,’ she continued, ‘we could not be Greeks, we are Greece’s anathema. You wouldn’t do a thing like that and you are not even a Greek.’ There it was again. The way she comes out with it, embarrasses and insults me because she dismisses me as a nonentity. It is also extremely dangerous since I circulate with a Greek I.D.; I had reminded her of that before.
‘I wish you’d try to keep
quiet about that, Ourania,’ I said. ‘You seem to
forget the danger.
Sometimes I’m sorry I confided in you. My whole
family can be exterminated
if the wrong people hear you. It’s as if I went
around telling everyone,
or someone in school that you have a radio in your
cellar. What do you
think is going to happen to you and your mother?’ Don’t worry, you can trust me, my own mother doesn’t know about it; I only told the Father at confession...’
What?’ I screamed angrily, momentarily paralyzed by fear.
‘Are you out of
your mind? How dare you divulge a secret which is more
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sacred than religion at this point?’ Her eyebrows arched proudly, then she lowered her eyes and sulked. ‘Nothing is more sacred than religion,’ she said. ‘I understand, but it’s my life we are talking about, and my nationality is no concern of the priest or even God. He doesn’t care.’ She flinched. ‘Thousands of people perish every minute. He doesn’t lift a finger.’ ‘My priest is a saint, I don’t see why you mistrust him so.’ Her voice had
icicles on it, I had touched a sensitive subject. She already
resented my mother for allowing me to miss Sundays in church and not forcing me, as her
mother did. ‘That was the last secret I shared with
you,’ I told her. ‘You can’t even go to the bathroom without telling your priest, for God’s sake.’ ‘The trouble with you is that you are an atheist,’ she shouted. ‘And you are a fanatic,” I shouted back. I really love her and I don’t want our differences to separate us, I even played dumb when she called my mother ‘a religious degenerate’; I am not so sure I understand the connotation, or if she does for that matter, it’s just that the word ‘degenerate’ annoys me. Our screaming brought her mother to the room. ‘What was that?’ She asked looking at me suspiciously. ‘Nothing, Mama,’ she answered, ‘we are talking.’ ‘Keep your voices down then, we don’t want to attract the attention of the neighbors.’ Ourania took my hand and we walked out. The patio was littered with all the garbage the thieves left. The street, seen from our height, looked as it had gone through its private war. Tears glistened in the corners of her eyes. I embraced her. One
more
winter, I thought, if we can last one more winter! She looked like a pale little doll. I love her very much, but at that moment I loved her more.”
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In the kitchen, stripped and bare like the rest of the house, the girls shared the bread and dandelions Ourania’s mother had cooked. The origin of the bread wasn’t mentioned. In the morning Elena and Ourania walked the streets of the looted city in silence. A fine drizzle fell gently now and then, as if afraid to disturb the mess; but that gloomy grayness gave an eerie appearance to gaping charred walls, the gutted buildings and ruined streets. The damage was severe. They couldn’t recognize some of the houses they had known, and there was no one about to
clear
the debris. On the Main Street the window of the small confectionery store blackened by fire and half destroyed, had a display of news. Schools were to open in November but the Germans had taken over the Girls’ Gymnasium and once again they were to move to an elementary school; the school days were reduced to three times a week. A fine education we are getting, they both agreed. “The Germans need the building for the rest of the week to teach the Italian prisoners something or other.” Ourania explained. “But I thought they executed them,” Elena said. “So did I, but apparently they kept those they needed; technicians for instance who were hiding. They proclaimed an amnesty, and they came out of hiding. “Where were they hiding?” Elena asked having a bitter experience of the cruelty of some of the peasants towards those who seeked safety. “In peoples’ houses, I suppose, same as the British. Anyway, the Germans seem to need menial labor and doctors, or such so that they can release their own soldiers to the front. God,” she sighed, “last year I couldn’t imagine I would speak of these incomprehensible army tactics like a pro. What kind of education
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we are getting...” “Do you suppose that all this destruction came from the English Air Force?” Elena asked. “First came the Germans trying to make the Italians surrender; then came the British trying to punish the Germans or the Greeks, or the Italians, who knows; when their job was completed, came the local hordes of looters to clean up what ruins were left. How do you like that?” she teased. “We are becoming experts in destruction and doom,” Elena said. “And I feel I am getting to be an ignorant strategist.” “Stick around, sooner or later, we might find some logic behind all that.” She waved her arms to encompass the whole half-gutted city. Her voice broke in a sob. Elena told her about the Italian doctor wrapped in a horse blanket under one foot of clay in a barley field. Surprising, Ourania did not seem to be shocked. “Death,” she had told her once, “is just another experience, the only bad thing is that you don’t live to tell about it; it’s the absolute truth, or perhaps liberation from the filth of life. Let’s face it, it’s the only reality”. Elena had looked at her openmouthed, admiring the wisdom of the little ‘mouse’. “My death,” Ourania said now, “would be a relief, my liberation; for you, everyone’s death seems to be a personal loss, as if the earth is your domain and humans are yours, all yours, but my soul will be freed.” Elena was looking at her with amazement. Is it possible that she is telling the truth, she wondered, or did she read it somewhere and is trying her wisdom on me? Where did she hear all that, from the priest? “Let me see,” Elena said finally. “If death is liberation, how come we kill
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for revenge, or for ‘honor’?” “What do you mean?” said Ourania. “Death is death.” “Yes, but who does it liberate? If I kill my enemy, I liberate myself; I exterminate a dangerous person, right?” “Wrong.” Elena decided not to push the matter further; she didn’t know how to phrase her questions and she was putting Ourania on a spot. They walked side by side in silence, smells of smoke still in the air, ashes swishing here and there in the breeze, it was a depressing dance of skeletons. When the war ends, Elena was thinking, hate will die inside me and I will be different...when the war ends... Basil’s house was shut; it wasn’t bombed but then they couldn’t see if the looters had been there. Elena had not asked Ourania about Basil’s family, she figured that they must have taken refuge in some village nearby. Still, his absence made the city seem emptier and her heart bare. They turned back.
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “Mama and I left at dawn. There was nothing we could do; not much of our belongings could be salvaged, anyway. If we only knew what awaited us, perhaps we would have delayed our departure, even though it was painful staying in that looted place was painful and
we were afraid.
darkness we crossed the bridge which was hardly visible in
In semi-
the mist
blowing from the open sea; the German guard stopped us and searched our
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bags and pockets, even our waists under the belts and I clutched the remnants of
our precious bread, but apparently he wasn’t interested. It’s
a good thing I
had left my diary in the village; had guard had found it
on my body both the diary and I would be in great trouble. first curve of the road to the mountain sails were still and wrapped in its own
We rounded the
and reached the windmills whose
shrouded by silence. Way under, the sleeping mists and slumber of terror. It was a scary
city was
hour,
silent; not even a cricket, only our clogs that shattered the morning stillness and the soft, imperceptible whisper of the calm, slimy black-green water of the harbor. already carved
The
uphill road was tortuous. The first rains had
new ruts and
I walked in those ruts with a heavy heart,
carefully avoiding stones that could
make me trip. I had made that trip
mainly to see Basil, not because my mother made me -well, that, too-, hadn’t been able
to get any information as
and I
to his whereabouts. I dreaded
the journey. My legs were weak, my feet were hurting, but if anyone should complain that is my mother, older and weaker as she is. A German military truck was crossing the bridge fast speed;
One glues her
body against the mountainside when that kind of a monster goes through. Its tires hissed menacingly, and suddenly it was very close and stopped right next to us with a roar and a cough. A fearsome thought paralyzed me. Had they come after us? Were they kidnapping us? Was it for the bread? Had we done something we shouldn’t have done? The officer on the passenger side looked
at us and gestured inviting us to share the ride. We refused the
ride
politely in a mixture of Franco-Italian-English and sign language.
He pointed at the mountain and we nodded. His stern face was that of the
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devil; mask-like taut skin covering his bones. With a no-nonsense command he
ordered us to the back of the truck. Then we really got scared. We
were afraid to disobey him, but also afraid to climb into his truck and stood
undecided by the side of the road. Then a clean shaved face emerged
from the open truck, a civilian whose Greek was impeccable: “Don’t be afraid, they mean no harm.” His voice was kind, and anyway, there was no use refusing them; if a German decided to help you, he will help you if it kills you. The German soldiers in the truck roused themselves to help us up. I looked at their young faces, some as young as me; they looked almost identical, all blond, all expressionless,
faceless under the square
helmet. I wonder if they drill them to look dead...It was the first time I was looking at a German so close and in the flesh. The only live Germans I have
seen are the ones who marched into Athens back in the Spring of
The truck started upwards with a loud grinding noise. The cool air cleared the mists and brought in the smells of the forest. My poor feet would have welcomed the ride, but for being in custody and
terrified in
their truck.
I was sat where they showed me, on a pile of helmets stacked
in a corner;
one of the soldiers came close and fingered my curls saying
something that I know is that I mother for
sounded like ‘extra-prima’, I don’t know what that is, all screamed as if he was killing me and inched closer to my
protection. The man who had spoken Greek before, was smiling
his diabolical
polite smile, showing a line of bright white teeth.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said, ‘they are soldiers, civilized people, you know, not animals.’
Now, I thought, where have I heard that before? I kept
quiet. My mother’s stare was begging me to keep my mouth shut.. ‘...in
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Greece we have a misconception about the third Reich,’ he continued. God, how I hated
him. Moments like those make people want to kill, but I’m
just a girl; still
I wish...I wonder if he is an educated German or a
Greek collaborator. He had perfect diction but he didn’t speak with our island’s peculiar tilt island, so he must be imported. As the truck labored upwards, I agonized over
the question: where are they taking us, why,
what is the Greek doing in a German military truck. Nothing made sense and I began to shake, my mouth was
dry and on top of everything I needed to go
to the bathroom badly. A scary thought passed through my head. Ourania’s priest had
What if
denounced us to the Germans and they are taking us to
a concentration camp? I needed some
reassurance, something to hold on to;
I hugged my knees, it was no use. Mama ‘Greek’ questioningly. The truck had left
stirred uneasily and looked at the the fork and was making for the
Saint’s monastery. She got up unsteadily. ‘Sit down, sit down’, he ordered her, not too kindly. ‘But this is not our route.’ ’That’s all right,’ he said. ‘Please let us off,’ she pleaded; hiding the blinding tears. He
the wind was lashing at her face,
did not hear. The truck suddenly stopped and
the dead-looking German officer came to the back to investigate. ‘We are on a mission,’ the ‘Greek’ translated. ‘Then we’ll be on our But
way.’
Mama did not trust him, or his mission and insisted on getting off,
thanking them. I had a sinking suspicion this was divine retribution for having
deceived the woman the day before. The truck continued rolling down
and into the valley where scattered crowds were celebrating the Saint’s day. I was hoping that the woman wouldn’t spot us in that truck. Mama was holding on to
me so hard, she was hurting me. Her face was white, her lips
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tight and her green eyes dry and lifeless. I looked at the soldiers and goose pimples covered my body; they hadn’t blinked an eyelash. Going to the bathroom became a dire necessity.
Down at the center of the valley we went
through the crowds that looked at us suspiciously with hate. The woman, I kept praying, please God don’t let her see us. ‘Please,’ Mama whispered to the interpreter. ‘Ask them to let us off here o pray for a few minutes. It’s His name-day, a very sacred day. Then you can pick us up.’ What is she doing? I thought. There we go again; Elena, the crazy one! The interpreter spoke to the officer through the little cab window and the truck stopped. We scrambled down fast and disappeared among the crowds. I had not thought of either the bread or my jacket that had stayed in the truck; life is more precious than possessions. We entered the big church and were met by a heat wave, incense and candles and the ecstatic screams of the miracle seeking lunatics. I was thankful I was away from that
truck, but as the urge to go to the bathroom became
reality down my legs I looked for a place to hide. The church was over crowded, I felt weak and melting like packed by the sick and the
the candles. The interior was
healthy, the blind, the insane, the love-
struck, the lame, men, women, children. The ‘possessed’ were chained in dark corners in the back of the
big church and their screams
tore the
solemnity of their surroundings. As we went deeper into the bowels of the church amid stale odors and livid
entities, we were thrown against chained
girls my age, wild, unkempt, frothing at the mouth, some of them victims of love. I remembered the woman
with the bread.
We reached the sepulchre.
The saint, old, dehydrated, a shriveled four-hundred-year-old corpse, stood
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erect inside his bier his un-earthy eyes sunk into bony sockets, skin leathery black. He was covered with gold, a treasure of precious stones, offerings for miracles He had performed or was asked to perform. If the Germans find out about this wealth, I thought, who can stop them?
Faces in
trance stared at Him, transfixed or fainted or screamed until they were dragged away unconscious. Some were praying
bowing
hitting the tiles under their knees.. Their spiritual
again and again and contact with the
saint was supposed to drive the devil out of their bodies. Mama was on her knees; she pulled me violently and I fell on my knees next to her, examining the saint who looked like the trunk of an ancient olive tree the one in my uncle’s lot, He terrified me. I needed fresh air, sun light,
the
open road. The whole world was whirling into chaos; what was reality yesterday has nothing to do with today’s facts; trying to hold on to known values, to something that is still sane and reassuring was the most important element for survival at that time. I looked up to see Him, trying to forget that He had been dead for hundreds of years, remembering the discussion I had with Christ some years back in Athens, and wished I lived in their time. But was their time any better? Could He read my thoughts and smite me to instill some faith into me? Hallucination, I decided shaking myself awake from the trance I was immersed in; His ancient death scared me. ‘I am going outside,’ a whisper to my mother; she touched my hand and I got off my knees, but the German officer whose big frame darkened the doorway, was scanning the crowded church. Back on my knees terrorized; Mama
had seen him, too. We stooped low, almost touching the floor with our
heads and stayed there for a long time. When I looked up again, he was
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gone. How did he expect to find two women in ‘a crowd of hundreds, all swaying drunk like in a religious stupor, an ocean, waving gently with purpose, the very ill tearing the air with their screams? I’m sure Mama wondered, too, why he
was looking for us but I would not venture outside,
not until I made sure
they had left.
Much later, and after many precautions, I ventured outside slowly, first into the courtyard, where no truck could enter, then onto the road filled with crowds. There was no truck, just the restless crowds and the autumn leaves swishing to and fro close to His well. The mountain further on real and ageless, has nothing to do with death and enemies, it has seen it all. I let the tears run freely. Pilgrims, worshippers looked at me with pity, some with sympathy; my tears were sheer relief; for being alive, for being free, for having escaped one more near-miss in my short life.”
Leaping from stone to rock in uneven paths and the dry bed of the river, Elena followed her mother, each step a stab of pain; there was no visible road, just the uneven terrain. “When the rains come,” Anna said panting, “this, believe it or not, becomes a wild, rushing river; then suddenly, it backs into its banks, to deposit silt in the fields; that is good for planting.” Elena knew that procedure in the River Nile, but not in this dry, unimportant stream. “I believe it, I believe it,” she answered wincing in pain. “Something like the Nile.” “The who?” Anna asked.
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“Nothing! I said it’s a rough path. The pebbles are sharp; do you know where we are and where we are going? ”Of course, I know; we are going to koumbara* Maria. Her house is in the village up the hill, you can almost see it from here. We’ll spend the night there. “Unexpected guests? How do you know
that they still live here after so many
years?” “Where would they go,” her mother panted, “this is a village, Elena,, people have roots...At least some do... “ she added under her breath... “We just took this shortcut because the main road is longer, and we don’t want to meet with certain friends who might wish to offer us ‘hospitality again.’ They laughed. “Mama, don’t be ungrateful,” Elena mocked, “think! You brought your sick daughter, you had an unexpected visit to the monastery and you will surprise one of the twelve attendants you haven’s seen since your wedding.” Her mother’s wedding with twelve koumbari* instead of one exchanging the crowns, had been a standing joke. ‘You know Mom, I was thinking. Normal weddings with one koumbaro take almost an hour, how long did it take twelve people to get to the altar to exchange crowns?” “I don’t know; I only know that from the twelve only know Maria. That was some feast though,” Anna remembered. “People came from all over the island. For three days and three nights they ate, drank and danced...the flute players came in shifts. My father must have slaughtered over a dozen sheep and goats. Wine, ouzo, raki, flowed like water... and after that? Just a few years of happiness and he left us...” Elena looked at her mother’s pained face, gaunt and bony beyond recognition; droplets of sweat ran down to her chin; she wanted to think
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of her mother as the blond girl with the green eyes, dancing all the three nights, a graceful gazelle, looking at her tall, handsome husband with loving eyes, laughing. That was how she wanted to keep her parents in her mind, not like the stiff people on the wedding photograph that reminded one of last century’s advertisement seeking new immigrants for the new land of wealth and honey. Bride and groom, solemn, afraid to show happiness or laugh, he sitting, she standing...Now they were to visit the woman who years ago had participated in a legendary wedding celebration on the other side of the mountain. Would she remember the young bride? Would they bring up the past that would make her mother unhappy? And the most important, will she welcome them?
Maria
did remember Anna and the celebration and was happy to see them, she
received them with warmth. She had married a man considerably older than herself who was still alive, and had a daughter who was helping to make other visitors comfortable. They, too, had ‘dropped-in’ on them because there was no other place to go, and though Maria’s family wasn’t a rich one, and like every one else they a piece of bread was luxury, Maria’s sense of hospitality would not allow her to turn anyone away. Those were people who had come from other parts of the island far away, seeking a miracle. Maria managed to get a piece of bread for each of her ‘guests’, a cup of wine, and a clean towel. The cottage with the kitchenliving room reminded Elena of her uncle’s house at the mountain with the hard packed earth floor and the big round table covered with a snow white tablecloth. She could see a door leading to the bedroom, but that was all. Where are
these
people going to sleep, she wondered, where are we, where is Maria and her family
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going to sleep? She found out soon enough as darkness fell softly over the valley and the guests were led into the bedroom. Two men were to sleep on a mattress outside in the courtyard, and the five women sideways on the large bed. Elena was so tired, she only had time to inhale the scent of laurel leaves on the freshly washed sheets before she hit the pillow and was instantly out.
Early in the morning Maria walked them to the stony path on the hill off the main road. That, too, was a shortcut; the fear of the German truck was still with them. At some point they would have to take a chance and continue on the main road, there was no other way to reach their village on the other side of the mountain. She left them with bread and olives wrapped in a napkin. “For the road,” she said and the she apologized. “I had to sort of steal it, there isn’t enough for all.” “You shouldn’t have,” Anna said feeling a bit embarrassed, “but thank you. They kissed and Elena kissed her hand and continued upward as dawn was breaking feeling the clogs heavy on her feet as they struck the stones. This was wild country, wild bushes, herbs, goats traveling those thorny hillsides with comfort; it was their domain, they pulled and ate anything that dared sprout in that dry stony ground the scarce trees and bushes; eagles and vultures kept watching as they swooped down from the sky suddenly to steal a wild rabbit or an occasional baby goat. Shreds of mist flitted through the shrubbery on the gaping ravine; the Valley at the bottom of the hill way below, was hidden in the mists that were just fading. The sun came up hot and merciless in the autumn sky, the rocks were
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being baked and the path became once again tortuous for the two women. Little bugs and snakes crawled in the bushes; thorns and thistles pricked their feet. Elena tried to concentrate on the monotonous song of the cicadas and the circles the menacing birds sketched on the sky above them. Do we look small enough for a meal to them? Elena wondered. “The sun is hot,” Anna complained. “It’s a sure sign it will rain.” “I hope so,” Elena said, “we’ll cool off.” “How little you know about mountain weather,” her mother said. “When it rains in the mountain, the water takes everything with it; even the animals run for shelter. Look around you. Does it look anything like our village? The landscape is harsh; the rains are to blame.” “I see! A vicious circle!” Elena said. She knew from her father’s village; she was amazed that the land influenced the peoples’ attitudes, moods, characters. But then, she thought, every civilization is intimately familiar with the climate of the country where it develops. That much she had learned in school, never imagining that she, too, was part of it. She was involved in her own thoughts and didn’t realize that her mother had stopped to rest and was cursing for all she was worth. Elena stopped, too. If a divine being is listening, she thought, the entire Germanic race will be wiped off the face of the earth; her mother was devising various awful diseases like leprosy, plague, earthquakes, floods, bombs and other agonizing means for the Nazis’ demise, she improvised as the path became steeper, narrower and more dangerous. Elena tripped on a rock and the strap broke; her foot began to bleed just as they got to the main road where a small brook ran through the field and nature looked kinder. It’s the East, Elena thought, it’s got to be kinder, sunnier, calmer, full of
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trees. She plopped down by the brook out of breath and took the clogs off. The cool water felt good on her sore feet, her mother did the same. In contrast to the hot sun, Anna found the water too cold for her feet in October, but still more refreshing than walking. The brook gurgled amid wild flowers and reeds, oblivious to them, unmindful of their fatigue and hunger. “Let’s eat our bread,” Elena proposed enthusiastically siting on a stone fence. “I ate mine,” Anna said and Elena did not believe her. She knew that she probably hid it for Nicky but said nothing. She ate hers in silence. “You want some more?” She asked her mother. “It’s really too much because I’m too tired to eat. You know, I believe that if we have a future, one thing that I will remember with dread more than the bombs, more than hunger, will be the clogs; these horrible, painful contraptions. I can’t wait to throw them from the highest hilltop.” “Eat, eat,” her mother urged her. ”We’ll have to start soon. And don’t be ungrateful, some people have no feet!” Wonderful example, Elena thought getting ready to start again. What choice, either clogs or no legs!
In the afternoon they reached the little stone bridge from where Nicky had began his trek up the snaky road to the other side through the cherry orchards two days before. Suddenly, the two women froze on their tracks. Speeding, almost straight at them with maddening speed, the military vehicle careened down madly, then swerved onto the little stone bridge with a terrible screech. Anna pushed her daughter in the ditch behind the thick bushes under the bridge and jumped after her. The thorns hurt. They stole a glance at the truck as it passed, full of
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captured Italians, their instinct was correct, it was the same truck that had forced them into the unwelcome, frightening lift to nowhere the day before. The same faceless German soldiers, the same robot-like officer sitting in the back now. Suddenly, the officer lifted his head and saw them, or they thought he did; Anna had a sickening fear that he had recognized them because he raised his hand in salute and laughed, the hyena, and Elena froze when she heard that laughter. The handsome Greek sitting in the truck did not smile. He was wearing the white mask of the informer!
[FROM ELENA’S DIARY] “If there will be more days like this one, I doubt that I’ll make it to the end of the war; I was looking in the fields and the mountain for God, we came so close to our end that I wanted to either ask Him to save us or sit and listen to me. When we came home late in the afternoon we were totally exhausted physically and emotionally. We felt immediately that something was wrong. Burning incense in the house any day except Sunday or a holiday, stressed the sense of gloom more than the usual and my aunt’s face was tear stained. I could smell death, but everyone was present, the children had been driven inside by the drizzle. Grandfather had died. When he hadn’t opened the door for his morning chamomile and didn’t respond to knocking, Uncle Philip broke the door down. Grandfather was sitting in his wife’s armchair dressed, his unseeing eyes staring ahead at the faded, dusty photograph of his first wedding. His dead fingers were intertwined in Nona’s knitting wool.
They buried him yesterday. I’m sure he will be happy
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now close to his wife.”
“Where is Nicky?” Anna asked suddenly. “He hasn’t returned yet,” her brother said, “but I’m sure he’ll be fine. After all, he is only a boy. “Why? What happened?” Anna was alarmed. “What happened?” she shrieked ready to pass out. “The Germans executed some communists,” her brother said. “You know...what they call anarchists or anti-German, or whatever, we don’t know for sure, we mustn’t worry, it could be just gossip.” “I am going,” Anna said. Aristos leapt to his feet shouting indignantly: “What kind of a crazy family is this? Everyone takes off, this way and that way, no discipline, no communication; jail, unnecessary trips, anarchy...”
He
looked at his aunt. “Can’t you think of the rest of us?” he asked her. White as a sheet, Anna stared back at him calmly. “We give you food and shelter,” he continued, “and you thank us by getting us in trouble and trying to land my father in jail.” Melania looked at her offspring with awe; his father got up from his chair, his yellow skin tight on his jawbones; his eyes had become two little lighted coals. The sound of the slap that fell on his firstborn’s face left a vacuum in the room. Philip had never raised a hand to hit any of his children, what was more, he never beat his wife and he had gained the title of a hen pecked man, because what kind of a man doesn’t beat his wife just to remind her who is the boss...The smaller children scrambled around their mother and Aristos, dumbfounded, fell onto his chair unceremoniously. His mother made a gesture as to protect him but a cold stare from her husband drove her back. Philip looked at his hands and bit his mustache
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nervously. Then, he looked at his son. ‘This is the last time you meddled in your aunt’s affairs, he said sternly, but evenly. “You got things all wrong, Aristos, and I must straighten you out. You are to obey her, not she, you. Another disrespectful outburst like this and I promise to tear you to pieces.” Philip emphasized angrily the meaning of his message with a tearing motion, for a moment he looked like a merchant ripping up a yard of fabric. Troubled and worried as she was, Anna told her brother about Aristos’ refusal to give her ration of bread for the trip to the city, making things different. “...he told me he had no bread for fools,” she said. “I had to beg him, and still I got no bread.” She turned and faced her brother. “Don’t get me wrong, “I love him, and you know it, but this boy is
turning into a monster and, I am
afraid, you have done this without realizing it. It is not responsibility that you have instilled in him, but dictatorial powers.” Melania threw her sister-inlaw a baleful look, Aristos kept his head bowed, his father covered his face with his hands, he looked as if he was crying. Suddenly, he raised his head, looked at his son and stretched his arm. “The keys,” he said evenly but his voice was that of a threatening thunder. “The keys!” he repeated louder. “I was wrong to trust you with them; your aunt is right, it’s my fault...I really have created a monster.” “I...I didn’t exactly mean it the way it sounded,” Anna tried to save face, avoid an explosion. Her brother interrupted her. “Maybe you didn’t, but I do!” he said somberly. “And for your information Aristos, there are some things you should know like: the keys should be kept by your aunt, my sister, not you. It was her husband who paid for this house you
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live in. He was the one who financed the store; everything we have we owe to him; since he is not with us any more, we owe it to his family. It is us, I repeat, us, who should be asking her for food, not her. Do you hear me?” Aristos kept his head down. More than his father’s news, it was the stripping of the power of the keys that hurt. “I am surprised at you, Melania,” he continued turning to his wife who was holding sleeping Lenaki on her lap. You must have seen and heard; why didn’t you correct this? Why didn’t you tell me, at least? What kind of integrity and respect are we teaching the children?” Lost for words, Melania began to whimper: “But...but,” she stammered, “what about my dowry? What did you do with my dowry then?” She had began her favorite lament, something she always threw about in moments of crisis. “I will remind you for the hundredth time,” her husband said. “Your dowry money opened the store when Anna was still in America. The store went bankrupt because of your extravagance and squandering... Your friends and relatives never paid; you gave freely, until one day there was nothing to give and no money to buy. When Anna returned, it was her husband who opened the store and I had sense enough by that time not to leave you alone in there for more than ten minutes. That’s why we still have what is left of it. Now, are you going to ask me once more about your famous ‘dowry’?” Melania looked at her sleeping child; tears were running down her cheeks and onto her apron. “Aristos,” his father said, “go out and get a mule for your aunt. And, by the way, if you have given it any thought, you may apologize to her.” Aristos, humbled, nodded and without a word approached his aunt; she hugged him and caressed his head. “Anna, go if you must,” her brother continued, ”I understand your concern, but don’t take Elena with you, she is already spent, no use both of you getting
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more tired.” Elena, grateful for that respite, walked out to the porch, threw her clogs and ran down the stairs barefoot and into the street, stepping in the rain puddles. It had stopped raining. Aristos, head bent, passed her, on his way to find a mule. She walked out of the village; no one was about, the chickens were already asleep; the silence of the fields and the grove, the smell of the rain on the soil and the trees, the autumn flowering bushes that lined the road, invigorated her. The past two days loomed in her memory like two painfully long weeks. She wanted to live, more than ever, she wanted to see the end of the war... The mud squished through her toes and yet, she wanted to dance, she stared at the red clouds hiding the sunset. At the bend of the road, hunched underneath the large umbrella like a monk, the small figure of her mother on a mule had began her journey. “Go home, child,” she said and her voice was hardly audible. . .”It’s going to rain again any minute, go. And don’t run shoeless like Lenaki, there are snakes around here, you know...”She turned the animal to go, but as her stare fell on the fields above the road, she froze. Elena followed her glance. Human hands and feet stuck out of the ground, in the field above the road where the Germans had recently thrown some political prisoners who were caught after they escaped from the city jail. The Germans knew that with the first rain the macabre sight will shock everyone into submission. Elena remembered the unburied Italian up in the mountain and wondered if Nicky had finished what he had started out to do. Anna looked at her daughter and gestured showing her the village where she should head to; she didn’t want her sick. When she saw her daughter on her way she made the sign of the cross and began her journey.
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A few weeks before, the Germans had gathered those prisoners together fed them well and had a real feast, took photographs, played music and laughed while the people in the village watched wondering why the celebration.
They marched
the prisoners to the field, machine-gunned and buried them on the spot right next to the road; they covered them with a little earth and there they lay still. Elena gasped looking up at the fence, Elena gasped; the horrendous sight was more
than her stomach could hold. The rain had already uncovered
body parts of the slaughtered men; hands and legs protruded from the soaked earth grotesquely. She hoped that mer mother had kept umbrella low enough to keep her eyes hidden.
The rain came down harder; she ran the rest of the way,
climbed the stairs to her uncle’s if one was shot with an empty, or a
house
wondering if it made any
difference
full stomach. She wanted to cry but didn’t
know for who, the skeletal bones that seemed to sprout from the
earth, or
herself.
C H A P T E R
EXECUTIONS Had the German
truck gone through the main road, the people of the mountain
village would have been warned and taken to the hills. But the truck waited in ambush at the exit of the village on the crossroads underneath the overhanging
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trees whose overhanging branches hid it and it could not be spotted from the road above. There they picked one by one all who were on their way to their fields before sunrise...By noon, the male populace of the three surrounding villages were amassed in the small square where the Italian police had its headquarters. Scared and bewildered, the few Italian soldiers of the garrison forgotten in the village, raised a white flag and their arms and walked outside to share the fate of those whose blind obedience they had demanded for three years. They faced a machine gun at the ready. The women who were accompanying their husbands or who came out of curiosity, were sent home. They sensed danger in the faces of the storm troopers and stayed in the background half-hidden in the bushes, their terror hidden beneath black kerchiefs. Their dark, knitted eyebrows spread the alarm. Now and then some of the German soldiers approached to push them with the butts of their rifles; they barked at them, as the women thought as they returned back to their post as soon as the tyrants turned their backs. The women, pitiful, forlorn, petrified, knelt and prayed that the horrible nightmare would end without a bloodbath. Even the priest had been arrested; but the children who saw all ran to alert the people of the surrounding villages. Women, children old men and their animals, took to the hills. Stathis, Nicolas’ twenty-one years’ old son, was married the day before; it was a gun wedding, usual in those parts. The bride’s father had caught them in the fields and herded them directly to the priest’s house, rifle in hand. After the ceremony, he threw them out of his house because his daughter was ‘dishonored’, and he could give her no dowry. Stathis’ father did the same for almost the same reasons, (lack of a dowry) and the couple had slept in the shepherd’s hut with sheep and goats. Stathis was taken early in the morning as he
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walked to the main road with his bride, to join his father and brother getting ready to leave to plow their fields. The Germans pushed the young girl with the other women, she began to wail. The German pointed the machine gun at the women to scare them into silence. With the strength that love gave her, the newly married woman defied the Germans and the machine gun and tried to reach Stathis. She was thrown back badly battered as Stathis looked in
despair, then saw Nicky
and went to stand next to his cousin who was shaking, put an arm around him: “Don’t be frightened,” he said, “they are just big baboons trying to terrify us.” “I had no idea”, Nicky stuttered; “I heard commotion and a loudspeaker and came out to see what was going on. That’s how they got me.” Stathis laughed and his kind, toothy smile had the kindness his father lacked. “It will soon be over,” he said. “I’m not scared,” said Nicky, trying to keep his teeth from chattering. He looked as the Germans handcuffed the Italian garrison and shoved them into the truck, separating them from the Greeks. Hours passed; the Germans made a fire, cooked their meal then sat and ate as if nothing was wrong, while the village women moaned around them and the men shifted legs to rest from standing all those hours. The rain came and went but they stayed on; dark shadows descended from the mountain and the tall iron men loomed like death itself in front of them. It was their first encounter with Germans and they didn’t know how they were supposed to behave with those northerners. The Italians were from a neighboring country, almost like a sister race, but this satanic, blond race from the north that dropped from the sky and sounded like the hungry wolves in the cold winter nights, what are they, they
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wondered. In the quiet afternoon, a man emerged from the cab of the truck, a stranger in civilian clothes and trench coat. His upper face was concealed by a white silk mask... The captives looked at him dazed and apprehensive. What sort of a devilish trick was that? It was not carnival time; they never suspected drama, in fact, if the masked man had smiled, the simple, naive men would laugh and their laughter
would disperse the panic and echo in the hills and the great mountain.
But the masked man did not smile, raised a gloved hand and pointed: “Him!” Stathis placed his hand on his chest in silent question; he received no answer. “Him!” Another silent question from a startled youth. “Him!” A woman’s shrill wail.. The word ‘him’ had suddenly taken a meaning of gigantic proportions, the hand of God for an ancient sin, a fiery finger of judgement. The gloved hand continued to raise human questions as it kept pointing. The suspicion that he was sent from hell was part of the nightmare. “Him!” Four young men taken from the crowd disappeared with the masked, gloved man with the trench coat, as they retreated into the shadow of the truck leaving the naked night in frozen silence. The vacuum of death swallowed the mountain, the trees, the crickets. The tops of the aged olive trees witnessed their longest night on earth. Their sacred ground was violated; they knew, and the handcuffed men knew; men with their hands tied behind their backs always know. The priest came forward thinking it was his Christian duty to plead for mercy for the men who had done nothing wrong. He was shoved back. His black robe caught on a stick and he moaned softly as he fell; he was not so young any more. When he stood up, his two daughters began a loud
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wailing which the other women picked up; soon, even the sleeping birds in the forest joined. The priest, known for his loud mouth when he indulged in an extra cup, began cursing at his daughters in a very un-Christian way. The girls cringed and fell silent, but not the other women. “Shut up, shut up, you goats,” he hissed feeling not only his behind, but his ego bruised as well. A soldier untied Stathis’ hands; he smiled and looked in the darkness to see if his wife was watching. The joke was over. The German patted him in the back and pushed him to join he other men. He was free! His young bride flew to his side and into his arms. “Halt!” The German barked shrilly and as Stathis turned to look at the soldier, the bullet struck him mid-forehead scattering his brains. He fell face up a mess of black curls like a hallo around his young face, his large black eyes wide open in the unanswered question and bits of skull and bloody brain matter at the feet of his bride who, totally insensible of her movements, rushed at the German. Her second step was her last. Her bloody dress covered her husband’s hand; they were joined for ever. When the other three young men were shot, the women rushed at the Germans in an apparent suicidal effort to get revenge, to stop the miasma, to shred them to pieces. The machine gun stopped them. Another step, they were told, and all the men would be shot. They pointed to the death machine and Nicky saw its barrel three inches from his face. He stood motionless waiting to be shot. He cried for his mother, for the cousins, a bloody mess at his feet; he cried because he was afraid to die. With arms spread he inched toward the machine gun; the German pointed it directly at his chest screaming his threats. The priest broke away from the crowd and held the
German’s hand. ”No”, he screamed, “no, he is an
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American child�! There was a hush as all eyes turned to the commander and Nicky was sure he was drawing his last breath. The priest is crazy, he thought. Hands pulled him back among the captives to hide him, the killing had stopped, the lesson was sufficient; no one from those villages would annoy them, so the German soldier retreated with the machine gun, like a good captain who folds his binoculars when he sees no more danger in the horizon. A deathly silence covered the village and the ones surrounding it, numb, a state of shock, not hysteria, as one would expect. Those villages perched atop hills on the sides of the mighty mountain, were peaceful. An earthquake would be a mild disaster, gun weddings or sheep stealing, a fistfight or a miscarriage were troubling enough. The women sat around the five corpses holding on to each other dry-eyed, all seemingly aged by a century of pain etched on their faces. As in a dream they touched their loved ones, or cradled the bloody heads and rocked them gently swaying their own bodies like wheat about to meet the scythe, the owls mourned for them in a long, sad wail. For the women mourning their loss, the world was not real, the night was not real; the real night was when they screamed, their arched bodies pushed and bore down hard until they heard that blessed first cry. Then they stopped screaming to sit in a state of stupor between night and death, this night with husbands and sons huddling across the way, and the five victims sprawled on the ground in a pool of blood, like so much waste, the flames of the fire which the Germans had lit their only light; it was getting dim. Those Germans who sat around the fire eating, joking; they laughed, another job well done. Old women unseen across the road in the ditch, moaned the unjust deaths with dirges sang softly from behind tightly knotted black kerchiefs, in eerie, tremulous voices. Men mourned sons, brothers, sobbing silently and Nicky, alone, sat on the ground
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stunned, unable to explain what had happened, or why. He passed out a few times, came to, slept, but he was in a state of non-existence. The sun began its morning rounds from behind the mountain peak, bright as if the night just past was another night like seen from his perch up in the sky.
billions of other nights he had
The ‘gentle’ man emerged from the truck
wearing the white mask, looked at the heaps of the wet, chilled rags that were the remnants of human beings unable or unwilling to stir. “We are going now,” he addressed them, as if anybody cared to look up. “We must visit other villages. We are sure that now that the communists and other terrorists are here no more, the rest of you will behave and treat us like civilized people and continue on as before without fear from them.” The civilized survivors of the bloody nightmare, made an unsuccessful effort to understand him. In a fog, they saw him get into the truck, then the soldiers climbed onto the back and the truck with the victorious third Reich and
their Italian prisoners
backed slowly and rolled down the dusty road not yet seen by the sun and disappeared into the morning mists. The hair rising wail that burst out of pained chests scaled the mountain and returned tenfold, an echo, reaching the bells that began to peal the message to fields and groves that death had come to the village. Soon other communities, those who were spared the slaughter, rushed in to help, joining in the sad cortege of tears and wailing. Nicky, oblivious to his movements, dry of tears, shivering and confused, moved from one mourning group to the other, recognizing no one; no one paid attention to him, either. Some were digging graves, the priest went through the rituals, no one heard him. Nicky’s father’s grave was opened and his remains were taken out for a few minutes so that Stathis and his bride could share his resting ground. Nicky, who, like all
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the others hadn’t eaten anything for the last two days, was dazed and halfwitted. He hadn’t realized until he was told, that the tall skeleton placed on the ground for a few minutes was that of his father. When he was told he was so stunned that it seemed to him a bad joke; the man who had volunteered the information hadn’t realized that it was Nicky he was speaking to until the boy let out a yell and collapsed. When the mourners realized what happened Nicky’s mother was amongst them trying to get down from the horse at the cemetery’s gate; she reached them in time to see them carrying her son. The world collapsed for her. It was her son they were burying. They held her back and assured her with difficulty that Nicky was fine, just scared. Only when she held him on her lap on that mule and on her way he believed that Nicky was alive. She left immediately without watering the animal, the village said, feeling bad for both Nicky and the animal. Anna held on to her son, afraid of that mountain grave that had claimed her young husband. She clutched on to him, and was still going when night fell clear and cool, completely innocent and not responsible for the day’s affairs. Darkness closed in around the cypress trees that soughed sadly to their shadows. One by one the stars came out but their light did not alleviate darkness. Bend after bend and curve Anna descended the road prodding the animal to go faster, faster. A doctor, a doctor, God...fast, fast... The war would soon be over, soon now, as soon as I can get you to a doctor. Don’t you worry baby, the war is almost over, my children will make it, God take me, if you want someone, leave my children alone...soon now, as soon as I can get you to the doctor. Everyone rushed outside frantic, trying to help; they took Nicky down and Elena was sure her brother was dead, just as sure that her mother would die, too, after this. A neighbor shook her. “Wake-up, girl, run to the doctor’s house, make
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sure the patrol isn’t around. You brother will be fine. Go on...” In the light of the lamp, the doctor, puffy-eyed from lack of sleep and disheveled, examined Nicky murmuring ‘he is not shot, he is not shot...wait, he’ll be fine’. Looking at her brother, Elena couldn’t believe the doctor. Nicky’s face was swollen, his hands and feet slightly bluish. How can this boy come back to life, she wondered and was sorry for the things she had said to him in anger. Suddenly, Nicky shivered and heaved. He opened his eyes and looked around him as if seeing everyone for the first time. He looked shrunk. Elena still didn’t believe that he would make it. She covered him with a blanket because he was shaking, her aunt put more coals in the brazier. The room was very hot but Nicky shivered. The doctor talked to Nicky but her brother stared back at her blankly. He couldn’t speak. At dawn Nicky shuddered and screamed. Elena, crouched at the feet of the sofa, had dozed off. She leapt up in time to see the doctor administer a shot to her brother who slowly dropped off to sleep and stopped shivering. “I am going now,” he told Anna. “Don’t worry, he will be fine, he suffered severe shock but children are better equipped emotionally that adults, they survive monstrosities and tragedies. I’m sorry you had to go through this...I’m sorry for the young men; they must pay for our sins.” Anna nodded. In a few minutes, she, too, would pass out, she thought. Still the painful thought persisted, what if Nicky never gets over the trauma, what if it haunts him for the rest of his life? She said nothing to the doctor, she thanked him and went back upstairs leaving the neighbors to wonder what had happened up in that mountain, she had no strength left. “Again he refused payment,” she told her brother, “I’m embarrassed each
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time there is an emergency...” Philip said nothing, he sat at the foot of the sofa watching his nephew sleeping peacefully. “Go to sleep,” Anna said, “I’m staying here.” “We’ll both stay,” Philip said. They fell silent as they continued their vigil.
(New York - October, 1947 Diplomat Hotel - Somewhere in Manhattan. When there was time left after school and work, Elena and Nicky met with their new friends, recent arrivals like themselves. If the weather was nice, they would ride the bus across the East river to a little town-like called Astoria to buy flowers and vegetables from the nice little town with one-family homes and mostly heard
community
farms. It was a
gardens. The language
was Italian. They sang in the bus as if they were off to
a picnic in Greece, and the other passengers seemed to enjoy it, because they were never loud or rude. When there was a national holiday the youth group celebrated accordingly, practiced -or performed in- a play and they had become quite adept. It was in one of those plays that their mother came to admire both
the children on the stage in a new play about the Greek
resistance in World War II; the players remembered quite a lot. On the stage, while Elena was delivering a tearful stage lament for her ‘son’ executed by the Germans, she glanced at the commotion down the aisle and wished she hadn’t. Her mother was running down the aisle shouting for her son momentarily reliving war and executions, forgetting where
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she was and that the war had ended three years before. Nicky, the ‘executed’ son had used a stage trick, a pin, to
break a
small balloon full of red paint hidden under his shirt. As he fell, he brought up a hand on his chest where the ‘bullet’ had struck, and the red paint dyed the front of his shirt. Someone finally stopped her and held her backstage but she could
not rest until she saw the actors
take their bows at the end of the performance; he was there, alive! One of the actors had a brilliant idea, he took her hand and guided her to center stage
before she realized what was happening. The
audience got the impression then that she was a member of the cast acting her role, not a paranoid mother and at the exit they offered her congratulations which she accepted graciously. Riding the No. 3 Subway to Washington Heights later that night, she told her children, that it was the last play she had gone to. “I have seen all the wars due to me in this lifetime. No more!” She yelled over the screeching of the train’s brakes at the 181st Street Station. “I need peace now!” Needless to say nothing could keep her away in subsequent productions. She did made sure to ask if any one of her children was getting executed on the stage during the performance.)
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “Here we go again; it’s that time of the year, the usual struggle, the same old battle! The same fight about going to school. ‘You wanna go? Your funeral’. My uncle; the war must have gone to his head.
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He knew he was going to lose at the end, so he didn’t feel like putting up much of a fight, just token resistance to show off. The victory was too easy for me, no fun! And so, we are back in the city, thinner, hungrier, wiser, more grown up, though shrunk, a little mummified...We are teenagers and look ancient like our parents with wrinkles and sunken eyes. It’s increasingly difficult to climb the rickety stairs, some students faint in the effort. But the news, oh, the news. First the bad news, if one cares: our much hated Greek ex-Principal has met with his destiny. A bomb, one that his ‘friends’ the Germans, dropped in the summer, did not recognize him. He was killed. The ‘good’ news, again if one cares, our Italian Principal, Signorina Tescari, got married after a surprise reunion with her old lover whose unit was shipped
to our island. The man had no idea that
she was working in our town, he had lost track of her. They were married in the Catholic church here, and went to Italy for their honeymoon but I doubt we’ll see them again now that our new masters are their ‘enemies’. Still, I must admit, it is very romantic. Too bad they had to marry so old. They must be in their thirties; this world is getting crazier. Another happy event: The math teacher who forced us to greet him ‘Romanamente’ even away from the school grounds, has not returned from his summer vacation and rumor has it that he was transferred to the North of Greece. {Good riddance, I say}. Our exiled teacher is now the principal, the best thing that has happened to us in the past three years. Sad news: One of our schoolmates, a beautiful and kind girl whose mother died in last winter’s famine, lost her father in a bombardment. I don’t know what happened after that but she has moved to the big, white house by the harbor where
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prostitutes live {I know what a prostitute is} and though we were not close, I feel a certain pain as if I lost something. I don’t know why I took it so personally and I cried; I mourned her for dead, perhaps because the girls say nasty things about her, and no one defends her; she has no more a family to care for her. As for us, we are much poorer than the year before, if that is possible. The starkness of this room is unbearable, the ‘landlords’ harass us; they know we suspect them that they burglarized our place. We would go to the police but we have nothing to bribe them with, it will be useless. Yet, there are others in worse shape, those who lost their homes and now live in makeshift huts. The buildings that still stand are taken by the Germans. Mama had a bright idea; she visited
the Mayor,
which was a joke; that little invisible puppet was placed on that post by the Germans and as such, has no real concept what his duties consist of. I have an idea that that is exactly what my shrewd mother had banked on. The man has the authority to dispose of vacant apartments and refugees are priority. So why are there so many makeshift huts in the city? No money to bribe him with! Mama made up her scrawny face and wore whatever nice clothes she has left to go do battle. She was such a phony going to outwit another phony. Luckily, Aristos is not with us and Nicky and I admired not only Mama’s nerve, but also the
once very pretty
woman, as she went up
the road a surprising figure after she shed her rags. The police force, hand picked and armed by the Nazis, are shady characters, to say the least.. . They are criminals, loyal not only to the enemy but to whoever bribes them. I guess that, too, is a survival tactic; they sell their own country for a pint of olive oil. With no semblance of any law
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the hordes
known as ‘police force’ raid the countryside interpreting law as it fits them. Drunk with the sudden power, they are confused. Those are the uneducated, unfortunate products of an unjust, incompetent, insensitive society who suddenly found themselves in a reverse situation and are making the most of it: Mayor, Chief of Police, Court Assistants, Provincial Supervisors, Communication Assistants, and, of course, the armed riffraff, the honchos of all the above. Behind this intricate political mechanism is a doctor who never made secret his admiration for the Third Reich, and his hate for opposing powers and communists who along with the Jews are Reich’s prime enemies. The other leg of the leadership of the un-holy alliance, is a math professor -not ours- who has been horsewhipped in the past I hear for homosexual involvement {I don’t exactly know how that works but I’ll find out} and last, a lawyer from an old, excellent family; he was involved in a hashish and heroin smuggling scandal and was sentenced to twenty years in prison but the Germans pardoned him after serving just two. In the name of God and Country, this unholy trio are delivering us to the Nazis like sheep so that they can save us from communism, whatever that is, as if suddenly all people of the island have become sheep and can be delivered to anyone for slaughter. Just look at me; I write politics. I wonder if what I write makes sense, if this is really politics, because I have an idea
that only the politicians
know about politics. I have faced this confusing word ever since I was seven years old. I learn something new everyday and I feel a little better when I write those things I have just learned. I used to think that when I began to understand ‘politics’ it would be a problem. It seems that I get
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‘smarter’ because
I understand most of what I hear. Either I am growing
old, or I am close to death; I’ve heard that when people are near death they can see clearly things they could not understand before; this describes me fully.”
Anna’s emaciated face, carefully made up with leftovers of pre-war cosmetics dressed with her best pre-war dress and shoes, made ready to do battle. She noticed with dismay that her dress draped her body almost twice; she was a beautiful woman, yet! When she stood in front of the Mayor’s closed door, she was a princess visiting a poor relative in
a bizarre fairytale. Her heart was
beating fast, she almost lost her nerve, yet, she knew that she had to be the victor not the vanquished. Had the Mayor called the German guard, her life would be in jeopardy; but the Mayor, apparently overwhelmed by the woman’s nerve, sat back stupefied, then got up and offered her a seat, which she refused and while he made himself comfortable behind his desk, she stood in front of him pointing an accusing gloved finger. “You are a collaborator!” even, calm voice, body paralyzed but a hidden threat in that voice, she had no idea what to say or do next. She had to get to the apartment question before the man got his wits together and called the Germans in. The ‘mayor’ was too visibly stunned to talk. Anna decided to convince herself that he really was stupid enough and played all her cards. “I am a widow, sir;” she continued. “My children and I are Americans and carry forged Greek papers.” His eyes almost popped out of their sockets; he tried to get up from his chair, then changed his mind and sat forgetting to close his mouth. “As you know,” she continued unperturbed, “the war will soon be over and not in favor of
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your friends; and I’m sure you understand what this will mean for you. So, be discreet about it because you may need help later on.” The man was aghast. This was terrible, he thought, information like that could lead the woman’s family to a concentration camp. Anna told him point blank that her family needed an apartment and she new there were plenty available. The man took a big breath and decided to play along. He began to sell Anna a piece of goods like Germany’s intentions in Greece, their superiority, their industry and the change the world will see after the war with the 3rd Reich’s victory. Anna listened quietly, seething inside. She nodded politely now and then like an idiot, but was in total absence. From the way he spoke, she gathered that, among other things, he was also illiterate; while he was talking, Anna was wondering if the man knew know how to sign his name. They parted without having come to an understanding. Anna looked and felt a dethroned queen. She went down the stairs proud and regal in her defeat and the Mayor stepped aside in the wake of her perfume, apparently struck by her arrogance, if not by her beauty.
By the time she got close to home she was a
wreck; she leaned on the door tear-spent, hairdo in disarray, and refused to talk. Twenty-four hours later, the Mayor paid them a visit. When she opened the door, he bowed and kissed her hand. Nicky ran inside laughing like a mad wolf, his sister said; she trailed after him to keep his mouth closed. “That ridiculous little man,” he gasped when he got his breath back, “is kissing Mama’s hand.” “So?” “So? Don’t you see? It’s Mama! He must have seen a German movie.”
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“Don’t be ridiculous, he doesn’t know what the word means, where do you think he spent his life, in Athens? If you want to see something really funny, go to the yard and look at the landlords. They are all outside their eyes as big as their gaping mouths!” The landlords were watching, wondering what their tenant had reported to the mayor that brought him to their house. A week later, the family moved into their new apartment in an office building used by the Italians now half vacant, the front part sealed off, occupied by the Germans. Facing the harbor, it was once an aristocratic Venetian house by the water; the back entrance bore remnants of
a stable and a structure
where the carriage was kept. The first floor, a pre-war coffee house and a meeting place of the island donkeys that brought produce to the city, was now sealed. Anna and the children had access to an attic full of mystery, they thought; the open terrace whose marble floor had seen better days, was the only connection between the tenants. The current residents of the apartment, filthy beyond description, were mice of all sizes; also, thieves had been there and anything that could be unscrewed, broken or unhinged, had been taken or was broken by vandals, like window panes and shutters, doorknobs and hinges, water pipes and faucets; irreplaceable at the time; they just had to do without, and since it would be impossible to heat five large high-ceilinged rooms, they decided to occupy
what
little space they would use more and seal off the rest. The two rooms closest to the kitchen would be enough for them, but the cleaning had to include every inch to protect their health. On the other hand they were not paying rent. “For the first time since we came to this island, we have an inside bathroom, right next to the kitchen,” shouted Nicky in glee. “How lucky can you
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get!” “If you don’t help clean this mess,” his mother reminded him, “you won’t have a bathroom to use, or the mice will nibble at your behind.” “This place looks as if it has been invaded by two armies, not one,” he said disgusted. They cleaned, scrubbed, and boiled buckets of ashes. The bombs that had destroyed the house next to theirs had busted the water pipes as well, but the public fountain wasn’t far off. Most people were using the fountain after the summer’s bombardment left their pipes shattered. In a few days the place looked and was livable. Elena, her bones and fingers aching from the hard work, nevertheless, enjoyed the space in the large, vacant rooms; she loved the antique
furnishing attached to the wall and didn’t
mind the extra work needed for the dark wood like dusting, scrubbing and shining it with a few drops of oil she stole from their lamp. She danced around the empty, clean rooms dizzy with sunlight and space, and sang her feelings of warmth in the emptiness that engulfed her lovingly, until her mother brought her back to earth by reminding her that she would need those calories for another day’s activities, like getting up in the morning, going to school, or even breathing. She can really kill with her morbid sense of reality, Elena thought. Mr. Mayor paid them another visit, possibly to accept their gratitude which they did in a polite but distant manner hoping
he would get the message that his
visits were not as necessary as he thought. He couldn’t be shaken. “His skin is too thick,” Nicky whispered to his sister, “we are much too polite.” Anna put her manners aside and getting up told him that she was sorry she had nothing to offer him as refreshment. He made an attempt to talk, but she cut him short.
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“Mr. Mayor, if I had your reputation, I wouldn’t place people in this difficult position. You are working for the Germans, and it’s your business. You helped a family of refugees to settle, and that was kind of you. Visits aren’t advisable. We have neighbors, they may talk, think of their tongues. My children go to school and I am a widow. I’m sure you understand.” She was leading him to the stairs. He bowed and left. A few days later, he was back again; this time it was dark, past curfew and Anna really got upset. He said he had to speak to her in private and for a moment Anna was afraid of blackmail and cursed her irrationality and naivete telling him they were Americans. He left soon after their discussion. The children were anxious to find out what it was
they had talked about.
“Not much,” their mother said. “That horrible, collaborator, wants to come to America after the war. I guess he stopped believing in a final victory of the Axis.” ”Did you promise?” Nicky asked grasping her hands acting out his plea for her to refuse the man. “Stop it,” she said. “No, I just told him that we have to wait until after the war, if we are still alive, and if the Allies don’t get him, and if and when my children become of legal age and finished with their studies and get jobs which meant that they could sponsor a new immigrant...” They cut her off and began to laugh with her acting and emphasis on each sarcastic word. At least, Elena was thinking, we had fun tonight and, thank goodness, Aristos is not here. “Mama,” she asked. “Do you think that America needs someone like him?” “No, they don’t, they have plenty of their own, but you never know; once a country becomes corrupt, everything is possible. Of course, you don’t believe for
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a second that I would add another monster to your country. Maybe after the war Greek justice will do its job.” On the other hand Elena, don’t be ungrateful. We all know what he is but for argument’s sake try to remember that we have an apartment and we don’t have to put up with the cells we had and the monsters of landlords.” “That’s fine, we won’t miss them,” Elena said and she pointed at the bolted door. “We got the ‘civilized’ thugs, our friendly conquerors, the Germans.” “Always the last word. Time for bed.”
With room enough to stretch and breathe they began the third winter of their siege with the minimum of provisions and almost no clothing left to them... They improvised, learned to do with less or without and invented whatever was needed to keep them going. They unraveled knit blankets to knit socks and sweaters, dyed sheets in a color made from weeds and flowers so that a pair of pants for Nicky and a dress for Elena could be made, and saved everything they could find. There was nothing a garbage collector would find in front of their door.
C H A P T E R 1944 Popi’s much awaited relief trunk finally arrived; there were clothes and shoes for each of them, cans of food, a bag of rice and a small packet of coffee which left Anna ecstatic. She left everything for the others to admire and sat smelling the packet until the children reminded her that if she continued to smell, the
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delicious aroma will evaporate. She believed them and hurriedly she sealed and hid it for the ‘stark days’, as she called her miserable moods. The fact that the trunk hadn’t been opened at sea and nothing was missing, was in itself a miracle. Popi must have known, she was shrewd; she had sewn messages into folds of the clothing, one was a list of what she was sending, the others were some speaking of freedom and hope, others warning them about the clothes, like: ’do not scrub hard, material might wash away,’ and inside the shoes: ‘do not step in water, they melt.’ The notes made them happier, Popi was not known for her sense of humor. “I am starting a new trunk,” she wrote in the letter they found at the bottom of the small trunk “though I keep hoping
that another one will not be
needed and that we will all meet here and continue as before.” In the bare large room
where the sea breeze entered freely, they were convinced that her message
insinuated that liberation was indeed a matter of months. Unless she was absolutely sure of what she was writing, Popi, the eternal pessimist, would not so easily disperse hope hinting for the end of their misery.
For the first time since they had come to the island, both Nicky and Elena felt good in their living quarters. Space was of the utmost importance; the fact that a large space meant lack of heat, or just cold, wasn’t too important, Nicky loved his privacy and Elena everything including the balcony door which she opened each morning cold or not, before starting for school, to greet the day, avoiding the ruins of the wrecked houses across and around her. There were neighbors across the street, alive, and that was important. The old, friendly couple occupied the one house still standing, albeit precariously.
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The lady aired their sheets and
blankets on the balcony and said good morning with a smile as Elena opened her door, praying that those half broken, rotten balcony rails won’t buckle and send the lady to her death. The music was something Elena missed sorely; listening to it now was a blessing. The old couple wound the old phonograph as soon as they awoke, and if the windows were open Elena listened to the strange the Italian songs. She hadn’t heard either music or lyrics before and listened holding her breath; each morning she prayed that when she opened the door the old lady would come out; that the house would still be there, and that the
wall of the next bombed house holding
the old people’s house would not give in one more week, one more month. “It’s a miracle that it still stands as it is,” Anna whispered one morning when the old lady greeted them. “Time to go to school, Elena.”
{FROM ELENA’S DIARY} “New Year’s Eve - 1944. Another year!
The war is still on, more
vicious.
They tell me I have grown. I know I have aged, but grown? Children grow, my heart is full of sadness and mourning. We can’t expect anything good to happen to us, anymore. This day began and ended in extreme pain and sadness. I better write this from the beginning a few days ago when a strange storm lashed the city for hours with sheets of rain and ice and sleet. I have never seen anything like that. A German Army truck on its way to confiscate food from the villages in the upper side of the valley, was blown up; the Nazis, those who survived, went insane and ran into the fields. At the edge of a village they came across the lonely house of a professor who taught history at the School of Commerce, they dragged him
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a
and his elderly mother out into the rain, shot her, then poured gasoline on the house and burned it. It happened outside of the city, one neighbor saw it and told everybody who upon learning what had befallen the much liked professor, took to the streets and witnessed the coatless and hatless stunned professor as they marched him handcuffed to jail to be interrogated and suffered with him. That is one horrible thing to happen as we wait for the new year that will supposedly bring us freedom. Next, tomorrow is Basil’s name day and his mother throws a big party every year come what may. This was to be a special party; the family had received news from Alexander, Basil’s lost old brother who was taken hostage by the Italians the year before. I remember Alexander, I saw him as he was marched to the boat, a young handsome boy, brown hair falling in front of his right eye, just like Basil’s. They went through the main road with the shopkeepers, mute with grief, watching. I stood on the sidewalk hoping that his mother was not around to see that. I was wrong. She was following the soldiers tearing at her hair, screaming. A year of total silence followed and Alexander was presumed dead; his religious mother had gone through the necessary eulogies for the dead at the church, and his sisters were in mourning clothes and spoke of him in the past tense. After the Treaty of September, 1943 where the Italians gave up, Alexander escaped from the Italian prison camp, crossed the Adriatic Sea -his letter did not specify how- and joined the partisans in Central Greece. From there he managed to send a message home that took three months to arrive. It came one evening, long past curfew, with a knock at the door, and when the father opened reluctantly and with fear he saw no one; the hand that pushed the message
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into the father’s hand, didn’t seem to belong to a body. Whoever it was, had been swallowed by the night along the narrow winding lanes. Needless to say, we all celebrated. Alexander’s mother and sisters threw the mourning dresses away and began making plans for the big party;
we all participated
exhilarated at the thought of celebrating life for once. I was ecstatic;
I
would dance with Basil, the thought kept me awake at night. How nice that Aunt Popi isn’t here, she would have spoiled everything. But by now, maybe she has seen light, who knows. I have nothing to wear, but we are more or less all in the same boat. My mother says that things like that shouldn’t worry me, they don’t matter because I’m young; but that is precisely the point, they matter because I am young. How can she understand! Isn’t it enough that I am half my size, that my face if wrinkled, that I am too embarrassed to smile because of those wrinkles? I was getting dressed for the party in front of the mirror and though I have a tiny waist and it looks good, looking at my face made me want to cry. Yet, I have to be thankful. Other girls are losing their hair or their teeth because of undernourishment. May God spare me that! Mama, Nicky and I started for the party early in the afternoon walking fast because the rain wouldn’t let up, time was short, we should be back home before 6. My curious brother
had to stop to read the latest news
on the window of the pastry shop is still operating -one of the few- serving ersatz coffee and something or other, euphemistically called pastries, made from St. John’s bread. The Germans used
window of the confectionery store
along with their daily lies and warnings. The crowd on the rain soaked sidewalk reading the
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news was larger than
usual. Mama called him back, she was getting wet, but does whenever he needs an ally to get him
he
dragged me (as he
out of trouble) and we squirmed
through the crowds. The first name that met our sight was the
village where
my father’s sister, a widow, lived with a deaf-mute stepson and very handsome sons. Those two cousins of
her two
mine, much older than I am,
heroes during the war, they fought at the Albanian Front with their
were white
pleated kilts and special uniforms. I still remember how proud I was when I saw their names and photographs in the papers back in 1940.
Now their
names were on the miserable piece of paper, the printed bulletin, only this time it was a death notice. Nicky’s cry made people back away; it is
dangerous to be close to someone
whose relatives executed or imprisoned. Mama
sensed disaster. (What else
is new?) She rushed to us, took each by the hand dreadful news written
in
after she read the
Greek, and we turned for home in silence.
‘I am not a hypocrite,’ she told us opening the door. ‘We hardly knew those relatives, but they are your kin, your blood; and they are dead. You understand! We are in mourning.’ Suddenly, those relatives whose existence we had only heard of, loomed in front of us in a new terrifying light: that of
people who ceased to exist.
The tears I’m shedding now are not because I have missed dancing with Basil because if we live, I’m sure I will dance someday; I cry because some people I hardly knew, who were of my blood, have died at the hands of the enemy. In a way, I feel I am crying for the hundreds of thousands -or are they more?-that are dead and are, this minute, the first of the month of the new year of 1944, dying in the hands of the enemy. This year, too, didn’t
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begin with a good omen.”
After the collapse of the front the two brothers returned to the island thankful that they found each other in the pandemonium of armed vehicles, retreating Greek troops and advancing Germans, Stukas overhead, and non-existent
Greek authority
on the way. Two adventurous and dangerous months later they reached the island in the Spring of 1941, and hid their arms in the stone fence of the goat shed high in the mountains higher than their village, where the flocks spent the summer. Kostas and Orestes got along
nicely, they were hard workers and like the rest of
the people on the mountain spoke little and kept much to themselves. Kostas played the flute and his older brother Orestes spent idle time, when chores were finished, making sandals from animal skins which he sold to other villages and towns on the rare occasions when they went shopping or for other errands. Their lives were peaceful; one day they would marry the girl their mother chose, have a family and continue on. The day the Italian commander declared peace, both brothers were down in the harbor for supplies and accepted his alluring offer to take up arms and fight the German invasion as did many other Greeks. Instead of staying there to await the supposedly oncoming “battle”, they returned home; so did most of the others who had taken up arms. They left because the Germans weren’t invading, they said. Kostas and Orestes hid the arms in the secret hole alongside their own. They were done with fighting, they decided, yet,
a rifle was a necessity, an added
security in their isolated, lonely life in the wilds of the mountain
especially
those days of madness. Sofia, their widowed mother, lived in the village with her half-wit mute, kindhearted stepson who squatted all day under a tree in the yard
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following the ants’ path with a twig, waiting to be fed. Elena and Nicky had met
aunt Sophia, their father’s sister once, when she
came up to his village to welcome them. Nicky told Elena that she looked like their aunt and their mother agreed. ‘She has Elena’s wild, black curls,’ he whispered to his mother and she looked at him in a way that said, look for something else’, because in contrast to her brother Nicolas, the woman was a good looking soul, ‘sold down the drain’ as the neighbors said, by her brother, to an older man with an invalid son who didn’t want any dowry and died six years later Leaving her his son plus their two new little boys. That December morning, the masked man stepped out of the truck in front of the house, a mere two months since he had directed the execution squad by pointing
his finger that had killed Stathis, Sophia’s nephew, and the others.
Now the stranger asked Sofia that
politely where he may find her sons, and she knew
her sons were denounced. She told them she didn’t know where they had taken
the flock to graze, she swore. People gathered outside the yard, others hid. Two Germans got off the truck and strung up the mute man from the tree with the clothesline; he hadn’t
offer any resistance, he laughed with the game and only
began to kick when the agony of death took his last breath and his eyes popped out of their sockets. The mother leaped over the back fence, took the path up the hill to warn her sons, only to find the German truck at the bottom of their property and the soldiers already closing in on foot. Her tired legs had betrayed her. Her two boys were being led down the path in chains but it was too late for her to call out, to cry, to cross herself, or pray because she, too, was taken and loaded on the truck with her sons and two soldiers. Once on the road, Orestes suddenly rolled out of the open truck and into the ravine; he was instantly shot.
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His body was swallowed by the thick, wild bushes. He had whispered to Kostas to do the same, but before Kostas or their mother had time to realize what had happened, they were both taken out on the road and machine gunned on the spot. The two bodies were left on the road with the usual hastily scrawled sign: THIS IS HOW COMMUNISTS ARE PUNISHED. The truck returned to the village where no one knew what had happened, but before it left to call on other villages, the masked man organized armed bands of men willing to work for the third Reich for God and country and money. They were to keep the peace and inform on guerilla activities in villages where the only times people used guns were for gun weddings, hunting, celebrating the birth of a boy, or to shoot at a thief going after their goats. These newly armed people, seven of them, had no idea until then that armed resistance units did exist in the surrounding mountains and hillsides. The Nazis were accomplishing two things: scaring the people into submission and buying consciences; they encouraged the usual ‘divide and conquer’ policy with the Greeks killing each other. In the village people began looking at each other with suspicion. Who informed the Germans? How did the Germans find the weapons? There must be a traitor among us, was the general but vague and mute feeling. Nicolas, Elena’s and Nicky’s uncle whose son was executed not long ago, was Sofia’s brother, the woman shot by the Germans, and uncle of her two sons. He volunteered! He was to lead the local armed band of the area. The priest and his neighbors took to closing doors and windows when they saw him pass as if the evil spirit had taken residence in their village. “What’s a communist, Ma?” asked Nicky as they walked home in the gloomy, cold rain. “I’m not sure,” Anna answered, “and I don’t think your cousins knew,
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either.” “Maybe the Germans didn’t find the rifles,” Nicky thought out loud. “Is this what worries you?” Elena asked him. “Not that three people, your own blood, are dead?” “Something else worries me,” he said with a hushed voice. “I have the same name with uncle Nicolas, and he is a collaborator.”
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “Ourania was plucking her eyebrows this afternoon; it doesn’t seem to hurt her
and she does a good job, she manages to make her
eyebrows look like
arches above her eyes giving her an exotic look. I winced
when she bit her
lips; she said it didn’t hurt, but when Nicky pulls my hair it hurts. She asked me to try but I declined though I would like to get rid of some hairs between my eyebrows that give me a scowling look, but my would make mother
mother
my life miserable and that’s what surprises me; Ourania’s
believes that dancing is immoral, yet, she allows her to use powder
and pluck her eyebrows. I couldn’t think of it in my home with a so-called ‘liberal’
mother, go figure! Ourania’s eyebrows don’t bother me, her cough
does. She began choking while plucking her eyebrows; a dry, monotonous cough that left me
breathless. I told her to be careful no to catch a cold
now at mid term tests time, and then I made for the door. I told her that I have to study and added: ‘ I don’t want to catch your germs’. ‘It’s the powder,’ she said, and then, laughing, ‘coward!’ I like
her when she
laughs and makes those cute dimples. She has with small pearl-like teeth.
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When I laugh with my face is all wrinkles. ‘You
should have heard me this
morning,’ she said, ‘When I got up I coughed so much I had to run to the bathroom to throw up. I vomited blood.’ ‘Did you tell your mother?’ a chill ran through me; I
guess she
never
heard of tuberculosis.‘Oh, no, please, don’t even mention it, you know how paranoid she gets even with a little fever...it’s nothing, I’ll be fine in a few days...Please?’ I promised but I don’t feel right. I made her promise me that if the cough persisted, she would tell her. My conscience is troubled. What if Ourania dies God forbid? Wouldn’t I be responsible? Do people who are about to die have some kind of a premonition, a warning mechanism that once triggered makes one familiar to the inevitability of his fate, or death? I felt kind of lost and took the only way out, I didn’t leave. ‘Let’s go to the Tower to get some water’, I said, and it seemed a good idea because they needed water. I am exhausted from thinking and worrying. What will it be? Ourania, me, so many people I
worry about...”
Centuries before, the Venetians had built the Clock Tower, higher than any other structure in the city; the clock was still working keeping time; it chimed the hour and the half and for some people it was the only means to be accurately informed of the time. By some stroke of luck, or mechanical ingenuity, it had survived bombs and earthquakes and still stood tall and beautiful overlooking the stately
Venetian homes, that surrounded the square, the palm trees and the water
fountain. The whole scene was a page from a bygone era, eerie though because the surrounding neighborhoods had begun decaying even before the bombs hit. The fountain provided water for all whose pipes were busted; it was also
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an excuse for people to meet and gossip and for youngsters to flirt while the children played in the park. Elena and Ourania found some friends and talked about school, tests and boys. Ourania turned her head, she would seal her ears but was embarrassed. I’ll never come to the fountain again with Elena, she promised herself. Elena looked at her and smiled. I fear for her, but Nicky is a better company to fetch water with. Sorry, my friend!
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “Independence Day, March 25, 1944. For one hundred twenty three years we have
celebrated this National Holiday; now we are to consider this as just
another day. Anyway, it’s a cold, raining day a little unusual for this time of year. This morning going to school, I kept thinking that the Italians did not let us celebrate and the Nazis, the most brutal, gave us permission to commemorate the day ‘within appropriate limits’. That meant ‘celebrate within the classroom area’ so that our little patriotic hearts don’t get over enthusiastic and... topple the authorities! Thus, we will not encourage civil disturbance and create impromptu street confrontations. I got to school with a feeling of gratefulness that I am alive another morning and also of dread thinking that some of my schoolmates wouldn’t be there because they have died during the night. When I saw the German guards at the door, my patriotic feelings evaporated. Our classrooms were decorated with little Greek flags that hung limply beneath the two icons, that of Christ and Hitler. One had the feeling that we should pray and thank God for sending
us Hitler and to congratulate Hitler for giving us
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freedom. We stood inside the empty classroom from where the desks had been removed, our bodies aged, emaciated, suffocating in the small place, and stared at some of our teachers in front of us, hands crossed, some looking like corpses, and some like statues with stern faces blank and stern. They took turns to talk to us in their dead, monotonous voices about country, duty, history and God, carefully avoiding the word ‘freedom’. I don’t believe they really felt anything; they just parroted the words. I didn’t feel anything either, except that
my feet were frozen; the soles of my
shoes have holes in them and I got soaked. My legs were also weak and I wished I could sit somewhere, but they were going on and on and the rain beat its rhythm on the window panes, drowning out their boring monologues. I thought I was going to faint; the body odors, the drone, the hunger and no window open. As if in a dream I could see the little men and women up on the dais repeating empty words; the manufactured patriotism failed to reach us. Then it dawned on me that I was witnessing the real ‘educational system’, one I can’t overlook just because of the circumstances we are in, otherwise, why should I feel so poor in spirit, and wish that I never grow up to be like them? They don’t educate us, they indoctrinate us, and mis-educate us with fallacies and stupidities. I am amazed at my docility and that of all
students. Is it possible that our parents don’t see? What
do they say when we are faced with Sofocles’ or Aristophanes’ books from where many pages are missing because the previous dictator thought they were not decent enough for our virgin ears? I believe now that those teachers who are educating us have just the absolutely essential requirements in order to teach, but got their degrees because they knew
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someone, as it happens with all civil servants in Greece. They also seem scared which makes me wonder what right do they have to the young minds, like mine; I expect to learn, not to feel disgusted that they sit in front of me and my future depends on their judgement. For the first time I saw them as they really are: small, insignificant, frightened, Paleolithic! The thought scared me. Am I, too, being prepared to become such as they are? Are these girls, some poor, some brilliant, some not so smart, some awfully good, to be molded to re-create those morons? I kept thinking all day trying to calm down; the day influenced me badly, even the weather; all teachers aren’t like that, of course, I generalize looking at the negative rather than the positive, I don’t like surprises; I believe that I aged a lot in that stuffy classroom today. After the ceremony I walked alone in the rain was
breathing the cool, invigorating air, thinking that perhaps it
the Germans who did not allow us to sing the National Anthem. Anyway,
what’s the use? At the corner of the Catholic church a group of boys from the Boy’s Gymnasium were whispering conspiratorial messages to the girls as they filed out of the narrow lane; my spirits soared, I didn’t even mind the cracked cobblestones that had seen centuries of wear and tear and storms and were now hurting my feet, nor my battered shoes. I joined the groups of girls dashing across town to the commandatur where all the schools were assembled. Luckily, the little farce of the classroom ‘celebration’ evaporated from my head.
I believe I was the only one who didn’t know that
the Germans had picked the Day of our Independence to execute the professor they were holding and torturing since
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they killed his mother and burned
his house. Or maybe, all the others had just found out and passed the word. And there we were, a crowd of students of the three schools in front of the Commantatur, the austere old building that looked oppressive even in sunlight. It was a Venetian Doge’s domain centuries ago; built like a castle, it still stands close to the Theater on it right and the blue waters of the harbor on its left. Funny how some structures last and last. The heavy black iron gates separated us from our masters who were inside well fed and dry, and well armed, and us, out in the rain, hungry slaves, determined. The patch-eyed commandant came out on the balcony just about two feet above us. Behind him a soldier secured his machine-gun on the balustrade aiming its nozzle directly at us. The commandant, we heard, has lost his eye in the battle of Stalingrand which also gave him the ribbons and medals on his chest. Tall, slim and arrogant, he looked at us with such contempt that one could hate him even if he weren’t the enemy. In front of him a few hundred of starving, screaming youngsters were demanding the release of their teacher . He ordered us away in that raspy, strange language of his and the interpreter relayed the message: ‘I will give orders to shoot,’ he said as if there was any doubt and I looked at the black gaping hole of the death-emitting instrument so close, wondering if he would dare, and then thinking, so what if we die? The great shout brought me back to reality. ’Go home,’ he shouted only to get a thunderous ‘no!’ that must have been heard throughout the city. We shouted that again and again, as though trying to make up for the cowards -our teachers- and pay tribute to those who gave their lives more than a century ago so that we could be free, after a 400 year in bondage God, I prayed, don’t let this
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happen again. And then the sun came out. Just like that! We were drunk with sunlight, indifferent for our lives; before I realized that I had gone crazy, I found myself in a white cloud that covered everything, all I could hear was the loud ‘no’ as I floated, opening my worn jacket, offering my young heart to that beastly weapon, challenging the enemy to shoot. ‘Shoot!’ I screamed; I must have been totally out of my mind, I don’t think that I’ll ever forget those eyes of steel that met mine so close, as close as the black hole of the muzzle. Suddenly I came to and I wasn’t floating nor was I dead and the muzzle wasn’t there, only the blurry voices of the students who were pulling me away. Then all over. Was I trying to get
killed?
terrifying
thoughts made me shake
Was I going mad, and what if my
mother finds out. How was it possible that I tried to get killed when I wanted so desperately to survive? Does hunger make people crazy? The one-eyed commander unfolded his arms and there was silence. We thought that he was upset because he didn’t give the order to shoot. Instead, he ordered a student delegation sent in; the three boys who were apparently selected beforehand, got ready. As soon as the gates opened, the delegation was swallowed inside the castle. Then I was afraid; what if they held them hostages so that we could disperse, or kill them, or jail and torture them. I don’t know how long we waited out there fearing for their lives. Just before sunset, the boys emerged alive and smiling! Victory is sweeter than bread, I believe, we didn’t explode into a huge hurrah, afraid that the Germans might change their minds. The teacher was saved; I don’t know what was said, I don’t care, I skipped all the way home, light as a feather and stopped to see Ourania first, to tell her the good news. Her house reeked,
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not smelled, of incense. She was propped up on her embroidered pillows
her
transparent face carved alabaster; her enormous eyes were deep in their sockets; she looked feverish, but was happy about the teacher, she said, then ‘the priest just left’; he now visits her twice a day, her mother feels that it is not food or medication or friends that Ourania needs mostly, but divine intervention for her soul. When I think of all the useless little and large things
in her house that she can sell for food to
save her daughter, I get mad. She won’t part with them waiting for harsher situations and I don’t understand her logic, but my mother says that it is too late now to save Ourania and my heart breaks; at times I wish that I die instead of her. Sometimes I see Ourania’s mother in the street bent, despairing, trying to forget that her only child is dying, and my heart breaks. Her devotion and religious fanaticism isn’t saving her daughter. But how about seventeen-year-Ourania, a
prisoner of a dreadful disease. Those
beautifully embroidered sheets of her dowry, I’m afraid, will never see her a bride, what a pain looking at her, she is so vulnerable, too weak to even talk! If death has an odor,
I smell death. When I stay with Ourania I
usually leave before her mother returns. I need to cry for
Ourania and for
me, for our entire race, even for the teacher we just saved from execution.”
Mr. Marinos was teaching in the Boy’s Gymnasium in an island nearby where he was transferred that year after the death of their Math teacher. Though not too far away, his letter reached Anna’s house two months after he wrote it. He had
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left some books with his landlady, he wrote, and would Elena please pick them up; a friend of his would be coming to the island and he would take them. “And, by the way, there was a gallon of olive oil hidden under his bed,” he added, “please ask the landlady to give it to you, assuming that she hadn’t found and used it.” Elena wanted to do her teacher a favor but she was a bit embarrassed and asked Nicky to go. Nicky kept putting it off. What if the man comes and we don’t have Mr. Marinos’ things, their mother reminded them, so one afternoon, Elena walked the lane up the hill, where the German anti-aircraft station
was located, fully
armed and scary looking. Cannons, machine guns and other ominous hardware jutted from beneath flowering geraniums, ivy and early flowering jasmine. The War machinery took the entire backyard of the beautiful villa where the Germans were stationed. At the bottom of the hill on the other side facing west, the sea murmured its song. She could hear it even from her side. The little community under the luxurious villa, was a conglomeration of huts and hovels, thrown helter-skelter as if by chance, beggars at the feet of a giant. Smelly and strikingly impoverished, not like the rest of the town that was suffering because of a World War, despairing indigents, they were abandoned to their desolation, like a defeated soldier lying down to die because there is no more hope, then rots away. With misgivings, Elena pushed the outer wooden door which could fall if carelessly
pushed, and entered a courtyard that looked more like the leftovers
of a bombarded bazaar. A few scrawny chickens pecked at the debris and the dust for non-existent seeds or worms. The open door was scantily covered with burlap. The earth packed floor, the filth that met her eyes made the squalor of the yard and the neighborhood look like a king’s palace. The few gaping holes to the left
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and to the right had been doors which, she assumed had been used for fuel; they, too, were covered with burlap for privacy. A nasty smell permeated the air, the wrecked filthy table, the decrepit chair, the wash bin. A bed in the corner with rumpled sheets that once must have been white, knotted Elena’s throat. She had seen poverty, death; experienced hunger and friends who succumbed to it, but this sordid scene was unbelievable. How in the world was the meticulous Mr. Marinos able to survive in such wretchedness, she wondered when a voice interrupted her thoughts and startled her. Inwardly, she had hoped that this hell hole was an abandoned garbage station and she would write Mr. Marinos that she tried but found no one living there any more. The young girl, about Elena’s age, raised one side of the burlap covering one hole and greeted her. “What is it that you look for?” She asked and Elena explained her mission with uncertain voice. “Wait for her, then,” she said, “I know nothing.” She
at on the bed and
stared at the visitor with big, sad eyes that embarrassed Elena. “Your mother?” She asked just to say something. “Mother is dead, she ain’t our mother,”
the girl’s face was pallid and
gaunt, her long blond hair as unkempt and filthy as the rest of the room. An older woman came in from another hole and began fighting with the girl. “Is he still here?” she snapped with a gruff voice, the girl nodded. “Well, before he goes tell him you want no money. Cans of meat, do you hear? Cans of meat and a pagnota. Hear me? Tell him we need bread, a pagnota, that will last us for a day or two.” The girl nodded again; she seemed angry, and the woman, or whoever that old woman was, slapped her hard. The girl rolled over on the bed and
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began bawling like a child. Elena was afraid. The woman hadn’t seen her yet. How is she going to treat me when she sees me, she wondered fearfully. She hoped she was kinder with strangers, maybe she looked old and was angry because she was hungry. Her face was deeply lined, her breasts sagging and her stomach descended on her apron in folds. Suddenly she turned to face Elena; her foul garlicky mouth was too close for comfort, in the dim light she could see coarse black hair on her chin and inside her nostrils. She retreated a few steps fearfully but the woman followed her looking at her suspiciously as one examines a horse for sale. A German office came into the room and went straight to the girl, picked her up and rocked her like a baby until she stopped crying. Then he put her down and went for the woman threatening her in his language, the old woman kept nodding her head. She understands as much as I do, thought Elena
who by now
was in panic. Doesn’t she care? She thought, maybe I’ve lost my mind; maybe I’m living a nightmare. There is no Mr. Marinos, no hovel, no squalor, no German, no old woman. I’ll wake up in Mama’s bed. The flies on the table and the half loaf of bread, that pagnota for which she had slapped the girl, were real enough. “State your business and get out of here.” The woman said. Elena stuttered Mr. Marinos’ request. The woman frowned and sat down; then she guffawed showing black spaces where her teeth had been and began slapping her thighs; Elena was looking at her, at the cavernous mouth with the two teeth. The German walked out, the girl was smoking a cigarette. An older girl came out of another hole wearing just a black slip and an old sweater which underlined the thin breasts; she was followed by a German soldier holding her by the waist. My God, where am I? Elena wondered ready to scream from fright.
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The woman turned around and repeated Elena’s request to the new girl who left the German’s embrace, came to the table and stared at Elena with a thin smile. Why is everyone acting so peculiarly? Elena began to seriously doubt her sanity. The second girl bent to put her shoes on exposing her emaciated breasts and the black roots of her blond hair. The old woman screwed her eyes and gave Elena a malicious look; fists on her hips she eyed her for some time menacingly so that Elena forgot what she had come for and all she wished was to be able to run away from that trap. “Well, my lass,” she boomed, “tell me, where in hell is that professor of yours? The old landlady has met with her Maker;” she turned to the icons and crossed herself. “She told me to keep his room the ass never sent me word that he ain’t coming back. If it weren’t for these kind gentlemen I would have starved to death waiting for his rent.” She pointed to the German with her head, causing the bun on the back of her head to get loose and propel a large black pin against the wall. “You can tell your professor that he has no manners, but what should one expect from a Greek? And tell him that I’m not keeping girls for his pleasure. I see no oil here; he must have lost it together with his marbles.” She walked to the corner and sat on some rags leaving Elena in shock. The older girl looked at Elena then struck a match to light her cigarette. She blew the smoke toward the ceiling, smiled at Elena and winked. She had a little wrinkle that must have been a dimple once, and small teeth. She put her cigarette in an ash tray and left the room only to return in a few seconds carrying an armful of books. The old woman got up, took the books and wrapped them in some rags. “Here,” she said. “I guess those must be what he’s looking for; I could have burned them, God knows. . . but, if he was here,” she hissed handling her
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the package, “I would wring
his neck.” She pushed her out of the door and Elena
took a deep breath and made a run for the street, she was saved! “If you ever need anything, dearie,” the woman called after her with a heavily sarcastic, sweet voice, “come see me, everyone knows me, Madame Alexandra...” She neighed like a horse and dropped the burlap behind her. Elena quickened her step blinded by tears. Someone was calling her , “little girl, little girl...” but she didn’t stop or look around, she opened the door and got out. The older girl caught up with her. She still wore the slip and the sweater and it was cold. “She’s not that bad,” she said and pushed another package on her. “Here, take this.” Elena didn’t
say thank you, didn’t even look to see what it was the
girl gave her; she assumed it was the oil, the girl laughed, a normal, healthy laughter that followed Elena all the way down the hill but it also filled her with dismay, shame and sorrow; she wanted to vomit. What did the woman mean that she kept the girls for Mr. Marinos, the mild mannered, music loving man that she had known almost all her life; what kind of ‘pleasure’ did he require from those girls and why was he renting in such a hovel, there
must have been one, just one
room in the city for him to rent. Was Mr. Marinos really a fairy tale monster? And what should she tell her mother? By the time she got home she was dry-eyed and somber. She was immensely older than the girl who had left an hour before to get Mr. Marinos’ things. No one paid any attention to her, no one saw the difference. Her mother surmised that the woman had taken the oil but all gasped with pleasure when they saw the three large white, beautiful potatoes resting in the rags . Wrapped in the large package were the books the old woman was sending Mr. Marinos: Five volumes of Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables.’ Until the man comes to pick them up, Elena thought smugly, I have some serious reading to do.
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(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “School was closed before noon today; we were ordered to attend the court martial of ‘the traitors.’ The Military Court is German but there is a puppet Greek Jury whose sole obligation is to affirm and witness the Court’s decisions, they have no voice or vote. But since ‘democracy’ works in mysterious ways and in strange functioning obligations, -and mine isn’t to reason why etc.- I slid into my space on the bench ready to accept my baptismal to the demonstration and ‘execution’ of justice. The only admiration I felt was for the magnificent benches whose dark walnut wood gleamed, and the velvet that covered the pews for the important people. The jurors also were something! They sat erect, superior in their box looking like sleepy forgotten candle sticks, I wondered if they were breathing. The judges
higher on their dais under the two flags overlooked everything. Poor
Greek flag, what a strange bed-fellow ! Next to the flags, but of lesser importance, were two icons or photographs (how does one put them in the same class?) The mustachioed Hitler, and Christ hand raised in blessing, or was it salute? Does He have to witness this, I thought, wasn’t His trial enough for all time? Here they were side by side, Hitler and Christ, just like in the classroom, ready to judge, hoping to free us from terrorists and traitors to the Third Reich, emitting their magnanimous justice with ‘wisdom’. The three
military judges, uniforms stars-and-medal dusted, sat
directly under the divine authorities. The lesser Germans, paper-cut Nazi faces with polished buttons and gleaming medals, sat on the lower dais
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staring ahead with their blue, cold eyes a contrast to the lofty ceilings and the paneled and polished
walls. The audience, mostly us, forced to
attend,
sat statue-like as in a theater, hardly breathing. The trial was short, the sentences immediate; the Greek panel nodded: one year to life, to hanging for insubordination, causing unrest, treason and all the rest. Thirty-one defendants, all under twenty sat erect with an imperceptible smile
as if the whole thing did not affect them, as though they were actors
performing, or were handed degrees and diplomas and not death sentences. They stood up when their names were called then sat without emotion not very impressed, it seemed, that the enemy’s ‘justice’ would cost 27 men and 4 women their lives.
I was too mortified to be impressed or whatever else.
Despite the protests and screams of their lawyers who were there as a token of enforcing justice in the first place, nothing can ever alter the decision of a military court. The jury were asked if the sentences were fair; of course they nodded in unison like true puppets and dutifully whispered the necessary ‘yes’ except for the bald man in the third row who had fallen asleep with his head resting on his chest, or maybe he was pretending to be asleep. After witnessing Hitler’s ‘democracy’ and justice to our masters’ satisfaction, we were free to go; I walked out into the fresh air and raised my face to the sun, forcing myself to be brave, to breathe deeply and not to think of jails and tortures, a noose and hanging from a tree. The thought that I had to write an essay ‘Justice at Work’, darkened my mood... The Nazis judged, the Greeks ‘defended’, the jurors nodded and heads fell. What or who do I write about? Maybe I should offer this page of my diary for that homework; then I will find myself sitting in that box. I
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walked toward the shore in the beautiful sunshine, wondering for the thousandth time why all this beauty in nature and so much ugliness inhumanity. The water was blue and calm, the enemy was real and everywhere. Can a death sentence be erased? I sat on the old stones some workmen had cast ashore while building the pier and watched the water ripples at the edges intimately, bringing salty messages that became tears. I wish I could hide somewhere away from the Nazi-infested streets, the returning swallows. What right do they have to fly south for the winter to another land and return to this enslaved one as if it was a free-for all year after year? But I know that they only go to a blood-soaked Africa where their nests are bombed, then return to us in the Spring to share our summers of grief. Here, too, their nests are mostly gone. But they look so happy as they sweep over the water competing with the seagulls. Are they happy, I wonder, are they in love? And what is love? Is it the whispering I hear when I look up at the moon-lit sky? Is it the pain I feel because I cannot ask anyone my silly questions? Or is it a magic miraculous? Do I need love? No matter what I need or feel, there is a terrifying and horrible reality: people are to be hanged and Ourania is dying! A German cutter sped out of the port its wake following in small, innocent waves that sprayed the flagstones. The seagulls overhead, insensitive and unimpressed, weighed their grace in the air or dived for fish as if life is for ever. I got myself home with a heavy heart. I can’t carry all that weight, I am a coward I think, everyone else is doing his best, am I special? Is it only I who feels so alone, so unwanted, a reject, of human flesh, what’s left of it?�
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surplus
(New York City, 1956 “...are you now or have you ever been...” (I have been...I have been... a starving victim of insane bastards like you; only they did not salute the flag each morning... ‘I pledge allegiance’ and he wore a swastika, you wear a tie...) “Are you now...” (Where were you when they slaughtered children... millions in the ovens...) “Guilty by association...do you refuse to answer...?” (Yea, yea, I know this is a democracy not the Third Reich. I have a right to believe, a right to speak -or keep silent- as long as I say what you want me to say.) “What 5th Amendment? Are you now...Contempt... “Contempt of Court... One year, take him away; next... the gentleman there... ‘do you swear’...”
Interrogations, 20th Century inquisitions, McCarthyism! Drunken delirium, prison sentences; the
American Constitution,
the Bill of Rights, poisonous seeds fed to the pigeons on the window sills outside the Courthouse. Citizenships taken away, families split, reputations thrashed, jobs lost, values distorted, black lists. “Are you now or have you ever been...”
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the routine spectrum. Hitler did not survive to see his dream materialize, his ideal all-white, all Arian, non-Jewish society of the ‘super race’ on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. The enemy of the moment, the fashionable ‘red scare’! It now rested on American democracy to finish Hitler’s dream, to save the
world! And that is what the drunken senator from Minnesota
was doing. He pointed and heads fell, just as Hitler’s masked men did. (Do all dictators attend the same schools?)He never asked
anyone
if he or she ‘is now or has she/he even been’ a
Nazi. Strange winds
were blowing over this sinful barren earth.
Black/white TV, endless discussions, Hollywood, N. Y., Washington, month after month, the media, writers, Actors, respected scientists… A dizzy country on its knees, in the hands of a madman. Hitler was dead but the seeds he left are cultivated here. I’ve lost death and not
many
of my friends, not
to
those who have graduated and moved someplace away from
New York, but those
who stayed here, have jobs and families or are
doing graduate work. We visited often with our babies, went to dances grown-ups now, as families; went to picnics or demonstration. Now they don’t call
to an occasional
and I don’t see them. I
stopped calling them because they have been threatened and I have known ‘fear’. I could feel the cold awkwardness of fear that struck my eardrums through the wire and it hurts.
They
have been intimidated by those same dark faceless powers who call me on the phone in the middle of the night to threaten me
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and call me names. I wonder how long this is going to last.)
I can’t get a passport. ‘Security Reasons!’ ‘Whose Security?’ Why did I ask? ‘The country’s.’ ‘Who is the foe?’ Why did I ask? ‘Who, me?...M E?...M E?... After all, it was insinuated that I might overthrow the government by force and violence. I had the impression that it took huge armies of hundreds of thousands of men and the Navy and the Marines and the Air Force or an A - Bomb to do that. No wonder Nicky never taught me how to use his slingshot; I might have tried ‘force and violence’! All five feet two, and dangerous?’ Ah, finally, I made the Book of Records, I am not a ‘nobody’, after all. ) (Pity, two years later the madman died of a whiskey sodden liver.)
C H A P T E R
THE THIRD REICH CRUMBLES Suddenly,
as if this kind of miracle wasn’t expected, it became obvious that
the mighty Reich was crumbling; so said the leaflets that suddenly flooded the
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city. The daily arrests, the sudden, frequent executions, acts of panic, malice, brutality and monstrosity. The English presence on the air and the bold presence of the resistance where and when they were not expected, bolstered the people’s morale profoundly. Hunger was eating away their flesh but the spirit was uplifted as if the air was bringing secret messages. But for the fear of guns aimed at them in every street and neighborhood, they would be outside all day waiting for the miracle. But there were too many corpses lining the rural roads and lanes with the illiterate scribbling: “This is How we Punish the Communists,” and no one was
volunteering as an example corpse. It was becoming paranoia.
Elena had become an expert in that hide and seek, running, hiding, helping the underground in her small way feeling the scent of freedom the air was bringing. Her mother called it signs of a deranged mind because of starvation, but she knew better. She needed no lectures, books or talks, she knew! And she had seen many faces of those ‘monsters’ the Germans killed in cold blood with the label of a communist. It was the face of their neighbor, an elderly barber; of a young apprentice in the bakery shop down the street, of a fisherman, a teacher’s wife, a patriot, a priest’s young son. Now she knew how Hitler was able to exterminate half a continent to save it from those monsters. Now, she thought, the British, the Americans, the Russians, the whole world, have joined forces to defeat Hitler who was trying to save that world from communism. “Ha! I found it!” she told her mother bursting with life and joy.
“We are all communists!” Her
mother looked at her a bit worried. “Have you been talking to anyone?” she asked and Elena shook her head. Anna left crossing herself. “It must be today’s fashion,” she murmured fearing the worst.
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(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “The terrible story we heard last year from Alice when she came from Athens, is true; I heard it again today in school! It’s not only the communists the Nazis are saving us from, it’s also saving us from the Jews, she was right!
They do unspeakable things to them, worse than the Middle
Ages those dark days of the Inquisition; Zoe said that they burn them alive in huge ovens, women, men children, they BAKE them! They turn them to ashes! So that’s what a concentration camp is all about, not ’labor camps’ as the Nazis were saying all these years. They are preparing a new, cannibalistic world. If things like that happen, then why should the rest of us be alive and await for freedom, so that we could be next as nonArian? I know Zoë would never say something so horrible if she wasn’t sure. She is a shy girl and a very good student. Only she doesn’t talk and laugh like the rest of us and lately I found out that she and her brother are involved in the resistance. No wonder! How can anyone laugh when the heart is heavy with the knowledge of such crimes? I admire her a lot but I wouldn’t want to be her.”
Zoë was watching Elena while she was reading a leaflet placed between the pages of Oedipus Rex. She nudged her gently, startling her. “He will see you,” she whispered conspiratorially nodding toward the front of the classroom where the teacher stood. Elena, embarrassed and a
little
frightened, folded the leaflet and put it under the desk. Zoë leaned closer to her ear.
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“At sunset, you and I are going to pick up a few things that have been dropped off under the cliffs,” she said. “Such as?” Elena asked. “Bullets.” Just like that, as if to say we are going to pick up olives or greens for dinner. Elena shivered. Bullets? Bullets kill, of course you need a gun... “Guns, too?” she asked trying to sound as if she was doing that every day. Zoë smiled. She shook her head, no; she had guessed her fear. “I am not allowed out after dark,” she whispered blushing, hoping that Zoë would not guess the panic that made her heart beat wildly. “That’s all right,” she said, “just tell your mom we are going to the fields close by for dandelions. We will leave at sunset, so she won’t suspect you.” They were whispering all the time looking at the teacher, their lips hardly moving, they were speaking of bullets and death. It’s the third year of occupation, Elena thought, we have gone through so much, and still I haven’t seen much.
I know what a bomb looks like, now I’m to be involved, actually
carry ‘ammunition’! So, my time has come. Elena
knew that moment that she had
grown up, she felt the power of death she would
carry in
her small palm. But
later on that afternoon, she found that convincing her mother that a sudden urge had come upon her to pick dandelions for dinner, was harder. “Sure,” Anna said looking at her sharply, “when I ask, you do not stoop to to pick ‘weeds;’ you are not a peasant. What happened now,
picking dandelions
became fashionable with your friends?” Elena said nothing. She picked up her basket and a small knife and ran downstairs before her brother came in and began asking questions, too. Suddenly he had become more obnoxious than ever in
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‘protecting’ the female of the roost. How lucky Zoe was, she thought, her brother was working with her and behaved just like a human being not a future male tyrant. Zoe’s house was in a slanting row of small, two-story homes built in a forgotten past on the hillside. All homes are alike, attached, almost squeezed, like frightened children. They all had a postage stamp garden in the back and a small verandah in the front on the second floor, from where one could see the roofs of the houses all the way down to the main road, and
part of the harbor.
The neatness of the house, the sparcity of furniture, gave off a sense of serenity, also of austerity, like the residents; as if war and hunger were just passing calamities to which one must not succumb, but instead fight and hope. When Elena and Zoë left that afternoon, Zoe’s mother made the sign of the cross over their heads and whispered: “God be with you.” She knows, Elena thought; if my mother only knew!
(FROM ELENA’S
DIARY)
“Zoë and I have not been close friends; we get along fine, we sit
on
the
same desk, sometimes we study together. I have no idea why she picked me to join her, maybe there was no one else. We walked up the hill from her house hand in hand swinging our empty baskets, Marinos had
past the nightmarish quarters Mr.
occupied, past the villa with the massive jasmine bushes and
flowering geraniums where the Nazis are quartered and the gaping black muzzles
of the anti-aircraft which control both harbor and the open sea
when and if the ‘enemy’ approaches. When we reached the top of the mount,
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soft hills literally covered with pine and olive trees greeted us. The little grove
ended at the
edge
of the water, that magnificent sea
stretched all the way to Africa to meet the wine color of space. The sun was already on
its last legs. We
from field to field getting our legs in a while other people,
young, old,
avoided the
main path, leaping
scratched by thorns
and sage. Once
passed us on the way up, not looking
at us, their baskets heavy with ‘dandelions’; we did not look either...It’s a common sight, the fields need
the weeding and the people
for supper, the Germans know about it and make no fuss. thinking that I was to see a British submarine, or Navy, at least, or
need the greens
I was excited
partisans
or the Greek
anyone from the lands of fairy tales who spurn peril to
come to our aid, but there was only a dark, thick set Greek with a black mustache who waited for our baskets with
the
us in a hut
concealed by bushes. He half filled
little lead killers and without a word,
pushed us
gently out the door. I can still hear the dull thud of the lead as he poured the bullets into the baskets. Outside, we began
uprooting and
picking
dandelions with our knives making our way through the fields and
then
began to climb the steep hill loaded now with a deadly weight, trying keep our weak legs from pushed on ahead panting, guardhouse
buckling; the baskets were pulling us back and we but as we got closer to the top where the
was, we pretended in our thoughts that we had feathers on our
heels; we had to shoved
to
face the German guard. He threw his cigarette away and
one hand into the muddy mess, made a grimace of disgust and wiped
his palm on his chattering, but I
pants. I kept my teeth tight so he wouldn’t hear them thought that
both
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my jaw and my heart would be in
pieces after the ordeal. When he we walked down the hill.
gestured ‘go’, the panic fled and calmly
Zoë looked
admitted that her mouth was
the picture of serenity, though she
dry. I was dry down to my nails. . .
We never said a word until we got to the
bridge at the harbor, that’s
how scared we were. We passed the other guard who just we started to cross the Bay intent on our mission. I
looked
at us;
had no
idea where it would lead us, Zoë knew and judging from her happy whistling and her keeping in step with the tune, I imagined my second experience won’t be as frightening as this one. We began to climb the hill Bay. The
across the
harbor water had lost its shine; darkness was creeping
in, for a
second I made a wish that we make it before curfew, but then I was overwhelmed by the
beauty of the early evening, its comings and goings, its
freedom. That moment I was as free as the sea. I exhaled the terror I had felt just minutes before; yet, I longed for the dubious security of the roof over my head where my mother
waited; home! The only protection I have in
this world, walls that a bomb could blast and bury me under them. But my mother’s hands, her warmth, were my shelter. People crossed the bridge homeward slowly, finishing their evening walk, taking advantage of the last few minutes before curfew, trying to forget occupation, fear, hunger. As I walked, I had the weird feeling that I was in a dream; I was filled with love for everything, for life, and yet, I was carrying a basketful of death. We began to hurry, the basket was getting heavy; it was now dark, the city under our feet was already wrapped in its
silent, depressing darkness. I still felt happy, happier
than I have felt in the three years of war and almost non- existence. I was
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aware, and still am,
of a new sensation that rippled through my being. I
am free, and so is Zoë,
and
even if he kills us. We are
the enemy plays no role in our existence, free, I thought, because we are fighting. That
was the secret all the time and I free. Instead, I had immersed
never knew; one must feel free to be
myself in my own selfish misery and the
stupidities of Aristos. Here is life, loud. Zoë laughed with me, I don’t
I wanted to shout and I laughed out
know
see the man who waited by the side of a
why. In the darkness I could not mule. The mule carried two extra
large baskets on its saddle. The man removed the vegetables with swift movements and emptied the bullets. The mountain
metallic sound awoke the little
creatures and they began creeping
about, fluttering, chirping.
‘It’s only birds,’ he said, ‘we disturbed their sleep.’ We said good night and hurried down. Suddenly something moved in the bushes and took cover. Two boys in short pants were walking up the path towards the man. They were carrying baskets! In the darkness I could only make out their silhouettes, but as they came closer I noticed the taller boy’s white socks. They passed in
front of our bush and I could swear I saw my brother and Basil! I could
be wrong, the moon wasn’t out yet, it was very dark. We waited for a while until they were through, then
rushed downhill. Let them go before us, we
decided to avoid confrontation. The moon came out then bright and we could see the houses along the harbor. The German guard at the end of the bridge the German guard paced nervously; we began running, chasing one another, laughing until we were out of his sight. I wonder if Zoë
had ever
played or laughed as a child. I had an idea that she was born with a permanent scowl on her nice face.
The German raised his rifle
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in a
warning: ‘raus’, he yelled, and again ‘raus’ and we did, because we got the message, get lost! We separated near my home and she continued on to her house a few
blocks uphill.
I could see my house standing among ruins in a weird scene of
absurdity.
What the hell, I thought, I live in a country of ancient ruins and medieval wrecked castles, what is a little twentieth century addition of human unkindness? Perhaps that’s a new meaning of the word ‘creativity’! At that
moment, the two things that came into my view dispersed the moonlight
and my poetic and philosophical aspiration on the drama of the extinguished homes: My mother’s head lightly sketched behind the half-opened shutter, half-dead, herself, I assumed from fear, and right under her darkened window the German patrol, on their usual rounds. They were coming my way, God, what was I to do with the little leaflet flat against my stomach? The man given
had
Zoë a packet to put under people’s door on the way; she hid them in
the lining of her jacket and gave me one to read. If that piece of paper was
found on me, I would be shot on the spot in front of my mother’s
eyes. The patrol
held
their rifles ready and shouted “Halt!” and I put my
basket with the dandelions down by my feet. Frantically, I extricated the leaflet like a
from inside my dress wet from perspiration, my heart thumping machine gun. Will I
have time? I didn’t have enough
saliva in my
mouth, I would choke on it before they reached me. I chewed, praying desperately for the saliva
that would not materialize, but as they closed
in on me, I swallowed. I immediately using sandpaper for their feel the knot in my
got the impression that the Allies are
leaflets. I
esophagus, and I
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don’t know how it still
got down, I still
don’t know what it said. One
of the Germans frisked had placed my greens third covered the
me, the other looked inside my muddy basket where I neatly after the bullets had been taken out, and the
operation! All three
barking and I kept thinking and said: ‘my house’ in
of my
mother’s terror. I pointed at the house
English
that’s how it is in German. with whatever strength was
began to yell at me; it sounded like
hoping that it’s a foreign word, maybe
One of
them pushed me with his rifle butt and,
left in me after this extraordinary evening, I
made it to the door, got inside and
closed it behind me, as the clock on
the Tower struck the hour: nine! My mother, scared half to death, vowed never to let me out of her
sight again, but I know there
will be other
times and she will again understand. The question is, will my
poor weakened
heart be able to endure another night like this? Maybe I’ll get used to this life, the adventure, if so many other people do this and more all
over the
world every day, every minute, who am I to complain? I want to live
free, I
thought, so, I, too, must do my part. Everything has its price in this world.(It wasn’t Nicky I saw, after all)
Meanwhile, in Athens! Popi was storing anything her inflated wages allowed her to buy. Finally, the two-hundred lbs. crate of non-perishable food wrapped in clothing, shoes for everyone and other things, was picked up and loaded in the small caique for the island. She was too excited to stay at the hospital that evening, she spent the night in her cousin’s house overlooking the harbor of Piraeus where her cherished crate waited clearance to leave for the island early at dawn. As darkness fell and she saw the craft swaying in the breeze, she imagined them opening up the heaven-sent supplies. If they only knew that most of her earnings of almost half a year had gone to that crate; if they knew the
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depravation and hunger she suffered, the humiliation at times and the agony... She was still at the window when the sirens began wailing; an enemy plane, to them an enemy, to her, allies, but at that moment fear gripped her heart, for her life since she was so close to the harbor, and for her precious caique! She hoped that they would escape that night because there were no large German ships in port. But war is blind, tanks and planes are blind, soldiers holding rifles and machine guns are blind, pilots are blind and all their deadly cargo was emptied on the little niche in the harbor of Piraeus where the poor peoples’ homes were, and some smaller craft that accommodated inter-island traffic. Popi dashed out into the cold December dawn like a mad woman after the all-clear sounded. She tripped and fell on ruins
of cafes and houses. Around her people
were screaming running from fires and smoke, there was no ambulance, no doctor. The doctor in her forgot
why she was running; she
worked for hours helping the
injured as much as she could cope without any supplies and had to wait until morning to see if some authority cared enough to at least send help to dig people from under the ruins. The gray, oily
water was littered with debris,
the air reeked of sulfur and crude petroleum. The freight ships and a war ship nearby had caught fire and were burning furiously, adding light in the darkness; every now and then there were some small explosions. Other than that, it was a usual act of war. Exhausted and half senseless with grief, she walked alongside the shattered harbor amid the debris, planks and ropes and despairing people stunned into stupor. At dawn, parts of the destroyed ships danced crazily in the murky water; a hand stuck out of the floating debris, the fingers were curled angrily, she thought, as if accusing her. There, she thought sadly, all my efforts of the past
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year dead, my money, my needs, my anxieties. She cried then. When her letter reached them in the island, they could almost smell the acrid fumes and sense her despair. They imagined the dead bodies, the needless slaughter... “Our allies are blind,” Popi wrote, “they are as brutal as the Germans, as anyone holding an instrument of death. If
they, our allies, can kill
us like that, it means that they know not what they are doing or why and should not get involved.” It was the extent of Popi’s knowledge of strategic affairs, her warfare, her anger and despair!
C H A P T E R
OURANIA Ourania was
getting progressively worse. Elena stayed with her whenever she
was allowed, begging her to get well, to hold on, telling her that the war is at its end…‘my end,’ Ourania whispered, hardly audible. “Look,” Elena told her one morning, “we have achieved something important the Germans will allow the Red Cross to distribute food, there will be rations; have some courage, Ourania, we’ll make it.”
Deep inside her Elena knew that
Ourania wasn’t going to make it. She also knew that it was too late for the Red
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Cross to save some people with the wormy peas the Germans distributed after bloody demonstrations in Athens and other big cities. Facing her plate on the table made Elena gag and cry, though her mother had carefully removed the floating little bugs. She had begun to throw up and the doctor told her mother that she suffered from ‘melancholia’. “Now,” her mother said, “with final exams coming up...” The doctor told them that Elena needed to be her age, to laugh, and have some fun, to be in the fresh air, no mention of food; it’s not uncommon for her age, he said. Where does he come from, Elena wondered but kept the thought to herself; it worried her that she knew of no other girl at this time of hunger, who viewed food with revulsion as she did, or suffered from this strange disease ‘melancholy’! The weather was getting warmer, her finals loomed ahead scary, and all she wanted was to cry for Ourania and to vomit because her stomach hurt. The German officer who lived on the front part of the building gave Nicky a spoonful of margarine, for Elena, one afternoon; even he, had noticed that there was something hauntingly wrong with her. Nicky brought
the spoon to her happily
and urged her to eat it for the calories, to give her some strength. She eyed him with surprise. “Where did you get this?” She asked. “Otto gave it to me.” Elena looked at him startled; she took the spoon and went out to the veranda where Otto was, threw it on the ground where he could see and stepped on it. The looked at her sadly, then went inside. “Another act of heroism,” Nicky mocked her, she said nothing. How could he understand that she could not stomach anything. Two days later Otto was dead; he shot himself after learning that his whole family were killed in one of the frequent deadly American air raids in
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Berlin. Nazi suicides were not frequent in the island but were accepted as another phase of warfare. She felt sad for Otto, but couldn’t help thinking that had he known that they were winning, he would not kill himself. As it was, he would have to face a ruined country, no family, and perhaps the aftermath of any war, an international tribunal. His death, Ourania’s imminent death, gave her strange signals and frightening premonitions of her own demise. And it was with very little enthusiasm that she accepted Basil’s invitation to join him and his sisters to attend a dance that weekend, that the local resistance organization was giving in a village on the hill across the bridge to bolster the people’s morale. She would ask her mother, she said.
Summer was around the corner but it didn’t seem like other years, at least
for
Elena, the crocuses were in bloom in the ruins and the narcissus in the fields; in the countryside the wheat fields were green. the Nazis were greedily watching. The great bulk of the mountain above them hid partisans, who were hurting the enemy. How many secrets can a mountain hold, she thought. Another feeling began taking roots inside her and it worried her, because she had nothing to compare it with. She wasn’t sure but she thought she was in love. She looked sideways at Basil as they climbed the hill across the Bay that beautiful, clear Saturday morning on their way to a “week-end of fun”. Basil and Nicky walked ahead, Elena and Basil’s sisters followed panting. Though well chaperoned in the village they were going to, her mother had misgivings letting them out of her sight. Anna knew she was going to spend a miserable week-end and was hoping that nothing happened to her children; those days something happened every hour. She knew that the outing would do Elena good.
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The suspicious guard at the bridge looked them over, circled around them murmured a stiff good morning under his square helmet, but did not search them, which meant they could go on. From then on, until something unforeseen happened, they were not going to see another German. “In a few months,” Basil murmured after they left, “he’ll swear he was always our friend.” His older sister quickened her step. “Shut up and walk,” she said, “before he changes his mind and remembers that today he is not our friend.” Rows of tall eucalyptus trees and olive trees lined the shore along the Bay and there was an intoxicating aroma of honeysuckle in the air. The water was calm and in the middle of it, squatting like a huge gray whale, the sabotaged half sunk Italian ship, an heroic memento of a young man’s lone act of resistance, seemed to wave its own banner of hope to the seagulls and the swallows that circled above its rusting shape. But for the swastikas on the masts of the ships in the harbor one could not imagine a more peaceful day. Nature is the medicine, Elena thought. But can one live wrapped in himself and nature? Basil proposed that they stop for lunch while the view of the Bay was still visible downhill because soon they would take the bend to the other side of the hill and the only view would be trees and birds and wild bushes. “And snakes,” Nicky added. “And the cemetery,” Basil’s sister said. So they stopped, they needed a rest, anyway.. “At least,” Basil said with a twinkle behind his glasses, “those in the cemetery won’t ask us for food.” As they were preparing lunch, Elena looked at the basket Nicky was carrying: two pieces of stale bread and a jug of water. Basil saw; he picked the basket and placed it under a tree. “Let’s finish with
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ours first,” he said, “and if we need more food, we’ll attack yours. Anyway, you are our guests, remember?” He asked Elena. She remembered, she also remembered that if she saw food she was going to puke. When she saw the boiled potatoes and eggs, the olives and the bread the girls spread on the tablecloth under the pine tree, the revulsion was stronger than ever. She tried not to look; Nicky eyed the food hungrily. “Where did you find all that?” he asked, too timid to be the first on the plate. “What do you think? We stole it,” Basil said. “From our father,” one sister volunteered. “He said we could take what we needed,” he corrected her. “Anyway, it’s all black market, the Germans will pay for it.” “And they expect to find it after father cooked it. Come on Elena, eat.” Elena couldn’t even look. Basil was worried, he looked at Nicky
then at his
sisters who shrugged asking him with their eyes what to do. Elena looked at them with a sort of pity. All they think of is food, she thought looking the other way down to the Bay, the German ships, the sunny water. She turned to look at her friends eating and saw Basil’s worried eyes on her. He cares; she thought with a strange leap in her heart, he cares! She took the olive he offered, it went down without making her nauseous. Nicky peeled an egg and gave it to her. Absentmindedly, she took it and began to eat, forgetting that Nicky was not known for his chivalry towards her. Basil put a piece of bread with cheese in her hand, touching her lightly. A warm current went through her like an electric current, something was happening to her, she realized that she was eating and she liked it, and that she was ravenously hungry as she hadn’t been for a long time. She
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ate whatever they gave her until she was ready to cry; but she noticed that the little ‘conspiracy’ had made everyone vulnerable, they were looking at her as if seeing a resurrection, a miracle, the will to live won. She smiled; the hunger for food was a healthy
beginning, not the end for a person living with famine.
She felt that deeply and for a few minutes even Ourania’s fate faded. The will to live on and dream, to love and sing and dance, to see the end of the terrible war, returned in full force. She thought she could hear music, her eyes took in everything that mattered, the sea, the colors, the trees, the birds; The enchantment was so great that she turned her eyes away afraid that her brother would read her secret thoughts. If asked, Nicky would go to any length to keep his sister alive but if he knew that Elena was thinking of a boy, and that it took Basil’s attention to bring on the miracle neither he nor their mother could bring about, he would have preferred to skin her alive.
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “This has been a miraculous weekend; the most memorable of my life; I didn’t know what it is to be happy, free, light! The village we went to is small, picturesque, sparsely populated, tucked in endless groves of fruit trees; it’s a paradise that cannot be reached by car or any mechanized vehicle, except bicycles, horse drawn carts and mule. The Germans haven’t ‘visited’ this village yet; they don’t like being targets. We walked; it took almost all day to get there, but that was because we are rather weak even though we ate well on the way and then stopped to rest, to sing, to tell jokes, so we were not too tired when we got there at sunset; after all, we went there to dance. We could hear
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the music from far and followed it to the school where the dance was held. I carried my pre-war white silk dress over my arm all the way and when I wore it and pinned the waistline almost twice, I felt like Cinderella! Luckily, my clogs did not bother me and I was as light as a feather when I danced and I danced all night! (Where is my uncle? Where is Aristos?) What sense of freedom! The Germans did not exist, they were invisible, maybe they never existed or were part of a nightmare, someplace in our yesterdays. Everything was Greek, old as the dances dug from deep within our souls, our past and our culture; we were so important in our isolated celebration of which the enemy knew nothing; so proud in our struggle for survival, so beautiful! I walked outside into the moonlit schoolyard and Basil followed me. It was midnight; I don’t think I have been awake at midnight all my life. The world smelled of jasmine and earth, ripening figs and grapes. Darkness softened the sharp edges of the rough common, everyday village things, the barns and cottages, the outdoor brick ovens, stone fences, even the empty, lonely chairs outside the village’s only store, seemed to have a life of their own, to hold secrets shared only with the darkness, the crickets and the blackberry bushes; an unreal world! The path led to the top of the hill from where we had a breathtaking view; no enemy could conceal that from us, and there was no parent to scowl, no clock or curfew, just us, absolutely delirious in an unknown but not fully understood happiness, unaware of our awakening. I was in a world full of colors, where no darkness existed. Behind an imaginary window I could almost feel the throb of a bleeding globe, of a universal
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conscience. We sang softly then Basil and I, the
new songs we learned
that evening, those that speak of struggle and hope. Unseen owls, their wisdom phosphorescent in the shadows, approved quietly. Basil is much taller now, he is wearing his brother’s long white pants. He looks older than he is though thinner, who isn’t. Next to him I felt secure, wanted. I wondered at some point, if from all the boys in the world Basil is destined for me. Isn’t that what every girl secretly asks? I also noticed that we were sort of ill at ease, shy, as if that walk was prearranged. ‘What are you thinking of?’ He his voice.
I shrugged my shoulders, I couldn’t tell him what I was
thinking at that a branch of
asked with a slight tremor in
moment, I would die. He leaned over the fence and
flowering jasmine. He plucked the little flowers
and one
by one, he carefully put them in the curls of my hair. I looked up
at
him but the moon was
shining in his glasses and I couldn’t see
eyes, I only saw one
little drop sliding down his left cheek and I
stood there motionless in
cut
his
my perfumed wreath, facing him
breathlessly, expectantly. Night and
flowers enveloped us in rare
tenderness. I was trying desperately to think
of something to say
that lump in my throat choked me and my brain had
stopped
but
functioning.
I could see he was suffering the same agony. “Look,” he said pointing down where we could guess the city lay. “Nothing but darkness, but when lit, it’s a miracle. One day you see it as it looked before the war. I felt a pang of jealousy
will that
moment. Basil has a country, a city where he was born and felt secure in. I have no country at this moment, no home, I am a refugee
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with a triple
nationality. Maybe one day this will be funny but right
now it’s not. His
finger was still pointing. He could see things that I couldn’t because geographically, I had only known from too close. It was a magical moment; no ruins, no ashes, famine, guns, rats and Nazi
troops. Just a cloud
painted silver by the moonlight hovering over the
shadows at the edge of
the water down below. ‘Yes,’ I managed to whisper breathlessly, ‘it must be really
beautiful when all lit
up.’
‘Moonlight is more beautiful,’ he said as if just coming back to his senses. ‘It’s a pity you can’t see the city itself under the moonlight, it’s the distance.’ We were aware that we were making silly remarks, but moonlight is
a safe subject, though limited.
my fingers one I thought, kissed
He took my hands and kissed
by one, then took off his glasses and mine. Oh, dear Lord,
not again, I don’t want this beautiful night killed. When he
me my lips were frightened and unresponsive. He kissed my eyelids
and I felt the
tears behind them. He put my arms around his neck and
kissed me again. “You mustn’t be afraid,” he whispered close to my lips, “you must never be afraid again, we will always be together.” The cool breeze touched my lips hot from his stiff, tender kiss, filling me with overwhelming confidence. Suddenly I was a complete human being, independent, extraordinarily happy without fears or doubts. There was love and there was purpose and let the war go to hell. Holding each other close we danced to the silent music of our heartbeats and the sleepy song of nesting birds and
night insects.
There, on the rough goat path lost in our newly found happiness, Basil and I, two prematurely adults youngsters, danced our fears in the darkness,
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pressed between the enormous responsibilities of a struggling nation and the intoxicating scent of young summer love, two tiny specs in the vast tortured universe. We walked back to the house of the school teacher, our hostess and chaperone. Everyone was getting ready for bed, we were to start back early in the morning. I entered dropped me from the sky. That was seventeen and on and on
I
my everyday world as if someone
yesterday. Today I am in school, I am
write about love and my chemistry teacher up front drones
pointing at the blackboard not making sense. My inner vision
travels over vast oceans in mystery white-sail boats to ports of love and freedom. I am seventeen, I want to shout to him, but why? I am a senior, in another month this stuffy classroom will be a memory... Now what? Who is screaming? A woman from across the street yelling and Crying, we all rush to the windows. She had forgotten that her cat was on the window sill and decided to air her bedclothes; the cat fell two stories and landed on her paws. Relieved, we returned to our desks. “It’s true they have
seven lives,” a girl whispered, and another, “maybe she decided to
commit suicide
and failed.” We giggled, the woman is still crying. People
die or are killed every hour, the poor cat survived the indifference of a human. Thank God for a life that was spared.”
Ourania died before the finals. In the last weeks of her life, her mother who never left her side, had asked Elena to keep away from her daughter feeling ‘evil spirits’ would invade the sick girl’s pure soul. Elena did not understand the meaning of evil spirits and where they sprouted from, but she complied with much
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pain. Perhaps, she thought, she means that Ourania would be excited seeing me, or disturbed, she could understand that. But when Ourania’s mother sent for her, she knew it would soon be over and walked the short distance in a state of shock; she had thought that maybe one so young, so pure, could fool death; she looked pensively at the wild flowers and the thorns that sprouted from the dirt in the ruins among rotten planks and fences. Blessed Greek soil she whispered, you bloom everywhere, why do you let the young men get executed for loving you? Why allow death to reap Ourania’s life, so young, so beautiful? She had studied for the finals and now she will never see her diploma, nor freedom... Full of helplessness she kicked with venom the violets hiding in the ditch.
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “Ourania is dead! My lovely flower, my friend, is gone. I rocked her in my arms like a baby and told her so many secrets hating myself for being alive, for still feeling strong and able to go swimming, to study
and
love; her hand clutched mine with superhuman strength; I believe she knew she was dying and didn’t mind. I touched her mouth with my lips and blew air into her lungs, challenging the terrible seeds of disease with spite and malice, hoping to give life to her dying cells, daring the collapsing lungs to respond; I wanted to go with her, to forget sunlight and dreams. To go down with her a victor not a starving, vanquished girl. There was, I realized, nothing between life and death but a finality I could not cope with. Ourania’s only answer was a terrifying death rattle. I felt it like a knife stab, the pain was too great for tears; I was as dry-eyed as a piece of dead wood. Yet, as long as I could see her chest heaving, as long as the
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hiss came out from her clenched teeth, I couldn’t give up, I had to force her back amongst us, the living. Horror enveloped me like a vicious ocean wave when I felt Ourania relax her grasp; her head fell back on my shoulder like lead. I looked at her then, her eyes had receded somewhere in the back of her sockets, only the whites were visible, impersonal, noble, un-earthy. A bluish serenity spread over her alabaster face, her mouth slightly open showed her small, shiny teeth. Now that she quit fighting and the hissing, the rasping short breaths ceased, she was pretty as I imagine angels are. I whispered her name, begged her to come back but I only heard the moan that signaled her last breath; it faded into a baby’s sleepy whisper. It was over! perhaps it had been over and I only thought I heard that moan. A scrawny old woman pried me away roughly; she tied Ourania’s jaw shut with a white dinner napkin, I lost my friend’s shiny pearls. Ourania’s mother pulled me away. Behind her stern eyes there was endless grief, her square face was stern, unforgiving. ‘Don’t torment my daughter any more,’ she murmured shocking me. How could I torment my friend, I wondered, I only want her back, but she is dead. Black clad shadows, mostly elderly women, moved in and out of the room, an almost ethereal
murmur of lament was in the air, all unbelievable except for the
flickering flames of candles and the scent of incense. I was suffocating as I lay sprawled on the floor in front of the death bed. I remember screaming before I fell; underneath the structure of humanity, a stone had crumbled; my stone, a part of my youth, my life! When I came to I was alone on the terrace leading to the outer door; the door behind me was closed. I walked out of the house of death that means nothing to me now; just yellowing
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walls, green shutters and black rails on the balcony; all foreign, impersonal, an ancient crumbling Venetian structure. The incense smell followed me, my dress smelled, I wanted to tear it. I went home, took my bathing suit and ran to the beach. The water with its cleansing kindness welcomes and washes the bodies, even the dead ones, lulls them, cools them, or simply lets the tears
mingle with its own salty kindness. Across the
Bay the cemetery where Ourania will be interred tomorrow seemed to beckon me. I took my glasses off and dived in,
swimming across as if trying to
make it there before her; without the glasses, there was no water, no land, all became an endless haze,
my arms grew heavy, my legs felt like lead but
my head was clear, light, senselessly calm. I was unconscious of the fact that swimming is not one of my great accomplishments and yet, I kept going because I was at peace following some heavenly music that drew me somewhere to forget... Basil leaned over the side of the small boat and drew me out of the water and onto the wet planks that stank of tar and dead fish. I panted holding back the vomit that was choking me while he rowed silently. From where I was lying I could see the hair on his legs, his muscles contracting. I looked up to look at the grim face wondering if I had lost my mind. Basil’s face was pale, immensely steeped in grief but I couldn’t see his eyes because of the sun in my eyes. I pushed the hair away from my eyes, warmth crept through my cold limbs. ‘Many more will die before this is over,” he said suddenly. “But all of us mustn’t perish, we must grit our teeth and push ahead.” Suddenly I thought it was an adult giving me courage, directions; the young man I had danced with just a while ago had disappeared. I said nothing, how can he
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understand, I told myself as he rowed the little boat behind the rocks, pulled the oars in and sat down beside me rubbing my hands to bring circulation back. He took me in his arms gently like one handles a small child unexpectedly, I broke down
and began to sob uncontrollably. He wiped
my tears and pointed to the shore. I followed his finger to the outline of the prison building, scary and forbidding even to my myopic eyes. ‘Look,’ he told me. ‘You know how many dreams are dying in there. The palm trees and the ocean breeze seeping through the walls cannot soften the drama. Our people are there, they are dying.” He let go of me, jumped out and helped me climb on shore. He handed me my dress and glasses that he had hidden behind the rock. He never told me how he found me, why ask him, I don’t even care to know, all I want is for him to be close. Somehow I must make him understand that I am thankful he happened to be there when I needed him; I felt I had come back to my senses and wouldn’t like to discuss it further. He had talked to me like a caring person, a good friend; he also reminded me of the way some ‘heroes’ would talk. ‘You never told me what you’ll study,’ I said as casually as I could putting my glasses on. ’No,’ he said, ‘ we never discussed it, we have time, we have to see this land free, why are you asking me?’ ‘ I think you should be a writer, a poet,’ I said hoping he wouldn’t think me silly.’ ‘Something like that, I’ll study history, I’ll write about it.’ ‘But that’s not literature,’ I said. ‘Yes, it is; in fact I believe that it’s the truest history. Think. If there was no Homer to write his epic poems, would we know anything about Troy, the 10-year stupid war, the sociology that today we recognize as the fist book to discuss other lands and people?
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Those weren’t all tales, you know.’ I nodded. ‘So, what are you planning for your future?’ ‘I’m reluctant to dream,’ I said; ‘I’m afraid I might jinx myself and die before I have a chance to see my dreams materialize.’ ‘Let’s be optimists, suppose we make it. What then?’ ‘I’ll study medicine and join Dr. Schweitzer
in Africa and cure the natives.’ Basil burst out
in a silly laughter and that hurt. ‘Taking after your aunt,’ he said and I did not open my mouth after that; I wanted him to understand that we do not mock other peoples’ dreams and ambitions. I forgave him, after all, he had saved my life that afternoon.”
Elena was in no shape to take the finals. The new principal gave her two weeks to get over her grief. He was at the funeral and he was the one who suggested that Elena delivers the eulogy that unbearably hot day in June when Elena faced Ourania’s emaciated face surrounded by the lemon blossoms of her bridal veil. She went all over the city in the morning collecting gardenias from friends and neighbors to cover her friend’s body and the perfume in the hot church was overpowering. That, the incense and the smell of the body that had began to decompose, made her swoon. When she came to, all was over, Ourania had been taken to the cemetery. Two weeks later, ready or not, -more ‘not’- she took the finals. Two teachers
volunteered to stay on the two days to oversee the strange situation.
Suddenly, Elena realized that everything was hard, beyond her as if she never saw it before, never studied though she spent the two weeks doing nothing else. Whole pages of Virgil that she knew by heart suddenly looked like
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hieroglyphics
and ancient Greek, a foreign language, Math and physics, incomprehensible; Math wasn’t her favorite subject, to begin with. Everything was unimportant, meaningless, it swam in front of her and one thing superceded all: Ourania was gone, not just gone somewhere, but buried for ever! What is the use, she kept thinking, she was just another young, emaciated body with eyes seemingly alive. eyes. Those long walks across the Bay to Ourania’s grave in the past two weeks did not help. It was a miracle that she did so well, she was stunned when she received her diploma so unceremoniously but with great happiness from the principal and the two attending teachers. One of them walked her to the door. “Sometimes,” she said, “that mechanism inside that we call self, stands up and demands
to be heard; it sort of takes over in spite of you, do you
understand?” Elena tried but she didn’t know what she was diving at. “It’s like this:” the teacher added. “We’ve been taking a beating for four years; bombs, fear, executions, starvation...all of us didn’t die. Suddenly, we said ‘enough!’ We took up arms, went to the mountains, we are fighting in the streets in the cities, because that little thing inside we call ‘self’ stood up and demanded to be heard! Now, do you understand?” “A!” Elena was able to say, just “A!” the teacher went back inside. Elena followed her with her eyes, then ran back, hugged her and said: “Thank you, in case I don’t see you again, I’ll be going to the University.” “Of course, you will, and good luck to you.!”
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “They tell me that the war is going ‘well’!(My God, we are killing each
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other and all seems to be ‘well’ depending on who is winning). I really don’t care. Ourania is buried and more people die daily; we are hungrier than ever. It is doubtful that we can make it through another winter. These past weeks have been an unbearable ordeal, one I would like to forget even as a dream. We have a heat wave and not a breeze from the sea. Ourania’s burial, executions, Basil’s court-martial...Basil’s! I am lost and alone now, or just plain crazy. I catch my mother’s eyes on me sometimes and I sense that either she wants to ask me something, or thinks I’m too far gone and is already mourning for me. But I feel the same, just empty and tired, justifiably so. No one ordered me to attend this trial, but how could I stay away? I sat on the same bench I sat on the previous occasion looking at the same paper flat expressionless faces of the Nazi military court and the disgusting Greek stares. Basil’s parents seating next to me seemed to have aged overnight. Two of their children on that dais being tried as ‘spies’! The father held on to his wife’s hand, it was obvious he had no courage left for himself, alarm was written all over the stooped man; Basil’s mother shook her head mournfully, her eyes didn’t waver even once from the faces of the two children she had born and raised so that they could be brutalized and dragged to the enemy’s court, an enemy they didn’t know existed, because nothing like that was mentioned in the Bible! This God-fearing woman has never seen the inside of a court; she has brought up her children to be good and honest and now she is a witness to a drama with those two children as protagonists. This, I thought, was far too tragic for her innocent mind to grasp. Basil did not look at us even once; without his glasses he wouldn’t be able to see
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beyond the rails but the badly battered face of my beloved friend looked like a sculpture, rather spiritual as if he had already anticipated his future and his spirit had moved on ahead and left us. It was the same mockery all over: ‘treason’, a bona-fine witness, Greek of course, a known dope addict whose newly found occupation -private chauffeur for the military- has given him liberties he had never known before. Some people used him, him for the first time in his life. His testimony, an excuse really, had sent a few people to the gallows, and he was paid well for that service. I need to record his testimony as best I remember it because I was too distraught, one day I may laugh but now I mourn: ‘...I was driving across the bridge with those two young officers, your Honors, early Sunday morning, and at the curve close to the
windmills,
your Honors, I heard a rustle but didn’t stop the car, not to rouse suspicions, you understand, your Honors, but then I spotted them and I told the officers: ‘Communists!’ (He accented the last syllable to incorporate the Germanic accent of the word thus making sure that the Nazis appreciated his effort. The syllable itself brought contempt and disgust to
his
contorted face). If the officers had not started shooting, your Honors, we would’ a’ taken the lot of ‘em...But they heard the gunfire and took to the hill and we got those two...’ He pointed at Basil and Margarita... In the suffocating courtroom he looked ominously dark, exhausted and he perspired so profusely, his stench reached my nostrils.
The two ‘communists’ sat
side by side perfectly straight small and vulnerable, a brother and a sister, almost indifferent to, or unaware of, the drama as if it concerned
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someone else; as if the sunny Bay they had crossed to bring the mountain
ammunition to
wasn’t outside the court’s high windows but across the
continent. No one in his right mind will believe these stories after the war, only those who saw and suffered; it is inconceivable that these atrocities are happening in the twentieth century. I keep saying that because I have no idea what other atrocities are in store for us in the centuries to come. Basil, gentle, myopic, serious beyond his years, always reliable was shoved in the back of the German car, next to his sister. Calmly, he took the
pistol from his sister’s bosom to save her, and she,
like a true sister, hoping that the Germans might treat her a little gentler as a girl, silently grabbed it back. A small struggle ensued on that back seat, so silent and desperate that even the Nazis seating up front missed it, but they caught the final act of the drama. In order to calm Margarita, Basil threw the little pistol out of the window aiming for the Bay, but as they were riding the curve in the middle of the bridge, the pistol landed on the concrete. When asked by the judge to identify the weapon, the two defendants feigned deafness. The two arresting officers repeated the request, then had interpreters relay the same story again in a little more literate version than the collaborator. The Greek attorneys who defended them aware of the futility of the process, threw the case to the mercy of the court suggesting the youngsters’ enthusiasm and other judicial pleas a language that I do not understand. Through all that, brother and sister, like statues, were immersed in their savage pride; they did not move an eyelid. Of course they were indicted as expected: Basil was to be shot and his sister to serve three years as an accomplice... The piercing
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scream of the mother was too much to bear. I moved close to the varnished balustrade as they ushered them out to the corridor. Margarita, just a year older than I, smiled at me, she was strolling, not going to the dungeon of a prison, her walk suggested. And then he came. straight proud, squinting towards his mother; his eyes rested on me tenderly and his look went through my body like a refreshing wave of wellness. For one second, just one second, he stopped in front of me and touched my hand lightly; there was a message in that momentary contact, not of death but of hope and victory. I knew that moment that it was the last time I would ever see him. He followed his sister through the polished door, out of the court room, out of my life. In the corridor they were handcuffed, their mother did not see that, but her effort to be brave suddenly dissipated, courage left her and she collapsed onto the floor. Her children did not see that, either. Boys and girls, friends and schoolmates waited outside in small
groups
afraid to seem that they knew each other, afraid to be seen close to their condemned friends, afraid to offer solace to one another. There they stayed speechless as brother and sister
were carted into a car and off to prison
knowing that Basil’s death will always be a burden on their young shoulders for ever, a guiltless
pain for their friend. Just a couple of months
before, those same friends had danced at my house at an impromptu party brought about by weird circumstances. How easily I say ‘weird’. What is normal in a state of war? The boys, mostly seniors, told me that they wanted to hold a meeting at my house because it was large enough and for the stupid reason that the Germans who shared the house would never suspect that anyone was so crazy as to hold a meeting right under their noses. The
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two
girls couldn’t come and that proved to be a blessing as things turned
out. It was a bit hard when my mother saw all those boys coming up the stairs, polite, bony, hungry... ‘Not in my house, you don’t,’ she screamed and we thought that the whole city heard. The boys stopped cold at the foyer but Nicky and I held our ground. ‘I know what you are up to,’ she shook her finger at us, ‘you are to topple Nazism single-handed.’ No one smiled at the sarcastic remark, so she took her knitting and went to sit with sick Ourania and her mother. ‘If anything happens,’ she warned us going down the stairs and shaking her knitting at us, ‘I don’t know you, I don’t even know this house.’ She crossed herself and murmured: ‘God help you,’ before slamming the door. I sat guard on the terrace doing homework. Sometime later, a fat German who must have been feeling lonely jumped the parapet and came to talk to me. First, I
couldn’t understand a word; second, I panicked. The German
was smiling until he heard the boys’ muffled voices. I had no time to warn them. He knocked first and then banged at the shutters and I found the chance to run inside. The boys pushed me out of the room and scattered all over looking small and innocent as they huddled in the corners. A young boy, so blond that he looked German, opened the shutters and smiled. He spoke to the German. He comes from a wealthy family and was raised by a German nanny. He admitted to the German that they were holding a meeting and the seniors of the Girls’ Gymnasium had no idea because it would be a surprise graduation party for them. He had the nerve to give him a date and invite him, too. And thus it was that when people were starving to death, when I was waiting for Ourania to die and executions were daily affairs and
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we were visited nightly by unfriendly air raids, the class of 1944 initiated the first graduation party in the island. The girls were surprised; the party was a success. If the truth is to be told, we all enjoyed singing and the chance to dance like all normal young people, or old ones. The would-be graduates sang and danced and the German came and brought a small keg of imitation ice cream. It has been a long time since we had ice cream; we have forgotten the taste. The German sat on the floor -there were only five chairs- and showed us photographs of his family, a wife and children. At that moment, when he was trying his best to remember a few Greek words probably from his ancient Greek class of his school years, we forgot that he was the enemy we were plotting against, he almost looked human, like the rest of humanity, he could love, he had fathered children, maybe he had sung lullabies, perhaps... Where is that German now, I wondered as I faced the avenue that led to the prison, trying to catch a last glimpse of the car that took my friends away. The sun blinded me. When one is happy sunlight is a blessing, when death hovers, the sun has no business to shine as if everything is all right with the world.�
Basil’s attempt to escape a few days after the trial was tragically
unsuccessful. He was caught and tortured mercilessly.
That night they half buried him in the prison’s backyard and left him at the mercy of the elements for two days and two nights. No one knew about it. An Italian soldier who had somehow survived the massacre
and was guarding the back gate, tried to dig him out.
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He was shot n the spot by a German guard. After all, the Italian, too, was a
prisoner. The same guard crushed Basil’s skull with a
large
flagstone. That stone served as a gravestone for Basil
until
liberation, six weeks later. He was buried next to Ourania.
C H A P T E R
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “Basil’s mother was watering the flowers and plants in the garden; it took all my courage and I thought a lot before paying her a visit. The flowers were blooming and
the fig and lemon trees were heavy with fruit. Nothing
spoke of death but the figure of a mother dressed in black. It was painful to see much
such sorrow in her face, but then, what did I expect?
older
than my mother but in a few weeks she has aged
She was not
so much, she
looks like my grandmother. Her pain, her mourning is by far different than that of Ourania’s mother, I hate comparisons. Her, I try to avoid much to my
pain;
brother as if
but I feel like dropping on my knees in front of Basil’s that
the watering can an
would lessen the sorrow for her loss. She let go of gave me her hand; lost for words, I sat on the stoop
under the honeysuckle hours in the past. That
where her children and I have spent many carefree past keeps coming back and the feeling that any
moment Basil will pop out of the kitchen door wearing his brother’s long
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pants, his gray laughing eyes his mother two facets of
contradiction
the middle with a grief I collapse that
squinting behind his glasses. His garden, merged and I was left breathless in
couldn’t have suspected. The whole world could
moment into a
catatonic, maddening chaos and I wouldn’t bat
an eyelash. My heart was racing violently, it was hard to breathe, to swallow. ‘You’ll be off to me to. ‘When you get
Athens soon,’ she broke the silence and brought
settled, I’ll send Margarita to study with you.’ I
thought her voice came
from somewhere in the depths of that chaos; I was
amazed at the woman. Her daughter would be in jail for the next three years, we had just buried her
son and who knows if her other son is alive
fighting in the mountains. Yet, she has the courage to make plans for her daughter’s future at the
university. ‘Three years is a long time,’ I said
not realizing the cruelty of what I said but I was lost for words. ‘Don’t be silly Elena,’ she said. ‘The
Germans are finished.’ ‘The war isn’t
over,’ I said absent-mindedly. ‘All in good order, the good Lord is paying attention, the war will be over wait...’
soon; it’s too bad that Basil couldn’t
‘They would have executed
him...’ I said lamely. ‘Maybe, maybe
not. But Margarita is alive and so are you. You are young, the pain is for me, for you it’s life and a future. I have seen enough wars and disasters, but I had faith in God and now you must continue; see that nothing like this happens again, build this wrecked land. If you give in to grief, if you lose hope, then Basil died in vain...’ She shouldn’t have said that, it left me a wreck. She saw me to the door and kissed me; it was the first time she did that and I felt awkward. garden gate and went straight to the German
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I walked out through the
Commander’s office to apply
for a travel permit then home to begin studying for the entrance exams if and when the University opens its portals. Here, I thought, I am repeating aunt Popi’s escape; another generation of an escapee. Two days later my application was rejected. ‘Entrance exams at the University’ was ‘insufficient’ reason for travel. So, I applied again, this time using a lie. Our good doctor gave me a paper that said I must be examined in Athens for a strange disease I can’t even read, never mind pronouncing it and now I’m sitting waiting in this endless void called ‘time’, for the day that I can flee this trap of death. Nicky has left for the village, the city is hot, Mama and I wait. I visit Margarita twice a week but still have no strength to visit the graves. The wife of a distant relative who is in jail for obvious reasons came to stay with us after doing her stint at the police station interrogated and tortured. They don’t believe that she is a stranger, but she is, we don’t know her either so well. The strange winds of war have brought her to the island from Athens just like they have
us; we
sort of belong because of heredity, but she is part of the shipwrecked humanity that lost their country in the Asia Minor disaster. Her main function at this time is to see her husband alive, to take him home if possible. Now we are three women going about our business during the day, getting home early in the evening to exchange news, discuss our negligible exploits and give each other courage: The stranger, Christina, Mama and I.”
(The Portrait of a Collaborator He was a porter before the war, half starved, illiterate, treated
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with contempt because
he was sly, a gossip and a petty thief. He had
married a woman half his age in his village, and he beat her every night to get even with a world that wouldn’t give him half a chance. Suddenly, he became a harbinger of ill winds; an everyday word in this island, bent to extinguish resistance, of which
his followers
knew precious little; they were told that they were a ‘patriotic’ group organized by the Germans to save the island from the communist threat. The organizers did not consist of just anybody, the rabble, they belonged to the affluent upper class, hardly a ‘terrorist’ group, an ex-Army Officer, one teacher and one doctor. They found the
man to do their work for them. The collaborator/killer was
their alter ego, a Mr. Hyde to their Dr. Jekyll personalities. The little man was given clearance by the German authorities to assemble and arm his own ‘army’. The army tank the Germans thought was due him, soon proved to be something that he well earned. The conglomeration of men of every shape and past went through the countryside terrifying villages and towns; they hanged, pillaged and brutalized entire communities; they had a good time, they ‘cleared’ the island of dangerous elements as the leaflets proclaimed. Their leader, so named by his godfathers was also
a ‘general’, so named by
the Germans who with the tank and the arms, also supplied him with a white military uniform, since it was summer, with golden stars on his shoulders. Astride his tank, the little scrawny man spread terror all over the countryside from one end of the island to the other. He destroyed, burned and killed with sudden venom, even people
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in his
own village hid from him. Forty years of suppressed deprivation, contempt, humiliation and similar traumatic experiences had unleashed a murderous tempest. According to his own reports posted on the most prominent corners in the city, he had ‘cleared’ the island of more than one thousand people in one year, beginning with his former employers. He seemed to have developed a sadistic pleasure in killing young married couples and then having himself photographed with a German officer lighting his cigarette under the swinging bodies of the hanging bride and groom. There was a deliberate unique show in the form of execution each time he went on a rampage; there was no manner of execution that he did not try. He would appear suddenly atop his tank when no one expected him, bony legs akimbo, tommy gun in one hand and a whip in the other, a world conqueror, while his power drunk ‘army’, dressed in their own rags and patched pants, some shoeless until they stole shoes from an executed man, followed afoot, armed with rifles and grenades.)
One week after her previous arrest, Christina was arrested again and taken away without explanation, as she emerged from the prison when she brought her husband food. Elena, who was visiting Margarita, hardly had time to see her as they whisked her away into the blinding sunlight. She ran after them to the police station but there they gave her the same story: only
the Germans knew. They also
warned her that it would be wiser if she didn’t press the matter further. Three days later, Christina staggered into the house in a sad state. Her back
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was
almost
torn to shreds from whipping and her buttocks and legs bloody.
Her face was so swollen, she couldn’t open her mouth to speak
or eat. When she
whispered ‘water’, her voice was hoarse from yelling for three days and nights. Anna dressed her wounds, could
nursed her and fed her water and whatever else she
with a small spoon while she lay in bed crying in pain.
why she
She never knew
was arrested or for that matter released; she never saw a German. The
Greek police were torturing her with
one question “Who?” She didn’t know what
they were talking about. She figured that they might be looking for resistance leaders but she knew no one, anyway. Anna believed that she was freed hoping that she would lead them to their target. Elena’s courage was waning, her idealism evaporating. To add more misery to her life, the Allies began nightly bombings which in the beginning
was
considered by some a good sign; after a few close calls, the nocturnal visits by the American planes were not so welcome. The years of despair, death and hunger had weakened the romance and the excitement of having allied airplanes overhead, they now knew that planes carried bombs and that friend or foe the pilot had to get rid of them somehow and bombs have no vision nor do they know the difference between friend and foe as Anna was fond of saying. The planes came earlier one night; the three women rushed to the dining area because it was the only room without windows and sat on the floor holding on to one another, listening to the explosions and the anti-aircraft blasts in silence. The next day the ruins and the debris of the houses that were hit as well as the bodies were cleared away, buried, forgotten. Now everyone was sure that ‘something was afoot’ but if that ‘something’ was good or bad’ no one was sure. In the streets, the harbor, the people, one could feel a visible unrest as if some kind of an ‘ending’ was
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expected. Elena was sure that the end had come, the end of her patience, perhaps her life’s but she didn’t much care any more. Like every one else, she thought she had no more excuses for not caring whether she lived or died, whether she ate or not. Still, she went about dutifully looking for food. And still, the planes, the bombs, the collaborator waiting at the crossroads drinking wine at the corner tavern in the afternoons and trying to find his next victim, scared her. She had no one to talk to any more; that scared her, too. The planes returned that night, too. From her window Elena looked at the darkened, semi-ruined city and the moonless sky studded with millions of bright stars. Would that be enough light for the pilot to see the German ammunition barges
in the harbor, she wondered, or is he going to unload any place?
And what if they really hit the boat with the ammunition that was so close to her house? Terror gripped her whole being. We’ll all be blown to bits, she thought and at that exact moment she heard the unmistakable roar of blasts and the fireworks that followed, lighting the sky, but on the other side of the city far from the harbor with the German ships, closer to the prison. Next morning they knew; homes were devastated, the beach destroyed, more victims, more unrest. Rumors had it that the ammunition was headed for the front, what front and where no one could tell. English pamphlets informed them
of a “Balkan” front which was
a good idea but a very broad target. And the burning question: if the barges and the ships were hit wouldn’t the whole city go up with them? People spoke of an underground wireless which kept the Americans informed. Someone surely lacked accuracy and the people paid with their lives and property. But no one was sure how accurate the information was. The front seemed to be right in their own yards.
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It took all Elena’s strength to walk about the city in the hot sun trying to find a store selling anything edible at black market prices. She was very tired, sleep had become a luxury. Exhausted, she had fallen asleep that third night and in the midst of her dreams the explosions almost threw her out of her bed. No sirens, no warning; just the deafening roar and the sky lighting up her window filling the room with terror; again! Christine and her mother calling her as they
In the darkness, she heard darted from room to room, like
rats chased by a cat, trying corners, yelling for her to wake up, feeling trapped. There was no hiding from the deafening blasts, the noise overhead; the explosions were there, awfully close. Fully awaken, Elena screamed but couldn’t hear her own voice, which was just as well, she wouldn’t recognize herself. In the red light that lit the room in spurts like tongues of fire, she groped for her robe and matches; the darkness swallowed her; she couldn’t find matches, but guessed rather than saw her mother’s and Christina’s shadows sketched against the wall crouching, and breathed a sigh of relief but not for long. A mad delirium of bursts, hissing, explosions enveloped them, the acrid taste of sulfur filled her mouth, smoke choked her. The world is really coming to an end, she thought resigned and moved close to her mother in the dining room. Anna held on to her and pushed her towards the stairs. “Where are we going?” Elena asked. “I don’t know,” her mother said. “Let’s get out and we’ll follow anything that moves, I hear movement, voices, there must be someone out there.” They
were on top of the stairs when the other bomb fell, this one, they were
sure, next house which was blasted, then they knew; flames leaped from the windows but there would be no casualties, the house had been bombed
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before and
no one lived there.
Their own stairs disappeared from under their feet, a mount
of debris blocked their exit. Anna turned and pushed Elena under the table and kept calling Christina.
She covered her daughter with her body crying
hysterically, “...my child, I’m losing you...” “No, Mama, no, listen,
one more, six, seven...wait Mama, don’t die,
please, Mama, ten ... eleven...” “My child, my child...” “You are choking me Mama, listen...twelve...” then, quiet.
New Jersey - July 4th, 1970 “Mommy, mommy, look!” She came to with a start; the children’s voices, the
music; her ears were filled with happy noises. She could almost
see the magnificent colors lighting up the
night sky, smell the
fireworks’ peculiar odor mingled with that of the barbecues; the whole town must be grilling, she thought glad that the children didn’t care for the barbecue, all they wanted was the excitement of the holiday. What a day! First the parade, then lunch -junk food, what else would they enjoy? I must have dozed off, she thought, trying to straighten her body; her back ached. The book fell off her lap. She waved to the children acknowledging the splendor in the sky. Far be it from her to accept that it was not fatigue that kept her crouching in the back seat of the locked car pretending to read in the darkness, but the terror that the small, inconsequent explosions of the fireworks sketching happy figures on the summer night sky brought back...What
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day was that, she wondered, lost that one too, I guess in the mists of time. I am now in a New Jersey park with two happy, screaming children, hot dogs and parades. I am locked in in the back of the car so I don’t see, I don’t hear, I don’t smell. Is this the only trauma the war left? What year was it? I forgot that, too? Must be after 1943, the Germans, not the Italians were there. Yes, it was summer, 1944 and the bombs were American...My own! She laughed and followed her leaping children with her eyes. I hope they never have to remember what I am still trying to forget...
“Mama, listen...quiet... I told you. Mama, please wake up, don’t leave me now. Mama, we must get out.” Smoke choked her. Anna opened her eyes and coughed. “Are you hurt?” she agonized. “No Mama and neither are you, you were smart to crawl in here. Let’s get out.” Christina was hiding under her bed; she was now yelling. Soon she climbed over the debris and reached them. “Allies, your compatriots, or whatever the devil they are, may they rot in hell,” she cursed spitting plaster from her mouth, as they helped her to climb over the debris. “Are you both all right?” “Yes,” they both said, “yes,” Elena repeated, I’m all right my heart has just died.” “Why don’t you thank God that we can still stand in the middle of hell and we are not hurt?” Her mother reminded her. “Don’t talk about that God,” Christine said. “He’s away on vacation, or
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comatose; otherwise, this is unexplainable.” A gaping dark void filled with beams and plaster and cement chunks was at the top of the stairs. Now, what? Elena wondered while her mother began wailing: “Oh, God, we are trapped.” “The windows,” Elena suggested when they heard human voices and hurried steps outside. “They are too high,” Christina said, “we’ll be killed.” “Not to get down; I’ll call for help.” She went to her room knocking everything, stepping over beams, but managed to push
the broken
shutters; in the street she could see shadows moving about, talking hurriedly above the artillery pandemonium, some were huddling amid the debris. She yelled for someone to break the door so they could come out. A group of men helped break down the door; then some of them climbed up over the beams and the cement blocks and helped them down and out into the night that smelled of death and sulfur. They joined the crowd of neighbors heading south. They had topped to rest for a few seconds. Sobs were heard from across the street, it was the old people’s house , the house of the music Elena thought and froze. She tried to reach across but tripped and fell behind a mount of stones and the debris covered her. The men dug out the old woman who was half buried She ran back inside the wrecked house. “You go ahead,” she told them, “my husband...” she broke down and began to sob, “my husband is dead, my husband is dead. Leave me, I want to stay with him.” “Leave her,” a young man said. “The planes aren’t coming back tonight. Let her stay with him. We’ll check in the morning.” Elena climbed up the shattered slabs of the ruined house feeling broken down herself, crying. Christina took her
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hand, “Let’s go child.” “I am not going,” she
said. “Leave me alone, I want to die.” She was too
numb to move; she found herself in a state of suspended animation, why go on? She kept thinking while people around her tried to get her down. “Let me be,” she screamed, “ don’t touch me, I told you, I don’t want any more of this. I want to die.” “You die when your time comes,” said an elderly man, “now, get up.” “I want to die, I tell you,” she cried, she was hysterical. “Let me be.” Then they heard music. The old woman was keeping her husband company. The needle scratched the record badly, but Elena recognized the off-key aria from ‘Tosca’ and something inside her stirred painfully. A fleeting thought passed through her muddled mind. Music had survived many wars, and those who wrote the music, they left a legacy, a memory; maybe that’s why music is here, to give us a message, perhaps to tell us that If it can survive against wars and other disasters, we must survive, too. I must live because men, people, individuals will write and compose and build and stay alive for ever through our survival. Still in a trance and deep in thoughts more tragic than the ruins around her, she let them dig her out and fell in line with the crowd who took her by the hand and brought her to her mother. She hadn’t been aware
that she was walking with the crowd and that
Christina was holding her. I must live, she kept thinking, while music lives, I must, too. Where did I get all those nutty ideas from, she wondered, life is too important. Up they went, the waves of half crazed, half-dressed humanity carrying their children and their fears, past the old schoolhouse from where she had recently graduated, into a field at the top of the hill below the villa whose
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walls housed the German anti-aircraft under the lush ivy. They lined up into the ready made troughs left there by the archaeologists who had been digging when remnants of Mycenean tombs and walls were discovered before the war. They now served as a natural shelter against both planes and anti-aircraft. There was logic in that decision:
the American planes seemed to be either misinformed or
bad shots; in either case
what safer place than the actual target: the enemy!
Her tired brain drifted into darkness and she slept on the rocky ground. The morning mists covered the city below, it seemed resting in a quiet slumber. Until the mists dissolved; then the catastrophe faced them, most of the city below them lay in ruins. A good part of the ancient Venetian walls that had withstood centuries of storms, earthquakes, pirates, enemy take-overs and Italian and German bombardment, had finally succumbed to American bombs. How grotesque! Elena almost said out loud as she looked in shock.
We suffer natural disasters
and forgive nature, how do we forgive this? Her eyes were full of tears; anger, sorrow, fear and suddenly last night’s despair and total hopelessness consumed her. And her two loved ones buried! She cried silently shivering in the morning chill; My God, she prayed let my diary be saved. But she knew that for the diary to be intact, her bed had to be intact, and for the bed to be intact, her room had to be and so on, not much hope left. The survivors began the descent at dawn toward home slowly. Home! Where will that be, or will there
be a home, was in everyone’s thought. Tired and
dusty, they walked along the walls looking down, young and old, the cowards and the brave
huddled against the morning dew. Fear, a common bond,held them
together,. Elena’s room was in shambles, but the bed was still standing and so was the
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large Venetian mirror. Her diary was safe. She hugged it and shoved it under her blouse.
C H A P T E R
A MIRACLE – AN EXIT The city
was
evacuated almost to its entirety before sunset. Even those whose
homes were intact, joined the exodus not trusting the night any more. People carried bundles, or rode donkeys, holding candles and possessions that had to be saved, bicycles and carts. It was a very big line of silent humanity trying to get as far away as possible. Long lines crammed the bridge crossing the bay, some would be taking paths to stay with relatives in villages along the way. Hundreds of overnight refugees, families like Anna’s, would look for shelter for the night on the hillside, to return in the morning to clear the rabble and look for food. Christina was frantic with worry for her husband, she wouldn’t go back to her village; Anna felt that both she and Elena were too weak to attempt an escape to their own village on foot. On the other hand, there
was always the fear of the
pillagers, the most despicable enemy though there wasn’t much anyone could steal any more. She had cleared the dining room and placed their mattresses and clothing there after removing most of the debris from the entrance so the broken door could close. Late in the afternoon, they, too, joined the crowds abandoning the city to the bombs and the Germans who patrolled it. The German guard at the
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bridge eyed them coldly, as if trying to evaluate the number of rifles they carried in the ragged blankets and bags. By the time they reached the windmills the lines had dwindled somewhat; people drifted either to the olive groves or to continue to various fields and villages. About an hour uphill, Anna stopped, she couldn’t go on. They decided to follow those who seemed to know where they were going, down into the ravine thick with wild bushes. The deeper one got into the gorge, the safer. Years before, when cars were a rarity, a motorist whose car didn’t make the sharp curve had survived the terrible toss all the way down into what seemed a deadly abyss. Thankful for the miracle, the grateful man had a church built right into the cavernous side of the ravine at the bottom into the cave; no one passing the road above could guess its presence, but the natives knew. When Anna’s group reached the plateau where the church was, every inch of the ground in front and around the chapel was covered with rags and blankets, pets, children, chickens, even tables -apparently to eat on and sleep under- and squabbling adults. A good hiding place but claustrophobic, thought Elena, looking at the threatening cliffs towering above them. Her empty stomach couldn’t take the smells of sweaty bodies and proximity that overpowered the fresh scent of the pine trees surrounding on
and hiding all that humanity from view. They kept walking
through uneven stony ground in fields not knowing where they led, demoralized
by the indifference of those who, secure in their isolation wouldn’t pay attention to strangers. The countryside beyond that point was hostile; they climbed over rocks, went down into ditches, but they were in view -if a pilot decided to use binoculars and scour the countryside just to look for them! Thorns, bushes and thistle scratched their legs until they reached a deserted
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threshing floor which hadn’t been used for years if one judged from the cracked flagstones where weeds and wild flowers grew. “Open air hotel,” Anna said defeated and dropped on her blanket. Her voice meant: that’s it!
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “I imagined the planes, whose presence I could just guess, dropping bombs just like a horse moving its bowels; at least that’s what the frequency of explosions seemed to remind me as I looked down from so far away but for the destruction they caused. The blasts awoke us. Below us, the red glare of the explosions etched the drama of the city against the horizon, the harbor’s mirror reflected the burning sky. I could never imagine such colors in destruction. Maybe the people who drop the bombs have another view and they like it; of course, they are not getting those bombs on their heads. Those blasts reached us in delayed waves like far away thunder following the instantaneous flame bursts. When a house was blown up we could see the blackness of its parts traveling upwards; in some neighborhoods tiny windows were lit up as in a feast but we were very far and quite safe, just watching from higher ground as one would in a cinema where all is make believe. Unfortunately, distance didn’t make the ‘fireworks’ make-believe! Christina was silently crying this time sure that the prison was hit and that her husband had perished; and how about Margarita in the same prison, I thought. My mother couldn’t watch; she crawled under her blanket, but terrified as I was I couldn’t take my eyes
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off the inferno. I was in a nether world surrounded by wilderness and only when the roar ceased and the planes left, I could again hear the insects and the fluttering of birds in nearby bushes. A goat passed by, probably lost; she didn’t pay attention to us, the city, or the sky. I slept again, I don’t know for how long because I don’t know what time the planes came and how long they stayed but it was dawn when I awoke shivering and wet with dew. Slowly we reversed our route towards the city, following the crowds that were also returning, hoping that the bridge was intact because if it had been hit we would have to walk around the bay and the adjacent lake which means a six-hour walk. We were thankful to see it intact, even with the German guard there. I wondered where he was all night.
The
gasoline supply warehouse was hit and that was the ‘splendor’ of the fireworks, and two of the barges finally got their due. The other two were still there bearing the signs of their misery. The harbor waters, always blue and clear, were slimy, black, filled with floating debris. I felt for Aunt Popi that moment; I saw her staring at the debris the night she lost the trunk to the Allied bombs. Unexpectedly, and lucky for us, our house was spared, it was a close call. The woman across the street was sweeping the non-existent sidewalk as if nothing had happened and asked us if we had spent a comfortable night. Christina grunted and Mama just looked at her as if to say, where do you think we spent the night, at the ‘Grand Bretagne’ hotel? She shook her head sadly; the old woman had lost it. Her husband had been buried the day before, she told me. She had to dig him out all by herself, that was why she was late and didn’t invite her neighbors to the funeral. She showed no
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emotion, she smiled politely and placed her broom against the wall then went upstairs to the half of the house that was still standing, to open the balcony doors that just about held on to shattered hinges, to air the bed sheets. The tattered curtain flew in the breeze through the broken panes and I turned to go. Suddenly, there it was: the burst of music again, this time the loudness made the distorted record sound like sobbing; it was, it seemed to me, worse than bugles of death. I looked up before I went inside and I saw her sitting on a chair in the balcony, moving her head in tune with the eerie music. I was surprised that the record player had made it, was it some sort of a game her destiny played? The blend of opera, tragedy and death, a cacophony in itself, struck a note of isolation that morning as we listened to the distorted Tosca for the last time and watched our elderly neighbor smile foolishly moving her head with the music. We left the bundles with our bedclothes inside the door and took to the streets: Mama to find food, Christina and I to our prisoners. One thing we could be thankful for, the prison wasn’t hit and Margarita and her parents were spared, too. They had stayed in the city to be near their daughter”.
After a hasty meal of boiled squash, the three women shouldered their blankets and anguish and took the road to safety again with the other ‘overnight refugees’. They started earlier hoping to find a better place, a more protected niche on the hillside so they wouldn’t be exposed to the elements, at least. Others had the same idea so they landed in the same threshing floor. They sat on the blankets waiting not knowing for what: dusk, the planes or sleep. What came
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wasn’t entirely unexpected: a growling tremor from beneath the earth. Another visitor from hell, Anna thought, an earthquake! “Now,” Christina used the last shreds of her sense of humor, “people won’t have to hire wreckers to raze their homes so they can rebuild, the earthquake will do it for them”. Anna was crossing herself. “What else, my God?” she murmured. The tremors continued for a while as if precursors for something bigger following, but when they stopped it seemed that the wrath was spent. Elena wrapped herself in her blanket and sat up scanning the horizon like an experienced weatherman, or like the fishermen she had seen the evening before taking their boats out fishing. She tried to sense the wind direction, to guess where the planes would be coming from. The sky was full of stars, the only seemingly, stable thing in the world. She couldn’t be sure of the earth under her feet, either. Funny, she thought, I used to look at the stars and draw hope and strength thinking that as long as they shine up there, life on this planet will be normal, that there will be peace on earth! How childish I was. She felt that after the deaths of the two people she loved, there was no space for hope in her heart and strength was abandoning her. She was alive for the moment, the earth may crumble, the stars may fall, the universe could begin spinning all the way to hell. At that moment, when happiness meant a momentary victory over planes and hunger before it, too, was
brutally taken from her, hope had lost its meaning.
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “The planes came, what else is new? They took an eternity to unload, a repetition of the night before; it doesn’t shock or interest me. It was a little before dawn I believe when they left and we tried to get some sleep
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only to have the same lost or wandering goat call on us, and mistaking us for bushes or rocks, she again unloaded bladder and bowels on its hosts. Not so terrible as not to get any sleep for three nights. Especially if one has to trek up and down this steep hill hungry. We are beginning to look worse than ever, like drunken ghosts. My mother, an avowed insomniac, is immune to sleeplessness, maybe she thinks it’s romantic, but I have reached the point where I prefer to stay home and risk being bombed to any more mountain climbing. I don’t even care to search for food. I am human, my shoes are threadbare and I hate climbing mountains. I began to miss my clogs; they hurt but, somehow, I controlled them. This new device, the ‘cloth’ sandals that we made, are a little less than nothing. I feel that concentrating so much on surviving has turned us into animals caring only for the next field to graze in, so to speak; like I haven’t given a thought to my brother, though I know he is safe in the village, or the rest of the family for that matter, my cousins. And my mother will not go see Ourania’s mother to check if she is alive. “Tomorrow,” she tells me, or “I’m sure she went to her village”. With her I believe, it’s a matter of strength. Does anyone care if there are people under the ruins dying or dead? The authorities guard the prison well, not for their safety, but because they are afraid that if the prison is hit, the prisoners will escape and since it’s a maximum safety prison, the important communist leader incarcerated there might escape, we are told. But I can detect a faint odor in the air, I wonder that the enemy doesn’t scent it, that is danger for all of us, what if cholera breaks out? (Then maybe the Germans will get frightened and flee). That was a happy thought as we crossed the
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bridge and I saw the guard there.
Maliciously, I envisioned him and all
the troops running for dear life. Ah, my friend, I thought looking at his cold face, cholera will be your victorious end! The water in the harbor is in a sad state, where once we could swim and catch little shrimps, now a black slimy mess sticks onto the flagstones like mud, leaving ugly black scars. People are getting killed, homes are lost, more barges are coming in. Where is logic? The air reeks of smoke, doused fire, sulfur and spilled gasoline. Maybe those smells are benign by themselves, if taken apart; I don’t like any of them, but like everything else, even the pleasure of smelling something nice, not slime, has deserted us.”
The ordeal lasted five nights; the people were so exhausted that
if a bomb came
their way they wouldn’t duck. Self-preservation gave them the strength to begin the trek up the mountain each afternoon with the late rays of the sun. Elena and Christina visited their people at noon then they tried to rest or nap before they began their daily pilgrimage, but it was never enough. The fifth afternoon as they were getting ready for their nightly rendezvous with the goats up the hill, Anna called her daughter. “Elena!” “Yes, Mama.” “Come in here a second.” “Coming.” “Now!” There was no mistaking the urgency in her voice, the demanding order. Elena shook her head in dismay. Her mother could choose the worst time to
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invent emergencies or chores. First, she makes me look for pencil and paper in this mess to write to Aunt Popi that we are alive before she goes crazy, she thought. “Just a short note…” Then as soon as
I settle down to write that note
she finds something else, an urgent something or other... She was sitting in front of the gilded mirror on her favorite chair writing on her favorite desk, the pieces of antique furniture she so admired; nothing could budge the mirror attached to the wall for centuries. It had withstood time and bombs, her mother had said admiringly, it will be the last to go! And the delicate desk stood on daintily carved legs in perfect condition while everything else
in the room had gone to pieces. “Elena!” Anna’s frantic voice. “I’m coming, I’m coming, what’s the rush?” She pushed her chair back
annoyed and got up. Her mother’s open arms at the door, a face of pain and terror, a tragic grimace, just fractions of seconds in time, “Mama!” the scream and the choking cloud filling her mouth and lungs as the world collapsed around her. “Elena!” Anna’s agony, the roar covering all voices, noises and breaths. Elena was pulled away into the kitchen where the air was clear and the rumbling not audible. “God,” Anna whispered, “a bomb with no warning in the middle of the day; I didn’t hear a plane. Christina rushed in coughing, hair flying, still wet from washing, splattered with white dust. “What’s happening, what’s going on? “Mama called me,” Elena said spitting coarse dust, “and…” “I did not!” Anna
shouted, suddenly very scared, “I was in the attic
cleaning.”
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“But I heard you again and again I tell you, if you hadn’t called me I would be dead now, killed, I am not crazy, Mama.” “I tell you I did not call. Maybe you heard another noise; I rushed downstairs when I detected a rumbling, something like an earthquake and when I got to the door I saw you just escaping. Mirror and wall were falling seconds behind you; another bomb no less…” They looked at each other in shock. “A saint is looking after you,” Anna said in tears and hugged her daughter. She dusted her hair and kissed her brow; then she was sobbing. “An angel is protecting you, my child, she said, “thank God.” She went up in the attic to finish her cleaning. No, Mama, Elena thought terribly moved at seeing her mother in such a state, that wasn’t a saint’s or an angel’s job. It was the love in your heart that transcended time and logic to reach me, to warn me. Your love saved me, Mama. She knew there was no bomb; she realized that weakened by the bombs that hit part of the house two nights before, the wall had given in; it caved in and finally collapsed taking with her the beautiful desk and mirror. What a sad ending! Her thoughts were interrupted by strange noises coming from the hollow that used to be the dining room leading to the wrecked staircase. Christina was rushing there, too, they thought they heard loud sobs and wails very close. As true as life Philip and Nicky were clawing their way up the debris crying, calling their names. When they saw the two women they stopped cold as if they were looking at ghosts; they almost collapsed. Their legs gave in and sitting on the rubble, they covered their faces -to erase the images?- and wept some more... “Who are they?” Christine asked. “Are they hurt?” “Uncle Philip, Nicky,” Elena called, come up, stop it.”
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“You are alive,” Nicky squealed, “someone told us that all the houses on the harbor had been bombed.” “And it took you five days to digest the information?” Elena asked sarcastically. “We were told yesterday, Elena,” her uncle said evenly, his voice still shaken. “I am joking, uncle Philip, you have no idea how happy I am to see you. Another night and you would have found us dead from exhaustion if not from a bomb.” “We were frantic.” Philip said Anna climbed down the stone slabs that used to be the attic stairs. “What happened?” She asked fearfully running to hug her son, crying ‘Nicky, Nicky’! “Nothing,” her brother said. “We came to take you back to the village.” “I saw the animals outside. Well, we have nothing to pack, nothing to lose but whatever rags we have left. Let’s get ready.” “We brought food, Mama,” Nicky said helping his mother climb to the dining area. She held on to him and cried silently. All those sleepless evenings on that threshing floor she kept thinking that she would never see him again. “I’ll stay here to watch the house,” Christina offered. “But you can’t,” Elena insisted and everyone began yelling at once. They explained the situation to Philip; he was not one to show sentiment. “Believe me, your husband is all right where he is. Go see him now and tell him you are coming with us. I’ll see that you get to your village. But to stay here, alone, is out of the question. This place is for jackals now,” he murmured
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looking at the mess sadly. Christina looked around her with her big black eyes so innocent carrying so much pain and sadness in them. She sighed and put on her sandals. With a deep frown she went down and out into the afternoon sun towards the prison dragging her tired legs.
The long, ant-like procession of forlorn, scared humanity slithered up the mountainside as they did every dusk to keep their nightly rendezvous with the lice and the filth of their safety haven. The sun, a red indifferent disc suspended over the slim line of the horizon where Africa lies, bathed them with a sad, golden silence which expressed the human feelings exactly. It was a wonder that with so many people dragging feet there was not enough noise to disturb the pristine countryside, peaceful as if it had never heard of bombs. The shuffling raised a cloud of dust; after months of no rain it covered them with a fine white veil; that, too, seemed to be part of the scheme of a natural existence. Perched on top of the loaded animal climbing the hillside, Elena nodded sleepily half conscious
that she should hold on to any of the tottering baggage.
People passed them raising thin arms in silent plea or final salute, young and old shriveled humanity. Until last evening, she thought, we were part of them. Finally, she could look forward to a bed; she would sleep for a month, she secretly told herself; if she had to walk at that moment, she wouldn’t be able to take a second step. Everything around her had become a slow motion dream-like reality, a nightmare noiseless as cotton; she was somewhere far looking down, seeing a world she was no part of, but a world eerily expanding, surrounding her. They reached the tip of the first hill and stopped at the old inn forgotten
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and closed since the beginning of the war. They needed the rest the animals needed water. The slowly diminishing crowds were left behind and the travelers were now alone with the crickets, the owls and the soft whisperings of the forest. They unloaded the animals and got them to the fountain for water; then they sat on the ground or some rocks, they had taken the grade of the mountain without stopping, they hadn’t even exchanged a word. Nicky was still in a state of shock; he had followed the animals on foot, agile on his long, thin legs, occasionally snapping a switch off a tree and prodding the horse, or just pushing along, head bent. He helped his mother down from the mule, then sat on a rock and, wrapped in his silence, began whittling a branch with his penknife. Philip, exhausted and very pale, rolled a cigarette still panting, a shadow in the last light of the sunset. Elena noticed the deeply lined face, a face deeply immersed in apprehension and sadness. Always the worry bug, she thought chewing her piece of bread. Everyone’s eyes were glued further out at the expanse of a darkened sea at the point where it met the lighter line of the horizon from where the planes were expected to emerge. In the distance down below, guessed, rather than seen, lay the deserted city, a vague, shapeless void, sleepless, waiting for the merciless duel with death under a starlit, unsympathetic sky. Nicky looked up when it got too dark to work the penknife. He opened his mouth for the first time. “Are they going to bomb us now?” he asked no one in particular. “Mountains don’t get bombed,” his uncle said, repeating the favorite slogan of the times. “Unless they host guerrillas.” Christina said. “Or they see us!” she giggled at her ‘joke’; Nicky moved to another rock a little below for a better
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view that no bush would hide if and when the planes came. He hoped that if they were to come, they come soon before his uncle decided to move on. He would miss everything from the other side of the mountain. The planes did come. They gave Nicky a preview of a miniature world of matchboxes aflame, burning with sudden sharp intensity and playful bursts. In the bay a barge,finally hit, was burning giving the impression of a small fire a boy scout had started, or of a candle in a mirror. It was too far to be real, too quiet to accept as something other than a figment of a sick imagination. It was also a hell from which they had escaped. Christina was on her knees under a tree praying. Anna was lying down covered from head to toe with her gray blanket. Elena tried not to look at the inferno; she had seen enough by then to last her a lifetime of nightmares, that is, if she lived through it. When no new flames showed spurting from various points in the darkness, they assumed the planes had left. Only the glow of the aftereffect implied that death had touched their sky, their city. Moving slowly, they loaded and mounted the animals and Philip and Nicky led them on to the bend and down the other side through sleepy villages and fields, facing an eastern sky with no planes. They reached the fork of the road to the village at dawn; all was dark and dewy, and no German patrol was about. At the fountain they dismounted and after watering the animals, they made their way home on foot in silence not even shuffling the pebble. Elena walked next to her uncle; he, in a rare gesture of affection, placed his arm around her shoulder; he is too tired to take the rest of the road unaided, Elena thought, and too proud to admit it. He spoke to her then, the second time that night; his voice, that of a cracked bell, was a mere hoarse whisper that penetrated and echoed in the mountains and came back a blood
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curdling gun shot; Elena wished it had found her dead. “We were spared your funeral,” said that strange, faraway voice, “in time to attend Little Lena’s!” Suddenly, the world was covered by darkness; not the one coming from the sky over the mountains, the night darkness that brought the planes; it was an impenetrable night that obscured all, including her own soul. “My Lenaki,” she whispered, not sure that it was her own voice, “my Lenaki”!
C H A P T E R
Lenaki Her death
had struck a heavy blow to old and young alike whose concept of the
value of life after years of deprivation, cruelty and brutalities, had become too confusing and incomprehensible. It was a lightning that had touched and scorched everyone. It wasn’t just malnutrition that took 4-year-old Lena’s life. It was everything; she didn’t have a chance, the doctor said trying to ease the guilt they all felt, convinced that if they all had given part of their meager ration, Lenaki would have survived. But why her? Why the youngest? “Because,” the good doctor explained, “that’s how it goes, it is the youngest and the oldest that are most vulnerable, they are fragile.” In her short life that child of war, one of the millions who perished because of her tender age, Lenaki had never enjoyed a
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full meal. She was born too late and didn’t have a chance to build up defense like the older children. For three days and nights, Elena sat on a little rug next to Lena’s cot watching her little cousin wither away, her green eyes large and questioning, the honey-colored hair unkempt and stringy on the pillow. She told her stories and sang songs while her heart was breaking. She refused food trying to redeem herself in a vain abstract hope that perhaps God looking down would spare the child and punish her in some other way. She wouldn’t leave her side afraid that the little one might suddenly stop breathing. Ourania’s last moments were too painfully recent in her mind. She ached to pick up her little cousin, to hold her close to her heart, exorcising death, fooling death, challenging death to dare approach her little cousin though she knew from her experience with Ourania that things don’t work that way. But Lena was not to be picked up. “Are we getting chocolates now?” Elena had been dozing, “Yes, yes,” she answered as the questioning eyes turned to her. She wished she could think of a way to find a small piece of chocolate somewhere, she would trade anything, or everything she had for that luxury, to see the little one smile before she left them. Little Lenaki had accepted rationing, hunger and going to bed hungry. She had even accepted the bombs; perhaps she thought it was part of living, part of the natural world. Chocolate had somehow remained in a hidden part of babyhood memories in a way that was almost eerie. The house was always quiet, children and adults tiptoed; at times they forgot to eat and cried themselves to sleep. The adults scolded the children without reason and little Lena was not aware of anything happening around her, she was ‘resting quietly’ they said, or, as an old woman neighbor put it,
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‘talking with the angels’. Nicky spent most of his days sitting on the stoop under the balcony. His grandfather sat nearby clicking his worry beads endlessly, silent as ever; no one knew if he understood
the impending death of his youngest
grandchild. Aristos took to hiding, no one knew where and the two women tried to keep the household together crying their pain separately. Philip kept going out and coming back, pale as death, clutching his stomach; he cursed under his breath and spent much time sitting on the floor next to his daughter’s cot playing, or trying clumsily to, with her. He looked so pitiful in his pain that they didn’t know who to feel sorry for, little Lena or her father. One thing was obvious. If death was tangible, if he had a form, any form, human or animal, or had the shape of a god, that form, that shape would have been unable to approach the house. Everyone was on the alert, ready to do battle; who with, and where? They had no answer. When the priest crossed the courtyard holding holy water and other paraphernalia, the children who waited listlessly downstairs, booed him shamelessly; they knew what his visit meant. They did not follow him upstairs for the last communion as they were told. They stayed downstairs and cried loud enough to upset the neighbors who tried to console them. Melania relented and moved her little girl to Elena’s bed so that Elena could get some sleep. That night, little Lena died. One moment she was awake whispering to her cousin: “Elena, will you get me some chocolate now?” and then she was gone, her eyelids closed, her fingers relaxing their grip. Elena surrendered to sleep thinking that her little cousin was resting comfortably in her arms and when at dawn she awoke and saw the blue shadows under the eyes and felt the presence of death around the corners of the rosebud mouth and nostrils,
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she thought that she was too beautiful to be dead. Philip tiptoed in on his way to shave. He removed the towel from his neck and bent to kiss his daughter. With eyes wide in horror and his lips bloodless, a wild man, he let go a terrifying groan; his agony was the hardest to bear. Within seconds, Elena’s bed had become the death scene of a classic drama with the heroine, little Lenaki, unmindful of the torment surrounding her tiny doll-like body.
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “They took our baby away. The vultures came, the black robed priest and those professional black-clad mourners, the witches. I couldn’t look. I didn’t stay to attend the washing and dressing of the little body, when I smelled the vinegar I ran outside to throw up; I’ll never taste vinegar as long as I live. They took her to the cemetery, the whole family, the neighbors, the
whole village, all except me. If I took one step up that
hill, I would have died. I climbed the path from where I could see the harbor with the idle fishing boats and the sea in endless motion that kept the world going round and round, where? I wonder… I sat by an olive tree, its trunk was
cavernous and forbidding
and I wept not only for my little
cousin, but for all the people, my family and those who followed the cortege like dark ants in the sunlit distance. I wept for the sea with its false promises and luring whispers, for the earth that we burn and kill so brutally, needlessly, and for God whose presence was getting farther and farther away from our suffering. I cried for me because I am doomed, I am tired of so many deaths. If that is part and parcel of
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growing, I don’t
want it. If I, too, were to die, at least I would be spared of having to witness the senseless deaths of my loved ones. Insanity is preferable to the reality of this useless existence. Ourania’s death, Basil’s loss and now this,
make the world taste sour. I am
part of this world, and this
doesn’t seem to be such an extraordinary gift. Ourania is gone, Basil is gone; at night, their loss becomes unbearable. And still I am here waiting, for what? I am now too mature for the childish ideals glorifying death and self-sacrifice. I have seen how un-glorious, mundane and horrible death really is. Maybe if I were more mature or smarter, I would be able to understand, accept the unacceptable. Because I see that while I pray for death, I cling to life tenaciously and I wonder why; to save this miserable sack of bones I have become?”
It was hard for her family to forgive Elena for her ‘lack of respect’, and for running out of the room whenever Lenaki’s name or the funeral were mentioned. It got to the point that Elena couldn’t stand to listen to them speak of white flowers covering the little body, or the special dirges of the mourners, the priest speech; she felt the reproachful eyes on her, even her mother’s. She was taken aback when Aristos went to
her one day when she was hiding under a
mulberry tree crying. He said he understood and she found it hard to understand or believe him, but was open enough to give him the benefit of a doubt. “You must be strong,” he tried to console her, “we all hurt and at this time we should
stick together.” What a surprising effect death has on a
person, Elena thought and thanked him. She remembered the day of the funeral when her uncle saw that she was not there. He knew where to find her, he
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climbed the path to her sanctuary slowly, picked her up and took her to the house
holding her hand, his own trembling. “I felt that if we all ate less,” he told her on the way, “Lenaki would
have survived.” Elena nodded. “We all thought so,” she said. “But you heard what the doctor said. It was not meant to be,” he added sighing. “She only came to this world for a short while, maybe to teach us love.” Elena broke down again. For the first time she saw something in her uncle she didn’t know he could express. He hugged her and they both cried for a while. Before they went inside, he stopped to talk to her. His Adam’s apple was working nervously, he was pale and drawn and suddenly very old. “Look,” he said, “I know what’s eating you; as I said before, that was in everyone’s mind, if we all ate less and so on; be realistic. What we would have accomplished would have been the rest of you get weaker and be in constant danger. There are certain things, Elena, that we can’t question. Let’s say it was God’s will, He alone knows best.” For a man who never goes to church, Elena thought listening to him, he does a lot of priest talking. She wanted to tell him that she didn’t like that God of his with His ‘knowledge’ and His unjust decisions. But one had to be careful with her uncle. She could not offer an opinion or bare her feelings to him especially when he was vulnerable and in pain.
(Panos came from his village to attend the funeral. His wife, heavy with child, expecting any minute, stayed home. They now felt that the time had come. The midwife was attending another woman and promised to get there the next day. Elena watched him as he walked the old shore back road to his
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village with great strides tall and thin, the shadow of his old self. He wasn’t gone more than one hour when the shocked village witnessed another tragedy: The helmeted, Nazi-armed collaborator atop his tank making his way into their peaceful morning. His armed, disheveled band followed afoot. In their midst, tattered, ragged, barefoot, beaten beyond recognition, hands rope tied behind his back, walked the tall bloodied figure of Panos.)
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “The traitor calls himself “Savior”. I hope Christ can hear His name in this blaspheme because the only things he saves the world from are mouths that have to be fed. His approach to any village is felt rather than announced by his random warning shots; doors and windows close, children and animals flee, curtains are drawn and the coffee house empties. This noon everyone played dead, everyone but us, we were dead
watching ‘Uncle’
Panos in the insane killer’s clutches; he was paraded through the village, right in front of our house and I thought that my uncle would drop dead that minute but he didn’t, he was too much in shock. Pale, unmoving, sitting on the stoop like discarded baggage, he stared at the proud man who didn’t look our way so as not to implicate us, but that moment we knew it would be the last time we saw Panos alive. His hat, jacket, shoes, were distributed to the members of the gang and they were now wearing them. Even his wedding band-we found out later- was taken. Panos was brought to the cellar of a house at the edge of the village near the main road and tortured for hours with unimaginable brutality to get the name of the resistance leader in his village. He had nothing to say
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to them, he never opened his mouth even to cry out. The neighbors told us that they heard the torturers but not ‘Uncle’ Panos. We could not see him and as the hours turned day into dusk, we began to worry because they wouldn’t let us bring him any food, all we did was pray but we knew it was in vain. The village was in agony; Panos was a man loved by everyone
and
this action today is the first sample of the killer’s ‘operations’ in our parts; we knew that after his ‘valiant’ exploit the killer would leave, he needed the show of might, the power that intoxicated him. That was the reason why he was making so much of interrogating and torturing him, I believe, that was his paranoia. Uncle Philip, his trauma for the death of our little Lenaki still bleeding, tried everything to save him, he went from door to door hoping to find someone who could talk to the killer, anyone with some influence; he pleaded with the German commander, the Greek gendarmes, the ‘Savior’ himself, he promised him olive trees and vineyards, even his house and property. But the killer is a shrewd peasant, he knows that sooner or later his drunken melee will end and his protectors will flee leaving him behind (or does he?). He would not stay alive one minute on the island, so he can only be bribed with gold and even that doesn’t appease him because the execution goes on as planned anyway, with the bribe or without it. My uncle knows that, but he is so desperate he would do anything, give up anything. Unfortunately, no one could help. The authority of that brute is far more potent here than that of the Gestapo. A collaborator is hard to find and when one is found, they hold on to him, do as he says, give him absolute
power
without interference, as long as they
can report that the murder is a ‘patriotic’ action aimed at destroying
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‘communism’.”
C H A P T E R
A New Life The news
of the collaborator’s presence in the area and Panos’ arrest, reached
his village. His wife fought her in-laws and, hardly able to walk, feeling that ‘’labor pains might start any minute, started down the hillside to get to her husband. Her mother-in-law went from door to door in their village warning the men to flee to the mountain; her father-in-law went to the mountain himself to warn the partisans and prepare Kevi’s young brother who had joined the partisans the Spring before. It was five in the morning when Kevi, out of breath and hardly able to drag her legs, reached Philip’s house at the exact moment that sharp machine gun fire tore the receding darkness tearing her heart. She knew! As dawn began
to paint the shore of the island and the tip of the mountain, stricken by
the pain in her heart and birth pangs, she collapsed in front of the door with a moan; the child was rushing to free itself from her belly. The commotion brought everyone up in alarm fearing the worst; they ran to her still fuzzy from sleep and grief. Anna and Melania had not been to bed all night; they needed all their strength to carry the heavy, unconscious woman upstairs and by the time Nicky ran to get the doctor,
Kevi was securely held by the women on the sofa. Philip and
some of the neighbors had a hard time keeping Melania down and secure her in bed;
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she had a complete break down and was having convulsions. Maria took the younger children away and Aristos went to the priest to get the church’s casket and find help to haul Panos’ body from the garbage dump where it lay behind the school, before rats and vultures got to it. Elena helped her mother to tend to Kevi, they undressed and covered her with a sheet but unconscious as she was, she was fighting them with vehemence. When she finally came to her senses somewhat and realized where she was and what was happening, more hands were needed to keep her down. Her aching body was convulsing in terrible spasms. “Is she giving birth?” Elena asked her mother terrified. “I don’t know,” Anna answered, “but if the doctor doesn’t come soon we’ll get the priest. She is in labor, if she keeps resisting, she’ll kill the baby, and I’m afraid that’s what she is trying to do.” “But why?” Elena asked in tears. “What did the baby do?” “It’s not the child she is after, it’s herself she tries to punish and she doesn’t know how. I can’t explain it Elena, but when a woman gives birth many things happen to her mind and her body.” The doctor came in at that moment. Philip helped him to tie Melania’s hands and feet to the bed posts; with a shot in the arm she was out in minutes, then they untied her and the doctor asked Philip to take her away from the house. “I can’t,” Philip said, “there is a pregnant woman in the other room trying to kill herself and I have a corpse to tend to.” “Tend to your wife first. I’m here for the pregnant woman and your son is taking care of the victim. Now go. Wait, before you go, please have someone get the midwife, I’ll need help. Then put your wife on a cart and take her out of
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here, away. When she awakes I can’t guarantee the chaos we’ll see here, I need peace. Your wife has just lost a child, she is weak and is telling us in her own way that she can’t take it any more.” Philip lowered his head and left to look for a horse and cart. In the living room, Kevi was in what seemed to be a coma, but in labor the midwife realized
as soon as she saw her. The doctor ran to the pharmacy for
supplies, and Philip took Melania, still peacefully asleep, to her aunt’s house hoping that the ‘savior’ would not cross his path.
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “I hadn’t realized that under severe pressure I can act sensibly, I mean consciously, like this morning with Aunt Kevi convulsing on the couch, her huge belly shaking in the last stormy minutes of labor. The doctor feels that emotions -grief- brought on the labor, but the midwife insists
that
the baby wasn’t premature. I know nothing of the mystery and miracle of creation but while I was useful, I was alive and alert, though somehow disconnected from reality as if that wasn’t me participating in the drama. I had no tears, that was it, I was dry!
I felt that whatever we had
suffered prior to this hour, the war, the occupation, executions, starvation, little Lenaki’s death, were events culminating in this hour, this minute over Kevi’s swollen body. She was in grave danger, the doctor said, in shock and subconsciously trying no to surface. That was exactly what Mama had said. I did as I was told and it felt good that I was able to help; I boiled the doctor’s forceps and other instruments after being able to light the fire strangely without any trouble, and tore sheets for him. I
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obeyed automatically. At times, Mama and I had to hold Kevi down because when she came to she fought and kicked and bit our hands. With her hands free she used her fists like knifes hitting her stomach so violently, I thought if that baby was ever born, it would come out bruised or half dead. ‘I want to die, let me die,’ she was screaming and the doctor asked me to stifle her with a pillowcase, I almost suffocated poor Aunt Kevi! She tore the cloth with her teeth; the strength of the woman! Mama and the doctor had a private discussion and it’s those things that scare me, when I don’t know and don’t understand what is going on, I feel lost. The doctor is my mother’s age but now that I saw him so close I noticed that he, too, has aged considerably.
His wrinkles are as deep as my uncle’s, but then, I
look and feel almost as old and I’m in my teens, I feel like an old weathered tree. I only hope that I have roots deep enough to sustain me. Mama and I sat in the dining room while the midwife and the doctor prepared Kevi for delivery. She was already screaming with all the remaining strength in her lungs. It was then that through the open window and above the gentle soughing of the sea breeze we heard the grating roar of the tank. The killer was leaving. Mama put her hands over her mouth as if the screams were hers, then went into the room where the delivery was in progress, her palms still over her mouth. How ingenious! The doctor and the midwife exchanged looks; she got the silent message and stuffed Kevi’s mouth with a pillow. Mama returned to the dining room to listen to the concert of horrors: the grating of the tank’s treads, the hoarse drunken song of intoxicated armed men and Kevi’s suppressed agonizing moans. Then we were called in.
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‘Throw her on the floor,’ the doctor shouted urgently; He was drenched in perspiration, Kevi was resisting, the old, delicate sofa threatened to collapse under the stress, but once on the floor we tied her hands on the sofa legs. The doctor was yelling ‘push’ and it seemed that Kevi was trying to hold that baby to asphyxiation. Then, unexpectedly, she passed out and no amount of coaxing would bring her back to. She had given up and now it was up to the doctor to try his best while she receded into the depths of some ocean of forgetfulness. It was a bloody mess, I didn’t have the strength to turn away, the smell of the blood nauseated me, I was living a red nightmare. The doctor was trying to deliver the baby, I was ready to collapse and then my mother’s frantic gestures made me leave the room. It was just as well because what I was looking at burdened me with additional fear for a human life; it also endowed me with a tremendous respect for women. Never before have I realized the honor, the tragedy, the miracle of womanhood. I must remember to tell my mother how grateful I am, and how much I love her, God she went through all that to bring me to life, and I will be a woman someday, destined, perhaps to have a child. Dear God, spare me this! I touch my stomach wondering if one day it will expand like Aunt Kevi’s. I exorcised the curse or blessing of my creation. The doctor found me sitting on the top of the stairs. He sat next to me exhausted, and wiped the sweat. “That baby wanted to live very much,’ he said, ‘it’s a miracle.’ ‘Will Kevi be all right?’ I asked and he nodded. ‘It’s a boy,’ he said, your mother is washing it and the midwife is looking after Kevi. That baby will give her the incentive and the strength to live, you’ll see. I guess that’s why he’s here.’
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I didn’t understand what he meant, babies don’t know. How does a little, tiny baby know that his father had been shot hours before he was born and decide to live. Maybe the doctor knows what he is talking about I don’t dare ask. He got up with an effort, sighed and said he would look in later: ’I must speak to your uncle’, he said going down the stairs, a tired, stooped, young-old man. After he was gone
I heard the baby’s cries but
they wouldn’t let me in and I prayed that Aunt Kevi survives the ordeal. The sun was hot on my face but I wouldn’t budge not to miss whatever was happening in there; I didn’t have the time to mourn for Uncle Panos, the tears weren’t coming, I was angry, too angry to even think, and since I couldn’t find the person or persons my anger was directed to, -where does one start?-God who was too far to listen anyway; I kept seeing Him with His white beard hiding up in the clouds maybe shaking His head at the samples of humanity He has created; but if He is the omnipresent one and if justice is His word, where is that justice? Where is Ourania, Basil, Lenaki, uncle Panos, not to mention the millions of humans in the cities and the fields of Europe and those turned to ashes in the crematoriums of Europe in His name? And why should I still be here wishing for death before I had a chance to live, feeling like a rotten reed ready to snap instead of feeling happily irresponsible at my age, dancing, listening to music? If, as they say, you give and then take back, I prayed, then take me, too; why must I be punished watching the dying of millions in thousands of ways all over the world...Make your presence known, take the sun away, or the moon, or something, I prayed like a madwoman, then we’ll see how powerful the airplanes and their bombs are and all their newly invented arms. Let the
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flowers die and the sea dry up. Strike, God, strike now because later there might be nothing to strike at and no one will believe in You or Your miracles; they’ll mock your presence as another fairytale. Strike man, Your creation, Your monster; because that monster has outsmarted you... S T R I K E
N O W...”
The echo covered the courtyard, enveloped the surrounding trees and as it died out
it returned
to Elena’s ears with the effect of a rush of cold water
drenching her; it brought her to with a start; she wasn’t drowning, it was the water her uncle had thrown on her. That was her scream! Her uncle was shaking her trying to get her away from the flagstones where she was lying flat under the hot sun. She couldn’t understand what she was doing down there and how she got to the bottom of the stairs; She hadn’t fallen because she wasn’t hurt, a fall from where she was sitting would have broken some bones. She looked for her glasses; as in a dream the blurred face of her uncle’s came into view, a face of anguish; as it cleared she saw his anguish. His mustache turned gray overnight, how did that happen. His bloodless lips were drawn into a thin smile. Am I finally dead? He is also dead and is dragging me into Hades drenched. No, I am insane, she kept thinking, my ankle is sprained, I can’t stand on it. She tried to keep her balance but fell in great pain. Nooo, she began to cry forgetting that it had been a long time since she cried because of physical pain; this was different, she was half dead and didn’t care. “Elena,” the voice was too loud, a thunder, it had no tenderness. “Get up, Elena, you’re delirious you’ll have a sun stroke” he commanded trying to get her to her feet. She was a rag doll, unable to even stretch her legs, she began to
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sob anew, she wasn’t sure that he wasn’t calling his own little girl who couldn’t hear him any longer. “ What is wrong Elena, I never heard you cry like that, you are hysterical.” “I cry, I cry,” she said, only I cry louder when it hurts.” “Help me, Elena,” his voice broke into sobs, “please help.” Elena’s eyes opened wide instantly. Someone was asking her to help; her uncle! And she wasn’t dead, her uncle needed her. When she was desperately ill he had sold his suits and his gold cufflinks to save her from death. He had taken her to taxi rides and Museums and the Parthenon in the long forgotten days of sanity; he had sent her fresh flowers to Athens all the way from the island when she was little. And I, the ungrateful one, she thought, indulge in my petty little spiteful thoughts because of his austerity and explosive manners. She was shivering though the day was very hot; her dress clung to her emaciated body. She made the effort to get up, took his hand and he almost lifted her to get her up the stairs. He took care of her ankle and made her lie down. “It’s a boy,” she whispered holding his hand tighter. “Yes,” he said, “the doctor told me. Life goes on, Elena. One child left us, another came. Now we have little Panos.” Yes, Elena was now convinced, maybe that is nature’s secret. Everything dies and is replaced by something else, like the trees and the flowers, only the plants rejuvenate and we die!
Life goes on, though, they can’t kill us all. I am
alive and there are many things to be done.
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C H A P T E R
Life in a Free Village Kevi stayed
in the house until she felt strong enough to travel; most of the
time she stared without speaking and seemed lifeless; she was indifferent even to her own baby’s need. She fed that baby only when told to bare her breast but didn’t seem to realize that the baby needed to be changed or to be picked up when he cried; the baby was lucky, he began his life with more than one loving mother. Their life in the village became a little dangerous because the Germans, informed that there were guerrilla units in the area, were shooting on sight. Kevi’s brother was in one of the partisans’ units and one night, leaping from tree to tree like a shadow, managed to get to the house to tell his sister that she must return to their village immediately because the traitor hadn’t left as they thought but was lurking in the vicinity and her family was afraid for her and the baby. Philip was against the idea but Pericles insisted, then left as he came; no one else in the house saw him. Philip was still keeping in the house fearing for his life, as well. The day before he had sent Aristos to fetch his mother and Kevi was now getting ready to go. “You can’t go alone,” Philip said. “I can do it,” she told him, “the baby isn’t heavy and I am a lot stronger.” Much to his negative feelings for that trip, Philip let her leave with the proviso that she is accompanied by Elena and Nicky. If the Germans or the traitor spotted them, they would see a woman with a baby and two children. The
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mother of those two children was in agony but didn’t say a word when, she saw them off that Sunday at dawn. She stayed at the edge of the road following them with her eyes as they carefully circled the village along the shore avoiding the main road. She went back upstairs. The sea was calm and inviting, the air fresh with the familiar scents of thyme, pine trees and berries. Kevi dragged her feet heavily and the two children behind her waded in the shallow water, splashed one another and chased the grazing sheep in the meadow. They had a good time, as if they were going to a picnic until they had to leave the beach and began climbing uphill on the steep path. All, except the baby, were panting. Halfway up the hill climbing became a rough venture; it seemed they were climbing the giant’s ribs in a fairytale; soon they heard the church bells; they stopped to rest, they were
close to Kevi’s
village. They reached the village at noon. Three armed guards were sitting on the cement stoop underneath the big oak tree in the middle of the village square, rifles on their laps, singing softly as if afraid to awake the village. They rushed to Kevi when she and the children finally showed up, circled them and one of them picked up the baby tears running down his rough bearded cheeks; They walked Kevi and the baby home to rest, Elena and Nicky wondered what they were supposed to do next with not a soul about, not even in the coffee house which was also the general store, and a strange smell in the air, something they had forgotten about, meat being roasted. My hungry imagination again, Elena thought. The young men serious looking men of duty, returned and sat on the same stoop not paying attention to them. Suddenly, a man emerged from a sparkling white church at the top of the hill nearby, a giant of a man! Of course like
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all giants, he had a red beard and wild red hair under his military cap, and his hands were resting on the bandoleer that crossed his chest. Elena watched him walking down the road and thought that he, somehow, did not personify her romantic idea of a partisan. She stood in front of the big man with awe feeling childish and small. Nicky didn’t even get up. He just looked as though he didn’t believe what he saw, but then the man laughed and there was such peace and humanity in that loud laughter that Elena wondered why didn’t all the windows and doors opened to enjoy the laughter and join him. She noticed that the man was a lot older than the young men sitting nearby. He also had a booming voice. “Welcome,” he said and his voice sounded like a message from the mountain. “I know who you are and I thank you for accompanying mother and baby. The people of the village had a meeting in the church after the service. They’ll be here soon.” Nicky found his courage and went close. “Are you a partisan?” he asked. “Yes, of course, what else could I be, a German?” His laughter boomed again. “Wait here, I’ll tell Pericles you are here.” The pebbles in the street crunched under his boots as he walked to the church. Then there was only the song of the young guards on duty a fighting song, it made one feel good, liberated. In the city no one dared sing those songs. Further down below, the olive trees and vineyards were bathed in the gold mid-day sunlight and the sea sparkled. Their own village nested in its harbor as in a peaceful post card. A little later, when the church bells began to peal, the people of the village came out of the church and soon the square was buzzing with talk, laughing and arguments as if everything was fine with the world and one
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could go to church without fear, be free and do as he pleases for the rest of the day with no thought of death, thought Elena, and death just a few kilometers away. But it was only a short time ago when Elena thought with her heart and not with her head, that she had considered dying for one’s country an ideal and glorious death. But then she hadn’t seen Panos’ head lying next to his body in the community casket with an olive branch resting on it. That death wasn’t glorious at all. Panos had sacrificed his life but the killer did not get a word out of his lips. He wanted the name of the leader of the village organization. He never found out that he was holding the leader, Panos.. Thinking of him made her ashamed of her thoughts. His death was cruel and ugly, but noble. He knew he was going to die and chose not to speak. He knew what he was doing!
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY)“August, 1944. We are feeding the Nazi troops! We are actually sustaining those who are trying to annihilate us. It isn’t that the hard working people of the island who are trying to survive this famine are giving them food; the Germans, the conquerors, confiscate their “share” with the power of the conqueror, we are at their mercy as we try to stay alive. The Italians who did the same, used the hypocritical device of ‘receipts’ which were to be reimbursed at the end of the war!! The shopkeepers are powerless, the black market is thriving. In a crisis, unfortunately, everyone is looking not only after himself, but also to get out of a crisis a little richer. The armed resistance fighters are trying to protect the rural areas by working alongside the people at harvest time, wheat or olives and
hide their products before the Germans get to them.
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Last Sunday when we took Kevi to her village, was a revelation to us; after the service, the village
held a meeting to discuss just that: how to save
their products from the enemy. They also voted to name the village square after Uncle Panos. Pericles looked funny, almost unrecognizable with his long beard and unruly hair; he is taller
now unless the ragged uniform made him look tall. ‘Kevi
is all I have,’ he told us. ‘Tell your uncle that if I get killed you people must look after her and the baby.’ We felt bad listening to him speaking of yet another death so we asked him about battles and skirmishes in the mountains and the war in general, and the village they were guarding nights especially now that the killer had found and murdered their leader. It was all too much for us to digest, but we were aware that every minute was part of history. Nicky and Pericles, were discussing food, the problem of feeding an army without resources. ‘War affects us all,’ Pericles said seriously, all of us must share in the effort; all farmers and shepherds know about it, except your uncle up there’. He pointed at the mountain whose presence we guessed rather than saw half hidden in its mists, dwarfing all hills in between. ‘He is not an angel you know,’ Pericles continued and poor Nicky’s jaw dropped as he listened stunned. I wanted to ask Pericles not to mention him, Nicky’s disappointment surprised me, he was acting as if it was his personal guilt, but we both know and everyone knows by now that our uncle Nicolas is involved in many dirty deals. Pericles continued to relate a bad story, but as he explained, many bad things happen in a war. ‘In village standards the man is rich, his sheep and goat herds cover the hill. He was to contribute some cheese and milk and occasionally an animal for the people who are fighting and he asked us
736
to return the next evening when his older son, the one who survived, would be there; we didn’t smell the trap and were ambushed by a German patrol led by the Greek gendarme who waited for us. We lost six men. Some of them were known to your uncle, they were from his parts.
How did he manage to inform
the enemy so fast, we will never know.’ Nicky and I lowered our heads. It’s a shame really after losing his son, his own sister, nephew and step nephew to the Germans
such a short time ago; he should be joining us instead to
avenge their blood instead of working for them, but most cowards react this way’. ‘And Uncle Panos had to die,’ Nicky murmured trying not to cry. ‘That’s how things are in a war,’ Pericles said again, ‘people are not acting the same and not always for the same reason in a given situation.’ Nicky didn’t seem to understand but he listened fascinated. ‘Listen,’ Pericles said getting up, ‘we make mistakes, we learn from them and we go on as best we can. It’s not always up to us. We must not to lose our courage, hope and faith. When freedom comes...’ his voice trailed off;
he
looked at the mountain squinting as if looking at things to come from very far away after the war. We walked to the square where long tables were spread and people sat somber and silent, picking on food according to tradition. They raised their cups and drank wine to freedom
mouthing the secret wish, a eulogy to Panos. We
joined them but I couldn’t push food down, my stomach was churning; I hadn’t seen all that food for years and at that moment my appetite turned sour, as if something inside me had irrevocably died. The olive trees covered the hillside all the way down to the sea, the only thing still reminding us of peace. Suddenly Pericles got up and raised his cup.
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‘Panos,’ he said, wouldn’t like to see us mourn, he didn’t die for that. While we fight we are free. Freedom is not far now, let’s celebrate his death. Long Live Freedom!” They applauded and raised their cups once more. to freedom. Soon they were singing and some got up to dance to the music of violins and flutes. For more than two hours I couldn’t even think of Germans, I almost forgot we were still under their brutal oppression. We were celebrating Panos’ death. Wipe the blood, they said, bandage the wounds and walk toward the sun, that is our destiny. It was dusk when Nicky and I left; I hadn’t tasted any of the food, weak as I was from hunger, I couldn’t keep it down; I kept thinking that there wasn’t so
much food for
Panos’ wedding! Our new friends saw us off; they walked with us to the edge of the road somber faced, then placed homespun bagfuls of food in our hands to carry to our family following the ancient rites of food sharing after a funeral... “...take, eat! This is my body broken for you for the remission of sins... ...drink ye all of it! This is my blood of the New Testament, shed for you and for many for the remission of sins...” ‘When freedom comes...’ Pericles said. Will it ever come, and if it does, will I be here to see it? More often than not lately I catch myself asking the many whys of life. Why was I born, for what purpose in this wild, insane world, why at this particular chronological era, why am I a girl, why a Greek, why an American...gibberish! I know I have to grow up and mature not only in age but also in brains. I feel I am eighty years’
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old thinking like an adolescent. Not even sixteen and I have deep wrinkles, and my period has stopped; it’s not menopause (a new word) the doctor explained, it’s my body protecting me from getting anemia even from dying. That’s how I found out that mama has what they call an early climacteric something or other in her thirties. And I thought that this is going on until we die. What a nuisance being a woman!”
C H A P T E R
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “Summer is coming to an end. The Nazis’ frigid, inscrutable faces don’t betray any uneasiness, they go about their business as usual patrolling, arresting, jailing, executing. They are more vicious and bloodthirsty than ever. Behind the mountain, the city is mercilessly bombed on regular basis by our allies. These two samples of war behavior ‘fight to death’, seem to be the final show of might which makes me believe that the end is closer than we think. Whose end, I don’t know. We try to concentrate on and provide for another winter of famine; like those little subterranean animals, we accumulate every possible bit of food. We braid garlic and onions, wrap quince fruits, fill sacks with walnuts and hide them in the basement under rags and rotting old furniture. We traded Aunt Popi’s now empty dowry trunk for some potatoes and raisins and made jam from wild berries. Now maybe we are ready for the winter, or
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so we think, but we
have learned to make do with less and less as the years go by. Will this be the last winter of our siege? And what am I to do at the threshold of another academic year without a travel permit? I wrote to Aunt Popi if I can stay with her at the hospital if I make it to Athens for my first year at the University. I need to because I am studying for entrance exams, anyway, she hasn’t answered yet. There is a war on, are they going to make a special effort for my mail? Who is to take care of the submarines and the killing then?
Needless to say, my uncle is very much against my traveling.
“. . . a girl of seventeen to travel alone? Unthinkable!” I tried to involve my mother in a discussion about Nicky. He
is too young
and immature to stay in the city alone away from his family; his ties with ‘Mama’ are too strong. (Don’t I sound like my uncle?) My mother is shrewd, she cut me short and told me to ‘quit the crap’ because she’ll fight for him as she fought for me. I knew I could depend on her! ‘You’ll go away,’ she said that evening as we sat on the stoop downstairs in the darkness to cool off. ‘You’ll see other lands, get educated…” She paused for a while dreaming, it seemed, then, ‘never, never,’ she emphasized, ‘depend on anyone; your life will be yours and yours alone, no matter what happens to the world, education will see you through.’ Her voice sounded tired, a buried bitterness she wanted out of her system. I got up to go inside and she stopped me. ‘Look around you, Elena,’ she said, ‘banks are useless, all their money, our
money, lost; buildings wrecked, fields and woods burned,
a war leaves few things standing. Let’s hope this is the last. But, remember Elena, my daughter, what you have in your head, what you gain in school, the education you pursue, no one can take that away!’ As I went
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inside I couldn’t help thinking that my
mother is planning my tomorrows -
if I indeed I live to see those tomorrows- unconsciously reliving her own missed youth.
Lenaki’s death had left an unimaginable void; at times it seemed that death had cut off a piece of the body of each one of them. Nothing, no one could take her place. Elena hated to go inside the house even to eat the meager piece of bread. More and more she stayed at the rented rooms moping, she couldn’t face the house without the patter of the little feet, or see little panties drying on the line. The crib had been removed to the basement to save them the anguish as well as the mother from losing her mind entirely; the empty corner stared at them with hostility. Melania was neglecting herself and her family; she wished for death and cried and moaned all day or she sat on the stairs and sang the little songs her baby loved. Even the children had sobered up and walked like shadows ‘not to wake up the dead’, Maria said.
September of 1944 was warm, the countryside’s harvested fields happy golden expanses. Sky, mountain and sea were sheer brilliance; the beauty was appreciated mostly by schoolchildren; summer vacation was coming to an end and the dreaded winter schooldays loomed ahead, an unavoidable disaster. Elena’s thoughts concentrated on the clothes she needed whether she went to Athens or stayed in the city; it was business as usual, home economy.
Old things and rags are
patched, she thought, blankets made into coats and sweaters unraveled to be knitted into socks. “If we have a tough winter,” Elena told her mother, we can always wear the coats and socks to bed, too.”
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The news from the world outside their realm was much too horrible
to
believe, the entire universe was immersed in an insane bloodbath from the Mediterranean Sea, to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, continents aflame
where
was it was leading, no one knew, not even those responsible for it, but everyone sniffed ‘something’ like those dogs who dig out corpses or ancient treasures just by The
sniffing. Whatever that ‘something’ was, it
elderly, the babies and weak
was invisible.
children succumbed at an alarming rate.
Death, Elena thought, is after all the only testament that we are alive!
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) September 6, 1944! “That ‘something’ came! Without warning on this beautiful, warm, blue, unforgettable September morning. I opened the shutters like I do every morning, to let in light and air; nothing warned me that it was to be a special day, one that I am destined to remember for the rest of my days. The sun filtered through the pergola leaves and the hanging ripening grapes; it entered the room in countless golden shattered mirrors. From behind slightly opened shutters I watched the German soldier across the street busily cutting the thick, black telephone wire half buried in the ground. It doesn’t look anymore than one or one and a half inches thick, yet, that black devil of a wire had cost hundreds of lives in the last year of the German occupation. It crossed valleys and mountains, forests, gorges and bushes connecting villages to the city headquarters, and who knows, the rest of the country. All the way to Germany? It was their ‘hot’ line! Each time it was found cut due to sabotage, fifty people
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from the immediate area were arrested at random and executed on the spot. Seeing the German cutting it with those huge shears, sent shivers down my spine as he handled it and then looked at it. All of us would be killed, I thought feeling cold sweat down my spine wondering if someone had cut it at that precise spot overnight. The German
walked a few feet below the spot,
coiled the wire and continued on the road to the harbor. He was cutting it himself! Fireworks flashed in my one-track mind that moment. F r e e d o m! That was it, I knew it, the
e n d! My God, we made it. Nothing, not
another moment past or future can ever duplicate the ecstasy. Near hysteria I closed the shutters and turned to fetch my mother. I fell into her arms, I hadn’t seen her coming. I began to cry and yell ‘it came, it came’! I cried and laughed and she thought that the hysterics were
due to some
Nervous attack, from insanity to epilepsy; she, too, cried and shook
my
shoulders. ‘What’s wrong, Elena, what has happened to you, my child?’ She was alarmed and I could only point at the window because if I opened my mouth I would scream so loud that the entire country, no, the whole burning world
would hear me. My mother opened the shutters slightly and peeped
left and right, expecting,
I suppose an execution squad aiming at us. I
prayed that moment that what I had witnessed
wasn’t a figment of my
imagination, a mirage, a hallucination. ‘There is nothing out here,’ she said finally craning her neck, ‘but a German cutting the wire.’ I heaved a sigh
of relief. The impact of her own
words reached her ears slowly and for a second she stood stock still; then slowly she turned around and faced me her eyes popping almost out of their sockets, shaken, her mouth open. Tears were running down her pale cheeks.
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Inappropriately, she reminded me of the skull of a skeleton with two gaping holes where the eyes had been. Freedom, I thought, came not a moment too soon. She knelt next to me and hugged me and there, she shed all the tears she has kept all the years of the war for that precise moment. ‘The wire,’ she kept murmuring, ‘the wire... God, thank you, oh God, thank you. Let’s pray, let’s thank Him together.’ And then she shot up as if someone had fired at her. ‘Nicky,’ she screamed. ‘Where is Nicky? We must warn everyone to stay indoors. I told her not to worry, if anyone in the village knows what is happening, that would be Nicky. By now, I told her, more to calm her because I didn’t know what I was talking about, he must have warned the village and the surrounding ones. ‘I believe,’ I said, ‘that we are the last two ones to find out.’ ‘The Germans are going,’ I whispered, I had to reassure myself. I enjoyed the sound, the words rolling out of my mouth like the long forgotten sweetness of a lollipop. I hid my face in her bosom and cried; it was at that
moment it occurred to me that the time had come to mourn for those we
had lost; openly, this time, twice as much because they didn’t live to see that moment. I longed for freedom all these years, nothing but!
Now it was
here, not announced by church bells and half-insane people running with flags as I had anticipated. I am happy that at this
moment I feel sane, no
delirium, well, a little bit, but, hell, freedom is, after all, a state of mind even under the most inhuman circumstance. I was always free. God, I’m getting old, I am beginning to sound like them! And the Nazis are still outside the door cold and business-like for all the world; they are still our masters. ( But, they are
g o i n g!) I know the truth they are trying
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to hide from us; they are the captives now, captives of circumstances, in my land where Hitler can’t reach to help them. The Russians on the North, the partisans here, the British and the Americans landing all over. The Nazis are
l o s t!”
Aristos brought breakfast for his aunt and cousins a few pieces of bread and some olives, along with his father’s orders: No matter what happened, Philip’s emphatic message was, no matter what they heard, they were to stay indoors at all costs with doors and windows bolted. German troops began to arrive from other parts of the island. The village port they were to be evacuated from, was the closest to the mainland. Out in the open sea, barges waited for them; so were the Allies. The German troops kept coming all day and all night marching almost noiselessly, so much so, that even Anna, the avowed insomniac, didn’t hear them pass on the way to the harbor, their only access to safety being the road in front of her house. Behind closed windows people giggled watching the mighty race tiptoeing to their port of evacuation like ballerinas. There was still the fear that if the Americans found out that so many German troops were amassed in that small village, they would bomb the hell out of them; all they needed at the last moment was another holocaust. The village was too small, the hills around it low and
water surrounded them.
Everyone could see that it would be humanly impossible for all those thousands of troops to be evacuated without drawing attention from the air. The channel was not that wide for such heavy traffic. Sitting behind the shutters afraid to move, reluctant to take a nap as her mother at least tried to, Elena bored and scared mopped around afraid that she
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might awake to find that she had imagined it all. She was also overwhelmed by the intensity of the emotions she was experiencing. Suddenly there was a rumble; a plane, a car? It sounded close; Anna opened the shutters a crack to see. A closed sedan sped towards the port sending terrified chickens scudding with
shrieking
cackles. It was the one-eyed commander from the city, the big ‘gun’, himself! Elena hissed an obscene curse; Anna looked at her not even reprovingly, just surprised. Even with doors and the window closed the dust reached them; the troops kept coming not so quietly anymore, and Anna remembered that what with the commotion, the strong feelings and emotions, they had forgotten they hadn’t eaten all day since no one was moving about in the street taken over now by the retreating enemy.
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “The ‘victorious conquerors’ were leaving the island for two days. Gone is the air of superiority, of contempt; they did not show bravado, just miserable looking troops who have now lost their goosestep; I’m sure the ‘superior’ race would wish right now for
my security behind the shutters.
They are prisoners of their fears but the gun, their security, is by their side as they realize that their world is falling apart around them and the victory promised them now belongs to the anti-fascist forces, the Allies; and I, a starving kid in my shell, quietly enjoying their agony, am waiting for their last breath, to hear their death rattle so that I can shout my triumph! I wish I could shout with malice so they can hear me: “where do you think you are going?” The strip of water that separates them
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from the mainland is infested with allied submarines; airplanes
will
probably bomb them. I would tell them that even if they get to the mainland, there will be no further road to their country, the fools. The Red Army is waiting at the north, the Americans close to Berlin! What an unattractive, deserving end for the mighty third Reich and the civilization they had prepared for us! The grapevine is spreading the news, barges are leaving the port full of troops and the explosions, more frequent now heard from the open sea, shatter the sunny afternoon; everything around us is breathless with anticipation. Each time we hear a blast, Mama crosses herself whispering ‘another’ to no one in particular. She is counting blasts as we had counted bombs some months back. Now she ties a knot on a piece of string each time she hears an explosion, I don’t know why. Of course we know that each explosion means a direct
torpedo hit and a barge full of troops gone. How
many corpses… Does Hitler care? Late in the afternoon, the evacuation was finally over;
darkness came and no more Germans marched into the village.
We breathed a sigh of relief, no more fear, it was over! Suddenly, more troops appeared on the road; they looked as if they been marching
a long
time, they were in a deplorable state. Some broke the line and rushed to me as I sat safely inside the window panes. Grinning sheepishly they asked me for water. He had some nerve! I’m not used to a German asking for anything, a German takes!
They stood in front of me as if they were tourists and I a
local curiosity item, maybe they forgot that they can break in after all, kill us and take whatever they wish, it was impossible for me to believe that after years of brutally exterminating and torturing humanity, they
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suddenly discovered that they can act like human beings, and that we are human. I looked at them, unable to utter a sound. What they would never know, I thought, was that if I opened my mouth, the sheer enjoyment of their despair, humiliation and fear would be too much for me to hold back. The grimy, perspiring faces were young; one could well wonder how could so much murder, hate, cruelty and brutality thrive in such young hearts. Not even a year has passed since they set their dogs up in the mountain to sniff the partisans out, burned our villages, hanged our people, plundered, taken hostages. They had thrown hundreds of thousands of lives into chaos. So, here you are my enemy, my
prisoner, I thought, you, too, are
vulnerable. Unbelievable! war can turn victors to ashes. The ex-victors asking me for a cup of water, your armor of pseudo-courage and discipline gone. For all you know, I can offer you rat poison. With these thoughts came the disturbing realization that I may never be able to accept them as humans or forgive them. They may have children, mothers, waiting for them but it’s hard for me to believe that they didn’t know what their beloved fathers and sons were doing to this world. My mother insists that in the army you must do as you are ordered or you pay with your life. But I have seen things that they did on their own without waiting for orders. How can I live side by side with people who had succumbed to such cannibalistic instincts. I was still staring at them with all those thoughts running rapidly through my mind as if I existed for the past 4 years only for these moments, just so that I can let at least my thoughts, humiliate them. How childish I am! Why do I need revenge when I know that the shuffle of their boots on the dusty road is dragging their desperate lives into doom in the
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next few hours. Can’t they feel that this cup of water will be their last? “Poison them,” a neighbor hissed from across the street hidden behind her shutters. “Don’t give them water.” I thought that maybe they had tried there first and she refused them. For the second time in my life I gave my hand in reluctant compassion to the enemy in the form of a cup of water for which I earned the laughter of my neighbor and her contemptuous remark from across the street: ”Just like a true Christian!”
C H A P T E R
The Nazis are gone Sleep was fitful
and fearful that night despite freedom. ‘Freedom’! people
thought half-believing it was a dream but still hoping; ‘wishful thinking’. Afraid to surrender to sleep in case the bubble burst, they were ready to flee in haste. At dawn, there were still remnants of the German Army waiting to be evacuated. Ugly in spirit and monolithic in behavior as they had been, they had no other choice but to trust their ex-allies and now enemies, the Italians, their prisoners, with their canons and anti-aircraft situated on strategic hilltops, the idea being that an ex-fascist, even an ex-ally-turned-traitor is better than
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a Greek who would surely seek revenge, or even a
Greek collaborator.
Except for
machine guns and their rifles, ammunition supplies were dumped in the sea; they burned their automobiles and military trucks rather than surrendering them to anyone; the countryside was reeking of sulfur, he stinking fog covered the trees and there was a fear of massive fires because it hadn’t rained for months. Those Italians who survived last Fall’s massacre and humiliation had not forgotten. As soon as their former allies’ barges reached the cape and turned into the open sea, the Italians turned the cannons on them. Canons from the land, torpedoes from submarines lurking nearby and bombs from the occasional planes were exploding all day to everyone’s elation; the people, careful, hailed each other with Easter greetings, ‘Christ has Arisen’ finally convinced that there is a God after all, or that He had found His Ledgers and was now dishing out justice! Miserable and tired, the Germans had, nevertheless, carried their spoils through mountains and valleys hoping to take them home. One by one the barges disappeared
and that loot followed them to their Ionian Sea grave: Lamps, casks
of olive oil, desks, sewing machines, typewriters, books, even the theater’s velvet seats were not spared. What they had no time to burn, they threw into the sea, it was a sad sight, the flagstones littered with wheat, raisins, barrels of wine those they couldn’t carry to their own war-torn country. The starving people around them watched; covered by the darkness of night many challenged fate by attempting to steal from the Nazis the discarded ‘treasure’.
Need was the
incentive behind the shaky courage; they were being vengeful for what was done to them, a small gesture of revenge after years of subjugation and tyranny. No one saw Nicky leaving his bed in the darkness to join the ‘daredevils’ as his mother called those who dared to challenge their fate now that the ordeal
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was almost over. He followed the shadows to the harbor where other shadows were looting, stripping trucks that were to be burned, anyway; he had made his reconnaissance in the daytime and knew exactly what he would take if no one else got there before him, and now went straight to the field where he had seen bicycles, and foodstuff like flour, and olives and tins. There was no guard because even armed, they were afraid to expose themselves at night. Unfortunately, others driven by the same ‘patriotic’ thoughts, as his sister Elena put it, had preceded him and had cleared most everything that could be lifted and had been there hours before. He did find a tin of meat, apparently rejected, took it and ran because a German had spotted the looters and began shooting. He stumbled on a huge
tire that someone else had loosened from a truck
for a later picking. Without thinking, he rolled it off the field making sure that the tall grass and darkness covered his escape, and fell with it into a ditch. When he felt secure that everybody, including the German, had left, he climbed onto the road but the German was there and began shooting at him.
Nicky
wouldn’t leave the tire, it meant soles for all their shoes for the winter. Still holding on to it, he fell back into the ditch and waited in the thorny bushes. The German wouldn’t venture outside the safety of the harbor area and gave up on the little thief; Nicky bided his time, dozed off and was awakened at dawn when he heard shooting and commotion in the direction of the harbor. People passed running above him shouting: “They shot the priest’s wife”. He looked up and down, the road looked empty, and in the grayness of dawn that began to lift the darkness he made a run for it rolling the tire expertly, victorious over his almost extinction holding his night’s booty: a tin of meat and a truck tire!
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The Germans were feeling the effects of a historical boomerang. The terror and death they had been sowing for years struck back and not all of them made it to the mainland. Most found eternal rest at the bottom of the Ionian Sea amid their spoils: tanks, guns, typewriters, instruments, porcelain urns
oil and whatever
else they planned to carry to their homeland, a final funereal wreath, the sacrifice to their madness
of the millions of souls they had exterminated. It
was late in the afternoon and no more barges were left, nor was another one coming. The stranded soldiers waited in vain fearing for their lives now because they didn’t know if the Greek partisans, those who had survived, would attack. People kept out of sight, behind locked doors and windows. Tired of waiting, the Germans boarded the three remaining trucks and left for the port across the bay. Elena heard the trucks rolling in the street , then the screeching brakes and knew they were had turned right heading for the port where she had landed shipwrecked in 1941. They had gone through the village at a snail’s pace and after the crossroads they tore the countryside in a mad speed covering the sunset with the eerie dust their wheels left behind them. “They think they’ll find barges there,” Anna said. “Maybe they know something we don’t; there are no barges.” “I just hope they have no artillery that can reach us here,” said their landlord; the village settled down to wait until darkness covered the humble, quiet homes. The Germans found the barges sank, they were trapped; the tide was reversed, they were now running away from the Greeks in fear, they were at their mercy. “Strange are the
games of war,” said the landlord scratching his short
beard philosophically. Elena was thinking how strange the destiny of each war must be when one moment the enemy loots, hangs, shoots and starves you to death
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and then the day comes when you see the ‘enemy’ facing the same fears as he tries to escape, knowing that behind each door and window eyes of hate follow him thinking of revenge. What’s the point, why doesn’t humanity learn? How idiotic of governments with their insane politics to keep repeating the same stupid mistakes for ages. Are we perhaps hoping to invent the ‘perfect’ war that will wipe out all wars and have one, only one winner for ever, for the entire globe? She shivered with her childish and insane thoughts. Is this what it’s all about? She felt alone in a void, there is no exit, she thought sadly, the silence was frightening. Her thoughts were interrupted suddenly, by a thunder of ‘ZITO’s the ‘hurrahs’of victory, echoed from fields and homes, roofs and hillsides, that paean
to freedom, that ‘ZITO’ kept behind sealed lips for years. Doors and
windows were thrown open, dogs, cats, chickens, even goats and pigs ran into the streets in a mad haste; children ran madly and adults embraced their neighbors in tears of triumph; they jumped over fences into gardens and threw flowers at each other or took them to church as if Easter had come in September. Wishes and wine flowed, the bells rang ‘may we live and die free’, ‘Christ has arisen,’ ‘Truly, He has!’ Years of brutality, starvation, humiliation, slaughter suddenly evaporated. Freedom was tangible, there was a future in the horizon. The sun had set and church bells were ringing but
suddenly they stopped as if with a moan.
The ringer of the bells, a young boy,
had been shot at his post in the tower by
a sniper. A hush fell over the village as dusty men in a wild group galloped madly into the celebrating village like the Satan’s army. Partisans! Someone shouted and in stunned fright everyone ran to hide indoors amid shots, vile cursing and screaming children. Breathless once more behind the same shutters
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they tried to recognize the likes of the terrorists but they had already gone down to the port to take charge of the loot the Germans had left. They loaded their animals and trekked up the mountain path from where they had descended shooting in the air and toward the village until they disappeared. So, the people thought sadly, those are the ‘liberators’? But Elena had seen them, she wanted to shout that they had nothing to do with the partisans who, anyway, the Germans said
had been exterminated, but was shocked into silence. As the last of the
wretched band dragged a heavily loaded animal waving his rifle triumphantly, she recognized her uncle Nicolas, her own father’s brother, the other ‘collaborator’!
The gang’s departure
left a sour taste in everybody’s mouth. The mother’s
moaning and grieving over the 12 year-old victim at the foot of the bell tower pierced their hearts. The last moment, everyone thought in pain, the very last moment. Will this be the last victim?
Killed by a Greek, Elena thought, perhaps
by my uncle. She cried hidden behind the door. No one must be told, she thought, no one; she swallowed her tears. Freedom comes at a prize, a very
expensive
prize! Less than an hour later another armed band came down from the eastern Hills; people groaned and kept out of their way. They’ll take what the others couldn’t carry and leave us if they don’t see us and if we’re lucky, without more victims, they thought. “Here we go again,” Anna sighed resignedly, “don’t go near the window, Elena, keep close to the walls, sit on the floor. Elena left her spot reluctantly but not before she stole a glance at the new men
walking in the moonlight. Somehow, that
horseless group of strangers walking straight like regular soldiers
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wearing what looked like military caps, didn’t strike her as being bandits. Their caps also reminded her of something. The armed men walked, almost marched looking about for people, astonished because in the darkness the village looked deserted when they should be out celebrating happily. The loud rap on the window startled and terrified the two women, they played dead. The knocks were repeated louder, alarmingly urgent. Why us, why our window? Anna thought and she straightened up. Elena’s frightened eyes, followed her mother as she walked to the window with small uncertain steps, body straight, as a performer in an ancient drama, and cautiously opened it a crack. A wide grin on the young bearded face met her eyes in the darkness. She threw the shutters open and while the man opened his arms, she, surprised and downcast silently condemned him. “Well,” boomed the deep voice, “calm yourselves, don’t get excited, we can stage the liberation performance again tomorrow or next year... What is the matter with you people, where is everybody?” He stuck his head into the window and looked at the women as they rubbed their eyes to make sure they weren’t seeing a ghost. “What is wrong?” He asked suddenly dead serious. Elena was surprised that her mother in her anger and grief did not raise her eyes to greet their koumbaro*. When she did she was struck speechless. *“Koumbare,” she managed to whisper, “what are you doing with them? You are an educated man, a man of means, you don’t need to kill and steal, you fought in the war...You aren’t like them.” She pointed at the armed bearded men standing in the middle of the road, the young teenager, Makis from the neighborhood, a sad conglomeration of ragged uniforms, feet covered with anything one can imagine, against thorns and snakes.
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“Are you accusing me of fighting for my country, koumbara?” He asked sadly. “Did you expect the fascists and traitors to fight for freedom?” As if answering him, the door across the street flew open and a neighbor ran to the street like a madwoman shouting: “The partisans! They have come, it’s the real partisans, come on out
everyone”, and from the shadows Nicky appeared from nowhere shouting:
“Pericles, Pericles”, looking for him among the men in the shadows, until he located him. The tall man left his comrades who watched in silent astonishment and mirth, and fell into Anna’s arms as she walked out. “Yiannis, Yiannis,” she cried.
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “My mother looked at the tall man up and down as if measuring him; suddenly he looked too grown-up for her to be Pericles. She looked at the others attentively, for the first time, taking in their red bandanas, the colorful uniforms, their young, almost teenage faces behind the beards. ‘Some are Italians,’ our koumbaro Yiannis said and laughed at my mother when he saw her jaw fall. ‘They are our comrades; forgive our beards, we are fighting in the mountains, we have no blades or soap, do you understand?’ She did… she knew him, all his young life.
‘We are koumbari’ -related by baptism
for life. Yiannis then heard from her what had passed just a short while ago. I had a strange feeling that I detected his furtive, split-second glance at me and Nicky. Does he know? Had he recognized or seen my uncle in the mountain?
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“My friends,” Yiannis cupped his hands and addressed the people of the village from the middle of the dark street. His voice reverberated like a cannon’s boom through the village. “My friends, neighbors, come on outside. This is Yiannis, your neighbor; this is the Liberation Army, your sons, your own people. The Germans told you that they exterminated us, not true! We were fighting for freedom. We are free now. Come and celebrate with us.”
Reluctantly, one by one, doors and windows opened first on the main road then further down and uphill on side roads and paths as the men walked ahead greeting people and spreading the news. From the corner, Aristos’ head peeped cautiously, spying for his father to make sure that it was safe to
come out. Yiannis saw
him, climbed on a stone fence and directed his voice to the tall house where, he knew, Philip was nervously awaiting another slaughter. “Come everyone,” he called, “you have known me all your life, you have known my parents and brothers and sisters. We have been together through miseries and joys. Listen to me. The enemy is gone.” People gathered around close to the fence
to listen. “They burned our villages, we will rebuild them, they razed our
fields, we will cultivate them again. And we shall dance and sing again at the weddings of our children. It is for those children and the cause of freedom that so many brave young men sacrificed their lives. We shall honor them! Once again we are masters of our destiny. Keep your doors open, let the children play in the street, we are guarding them. You are free!” The people listened quietly. They knew Yiannis as one of them the son of a well-to-do family, who did not need to take to the mountains or take from them
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like the bandits. He will marry one of our daughters and raise a family like the rest of us, they thought. Slowly, they opened up and joined the armed men, hugging them, grasping their war hardened hands; they brought out carafes of ouzo and wine, they hadn’t drank for a long time these people thought because there was no reason to celebrate; now they shouted their joy and made speeches. The laments of the grieving mother were drowned in the happy clamor.
(No one could have foreseen that evening, that just one year later, when a post-war Greek government, one of the many that followed
liberation, would
hunt Yiannis into the mountains like the Nazis had done, kill him and exhibit his severed head in
military parades through the villages, an
example to the rebellious Greeks. But that is another chapter in history, the bloodiest yet, a civil war manufactured by and imported from outside forces called ‘international politics’. No one had such outlandish thoughts that happy evening in the small village on an
Ionian Island where bells
were ringing and people were singing, and crying deep into the night, the first night of liberation.)
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “Uncle Philip’s message was clear: Stay inside. No celebration! He knew Yiannis all his life and had no fears. I think that the old ‘in times such as these’ still holds. What else can I think? Once more I am bitterly disappointed with him; he can’t smile even for the sake of his children if not for himself. ‘If they are not thieves like the others,’ he said, ‘we
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will soon know. Meanwhile, we are under cover; it’s the safest way I know to keep our heads.’ ‘Philip,’ my
mother said, ‘it’s Yiannis, Father
baptized his sister, what are you saying?’
‘I’m saying that the war has
made evil people out of saints. We don’t know if he is still the Yiannis we have known..’ With that, which was his last word, he slammed the door and went to his house and I went to bed, or should I say my mattress of thorns while outside, groups of people sang and joked and walked in the electric lights that lighted the village. I haven’t seen electricity for years; I could feel and smell freedom, but what was the use? For all intends and purposes, I was still a slave, a slave of ignorance and
village mentality.
My uncle is not afraid for our heads, he is afraid I might look at a boy, or have fun, and rather than have a boy look at me, he would prefer to see my head in a plate. And I, the idiot,
had thought that when freedom came,
I would wear my good white dress and dance all night. But to my uncle’s eyes, freedom was just one more passing experience. My island is finally free; I don’t know about the rest of the country. I only know that I am not free!”
Planes came that evening, English, American? The made their rounds and left after dropping their flyers that flew and scattered happily about the countryside like little night birds on rooftops, yards and out in the fields where the children picked them up and played with them. “Long Live Freedom” was the message. Late in the night the accordion stopped playing and the village nestled, peacefully asleep, in the arms of the Ionian Sea. Unexpectedly, in the middle of night a sudden deafening roar tore the
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stillness; mortar fire ripped the roofs. Terrified people took cover again. Another nightmare! Had the Germans returned? Is it possible, Elena thought as she followed her mother, Nicky and the landlord’s family down onto the cellar. Had they been fooled as her uncle had predicted, was the evening just a dream? Lucky goats, they were safe, but they had to share their shelter with those who were gifted with speech and brains to think and to fear. Elena crouched behind a bundle of hay hugging the wheel of a cart for safety, as if expecting an earthquake. Her teeth were chattering, the mortars wouldn’t stop, the landlord’s elderly mother was praying, her own mother was crying and Nicky hid his head in her lap. The landlord reached his wife just as she passed out; he held on to her with one arm and pressed his baby daughter onto his chest, his face showing the agony of fear and concern. Then there were shots close by, loud and frequent as if a battle was raging outside their door, machine guns. In a senseless and selfdestructive drive, Elena ventured to open the cellar door aware of her suicidal urge to find out if she was in a nightmare or if that was reality. They were trapped in a cellar with goats and desperate people. The signal her instinct gave her was that of danger, still she wanted out. Someone pushed her violently away from the trap door and she fell on the hay. Her mother was barring her way. “You have a fifty-fifty chance of making it upstairs,” she said severely. “If you care nothing for yourself, consider your responsibility to the rest of us; you have no right to jeopardize so many lives. When you open that door, it could be the partisans, but what if it is the Germans, what then?” Elena went back to her bale of hay then walked over to the struggling landlord and took his baby so he could look after his unconscious wife. The tiny baby was swathed in yards of swaddling, which would make her straight and tall as she grew. She
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looked like a little cocoon and smelled of milk and urine, but then the whole place smelled of goats’ urine. The goats had their rights, the humans were the intruders. No one knew exactly how long they had been in the cellar, they had no watch. They knew they were all there, some asleep against the stone wall, others staring ahead trying no to hear, not to feel harboring their fears in silence; they saw each other in the flare of the gunfire but who was firing and from where they could not tell. And then, as suddenly as it had started, it was over. The silence was more frightening; not a sound, not a rifle shot, not a voice, not even a cricket. It seems that outside everyone has been killed, Elena thought, or maybe we are dead. I’m losing it, and why not? When they heard urgent knocks on the door upstairs, they held their breaths. More thumping, more hands; no one moved, a movement could be fatal. Elena felt her previous bravado evaporating. She wanted to go to the bathroom, the young mother took her baby and sat down crying silently fighting the urge to cover the baby’s mouth in case she began to cry. “Better they think that we are dead,” she whispered to Elena. “Let’s all pray,” someone suggested hoarsely, “let’s forgive each other”. No one paid attention. Elena moved slightly and like a cat found herself at the trap door once more and again her mother who must have been watching her was barring her way. “In the name of God,” she pleaded and though Elena felt for her mother and was frightened out of her wits, she knew the time had come to think on her own, like a grown person. “Mama,” she said calmly, “I am not crazy and I can’t stand this, it will soon be daylight. If we are to die, we will, don’t have any illusions, but let’s not die in this stinking hole like horseflies.” She didn’t give her mother a second to think, she ran upstairs
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and as in a trance, but with the consuming wish to live, not to perish, threw the door open. The darkness came into the room and she wanted to pass out.
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “Yiannis, Pericles,” I managed to gasp and my mother held me up so I wouldn’t fall. “Pencil and paper,” Pericles said and collapsed. “A doctor, run for the doctor,” Anna shouted to no one in particular. Some men came into the room and took Pericles to the next room where there is a bed. Mama first made sure that he wasn’t dead and then fetched paper and
pencil for
Yiannis who scribbled something and gave instructions to one of his men where to take the report. My mother was all business. Once she realized that Pericles wasn’t dead, she resolved that death would not pass her doors to snatch him or anyone else from her. In the next hour, which was just before dawn, many people went through our rooms, I have no recollection who they were or what they wanted, I was in a daze, I couldn’t put together what had transpired and they were all too busy to enlighten me. The doctor came, told us that Pericles was out of danger, just a flesh wound on his leg and took him away, I don’t know where, we have no clinic here, and no one in his right mind would risk a trip to the city. Finally, I found a spot on the bloody bed, warm
from our hero’s wounded body, and slept. The
last I heard before passing out was that not one German remained on the island.”
The remnants of the German Army waited in vain across the Bay for a barge; they decided to return to the original port of exit to wait or commandeer a few
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fishing boats to get them to the mainland. What they hadn’t counted on,
was
armed resistance. The partisan patrol saw the dimmed headlights a few kilometers before the trucks approached the village, and though poorly armed with outdated rifles and a lone machine gun, they ambushed the trucks and ripped the headlights killing the drivers simultaneously. That spread panic among the Germans who, unaware that something had changed since they left the village some hours before, and not knowing where the enemy was, leaped into the ditches to the left and right of the road
and proceeded to exterminate one another with their machine
guns. When they realized that they were butchering their own, the survivors picked up as many of their dead comrades as they could, loaded them on the last truck and, in the darkness, backed the truck to the edge of the valley where the road was level with the fields. There, they made a turn for the other port once more, leaving the half-burned remnants of the other trucks on the road and some corpses in the fields. Once there, they began firing their artillery all day but their range was short and only reached the valley killing some sheep. The dead Germans were buried, the remnants of the battle were swept and put away and the trucks towed outside the village where old, wrecked by storms fishing boats rusted in peace. That evening after sunset, boat coming from the mainland dropped anchor in the pier and a platoon of well-armed, well-disciplined, uniformed men and women partisans landed quietly. A few left soon for the small harbor village across the Bay to check on the remnants of the German troops; they returned after midnight. Electricity was still on and the people waited speaking softly as not to awake their children or their animals. They should have
no more fear of a
conqueror, they assured them; they saw the exhausted armed group patrol walk the village streets somberly. They smiled as they faced the people who circled them
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fearing vengeance from across. “The Germans will not bother us anymore.” The people of the village heard the reassuring words and went inside their homes.
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “Uncle Philip must be the last Greek convinced that we are legally, historically, definitely, liberated. With great misgivings and
many
warnings he allowed us to return to the city so that Aristos and Nicky can register for the new school year. The situation is now changed, people have changed, at least we were hoping so.
The Liberation Forces’ are now
legally in command of the island; their Military Police have uncovered food stores hidden by the Germans and distributed it to the people. School children will now have free lunch; as the island slowly emerges from its chaotic war daze, life begins to follow a steadier pattern. There is reconstruction to be done in every
phase of our lives, and few people to
do it; also, there is too much bitterness and hate to be dealt with, to be confronted and overcome, this terrible division that ‘politics’ had managed to instill among us, which will take many years to heal.. That’s what every enemy tries, to divide the people. New problems are popping up as the memories of the past
painful years unfold, but there is hope and there is
a willingness to accept this new life as free people, to work to make it stable, to face the future, at least I hope so.”
Many of the Italians who had survived the massacre of September, 1943 and either joined the partisan army in the mainland to fight against their ex-allies or were
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hidden by Greek families, were technicians who proved valuable as things were slowly returning to normal and life began its course. They worked alongside the Greek technicians re-establishing communications in villages and towns and installing electricity. It took only a few months for the island to look different, very nice. Youth organizations sprouted overnight; festivals, concerts, open theater and discussions enriched their lives. Where have all those talented youngsters been, the people asked themselves not daring to answer or to hear the answer that could very well be that it was them who were stopping their youngsters, their mediocrity and adherence to a dead past; combined with the enemy’s program of annihilation, it had caused a lot of grief; it was too late for many young people who could not be there to celebrate life. When the Liberation Army entered the City, the ‘Fathers’ awaited at the bridge that had seen clandestine operations during the occupation while they slept under the ‘peaceful’ guard of the conqueror. They were there to welcome the new order that appeared un-expectantly. Biting their nails in anticipation, shivering in fear of retribution, they bowed and greeted. The traitors and criminals were taken to jail and then were sent to Athens to face the tribunal as all collaborators did in all occupied countries in Europe. Eventually, unlike other European countries, they were ‘exonerated’ and returned to the island to rule another thirty years in corruption and ultra right wing policies. The bodies of the resistance fighters recently executed were exhumed and brought to the city in sealed coffins under mountains of laurel wreaths for a decent ceremonial burial where representatives of all organizations and villages spoke unfolding unknown pages of heroism. People learned much that day and the knowledge served them well, since, unbeknown to them, forces outside Greece were
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already planning the second part of their national ordeal. Basil’s flag draped casket was surrounded by an honor guard: his sisters, Nicky and one of his friends and schoolmate. The parents of all who did not make it to freedom, stood on the platform somber, grief-stricken,
motionless, each holding a branch of
laurel, their parting gift. After the ceremony and the speeches more than one thousand people followed the sad cortege to the cemetery across the Bay. There, the priests performed
the last rites and one by one
the coffins were interred;
there was not a dry-eye in the crowd, the communal mourning had affected everyone and as they passed the newly covered graves leaving their laurel wreaths, they all wished and hoped that they were saying good-bye to the last victims of the madness that had immersed the world into the flames of hell. It was hours later that the last mourner had left, Elena! She stayed behind in the dusk, alone with Basil’s absence. Reality finally gripped her, she had no emotion left, she felt that at least temporarily, youth had left her; it was buried with Basil and Ourania nearby. The moment we lose, she thought, is gone for ever. The love we lose is gone, too; the beloved who dies is gone, but is always present
in one’s
heart. Darkness descended from the mountain all the way down to the Bay; she was terribly alone.
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) “September, 1944. I don’t even know what day it is. It is still
warm, and
I’m getting ready to leave for Athens now that I need no special permit from an enemy authority to travel. Yesterday I
said good-bye to Basil for
the last time. I stopped by Ourania’s grave because I know that I will never see that cemetery again. My pain was so profound as to be physical,
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hurting my stomach but not from hunger. I stayed there grieving, feeling the horizon close in on me as if the lights in the city had no meaning, because Basil had described the city in lights and now he is not
here to
enjoy them with me. But then I began to think that horizons are never closed for life; they close only for the dead; Basil and Ourania belong to that world beyond the the harbor
horizon. The wreaths, the stars, the reflection on
waters, the half-sank ship, seemed unreal. Suddenly, my
mother’s absence from my side made sense; everything appeared rather adult, I felt adult; it carried a rather ominous sense
of responsibility. I know
that when I walked out of the cemetery, part of me was left there for ever. I said good night to the old grounds keeper as he locked the gate after me. I wonder if he is afraid that someone will walk in there voluntarily. He can’t possibly fear the Venetians, the British and Italians, the Germans, all those who came to conquer and became permanent residents of our island. It is ourselves we should fear, all of us! People walked on the bridge leisurely as people do when they are free to do as they please; life is truly stepping up. Overhead the sky laden with stars,
guarded the calm night. Like an owl unfamiliar to daylight, I
stumbled on ruins, and other debris mixed in the rubble I thought I was familiar with. The irony of it made me smile; I couldn’t see under the electric lights what I could sense in the darkness of war and slavery. By the time I got home, I felt freedom! I could feel my new wings ready to spread to take me into my to-morrows which no one can foresee. The cool breeze carried a salt taste and a promise of Fall. There is no yesterday to serve us, to help us regain strength; there is only tomorrow and we better
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do our best to protect it. I began to sing trying not to think of the wreckage of the house I was going in... That was Freedom! Sweet, irreplaceable Freedom! Now, what do I do with my
Y e s t e r d a y s?”
(How was I to know then that less than a decade later
American
soldiers would be doing in Korea what the Nazis had done, exhibiting the same enthusiastic cruelty? And that American soldiers would confer such
atrocities and worse to another Asian country, Vietnam, another
twenty years later, destroying our own youth in the process; or that America would offer shelter to war criminals and be responsible for civil
wars in many parts
of the globe stabilizing dictatorships
turning a deaf ear to justice? And all that, in the name of Democracy in order to promote and protect Freedom? The word ‘democracy’ a misrepresented, misunderstood, misquoted term, lost its meaning as a political and social order. Perhaps the Greeks themselves, are vaguely cognizant of the term and its implications. Democracy was, after all, their invention.)
P A R T
(Elena looked at the clock on the mantel and couldn’t believe her eyes. ‘Elena,’ she whispered, ‘where have you been all those hours?’ She drew the drapes aside and opened the balcony doors. Every window in New York across the river sparkled
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flaming red from the last rays of the setting sun that flooded the western horizon, delicate pink; gray fluffy clouds flitted gaily. One by one the city lights changed the tableau dramatically; she never tired of the breathtaking view. She had been in such a state with her memories all day, her coffee was cold, she stared at the cup but why now, she wondered, why today. The traffic below was slack, the only noise she could identify was the whir from the air condition. She knew she was expected somewhere, but where? She stood still gathering the wool of her thoughts to bring herself back to today, to remember where it was that she had to go, something to attend. Forget it, she decided; I must try to remember what I was doing all day, reminiscing? But that would be impossible, she would need a month just to put her life in perspective even in the speediest film version. To think that I sat for twelve hours in the same place...she mused, I must be sick. So, I lost one more day of my life. I can’t account for it, I have no memory of it. But I have so many others what’s one lost day?
in my past,
What are memories after all? Just reflections I can’t
alter, add or subtract and at this point of my life I better not start collecting more. I am in danger of becoming a musty museum of a life which doesn’t interest anyone; it’s infectious, dead. I have a closet-full of photo albums I’m afraid to open, to travel through or share with friends; too many people missing and as the years go by more and more will be missing and then I’ll start wondering ‘was I at the funeral?’ I wonder why we collect photographs for a lifetime; perhaps to reminisce and be happy with the memories. Do we hope that our children will treasure them? Unfair! They don’t know most of the smiles, the young persons of another era, the groups, the parties and demonstrations, the crazy hairdos, the funny clothes; all that means nothing to them. Actually, we are punishing
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ourselves, by looking back in shock, having to accept the ravages of time. No, our memories belong to the museum of the mind. For our children life begins with the picnic, the first bike, the first recital, the first baseball game, proms, birthdays, dates, weddings; we begin our second life, the grandchildren. Before that, all
is history. And I? I recede in the shadows of my past reluctant to
look at the woman they are coaxing to smile when I know that wrinkles have replaced my smile. Forget the pictures. On the other hand, if we do not collect pictures, how will the future generations learn from our past so they can ensure their past; what will they research? It’s like a savings account that doesn’t go bankrupt until a world war erases half humanity and then it would take at least one century to reconstruct the past that was erased. I know, I was banking against the
blahs of my lonely winters, because I knew
the day would come when
the walls would be closing in and I would touch the definitive period with the dash after it. The memories I have collected will be a sad, almost funereal procession. Sometimes I wish I could dig up a grave to bury those memories of mine; whatever tomorrows are still due, hold no more surprises, they do not deem preserving. Memories are sadder than not remembering at all. What is more incredible though, is that as I squirm and complain now at this last page of my life’s chapter, memories are popping up, from the depths of time uninvited so that I cannot deal with time in terms of years and decades. Time is like a fast train ride which goes on for ever and at some point we just walk off but the train keeps on going. I would feel more comfortable if I could file the chapters of my life not on a year to year basis but in terms of historical eras. This way maybe I will not consider half a century as being such a tremendous amount of time.
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Many people are missing from my life, some I knew well, others hardly; each has played a role in my life. I didn’t know most of them, the hundreds, the thousands, the millions who passed on leaving an irreplaceable vacuum in the lives of everyone, those of the Arts and the Theater, the Sciences, Technology. Education, Politics. They left but in the world’s museums their creations keep their names alive so much so that we believe we know them. I wish I had lived when Praxiteles was finishing Parthenon, his masterpiece on the hill of Akropolis in Athens. Twenty centuries later, he is as missed, as Homer. Shakespeare or Dante or those who built the Pyramids long before that, shadows in history and sketches and biographies in encyclopedias and the Internet now; actors or extras exiting the stage, leaving us richer but also with a message through the ages: that we belong to a future for which they toiled. I wonder if in this life of mine I understood that.
Will I leave a message to newer generations after I go?
Am I as human as they were? After all, those whom we shall never forget were not all the ‘heroes’; they were also the slaughterers, the arsonists, the criminals, the masterminds of evil in every century, every age and civilization. The world may change faces and sex, people transcend continents, races, conquer space; more planets may be discovered, scientists may clone humans, animals or plants and change the face of the earth or the universe, the earth itself could one day surprise us in a terrifying turn of events, but essentially we, the humans, are and will be what we have always been: miserably human! Here I am, more than half a century later, with the end on a century and a new millenium facing me, an older woman now, remembering when I know that most of those who were part of my life are gone.)
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C H A P T E R
The Return Elena was packed.
After Nicky and Aristos left for school she took her coat
and went downstairs; it was a cold, rainy day, not so good for a crossing in the small craft, she thought as she waited for her uncle and mother to come down, after all. It was the end of November, always nasty in the sea. As they walked to the harbor a stiff wind met them. The small caique moored at the pier was loading charcoal; it swayed left and right looking dizzy and awfully small and vulnerable to Elena who remembered her last voyage with a similar vessel back in 1941 when they came to the island. The passengers waiting to go aboard were calm as if going on a cruise, relaxed; her fears subsided
but she couldn’t help wondering
where they were going and why at this time, it was 1944 after all and though the war was over for Greece, but not necessarily for the rest of the world, the sea was hiding many perils. But I must go, she justified her hasty voyage, registering at the University will not wait for me. Her uncle eyed the harbor entrance worried; the swell looked mighty heavy, a precursor to a gale waiting outside the sheltered bay. The captain walked up to him blowing smoke from his cigarette. “ You’re worried,” he said, “no need to; it looks rough because of the narrow neck at the entrance. Once we are in the open sea, it will calm down.” “Look after her,” Philip said looking at his niece. He didn’t believe the
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captain. He knew there would be a rough sea further out. “You don’t have to ask me,” the captain said, “look.” He pointed at the young
boy
waving from the deck to the people below. “My son! Would I risk
taking him along if there was the slightest danger? Hey, Phil, trust me, we know each other since children.” He patted him on the back and left to look after his cargo. Soon, the caique was ready and the
passengers took the precarious steps
from the quay to the deck. Elena waited her turn trying not to look at her mother sighing and wiping tears. Philip took Elena aside away from the line and pressed a tightly knotted handkerchief in her hand. “Listen,” he said. “This is an English gold pound. It’s the last one left to us; I held on to it as long as I could, I used the few we had only in a dire emergencies; our lives depended on that gold, it bought us flour, beans, medicine. I hated giving one to the Italians, still, the medicine saved your life.”
So that’s how they dispersed the medicine, Elena thought, not because
they were so charitable. “I was saving them for years for the children’s education. But survival was more important, what is money for, after all. So, hold on to it until the last possible moment, see that it gets you to Athens and never, never lose sight of it.” Elena was terribly moved, she hadn’t given a thought to money or what she would do on the trip without a drachma? Thankfully, she shoved the handkerchief inside her brassiere and laughed as she kissed him goodbye and thanked him. She managed to get up on the deck, more limber than she ever thought she could, and felt very grown up. She waved from the deck, saw the back of her uncle as he walked toward the town, his back
bent against the wind.
Her mother stayed there in the empty pier, a lonely dark figure in the gloomy morning. Soon, she was a tiny dot in the fog.
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Just as Philip thought, the wind picked up as soon as they emerged from the safety of the harbor and the caique tottered in all directions where the wind pushed it, contrary to the captain’s reassurances. He opened the hold and had the passengers go down to avoid being tossed overboard. The vessel had no cabins, bathrooms or other amenities, they had to do the best they could, the trip was a short one, he said, except of course in unsteady, unforeseen political or military emergencies when the short trip could become longer and dangerous, but that we know already.
Elena held on to the rails
next to the little boy who was
enjoying the pitching deck like a cowboy on an untamed horse. Like Nicky would, she thought and smiled, already accepting the fact that she was all alone with strangers. Two agonizing hours later, after they had passed the Narrows, between their island and the island of Zakynthos on the south, the wind
calmed
and the
sun came out. Out of the mists they saw a large ship coming up north and the passengers of both vessels rushed on the decks to wave as they passed each other going in opposite directions; the captain used
his bullhorn to warn the oncoming
vessel to stay close to the shore. “Mines bobbing up all over,” he shouted, “watch out!” “I know, you don’t have to worry.” They waved their good-byes and soon distance separated them, one going north, one south; suddenly, the north horizon became a column of gray water, first the shocking black stain hid the afternoon sky, then the blast like a subterranean earthquake shook them. Their small craft shook and leaned drunkenly as the captain steered it north
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immediately in an effort to find survivors. The British mine sweeper appeared out of nowhere; the captain was ordered back to his route, they were there to help, they said. Slowly, facing the wind with a frown and scanning the rough waters for floating mines he traversed, steering his caique back to the original course making for Messolonghi, the first port on the mainland, to spend the night. Elena and his son crouched on the deck holding on to the rails scared speechless; it could be us, they thought. Elena’s thoughts were with her mother; if she only knew! God, how many people went to the bottom of the sea without help or hope for rescue, and that after the war when everyone hopes! The town of Messolonghi looked beautiful all in a pink hue facing the sunset. The captain went ashore to meet his buddies after securing the boat; he would sail for the city of Patra across the channel at dawn. Down below in the hold, wrapped in their blankets, hungry and miserable, the passengers tried to sleep, next to the crates and the sacks; so did Elena but after tossing for an hour or so, her stomach could not hold the stench of old shoes, bad breaths and benzene odors which made her nauseous; everyone snored. She climbed up on the deck and sat below the main mast staring longingly at the lights in the historic town where the captain had gone and she always wanted to see. The English poet Lord Byron had lost his life defending it in the 1820s when the Greeks took up arms and freed themselves from the 400 years of the Ottoman yoke. ‘An exception’, the landlady in Athens had said back in the dark days of 1941. ‘There are more Lord Elgins in England and the world, than Lord Byron’ she had said and Elena had asked her mother later who that was. That was when she first heard of Lord Elgin, the Englishman who ‘bought’ from the Ottoman forces occupying Greece the frieze from the front of the Temple of Parthenon,
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statues and hundreds of different valuable items and brought them to England, losing a few ships in the Mediterranean Sea on the way.
And that’s where they
still are, she thought sadly, except those that he sold to the London Museum. I hope they have them in a Museum, and not thrown them someplace, she thought looking at the calm waters that reflected some lights from the waterfront tavernas. Even since she heard the story, she vowed that one day she would go to London to visit her country’s treasures that belonged to Greece, she thought and not to every crook who happens to visit a country and takes what he likes at will. She was naïve enough to think that she could just go, ask the British to return the Greek marble ancient treasure, ask them why they are holding with someone else’s property. After all, she reasoned, we didn’t go to their homes to steal their possessions... Forgetting about Elgin she again began paying attention to the town and wished the captain had asked her to go along with him, but where, in the tavern? She smiled. Messolonghi looked calm, far from the memories of a devastating war that was only finished two months before. The captain’s son couldn’t sleep either, he came out and sat next to her. “He’s out there drinking with his buddies,” he said. “Where are you going to,” she asked, “or are you here for the ride?” “No, my mother is working in Patra and I’m going to stay with her because Grandma died.” “I’m sorry,” she whispered. The boy touched her hand. “Share my father’s cabin with me?” The boy asked timidly and then in a lower voice, “I’m scared there all by myself now that he isn’t here.
You don’t
have to watch the caique, we have a crew here, that man.” He pointed at the young sailor lying further to the stern..
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“I’m not guarding the ship,” she laughed, “I came up for fresh air, it’s suffocating down there.” “And it’s cold up here. Let’s go.” He took her hand and led her to the small cabin in the middle of the vessel which the skipper used both as an office and his quarters. Soon, they were both asleep. It wasn’t long after that, when she was drifting off to sleep huddling close to the warmth of the boy’s body, when she felt a hand groping her thighs. She was instantly, alarmingly wide awake; she tried to raise herself on her elbows
screaming, ready for flight, when a clenched fist closed her mouth; she
went crazy. A body was pressing hers down, she couldn’t move, she couldn’t breathe, she was hysterical. Half crazed with terror which surpassed the
bombs
and even the close call with the silly young Italian soldier, driven from despair, she opened her mouth with extreme effort and drove her teeth into the man’s soft palm. It was a miracle! He let out a scream that sounded like a wolf’s cry and like a wolf persecuted, he leaped out of the cabin. The moonlight sketched his silhouette in the opening and Elena recognized the sailor who was guarding them! She was trembling all over. The little boy stirred, then awoke. “A bad dream?” he asked innocently. “Yes,” she answered and covered him. “A bad dream, go back to sleep.” She went outside into the silent night afraid to stay in the trap of a cabin; she hoped that the captain would return soon, but if the man attacked again, she had resolved to throw herself in the sea, come what may. She was alert to every noise but only the whisper of the waves lapping at the sides of the vessel were heard. The fishy odor of the port was familiarly calming. The town was asleep, peaceful, the street lights dim, but she felt terribly alone and in danger; she missed her mother, the island, her dead
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friends. Suddenly the whole world was a hostile place. There is so much ugliness out there, she thought and began to cry. “What are you doing out here so late?” She was startled, she hadn’t heard the oars; “Do you know what time it is?” she smelled the wine. “You are drunk,” she said accusingly. “I’m not.” He protested. “I never get drunk when I am sailing; I just had a few drinks with some old buddies. Is everything all right, here?” She nodded in the still dark dawn. What’s the use of talking to him, she asked herself looking at his bent figure trying to get into his cabin. She noticed the gun in a holster on his belt, he would kill the man. She knew that one disaster would not correct another and nothing happened thank God, except that she was never to forget it and
would never trust another human being. She was lucky this time, never again,
she vowed. I will always be on my guard!
And she was. In the city of Patra she did not wait for a bus because she didn’t trust the people who told her to stay in a hotel and wait for morning to take the bus. Instead, she gave the truck driver the gold coin; carrying her tin of oil and her suitcase she climbed on the truck and joined the other passengers and merchandise. She sat on an uncomfortable sack of hard items and immediately the voyage began a little before dawn, out of the city and through rough fields and underneath blown bridges for hours on end without stopping. Outside of the city, the roosters’ crowing were awakening the villages; chickens scattered screeching and dogs followed then barking, soon to be replaced by those from the next village. They have been saved from being roasted, Elena mused not wishing to believe that. She had nothing to eat in the past twenty four hours and the shaky
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ride was making her dizzy. She remembered momentarily the unwelcome ride she and her mother had to accept from the German truck the year before; it was just as uncomfortable, only her life was in danger then and now she was only threatened by a land mine, if luck wasn’t with them, or the truck found itself at the bottom of a ravine. The truck danced perilously; passengers and bundles shook and swayed from left to right and unexpectantly, to make things worse, she got her period. Not only she was miserable and in pain, she had no way to get to her suitcase to change and no bathroom anywhere on their route, nothing but trees and shrubs and the chilly color of a Fall morning. It was dark when they finally reached the city of Corinth; the truck parked in front of a cafe on the main street for the night. The café was closed. The passengers dispersed to find quarters, the driver left too, and she was alone. The night patrol of the Liberation Army stopped by and asked her to follow them to the headquarters where she would be taken to a family, the General’s sister home for the night; Elena refused to move; she showed them her travel documents, which directing the authorities on route to give her food and shelter because she was under age. One of the men went back and returned with a pleasant woman who pleaded with her to come down; she had two teenage daughters, she said; Elena thanked her politely and fell silent. Another patrol came, took the stacked chairs down and sat smoking to wait the night out watching her. It
upset her a
bit but she could not ask them to leave. “Just because the Germans left,” one of them said, “doesn’t mean danger is totally wiped out; we have orders to look after you and stay here for your safety, so, go to sleep.” Easier said than done, she thought, she chose a wooden case, but it was most uncomfortable, too hard. She felt secure with them around anyway, as long as they didn’t move closer to
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the truck. She spent the night sitting up sleepy but never closing her eyes. She had to deal with her physical problem as well and she didn’t dare tell the woman when she returned for the second time bringing her bread and olives for supper. Those she accepted with gratitude. At dawn, she remembered to thank the sleepy patrol for guarding her as the truck began moving eastward. A little later, the sight that awaited their eyes and assaulted their noses was too incredible and tragic to grasp even after four years of war. The driver was the only one who knew that before they retreated, the Germans had blown up the bridge. A train full of Italian prisoners of war was on the bridge at that time; it was the Nazis’ final gesture of revenge. The water in the narrow Isthmus she had crossed on the way to the island three years before was spattered with corpses blown beyond recognition in their tattered green uniforms floated with the current; some cast by the waves onto the shore had been devoured by vultures; the stench was overpowering. She began to cry, fatigue made her week and she felt lost and afraid, the other passengers were looking exchanging looks but couldn’t do a thing for her. She was the youngest. They descended to what had been the crossing point and were helped out of the truck and into a flat, crazy looking raft that took them across, into a rough uncultivated field, and then returned to load the truck. That was a dangerous leap of death they witnessed, but the driver was doing it every day since the bridge was blown. Loaded as it was, the truck literally leaped up onto the raft, and once across, did the same, landing in the same rutted field, surprisingly intact. Elena kept her eyes closed afraid to witness one more disaster, which might
land the truck at the bottom of the sea, so she missed the ‘miraculous’,
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tricky landing. She opened her eyes only when she heard the applause and had no time to catch up with or internalize the events of the last forty-eight hours; all too soon it seemed they were crossing the streets of Piraeus, the old, bombed neighborhoods. The hill of Akropolis in the north sparkled in the midday sun, her eyes filled. She saw from afar the old Agora and the ancient, weather worn columns of Olympian Zeus under which they later passed. She was home, yet, she felt strangely apart from what she was seeing as if all she stared at were not real but figments of her imagination, or parts of her memories. She found it hard to connect what she was when she left and who she was on her return and experienced an unknown pain wondering if it was Athens she had missed the years she was away or a childhood so cruelly interrupted. It would be impossible to fit what she had seen, felt, suffered and experienced into three years. At seventeen, she decided, she was a totally different person than the one who left. Lucky for her, the bus stopped at a coffee house in the Main Market Place of Athens, which doubled as terminal for buses from certain provinces and remote regions.. In the ensuing preparations, the unloading and the noise, she forgot her previous thoughts and became again
what she was: a provincial girl coming to
Athens to connect her life again and enter the University. Forget about who and what, she told herself and think how you are going to cart the suitcase and the tin of oil. The shop owner offered to keep the tin of oil for her until she returns to pick it up. Pushing and carrying her tattered suitcase she walked the streets she had known as a child, now changed seen through adult eyes. She didn’t recognize names, but remembered shops and statues, touched them lovingly, happy to see them intact. Walking between trolley tracks, crossing streets without even watching for the few oncoming cars and buses, she found herself in front of the
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hospital where her aunt worked. She remembered it, they had brought Nicky there years before when she helped him break his arm.
C H A P T E R
Athens Garden plots
flowering bushes chrysanthemums
and stately trees surrounded
the hospital which seemed to be much larger than Elena remembered. She stood in front of the gates for a while before entering the front yard, then made her way through the garden slowly, carefully and reached the doctors’ quarters; her legs were shaking. It must be hunger, she thought.
Popi opened the door of her room and almost passed out. She looked at her niece with unbelieving eyes. Is it possible, her foggy mind asked, that this awfully dirty, disheveled and unkempt bag of bones with curls be her little niece Elena? Why didn’t anyone forewarn her? It was her, she was wearing glasses; Holding on to the door, Popi recognized the wrinkly smile. Elena, knowing her aunt from experience and not wanting to see her hit the floor again, dropped her suitcase and steadied her while hugging her. She had not changed, not even aged, she thought, she had always been old! “You chose the worse time to come,” Popi said admitting her niece into the room she shared with another doctor who was her friend from their student days.
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Elena wanted to ask a few questions, like where she was to sleep because there were only two beds in the room for the two women, but before she opened her mouth her aunt took her to the window and pointed down the Avenue where throngs of people were marching almost noiselessly to the center of Athens. “Keep away from all that,” she warned her. “For as long as I remember,” Elena said in order to say something, “there has never been a ‘proper’ time for me to do something right! So I am here, there was no way to let you know, to warn you; we found a chance, I left, just as you did, only with my uncle’s blessings,” she added mischievously. Popi laughed then she showed her the bathroom to wash and change. That done, she took her around to introduce her to the rest of the staff going as far as the second floor where new mothers recuperated from the ordeal of labor, bypassing the Operating Room. Later that night after their hasty meal, when they were alone in the room, Elena was literally half asleep before hitting the pillow. “Listen,” her aunt said, and Elena forced her eyes open. “Until you learn how to speak properly again like the rest of the people around you, don’t open your mouth except to say yes, no, thank you. And, another; you’ll be sleeping in my bed until we find something better, don’t worry about me, I’ll sleep upstairs.”
Elena listened motionless, unbelieving, not fully understanding what
she was cautioned about since she was always careful not to overdo it when speaking to strangers. Curled in her blanket feeling the warmth envelop her, numbing her brain into nothingness in the darkness, she thought she heard what was probably advice, possibly recommendation or disapproval. It also bothered her that her aunt was to sleep away from her bed but she had never managed to contradict her aunt, she thought. Meanwhile, Popi continued the lecture on her
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niece’s idiomatic speech: “...you accent identifies the island you came from; a girl from the backwoods. I, a native, never spoke like that, how did you manage to be one of them in such a short time...” Elena knew; she didn’t need to hear more, soon she was asleep! In the morning she vaguely remembered patches of the night’s warnings, but she didn’t deem it worth bringing it up again. She, alone, knew how important it was to adopt the peculiar local idioms of the language simply for survival reasons when she did; she had to belong. For the same reasons, she figured, she would lose it now. The shouts of crowds passing in front of the hospital, cries and slogans coming from Academia’s Avenue drew her to the window; the crowds were much larger than the day before, the marching lines were endless, young and old with placards; they gave out leaflets and yelled slogans, marching to the center of the city, unending waves of humanity. The hours passed but towards noon something happened, she heard shots, crowds running, some dispersed, angry cries ‘killers’, ‘murderers’ in the waves of cold air. The Avenue was chaotic! Popi was in the operating room
when someone shouted the news. ‘They killed them! They killed
four students in front of the Old Palace;’ Elena was afraid to venture outside. Her aunt came into the room looking frantic. She pushed her niece forcefully away from the window slamming it shut. “Keep away from that window,” she panted, “I have warned you and don’t even think of walking out of this room”. Same story, different situation, Elena thought. It must be my destiny. She wanted to look outside, maybe she would find out what’s
going on, why the demonstrations. No use asking, she is panicky and
having a fit Elena decided. She ate the beans her aunt brought from the hospital kitchen and then sat on the bed silently, with nothing to do, not a book around,
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not a soul to talk to. The hospital’s grounds with the flowers and the trees were out of bounds for her. “Stray bullets,” Popi said and the subject was closed.
December 3rd, 1944. The radio announced the day’s casualties: Twenty-eight dead and 100 wounded. Before the day passed, the dreadful events had justified her aunt’s gloomy outlook and dire warnings. The demonstrations, somewhat subdued but involving hundreds of thousands of people from Athens and Piraeus, had turned deadly.
December 4th, 1944. According to the radio there were 100 more dead during the Day’s march which was organized in protest yesterday’s killings;
many more were
wounded. Mr. Scoby announced that Athens and Piraeus were under Martial Law. In the days that followed more shooting, killing and shelling kept the people in panic. After that, all hell broke lose. Masses of people marched from morning to night for days. They were killed even trying to bury the dead. The protests were directed Against the provisional Greek government which insisted on keeping the collaborators armed, in command and shooting at the demonstrators at will. The British, who not only kept their tanks in the streets but had placed their artillery on critical vantage points around Athens, did nothing. The demonstrators were not armed, nor were they obnoxious or destructive; they sang and marched, families, mothers, children, youth hoping to be heard, to convince the Provisional Government, somehow to find peaceful solutions to their demands not to disarm the resistance army while the Security men of the Nazi collaborators, the Greek S.S. held on to theirs, supposedly to ‘protect’ the country from communism.’ Marching was the
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only means they had to get the attention of and send messages to the ‘big powers’ of the world, but instead of help and understanding or justice, they faced more British troops who, for the second time, or was it more, in the century, did whatever it was they knew how
to do best: divide and conquer!
Elena was at a loss. That wasn’t, what she expected from liberation, a civil war developing in front of her eyes. She couldn’t see the street, let alone walk outside; the University was closed; one way or another the entire country was paralyzed, not only the two large cities. Athens, the outskirts, entire neighborhoods, were shelled mercilessly; they were left without gas, electricity and all means of communication; everything was shut off ,people lived their terror behind barricades. In the hospital, doctors, nurses, most of the personnel were stranded with no way to get home if they wanted to stay alive; they were desperately needed at the hospital, anyway;
the ambulances and stretchers were
making the rounds and depositing casualties all day, mostly innocent, unarmed civilians, unarmed, injured or killed during the cease-fire hour at noon. The ‘cease-fire’ had been agreed on by both fighting sides but there were more victims during that hour. It was something like adding insult to injury, so Hypocritical, Elena thought. Allowing the people one hour as if the food and fuel we all enjoy as signs of peace and civilized living, were accessible. Many, believing in the ethics of ‘cease-fire’ ventured out only to end up dead or injured by stray bullets. Eventually the marchers dwindled and demonstrations stopped but the war was on; those who had arms were shooting. Alone and frightened, Elena sat around all day or tried to be useful; how come, she reasoned, the ‘brains’ of this world couldn’t understand what I, an underage person can analyze: war is stupid. It’s murderous and theatrical from the beginning of time. An archduke was murdered in
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Yugoslavia and that precipitated a massive extermination of humanity, World War I. A nut wanted to annihilate all non-Aryans and whole populations and countries followed his murderous stupidity, to another massive extermination of what was left standing from World War I; World War II! What will bring on the third one, I wonder? Now, we are killing each other, which means
that Germany hasn’t lost the
war if the forces they left behind continue to fight and exterminate the forces that resisted them within the cities and in the mountains. I think I’ll drop Medicine and study History instead, Elena began thinking while she gathered dry twigs in the garden to make a fire. She was told that an operation that couldn’t wait for the cease-fire, was pending, and the instruments had to be ‘sterilized’; in other words, boiled for thirty minutes.. She was afraid and ducked whenever she heard the ominous whistling of mortar shells; she knew she could not avoid bullets if one was aimed at her, so she tried to stay hidden in the bushes and away from the tell-tale of the smoke as the instruments were being sterilized. She thanked her stars for the perennial bushes, except that soon it began to snow. Sure, she thought, what else now? Snowfall, rare in Athens. . . now that we have no heat we need snow? She murmured. No, she changed her mind again, studying History will make me more upset and a bookworm on top of it, anyway, millions of other historians must have studied, analyzed and taught the stupidity, they don’t need another. No, I better stick to Medicine, I can help. I’ll join Dr. Schweitzer in Africa. At least my life will not be wasted behind dry walls or studying
military idiocies and waste of humanity... Maria, the jolly, round
cleaning woman crossed the garden towards the main entrance carrying her long mop and a bucket. “I’m glad it’s snowing,” she said picking up her bucket, “now everything won’t look so bleak...” it was the last thing Elena remembered
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hearing.
Elena looked around her trying to identify the area: She was on a stretcher in the When she came to, she was on a stretcher; she looked about her and realized she was in the outpatient emergency section; she remembered she was sterilizing instruments and for a few seconds trying to remember what she did with them. She heard her aunt groan, My God, she is hurt. . . she was hysterical, sitting on the floor next to her. “Am I dead?” She asked more to her herself and Popi was alerted; She shook her head, no. “Injured?” Again, no. She half raised herself on her elbows but felt dizzy and lay down again. “Why are you crying then?” She wanted to know what happened; it was the mortar that didn’t whistle, she was told. You don’t hear the one that’s going to hit you, you are lucky! “Then why am I here?” For observation, she was told. The shell that fell nearby had blasted her out of her place into the bushes. Nothing was wrong, she had just lost conscience. Maria, the middle aged cleaning woman, wasn’t so lucky, dead center! A young orderly lost part of his foot. She was trembling; the idea that she came so close to death once more and she escaped, had began to make her feel ‘protected’ in a weird sort of way. At least, she thought, I didn’t know, I didn’t feel or heard it coming, what a blessing.
When it happened again two days later, she knew. It was in the face of a young thug, one of six, armed by the Nazis who entered the hospital and took over. One
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came to the GYN wing and ordered everyone outside, staff and patients, as they were; all babies were thankfully left in the nursery but with no attendant. Some of the women had just given birth; the nurses and doctors carried them downstairs and out into the yard wrapped in
blankets. The young man held a machine gun in
his right hand, a revolver in his left and a rifle was hanging from his shoulder. He wasn’t joking as he was going around ‘interrogating’ importantly, accusing, yelling.
Elena, shivered
in the cold. Around her snowflakes danced unaware of
the drama; she was scared out of her wits as she looked at the young man wondering why her; does this happen to all girls my age? His attitude scared her, it was that of a madman, she had seen them when they came to her island’s Saint Expecting a miracle or a cure. She avoided looking his way, much less meet his eyes after he shot in the head one of their young student nurses, almost Elena’s age, for talking back. He was accusing her of being a communist because she wouldn’t divulge the names of members of her youth resistance organization. She told him that she
couldn’t possibly know, there were six hundred thousand of
them and that was the last thing she said. After that, death hovered above them. While Elena in deep shock watched the two red rivulets trickle from the girl’s temple down to the
narrow cement sidewalk where her head lay on to the path, the
man approached her; it was obvious she didn’t belong there, she wasn’t neither a patient or a member of the staff. He asked name and occupation and her aunt rushed to tell him that she was a student. “Aha,” he decided, “a student of communism. I. D.” left.”
“What I.D.?” Elena asked. “I tore
it up after the Germans
She received his powerful fist in the face. “What school?” He asked
again. Her nose was bleeding, it was obvious that she was to be the next one, the thought paralyzed her. Again her aunt interfered. “She just arrived from the
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island just a few days ago to go to the University, she doesn’t have papers yet,” she said. “We’ll see about that. Luggage?” She pointed to the clinic with her chin, unable to speak. “Let’s go!” he ordered and followed her to the room. As she opened the door to the clinic she glanced at the ashen face of her aunt whose white robe and medical I.D. hadn’t helped any. Inside the room she didn’t have the strength to drag the suitcase from under the bed, she pointed it out to him knowing that if he opened it, she would be drawing her last breath. Along with her High School diploma and other papers was the condemning
paper, a death
warrant: the travel Permit the Police of the Liberation Forces had issued her, a pass declaring her a minor of ‘good standing’. God, she prayed, don’t let him find that! That ‘good standing’, meaning ‘a nice girl,’ ‘a good girl,’ can be my death. I hope my aunt and my uncle are happy now that I’m to die because I am a good girl! The man had killed a girl for no reason, what would stop him after he saw the paper, the evidence, she thought sadly. She closed her eyes sending her last thoughts to her mother, to ask her forgiveness for the pain she was to inflict upon her. She didn’t open her eyes when she heard the butt of his rifle smashing the suitcase, she only wondered why he carrying
machine gun, rifle and
the little pistol with which he had killed the girl. He could kill everyone with just one of them, she reasoned. Suddenly, her sad thoughts were interrupted by and then she heard strange little noises, like cooing, the chirping babies make in the nursery upstairs at feeding time. She opened her eyes. Little pink mice scampered around the room, crazed like the armed man, seeking corners, screeching as they scattered here and there in fast little legs, seeking refuge, making sing-song noises. “The papers,” he commanded, “give me the papers.” On her knees, she looked
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at her clothes, her stomach turning, wondering how in the world could a mouse do so much damage in the few days she hadn’t opened the valise. Then her breath stopped for a few seconds, she didn’t know if it was from joy or a premonition of death. Every bit of paper, including the bottom of the suitcase, had been chewed and were now a little mount of confetti made into a cozy nest for those babies! Her High School Diploma, the letters of recommendation to the University, her girlfriends’ little sentimental poems on their separation, (“What is Love?”, “What is Friendship”? )her mother’s pre-war photograph, an icon...No signs of the ‘death
warrant’! She lifted her head to him expecting a bullet. His eyes were
crazy, he pushed her on the floor, ‘Oh, dear God, spare me,’ she thought, ‘not that, let me die, instead’, and then he kicked her face with his boot smashing her glasses. She was afraid to open her eyes, afraid that he was still there above her, maybe undressing, afraid of what she would see, afraid that she was blind. She heard the door slam, was he in, or out? Once more, in less than four months, the opening or closing of a door was a life or death decision. When she opened her eyes, the room was empty. She groped for her glasses, they were beyond repair. Now, she thought, the glasses again. How am I going to replace them? Her head ached and her face was swollen but she was alive. Sitting on the cold floor she cried in the dark silence until she had no more tears.
(FROM ELENA’S DIARY) Christmas, 1944- When we came to Greece I brought with me a memory of Santa Claus; gradually, only shreds of far away thoughts remained because of lack of re-enforcement. No one knew Santa in Greece. Here, people celebrate the
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birth of Christ, they visit, go to church and sing carols. Presents are exchanged on
New Year’s Day. Needless to say during the war all holidays
were on a standstill but stayed alive in our innermost thoughts. Still, Christmas is the holiest of holidays, one when all hate is eradicated and peace reigns, (or should). Of course, ‘peace’ did not apply during the war except in everyone’s wishes and in my most treasured hopes. Throughout the horrors life had in store for us, I kept Santa in my secret thoughts hoping that one day I’ll find Him, even in
myth. Same as I had hoped to resurrect
all those who died or were killed leaving me to mourn; they had taken some part of my heart and body with them. It wasn’t that I had delusions, I just had to find a way to keep them alive, and now I know I will write about them so the whole world will know. Santa does not need me to keep him alive, but the others, the unsung victims, do!
I will be a writer! If I
get out of this new adventure alive, I’ll spend the rest of my life doing that. As long as my mother doesn’t find out. I will be what I will be -she wants to see a ‘degree’- but I owe something to those who didn’t make it (assuming that I do, if I do, when I do get out of this besieged hospital, city, country or whatever and my diary still holds because that, too, is in tatters!) This moment, this hour of midnight, the world is celebrating Christ’s birth, the beginning of an era of Peace and Love, the holiest of the Holidays when hate is eradicated and Peace reigns. In many countries fireworks still aren’t bursts of joy in the skies, but death. Here we are ‘liberated’! The lights in the sky are watched in awe and terror hoping we aren’t the target. Whoever they are aiming for, they mean death and destruction. We are killing each other and what hurts more, we are doing
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that in the name of Christ, just as Mussolini and Hitler had done, or the Crusaders with their military expeditions some eons ago; they, too, plundered, burned cities and annihilated populations in the name of Christ! If I say this aloud to my mother, she’ll skin me alive. My mother! My mind goes to the island and I wonder where she and Nicky are tonight; does Mama know that I ache for her as I write this in the little weak, flickering light of a candle, that I am scared and can’t sleep because of all the thunder of cannons outside which means that this minute someone has just died, this very second! Upstairs women, those who had the insight to come to the hospital before roads were closed, are giving birth with a lot of pain and screaming, and outside they pick up victims in the street in the darkness. What contradiction! Lives on a chess board; inside life begins, outside life ends, what curse is this? I wonder how the after-war history writers will deal with this mess. As always, they’ll call it the ‘necessity of the times,’ or politics; ‘sanity’ will prevail I guess, they are not going to listen to someone like me. A little while ago I overheard two doctors talking as they drank their watered tea sitting on the cold stone steps; I gave up my eavesdropping soon, I couldn’t understand what they were saying and they confused me. The way they interpret war is different from the way I see it, close to me, touching me. People are so used to war that this sanity is expected to be forgiven and understood. Well, I DO NOT! Only there is no one I can ask. For the doctors I’m just a kid who should look after her studies and stop asking silly questions and let the adults deal with them (the subject isn’t silly for the adults, of course, adults created it in the first place!) I wanted to tell them to take a look at the
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world and show me the ‘adult’ way with which they had solved the world’s problems up to now, but war is usually the ends to justify the means! As for Aunt Popi, it’s no use, she looks at me as if I just landed from Mars. Tonight is Christmas Eve and I am not in a celebrating mood, I rather feel like mourning. Even with the foreign brutal occupation the bells would ring, their presence gave us hope. I always thought that one day, as soon as we are liberated, maybe next year, I’ll be out with friends at a party on a night like this. I miss going to a party, wearing pretty clothes, listening to music, dancing! I can dream, can’t I? Never mind the darkness outside and the shooting. It is now ominously dark, but I’d rather see darkness because a light crossing the window panes might mean a ’whistling’ mortar flying by, one I didn’t hear. If the lightning is followed by thunder, (a blast), I know it went someplace else. Does this make it any more palatable? It means more dead and, unfortunately, we are getting accustomed to the idea and that is the most tragic aspect of all wars, getting desensitized. It’s fallacy to say that wars are fought by ‘men’ in some ‘front’! The real victims of any war are the women and children, the innocent people in villages and towns; the real ‘front’ is everyone’s home. This morning, a young woman was taking a dead young man in a wheelbarrow to the morgue across from the hospital. His head was on his side almost severed, and a pair of binoculars with the strap still around the bloody remnants of his neck, were resting in a pool of blood on his chest. The young woman marched, not walked or ran, to the morgue, on step with the resistance song she was singing. I was afraid that if someone heard her, she would have no more chances to mourn for him. I didn’t know if I should
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cry or scream, call her a hero or a fool. How could I? I would do the same, I suppose. A few people walked by without paying too much attention to this all too common drama. Every corner of this beautiful, ancient city, hides a trigger-happy fool on the ready. Now they are heroes? Is this the way to celebrate the birth of Christ? And why do I think that this is a special Christmas, do I forget Christmas of 1940, or 41, 42, 43?
War, occupation, cold, hunger, arrests,
resistance, prisons, executions, beatings... now it hits me? It must be anticipation going sour on me, or sudden realization that since the world is going round and round, it’s got to return to the same point again, maybe to pick up the baggage it left in one of its previous points of departure, if there ever was a beginning. Maybe one day humans will reach the moon; I’ll be the first to emigrate. Actually, I hope we don’t get to the moon; we will probably treat it the way we are treating this poor earth, blasting it to hell. This Christmas could very well be my last. I try to think logically, write hopeful things, nice dreams before the candle gives out; this specie that has inherited the earth was probably meant to destroy or enslave all that stood in our way. In the process, we kill all we don’t understand, or don’t like for whatever the reason, including each other. So, maybe one day we will awake to find that there is not one more human to exterminate. Then, we will commit suicide. Because by then all we were endowed with, brain, voice, humanity, would have been eradicated. (I will try to write this fictional hypothesis some day, if I remember. Still, we live, eat, sleep, proliferate, love, lie; people built the Pyramids and the Parthenon, Homer
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wrote the ‘Odyssey and the ‘Iliad’ and Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet. Dynamite was invented, electricity, radio, telephone, airplanes aspirins and submarines. We had our masters of art and masters of destruction. Now, while we are accumulating wealth, properties, the perennial marauders, us, plunder nations, erase civilizations; populations are starving and we greedily accumulate fortunes when we know that we are ‘mortals’, that one day, in one second, our lives will be snuffed out, one way or another. We are gone!
Do we hear the nice eulogies sang over our freshly dug graves?
Do we feel the freshness of the sprinkled Holy Water, do we really care if the priest sends us to rest among ‘the spirits of the just’? Round and round it goes and what in the world is happening to me tonight, of all nights, I can’t understand. The candle is down to its last yellow melting tear, my aunt has to spend the night in the O.R. and I miss my mother, even are hungry and if there is fighting in the island,
Nicky, and worry if they no one knows. This
hospital has very limited food supplies, the Red Cross cannot cross the line of fire easily. Ha, ha! Cannot cross - The R E D
C R O S S!”
Christmas morning, 1944. I awoke not with church bells but with severe shelling; now I really know first hand what ’combat’ means: shelling, right next to us, noise, cannons. I found out why: Mr. Churchill arrived with Mr. Eden, his Foreign Minister to confer with their chief of operations in Greece, Mr. Scoby, about ending the civil war, a curse that they have initiated; of all the hypocritical fiascoes! I believe that all this insane blasting outside is a salute to his ‘grace’! It is a real raging war with
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sirens, blasts, bazookas. Tanks roam the Avenue and British planes are shelling the neighborhoods up north, where I grew up. I sneaked into the nurses’ room when no one was about and from the window I saw the planes. I cried then; I haven’t cried when they bombed us in the island because I knew they were trying, at least, ‘trying’ to destroy the enemy. But the same allies, our ‘friends’, are shelling our homes, and it makes me sick with grief. Meanwhile, as we hear, because there is no newspaper, Mr. Churchill and company are staying at the luxurious sheltered hotel on Constitution Square safe, warm and well fed, planning
strategic actions,
finishing up their cocktails while trying to force those ‘incorrigible’ Greeks
to behave! How proud Mr. Scoby must be with the powerful show, the
onslaught he put on for his boss, destroying the city, a thing even the Nazis didn’t try. How many mothers are screaming in agony picking up pieces of dead children in the street! Haven’t they done enough, what more evil can they inflict on this miserable land. I wish I could tell Mr. Churchill a few things, like ask
him to remember the day, not very long ago when the
Greeks were getting butchered winning his war; the whole world heard his speech on the radio: “…the Greeks don’t fight like heroes; it is the heroes who fight like Greeks…” A fine thank you note, this misery! Now he’s got tanks in the streets shooting at the ‘heroes’ after the sacrifices this small, insignificant country had undergone for ‘his’ war and his fat cigar.
January l, 1945 - Happy New Year Elena! Take heart! This is a New Year, it will not always be so dark, so cold, so empty. It’s snowing outside, I am hungry, but I don’t tell my aunt, there are people dying here, children are
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hurt, mothers don’t have milk for the newborn and casualties are brought in without stopping. I should talk? I smile to everyone and keep my mouth shut according to my aunt’s wishes until I lose my accent. I wish every one Happy New Year, and keep my thoughts to
myself. But a little while ago the
lady doctor who shares my aunt’s room (now I share it, too) gave me the most valuable present: a whole bunch of writing paper, prescription paper actually, yellow but who cares. Funny, now that I have the paper to write all night, I have no light. “Strange is Life!” The lady is a good obstetrician, as they say, kind and loved by patients and doctors alike. I feel for her these days because her eyes are red from lack of sleep and from crying because she hasn’t heard from her family for weeks. They live in a village in Northern Greece where fighting is raging. Today, the first week of the year I had so hoped for, I’m hiding like a mole to save myself from my ‘saviors’! Strange, or maybe not so strange, after Mr. Churchill left the shelling of the outer areas slowed down, the artillery was silent, and the tanks were rather invisible; we breathed a bit. They say that negotiations are to start soon. Still, I see no light in the horizon and I’m scared. I should have stayed in the
island. The
shelling began again in the afternoon, there are planes over our heads and who knows if the pilots are aware of where they drop their death. Mr. Scoby announced on the radio that “...today our Navy had discharged two thousand shells...”
February 16, 1945. The shelling stopped some weeks ago; we have, the dead are buried and we are still in mourning, it doesn’t mean much. An invisible
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pall covers the city like a sheath of pain, fear is intensified, terror from unseen sources. I don’t know what we gained from killing each other in the city of Athens for 33 days and nights of siege except blood, graves, hate and a split country. At least we still have a country because after World War l the then world leaders offered the Greek Dodecanese Islands in the Aegean Sea to Italy as a gift maybe because Italy, not an Ally, was defeated. Greece was an ally, not a foe and still it lost its islands and other parts, a punishment in reverse. Why couldn’t those leaders of the international community give them some of their own islands? Those islands still belong to Italy today, and Italy is defeated for the second time this century. That’s why I am scared today. I’m afraid that the Allies may convince the Greek ‘government’ those so-called politicians, to offer another group of islands to console the poor Axis forces for losing the war! God, how difficult it has become to understand high politics. I was much better when I hadn’t heard of politicians and their code of after-thewar-existence and ‘love’ between nations. I still tend to interpret the word ‘polis’ as it was meant by the ancient Greeks who invented the word to mean city, thus politics, affairs of the city, and politicians those who cared for the city.
We heard from the island yesterday; they know what has occurred here, the killing in a war they can’t understand; of course, they are frantic. I don’t understand this ‘civil’ war and I’m in it. Maybe I don’t want to. I haven’t been able to
write in my diary for a few weeks and have no excuse
because now I have paper; it’s just that I find it hard to rationalize the
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unthinkable, to put things together the way those ‘leaders’ do. The warring sides are still discussing terms; we have some kind of provisional government stationed in some country in the Middle East, not so ‘representative, I heard. There was an Amnesty Agreement, the Liberation Army surrendered their arms and within a month, after more demonstrations, bloodless, thank God, one by one, the terms of the fragile peace, those agreed upon on the cease-fire agreement, were violated. The Nazi groups, organized and armed by the SS’s Special Forces, the ‘X’ organizations, aren’t giving up their arms, while
the men of the Liberation Army, E.L.A.S
who had hoped to return home to pick up where they left off, gave up theirs only to find themselves arrested, terrorized, persecuted, jailed and at times assassinated, exiled. It was the same mess all over again and what I feared most is being whispered: the
partisans are arming themselves again
and taking to the mountains, an extended civil war is being hatched. What chance do they have, rifles against tanks and war planes and heavy artillery? Rather than face jail or execution by cowards they, who helped free the country, will die free, and that brings up the question, why? For what? For whom? I just hope and pray that this is all hearsay, or just a nightmare from which I hope to awake soon. My life has been and on going march of misery and nightmares these past few years, I’m sure everyone else’s, too.
April 12, 1945 – Just when I began to think that the worst is over and hoped the world is going back to normal and after international conferences and a United Nations which was organized in San Francisco, unexpected news
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reached us today. I was sitting on the front steps of the University with a few hundred hopeful would-be students, enjoying the sun and the newest song coming from the radio of the cafe across the street -one of the very few on the Avenue- something about the ‘green eyes with the blue lids’, whatever we could hear amid the din of the trolleys and the buses and the people and peddlers who never cease passing, talking, yelling. Suddenly, there was a void; the song, the noise, stopped abruptly giving way to a deathly silence very similar to the one of another April day in 1941, that Sunday morning when I was going to church, and the radio told the world that German tanks and Nazi forces were crossing the Greek borders. The American President, Mr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt has suddenly died! N O W? We looked around us for someone to say that it was a joke -some joke!- A man we, in our innocence believed immortal and just, suddenly changed his mind and left us. A
hush fell on the city. The radio kept repeating the announcement and
streetcars, buses and cars slowed down to listen. People stood still as one stands when a funeral goes by. The worst part was that no one could offer an opinion, say something, cry out. Shock, until someone ventured “...they did him in” and he was almost lynched. I think of my mother, should I write to tell her? They must have radios in the island by now; I don’t want to be the one to bring such news, especially because Mr. Roosevelt’s photograph stayed here in Athens with the rest of our belongings and she won’t be able to talk to him. The radio said that another President was sworn in, I didn’t catch his name, but Mr. Roosevelt
was connected with the war effort
and we all wondered what implications his death might bring forth in such delicate times. That remains to be seen, because every time one president
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dies or gets killed in Greece the land goes haywire. It took some time for the traffic to start again and the numb people to begin moving. On the steps we were all silent. Suddenly, there was commotion on the side street; policemen were running after people with raised clubs, students and other people were scampering about, but someone was being beaten by the police, I got up to see and to my horror, I saw Magda, a schoolmate from the island; she was the one beaten. I got up to run to her but someone’s hands pulled me back and onto the steps again. ‘You don’t understand,’ I cried, ‘she is my friend from school.’ He held me back. ‘You go there,’ he said, ‘and you are a dead student before you become a student.’ ‘But she hasn’t done anything, she is a wonderful girl’. ‘She was distributing leaflets before,’ he said. ‘So?’ ‘We are not allowed. I’ll show you the leaflet after they leave.’ The police left, the scene was cleared, the crowd, too. Blood had tainted the street, not much, but enough to give me a picture of what is awaiting us. I don’t
know where they took
Magda. He told me the story of a demonstration on the same Avenue not even two years before, he remembered the day, July 22, 1943, during a march of about four hundred thousands demonstrators from Athens and Piraeus when Germans tanks attacked challenging them. A young Greek-American girl moved against the tank to confront the German. Unfortunately, the German wasn’t that friendly and shot her. A schoolmate of hers ran to her aid and seeing her dead she, too, tried to attack the tank!! She was shot. Two girls on the Avenue, under a German tank, covered by their flags.
Panagiota
Stathopoulou, the girl who was born in Philadelphia, U.S.A. and her Athenian friend Koula Lili.
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“Let’s go,’ the young man finally said shaking me out of my mournful reverie; what a thing to remember...I had read about the fate of the two girls some months back but not details. We turned the corner, the trolleys weren’t running. The young man –for he was that in my eyes, not a boy anymore, - I forgot to ask his name- took a piece of paper from his pocket. It was an invitation to a reading of poetry by a young, upcoming poet. ‘She was beaten for that!’ he said. ‘But why? It’s poetry, not politics.’ ‘He is Ritsos, a communist, they say, we are warned not to go, you friend had different views.’ We were our ways. I must register and begin thinking of my future; I also must be careful who I speak to and where I go! Mama and Nicky will eventually come to Athens as soon as Nicky is finished with this grade which will be in June; I’ll have to wait for the University to open its doors, it’s right across from the hospital. Aunt Popi has moved back to her rented room in the suburbs and I have to go with her every day because she is afraid to leave me alone any place. I wish she would because I like her neighborhood, they have gardens and woods of pine trees. Here, in the center of Athens, the shelled houses and the mortar-dotted walls speak of war and I believe
I can still smell
gun-powder whenever I turn a corner.”
August 10, 1945 – A new disaster called ‘atom bomb’ would soon end the war or wars for ever, they told me. The news came as a hurricane approaching a clear blue sky. I wonder what this ‘atom bomb’ is; it’s a Greek word –not the Bomb-, ‘atom’ means ‘one’, something that cannot be split, like a person, I am an atom, unsplittable [a-tomo], but how does that exterminate
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hundreds of thousands of people in a few seconds, with one bomb? Was that a mistake, both times? Was it in Science’s name or part of the war game? People getting burned by the hundreds of thousands; Hitler didn’t dare do it, maybe it’s something so secret that no one had known about, but how could the Americans drop it on innocent people? Maybe they tried to outdo Hitler’s concentration
camps? After all, some people escape his crematoria
but no one escape the Hiroshima and Nagasaki holocaust. I feel such shame I would like to hide in shame. How will I face that country when the time comes for me to return? I guess the same way I face everything insane and murderous that happens around me since I remember myself. Every evil is justified or excused, celebrated, as long as more lives can be sacrificed to the altar of the beast-God named ‘war’. Yesterday’s newspapers did not enlighten me and today’s explanation makes less sense but for the incomprehensible number of people scorched to death in the most horrible way, in the two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What did the children, their mothers and the old people do to enrage the Americans so? In the hospital’s garden an old man sitting on a bench was reading the Akropolis newspaper. He was reading to himself aloud and I thought that he was deaf, or just very old. ‘They are testing new weapons’ he said and he repeated it. Then he saw me standing in front of him trying to understand what he was talking about and smiled. ‘The war is surely going to end now,’ he told me, ‘the newspaper says so. I hope they enjoy their bloody peace!’”
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C H A P T E R
The Family is back Popi found
a one room ‘apartment’ just before her sister and nephew arrived.
It was one room in somebody’s front yard, large enough with use of a kitchen and a bathroom of sorts at the end of the back yard, shared by three families; it was situated in the same neighborhood they had left four years before. The street wasn’t too devastated compared to some other in the neighborhood that either had their front blown off of were leaning precariously, or were totally destroyed. The trees had also suffered the madness of the allies. In July, when they arrived, apartments were scarce and expensive; Greek money was not issued yet, English currency was used and with galloping inflation, that made things messier. Most of the furnishings they had left four years before when they went to the island were lost. The man in whose warehouse they had left their household had died and in the process of closing up shop and warehouse his wife managed to rescue some items because she had no idea what the furnishings consisted of. “Nothing can be done about it, ”Anna said philosophically, “at least we have the beds, some chairs and a table. Most importantly, we are alive! Things can only get better, the war is over, life will be normal again someday.” She had reasons to doubt it but she wanted her children no to lose their courage and enthusiasm. “Meanwhile there are schools to be dealt with, first things, first,” she added triumphantly. They had to re-establish communications with the American Embassy so that the veteran father’s pension checks will start coming to them once again.
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Until schools opened, Elena had some freedom of movement she hadn’t enjoyed for years; she made friends, she was allowed to visit but, of course, her mother was constantly on her back. “I trust you,” she would tell her, “it’s the others I don’t trust.” “Nicky’s friends are the same ‘others’,” Elena would answer back tossing her long hair defiantly. But Anna
would have none of this. She was now
looking at a different daughter, a defying one and was afraid and at a loss. That, she surmised, happens when a girl lives away from her mother for a long time. “Nicky is a boy!” she decided expecting another blast from her daughter, but Elena smiled and walked away without a word, why argue? Nothing changes, she thought sadly. Nicky is a boy and the next generation will bring more ‘boys’ and all mothers are afflicted with the same male obsession. What if she, too, would one day be a mother like that; if it’s cultural, ethnic, she could change it for herself without any problem, but what if that was genetic? She had no idea how those things worked. Still, curfew was at sunset, not that she had time for anything else that summer. She spent her mornings at the British Academy to recapture the language she had forgotten, and her afternoons with her French teacher, God forbid that she would forget French, her mother wouldn’t have it, though she had told Elena that in America they didn’t speak French. But, Anna added, it’s good education and you never know when you will have to use it. She allowed Elena to walk on the Avenue with her girlfriends after her homework was finished and before darkness, when, she imagined, the girls would be ‘doing their flirting.’ Once home, she studied more. Nicky was a senior and Elena faced some complications at the University at registration time, because the photograph of the emaciated
girl on her High School diploma did not look anything like the
young girl who after one year of somewhat decent eating had began to look her
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age. For the sake of propriety, they asked her to update the diploma with a 1945 photograph. Lucky for her and strangely enough for the Greek bureaucracy and the stalwart educational system, the new diploma was received promptly. To her great relief she was accepted in the University and enrolled without any more difficulties. Her complicated program did not allow any more English classes and eventually she had to drop French as well. Meanwhile the country was preparing for general elections among great problems. The problem of the King’s supposedly scheduled return, rekindled century-old disputes and animosities, at times bloody. An
uneasy feeling was in the air, the mountains were gaining more
partisans, in the cities there were demonstrations, arrests, court-martials and gang wars in the name either of politics or God and country or patriotism, or anti-communism, but it seemed that guns were plentiful enough for Anna to be scared.
Abandoning the University and the scholastic future of her children, Anna succumbed to the American Embassy’s request and signed the necessary papers to be repatriated with her children against their wishes. “I will not repeat the stupid thing I did back in 1941, I’ve learned my lesson; one war is too many, and for me it wasn’t the first war. This time, we go! Elena’s pleas to let her to finish the second semester, at least, were not heeded, Anna was adamant. “There is a ‘real’, bloody civil war brewing, mark my words,” she told them, “and I want OUT!” It was a beautiful March morning in 1946 when they boarded the military ship. Anna knowing beforehand that as long as she was in a ship she would be sick, risking that for the safety of her children, Elena hurt and inconsolable
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for leaving school, and Nicky happy that he didn’t have to end his senior year. “The war was over for us,” Anna said.
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P A R T
III
America I really
can’t remember what I expected to find in the land of my birth. I
know I landed with the arrogance of youth, pseudo-courage and ambitions that I did not possess, but hopeful, nevertheless. The tall brick houses of Washington Heights, dark and unfriendly with ugly fire escapes depressed me; what a contrast with Athens bathed in sunlight white, full of marbles and song, “. . .and bullets”, my mother added. ‘Can one eat marbles?’ She asked wisely. The very first day we landed, almost as soon as the taxi unloaded our baggage to her apartment, the aunt we never knew existed, my father’s cousin’s wife, took my mother out shopping. Nicky went with them but I stayed
to report
to my diary that I neglected in the last days of the voyage. “We are going,” the aunt said. “If anyone rings the bell ask ‘who is it’, she warned me, “ better yet, don’t answer.” Ten minutes after they left, someone did ring the bell and I wanted to be an ‘American’, so I asked: ’who is it?’ “The exterminator”, the
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raspy voice answered. I was terrified. I knew the meaning of the word all too well; the man had come to kill me, to exterminate me, and me, not even twentyfour hours here! My mother was right, here people kill in broad daylight without waiting for a war, in your own home yet! I glued myself on the wall behind the door trying not to breathe, afraid that if he meant to kill me, he might break the door down. That’s where they found me when Mom and my aunt
returned not
noticing my terror; my aunt burst out laughing when she heard my story
and
explained to me that the man was a roaches exterminator. I didn’t even know that roaches survived in this ultra rich country. But this seemingly unimportant incidence made me wonder if I will ever manage to learn again all the little everyday nuances of daily existence; command the language which I first spoke in a way to be understood and not to fall in another trap such as the roaches exterminator. How many tricks a language hides, I thought; but I was determined to overcome any difficulty, to learn the tricks. This, I said to myself,
then,
is the first and last time I fell prey to my ignorance! (It wasn’t!)
A few days later we boarded the train for Washington, the city Nicky and I were born, where my father’s older brother lived. He waited for us at the train station
in a taxi and hardly said ‘hallo’. “Typical American” my brother
whispered. I kicked him discreetly, we were on the back seat but he could hear us; my brother was right, though. Our uncle was short, wore a white hat and gray gloves and held on to a cane which he didn’t use. Nicky and I did not remember him, but mama knew him well. It surprised me that he never wrote to us, he seemed unimpressed and his coldness left us uninspired for further discussion after the original
cold greeting.
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Soon various members of the Greek community who remembered Mama came to visit and to welcome us. From half truths and half insinuations we learned from various sources that our uncle was indeed strange, cold and snobbish with everyone. The same sources informed us that our uncle was known in the GreekAmerican community as ‘Nick-the-Greek’. “But his name isn’t Nick,” my brother Nicky reacted annoyed with the ‘synonym’. “His brother’s name in Greece is Nicolas.” here; he is
“Well,” the lady enlightened us, “the real ‘Nick the Greek’ isn’t someone big in the same business though, you know... Numbers...
“What numbers?” I asked. “That’s what they call what it is they do; the horses run races, the people bet with numbers, or something like that...” She lost me. “But,” Nicky asked, “why the name?” She was at a loss to answer. “We call him that because he is the only Greek who deals with horse and that business. It sort of gives us a sense of glamour, and he doesn’t mind; I think he likes it.” That ended the discussion but it took time for us to really understand what the whole thing was about. Our uncle kept much to himself, though, he had no close friends in the community and never went to church; the company he kept was strange and we were to understand that his behavior was not all together abnormal. Why should he bother with trivial things, a member of a notorious ‘gang’ running horse races and numbers in three states? Mystery surrounded him like an aura, more mysterious to us who had never heard of such vocations and didn’t understand what they were talking about. Both of us were afraid of him without knowing why. Mama asked him once if he ever married, or had a family but he shrugged and left the question unanswered. Later on we found out from the grapevine that he was indeed married once and his young wife died under suspicious circumstances. We kept it to ourselves.
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We began school with daily classes from eight to three and my uncle dropped us off in the morning on his way to ‘work’; he was chauffeured in a limousine and more often than not we noticed a car following us not always the same one, but
with the same two men in the back and one on the passenger seat.
At regular intervals, when both cars were stopped side by side at the traffic light, my uncle passed a small yellow envelope to the ‘passenger,’ the plainclothes policemen in the unmarked car who were protecting him, he proudly informed us with no mention of the yellow envelope, but we knew.
Learning English was easy enough compared to my efforts to shed the British accent I had acquired during my one year study at the British Academy in Athens. I was quick to adopt accents as Aunt Popi had succinctly had reminded me many times. My uncle took us to a special total immersion two-year, four half-year grades school. The students were mostly foreign embassies’ personnel and their families. I found the work easy and the teachers lenient. Since I was advanced curriculum –wise, but stiff in accent- I jumped from grade to grade and graduated in four months without difficulty except on the one occasion when I asked the teacher to translate a word I read in a ‘serious play’ but I couldn’t find in the dictionary. After I mouthed the “f...” word clearly, a sudden silence filled the room and then a loud laughter, only the teacher
did not laugh, she only asked me
what kind of a play that was and I told her the title of the well known play. “Why don’t you read something more to your level?” She asked unkindly and then without the slightest provocation, as if to vent her anger, she came to my desk and squeezed my cheeks hard telling me: “This is how you say: ‘America’.” She made a deep guttural sound for the letter ‘r’, “not America”. I didn’t
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understand what one thing had to do with the other but I wouldn’t venture another stupid question, I understood that the ‘r’ should not be pronounced like a Greek ‘r’ but more like the British I was trying to get rid of. I didn’t need the Prep School anymore, they told me, I should apply for College but that was scary because I wasn’t all that confident about College. However, I learned quite a few things while I was there, like the British and the Americans really spoke the same language with few variations; it was the pronunciation that baffled me and made me wonder whether the two countries, seemingly
friendly, didn’t still harbor the animosity of the long forgotten
American Revolution. The language took second prominence when I realized to my dismay that in America there were two kinds of people, ‘them’ and ‘us’, ‘us’ being the white race; that came as a shock but I was reluctant to ask questions until I had learned enough not to sound stupid. I had to find out why ‘them’ were treated as if they were a lower specie, or still slaves. In Washington
the children called
the black people niggers, after all. That was the South; the blacks were called “colored” as if that was more civilized. I was offended that the internationally known anthropological word ‘negro’ was mispronounced and though I didn’t know the insult intended, I accepted it as another variation due to the British/American pronunciation differences, but since I always went by the dictionary and the word wasn’t there,
I ‘smelled the coffee’, as they say and the word ‘colored’ never
touched my lips. It was harder to interpret the ‘legal’ definition of the word because to me color
meant art.
Nicky and I were bike riding along the Potomac River afternoons when the weather allowed. Before long we began paying attention to signs posted on the
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bike path, signs we could hardly understand, like, ‘For Whites Only’, or at the fountain, ‘No Dogs or Colored Allowed’. Nicky laughed at that one. “They mean you,” he said. “I am not colored, do you see any paints on me?” I laughed. “No, stupid, I mean the dog part.” I didn’t laugh, I had suddenly realized the true meaning of the word and tried to explain it to my brother; he chose to ignore it just to spite me. “That leaves me out then,” he laughed it off, “I’m blond, you are the dark one, they mean you!” He looked at my face and saw that I wasn’t laughing. “Let’s go home,” he said bluntly and turned the bike around. And I hadn’t told him anything about the book I was reading that
described a lynching in a
near-by town. “I’ll buy you ice cream,” I shouted after him, but he kept going and I met him again at the store where we had rented the bikes. He was sullen and walked out on me. “Anyway, the air stinks!” He shouted and I stood at the door wondering what he meant, what air. Turning around he screwed his eyes looking at the sky. “It reeks of gasoline,” he said, “everything stinks in this city.” I tried to make sense and realized that he was trying to separate the understanding of ‘negative attitudes’ and ‘social behavior’, who knows what is going on in the mind of this kid, I thought. We went home and he shut himself in the kitchen to do his homework without being told. He didn’t say a word all evening. Summer came early and vicious. Memorial Day, 1946 must have been the hottest people remembered. Washington was steaming in a haze of humidity that paralyzed us; yet, we pedaled our way to the Potomac River thinking that there
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might be a breath of air from the river or the trees. There wasn’t! Nicky steered his bike left away from the cement walk, dropped it on the grass and spread himself exhausted under a tree. I did the same. It was hard to breathe, I wondered how people survived it. My mother had told me about the cold winters, the snow and the ice but never about the breath sucking, paralyzing heat and humidity. Nicky murmured that it must be more than one hundred degrees (How did he know? Actually, it was more than one hundred). I was thinking that the water fountain was
a mile away on the other side of the park. I looked at the tree
above out heads and wished
that the cherry blossoms had lasted longer, as if the
flowers, by some magic power would keep us from being baked under the tree, spoiling our holiday. Another American miracle of Japanese extraction, I thought, But like all miracles, short-lived.
A few months later after some adventurous escapades, we had to flee for our lives because of the threatening ‘unhealthy’ company my uncle kept. In New York we found an apartment close to our relatives in Washington Heights, a neighborhood in the north of Manhattan, at the time a large Greek community, it felt almost like home. The apartment houses were not to my taste, to say the least, like all New York tenements, dark, scary, tall and ugly, very depressing. Nicky and I found jobs right away and enrolled in school, me in College, Nicky in the local High School and we worked part-time after school. It was hectic, but ‘this is America’ my mother said. She couldn’t stay home, she worked in the garment industry and it was much harder for her because of the language difficulties and because she never understood the subway system, but she was happy to
work. She
faltered once but for a short time when she heard that in order to work she and
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all of us must apply for a Social Security number. “Reminds me of the Gestapo and the fascists she said when we told her that ‘no number, no work’. I, too, was a little surprised when I found out
because no one had bothered to forewarn me or
explain the socio-economic advantages of the program and how people had struggled a long time to win this benefit. I just thought of numbers! All Americans were numbered, and that was that! I couldn’t in my wildest dreams think that the day would come when every aspect of our lives would be a number; that numbers would insidiously replace us, our existence, identity and humanity. We number fever or days in the calendar, or births and deaths and registrations, but lives? Little did I know then about Internet, World Wide Web, dot, COM, downloading, E-Mil; who had ever heard the word ‘computers’ in the forties; we knew the catastrophic effect of the nuclear power for two Japanese cities and by extension to the universe, but such power in our home? Unthinkable!
C H A P T E R
Once in America Elena’s knowledge
of Greece was, in the deepest sense of the word, hands-on
experiences and book knowledge; history, mythology, glory, wars, words and pages, all pages, all lessons she had to study boring or not; the ancient Theater, Philosophy, Sciences, Literature, the Arts of the world, plus Latin. She knew about the Olympics for which she was supposed to feel proud; every step she took
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provided her with leftovers of the ancient marvels, whether in marble or in books. The history of the country, the four hundred years of Ottoman occupation, the 1821 revolution, the liberation and the most recent and still hurting World War II and its aftermath, that involved more than her country; those she knew well. Somehow, Greece, the country she had left a year before, didn’t seem to have much relevance
to its ancient past as far as the rest of the world was
concerned. But Elena related to, and remembered the people who fought and starved with her for four years because other countries attacked it; now the land had to be reconstructed, to begin a new life. She realized that not even out of her teens yet, her own past was steeped in history. Before her tenth year she had witnessed government take-overs, an assassination, more than two dictatorships, police brutality, hangings, mass executions; as if those weren’t enough for a child, what followed with World War II, and the Nazi take-over of the land, with more brutalities, a brewing civil war completed her social and political upbringing, as well as her education. All those before her twentieth birthday. If something better doesn’t come out of this, she thought, then we have suffered was in vain, she decided. Her thoughts were interrupted by the slamming of the door, and she got down from the window sill of the fire escape on the fifth floor of their apartment to open the door She had been waiting for Nicky but got too involved with the snow as it came down fast, now heavy with
water, now light and feathery like so many
white butterflies covering everything dark and ugly. The few cars parked in the street had disappeared under the packed snow. By tomorrow, she realized, the pretty whiteness will be dirty mounts on the sidewalks. But for her and Nicky, unfamiliar as they were with snow, it was fun, not inconvenience. They were going
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‘sledding’, down from 191th Street, the highest point of St. Nicholas Avenue, in their improvisation of a ‘sled’: garbage can lids ‘borrowed’ from one apartment house or another. They had done that for three weeks now every afternoon after work when there were no classes. The streets belonged to the kids. They sat on the can cover and holding on to the sides they let go all the way down to 181st Street keeping to the right out of the way of the buses, and in case their mother, stepping out of the subway, spotted them. Cars were rare but in any case, they were well covered by the snow. This new era that is dawning, she thought as she looked at the sky getting darker and heavier with snow clouds, better be the turning point for the ‘new leaf’ her mother kept talking about in her most optimistic moments. Maybe it will be the new trend, a novel way for this world to
take a seat in the theater of
the absurd called ‘modern history’: Hitler, Mussolini, aggression, madness, disaster, the A-Bomb, a universe unsettle and bleeding with little and bigger wars and more deaths, and the ensuing chaos, were making her wish more than ever that it might indeed be her mother’s new ‘leaf’; it may mean
that the world is
taking another turn. We should bury the past with the dead, she thought, forget and begin building anew, but how can we, when before one war ends another one in starting. How will a world without wars be, she wondered as she opened the door for Nicky who was beating the snow off his boots. Heavy thinking was stupid when the snow is bright and offers fun, she decided. “Ready?” Nicky asked without coming in. “Your homework!” She said instead of answering. “Not much, I’ll do it when we get back.” “Yea, that’s what you said yesterday.” They ran down the five flights ready
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for their adventure before their mother came home from work and before darkness sets in. This is my reality, she thought as she slid down holding on to the sides of her trash can lid; no terror, no bombs, no hunger. This is my America, my fairytale! Or is it? The air, cold and invigorating pinched her cheeks but made her feel strong and strangely happy, free; she took heart with the thought that one is a master of his or her destiny. If I want, she mused, I can make myself like America and do well, it’s really up to me, no dictators here, no public beatings, no hoodlums armed by your own government! Occasionally, Elena had moments like those, instances of elation
and hope, even while dodging cars and
other garbage lids, speeding downwards on her ‘sled’. She was still a teenager having fun. Those carefree moments weren’t frequent nor did they last very long, but they were precious, they inspired her. Times Square was another treat she shared with her brother, a happy part of their day, whenever their schedules brought them together and both were free of school, or other obligations. It was the place to be if one enjoyed Charlie Chaplin and the Three Stooges. Eventually, they made it a Friday afternoon ritual. They saved dimes and nickels all week, bought tickets for the movie and ‘splurged’ on hot dogs ‘with everything’ and drank sarsaparilla at the hot dog paradise as Nicky called it, above the entrance to the IRT subway on 42nd Street. They consumed two or three hot dogs, secretly hoping that the word ‘dog’ wasn’t the literal interpretation of the word they knew, but who knows, they told each other, in America people do many strange things. The hard part was when they faced their mother waiting dinner for them. Eventually, she gave up and pretended to believe them when they told her that they ate a bar of chocolate at the movies. But as their working hours changed with the new school year and each
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found other interests to occupy themselves with, their shared ‘fun’ hours dwindled and gradually dissipated. Nicky joined the Greek Soccer Club but Elena, though bred in the game like every other Greek kid, did not follow him. Some of her male friends, even some females, took to baseball. Elena attended a few games, which she found hard to understand, so she quit going; she never understood. Slowly, Nicker became a stranger and she missed the camaraderie, the united front they had created to face the weird things they encountered in the land of their birth, or even their own mother who didn’t understand them. (Elena’s Diary Nicky isn’t so close anymore but still I can detect his sensitivity in things that shock him and I don’t include him in my most secret thoughts anymore seeing how slowly he ingests strange things he doesn’t understand or accept. I never told him why I left my part-time job at the Greek newspaper. In fact, I didn’t tell anyone, I didn’t want to shock others as I had been shocked. My job was typing new orders and invoices in a large office in downtown, Manhattan, surrounded by older men. There were women employees in the other rooms doing other jobs but those I hardly saw, we kept different hours and I’m sure they weren’t interested in an 18-year-old naïve girl right off the boat, full of dreams. An old fat, bald man who looked at me strangely, not as a grandfather, stooped in front of my typewriter desk one afternoon and put his hand under my dress and up my thigh. My dear, he said, you must be careful, we are men here! I couldn't, and still don't, understand why he said that, I could see they were men. Be careful of what? You must watch how you sit, he continued and he used both
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hands to grope me while the other men did whatever they were doing. Five busy men in a room, seeing nothing. I pulled back and stood up in panic remembering the sailor a mere three years before; I couldn’t shout or even talk.. The fat man stood up and looked at me with a stupid, apologetic smile but it seemed that he apologizing for me. Little girl, he said, when you sit keep your knees together, you are very distracting. Suddenly, as I watched him retreat to his desk, I felt I knew what that was all about. The old pervert wanted to touch my thighs, never mind my knees and the ‘distraction’. I picked up my school bag and left without a word not even picking up my check. How could I discuss this with anyone let alone Nicky? At the time I didn’t know that the incident was a frequent, not uncommon occurrence in fields were women in the labor force worked close to men. I am only sorry that I didn’t pick up my ink well to empty it on his bald head, or smash it on his skull. I told everyone that I found a better job in another paper, and it was a better one, very different in every sense. First it was political, ‘progressive’ as it was called at the time and sort of reminded me of home in politics, attitude, respect and caring for one another. They watched me and over me like my mother (oh boy, did they!)but thinking of the old man I said nothing.)
{Unfortunately the circulation of the weekly paper slowly dwindled as McMarthyism spread its ugly claws in every part of our lives and two years later the newspaper closed. Its politics were openly in direct opposition of the ones the cold war was inflicting upon history}.
820
Elena and Vivian visited the Museums of New York mostly on Sundays when it was too cold to spend outdoors.
It was in one of those pleasant excursions when
they stopped at the Pennsylvania Station to change trains when Vivian introduced Elena to ‘real American’ food, as she said. “It’s an amazing sandwich, they call ‘tuna fish,’ you can’t imagine how tasty it s!” Elena agreed; the tuna and the ham salad sandwiches were a ‘miracle’ American food. “This is real food,” she told Vivian. “Americans know about ‘fun’ foods.” It was a break from the Sunday ritual of roast leg of lamb stuffed with garlic. The milk shake was an exceptional treat that beat the Borden bottled milk any time; and there were no food lines at the little coffee shop inside Pennsylvania Station where they enjoyed their ‘real’ food, while her mother had to wait on line at the butcher shop. There is still an Army to be fed, she was told, while
she waited for her chicken.
Anna’s social life, strained at best, was stagnating in America. She kept pretty much to herself; work, church, shopping; in nice weather she walked to the park and sat alone
on a bench knitting. She kept her distance from other Greek women,
‘they ask too many questions’, she explained when her children pressured her to try and make friends with some of the neighbors. “But,” they argued, “you aren’t a fugitive or a criminal, you have nothing to hide from them.” They were aware of the many differences between the families in America and the families in Greece. They realized that they were two different worlds, two very different experiences and views. Elena and Nicky had found that out for themselves. They didn’t have friends in the neighborhood, either, the
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language barrier was the main reason even with the Greek American youngsters. Elena’s and Nicky’s friends were mostly young classmates from various sections or boroughs; they, too, had recently been repatriated, and all had much
in common;
they worked, went to school and had to answer to their parents for every step they took and every penny they spent. They met downtown in Manhattan
to talk,
solve problems or created youth organizations some of which survived and evolved into
cultural and educational groups as the children became ‘adults’. In Spring
and later in Summer they went to Coney Island to swim or to Bear Mountain for the snow in the winter. Like Elena and Nicky, the youngsters found the Greek immigrants of the previous generation living in a world that differed from theirs; they had lived in modern Greece, had known war, hunger and fear while the elder immigrants were still politically split between the ‘Royalists’ and Venizelos, a statesman long dead, and adhered to Greek politics of the twenties, virtually unknown to the younger ones. It seemed ridiculous that the Greeks were still arguing about political
parties or politicians long dead. Far from Greece during the war
years, but with their thoughts painfully planted there, they were inadvertently removed from the current political reality, and, consequently, confused by the newly repatriated Greeks who had seen all, had suffered and felt politics was a very prominent problem threatening to divide the country once more. Civil war was to them anathema, they shrugged painfully and named it ‘Greek killing Greek’, or ‘the usual politics of Greeks, nothing new’; it was true that politics were behind the killings, the foreign policies of England and the United States. Since those were the allies, they could not understand it, or rather, they preferred not to.
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The older immigrants and the newcomers, some of them children of older immigrants, felt that more than an ocean separated them but that had always been an ominous problem and now other problems, social and economic, were added to the post war situation. Admittedly, it was those immigrants whose hard work and sacrifices had carved the path for the young, the new generation of GreekAmericans.
Elena spent a good part of her day to her studies, she was consciously devoted to the idea of ‘doing well’! when her sociology professor gave his version of the ancient Greek vis-a-vis the modern Greek, she was livid. Before long, frustrated and disappointed but also very angry, she dropped the course the day her paper was due; she didn’t tell her mother. Her decision was mature, she thought, and she had studied her subject seriously before she dropped out. She had no wish to contradict her teacher but neither to appease him so she can get a good grade. He isn’t even a Greek so I can argue with him, she mused. What he taught, she didn’t find in any book. I’ll repeat the course next semester hopefully with another unbiased teacher, she reasoned, and Mama won’t be any the wiser for it. At that time she found herself bothered by strange and disturbing thoughts about herself, as if suddenly awakening to a new world, and experiences she was unaware of. Inwardly, she believed she had every right to criticize those who obstinately refused to walk, not even march
with the times, as she thought the old guard
with their outdated ideas and politics, were; yet, she was one of them. We don’t resent our mothers for scolding or advising us, she reasoned. The teacher’s view, however, made her understand some of the whys racism was rampant. His teaching, after she thought it more rationally, showed her
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another Elena she had not understood before, and that made her humble. But that was after she had dropped the course. Had she stayed on, she would have to speak out and that would eventually cause problems with future subjects that would surely affect her grades. Just because she had lived in Greece and had first hand knowledge that didn’t mean that she knew more than the professor
Vis-à-vis
American History, which she had just began to study, yet, she was learning from the books she was reading, she thought, and then, no, I am not a critic nor a know-it-all of history and mythology because of my heritage. She visited the school’s Library and ‘attacked’ the classics with passion; the more she learned, the more she understood and the more perspectives were offered her. If nothing else, she thought months later when her thirst for the truth had began to be sated, if I ever meet him, I can
involve him in a discussion as a broad-minded
student objectively, within reason, as long as we are not in the classroom. Now I know that I don’t have to rely in classroom learning alone for research of historical background. Elena was slowly learning that history isn’t always what it was cranked out to be. I felt
that years ago, she thought smugly.
“Whether we like it or not,” she told her friends the day she dropped that class, “everyone of us live history in our everyday lives but we are not the ones whose
business it is
to analyze it. We should explain and write about it when
needed like a test or in a thesis as we see things long past after we study them, without the stamp of approval of politicians who interpret events and ideas according to their own whims or that of their governments, or for
monetary
advantage.” Some students close to her, understood her, she was looking for their approval, trying
to justify her decision to drop the class because in her
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conscience it was an unacceptable and cowardly action; she also had to defend having those particular
feelings.
“I can read the original texts, in ancient or modern Greek; he can’t; he relies on books, criteria and critiques of wiser people, we all do. But I have lived with those ‘today’s Greeks’ that he calls ‘uneducated and unwilling to accept progress’, I’ve starved and cried with them, I know them better than Mr. Rondin,” she protested. “Maybe he judges every Greek having you as a model,” a young man chided her and ducked when he saw her hand raised with the coffee cup. They were sitting at their favorite meeting place, also a favorite with other Greeks, young or old, the Automat at 57th Street, occupying two tables sipping coffee through hours of discussions, heated at times. Everyone could afford a nickel for a cup of coffee. Outside it was raining, the world looked like a sheet of gray blankets and the windows were foggy. “Let me give you a sample of his lecture,” she said. She straightened her body on the chair to imitate Dr. Rondin. She didn’t dare stand up lest she became the laughing stock of the Automat, or someone threw something at her. “The modern Greek Ladies and Gentlemen”, she mimicked, “is not what we could, in perfect conscience call a bona-fide Greek; he is merely a product of numerous invasions.” She stopped when she saw one of her friends nod, “any objection?” She asked Leonid. “Aren’t we all?” Leonid said. I mean the concept of migration of peoples from all continents from ancient times. Every country in the word, every civilization, was created and evolved that way. Look at the latest one, America. This does not mean that we are not Greeks, whether we like it or not, or doubt
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the roots of our existence and our beginning. We have earned the right through the millennia and through
accomplishments, to recognize ourselves as Greeks.”
“After all, we are speaking of written history”, Elena interrupted, “whereas all prior migrations are assumed and still require research. Where does written history begin? My teacher insinuated that the ancient Greeks ‘stole’ what we think of today as original Greek coming to us from the depths of time language included, philosophy e.t.c. “Who in his right mind would invent such an impossible language like ours if he didn’t have to? After all,
if it had to be invented or stolen, choose
something easier. . .” Elena looked around to find the culprit who had whispered the blasphemy! The young man two tables away smiled at her as if halfapologizing. He shook his blond curls and raised his glasses on his nose.
It’s a
good thing you are so cute, Elena thought but then a girl began. “Careful Elena, you know you are right but don’t let your Hellenism consume you.” “Are you finished?” Elena chided her. “I wish you had been the professor.” She was upset because of the interruption, and because she didn’t want to hear what deep inside she knew to be correct. “...and because of that,” she continued to mimic her professor looking at her friend, “today’s Greek is ‘irresponsible, lazy and uneducated’. It’s just one more race occupying the Southern Balkan peninsula.” “Hey, that’s unkind, to say the least,” the
young woman sitting next to
Elena protested. Elena continue unraveling what she called ‘an endless skein of insults’ that her teacher was spewing throughout his lectures. “Greeks,” he had told his students “suffer from severe ethnocentrism.” Again she was aghast when he saw more heads nodding this time. “Do you want me to stop?” She asked. “No”,
826
came a small voice from the next table, “we’ll tell you when”. “...wallowing in the glory of their ancestors, themselves uneducated and unwilling to advance, they pretend to be superhuman. They borrow from the wisdom of the ancients, rely on their inheritance and live in a fantasy world of the yesteryear without raising a hand to at least add to it. The modern Greek feels superior while he cannot even begin to conceive what that entails.” George, usually a quiet, gentle and soft spoken artist raised his hand as if he were in class. “Elena, excuse me, but at some point did you ask that teacher if he knew of a country which endured 400 years occupation from the Ottoman Empire with no school of any sort allowed in the land without losing its language?” He stopped and looked at her quizzically. Elena took a deep breath, she seemed upset. “ I couldn’t,” she said, but felt like throwing up when he said that; that was very personal, what do you want me to do, the man is horrible. I couldn’t yell at him or shut him up, we aren’t allowed a dialogue in the class unless he initiates it. But listen to the end of that particular lecture, because there were quite a few in the Classics Dept. this semester. “ . . Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, we conclude this lecture with the example I brought to you of today’s resident of glorious Greece in order to emphasize this harmful social disease, of which many third world countries suffer, in order to explain and justify their existence among civilized countries.
Ethnocentrism has a disastrous effect in a
country because it stunts its growth. Ethnocentrism condemns the people to humiliation in the eyes of the world.” “And every eye in the classroom turned to look at you then.” Leonid laughed.
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“How do you know?” She realized too late that she had swallowed the bait. They had a good laugh and she shrunk but then laughed with them. “Wouldn’t you, if you were them?” He said. “I mean, after all, you were a prime example, maybe your teacher doesn’t know that you are Greek, but they do.” “I understand that we all suffer from ‘ethnocentrism’, Elena told him, “even though I wished I could interrupt him to ask him to give us the definition of the two compound words that make up his famous ‘ethnocentrism’. Most of the words he uses in his science have Greek roots.. .Oh, what’s the use?” “Never mind ethnocentrism,” a girl said, “you should have asked him to volunteer an example of a perfect 20th century civilized nation and maybe while he was thinking you could offer the example of the greatness of the nonethnocentric, civilized 20th century Americans testing their atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and let’s not go into the Negro population or what has happened to the ‘Indians’ in America a few centuries back, but of course, you aren’t allowed a dialogue.” In the uneasy silence the coffee was forgotten for some time. “Anyone for more coffee? My treat, a nickel each.” They laughed at Leonid’s attempt to break the silence with his interpretation of ‘treating’; they paid their nickel; he had to do the work, get the tray, pour the seven cups, then serve it. “Someday,” he said returning, “the Automat will wise up and throw us out; after all this is not a ‘forum’!” He looked at the people around them nursing a cup of coffee
for hours, the best entertainment for a nickel and
sheltered from the rain. They talked, or just daydreamed and watched the traffic and those who walked up to Carnegie Hall nearby late in the afternoon. Leonid felt sorry for Elena, his romantic, sentimental friend. He was the only one who
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had advised her against dropping the subject, she usually listened to him but this time she did not. “Try to work this out; you, me, and all of us have deep roots, a Greek birthright but another birthright equally important, makes us; the accident of birth! He smiled and touched her hand. “There is a dichotomy here, Elena,” he continued in a softer voice “and we must understand and internalize this. It’s hard, but time will take care of it, you’ll see.” He took the tray away. When he returned Elena was at it again; she wasn’t upset now, in fact she was smiling. “You know what’s funny?” She said. “That the professor is full of you-knowwhat. First he tells us that ‘various invaders made up Greece; but he uses every conceivable scientific phrase and wording in Greek. Boy, those ‘invaders’ must have been some scientists and thinkers. I wonder what genetic upheaval occurred between then and the present, and the Greeks have not inherited the wisdom of ‘those’ ancient foreign invaders...” “Drink your coffee and shut up, Elena,” someone said; all nodded their agreement. She did, there goes my ethnocentrism, she thought. “Elena”, a young woman from the next table called. “Is your professor at least a bit handsome, like ‘habba-habba’?” No one laughed, she received some ugly stares and shrank back to her seat. Sitting by himself a few tables away, Leonid, a strange look on his face, looked preoccupied. He stared intently at the same time concentrated at one point near the door as if waiting for someone to enter or looking at something no one else could see. Look at us, Elena thought, and look at him. The spoon in his right hand moved rhythmically from left to right, low on the table and his head followed the movement. God, Elena thought to herself, this can’t be a serious
829
math problem; he looks as if he is conducting an orchestra.
(The discussion about ‘heritage’ and Leonid’s interpretation following me all along. I remembered it again once when it popped up as vindication from an unsuspected source: my teenage daughter. At a class discussion, her teacher had given the definition of the word ‘heritage’ and then asked them to differentiate it from the word ‘inheritance’ in order to ascertain that the children had understood; she pointed at my daughter to enlighten them -she should have known better. “Yes,” said the Junior High student, “not too much difference because we inherit our heritage. For instance, having been born here, I ‘inherited’ a birthright, as I have inherited the Greek language from my parents. But since all my ancestors were Greek, I also have my Greek ’heritage’. All Americans enjoy a specific heritage from one culture or another. Of course, if we are talking property, that is also an inheritance”. She stopped and looked at the teacher who just said: ‘precisely’ and then a boy popped up. “We also inherit family characteristics. . .” “and character,” someone else offered. When she came home she asked me if
her answer had offended the teacher. I don’t see why, I told
her, the subject was well defined by everyone.’ She made no comment after that other than to say that her teacher had gone on to another subject. “Case closed, then,” I said and laughed because I remembered Leonid and his preaching years before. My daughter looked at me strangely and walked out.)
830
C H A
P
T
E
R
Schooldays To this day
I remember our talks in the late forties, and into the fifties. We
usually ended our discussions with our favorite subject, or. Maybe, my favorite theme: History! Interpretation, understanding. Vivian, Jason and Leonid and I were closer as a group, but we bored the others; we weren’t such fun especially when Leonid and I went at it. We were at the Automat, our usual ‘shelter’ on 57th Street one afternoon after classes with our 5 cents coffee and the 10 cents roll and Leonid and had already begun the
usual mild disagreements while the others
tried to study their notes for a test we were facing, not paying much attention to us. Leonid and I agreed on most subjects, it was just that we had different points of view on the matter. Looking back, I realize that he was the logic and I the sentiment. We defended those views vehemently with our unequivocal, usual arbitrary, sometimes unyielding tenacity. That afternoon I was more than ready to argue my point because of the test of the day: “Slave Trade in Colonial Days.” Discussing it we began to argue and we must have made a spectacle of ourselves because the others closed their notes and listened. “History is just events,” I told him. “We create events; we are ephemeral and events are ephemeral, they only make a momentary dent –very costly in lives, properties and national borders. Yet, the effects punish us for years, centuries. Take the 30-year Peloponesian War.” “Yes,” he interrupted me. “But history is lasting, it goes on for ever
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and stays with us long after the millennia are done and gone; However, ephemeral as those ‘events’ are, compiled, they are part and parcel of our existence, our inheritance and our future. If we do not learn from them, tough luck!” “But there are lasting ‘events’: discoveries, historical happenings like wars as we understand it, arts, science to name a few, we’ve been through that so many times; shouldn’t HISTORY give the same dues to those ‘events’ as well Oh, I know, I know, they do,” I hurried to add as I realized that Leonid was ready to argue the point. “What I’m trying to say is that Historians speak mainly of wars, modern armament discoveries for more annihilation, brutalities, conflicts, borders’ skirmishes, etc. We mention a Pyramid or the discovery of a new continent, and that is history, of course, Social Studies. But Arts and Sciences, are also historical events. That is my point, the fact that one expects blood in the word ‘history’.” Leonid had a funny look on his face and I stopped to finish my coffee. He waited for me to exhale; the others were looking at me in a funny sort of way. Was I saying something crazy, I wondered, or are they telling me to shut up?
Maria, sitting alone at a nearby table, had stopped
working and was looking at me, arched eyebrows and contempt in her eyes. She had joined us that day against her better judgement I’m afraid and had finished her sandwich and milk. She was with us but miles away. That was Maria! A studious girl, one no teacher or fellow student could stand because she put everyone down; cold and uncaring, distant, she knew everything. She had arrived the year before from Greece with a student’s visa and some of us had tried to befriend her; it was no use, the airs she confronted us with, turned everybody off. She made no friends but she didn’t seem to care and though we and other students invited her to various affairs, she casually declined arching her eyebrows with
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a “...no thanks, please. No politics for me!” That day, maybe because of the rain and the bleak weather, she consented to accompany us but she sat apart so that we don’t contaminate her with our ‘politics’! She was nice looking, tall and blond but certainly affected and as Leonid and I foolishly defended our positions in condemning history
for not pursuing its profound obligation to
humanity, Maria picked up her notes and bag and arching her eyebrows, made her way through the tables. As she passed our tables she looked at us. “Peasants!” she threw with disgust as she left. We laughed then, all of us, a boisterous laugh as the doors closed behind her and the cloud inside the Automat evaporated though the hard rain falling in buckets was drenching
poor Maria rushing to the
subway. Maria was one of the persons who actually disappear after graduation. In the ensuing years when and if some of us met we forgot to ask about her and no one ever volunteered any information.
In 1950 came marriage and it did interfere with school. Another hindrance was that threatening cloud in the name of the “Un-American Activities Committee”; not that at the time we thought
that was to affect our lives, but slowly we
learned otherwise. Since the 40’s that committee was worming its way into everyone’s life so our own lives as well were affected in every sense of the word, our innocence and youth notwithstanding. We found it out in our schools and looking for a job. McCarthyism covered the country like a cloud of pestilence deep into the fifties and the sixties and those were difficult years, then the seventies, wars –conflicts!- protests, ugly days. After graduation the old group dispersed some for graduate studies others
833
relocated or married elsewhere but still managed to get a phone call or a Christmas card across here and there, but those, too, dissipated with time. Leonid and I met occasionally until he left for Paris, but the thread of McCarthyism had left
a sad and angry scar on all of us, a shadow over our
youth, friendships and innocence. I found Leonid by pure accident years later, in the early sixties, after we all went our ways and lost touch, except for very few. Was it really an accident or pre-ordained, I wondered. I very seldom go to a concert or the opera unless I have company. Still, his name was in the papers big as life and it would be hard to overlook; if one looked! And if one didn’t suffer from perennial amnesia.
(I had forgotten my own daughter’s concert of classical songs, her debut at Carnegie Hall and instead of driving to Manhattan, I went jogging only to find a nervous doorman on my return telling me that everyone was looking for me; I had thought that the concert was next day. I made it just in time, I can’t remember anymore how my daughter managed to get there, she probably took a taxi. But I could still see the little diapered girl holding on to her crib’s rails looked at me for a second as if trying to understand why I was humming. Dr. Spock was very fashionable at the time, I had read everything he wrote about raising children and especially babies who, according to him were “... a captive audience”(!) My child never accepted captivity and showed it on many occasions. At that moment she rebelled against the voice who sang at her, probably comparing it to the operatic voices she had been listening to since birth and having no voice yet to protest, she showed that she liked what she heard. It was my voice that alarmed her; she took the pacifier out
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of her mouth and still holding on with the other hand, she lisped: “Mommy, please, don’t sing!” Very clearly, in a nice, polite way and in Greek! I listened to her rather than to Dr. Spock, and I don’t think I have sung since. After all, music became her life something I was smart to have foreseen. On her 20th birthday I gave her the Baby album I was keeping from the day she was born. On her third birthday I had written the prophetic lines: “A future Music Person for sure!” Did I know that what force was really listening?)
I was in Boston visiting my daughter who at the time was a student at the Boston University, and that night I was alone with nothing to do; I noticed the ad, and decided at the last moment, to go to the concert
rushing as usual and
I entered
the huge hall just in time never having seen the name of the conductor. I had no time to look at the program in my hands because the lights were dimming. To
say
that I was surprised, when the conductor walked in and a thunderous applause welcomed him, would be an understatement. I kept myself pinned to my chair trying not to obey the urge to get up and shout his name. I couldn’t hear what they were playing, that was my friend, Leonid; Leonid on the stage, commanding the stage! Here, I thought, is the meek student, the friend of my youth who advised me, the mathematician who today leaves his audience breathless with the power of his movements, and the tip of his baton. Leonid, the now famous conductor, a little stout but still gracefully tall, his bushy prematurely graying hair, turned and bowed to the audience with the same innocent boyish, shy smile I remembered. Deep in my thoughts and still in shock I didn’t feel the hours pass; I kept thinking that no one, not even he, had bothered to let me know
835
all those years. Were we all so blind that we couldn’t see he was born to music? His parents pushed him into Mathematics, he even looked the part, serious, almost strict, always telling us what or how to do things in his
gentle manner, helping
us with class work while all the time he was studying music. His parents found out when he presented them with the Ph.D. Half hidden behind a column I waited backstage for him to emerge; he glanced at my direction as he passed and I crouched and shrunk embarrassed, but he stopped short a few steps later as if he had forgotten something or had just heard his name suddenly called and turned to face me with a question in his eyes. “Elena?” It was more than a question, it was the cry of celebration. He hugged me with tears in his eyes and I began to cry. A fine spectacle we made! Two middle aged people backstage meeting after a lifetime of separation, crying and the crowds hurrying past, questioning faces, recognizing him. His wife came up at that moment and he ran to her. “Lynn,” he shouted, “Come, come, she is here, Elena, you must see her.” He was panting and she, puzzled, greeted me like a long lost friend. “How many years has it been?” She asked and he shrugged. “A lifetime,” he said shaking his head sadly. “You must tell us everything, let’s go.” We left the concert hall for a late dinner. We talked until we were out of breath; Lynn listened. “You know,” he told her, “I would have recognized her anywhere.” I think he lied. “I would, too,” I said truthfully, “if I bothered to look more carefully at the Music Section of the Sunday Times. I wonder why I hadn’t caught it. We lost touch so long ago.”
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“It was meant to be,” Lynn offered. “I see you in the papers, too,”
he chided, “ but no photo; you write.” I
nodded. “Do I detect a reproach? Or haven’t you ever check the “WANTED” mugs at the local Post Office?” I teased him, we had a good laugh. “Still with your worthy causes...remember?
I told you,” he said to Lynn
and she nodded and touched my hand. “The old ‘ethnocentrism’! It still follows you.” I said nothing, how can one span almost two decades of events, a generation of living, joys, sorrows, marriages, divorces, struggles for survival...already past history. We remembered a lot that day; we brought back memories of the friends at the Automat, a parking lot now, wondering where everybody had gone. It’s not easy to keep up with friends in this vast land where life takes you every which way. Some I still see. The two young sisters who traveled to America with me back in 1946. Chrysoula, we somehow didn’t lose touch entirely, but her sister Georgia couldn’t take the pressure and returned to Greece where she married and raised her family. I hear from her from time to time. Vivian I haven’t seen for ages; we exchange cards Christmas time; others I see occasionally, by accident in concerts, ethnic celebrations or cultural affairs and various political gatherings. Unfortunately, as history limps along amid small and not so small wars, injustices and other social and political upheavals and calamities are not rare; the old crowd, whoever is left around, meet at demonstrations but we hardly recognize each other; we mostly meet at funerals, though. . . Sometimes I look at one person and wonder whether he or she is the person I knew. I’m sure they
share the same thoughts. New York seems chaotic, it doesn’t matter that
they call Manhattan an
island. Individuals are the ‘islands’. Any place can be
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a jungle or a rat hole depending on one’s point of view and experiences. That’s how I kept missing Leonid who had been living in Manhattan for quite some time. He was different; I remembered him as the ‘serious’ type, frugal with words or smiles. He had loosened up now, he smiled freely... We met again at the Easter Vacation in his New York performance a week later; both mine and their children were home for the holiday. We were talking a storm in their apartment overlooking Central Park; Leonid told me of a friend’s tragic death
which I hadn’t heard about. He had some happier news and stories of other
friends. Our youngsters who had been listening to their music away from the ‘old fogies’ as I had no doubt they called us, walked out on us, we bored them. ‘Old folk tales,’ they said, ‘can we be laughed. How
long ago
excused?’ We looked at each other then
was it since we did the same or at least wished we could?
“Please let’s not to lose touch again, it’s been a long time.” I said before we parted that day. We kept the promise!
They managed not to get separated again, thanks mostly to their youngsters who became friends. Leonid and Lynn had a boy and a girl, just as Elena had, teenagers all. The two couples visited or took small trips, had dinners home or outside and spent hours on long discussions. Leonid remembered Jason, once their good friend, smart and kind, terribly in love with Marianna whose parents did not look at the union kindly and tried to prevent it. Elena had forgotten him for years after that unfortunate incident. “Have you seen him since?” Leonid asked. “Since when?” She said mockingly. “Since graduation?”
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“Oh, I don’t know, I guess since...since... haven’t seen nor heard of him for so long I forget when the ‘since’ was. I believe I heard many years ago that he married Marianna but that was all. Well? How about it, do you know, anything new?” He looked at her as if she was hiding a secret. “I... I... yes and no, anyway it doesn’t matter.” Leonid and Lynn exchanged a glance. “O.K., O.K.”, Elena laughed, we kept up until they returned from Princeton, married; we were active at school at the time, you remember, cold war McCarthy, Korean demonstrations plus doing graduate work, you know, the whole thing... It was at that time, in the thick of things that I began to notice that he was avoiding me, didn’t answer my calls... then...“ “Then, what?” Lynn leaned forward and took her hands. “What happened then?” “Jason called me one evening; no hallo, no how are you or where have you been, nothing, his voice was cool impersonal, I thought someone was standing behind him with a gun on his head forcing him to talk to me.” She noticed Lynn and Leonid staring at her as if waiting for shattering news. Holding hands they leaned on the table. Forks and napkins were left unused. “Stop looking at me this way,” Elena said, people will stare at us; the McCarthy era is gone, forgotten.” She smiled. “What did he say?” Leonid insisted whispering, freeing his hand to sip some wine. “O.K. I’ll tell you word for word: ‘Elena,’ very official, almost solemn, ‘I meant to tell you sometime ago the reason we cut off, er... it’s because, well, you know, we aren’t young kids any more. Marianna and I are scientists now. ’I know, I know, I said, congratulations, but what of it? ‘Well, we have important, responsible positions and a child and we can’t jeopardize all that,
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you know.’ ‘How will you jeopardize them, I don’t understand you,’ I said. You can guess the answer, he kept saying ‘no...no’, that’s all, ‘no – no’, and then it came out: ‘By associating with you’, he said, just like that.” “The bastard!” Leonid hissed through clenched teeth, his knuckles showing white. His wife nudged him to stay calm. “But he was never cynical,” he whispered hoarsely, “the coward! And what did you do, you just stood there and listened?” “What could I say? It was his choice and times were hard and tricky. I, too, was under a lot of pressure, I had a family, I had dropped out of graduate school; however, I managed to ask him if they told him that I was a murderer, or a thief or had become a prostitute. He was at a loss and told me that I was a being sarcastic. Damn well, I was, so I said, I understand Jason, they have used well known methods threatening you, look after your family and forget about your friends. He hung up suddenly.” There was a heavy, painful silence while Elena kept thinking that it is a lie what they say that time heals all. She felt a lump in her throat. “Tell me, Leonid, Lynn, did they ever approach you?” She managed to ask and suddenly everyone’s eyes were on the dessert plates shifting uneasily. “That’s all right,” Elena said, “forget it, let’s talk about something else, something happy, anything.” “No,” Lynn said. “Leonid, you tell her.” She looked straight at him. Leonid held both Elena’s hands on the table and looked at her in the eyes. He lowered his head. “Yes, they did, they approached me, too, as they did everyone else driving us crazy on the phone, in the street, the subway, days, nights, not only about you but about me and others, trying to have each say something about the other; let me tell you, they were despicable, the bottom of any trash can; they
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knew that what they were doing would one day be of no importance: they were to instill fear in peoples’ hearts; I’m sure they weren’t very clear why but if you offer a brutal person, allow me the metaphor, a brutal action, he will be very happy to oblige. So they obeyed orders and kept chewing words like ‘democracy,’ ‘communism’, career, etc like gum...” “Stop defending them, Leonid,” Lynn shook his elbow almost off the table. “They were real scum and you know it.” “Why didn’t you tell them to leave you alone and that you hadn’t seen me for years?” Elena asked. “I mean they were not ‘bishops’ or legitimate police force; they were employed by the FBI to do dirty work; only hoodlums do that in any country with a dictator, they could be garbage collectors, or dishwashers or geniuses maybe complying through a distorted view of a law abiding citizen.” “Hell, no, why should I? It wasn’t their damn business who my friends were or who I associate with.“ “I remember,” Elena said. “Guilty by association.” “That’s not all”, said Lynn. “What he told them whenever they appeared suddenly in front of him, is not for human ears. This gentleman, your friend here, has a mouth filthier than a sewer, though I felt at the time that he was burying his future.” Leonid’s face reddened, then he burst out laughing. “I used logic,” he said. “When you are faced with idiots, you speak to them like an idiot so they can understand.” “O.K.” Elena said. “Now it’s your turn. Tell me what you told them, I’d love to hear it
and don’t leave out the dirt, we need a little fun here.” Now
she felt good, the pain gone. “You see Leonid, they are gone, and we are still here, let history judge them.”
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“They tried intimidation,” Leonid said slowly, “they had been looking for me at my school, they were checking my rehearsals, the bastards. Whenever they touched the subject I told them to leave me alone; I even asked them to walk to the nearest subway station, go below and listen to the musicians, some very talented, sing and play their instruments, for dimes and nickels. . . don’t laugh,” he scolded his wife. “I told them that if they fucked my career,” Shhh. . .Lynn warned him looking around. “If they did, excuse me, Elena, I can take my violin and have a beautiful future in the depths of the New York subways. . .or maybe play at weddings.” He drank some coffee and played with his spoon. “Come on,” his wife prodded him, tell her the end of your logic.” “God, they always managed to send me the stupid ones, the imbeciles. I didn’t move their hearts with my subway career, they scoffed, nothing would faze them because they knew they had jobs as long as they can threaten people, they were ‘G-men!’ So, I told them to bug off, go to hell and leave me alone and that I would speak and sing to anyone I liked.” Elena shook her head. “Daring and dangerous,” she said. “Let me finish the scenario then,” Lynn said, “he is forgetting the juicy part. He told them that he would always be making a living no matter how they harassed him, he had a degree, and a talent he could use anywhere. They, on the other hand, and he really threw it at their faces, the only education they had, the only training, was in the streets, terrorism! When the era of ‘harassment’ was over, he said, you’ll be back in the streets where you belong because you wouldn’t be ‘needed’ any more, not even as ‘street musicians’! Elena laughed remembering the tale of the musician donkeys. Only this is not a fairytale, she thought. “Thank goodness it’s over and now we can laugh
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about it. Twenty years later we can laugh or cry at the stupidities of the past, an ongoing sin through the millennia. You know what?” She said suddenly breaking the silence. “It’s a long time since I came to the conclusion that history isn’t all that serious.” “Oh ho! What a contradiction. It seems that you got your lesson Elena,” Leonid teased her, “history is in the eye of the beholder, remember? I believe that it is a very serious part of our lives throughout the ages and it marks us and makes or breaks us.” “Precisely.” Said Elena. “We have no say even if we are part of history, so why get upset about it and take it seriously? The forties was a glorious time, then the cold war, McCarthyism…! The world is full of nuts!” “Better stop, Elena, say something happy, you are depressing me.” “There goes the spirit of the old boy!” She mocked him. The old days of our youth Leonid are not over as we choose to think, right?”
He nodded. But for her
those ghosts still lingered around her either dead or still alive and remembering: Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, the Hollywood Ten, Jules Dassin, artists, writers, politicians, among the thousands of ‘black listed’ Americans. No, she had no right to depress her friends. She picked up her purse and got up. “I have an idea that’s not depressing,” she announced. “ In fact, it’s brilliant! Let’s all go on a horse and buggy ride; Central Park is close by.” The reaction of her friends was as boisterous and silly, as her suggestion was; they filed out of the restaurant in a matter of minutes. “This is one thing I always wanted to do, somehow I thought it was something for tourists, not for the local riff-raff like us, New Yorkers.”
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“Sometimes it’s good to remember,” Leonid said as if continuing a previous thought. “Sometimes it’s good to forget,” Lynn told him as he helped her up the buggy. She looked at him and laughed. Elena winked at her; her eyes said thank you. The streets of Manhattan were lovely in thesunset. ‘I can’t get over it,’ Leonid murmured to himself as the horse’s gait became less audible in the traffic. “What”? asked Lynn absentmindedly absorbed in the noise, the lights, the pedestrians, even the grace of the horse drawn carriage with its ribbons. “The way people, old friends meet after so many years and it seems so natural as if it were yesterday they parted, but so many things happened since to change their lives.” “Yes,” Elena sighed, “life is good after all;” she looked at the Avenue as darkness gently covered the tops of the building, the trees. Lights, the affluent store windows, so peaceful... the lights she had wished for during the terrifying nights of her youth hoping to live through it all to see lights, many lights... “A penny for your thoughts,” said Lynn. Elena shrugged. “Oh, I was reminiscing,” she said. “School days after the war, when we came back.” That wasn’t what she was thinking of but why be repetitious. “That wasn’t so bad,” Leonid said, “the language was hard, that’s all.” “That’s not what I meant,” Elena continued her threads of thought. “I was suddenly immersed into a climate of freedom to think and talk as I felt, to read to practice my freedom... it was such an exhilarating experience, it made me so proud as if I had invented those freedoms myself... “But those are inborn values,” Leonid said, “yet, think of the fun in the campus, the drinking and the parties, how carefree everyone was...”
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“Yeah, except us,” Elena cut him, “we were such peasants!” “We were serious, the other young people hadn’t experienced what we had gone through.
They knew they didn’t have to shoulder the world’s ills as if they
were their fault. We came from a war torn Europe and we were brainwashed... “You see”, Lynn interrupted we thought that school was for learning and studying, our parents didn’t mention ‘fun’
but we made our own laws and knew how to have fun
which of course to you it was a contradiction.” “Didn’t last very long,” Leonid said thoughtfully. ”McCarthyism swept all that fun away soon.” “What a setback,” Elena murmured. ”Everything became subversive,” he continued, “you know, that was the first time I heard that word. Newspapers became ‘subversive’, people getting together, opinions... students were followed, or scared not to talk to other students...at the time I used to think what so different from the Nazi storm troopers, except that the FBI showed I.D. cards and the Nazis had automatics ready to shoot...” “O.K. you two, drop it now or I’m getting off; all that is gone, we are fine and we are out for real fun. What they call ‘life fun’, let’s be thankful we made it.” “My dear Lynn, I would advise you against such thoughts.” Leonid laughed, “this vehicle doesn’t make stops on 5th Avenue, wait for the Broadway exit. Let’s sing.” And sing they did, quietly, sotto voce at first, louder as they crisscrossed the darkened lanes of Central Park; the driver kept tune with his whip flogging the air. Yes, Elena thought, life has its happy moments after all!
C H A P T E R 845
Hindsight I am a Greek
and because of my roots I must respect that heritage, too,
Leonid had said, long ago. That heritage has really been a heavy load to carry, at times
a burden that left me breathless. I needed to shed some of the weight
in order to embrace the new heritage, the ‘now’ I was living, the new ‘me’. It is not ‘heritage’ per se, this short interlude of mass migration, but the century’s struggles; that will define the real meaning of the word:
the horrible slaughter
of the ‘red menace’ -and they were speaking of the native Americans- the lynchings and tortures in the South; the Memorial Day massacre in Chicago, the Veteran’s protests in Washington D. C. seeing their shanties in flames, government’s orders; the sacrifice of the so-called ‘dangerous foreign terrorists’ Sacco and Vanzetti; the incredible crime, the murder by electrocution of the Rosenbergs, a crime whose horror left the world aghast.
A country must be
very insecure to revert to these cruel measures in order to heighten its image and mask the fear, their panic that the world is out to steal the country’s prestige, their riches, their world-conquering goals. I had to deal with those historical realities, alongside the brutal events of the forties, the fifties and even the sixties. ‘Heritage’ doesn’t necessarily mean brutality; written history tends to place more importance to calamities because those events seem to define the meaning of each nation, their freedom, their hopes and ideals. Parts of heritage are also the fruits of freedom, the continuity and culture, the development of the Arts and Education, of Sciences. We explore Space; we can go around the world in a few hours. We are the richest country in the world with the largest percentage of homeless people. We are first in business and progress and we take a dive on the scale in education. Heritage in
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the final analysis, my friend Leonid, is fluid! The insane involvement in Korea and Vietnam, forced us to realize that yes, we struggled against evil, we were told, or felt it necessary for the benefit of peace; unnecessary brutality and bloodshed but it was the reality of the times and that is what it’s all about, we were told! The maturity of a country, the labor pains of history, the ‘heritage’. In the fever of the ensuing events, one could land in jail for protesting, lose a job, be thrown out of school, be ridiculed, black-listed; in the long run with time, memories fade and reason prevails, the struggles are vindicated; sins are concealed under a questionable veil and the real history is re-written. Peace and other causes, demonstrations of the fifties, black equality
and human rights’ marches of the sixties, were an
example. When I returned to America I left a country where one could be jailed, tortured, exiled or
executed merely for participating in a demonstration for any
cause because every one who dared to protest was either an anarchist, a communist or a potential terrorist;
prisons and execution squads were busy. Not so in
America where demonstrations needed just a cause and a permit! Nothing was ever gained without effort and struggle. The trained police horses were always afoot to ‘protect’ our rights and in the process trample on peaceful demonstrators; the foot police pushed and shoved, pulled hair and sometimes arms out of their sockets or used clubs. The photographers, not necessarily press, were not there to photograph stars or famous persons but those discontents who enriched the files of the very active secret forces that were ‘protecting’ the country! (It had taken Elena years to understand fully the political madness and the damage done to the country by the curse that had overtaken the land: McCarthyism! At some point, a mature young lady then, she was presented with a series of
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photographs and was more upset that
she didn’t look good; ‘if only I had known,’
she told her mother, I could at least have smiled at the camera; that’s how Hollywood stars manage to look pretty, but how do you smile
when someone is
clobbering you, or you know that the FBI and not a Hollywood agent is taking your picture for future reference while you are demonstrating peacefully? She confronted her mother one evening with the left sleeve of her new jacket missing. “I have spent half a week’s salary for that jacket,” her mother scolded her and then, “I didn’t know schools were closed today.” “They weren’t,” Elena said, but her mother wouldn’t let her go so easily. “So, who’s got your sleeve?” She asked. “Nobody you’d care to know,” Elena said bitingly. “But he was on a horse; and he was handsome, young, blond, wore blue, and held a club. Easy for him to bend and grab me, so I let go of the sleeve instead.” “I thought you didn’t like policemen,” her mother chided her. “I don’t!” Elena yelled and walked out slamming the door. She had left him her sleeve.)
McCarthyism was the natural product of the ‘cold war’ which was the aftermath of what followed the end of World War II. Labor Unions leadership were smeared, bought or sold down the drain, at times disappeared, and one wasn’t sure who was governing the land, the Mafia, Washington or some sinister unseen force. Eventually schools were integrated, sort of, and the blacks won the right to
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attend ‘white’ schools and to vote but the voting polls hid many dangers and schools in Little Rock, Arkansas rang different bells at school time! Higher Education were blacklisting professors and students. And the Arts! The Un-American Activities Committee were seriously investigating that ‘danger’. Apparently, Hollywood, always eager to make a few millions from each picture, had decided to go communist and give their millions to Russia, was the joke of the day but for the people involved it was no joke! Many a brilliant writer, actor, director, found themselves blacklisted, unemployed, but one did not speak openly about that, or the fact that Paul Robeson, the actor-singer-activist, whose voice has yet to be duplicated in the American Arts, entered the concert halls where he sang from the back door with the deliveries, he and other black performers of fame, or that he wasn’t allowed out of the country. The rest of the world admired Robeson; he was a rare voice and a brilliant actor. It was in the seventies that a great wrong was corrected: Robeson, an All-American Athlete while at Rutgers, was in the photograph of the athletes exhibited at the school, but his actual face and body were missing from the photograph, they were just outlined; a white empty space replaced his great body; he was a giant of a man. Elena remembered a protest demonstration in Washington in the late forties, against a proposal to conscript the seventeen-year-olds. The demonstrators couldn’t find a place in the entire city of Washington D.C, that would rent them rooms that night, many youngsters were black and Paul Robeson was with them. They had been hungry all day, too, because no restaurant would let them in. Deep in the night, a church was offered them and that was where they slept, on the pews. But it was worth it, Elena thought. Paul Robeson sang to them. Most time that night.
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heard ‘Othello’ for the first
It wasn’t an easy struggle retaining or regaining democratic values in a world that had gone mad with power, once they discovered that it only took one bomb to destroy a country, a continent. The planet seemed to be a wild party of drunks bent to kill, unmindful of the consequences. One bomb, there goes the enemy! Next! No one seemed to take into consideration ‘what next’! You release all that death in the limited space we call earth, where does it go after this?
Does the
earth also evaporate like the humans, become nothing? No one paid attention to the Japanese who after the Potsdam Conference had said that using the A-bomb will be ‘a thousand years of regret’(and haven’t we found that out now with the earth around us is gasping for breath?)
I still felt threatened as I was raising my children. In America, the Little Rocks of any state, in Africa the death of starvation of hundreds of thousands children. I looked at my babies and thought that I was the only one in the world so scared, and couldn’t the world see where we are going? It wasn’t ‘wise’ to voice such dangerous thoughts at the time. It was much later that people began to see, when the drunkard of the Un-American Activities Committee stopped pointing fingers at the ‘dangerous’ Americans, from the White House to Hollywood and even ‘dangerous’ Pope! Dropping dead from booze was the greatest patriotic favor he did for his country since he felt that he owed America something. It was about time; people had to go on with their lives; most were still unaware that our country was busy making A-bombs -just in case!- contaminating land and far away lakes, rivers and valleys, with plutonium and other equally destructive and lethal nuclear waste.
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Life goes on. There were jobs we had to go to, children to raise; run from the Little League to the ballet lesson, piano lesson, football practice, organ practice, painting lessons, voice lessons, pony rides; the Museums, the Fall Festivals and Students’ Hungry Marches, praying that the worst was over. It wasn’t!
C H A P T E R Greece: April, 1967 It was the morning of a beautiful Spring day; the children were getting ready for school and I was preparing breakfast. April 21, 1967; I listened to the morning news on the kitchen radio and in an instant I understood why the poet called April a ”cruel month.” An American backed Junta took over Greece spreading tanks and terror and in a matter of hours all over the land. The colonels weren’t exactly what one country could be proud of but they leaned on America. Overnight the values of freedom, of thought, of merely existing, or assembling –over three persons- disappeared. Overnight, thousands of people all over the country from all walks of life from the military to the church, arts, sciences, education and commerce were suddenly and roughly rounded up and were imprisoned, tortured. The most important, the best brains of the land were being silenced; human rights ceased to exist, tanks controlled all main streets in the cities. Greece was reinstating Hitler-like concentration camps, the country was thrown into an upheaval worse than that of the nineteen forties and the German occupation. Indescribable tales of brutality stunned the world. “As if Vietnam is not
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enough,” Anna murmured when Elena told her the news. Her mother was visiting for the Easter Holidays. She was alarmed when she saw Elena grab a pair of garden shears and run outside. From the kitchen window she watched her daughter walk around cutting flowers and buds that were blossoming after a hard winter and scattering them about on the grass. She opened the door and said evenly: “The children, Elena,” she cried, ”they’ll see you.” Elena shrugged and walked back into the kitchen, silently, to finish making their breakfast; she put the plates on the counter and called them. Her son was first on his stool. “Oh, boy,” he shouted unceremoniously with his mouth full, “just a few more days of school”. They dashed out and Elena sat empty, staring ahead like a statue. “What an Easter vacation our next week is going to be,” Anna told her after the children went. “A real Holy Week,” Elena murmured.
The Greeks on the Diaspora in countries like the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe reacted accordingly. In the U.S.A they marched in massive
protests to
Washington, the United Nations and the Greek Consulate. They tried to alert the world as to what they should expect from such a fascist state. It was harder for the American Greeks torn as they were between loyalty for their two countries. Their adoptive country not only blessed the colonels who were maiming and killing their brothers, but they helped and in fact initiated the military takeover because foreign policy at the time demanded it. The Greek-Americans were hurt; after the sacrifices their motherland went through in the world’s battle against fascism, they now faced the brutal armed forces their adoptive country had
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blessed while they enslaved the Greeks once again and dichotomized the land. The American foreign policy disillusioned and embarrassed the Greek-Americans at best and the American attitude of divide and conquer left them confused with the usual trite aphorism: “my country right or wrong”. Mediterranean politics, some said, and shrugged, or “that, too, shall pass.”
And they paraded their acceptance on
Fifth Avenue every March during the National Holiday, while others took to the streets to alert the world of their plight and the condition in the motherland. The press was split, the Greek Church followed the Junta meekly, the people, frustrated, kept protesting year after year, United Nations, Washington, the Greek Embassies, hoping, praying that the latest calamity would not last long. Somehow, everyone expected that things would erupt sooner or later, that tragic situation couldn’t possibly last long. At some point even the Americans would be fed up with the three idiot colonels, the clowns they entrusted the land to; the only thing that kept them in power were the American tanks; But, it was accepted, the usual business of politics had to run its course. It was the politicians who decided and undecided and in between a few hundred
thousand people lost lives,
careers, homes and land. Elena’s life became a roller coaster ride; in the process she suffered a miscarriage that left her with a sinking heart. The children were still at school and that year she was taking some more courses toward the almost forgotten Master Degree, which had to be abandoned again; she had no heart for that and there were conferences, meetings, trips. Maybe, she thought at times, this is what it is all about after all: struggle! Fight, fight, fight... Do we ever win? Not really, her inner self contradicted her, but look at the gains. Who ever thought a few decades back that blacks would gain the right to vote?
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Or that women would take equal space in the ‘Wanted’ ads columns in the newspapers. Of course, the pay isn’t the same...Yet, she was amazed at the number of people around her who seemed to exist happily or not caring as though life is a garden of roses. Am I so stupid that I cannot recognize the roses but only the world’s ‘sidewalks’, as her husband threw at her once? Maybe I don’t know when or where to stop, but the other inner voice, that of her heart, warned her that she could not stop to smell roses when the stench around her was so overwhelming. ”So what?” Nicky chided her once. “What makes you think you were sent to the world to save it from sin?” Nicky, a successful business man
but still Nicky! “And who sent me, Nicky?” She chided him, “a helicopter
threw me down?” Suddenly, but not unexpectedly, the dictatorship mess in Greece erupted and began crumbling. It was November, 1973, when the students of the prestigious Polytechnic decided that the time had come for
sanity to prevail.
The onset of their sit-in looked harmless enough. A radio station built inside the school for the occasion, was busy day and night. The students declared their decision to finish with the Junta once and for all, the word spread throughout the land and the outside world; all held their breath. The Army with the tanks at the gate were ominous enough yet, the people came from all over the land, the schools closed in solidarity, doctors and nurses were standing by, medicines and food were passed secretly over the high walls in the back of the school. It was night when the tanks broke through the gate, wrecked walls and rode over the shattered rails to spread death inside the Polytechnic’s grounds riding over the students’ bodies. The shooting melee that followed left hundreds of students dead and injured. Hundreds were arrested.
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East 79th Street in Manhattan was teeming with hundreds of people who stayed there day and night hoping, praying; but the doors and windows of the Greek Consulate were shut tight, and so they were at the Archdiocese. Buses came from nearby towns and states to join the protestors. When the bus from Maryland stopped at the corner of Madison Avenue, Elena had left the line and was walking to Madison Avenue to get some coffee. She stepped aside to allow the passengers more room because the police were closing in on them and there was Vivian coming toward her as if they had a date. They hugged and cried; it had been years. So many things had happened since they last saw each other! Vivian had married, Elena was divorced; and the children! So much to tell, so little time. Since they were to spend the night, they decided to go eat first and talk and then return. And talk they did! Starting from the school days, Vivian wanted to know why Elena had disappeared from the Graduate program. “It’s a long story,” Elena said, “tell me about you, did you finish school?” “Never mind, eventually I did; but do you know that the FBI drove us crazy asking about you and some others?” “Did they tell you that I had killed someone or did drugs?” “None of that!” Vivian laughed. Oh, you know how things were at the time, you were a dangerous person to know.” “Yes, I know and I don’t want to discuss or remember those times any more than I want to remember the daily Nazi executions.” “Anyway, they lost me because I disappeared.” Vivian was silent for a while.
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“Don’t tell me you went ‘underground’; at least, I didn’t.” They both laughed. “No, silly, I eloped, that’s sort of an underground!” She sighed. remembered
Elena
Michael, her friend’s boyfriend who wasn’t Greek; her parents were
dead set against that marriage. “We went to Boston, got married, graduated from Boston University, and lived happily ever after.” “You never wrote me all that.” “You don’t write stuff like that in a Christmas card. I always meant to come and see you, it just didn’t happen, one makes excuses and postpones.” Elena nodded, how well she knew! She marveled that it took an almost a catastrophe to unite them again. “Did your parents ever change their minds?” She asked. “Yes, they did! After I graduated and started teaching and they learned that Michael was a pharmacist. Then they could
brag, you know how it is. When
they retired they moved to Boston to be near their grandchildren.” “And how are they now?” “My father passed away last year; Mom moved in with us when we moved to Maryland and the children love her. How about your mother?” “Luckily she is still with us, frail, I’m afraid, but ‘thriving’ with the presence of the children, just like your mother. She still fights the Junta, though.” “She’ll never die then, she was always good with at fighting.” Vivian said, “she better hold on, these bastards are entrenched and they have help.” She lit a cigarette and looked at Elena
moving her fork listlessly in a pensive
mood. She realized that they hadn’t touched their food, Elena looked beat. The
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soft music in the small restaurant, the talk around them, images of contradiction; one block away, the
crowds marched silently holding lit candles.
Dumb in their grief, the two women tried to make conversation which failed each time... Elena suddenly remembered Leonid and Lynn, their accidental meeting some years back. They were trying to eat and talk of the past then, too. Politics, repression, ugly days. But they thought they were young enough to keep trying; something good will come out of this mess, they hoped then. We aren’t youngsters any more, she thought, and look at us, what do we talk about, the theater, music, museums, travels, the accomplishments of out children? No! Still politics, still the past influencing the present and perhaps their children’s future. At least we carry no rancor, we always knew we were right. “A penny for your thoughts!” Vivian said putting the cigarette out. “I was thinking of Leonid and Lynn, remember them?” “Of course, where are they?” “They live in Paris. They had retired in Greece, but after the Junta takeover they went into self-exile. They came to
see me in London last year,
they are well. Their children are here, I see them because they are friends with mine.” Vivian held her friend’s hands over the tablecloth and looked at her long and tenderly. “Tell me,” she said, “are you happy, Elena? No I should rephrase it, you can’t be happy with all those happenings. Are you alone, I wanted to ask.” “Alone!” Elena said and smiles. “That, my friend depends on one’s point of view. ‘Alone’ is subjective; I have the children, my job, my writing, the ‘sidewalks’, as my mother would sardonically inform you. I don’t have time to be
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alone.” “Elena, the children will go, like mine did. How about re-marrying?” “Bite your tongue! Marriage, Vivian,” Elena said with a sigh, “better be a one-time performance; there is no dress rehearsal. Either you make it or you don’t.” “Sorry, I don’t agree with you, but let’s talk about something else.” “I’m sorry Vivian, while these clowns, the colonels are in Athens I can’t think of much else, I am a bore; anyway, let’s eat.” They began to eat finally, each conscious that their appetites had vanished. “Before we join the crowds again, let’s walk down Fifth Avenue, I haven’t seen it for many years.” Vivian proposed after they finished their dinner. They put their coats on. “I hope you will not be disillusioned, Vivian, New York is constantly changing,” Elena told her, “it’s late in the evening to see anything new, and it’s raining, look outside.” “It’s just a drizzle,” Vivian said, “that’s the charm of New York, it’s never the same even after a few days not years as in my case.”
When she opened
the door she saw that it was more than a drizzle. “Let’s see what they are doing at the Consulate and then we’ll go to my place.” They walked the two blocks in the rain. Under their umbrellas, wet candles snuffed out, the crowd diminished now, still kept their vigil. It was going to be a long night! The T.V cameras were shooting.
When they came out of the subway the rain had stopped; that was a relief. They walked home, made coffee and sat cross-legged on the floor as they did long ago
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when they had to cram for tests. Elena brought out old albums and the newer ones, her children photographs. It’s the past we try to avoid and it persists, Elena thought, and the future that scares the hell out of us and we try to rush to. “Tell me,” Vivian said suddenly, “did you ever go back for that famous Master’s Degree?” She laughed. “Eventually.” “I bet you had a hard time.” “That’s an understatement,” Elena sighed. “Hard? No kidding! A full time job, evening classes, two children in College, divorce, complications, financial straights... name it. I should say it was hard! It’s over; next!” “All alone?” “All alone!” “No boyfriend...man friend?” Vivian moved slightly away from Elena just in case she got the album on her head. Elena laughed. “Shut up, Vivian, I said next, you have a one-way mind! I’m happy as I am. Shall we hit the sack before you find something else to interrogate me about? Vivian took the train to Baltimore and her school early next morning, and Elena the subway to her own school, sure that before the nightmare was over they would be meeting again in some sidewalk either in front of the White House, the United Nations, or the Greek Consulate.
C H A P T E R
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My Mother She was always
close, emotionally,
if not physically, at least mentally.
Even when she wasn’t around, her thoughts and spirit were parts of our lives, our own thoughts and actions. She was getting older, but not in years. She was weak, at times I felt that she had been carrying such a load on her small back that she couldn’t wait to let it go. Her bones were getting brittle and fractured easily, it was a torture seeing her trying to be brave, funny, to watch her efforts to retain
what she gallantly called her ‘political ethos’, when we told
her that things were getting calmer, better. Nicky and I told her stories, to engage her as before in dialogue, discussions and arguments; she was wise to that, too. She was old, she told us, but not to old to join a protest march once in a while. And that, from the Nursing Home recuperating from a hip operation. She agonized about the children, they were growing up and she was unable to look after them; it seemed that she was trying to tell me not to worry all the time because she did, as if I could help that. I tried to take her mind off that. “You know Ma,” I told her one day after she had been there for a week or so, “I never rode a carousel.”
What brought that up, I don’t remember. I was
sitting by her hospital bed and she turned to look at me as if the thought struck her that I had suddenly gone mad. “So? Neither did I,” she said, her voice plain but thoughtful. I thought she had taken the bait. “What brought this up, all of a sudden in this place of all places?” I noticed that her voice was weaker. “Isn’t it time I walked out of here? This place is for old people.” She scanned the room with her eyes, the table at the foot of the bed, the two narrow windows, from where she could see
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the branches of the elm tree that reached and touched the panes. Sunlight filtered through the windows sketching leave patterns on the white sheets. Sadly, she traced the little shadows. “I don’t know, Ma,” I brought the carousel back to get her out of the theme of leaving before she was allowed. “At times I feel that I have missed something, that it would be fun going around on a horse, round and round, never stopping, never going anywhere,” I said. “Like life! Elena, we are on a carousel since the day we’re
born, all
right.” She chuckled. “But to put things right, you have ridden once, of course you can’t remember, you were let’s see, three...I can’t remember though you should, with the children when they were little.” “You expect me to remember; I can’t even remember the children riding the carousel in Palisades Park before it was razed to become another luxury apartment building.” “You still have time...” “Oh, Ma, at 45? “What nonsense, what forty-five? You were just in your thirties; now, wipe that silly wrinkle off your face, smile!” My mother estimated my age in decades, I was either 20, 30 or 40! I looked at her face tired and wan on the pillow, the blond hair turned gray, all too suddenly I thought; but it was only because I couldn’t dye it for her since she had been at the hospital. I wondered if that cursed osteoporosis was straining her memory among other faculties. Her life, too, was practically measured by decades the painful childhood, escapes, turmoil, violence, wars, blockades; she had seen all, or almost all, and all had to fit in some decade. The strange thing was that she
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would relate very little as if it was of no consequence to us, we really had to extract it from her like a painful tooth; except for the decades that we shared with her. The 40s and World War II, occupation, resistance, liberation, the trip back to America; and then of new atrocities the horror of concentration camps, the terrifying aspect of the nuclear destruction of two Japanese cities to add ‘glory’ to our victory; what lessons in one’s life! Speaking of Hitler, or Truman, she couldn’t distinguish between the two at the end; to her the holocaust of the Japanese cities wasn’t different, in fact it was more murderous that Hitler’s crematoria (“...what did the women and children do to them? May God shut the door on their faces for eternity...”) As if Hitler or Truman ever cared! The 50s, cold war, FBI sneaking in the most improbable places like alley cats in the gutter, following us, her... the beginning of the McCarthy hysteria, (“...God, the way they are treating people, like they’ve been treating those poor Negroes. Doesn’t anyone care? Can’t anyone do something? I wish I could speak English...”) The 50s brought the T. V. in our living rooms, an instrument which she messed more than watched (“...What are they saying anyway, I understand a few words but they make no sense...”) The 60s, her children getting married; (“...what? Going where? Without me?” on the occasion of Nicky going away on his honeymoon!). The 60s brought some light, she thought. I didn’t have to tell her that I saw and felt the changes, like the wind whispering to me words of awakening, of awareness: the Women’s Liberation Movement (“...I wish your father was here to see it finally...”), the endless demonstrations. Vietnam’s undeclared War. Mama didn’t mind walking as long as her legs could carry her, she said. She didn’t mind baby-sitting as long as one of us at least, was doing our civic duty,
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protesting injustice. That decade saw the assassinations that spread a veil of doom to cloud her Elena’s optimism about a country trying to awake from its political stupor; somehow, she lost her spark. (“...an ominous decade these 60s, two Kennedy assassinations, Dr. King, secrets, political intrigues, someone is planning bad things, mark my word...I wish your father was here, he would know what to do...”) The last couple of decades of my father’s life...The aftermath of World War I, the bloodiest war, the mixed-up politics, his failing lungs after inhaling Germany’s ‘ultimate weapon’, chemical warfare, his hospitalization that lasted many years, the economic downfall that followed, the crisis with
hunger,
unemployment...and then the 30s with the depression, his return to Greece to live out his last days. How would he have reacted had he lived to see the following decades, I wondered. I knew little about my father, I’m afraid my mother, having been married to him for only six year, knew precious little, too. It takes a lifetime to get to know a person; but a few things did remain clear in my memory because my mother knew, or remembered. His obsession with the women’s movement fighting for equal rights and the vote; the adventure of flying, Lindbergh. He dreamed of the day that he and I, (a future woman) would one day fly in an airplane; he could not foresee that planes would terrify me, that I was forty before I got on a plane trembling. Had he been alive in 1935 when Amelia Earhart flew her solo, he would have left the message in a will. Madame Curie and her discovery of ‘radium’ the unknown element, was another obsession of his. That was all I could find out about him and that he loved his island with a childish passion because he was a child when he left; I guess that was what made my father, who he was.
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Mama saw little of the 70s, but enough to form an opinion about the outcome. She was gratified that the Vietnam adventure that turned to horror finally ended; she was overjoyed that the ‘cursed’ Greek Junta was finally in jail, though she would have preferred the original Court Martial decision, the death sentence instead of ‘life’ (“...of course, the government had to succumb to the orders of the CIA; they put them there in the first place, so now they had to save them...”) I wish she had lived to see the end of the decade, to live a few years without much turbulence, at least on the home front; to see her grandchildren out of school, settled, to enjoy serenity in her declining years among her loved ones. But, if I ever knew my mother, I know she would watch T. V. and try to guess which part of the world is in flames, scan the papers to prove her point that man was eating man. I inherited that from her. I can still hear her. (“...we are cannibals, the world has always been like that, wars, killing... Don’t they know that there is a God looking? Sometimes I wonder what He is doing...That’s why the earthquakes, the floods, the volcanoes, the forest fires consuming all, so many disasters; nature has no mind, there is a Hand above all that and it’s His hand, but man is blind, we will never learn...”)
I walked out of the building into the humid, hot afternoon, and stood under the elm tree looking up at her window, suddenly realizing that no matter what I say or do, we are all mortals and my mother, too, will go, perhaps soon. What will I do if I lose her, how would I carry on, take her place? The thought left an emptiness in me. She is the wall I lean on, I thought, I can’t possibly develop her strength. I don’t think I can be a wall for my children.
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The large Avenue in Englewood, the graceful trees, were just a picture: I couldn’t fit into that. We have been through a lot, she and I; her strength has supported me even though at times it seemed that it was my youthful stamina and enthusiasm that kept us going in disaster, in days of grief or terror. Seeing her helpless, fragile frame now, I felt that my own questionable strength was being sapped. In my early youth she stood by during demonstrations and protests and helped in her own way either collecting signatures for Peace or protest against the daily executions of political prisoners in Greece, or money, feeling vindicated because in her own country she was never able to do that. She helped causes that were not Greek, like the women’s Equal Rights Amendment Act; she collected money for the children of Africa, while scolding me that I neglect my studies, or complaining that I don’t do enough, especially when she was bedridden or in traction. “Ma,” Nicky said once, “you know you can’t march South on crutches.” She wanted to join Martin Luther King’s March. “Alone, no, but with so many people...and what is wrong with your legs? She would not give up. “As long as my legs hold;” she would say, or “what’s wrong with your legs, I didn’t raise you to keep quiet when you see so much brutality around us.”
Mama lived to see the collapse of the Greek Junta; I am thankful for that. She shut the door of her room with a shining, thankful smile and stayed there praying for a long time. “You see?” She said later her voice already weakened. “It was my curse, I knew it would work.” She closed her eyes maybe trying to recover that day in July
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1973, exactly one year before the Junta’s demise in 1974. She waited at the JFK airport with the rest of the family and saw my sullen face as I emerged through the swinging doors suitcase in hand and embraced my children. I had been ejected from Greece in the port of Corfu by the military ‘protectors’, the first port the ferry boat from Italy touched. My family had no idea I tried to spare them the agony as much as possible. I, an enemy of the State . . .again! Mom had been staying with the children so I could realize the life-long dream of a voyage, a European Museum tour. No one, not even me, let alone my mother, had foreseen that at the spur of the moment, on impulse, driven by that eternal memory cell, that longing that never rested, never slept, I would attempt to visit Greece unmindful of the fact that the land was under the choking hold of a fascist regime and fully aware of what that implied. I was anxious to use my brand new passport that had taken me more than 20 years to earn! I don’t know what made me think it was that easy. The colonels had a minute by minute report of the life and actions of all ‘dangerous’ passengers who would try to enter the land whether by boat, ferry boat, plane, train, car, balloon
or donkey. They were waiting for me in full
regalia, fancy uniforms, stars and ribbons, and a tank for good measure! Mom looked at me that afternoon as we reached the parking lot painted a calm pink in the sunset and the pain on her face was gradually replaced by indescribable hatred. My own face was not exactly the face of a happy tourist returning home after a tour of a dozen world-renown museums. “They stopped you!” She said, she didn’t ask, or asked ‘who’ or why. “They threw you out,” she corrected herself and at that moment, all the pain I held in check for a week, rushed in streams from my eyes and into her bosom as she hugged me. The children stood nearby, aghast, they had never seen me cry in public
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before. “May they, and theirs rot in prison and never see sunrise again, and may the evil Junta breathe its last summer.” She spat on the ground for good measure, making the children look around self consciously, apparently thinking of a way to hide if there were witnesses; my mother un-clutched my arms from her, crossed herself, looked up in the sky concealed by the huge dome of the TWA terminal, and led the way to the car, sure that her curse was heard, and somehow would prompt the demise of the Greek Junta. In the car she managed to whisper: “Did you see anyone in Greece?” “Yes, Mama,” I answered, “the Army officers who stopped me, a tank at the gate and a guard who walked me to another ferry boat for the return voyage to Italy.” She murmured something under her breath. “I was thinking more of a friend. You were crazy to try without telling anyone but did you tell anyone in Greece you were going?” “Yes, I did! I called Magda from Rome and we were to meet in Corfu.”
“Well, did she come?” “I have no idea. It all happened too fast,
no other human was allowed near the harbor. Who knows?” Magda’s life had been a roller coaster of disaster after her 1945 encounter with the police as things got from bad to worse; the right wing, pro-German Greek government silenced any dissenting voice. Court Martials became an everyday word. The executions and exiles lasted even longer than the painful civil war. Magda escaped the firing squad because her father had managed to bribe the judge with gold after he sold all his property in the island; she was jailed and stayed incarcerated for the next twenty years. When the Junta took over she was arrested again and exiled in an island Two months before I went there she was released for health reasons. I wasn’t sure that she wasn’t arrested while waiting for me. When I saw Magda again, the Junta architects were in jail and she was free.
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She had come to Corfu the Summer of 1973, she told me and found the gates sealed. Afraid that something had happened to me, she rented a small boat and searched the harbor until the ferry boat I was supposed to be in, left. I had to laugh at her adventure. “I had an idea they might have drowned you,” she protested. “Magda, they aren’t so stupid, if they were going to do that they wouldn’t do it inside the harbor. We had crossed the Adriatic Sea in the night.” She was silent. “I really lost it at the time, I was frightened, of course, I thought about it later but I was sure they had done something to you until I heard from you.”
A year later, in July 1974, my mother was vindicated. “I told you,” she said and nothing more. She expected it, she knew that her curse would bring the Junta down. A few months later, elections were declared in Greece; she sneered at the expression ‘free elections’. “Sure,” she said, “free for whom?
For the same old crowd of useless, good-
for-nothing exploiting politicians, that foreigner, the king and his entourage, same mediocre company of arteriosclerosis. The same old cronies who brought the Junta in the first place. Mark my words, Elena,” she said thoughtfully, panting because her breath was becoming short, “it’s the carousel that never stops.” She smiled remembering the talk we had the year before. “The same old men, round and round.” The day after the ‘free’ elections my mother died suddenly, peacefully without learning that the outcome of the elections was as she had predicted. Nevertheless, she had asked us to have her ashes buried in her island. I touched the cold face resting under flowers and icons, hardly recognizable, her beautiful face distorted by the funeral parlor cosmetician. Not until the very end before
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death covered her beautiful face with the frozen mask of serenity, did the long endured hardships sweep briefly over her face like a soft breeze from her Ionian Sea, and I thanked her for her last proud act, her dignified death, the aftermath of a dignified life. I also told her of the elections outcome. “Thanks Mom!” I whispered. “And you were right. I will not say again that ‘I never rode a carousel’. It will be ‘we never rode their carousel.’
I’m sure
she heard me.
Mama was funny! she decided to accept me as an adult but still
a sort of an
‘unfinished’ citizen when I was a College student. She began giving me short, delicate lectures about boys, trying to make me see them in another light, I assume, that of a sexual being. She treated the subject as if boys were a newly discovered specie, unless she thought that attending an all-girls High School made me blind as well as ‘virtuous’. was
As soon as the subject was dealt with, it
stowed away and forgotten. Each time she opened her mouth to enlighten me
she confused me with her half-truths and semi-knowledge. I liked boys and they were off limits. I hated cigarettes and she thought I was very un-lady-like, not an update ’liberated’ woman! I wanted to stay out with my friends after 8 o’clock but doors were locked at nine with me inside. And I hated seeing one of my cousins, not always the same one, at the University gate waiting to escort me home since ‘he was just passing by’! Naturally, I thought that once in America where people were free, I, too, would be part of that ‘freedom’ but my mother’s view of freedom did not coincide with that of the rest of the world. The first day she informed me that New York was no different from Athens and that if I had any silly ideas about my new life,
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better get them out of my head. Nothing had changed, she said. But for me something had changed! In America everyone worked, and since we weren’t rich, either I worked full time or divided my time between school and work, and that’s what I did. My mother gave me an allowance from my salary all through college. Those days a TV set was a dream in the heads of scientists, so it was early to bed. The endless boring nights gave me the precious outlet of books and I read like a maniac. It was the challenge of a new language, of authors I either had heard of vaguely, or was totally unaware of. The happiest day of my life in America till then was the discovery of a Public Library nearby; it was a miracle that filled all my Saturdays with joy to the point that the Librarian, a very nice, gentle lady, thought it imperative to inform me of new publications not knowing that I Yet, that was
had no idea which book was what or who the ‘famous’ author
was.
the most stimulating method of escaping to fantasy land.
I was already working full time when I realized that I needed more freedom; freedom from the suffocating house; I found the way: I married! Mama cried, she wasn’t losing a daughter, she was losing a valuable asset, her life’s investment in masochism; the body she spied on at night to make sure it was breathing normally, (unless she thought that I could escape and slip away from the fifth floor fire escape, fleeing the coup). On the other hand, there was a
small
dividend: now no one would think that her daughter was an old maid, or that no one would marry her at the ripe age of 21. Marriage to me was freedom of movement, of rules and curfew and from questioning. I would join any demonstration or protest line from New York to Washington because I would be an independent person. It didn’t take me long to begin wondering why my mother never lectured me on that fallacy. I found out that
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in marriage one must make more allowances, accept stringent rules and restricting demands because of duty. We rebel against parents but hardly against spouses. I did both!
I had never taken my mother’s restrictions kindly; at times I screamed, I cried and complained bitterly and that was usually the time when she gave the same answer mothers all over the world give: Wait till you have children of your own, you’ll see!
Not me, I told her, never! Never will I walk the dark bedrooms like
a ghost, listening to the rhythm of their breathing; never will I stretch outside a fifth floor window at the mercy of wind, rain or snow waiting for my offspring to turn the corner of the deserted Washington Heights street after a meeting, a late class or a protest march. Not me! And while she shook her head I tried to remind her that we are now in another country, that I belonged in another generation –‘a mother is a mother in any generation’ she would interrupt- that it wasn’t war time any more and that I was too smart to be caught in that parent trap. When I was a mother myself years later, if she ever felt vindicated she never let on. When I sneaked into the children’s room nights, I wasn’t repeating my mother’s paranoia listening to their breathing; I was just checking because I had remembered that one of them had sneezed three days before; or because I had heard of a rubella case in school. I wouldn’t call that irrational, or spying, even if my mother smiled knowingly. I’m sure I never pulled the wool over her eyes. As the years wore on, the pink hands of the electric clock’s dial were suggesting what they always did: the time, or how long I slept, or checking if my insomnia persisted. I certainly wasn’t checking the time when my teenagers
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finally made it home. The day came when they fled the coup. God, how far those colleges were from home, how endless and lonely the nights! The phone was under the sheet, friend or enemy, depending on whether it rang or not. It wasn’t bothering anyone, I reasoned, we are humans, something may happen far away, God forbid, the President may declare war or invade another country without our knowledge as we were asleep (and hasn’t that happened?) Another Greek dictator might try a military take-over (and hasn’t that happened?)How did I know that they were safely in bed and not someplace they shouldn’t be where
drunk drivers
took over the highways, or that they eat well, or that someone isn’t trying to convince them to try drugs? I wish there was a way to tell my mother that with all her panic I didn’t turn out so bad and that the children on whom I never ‘spied’(!) made me proud. There are so many things one wishes undone when it’s too late! Times were different then; things that were free, exciting and worth the trouble, like visiting the zoo, going to a concert in Central Park, the luxury of freedom from fear of getting mugged. Those memorable days after World War II, we walked along Hudson River in Spring; cars were few and far in between and, carefree, we could walk anywhere to
watch the clear blue water and wave at the tourists in the
Circle Line sightseeing boats that sailed up toward Bear Mountain; or we played in the snow under the George Washington Bridge in winter, sinking up to our waist at times in the soft snow; those were happy days one was looking forward to and the
picnics at Van Cortland Park, or Orchard Beach in the Bronx, and every few
years there were elections, an exciting time, because there was no fear, we were free!
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P
A
R
T
My Mother’s Final Voyage Mama’s ashes
traveled with me in a sealed metal box on my first visit to
Greece to fulfill her wish. I landed a few miles outside of Athens one year after the demise of the Military Junta on a sunlit, glorious day in June, 1975. The sun was reflected on the marbles, the sea the sky. No tanks, no Army waited to meet this insignificant person who now wasn’t considered ‘dangerous’; the colonels and their cohorts were incarcerated for life, their American friends were far, the Junta had done its job, their presence wasn’t needed anymore for their plans. Friends, flowers, the blinding sun –or was it tears- and the crisp translucent breeze caressing the bright city, the mountain, the people and the sea met me instead. After New York, the air was like a miracle. The children stood silently at the gate taking in the commotion, the whiteness and the exuberance of the friends meeting us. They knew that the metal box contained their yiayia’s ashes and that yiayia had come home to rest close to her family. A few days later the local church authorities informed us that cremation wasn’t allowed, consequently my mother could not be buried by the church. Except for the immediately family I had not told anyone else in the village; and of those in my mother’s family only an old aunt accepted the strange request. The old aunt took me aside. “Be ready 4 o’clock in the morning,” she whispered. “Why? Are we taking the goats out?” I joked. “Just be there, bring your mother, I’ll take care of the rest.” The ‘rest were incense and matches. My mother would love that.
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In the pre-dawn darkness my aunt and I skipped out of the village quietly and climbed the path
on the hillside to the cemetery, to the grave of Mama’s
father. It would be impossible to take her where she really wanted to be laid to rest, with my father, his village up in the mountain was far, difficult to reach and
we would be easily detected; we would be lynched! My aunt scraped the surface and dug to spread the ashes murmuring her
prayers; she covered the ashes and burned incense. The aroma
blended with that
of the cedar and spruce trees around us and the sea below. “There!” She said getting off her knees with a groan. “Now she can see the boats coming in.” Her voice was trembling. I shed the tears then that I owed my mother. You are home, Mama, I whispered, sleep well.
Though there were no Army men or tanks waiting for my arrival, the little mousy man wouldn’t let me off his sight while waiting at the airport the day of our departure. He had asked the airline personnel to insist that I give up my briefcase after I refused him. We had been in Greece for a month and it was 1975, a year after the fall of the Junta; apparently, some of its services were still in force and seemingly
he had the authority to delay the plane’s departure until
it became obvious that the plane had to leave and I heard my name being urgently paged. We rushed to the loading area; the plane was already warming up, a very upset pilot met us ready to scream that we kept the plane waiting for us. Then he saw the little man who had followed us still trying to grab my briefcase. He got into the plane with us pushing the stewardess aside. The pilot asked him to leave but he said that the briefcase had to go with the rest of the luggage because the plane was overloaded. The pilot stood aghast; he looked at the half empty plane
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(no tourist leaves
Greece in the middle of summer, it was the time of coming,
not going) “Since when?” Asked the pilot not believing his ears as he turned to me. “What have you got there, gold?” I said maybe; I had a manuscript, a book, my cosmetic bag and the pajamas I wore last night. The passengers who were eager for the voyage to start began to laugh and threatened the man; they and booed him out of the plane. The pilot made signs for the ladder to be taken away and added, “before I throw him out.”
The children were already fighting for the window
seat. My daughter served the obnoxious man with an extremely intelligent (threatening) explicit, rather a vulgar phrase, I thought, and found another window seat leaving the seat next to her brother for me. “Once a dangerous person, always a dangerous person”, was my daughter’s witty remark between waves of laughter and anger as she secured her safety belt.
The island I left in the Fall of 1944,
wasn’t the same any more, nor did I
expect it to be in the seventies. Thirty years is a long time, Europe was already reconstructed after the World War II disaster,
life was going on. The island had
been totally flattened by the earthquake of 1953 which left more than one thousand dead and sixty thousands people homeless. In
1975 the ferry boat
brought us in the harbor of my totally strange and unrecognized island. My memory had kept the picture of a fishing village, which was now a crowded, sophisticated tourist’s paradise; even the shape of the harbor had been altered, enlarged. Modern yachts and ferry boats
now moored there. The roads were wider and
beautiful, modern homes and cafes graced the shore and the surrounding area where sheep grazed in the fields once. Our house, built after the earthquake in another part of the village was up the road far from where it used to be.
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The old Venetian buildings of the capital
were no more; hundreds of years
of a distinct architecture gone! The narrow lanes were wide streets with new, comfortable homes and gardens. The one we lived in before we left, was now a hotel, my school a modern 3-story apartment building. But the tall graceful Clock Tower remained erect and strangely, it worked! Two years before, I had walked the streets of Florence in Italy with tears in my eyes; the similarity was astounding. Now ‘home’ was a strange megalopolis. Man and nature, I thought, change the face of the world; man builds and wrecks. A volcano can sink continents or bring up others from the abyss. Man and nature can create lakes and harbors and rivers, yet, an earthquake of seven something on the Richter scale had erased centuries,
burying whatever was left from the Venetian era together
with humble 20th century abodes. It took many years for the island to regain some normalcy, and for me to get used to the new city.
C H A P T E R
America
Then
Elections in America
were an exciting time long ago, for the candidates but
also for us youngsters, the volunteers who canvassed and collected signatures and did all kinds of office work. We helped in the election process learning things we had never heard of; we took people to register and showed the new immigrants the workings of registration or helped out in the community to organize rallies, and campaigned for this or the other candidate -those one agreed with. In America I found, there were no hoodlums walking the neighborhoods with clubs to force one
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to vote one way or another as they did in Greece; a few years later, when the African-Americans tried to exercise their newly won privilege, violent discrimination raised its ugly face in the South and I knew then that the hoodlums weren’t dead after all. But at that time we knew nothing; the real process, the hidden ‘blackmail’, became common knowledge to the younger people much later, but by that time nothing could shock me because I had learned not to be so naive. The joy and excitement the verb ‘vote’ instilled in me, however, never left me. It was years later that Greek women were allowed to vote and I knew what struggles it entailed, what the women had gone through to gain that privilege. With all those idealistic thoughts, it saddened me to hear other students discussing the merits of the candidates, especially the presidential ones, i.e. the wife’s charm and hairdo or how she dressed and by whom, his toothpaste smile and charismatic bearing; these are the values appreciate here, I thought. Some of the male students actually argued with us defending the elections as they were before, when women were not allowed to vote! “Woman’s place is at home!” My mother heard; she shook her head and laughed: “This you will never see again, my child,” she told him with a charming smile and turned to see to the coffee brewing in the kitchen. I cast my first vote in the National elections at twenty-one, just when my mother had decided that I was an old maid, beyond saving, a spinster ridiculed in the eyes of the community; at twenty-one I had to be a serious lady. Dressed in my Sunday best, card in hand, I waited in line to vote knowing that my choice was one of the two big parties; but once locked in my cubicle, I felt lost, there were many parties, many candidates, many confusing bills I knew nothing about, I only knew the people I was canvassing for as a volunteer. It seemed like a science rather than a privilege for the U.S. citizen which sounds simplistic
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enough; I wondered how they expected a person who is not learned, to learn the intricacies of voting. It must have been like staring at a table full of all kinds of food and suddenly losing your appetite. Those moments I thought of my father and the struggles in the then new-fledged Women’s Movement for the vote; I decided that it was my duty to honor the privilege. That, to me was an indication of constitutional values and guaranteed rights. Of course, that didn’t always work as it should. In the school library I had read that the ‘nobility’ which I had believed the word ‘America’ meant, was just an ideal which
doesn’t always
materialize, a ‘pipe dream’, or as my mother put it, ‘utopia’.
It was at that
time that the dreams of millions of people began to crack and crumble,
the
disease called cynically enough ‘cold war’. I wondered why ‘cold’ when the blood hadn’t dried out yet and more warm blood was shed in many corners of the world by ‘hot’ bullets. The Marshall Plan was supplying the Greek Government with guns during the ugly, painful civil war that followed and paying the luxury of a foreign Royal family while the poor war-wrecked people, poorer still, were tried, exiled, imprisoned or executed. The economy of the country was going from bad to worse
tens of thousands of people immigrated to the mines of Belgium and
Germany, or to Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The same American foreign policy
brought dictatorships in South America, and interference with other
countries’ government, always with the noble excuse of ‘restoring’ democratic values. Meanwhile, my ideal country was testing new weapons on innocent countries, enriching the war machinery lords. I thought how strange it was that one country’s wealth and might was another country’s downfall. In time the shock subsided; I learned that power ruled everywhere, power backed by the ambitions of politicians who eventually died, and were replaced by other ambitious nuts didn’t they know they, too, were going to die one day?- the horror of misused
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nuclear power, military aid, strategic advisers etc: dangerous combinations!
Eventually the cold war dropped its false front and became what it really is whenever and wherever war is needed: a hot war! Now we were faced with
an
exhausted, limping globe; the ecological imbalance is working its way to an eventually unstoppable disaster; I wonder if what I have witnessed in my time was a repetition and a natural process of the evolution of man: if Greece, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Cuba, Chile, Korea, Vietnam, Granada, Panama, the Gulf, Kosovo, were just
greed for power and wealth. Is it always the dream of
‘man’ to control the world or all of the above? It started with the caveman and we probably never evolved to a higher intellect as intended. Yet, all was not so bleak; things evolve, sciences are advanced, some diseases were eradicated, life expectancy is better by far. Washington Heights, my old neighborhood, looks like an immense parking lot and the old apartment dwellings like ghosts from another era. The entire city is full of fumes and the tips of the skyscrapers penetrate the ugliness to give a nicer view of man’s endeavors. Idlewild Airport, now JFK, far in the marshes of Queens where wild life was in abundance in the wetlands, became a reality and so did La Guardia and Newark Airports, also hunting wetlands many years before. Few airlines crossed the Atlantic Ocean or flew cross-country from ‘sea to shining sea’ then. More cars, more highways, more refineries, more congestion, meant wealth. Prosperity, building, housing shortages, colleges available to more people even though higher education got more expensive each year. But the ‘wanted’ ads in the newspapers were not allowed to carry separate columns specifying ‘Male’ or “Female’. No one could hire or fire employees because of age
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or sex. Not that sexual ‘abuse’ was never even hinted one way or another or that women we paid equally for doing equal work. The struggles for civil rights became synonymous with one’s existence, and the ‘activists’ were still more or less on the wrong side of the political road; but it was now or never, and there was bloodshed because nothing is ever offered free, as a gift. Everything earned has been fought for and it sometimes bore the price of blood, as were the assassinations. The ‘activists’ didn’t stop, and the infamous ‘black list’ wasn’t entirely buried. But then, long ago Lincoln was assassinated, and in our days the Kennedys and Martin Luther King followed the pattern...To this day I can’t understand the logic of assassination; one kills a person, but dreams and ideals cannot ever be eradicated. What was it in the assassination of a visiting archduke in Yugoslavia, a mere human, that made the world go completely insane causing World War I where millions who had never heard of the archduke were killed because they were told they were fighting for God and Country?
(“Tell me,” Leonid asked me once when middle aged, we met again. “what left you more disillusioned, you know, bitter, frustrated, knowing that you weren’t able to help or react in a certain way as you had dreamed?” He always confused me even when he tried, as he thought, to help me; only
maturity now afforded him the
luxury of irony. He knew the answer: it was my nature. “History!” He looked at me with intensity screwing his face. “But you love history,” he said, “you are part of it you always claimed, what made you change course? How about ‘good’ events reported and endorsed throughout history: civilizations, discoveries,
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altruism...” he offered. “How soon you forgot, Leonid,” I said. “Our discussions, our arguments... don’t let me be repetitious. It’s just that we have been brainwashed to associate history mostly with disaster, wars, victories, losses, killings and the aftermath. That is not fair to humanity’s existence, to our persistence persevere and
to
survive against so many odds. I still think so.” Leonid raised his
hand to interrupt, then changed his mind, waved me on and lit a cigarette. I swallowed hard. “Science”, I continued, “is history but we read mostly of battles and bombs, and heroes when they should be simply called simply ‘killers’. Shouldn’t we name ‘heroes’ those who in many instances have paid with their lives for daring to discover something lasting, beneficial and of vital significance to humanity. Dr. Semmelweis comes to mind, Dr. Fleming! His discovery of penicillin saved generations of children, so did the Drs. Salk and Sabin
with the polio
vaccine and so many others. Where would we be but for those discoveries indispensable for our very existence and the future of this globe; aren’t these historical events worth mentioning?” Leonid surprised her when he laughed. She looked at him; “what was so funny?” She asked. “You! My lovely Elena,” he said, “don’t you understand? For a few minutes you have brought back my youth and I am grateful for that. I so wanted to hear you, to see you in the old fighting spirits.” “What?” She was indignant, she felt like dowsing him with her coffee. “You let me go through the old spiel thinking that you forgot, or changed so that you can have fun? In other words, I entertained you.” “I agree,” Leonid said sadly. ”So punish me, I haven’t changed.” “I believe in history, Leonid, it is the most important lesson we can
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learn,” I added miserably. “It’s just that books continue to lie,
nothing
changed it just seems so because we are faced with something new everyday. The writers still prostitute history to serve views and vices of ambitious politicians, or dictators or kings or even common people who believe that they have some kind of a mission to lead, like Hannibal or Genghis Kahn, Napoleon, Alexander... Those who interpret and distort facts as they serve them, who endorse and enforce them.’ “Unfortunately,” Leonid said in a grim voice, “history is subjective, talking about it is useless; there’s simply no objectivity in history, Elena. Historians,
governments or dictators, each one of us, we all have a view, an
interpretation; go to a Greek café Elena and listen; every Greek can solve the world’s problems, or are you forgetting? Our lives consist of pitifully few surprises of joy and countless repetitions of momentous disasters, you are right. Sometimes the word ‘history’ loses its meaning. One kind of killers we call heroes we honor and bestow medals on them, but those who commit crimes against our society are criminals and we punish them, we prosecute them, throw them in jail for life or we execute them. What are the others committing? Favors? But there is the reason of committing a crime in order to save his country, or his people. And that’s where they dupe us. All killing has one reason, and one reason only: profit!” His smile was a bitter grimace.)
From the days of my early education I remember my history books, thousands of pages of wars. Even my religion books spoke gloriously of war, depending who one fought against and for what. The God they taught me was merciful, kind, forgiving. In another page I would read about a vengeful God, who cast fire and
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pestilence to the sinners! So, what happened to the ‘kind, forgiving’ God? I cannot believe that a noble reason exists to justify killing in any form; war is insanity. How can one kill for peace? Hypocritical! It seems that the male part of our human race never totally lost the caveman inborn impulse due to force of circumstances; he’s still the hunter. One would think that the millennia had erased or at least curbed the ‘killer’s’ instinct. Once the protector of the nest, the male, hunted for food, leaving the female to tend nest and seeds, but in our space-oriented, highly technologically advanced era the intelligent, educated people, us human beings, seem to be expendable. We now have
highly
accurate, sophisticated means of extinction, digital insanities. Press a button, a nation disappears. Man kills everywhere, anytime for any or no reason; there is an aura of
masculinity and a sense of might when one holds a gun or any weapon
that kills claiming a cause. Man defends his country and his God and gets honors (what happened to ‘thou shall not kill’?) Man protects and defends country, democracy, dictator or king, protects and defends money, home and children. Most of the war victims are women and children far from the battle site. Something in a man’s mind is invalidated when he feels the power of a weapon in his hands
men
are asked to bear arms for any of the above reasons: presidents of countries –they give orders, they don’t face the ‘enemy’- fishermen, professors, peasants, astronauts, merchants, scientists. Suddenly man forgets that the ‘enemy’ facing him is not just another man or an army of men. It is children and their mothers they are killing; it is the globe and humanity’s future they so thoughtlessly slaughter; they believe that they ‘protect’ or ‘defend’ country or God or home when they subconsciously defend what they fear most they might be losing: their masculinity!
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