CHAPTER 29
SOFIA
Korydallos Prison, Athens, 1968.
THEY SAID THE PRISON HOUSED two thousand wretched souls, perhaps two hundred of whom were women who were put to work. I worked with Thina in an overstretched hospital ward. Honey was working in the kitchens. The three of us shared a room with Agapi, who had been Madam Magdalena’s most popular hostess. She was forced into working as personal assistant to several of the commanding officers.
‘How come you didn’t get a job in the cookhouse, Agapi?’ Honey asked.
She shrugged haughtily. ‘I failed the test, if you must know.’
‘What was it?’ I asked.
‘They asked how long to boil an egg. Three minutes, I said. I know that much.’
Honey frowned. ‘So how come you failed?’
She shrugged again. ‘They asked how long to boil three eggs. Nine minutes, I said. I’m not stupid, you know – but they still failed me.’ She breathed on her nails and polished them on her thigh. ‘I’m assisting the officers.’
We all slaved a twelve-hour day and swapped stories whenever the four of us were together in our room – which wasn’t often. Men were tortured and brought into the hospital, battered, broken and sometimes dying. Their terrible suffering broke my heart. I longed to see Markos, yet hoped he had escaped and was somewhere safe.
*
Three months passed. I had worked through the night shift and, at 10 a.m., Thina waddled into the ward on her flat feet. The first eight hours of my shift were hectic, but for the last four, time had dragged.
‘You look distraught,’ she said. ‘What’s the matter, doll?’
‘We lost bed seven. His ribs had punctured his lungs and he drowned in his own blood,’ I muttered. ‘I’ve filled the forms in. They took him away in a body bag. Bastards.’
‘We can’t save them all, Sofia – but we can ease their suffering. That’s why we’re here.’
Thina was right, and that angered me further.
‘You won’t believe how busy I was. Four broken thumbs to set. I’d like to use the thumbscrews on that bastard officer’s cock!’
‘Wouldn’t do any good. Bet he’s never had a boner in his entire life! Soft as butter on a summer’s day.’
Our eyes met and, feeling better for the rant, we smiled together.
‘Now I’m bored, with only the worst of everything to think about,’ I said. I looked more closely at her. ‘You look different. What’ve you been doing to yourself?’
‘Agapi’s teaching me her make-up tricks. She shaved my bushy eyebrows off, then showed me how to draw perfect ones.’ Her grin showed the gap in her strong teeth. ‘One of her visitors left this behind.’ She waved a thick black pen. ‘A kind of marker, but it’s perfect for the job. Let’s have a go at yours.’
I folded my arms across my knees and leaned forward.
‘There, perfect!’ she said after a few minutes of her face close to mine. ‘I need more practice, though.’
‘You could do moustaches too,’ I joked. ‘Tidy up the camp commandant’s nose-broom.’
‘Okay,’ she said, laughing. ‘Let me try one on you. A Charlie Chaplin, here we go . . .’
‘Don’t you make me look like Hitler!’ I said, before she shushed me and started drawing. This kind of manic comedy helped alleviate some of the horror we had to deal with.
We were still giggling when the door swung open and I felt the pen jerk up my cheek. The officer in charge marched into the ward. I slapped my hand across my top lip.
‘Have you got a spare bed in here?’ he said. ‘And why have you got your hand under your nose?’
‘I’ve got a cold, sir. I don’t want to breathe germs on you.’
He looked at me suspiciously as Thina busied herself with the bandage tray.
‘Put a surgical mask on. I’ve got a prisoner coming in. Prepare a bed,’ he ordered.
‘Yes, sir!’
Once he had gone, I tried to remove the moustache with rubbing alcohol, but it wouldn’t go. The redness of my skin only attracted more attention. I was stuck with Hitler on one side, and Salvador Dalí on the other. I don’t know why we continued to laugh. The situation was ridiculous, but something crazy ran through us, as if we sensed the horror that lay ahead. Thina stuck a strip of plaster over the offending moustache, which stiffened my top lip and made me talk like an aristocrat.
We were still giggling when two guards arrived. They hauled an unconscious man into the ward by his armpits. The prisoner’s boots dragged along the floor. His head, covered in limp, matted hair, lolled down. They tossed him onto an empty bed and the moment I saw his face, all the mirth left my body.
Markos!
To see him like that – battered and broken and on death’s doorstep! My first reaction was outrage. I wanted to get hold of the pig who had hurt him so badly and stick a scalpel into his gut.
Seconds later, this need for revenge turned to intense sorrow. Tears stung my eyes, making it difficult to see as I started cutting away his clothes and washing the filth from his body.
‘Markos, what have they done to you?’ I whispered when the soldiers had gone. Thina rushed to my side.
‘Dear God! Is that Markos? He’s hardly recognisable.’
Unable to speak, I nodded.
‘Right, let’s do what we can for him. The doctor won’t respond if I call him out for dressing wounds. He’ll just say that’s our job, so I’m going to give him a shot of morphine myself and put it down as going into the patient who died.’
I mixed a dish of saline solution and tried to clean his wounds. He had what appeared to be swollen, infected burns all over his body. Horrified, I realised some of the sores were maggoty. I couldn’t imagine what had caused such terrible injuries. I cut his rags away, killed the grubs wriggling from his wounds and spoke tenderly to him as I worked. With every festering sore, anger rose in my throat. I wanted to kill those responsible. How could they do this?
As I bathed him, I tried to remember happier times, and thought back to the moment I knew my heart belonged to him. We had taken the bus to our special little cove near Piraeus, and dismounted on the promenade. Markos jumped down onto the sand, turned and lifted his arms towards me. His face lit up, eyes full of laughter as he gathered me towards him, pulling me against his chest and kissing me before my feet even touched the ground. When he put me down, I was somehow changed – we both were, as if we held a secret that needed no words. My heart was his, and his was mine.
When Markos regained consciousness, the morphine had started to take effect.
‘Markos, it’s me, Sofia,’ I whispered. ‘I’m taking care of you.’
‘You want some melon?’ he asked deliriously, staring into the space between us. ‘Hey, scruffy street kid, you look starved.’
I thought back to the alley behind the bakery.
‘I can’t remember when Mama hugged me,’ he mumbled. ‘I can’t remember and I can’t ask anyone.’ His voice was that of a young boy. ‘Papa slept with her body in his bed last night. I could hear him talking, talking, talking, all night long. I slept on the kitchen floor because my brothers and sisters were in my room. We have to bury them in the field today, Papa said so. Can you be sure there’s a Heaven, nurse? There is a Hell, I know that much.’
‘Markos, it’s me. It’s Sofia!’
‘He doesn’t know where he is,’ Thina said. ‘We need to get him rehydrated. Damn it, maggots! He must have been out there at least three days, probably longer. Bastards. Looks like they’ve given up on converting him – now they’re just using him as an example to the other prisoners.’ She fixed up a saline drip. ‘Let’s cut the last of these rags off.’
We worked together, one either side of Markos, until he was naked. As I gathered up the tatters, something fell to the floor. Recognising it, I slipped it into my pocket.
‘Look, you can stay here for a few hours, Sofia. Help me wheel his bed into the corner, then pull a chair up and sit with him.
’
I threw my arms around her neck and wept.
*
Three days later, most of the wounds on Markos’s body were healing. I learned they had wrapped barbed wire around him to make a cage, so that he couldn’t move. Then, they left him out in the heat for his fellow prisoners to see. In the intense sun, the wire had roasted into his skin, then the blowflies found his bare flesh and laid their eggs.
‘Renounce communism now, and we’ll set you free!’ blasted through the loudspeakers every hour, and a ladle of water was thrown over Markos’s face to return him to consciousness.
Markos had refused, so the torture continued.
*
‘Please, Markos,’ I begged, when he returned to his senses. ‘Give up the cause. It’s enough now. You’ve done enough. I love you so much, Markos. Please, just say whatever they want. I’ll do the same and we can get out of here.’
A pained expression dulled his eyes. ‘I can’t. Too many of my comrades have died fighting for the freedom of our people – how can I betray them all? Besides, we’ll never be free. The KKE will find me and kill me for betraying the party.’
‘Then we’ll escape them too, leave Greece.’
‘No. I’m not my father. How could he change sides like that, go over to the capitalists and the monarchy? All he loved was money! And now we’re in this situation because we came back for his funeral. Fools that we are.’
‘No. You misunderstood him. Look, I can prove it.’
I went to the surgical tray and brought a scalpel back to his bedside.
His eyes widened. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘When I cut your rags off, I found this in the hem of your trousers. It must have fallen through a hole in your pocket.’ I withdrew Spyridon’s tiepin from my pocket. After sliding the scalpel in where the clasp was missing, it popped open. There was a faded sepia photo of Markos. ‘You see why he didn’t want it buried with him? Because he wanted you to live. He’d worn that picture of you over his heart since the day he lost the rest of his family.’
Markos held out his scabbed hand and I placed the tiny locket in his palm. He stared at it for a long time before he spoke.
‘I don’t understand. If he cared, why didn’t he support me?’
‘He did support you. Always. Markos, he made me swear I’d never tell you this, but I must. Your father used every penny he had to bribe people to get you out of trouble, out of prison. Then, he stood back – frantic with worry – while you went on and fought for the cause you believe in. You see, you always had his backing, but he was consumed by fear that if you continued, he would lose you too.’
‘What . . . ? He did that?’ He stared at the ceiling. ‘Why?’
‘Because he loved you. You were all he had left. He told me that whenever he saw you, he was reminded of Isabella and how much he loved her.’
‘Why didn’t he want me to know?’
‘Because he believed if you knew he was behind you, you’d never give it up and you’d always be in danger. He was very proud of what you did.’
Markos screwed up his eyes and lay stiff and silent for a while. I understood how much pain he felt.
‘He wouldn’t like to see you in this place. It would break his heart.’
I saw his eyes fill with tears. ‘When I was in the wire cage,’ he said, ‘I remembered every moment of you, every inch of your body, every word you ever said to me. Even that terrible day behind the theatre when I wreaked revenge for my family’s deaths, and you lost your family. The day I lost my comrades, and in a way, lost my father too.’
‘Your father loved you more than you knew.’
He nodded, tried to squeeze my hand. ‘I know that now.’
CHAPTER 30
MEGAN
Crete, present day.
OUTSIDE CHANIA BUS STATION, Megan juggled while she considered her plan. The depot was busy due to the upcoming carnival. That morning, she’d had an interview at the tour office. The area supervisor seemed to like her, and had asked if she would return the following Tuesday for an interview with the area manager.
Now, she just had to get to her grandmother’s village. Granny Anna would help her work out what she ought to say to her dad, how much she ought to tell her mum – and how to apologise for all the worry she must have caused.
If only Megan had paid more attention to Granny Anna, listened to her on those rare occasions when her grandmother had talked about her village home in Crete. They had visited as a family, of course. Great-aunt Calliopi, Granny Anna’s older sister, lived in the cottage, the small stone house her great-great-grandfather had built that could never be sold. On their last holiday, Granny Anna said, ‘One day this place will belong to you and Josh, Megan.’ It was a surprise to them both.
She closed her eyes and saw the stone building in a flash, while continuing with the rhythm of her juggling.
Up and over. Up and over.
The cottage had gigantic beams, dark honey in colour. ‘Eucalyptus tree trunks,’ Granny Anna had once explained. Above them, pale as parchment due to their age, was a sheet of closely packed bamboo. The walls inside were roughly plastered, and a stone fireplace filled one corner. Outside, there were neat rows of cabbages and beans, and a giant, shady fig tree with huge leaves. A few chickens always pecked around a neat stack of olive wood that dried in the sun. The logs would be ready for burning in the cast-iron cooking range by winter.
At the back of the building lay an olive grove, the trees over five hundred years old. Some of the trunks were like gnarled caves and she remembered playing hide-and-seek in the grove with Josh when they were younger. The cottage lay on the outskirts of Kissamos village, with a clear view down to the sea. Megan was sure she would find it.
She glanced at coins thrown onto the pillowcase at her feet; she had enough for her return bus ticket to Kissamos, plus a little extra.
‘Hi, Megan. How’s it going?’ Gary and Jeff grinned at her.
She juggled two balls in one hand and tossed the third to Jeff. He popped it against his bicep, then to his hand before pitching it back.
Megan laughed. ‘You’ve done this before!’
‘A dubious past,’ he replied. ‘Come and have a cold beer. Our treat.’
She thought about her quest, and her mother. Perhaps she had earned enough for the day.
*
The three sat together at a pavement café. Condensation trickled down the outsides of their beer glasses. Megan guzzled the small bowl of crisps placed in the centre of the table, then stared at the pale gold Mythos and licked her lips. This was a real treat.
‘Cheers, guys!’ she said, lifting her glass.
‘Yammas!’ they cried, grinning at each other.
‘Learning the language, are we? How’s it going? You two having a good time?’
They glanced at each other again and grinned.
‘I think the locals have clocked we’re gay,’ Gary said. ‘But they keep calling me “Ela!” and I keep saying, “No, it’s Gary!”’
Megan, about to sip her drink, blew a raspberry into her beer and then hooted with laughter.
‘Ela means “Hey!” or “Come here!”, nothing more.’
They laughed together in the warm Cretan sun and Megan buzzed with happiness. This was how she’d always dreamed it would be, living in Crete, happy, normal. These guys knew nothing about her or her past, and didn’t care. She could be who she wanted to be.
*
At ten o’clock the next morning, Megan was on the bus to Kissamos with her newly found friends.
Gary, eager to see a famous mosaic in the small town, enthused about the history of Kissamos.
‘See, it’s got a great past! Mid-1600s, the governor, Geovanni somebody, opened the city gates to the Turks. The richest Cretan families, who lived in the magnificent Venetian mansions, went and converted to Islam. Can you believe that? But, the less fortunate families were oppressed, practically turned into slaves by the rich.’
&
nbsp; ‘Boo!’ cried Megan and Jeff, grinning at each other.
‘Then . . .’ Gary continued, realising he had the attention of several tourists around them. ‘In the early 1800s, the new Commissioner of Crete landed at Kissamos with six hundred Cretan fighters.’
‘Yay!’ Jeff punched the air and everyone grinned.
‘The commissioner and his men laid siege to the fort and the Turks surrendered. Hurrah for the Cretans!’
‘Hurrah! Hurrah!’ Jeff and Megan cried together.
‘But then, in the last war . . . the Battle of Crete . . . Well, that’s another story and I’m saving it for the trip back.’
A tourist tapped him on the shoulder.
‘’Scuse me, mate. Could you tell us what bus you’re getting back, ’cos we’d all like to hear the rest of the story too.’
The three grinned at each other.
*
By midday, Megan was frustrated and sweltering. She had trekked up and down streets around the village, to no avail. The town was larger than she remembered. Gary had lent her his watch, so they could all meet up at three o’clock at the harbour. They bought bottles of cold water and sat on a bench watching fishermen moor up or prepare for night fishing. Jeff noticed a nearby kafenio, a place where the local men gathered.
‘Come on, time for our daily beer. Let’s go and ask about your nana in there.’
Inside the kafenio, men played cards and backgammon. Megan chose to sit outside, under the shade of an enormous mulberry tree. The kafenzies placed their beers and a bowl of peanuts on the wooden table.
‘Where you from?’ he asked.
‘England,’ Megan replied. ‘But my grandmother’s from here, Kissamos. I’m looking for her.’
‘Ah, welcome, welcome!’ He beamed from ear to ear, his face shining with joviality. ‘Tell me the name of your grandmother. I know everyone here, everyone!’
‘She’s Anna Despotakis. She has a sister called Calliopi. They live in a stone cottage with an olive grove out back.’
The smile left his face. ‘Anna Despotakis? The hunter’s wife?’ He stepped towards the road and spat.
Greek Island Escape Page 24