Those Who Are Loved

by Victoria Hislop

  ‘How can it be his fault?’ queried Themis. ‘That’s stupid.’

  ‘We invited Allied soldiers on to our soil. So Hitler had no choice. Listen. Here’s how much he loves Greece!’

  Without pausing for breath, Thanasis pulled out a newspaper cutting from his pocket and rattled off a few sentences in which the Führer expressed his regret for attacking their country.

  ‘He says he was born to respect the culture of this country, that the first rays of mortal beauty and dignity emerged from here, that it was a bitter experience to see this happening . . .’

  Thanasis had not noticed his younger brother returning as he continued unabated.

  ‘He believes that Greek soldiers fought with the greatest bravery and contempt of death. And they say that he will release Greek prisoners—’

  ‘You just believe what you want to believe, Thanasis!’

  The older brother spun round.

  ‘And you just don’t want to accept the truth,’ he retorted.

  ‘But you don’t even know the truth! The Germans locked up plenty of people before their parade. The only ones on the street were traitors like you. Hitler doesn’t respect this country any more than Mussolini does.’

  Kyría Koralis stood silently drying plates until she had almost rubbed the pattern away. She loved the boys equally, and at times was as distressed by the sound of them arguing as by the bleak announcements on the radio. She tried to contain her reactions to both.

  She was finding that German instructions to Athenians on matters of day-to-day conduct encroached on all of their lives, and she knew this was making Panos even more rebellious. Orders came thick and fast: the Nazi emblem was to be flown throughout the city; no help to be given to Allied prisoners; no listening to the BBC; no one to be out on the streets after eleven at night.

  Many Greeks, especially the young, began to engage in sabotage. When Panos was out for several hours at a time, Kyría Koralis began to expect a knock on the door, and a stranger to report his arrest. Her anxieties increased after the swastika was torn down from the Acropolis. When she heard about it, she even feared it might have been her grandson who had dared to do it and was relieved when she heard that the perpetrators had been caught.

  ‘I wish it had been me, Yiayiá,’ Panos said, hugging his grandmother. ‘I would have been proud!’

  ‘Promise me you won’t do anything stupid, agápi mou,’ she pleaded.

  He did not answer.

  Thanasis overheard.

  ‘It was a stupid thing to do!’ he ranted. ‘The Germans will punish all of us. You think they will just forget it?’

  ‘It was courageous!’ retorted Panos.

  ‘Courageous?’ Thanasis spat the word out with contempt. ‘Those idiots who did it – they’ll just make things worse for us all.’

  The atmosphere between the boys had become more hostile, and between the sisters it was not much better. The new government had disbanded her beloved EON, which made Margarita more bad-tempered than normal so Themis escaped to Fotini’s house as often as she could. At the modest Karanidis home she could avoid her sister’s moods, study and think about something other than the presence of foreign soldiers in the streets. School, a gymnásio for girls, was sometimes shut during these days of occupation, so Themis began to borrow books from her brothers’ room and to spend some of the money that she had saved in a local bookshop. This way, she and Fotini were never short of reading material.

  Schools reopened mid June for about a month by which time there were not only German troops in the city but Italians too. In late June, Mussolini’s battalions had arrived.

  During the hot months, largely spent inside Fotini’s house, their personal studies of science and mathematics became a passion for the girls. No one could refute the absolute truths of Pythagoras or the certainties of the periodic table. Whether you were rich or poor, royalist or communist, the answers were the same. Scientific formulae were not a matter of argument and both of them were able to forget how much everything had altered in the world outside.

  They tested each other’s memories on chemical compounds, got through several books of ‘problems’, always checking their answers in the back, and set themselves the task of learning at least one poem a week. One afternoon, Fotini produced a slim pamphlet. She had found it hidden inside one of her mother’s treasured books.

  The girls read aloud alternate stanzas. It was ‘Epitáfios’ by Ritsos, a lament inspired by the front page photograph of a mother weeping over her son a few years earlier. He had been killed by police during a strike. The girls were too young to appreciate the sincerity of its emotion and found some of it too sentimental.

  They were giggling when, unexpectedly, Kyría Karanidis walked in the door.

  She saw what was in her daughter’s hands.

  ‘What are you doing with that?’ she demanded, snatching it away.

  Fotini apologised sheepishly.

  ‘It was banned,’ said her mother, sternly. ‘I hid it for a reason.’

  They watched her putting the poem back where Fotini had found it. The girls did not really understand what they had done wrong but realised the subject was closed.

  ‘It’s about time you two were back at school,’ said Kyría Karanidis, softening. ‘If it’s open, that is.’

  ‘I do miss school,’ replied Fotini.

  ‘I think it’s Dimitris you miss,’ teased Themis.

  All three of them laughed.

  Although their schooling was single sex now, several boys from the adjacent gymnásio flirted with them at the school gate. Fotini’s beauty attracted many but there was only one that really interested her and she blushed at the sound of his name.

  The sun never penetrated the shadowy Karanidis home, giving it the advantage of remaining cool. The raging summer temperatures, the fear on the streets and the bitter atmosphere of Patissia all seemed far away as they sat down to revise Ancient Greek grammar before another new term began.

  The girls got their wish to return to the classroom but as autumn progressed, although equations still balanced in the classroom, in the real world numbers were no longer making sense: the population had been swelled by the occupying forces and they all had to be fed. Greece was expected to feed them. Simultaneously, food was being shipped out of the country to Germany.

  The decision of the Allies to place a blockade on Greece worsened the situation. They could not restrict supplies to the Germans and Italians without affecting the Greeks too. For Fotini and her mother, the consequences were felt almost immediately.

  ‘So there is less food, to feed more people,’ explained Kyría Karanidis when she returned from work one day, carrying even more meagre supplies in her basket than usual.

  Themis noticed the pitiful amount that she was unpacking on to the table and felt Fotini’s eyes on her. She glanced up to see an expression of shame on her friend’s face and felt embarrassed that she was there to witness her discomfort.

  At Patissia they were still eating well enough but even the Koralis family began to notice changes. For so many years, Kyría Koralis had been proud of the way she had fed her grandchildren: the generous wholesome meals, the fresh loaves, meat most days, vegetables from the market, home-baked baklava. She made her budget go a long way. Within a short period of time all of this changed.

  At first she tried to conceal the problem but little by little the menus altered. First the meat became stringier, and then there was less of it. A single chicken could be stretched over several days until there was just a shred of it floating in a soup. Kyría Koralis had always kept a good stock of pulses in big glass jars on the kitchen shelf, but even the levels of chickpeas and lentils gradually went down to zero.

  The memory of Kyría Karanidis’ paltry handful of beans was still fresh in Themis’ mind one cold autumn evening when she, her siblings and their grandmother were sitting at the table. Margarita was moaning, but her complaint was gratuitous and aimed at her sister.

  ‘
Yiayiá, it’s not fair,’ Margarita said, her mouth full of bread.

  ‘What’s not fair?’ replied Kyría Koralis patiently.

  ‘You’re giving Themis the same amount as the boys.’

  Margarita was watching her grandmother ladle out equal portions of soup. Once she would have called it chicken stew. Nowadays the pattern on the plate was visible through the unappetising brown liquid. Without the few shreds of cabbage on the surface it would have been little more than hot water.

  ‘I am giving everyone the same, Margarita.’

  ‘But that’s not fair,’ she replied, pulling a plate towards her.

  The boys said nothing as the other plates were handed round.

  ‘You can have some of my bread,’ said Themis, tearing her piece in two and subdividing the half for her brothers. They both accepted.

  ‘Happy now?’ asked Themis, casting a defiant glance at Margarita.

  Kyría Koralis had not given herself a slice of the loaf. Everyone was a little hungrier than usual and it made them all irritable. All of the children, save Margarita, were lean at the best of times but in the first few months of occupation they had all lost kilos. The once-generously padded Kyría Koralis seemed to be half her former size and the boys had to hold their trousers up with belts pulled in to the last notch.

  Margarita, too, had lost some weight (though carefully padded her brassiere with old socks to hide it). Her face was still full enough and she learnt how to give herself a healthy glow by constantly pinching her cheeks and biting her lips to redden them. She was scornful of Themis’ stick-like legs.

  ‘Your knees are like turnips!’ she shrieked one day, prodding them with a fork. ‘All knobbly.’

  Shortages of all foodstuffs worsened as that year’s harvest of olive oil, figs and raisins were all seized. Livestock was also taken from farmers.

  The first time that Kyría Koralis was forced to serve a soup without even a trace of offal floating in it, she apologised.

  ‘It’s not your fault, Yiayiá,’ Panos reassured her. ‘We’ll manage. The bastards have taken our animals to fatten their Fräuleins,’ he went on.

  Kyría Koralis, who hated any bad language at the table, cast a despairing look at her grandson.

  ‘Just watch your mouth,’ scolded Thanasis.

  ‘But it’s true,’ Panos said. ‘My friend’s uncle is a farmer in the north. Cows. For dairy and beef. They’ve all gone. On trucks. And they’d ship us out if we were edible.’

  ‘Panos, don’t exaggerate,’ giggled Margarita.

  ‘I’m not,’ he snapped. ‘Why do you think Hatzopoulos has his shutters down?’

  Right up to the previous month, their local butcher had always found something, however small, to wrap up for them: some oxtail, lamb’s kidney or even a scrap of tripe. These were cuts that Kyría Koralis would have scorned in the past but had gratefully used them to add flavour to the soup. One of the boys had often come home with a spongy package wrapped in wax paper, but no longer. Even for his favourite customers he had nothing now.

  Everyone ate in silence. There was no answer to Panos’ question and it was true that millions of animals had been exported to Germany.

  It was not just food that was plundered by the Nazis. Little by little Greece was stripped of everything else too. Tobacco, silk, cotton, leather and all the other raw materials of industry were pillaged by the occupiers. Forests were destroyed to provide fuel for the Axis and energy production was almost halted. Within the space of a few months, the infrastructure, industry and morale of the country was in tatters. Fear was replaced by desperation.

  The effects were immediate and catastrophic: unemployment rocketed and hyperinflation took hold. Kyría Koralis came home in tears one morning when the price of a loaf reached several million drachmas and continued to rise. When rationing was brought in, the amount of bread allowed for each person fell to little more than one hundred grams a day. Thanasis was broader than his younger brother, but they both craved sustenance and hunger kept them awake at night, as if they had stones in their bellies.

  Kyría Koralis’ task of keeping them all fed was becoming harder by the day. As winter approached, a sense of hopelessness began to set in.

  ‘It’s cold in here,’ moaned Margarita as she held her hands over a bowl of soup in an attempt to warm them. She then shoved her younger sister, who always sat in the chair closest to the stove, in the ribs. Themis had a full spoon raised to her lips and Margarita’s action sent it flying.

  ‘You clumsy . . .’ exclaimed Themis, as the soup spattered across the cloth.

  ‘Just move! Why should you have all the heat? Why?’

  ‘Because in the summer, nobody wants to sit there! It’s too hot then,’ said Panos coming to his sister’s defence.

  ‘Well, it’s too cold everywhere now,’ said Margarita. ‘It’s just too cold!’

  She threw her own spoon down now and stormed from the room.

  ‘I have an idea,’ said Panos a few minutes later, when the rest of them had resumed eating. ‘Some of my friends went to the countryside last weekend. They found a few bits of wood and brought them back. Why don’t we do that? It would be a change for all of us. And we might be able to make this place warmer.’

  The following Saturday, putting aside their differences, the four siblings walked from the apartment to the end of the street and waited patiently for one of the very few occasional buses which had not been commandeered by the occupier. Several went by, already full, but even Margarita did not complain. This was how it was nowadays. There was not enough of anything and there was nobody to blame except the occupying forces. Neither Thanasis nor Margarita voiced so much support for the Germans now.

  When they finally managed to squeeze on a bus, it was only half an hour until they reached the outside of the city. They got off and had walked only a hundred metres along the road before Panos saw a path that led into a wood.

  ‘This looks like the place that Giannis described.’

  The leaves had turned to shades of auburn and gold and some of the trees were already laden with orange berries. For a while, as the siblings followed the path, they were silent. It was a long while since they had been close to nature.

  They were, of course, unused to walking on soft earth and Margarita was the first to complain that her shoes were muddy and that the briars were catching on her cardigan.

  ‘We’re here for a reason,’ Thanasis snapped. ‘So stop complaining.’

  It was rare for him to reprimand his sister. ‘We’ll gather some fire wood and go home.’

  ‘It’s for you as much as for anyone else!’ added Themis. ‘You’re the one always complaining about being cold.’

  ‘And we must look out for nut trees too,’ said Panos. ‘Giannis said that he found enough walnuts to fill a bucket when he came.’

  ‘What about acorns?’ asked Themis, picking some up from the ground.

  ‘We can’t eat those, stupid,’ said Margarita.

  ‘Fotini’s mother does.’

  ‘So your little communist friends live on acorns, do they?’ sneered Thanasis.

  ‘Kyría Karanidis grinds them into flour. I have seen her do it. And then she makes biscuits,’ replied Themis.

  ‘Let’s pick some up then,’ said Panos. ‘Why not?’

  ‘You won’t get me eating acorns,’ said Margarita. ‘They’re for pigs.’

  Panos poked his sister in the ribs.

  ‘But you love your food!’ he teased. ‘You’ve always loved your food!’

  Margarita raised her arm to hit him, but Panos ducked and for a while they chased each other round the woods, laughing and squealing. Thanasis and Themis joined in, trying to catch Panos, eventually cornering him and pulling him to the ground.

  For a short while, on this chilly autumn day, they became flush-cheeked, carefree children once again.

  Their need, though, was not a game. It was very real. At the end of the afternoon, the girls each had a basket filled with
nuts and acorns and the boys had armfuls of twigs for kindling, as well as the largest branches that they could carry under their arms. They had not needed to venture far into the woodland to get what they wanted and returned home as it was getting dark to present their trophies to Kyría Koralis.

  The afternoon had briefly taken them away from the grim austerity of the city and the oppressive atmosphere that permeated its streets. For a few hours they had seen bright colours, breathed in the fresh scent of earth and heard the wild calls of birds that were not caged.

  ‘We want to go again, don’t we?’

  Themis was the first to express her enthusiasm to their yiayiá as they ate that night. Her siblings all nodded. The apartment was warmer that evening and a reassuring smell of walnut biscuits being baked in the oven reminded them of better times.

  During this period, school was often shut for several days and the incidences of this became increasingly frequent. The cold was sometimes so intense that it was pointless to try to teach shivering children in a big unheated room. On other occasions the lack of light made it impossible. Themis would go back with Fotini to her house and one day Themis noticed how thin her friend was getting. Her skin had become transparent, as she described it to her grandmother later.

  ‘You can see through to her bones,’ said Themis.

  ‘Poor girl,’ responded Kyría Koralis sympathetically. ‘I wish we had enough to go round . . .’

  ‘I couldn’t invite her here anyway, Yiayiá,’ said Themis. ‘Not after the things Thanasis said.’

  ‘That’s so long ago, agápi mou.’

  ‘I know. But he still thinks like that. I know he does.’

  The next day, Kyría Koralis wrapped one of the biscuits she had kept back in some paper and gave it to Themis.

  ‘That’s for your friend,’ she said. ‘And no eating it yourself.’

  Later on, Themis watched Fotini slowly chewing each mouthful and then licking the paper to get the last crumb. Perhaps the most painful moment of all was when she had finished it and reached out to hug Themis.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. Themis was shocked by the realisation that beneath the red coat her friend was wasting away.