It was true that the conflict which held Greece in its grip had changed their lives, but the ravages of time had also played their part.
Within the next few days, the Prime Minister, Logothetopoulos, left office.
‘I can’t say I’m sorry,’ commented Panos. ‘He didn’t do much to help us, did he?’
‘I’m sure he did his best,’ responded Kyría Koralis, attempting to pre-empt a reaction from Thanasis since, for once, the boys were both home.
‘But he sympathised with the Germans, Yiayiá. Everyone says so,’ chimed in Themis.
‘Well, let’s hope that the next person will help his patrída a little more,’ responded the old lady. ‘And bring us all the bread we need.’ She was more preoccupied than ever with feeding her family.
‘He might be able to get us food,’ said Panos. ‘But this new man, Rallis, used to be a friend of Metaxas, so we know where his loyalties lie.’
Thanasis, for once, kept his thoughts to himself. He knew that Ioannis Rallis had a specific objective: to bring the communists under control. By that summer there were thirty thousand active members of the ELAS resistance and the Germans no longer had the manpower to deal with them alone. To the horror of many, the Germans provided weapons to a security battalion specially created by Rallis. Greeks were now armed to fight Greeks.
A few weeks later, with the fight against the resistance now greatly intensified, Panos left to join the struggle. He had warned Themis that he might leave Athens with Manolis, whom they had met that day at Fotini’s house, but they agreed that he should keep his destination a secret. It would be safer for them both. Margarita was very capable of pulling her sister’s hair, hard. She had been practising for years.
Both Panos and Themis were confident that his empty bed might not be noticed for a while. His hours were irregular and Thanasis often did night duty.
In fact, two days passed before anyone mentioned his absence and while no one knew precisely where he had gone, they all understood the reason for his departure.
Chapter Nine
FOR THANASIS IT was dangerous to have a member of family fighting for the communists and he was keen to ensure that the rest of the family was on his side. His ‘theatre’ was, as ever, the big table around which they always sat, which was more marked and dented than ever by pieces of crockery and cutlery angrily banged down.
Every time he came in from work, he brought the latest news, naturally told from the government perspective. The communists were achieving great success and he described the situation with increasing disgust. ELAS was taking over whole areas in the north of Greece and one night he had heard something that particularly disturbed him.
‘They’ve set up their own courts,’ he protested. ‘Even a new taxation system! And anyone who doesn’t agree with their politics becomes the enemy.’
‘That’s not right, is it?’ responded Kyría Koralis.
‘And they’re persuading women to join them. Did you know that?’ he continued. This upset Thanasis more than anything.
Themis had been half-listening and now her interest was fully aroused.
‘They’re abandoning their families and using guns,’ he added, with evident disgust. ‘Women in trousers! With weapons!’
Margarita, who had loved parading about in her EON uniform (it still hung in her wardrobe), was sitting in the corner, sewing on shirt buttons for her brother. She still had a passion for dressing up, but these days it was haute couture she aspired to.
‘Trousers!’ she echoed. ‘How unnatural.’
Themis daydreamed. What would trousers actually feel like? She imagined they must be very comfortable. If someone handed her a pair, she would put them on in an instant.
She had long since learnt that it was better to stay silent during Thanasis’ diatribes and nowadays it was more important than ever. Themis had a book on the table and was pretending to read. It was her standard subterfuge and lately she had something to hide.
As she had promised Panos before he left, Themis had begun to help the woman who had inspired him with her bravery: Lela Karagiannis. At the same moment each morning, she walked down the nearby street where Karagiannis lived an ostensibly normal life with her husband and seven children. From time to time she was discreetly passed a message telling her where to be and when. The instruction would outline an assignation, usually an encounter with a stranger with whom Themis had to engage in a short, artificial conversation before moving on. Essentially she was acting as a decoy, but her actions were so subtle that she hardly understood them herself. She never even saw Lela Karagiannis, but it was enough to know that she might be playing a role in saving a life, aiding an escape or providing cover for some greater act of resistance. If it could make even the smallest dent in the Axis hold on her country, it was worth it. Every act of resistance helped to distract German troops.
As Themis idly flicked over the pages, Thanasis continued, ‘The ELAS leader is a monster!’
‘But didn’t he work with the British to destroy that bridge?’ interjected Kyría Koralis.
‘That was more than a year ago,’ snapped Thanasis. ‘And it was the last time he co-operated with anyone. Now Velouchiotis just does what he wants, how he wants. And most Greeks hate him.’
‘Why do Greeks hate him?’ asked Margarita.
Thanasis always demonstrated unfailing patience when his sister was slow to understand. Margarita was one of the few for whom the occupation had brought great benefits. This was a war that she did not particularly want to end.
‘Because he even attacks other resistance groups now. They say he’s violent even to those on his own side. He is an animal!’
‘Please . . . Thanasis,’ interjected Kyría Koralis.
She felt that he had said enough. She simply hoped that her granddaughters would always be protected from the brutality now rumoured to be commonplace in communist-held areas outside Athens.
Themis was quietly scornful of her sister’s detachment from the turmoil that enveloped their country. She observed how Margarita, wrapped up in her own thoughts and dreams, came and went from her work each day, immaculately dressed, always with a smile on her face. More and more often, she was not even at home for their evening meal, as was the case on the night of September 1943 when they heard the radio announcement that the Italians had surrendered to the Allies and would be withdrawing from Greece.
‘It’s good news, isn’t it?’ Themis said to her grandmother.
Thanasis was out too so they were eating alone.
‘Let’s hope so, agápi mou,’ she said. ‘I just want this war to end . . .’
Before leaving, Mussolini’s troops sold guns, grenades and even motorbikes to ELAS, and the knowledge that the Italians’ absence would put additional pressure on the Germans significantly boosted morale in Greece. It also intensified resistance activity against the Nazis. Suddenly ELAS had new stocks of ammunition, but violence between the communist resistance and the resistance on the right also broke out. Thanasis, like many others, began to suspect that the communists would try to take over the whole country if and when liberation from the Germans came.
‘Who would you rather have on your side if the Germans go?’ he demanded of his grandmother. ‘Mr Stalin, the communist? Or Mr Churchill, who believes in democracy? Because that’s the choice.’
‘All I really want is for Panos to come home safely,’ replied Kyría Koralis, trying to avoid the question.
‘But fighting with the communists is never going to be safe,’ he told her. ‘Because they’re bullies. Don’t you know the stories about them, Yiayiá?’
‘They can bully the Germans all they want, as far as I am concerned,’ replied Kyría Koralis. ‘We have to get rid of them.’
‘But it’s not just the Germans they cause harm to! You know what happens every time they kill even a single German?’
His grandmother shook her head.
‘The Germans take revenge. Dozens of Greeks die. And I mean do
zens.’
‘But Panos wouldn’t mean that to happen,’ objected Kyría Koralis.
‘Maybe not. But these lefties are doing more harm than good. And I wish my brother could see it that way.’ Thanasis never missed a chance to aim some criticism at his brother, even in his absence. His was a lifelong campaign to ensure that his grandmother should continue to favour him over Panos.
He would never see things as you see them, Themis thought to herself. He never did.
These stories of retribution on the mainland and islands were legion and, one December evening, Themis and Kyría Koralis stood reading a newspaper that Thanasis had left on the table.
They reacted with equal horror, Kyría Koralis mopping tears with her apron as she took in what had happened, details of which had been given by an eyewitness.
During the previous month, in order to wear down the resistance that had developed in a mountainous area of the Peloponnese, German occupation forces had organised a military operation around the town of Kalavryta. Their mission was to eradicate Greek guerrillas and retrieve seventy-eight German soldiers who had been abducted. When the corpses of some of the captured soldiers were found, an order for reprisals was signed by General Karl von le Suire. Vehicles and troops then advanced towards Kalavryta, burning down several villages on the way.
When the Nazis arrived in Kalavryta itself, they pushed women and children into the school building, locked them in and set the rest of the village alight. Outside, almost five hundred men and boys over twelve years of age were then forced to march up to the hill overlooking the village. There they were lined up and methodically machine-gunned down. The witness, an old shepherd, who had been out in the fields with his livestock when the soldiers arrived, returned just as the killings began and said that the massacre of the male villagers took more than two hours. When the women and children escaped from the school every building in the village was ablaze. Over the following hours and days, numbed by shock, hunger and the cold, wives and mothers, sisters and grandmothers, began to bury their menfolk.
According to the witness, the hands on the church’s clock tower stopped at thirty-four minutes past two. This, he said, was the time that the first man had fallen. After murdering the men and boys, the Germans had slaughtered thousands of animals and set fire to crops, leaving survivors with neither homes nor food.
Themis was in tears by the time she finished reading, imagining how the women must have felt as they buried their loved ones. She suspected that the living might have envied the dead.
For once, the Koralis family were in agreement. The killing spree in that small town and the nearby villages was an act of unjustifiable brutality and revenge. It had taken more than a thousand lives. They all expressed the hope that Panos had been far away from these horrors, but even so, Thanasis could not resist making a link to his brother, suspicious that he might have been involved.
It was the Nazis who had murdered without mercy, but he insisted on focusing blame on the communists.
‘ELAS should have respected the wishes of the villagers in Kalavryta,’ he said, ‘and kept away.’
‘But nothing justifies slaying all those innocent people,’ cried Themis. ‘Nothing!’
‘I am telling you, Themis. ELAS should have known there would be reprisals for killing German soldiers!’
‘But why do you have to blame someone apart from the Germans? Why are you blaming the Greeks?’
Themis could not keep her emotions in check. The barbarism of the massacre had shocked her, and now her brother seemed almost to be excusing it.
‘Please!’ said their grandmother in a conciliatory tone. ‘It’s a terrible thing that’s happened. But it’s not going to make anything better if you shout at each other.’
‘I just want Themis to understand those poor people in Kalavryta paid the price for ELAS’ pointless actions. And she should understand that this is what the leftists do. They put everyone in danger. Like Panos! He puts all of us in danger.’
‘Enough, Thanasis,’ Kyría Koralis said. ‘Enough.’
‘I can’t listen to him anyway,’ snapped Themis. It was the first time that she had stood up to her brother so openly.
Seething with anger, she stormed out of the apartment, leaving Thanasis lecturing their grandmother about the dangers of the communist rebels and the benefits of arming tens of thousands of Greek militias to defeat them.
‘I know it looks as if they are siding with the Germans but isn’t that better than having those leftist idiots taking over our motherland? Please think about it, Yiayiá. What kind of Greece do we really want?’
Kyría Koralis did not respond. She just wanted everything to be as it had been before the occupation, to have enough food on the table, to know that the lights were not suddenly going to go out, and to have some new leather soles for her shoes. She was still recuperating after her stay in hospital and these debates sapped her energy.
For the next few months in the Patissia apartment, uneasiness between Thanasis and Themis grew. The only family member who seemed happy was Margarita, who went about looking radiant.
‘It’s nice to see someone with a smile on their face,’ said Kyría Koralis when they were alone one day.
Margarita hugged her grandmother.
‘I am happy, Yiayiá,’ she whispered into her ear. ‘I’m in love.’
‘In love?’ Kyría Koralis cried out, with pleasure.
‘Shh . . .’ her granddaughter reprimanded. ‘Nobody must know.’
‘Why?’ asked Kyría Koralis. ‘Why is it a secret? Love is a wonderful thing.’
‘Because . . .’ she answered, lowering her voice to a whisper, ‘. . . it’s with a German officer.’
Kyría Koralis did not know how to react but, before she had time to say anything, Margarita had rolled up the edge of her sleeve to show her something.
‘Look!’
On her wrist glittered a diamond watch of such delicacy and beauty that her grandmother gasped.
‘Where . . . where did you get it?’
‘He gave it to me!’ she said conspiratorially. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’
It was clearly not a brand-new watch and Kyría Koralis was reminded of all the jewellery she had been obliged to sell. It must have been owned by someone else who had suffered as they had, or perhaps even one of the departed Jewish families who, it was rumoured, had been obliged to leave all their possessions behind.
‘He’s given me lots of other things too!’
The old lady did not know what to say. She asked no more questions and promised to keep Margarita’s secret to herself. She knew what Themis would say.
Themis, meanwhile, grew more suspicious. She even asked her grandmother how she thought Margarita always found silk stockings, when everyone else had thick pairs darned or criss-crossed with ladders. And why she imagined her hair was in the latest style, so well coiffed and stiff with lacquer.
Kyría Koralis shrugged, keen to prevent the storm that would result if she told the truth.
Eventually Themis confronted her sister directly.
‘Where do you get all these things?’ she asked, knowing that the answer could only be from a small number of sources. The black market? A German soldier?
Margarita justified her glamorous appearance with characteristic venom.
‘We can’t all go round looking like you,’ she taunted her sister. ‘Some of us like to try a little harder. Isn’t that part of the war effort?’
It was true that Margarita had to be well dressed for the shop. Over the past eighteen months, she had adapted every item from the pile of her mother’s old clothes still in her grandmother’s wardrobe as well as altering other dresses she bought second-hand. She stood in front of the mirror for many hours at a time with a box of pins at her side and carefully tailored a garment around herself. It was a knack that she had developed and the resulting dresses, in vivid florals, crèpe de Chine, silk and velvet, perfectly fitted the contours of her body.
Themis caught sight of her sister in the street one afternoon. She was with her friend Marina and the pair of them were chatting with two officers in Nazi uniform. The four of them were laughing and smiling and the familiarity between them all was evident. One of the soldiers touched her sister’s arm and then the girls walked off in a separate direction from the men. Themis noticed the soldiers look over their shoulders to get a final glimpse of Margarita and Marina, who had now linked arms. Themis recognised that even their swaying, flirtatious walk was designed to hold male attention.
Unlike Margarita, Themis blended easily into the grey Athens background. For women from eight to eighty, dresses were cut to the same plain, mostly button-through style, and her dowdy, threadbare clothes were typical. What Margarita and Themis considered ‘part of the war effort’ was very different.
The blandness of Themis’ appearance was helping her continue to play a role in the quiet struggle against the occupying force. Sometimes she went to sit in the kafeneío where Panos had worked and eavesdropped on conversations that in turn she could pass on. She understood that the departure of the Italians had put great strain on the Germans, along with increased raids by British and Greek special forces on the islands. In addition, there was growing anxiety over the advancing Russian army. Each day, she felt a little more optimistic and proud that she might be part of a bigger campaign.
Large areas of mountain Greece were now under communist resistance control and the Germans began to rely increasingly on the Greek security battalions to fight them.
It was a blow to Themis and everyone with left leanings when, apparently determined to prevent Greece falling under the influence of the Russians, Britain lent its support to the right-wing resistance forces. She feared more and more for Panos and all those he was fighting with. They now effectively had German, British and Greek resources against them.
Those Who Are Loved Page 12