Those Who Are Loved

by Victoria Hislop

  The Germans continued to perpetrate barbaric acts of revenge even as they were losing their hold. On 1 May 1944, the day that in peacetime would have been a joyous celebration of summer, two hundred communist prisoners were executed in Kaisariani, in retaliation for the killing of a single German major-general. Themis and Thanasis scarcely exchanged a word about this event, which occurred in a nearby suburb.

  When Allied troops landed in France in June, the Germans were already struggling to keep control over Greece. Resistance activities were demoralising them, which gave Themis cause for optimism, but each day brought new calamity. Counterattacks seemed to be stronger than ever.

  Another massacre aroused disgust and debate in the apartment. This time it was in the village of Distomo, one hundred and fifty kilometres west of Athens, and even Margarita was distressed to learn of it.

  Information was sketchy at first because there were few eyewitnesses, but a handful of survivors reported that German soldiers went from house to house bayoneting everyone they could find: babies (born and unborn), men, women, children, even dogs and livestock. The priest was hanged and other bodies were found strung up in trees; people were cut down in the main street as they tried to flee. In one afternoon, the population was almost wiped out and most buildings razed to the ground.

  ‘They say that hundreds were murdered,’ Themis murmured.

  ‘I’m sure that’s an exaggeration,’ said Kyría Koralis.

  As usual, Thanasis used the news story as evidence of resistance fighters causing trouble for ordinary Greeks, but to Themis it sounded like another example of the Germans looking for an excuse to kill.

  ‘Leftists had been firing on the Germans. That’s what started it all. It happens time and time again!’ he raged. ‘The innocent pay the price.’

  ‘Yes!’ cried Margarita, her voice full of sentimentality. ‘They say that even newborn babies died. So why don’t the resistance just stay away?’

  ‘But ELAS didn’t kill them!’ protested Themis. ‘The Germans did!’

  Themis could scarcely contain her frustration with her siblings. They were blind to the fact that the resistance was struggling to liberate her country. Every day at the soup kitchen she looked into the eyes of people who were hungry, homeless or afraid, and knew that it was the Germans who had reduced their lives to this, not ELAS. The period of extreme famine was over but there were still many who were destitute, with nothing but what they stood up in.

  Added to this, many Jews were now in hiding around the city and in need of help. Tens of thousands had already been sent to Poland by the Germans, but some had ignored the summons to register, sensing that their lives were in danger. Themis often went home via one of a number of safe houses, casually leaving packages of food in a hallway. Those living in fear of the Germans and their spies were often saved by Lela Karagiannis’ network, which spread across Athens. Themis never met these invisible victims of Nazi terror, but she knew that she was helping them survive.

  Themis assiduously followed her routine, always carrying in her mind an image of Fotini. If she could save even one person, she was saving someone’s child, someone’s brother, someone’s friend, and any risk was worth it. One July day, as she strolled nonchalantly down a street in the usual neighbourhood, the note that was slipped into her hand was not along the usual lines. There was no drop-off address for food. No instructions. It simply stated: ‘Keep walking. Don’t return.’

  Her hands shook as she read it and her legs only just carried her to the end of the road. She knew it was important to act as if nothing had happened, to keep going and then take a detour home.

  The next day, Thanasis announced with something like glee that a local woman had been arrested by the Germans.

  ‘For espionage and hiding subversives,’ he said.

  Themis knew immediately that he was referring to Lela Karagiannis. Somebody must have betrayed her. Perhaps even Thanasis himself had informed on her. She struggled to dismiss the idea from her mind but day by day she was growing more and more mistrustful and isolated from her family.

  As Thanasis was reporting this news, the door opened. Themis expected to see Margarita, flouncing in with her high heels and broad, scarlet smile. Instead, it was Panos who came towards them in the half-light.

  It was more than a year since he had left and Themis’ joy was as undisguised as Thanasis’ displeasure.

  ‘You survived, then?’ asked Thanasis bluntly.

  ‘I can’t believe it. You’re back!’ said Themis simply, hugging her brother tightly.

  Panos said nothing. Initially, Themis had not realised what a terrible condition he was in but as she held him close the truth became evident. It was almost uncomfortable to embrace him, so sharp were the bones that almost broke through his skin.

  She noticed that his face and hands were covered with sores.

  Thanasis recoiled.

  ‘We must bathe these,’ said Themis, leading him to a chair. She quickly put on a pan of water and reached for the jar of salt. ‘Some of these look infected.’

  Panos silently complied, taking off his shirt to reveal long, deep wheals across his back. He said very little for a while, occasionally wincing as his sister dabbed at his wounds.

  ‘You were whipped?’ asked Thanasis.

  Panos glanced up at his brother. No answer was needed. Thanasis left the room.

  Themis was full of questions, but knew that now was not the time.

  ‘Thank God you’re back,’ she said quietly. ‘Thank God.’

  While she was still treating her brother, their grandmother came in from her errands.

  ‘Panagiá mou!’ the old lady cried out. ‘Panos! Where have you been?’

  She spoke to him as though he was late for a meal.

  She suddenly noticed what Themis was doing and recoiled at the depth and severity of the lesions.

  ‘Agápi mou, agápi mou . . .’ she said tearfully. ‘You poor boy . . .’

  Over the course of the next few hours, they learnt more. Panos had been arrested in the mountains by a member of a security battalion and handed over to the Germans. For the past few months he had been locked inside the prison in Haidari, not far from where they were sitting now.

  ‘We were beaten every day,’ he muttered. ‘Every few hours the door opened and they took one of us away. We never knew whose turn it would be.’

  Panos’ eyes were full of pain as he retold the events of past weeks. He had known many of those who had been executed at Kaisariani and even now experienced moments of guilt that he had not been among them.

  Themis put her brother to bed but the cool, fresh sheets were soon marked with the blood that seeped through the dressings. Over the following days, she kept Panos company and he told her about his months engaged in acts of sabotage, his arrest and the sub-human conditions in the prison. In turn, Themis told Panos of her small rebellions against the occupier and they shared their sadness over the courageous Karagiannis.

  Margarita kept her distance, squeamish about the way her brother looked.

  Thanasis did not go near him either, and slept on the couch rather than share a room with him.

  As Panos slowly regained his strength the Nazis gradually lost theirs. Over the following months, with defeat on the Eastern Front and invasion by the Russians, Germany was forced to capitulate. In October 1944 they withdrew from Athens but, as they made their way north, they went on a new campaign of destruction, wrecking roads, bridges and railways as they passed.

  The family were as divided as ever in their reaction to the end of occupation.

  Themis, who had longed for this moment, felt a huge sense of relief. On a warm, sunny day in mid-October she joined the throng of people who streamed down Akademias Street towards Syntagma, cheering and waving flags.

  It was only as she retraced her steps through the dilapidated city to the apartment that she realised it would be some time before she could walk the streets unafraid. Lela Karagiannis had been executed i
n September, only days before news of the German withdrawal. Someone, perhaps even in her own street, had betrayed her. The foreign troops might have gone, but other enemies remained.

  Themis was almost home and as she passed the little church of Agios Andreas, she noticed a posy of white flowers had been left on its threshold. Intrigued, she bent down to read the label attached to them.

  ‘Ellada. May you rest in peace.’

  Themis paused. The author of this note was right. There was peace now but the Greece she once knew had died. Peace and death. Death and peace. One did not cancel out another.

  She stood up and surveyed this ancient building that had witnessed both Turkish and German occupation.

  Themis knew that her grandmother sometimes went to church, but the darkness of these past years had led Themis further from, rather than closer to, belief. It was years since she had been inside.

  She pushed open the door and was taken aback to find the cramped interior bright with the flames of a thousand candles. A lone female shrouded in black sat motionless in the front pew. Themis could see her bare, scrawny legs, the protruding veins visible even in the darkness.

  The space was no bigger than the Koralis’ living room, every inch of its walls covered with paintings of the saints. In the flickering light, Themis studied their faces. A religious education teacher had once tried to explain the notion of ‘charmolýpi’ to her class and her lecture had been met with thirty blank faces. Now, Themis wholly understood it. Joy-Pain. It was eloquently traced into the expression worn by every saint that looked down at her. She studied the very particular look in their eyes and realised she had seen it so many times. After all these years, she understood what the hapless teacher had been trying to get across about iconography: it was discernible in the unfathomable depth of the eyes, in the set of the lips, in the firmness of the jaw, in the angle of the head. In biblical terms it was the Joy of Salvation achieved through the Grief of Sacrifice. Peace and death, hope and despair, co-existing simultaneously and inextricably.

  For Themis, childhood had ended with a flash of red coat in the square. It was also when she had let go of any faith. Three years on, now eighteen years old, Themis still felt the sting of grief. She continued to grieve the pointless death of Fotini, but now her heart had been lifted by the return of her brother. She understood that the bitter and the sweet must always live side by side.

  When she went home, she sat on Panos’ bed and talked about what she had seen.

  ‘Perhaps that’s what adulthood is,’ said her brother.

  ‘To understand that happiness is always tainted?’

  ‘I know no more than you,’ he said gravely. ‘But it seems to be true, doesn’t it?’

  They were alone in the apartment. Margarita and Thanasis were at work and Kyría Koralis had already gone out to find sugar in the local shop, optimistically imagining that rationing would have ended that day.

  ‘We have achieved a victory and yet I cannot celebrate it,’ continued Panos. ‘Even if I felt strong enough to go out into the street, I wouldn’t.’

  Themis nodded with understanding.

  ‘I saw men behaving like animals these past years. And some of them are out there, walking the streets,’ said Panos.

  There was an audible tremor in his voice. Since his return, Themis had noticed that it was not uncommon for Panos to lose control over his emotions. Tears ran down his cheeks.

  He was still very frail but at least they might be able to feed and rebuild him, she reflected.

  Thanasis was also uneasy about liberation, though for different reasons.

  He believed that Greece could have benefited from a longer-term connection with Nazi Germany but accepted that the Fates had not decreed it. Now he was looking forward to the return of the government in exile, hoping they would put the communists in their place. It infuriated him that ELAS was now basking in glory, claiming the victory over the Germans for themselves.

  Kyría Koralis was ambivalent, as always trying to sympathise with her grandchildren but failing to please any of them. What mattered to her most was that shops and markets might once again be well stocked with meat and oil and bread and all the other essentials of life that had been missing for so long.

  Margarita’s emotions were without ambiguity. Even ‘lýpi’ – sadness – did not describe it. Grief was closer. She sobbed and beat her pillow with her fists. Nothing her grandmother or anyone else could say would comfort her.

  ‘He’s gone . . . He’s gone,’ she wailed. ‘Mein Geliebter, my beloved, he’s gone. Mein Geliebter . . .’

  ‘Perhaps you should go to him, agápi mou. You might have a much better life in Germany. And he is so generous to you, this Heinz.’

  It was first love, deep, strong and undying, and Margarita was inconsolable. When her words failed to comfort, Kyría Koralis tried another ploy.

  ‘There will be someone else, my darling,’ said the old lady, desperately. ‘One day. I promise. There’ll be someone else.’

  Themis overheard her sister’s lamentation and understood better what she had seen of Margarita and Marina with the two officers. The German language had become familiar in the street over the past two years, but nevertheless she was sickened to hear the sound of it in her own home.

  ‘It does explain everything about these past months,’ she whispered to Panos.

  ‘She’s a little traitor,’ said Panos under his breath. ‘And there are plenty more like her.’

  ‘Plenty more collaborators, you mean?’ asked Themis.

  Panos nodded.

  They both knew that the occupation was over, but the war was not.

  As the last of the German soldiers left, tensions rose and antagonism between the brothers once again began. Panos’ focus was on how those who had collaborated with the Germans should be dealt with. He had personally suffered at their hands.

  ‘So what do you think should happen to anyone who supported the Nazis?’ Panos challenged.

  ‘That will be up to the new government, and they seem to have promised positions to some communist nominees so you should be pleased about that.’

  Thanasis’ sarcastic statement was designed to provoke but Kyría Koralis stood by, ready to be referee.

  ‘Perhaps there are more important things to do than for Greeks to punish Greeks,’ she said. ‘Maybe we need to forgive.’

  Panos and Themis exchanged glances.

  ‘The most important thing is to put our country back together,’ added Kyría Koralis.

  ‘Yiayiá is right,’ said Thanasis. ‘Listen to her. We have to rebuild.’

  She was right, of course. Thousands of villages had been left in a state of dereliction, tens of thousands of people had lost their homes and everything they owned, crops had been destroyed, churches damaged. An unknown number had died through famine and violence, some of it perpetrated by Greek against Greek.

  Few who surveyed their devastated land were not touched by ‘charmolýpi’ during those days, their joy at liberation tarnished by the sight of their country in ruins. For some, however, there was a less subtle feeling: a burning desire for justice.

  Panos knew who had betrayed him and who had whipped him in the Haidari prison. They were men of his own nationality. Forgiveness was not uppermost in his mind these days.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘THEY’RE TOO WEAK . . .’ Thanasis muttered as he read his newspaper one evening during the following week.

  ‘Who?’ asked Kyría Koralis.

  ‘The government. If they don’t demobilise the guerrillas, there’ll be trouble.’

  ‘You expect the communist resistance just to lay down their weapons?’ exclaimed Panos. ‘Why should they? Without any guarantees?’

  ‘Guarantees of what?’

  ‘A role, Thanasis! A role in the new government. Without ELAS, the Nazi flag would still be flying on the Acropolis.’

  ‘You have no proof of that,’ retorted Thanasis. ‘The Germans didn’t leave because of
the communists. That’s a ridiculous claim.’

  ‘They played a big role in undermining them, Thanasis. You know that as well as I do.’

  Thanasis did not contradict him, but as usual held fast to his position.

  ‘Whatever your opinion, I don’t know why the army doesn’t use force to make them disarm.’

  ‘I’m sure they know what they are doing,’ insisted Kyría Koralis. ‘We must be optimistic. At least we have food now . . .’

  ‘More than we did, anyway,’ said Themis, putting her arm around her grandmother. ‘And you are so good at making the best of everything, Yiayiá.’

  She was eating one of her grandmother’s gemistá with obvious appreciation. Kyría Koralis could turn the most basic of ingredients, even rice and tomatoes, into food for the gods.

  Unlike the others, who had put on kilos even in the first weeks after the Germans had departed, Margarita had grown thinner and more wan. Her breasts no longer pushed against the seams of her dress, and her belt was being drawn in notch by notch. At a moment when the city seemed to have regained its smile, she had lost hers. Even her beloved dress shop had closed down, now that the Germans had left. There was not enough custom.

  Kyría Koralis thought she was the only one who knew the depth and the cause of the girl’s sorrow. Themis and Panos were equally aware but offered no sympathy.

  One evening when Themis wanted to defuse her brothers’ argument about ELAS’ role, she led Panos to the balcony where they sat down together in the last of the light.

  ‘Try to ignore him, Panos,’ she urged. ‘He’s just trying to provoke you. But you know the truth better than anyone.’

  ‘It’s obvious what’s happening,’ said Panos despairingly. ‘But he refuses to see it. The government is back from exile with the Prime Minister, the government army brigades are on their way and thousands of British troops have arrived!’