As the war continued, it was more important than ever to keep up the momentum of the struggle. They had all been told to prepare for a fresh onslaught from the government army, who were newly bolstered by American supplies.
‘It’s for the cause, Themis,’ Katerina reminded her. ‘You must remember the promises we made.’
Themis nodded. Love for her country still motivated her, but the hope of seeing Tasos again gave her the will to live.
Chapter Fourteen
THE AUGUST HEAT was making them all lethargic. Even during daytime marches, Themis felt that she was sleepwalking and on most nights her head hardly touched her blanket before weariness overcame her.
It was ten days since Makris had left and there was a plan to raid a small village. As usual they spent the night several kilometres from where the following day’s action would take place.
‘There are just a few old people there. It looks like the younger generation has already left,’ Captain Solomonidis briefed them, smiling. Using this information, he had devised the strategy for the attack.
‘We can look forward to a good dinner tonight,’ boomed out his deep voice. ‘The elderly don’t consume much, so it usually means plenty of supplies.’
There were many similar villages from which the inhabitants, terror-struck by the advancing communists, had already fled. They sought the relative safety of towns and cities, fearing enforced recruitment, the abduction of their children and the reputation for barbarism held by many of the communist fighters.
As the unit advanced into the village, full of confidence and anticipating an easy takeover, the sixty-strong group was met with a barrage of machine-gun fire. Several dozen partisans were immediately mown down.
They had entered the village as usual from different directions but the gunfire was stronger on one front than the others. Themis was among the rear guard and had a split second to realise what was happening. As soldiers around her were being hit, she threw herself to the ground. For a few minutes, bullets whistled past her and then someone fell heavily across her legs. Whoever this person was, the weight of them told her they were dead. She shut her eyes tight.
The ambush had been perfectly laid. For more than a day her unit had been followed, unwittingly, by soldiers of the government army. Their own survey of the village had been superficial and those instructed to do it had only seen what they expected to see.
After thirty seconds, there was a stillness followed by the occasional pop of a gun. Not a single member of Themis’ unit had had a chance to lift a weapon. Not one shot was fired in return.
Themis lay still, knowing that the slightest movement might invite a bullet. She could feel a dampness seeping into the fabric of her trousers. It must be blood. There were shouts, and the thunder of footsteps reverberated around her as soldiers poured into the village.
Government army soldiers had not only been concealed in the houses, there had also been reinforcements waiting in the surrounding area.
For a moment Themis found herself staring at the well-polished toes of a man’s boots. They were a centimetre from her face and she could even see a distorted reflection of herself in the sheen.
‘Before you do anything else, check for any papers and bring them to me. Leave the dead where they are. Bring the wounded to the square.’
She listened to instructions being barked and heard occasional cries of pain as soldiers began to sort the living from the dead. Soon it was her turn to be prodded with the sharp end of a rifle.
The still-warm corpse was pulled away from her. Then she opened her eyes and found a rifle pointed in her face.
‘Get up.’
Themis struggled to her feet. She reached up to touch her face and could feel it was badly grazed from when she had fallen. Apart from that she was unharmed.
There seemed to be very few members of the unit still alive. Bodies were strewn everywhere she looked and her legs shook so violently that she could scarcely walk the two hundred metres to the centre of the village.
Those who had been shot in the stomach had fallen backwards and in spite of herself she looked at their faces and saw their expressions frozen in anguish. The sight of her dead captain was shocking: it seemed impossible that such a giant of a man could be felled by a single piece of metal. His arms were splayed wide and his thick, dark hair was matted with blood. A government soldier was leaning over him, going through his pockets and there was a look of triumph on his face as he called out to the soldier chaperoning Themis.
‘Here’s our prize!’
The old ladies of the village cowered in doorways. They had been forewarned of the terror that was to come, and several of them had agreed to act as decoys when the unit had entered.
Themis would not look at them as she passed. She held them responsible for the deaths of her compatriots and friends. Collaborators, every one of them.
It was then that she saw Katerina. The distinctive mane of flame-red hair that she had always refused to cut had spilled from her cap and now tumbled over her face. She must have been shot in the back and had attempted to break her fall. Her arms were splayed and both wrists lay at strange angles, clearly fractured.
Themis could not hide the horror she felt at seeing her lifeless friend, and an involuntary sob escaped from her throat as she stumbled forwards to touch her cold face.
‘Get up, now!’ barked the soldier. ‘Hands in the air!’
Poor, beautiful Katerina is dead, Themis thought to herself. There was nothing she could do now apart from try to save herself and she quickly stood up again, swallowing the salty tears that ran down her face.
She was ordered to join the group of unwounded survivors and they huddled together under a mighty plane tree that gave shade to the whole square. One by one, their hands were bound behind their backs.
Twenty metres away lay a dozen of the badly injured. Two government army officers were walking down the row, pausing at the feet of each one and making a note on a clipboard.
Suddenly Themis and the other survivors who could still walk were being pushed against a building, their backs to the square. The same soldier who had pulled tight the ropes that now chafed their wrists blindfolded them. One of the women began to whimper.
‘Shut up!’ commanded the soldier. ‘We don’t want your noise.’
The man next to her was quietly praying.
Themis bowed her head. Terror gave way to a sense of overwhelming sadness. Was life to end like this? In darkness and defeat? Beneath the dirty strip of cotton that covered her eyes, she could feel her tears. It filled her with grief to realise that life was to end when she felt it had only just begun.
Then the shots began. She counted. One . . . Two . . . Three . . . Four . . . They were as regular as the ticking of a clock but not as loud as she had expected. It was almost time.
Five . . . Six . . . Seven . . . Eight . . . Nine . . .
She could still hear the mutterings of her neighbour’s prayers. Nobody next to her had fallen. She would have heard that. But still the gunshots continued.
Ten . . . Eleven . . . Twelve . . .
Then there was nothing. The sound of some soldiers’ voices a short distance away broke the silence. Sweat poured down Themis’ face and neck. She was saturated with fear, with relief, with despair, with the relentless August sun.
Five or ten minutes passed before she felt fingers fumbling to remove her blindfold. She and the other survivors were free to look around them. Themis blinked in the brightness and slowly turned to see what had taken place. The wounded were no longer there. They had disappeared. All that remained were some patches of blood in the dust. She realised that their eyes had been covered to prevent them from witnessing their cold-blooded murder.
Terrified-looking villagers were being herded into the square. They had endured their own ordeal.
Along with the other ten or so, Themis was bundled roughly into the back of a truck. A government soldier loitering nearby approached them and very deli
berately spat in Themis’ face. She could feel his saliva running down her cheek.
With her hands bound, there was nothing she could do. It was the ultimate humiliation. As they crouched down in the truck, stripped of identity and dignity, Themis had to fight back the tears. She looked down and focused on the stitches of her trouser hem. It was important to maintain control.
‘Koralis . . .’
She heard her name spoken in a whisper. The woman they all knew to have been the captain’s lover was leaning towards her.
‘Use my sleeve,’ she whispered.
In an act of kindness that Themis would never forget, she leaned towards her and allowed Themis to wipe the drying spittle from her face.
When Themis looked up again, she saw her silently weeping, her normally expressionless face swollen with grief.
Poor woman, thought Themis. At least there was a chance that Tasos was still alive.
Themis lost track of time as they bumped over the rutted roads. There were nights and there were days but she counted neither. Nothing mattered. The motion of the vehicle, the heat and the lack of food induced such intense nausea that she could neither speak, nor sleep. One of the captives became so ill that the truck stopped. Even before any of them had time to realise what was happening, the driver had moved off.
‘With a cough like that, he won’t have long to suffer,’ he shouted over his shoulder. ‘You can stay there with him if you like.’
The others were too weak to protest and they watched helplessly as the pale face gradually disappeared in the distance. Had he inadvertently regained his freedom, wondered Themis.
The hours of passivity and sense of defeat took away all motivation even to talk. Suddenly Themis realised that the driver had slowed right down and the sound of other vehicles could be heard. Despite her almost catatonic lethargy, she sat up and peered through the slats of the truck.
There was traffic coming from all directions. They were in a city and passing familiar buildings. All the others were awake now and looking about them, exclaiming at the sight of landmarks that they knew so well. The Parthenon. The Temple of Zeus. Syntagma Square.
Athens. Themis was so close to home. She wanted to jump from the truck, run the length of Patission Avenue and fly into the safety of her grandmother’s arms. She imagined there might be a meal waiting on the table. It was months since she had eaten any good food and her whole body craved decent nutrition. Back in Patissia, she would live in secret, grow her hair again. Panos would protect her, if he got back, and her grandmother would hide her. Surely even Thanasis would not betray his youngest sister?
The driver did not appear to be stopping, though, and her sense of disappointment grew as she felt the engine accelerate.
A short while later, however, he did slow down. They were still not so far from the centre of the city and the passengers on the truck all looked at each other. One of them realised where they were. He had even been there before. It was a place synonymous with terror.
‘It’s Averoff,’ he muttered. They had been brought to the notorious prison, where both men and women were tortured into submission and ‘repentance’.
They were all told to get down and the soldier roughly divided the group. The selection process appeared to be random.
‘Not you lot,’ said the soldier who had come to supervise the handover. ‘Just you, you, you and you.’
Four prisoners were shepherded towards the dark, forbidding gates. One of them nodded a farewell to the others standing outside. Neither side understood the basis for the separation.
‘Get back in!’ said the soldier, giving Themis and each of the others an unnecessary shove in the back to push them back into the truck.
The engine started up again.
When they reached the outskirts of a small town south-west of Athens and were unloaded once again, they realised they were being delivered to a local prison.
‘You’ll soon be waving the flag for our Queen,’ the driver said as he unbolted the back of the vehicle. This was enough to strengthen Themis’ passionate commitment to her beliefs. Frederika still invoked a visceral hatred in her.
During the next few weeks Themis was moved from jail to jail, humiliated, sick and numbed by a sense of defeat. Pale and underfed, she imagined herself invisible, just as she had done as a child to avoid provoking Margarita’s spite. The talent she had developed then for avoiding attention she used to full advantage now.
The time passed in a haze of occasional abuse, usually delivered in kicks and beatings. There was constant travel and she lost count of the number of times she was loaded into a truck and pushed into a new but similarly comfortless small-town prison cell. It seemed that jails were so full now that there was no space even when inmates were crowded on top of each other, often twenty in a cell made for eight.
Conversation focused on the other prisons that the women had visited. Themis soon appreciated that she had been lucky to be spared Averoff, where the screams of the tortured kept everyone awake night after night and the guards competed with each other to conjure up new and sadistic punishments. Some women had done a spell on the island of Chios. From what they described, although conditions were cramped and filthy, they had something to do to pass the time. They did their own shopping and cooking, organised the camp and were comparatively free. Others had been on Trikeri. It was full of scorpions and rats but, from what Themis gathered, they could hear the sea and the sound of birdsong, glimpse the clouds and sometimes feel the sensation of rain on their skin. Anywhere without this constant stench and suffocating claustrophobia would be paradise.
She thought of the sweetness of the air she had breathed in those months of action on the mountains, the sound of night birds and the breaths of cooling breeze on her face. She remembered how she used to lie awake on clear nights looking up at the bright stars, astonished by the immensity of the galaxy. Space and the open air were what she longed for, as well as Tasos’ embrace.
Conditions in the urban prisons were universally squalid but every so often, when new prisoners arrived, some of the existing ones would be moved out and taken elsewhere. Themis was always happy to be transferred. It at least allowed the hope of something better.
Sometimes during the journey, one of the younger ones would attempt to escape. This meant a jump from the moving vehicle. Invariably the truck would screech to a halt and the escapee would be carelessly thrown back among the other prisoners, an arm or leg usually broken in the fall. Only rarely was an escape successful and when the guards were quizzed at the next jail they just shrugged their shoulders. If someone had got away it was better just to amend the figures. One missing? What did it matter? There were tens of thousands of these people, as hard to quantify as rats, and as unwanted. One unaccounted for made no difference to the guards.
Themis had lost track of time, and even of where she was, when some new prisoners were thrown into her cell one day. Those such as herself who had been there a while were desperate for word of the outside world, but this time the newcomers brought bad news.
The communists had survived their various defeats for more than a year but even as Themis had been suffocating in yet another stifling cell, the final battles of the civil war had been fought on the mountains of Grammos and Vitsi. Losses for the communist army had been heavy and most survivors had fled to Albania.
There was a stunned silence among the dozen women hearing this news for the first time.
‘It’s finished,’ said one of them bitterly, after a pause, and there were murmurs of agreement from other women.
‘But it’s not the end,’ protested Themis with despair. ‘It can’t be . . .’
For a while, the women with whom Themis shared her filthy rat-infested space were divided between defeatism and determination to rejoin the fight. A few weeks later, in mid-October, the guards gleefully gave them the news that their leader, Zachariadis, had announced a ceasefire. The conflict was officially over. Thereafter, every news bulletin was exploi
ted as an excuse to further mistreat the captives, to taunt them with the statistics of the dead and to gloat over their humiliation.
Some of the women to whom Themis was shackled openly grieved the death of their country but Themis refused to accept that the fight was done. Her sick, exhausted body felt defeated but her mind was still free. The number of prisoners increased markedly and, always optimistic, this increased Themis’ hopes of seeing both her lover and her brother.
The war had effectively come to an end but their period of captivity had not. Towards the end of the year, she was on yet another journey with hands bound. As usual, the destination mattered little. Themis’ head had dropped on to her neighbour’s shoulder and for several hours she slept.
When she woke, it was to a new scent. The wafts of diesel that they had all been inhaling had been replaced by the smell of the sea.
The truck had stopped and they were being ordered to get down. Themis saw a ragged group of soldiers at the water’s edge and, although their uniforms were dark with grime, Themis recognised them as members of the communist army. Her group was being herded towards them.
Relieved to be stretching her legs, Themis approached unsteadily. The soldiers’ hands were tied too and they were all skeletal with malnutrition. She had not seen a mirror for many months, but imagined she looked just as they did.
Across the water, a boat was approaching the nearby jetty. It was a simple fishing skiff but more than thirty lined up to embark. Themis was the last of the first group to board and was roughly pulled in by the helmsman. They all sat with thighs touching in a craft made for half a dozen, water lapping over its sides.
Those Who Are Loved Page 21