‘I’m so proud of you,’ I said when Yeorgo stepped off the bus in his smart uniform. He took off his cap and kissed me, right there by the roadside. He looked incredible, although I missed his thick dark hair. They had shaved Yeorgo’s head, army style, to stop the spread of lice in the barracks.
I noticed a strange mark on the back of his head. ‘What’s that?’ I asked curiously.
‘It’s a birthmark,’ Yeorgo said. ‘I’ve always had it, but nobody saw it before the short haircut. Does it bother you?’
I shook my head. ‘No, it makes you special. Let me see properly.’
He bent, and I examined the liverish shape. ‘It looks like a magnificent bird flying over your brains,’ I said and laughed. ‘I love it as much as the man beneath it. I’ve missed you terribly, Yeorgo.’
He kissed me again and replaced his cap.
‘Can we visit Mama before going home? She’s eager to see you in uniform. Look, she’s watching us.’ We saw her sitting under the big olive tree in the garden. When we stopped walking and looked up, she stood and waved.
Mama was always fond of Yeorgo. Even when we were children he often shared our meal.
Together, we walked through the streets of Amiras. Men came out of the kafenion, shook Yeorgo’s hand and admired his uniform. I was wearing my best clothes, already tight around my expanding belly. When we arrived at the cottage, Maria was all grin and sparkle, waiting in the doorway. We linked arms and, respectfully, Yeorgo removed his cap and bowed slightly to Mama. I was dizzy with happiness. But when we passed into the house, Mama had a terrible fit.
She collapsed onto the floor, kicking and screaming, calling on God and all the saints. I feared for her life, she seemed unable to breathe and her face lost its colour. My heart raced with fear.
‘Yeorgo, get the doctor!’ I yelled.
I thought my mother had epilepsy, would swallow her tongue, and die right there and then. Yeorgo ran for Petrinakis. Mama eventually recovered but Petrinakis spent more than an hour with her in the bedroom.
We heard them talking, sometimes shouting, but couldn’t quite make out what was said. Occasionally, Mama would yell, ‘No! Don’t, you can’t!’
That day changed everything for Yeorgo and me.
Chapter 41
Crete, Present Day.
POPPY LEANED AGAINST ANGIE and scratched the back of her hand furiously. Angie caught hold of her mother’s fingers, brought them up to her face and planted a kiss in each palm. She knew this was the terrible stigmata that Poppy had endured for as long as Angie remembered.
‘The truth is, Angelika, Maria had recognised the birthmark of my brother, Petro. Yeorgo was Petro. For twenty-five years Mama had believed him dead, and there he was, standing in front of her and married to her daughter.’
Angie stared at her mother. ‘The birthmark . . . of course, I’d forgotten. Yiayá told me, right at the beginning of her story.’ Angie’s mind raced, trying to guess where this was leading. ‘So Petro hadn’t died.’ She swallowed hard and asked the all-important question. ‘Are you telling me Petro is my father, Mam?’
Poppy nodded and dropped her head into her hands. Small whining noises came from between her fingers and her shoulders shook as the struggle to control her feelings failed.
‘Mam, it’s all right. You can cry.’
Baby Petro is my father? Angie could hardly grasp the information.
‘It’s been a lifetime, Angelika,’ Poppy said. ‘I’ve had it all knotted up inside me. It’s such an enormous relief.’
Angie slid her arms around Poppy. Matthia pulled a packet of Marlboro Lights from his pocket and then sat outside the door. Poppy allowed her emotions to vent.
Angie filled time by making coffee. Who was her mother? Now she understood that Petro was her father – baby Petro – the information was so huge and unexpected. Yiayá had told her about the beginning of his life, knowing he was Angie’s father. She took a drink out to Matthia, rested a hand on his shoulder and stared across the valley with him.
‘Do you know who my birth-mother is, Uncle Matthia?’
He shook his head, drew on his cigarette and blew the smoke out. ‘I believed Poppy was, that’s why I was against you getting married.’
‘I thought you hated me,’ Angie said.
‘Just the opposite, I couldn’t see you suffer like my sister.’
Poppy recomposed, dried her face and plumped the cushion beside her. ‘Sorry, I’ll try not to cry anymore, love.’ She attempted a smile. ‘Until that moment, when Mama saw the birthmark, she truly believed her baby had died in the massacre. She’d grieved for him and eventually accepted his death.’
‘Yiayá told me about that cruel day and her struggle to save Stavro and Matthia. Those evil Nazis – to murder Petro and her grandfather, Matthia – then to beat her and rape her. No wonder she tried to kill herself.’
The shock on Poppy’s face registered. Angie glanced at the doorway and saw her uncle open-mouthed.
‘You didn’t know?’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry . . . so thoughtless of me.’ Too late, she remembered Yiayá’s request. To keep the story to herself until after Yiayá’s death.
Poppy sighed. ‘Beaten and raped, poor Mama, and I’d no idea she’d tried to end her own life. How awful. I’m ashamed that I added to her troubles. She never burdened us with all that. I made things worse, blaming her for not telling me Yeorgo was Petro.’
Angie imagined how she would cope if somebody told her Nick was her brother. She flashed back to their glorious lovemaking and felt sick.
‘Stavro had seen the birthmark,’ Poppy said. ‘He remembered baby Petro had an identical one so he asked Constantina how Yeorgo had survived the massacre. My mother-in-law changed from that day. Perhaps she had always doubted herself.’
‘Stavro must have dreaded hearing it all,’ Angie said. ‘What happened?’
‘The details are gruesome, Angelika, you don’t want to hear.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t leave anything out, Mam. Yiayá would have told me if there’d been time.’
‘Constantina said the Nazis stood guard for two days. Before they left, they bayoneted the corpses to make sure nobody was alive. The bodies – a hundred and fourteen men and boys from Amiras – were stinking in the September heat. Starved dogs came at night, and the vultures circled overhead by day. Constantina told Stavro that the spilled blood had turned black and sheets of bluebottles covered everything. The poor women; their loved ones already decomposing. Mostly they used clothes and shoes to identify the men.’ Poppy crossed herself.
Angie didn’t want to imagine the awful sight and waited for Poppy to work her way through the story.
‘When they were allowed to take the bodies, everyone was weak from days without food and, of course, there were no men to help.’ Poppy’s shoulders drooped. ‘The women were alone, not just here but in all the villages around. To make matters more difficult, the Nazis had taken everything made of metal. There wasn’t an implement left to dig a grave. They had to scratch a hollow out of the baked September ground with their bare hands or pieces of flint.’
‘How on earth did they manage?’ Angie asked.
‘Constantina took the blanket off her bed and a length of rope and found her father’s body first. Most of her neighbours had lost their voices from the wailing. Flies lifted from the mens’ corpses and worried wounds on the womens’ faces where they’d raked the skin away in anguish. Constantina stumbled among bloated bodies, searching, pushed over by other hysterical women. The crows had taken her father’s eyes.’
Matthia sighed. ‘Agapi told me Constantina would wake in the night, screaming about the maggots between her fingers. The back of her father’s head was missing and, despite the loss of his eyes, she wanted to bury him whole. When she scrabbled around, feeling for pieces of skull, she found her hands were crawling with maggots.’
Poppy’s face contorted in disgust. ‘Constantina managed to pull her father away and roll
him onto the blanket. She tied him up and then looped the rope around her waist. One by one, she dragged her men to their plot and buried them under rocks she hardly had strength to lift. Animals were digging at night. Then, the women found a live baby. They say Constantina went crazy.’
‘What about the real Yeorgo, did somebody bury him?’ Angie asked.
‘Nobody knows; the dogs, crows and vultures were relentless. It’s too terrible to consider.’
Cigarette smoke drifted into the room.
‘Constantina’s first daughter, Marianna, was also killed that day,’ Poppy said. ‘Eighteen years old and full term, she was about to give birth. Two Nazis held her up while a third one ripped her clothes apart and bayoneted her belly open, in the street. She bled to death. Poor Constantina, it’s impossible to imagine what she suffered.’
Matthia came inside. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘It needs to be told.’
Poppy continued. ‘Years later, we heard the order from the German commander had been to kill all the males over sixteen, and anyone found outside the village. The Nazis went on a killing frenzy. Everyone blames others for the bad things that happen.’
Angie remembered Manoli saying the British started it all because of the communists in Crete.
‘Ha!’ Matthia interrupted. ‘Power, brings out the worst in all nations. This sort of evil is still going on, but we choose to look the other way. War changes people. The English have done worse, and the Americans, and most of the others . . . sorry, Poppy, go on.’
‘All this happened before I was born. Most of it I learned from Constantina, who seemed to get some relief by talking about war time, and especially the miracles. The women discovered three children, unconscious but alive. One was the baby boy.’
Poppy sniffed and wiped her eyes. ‘They had found your father, Angelika, the man I came to love. He was nothing but a tiny infant, dehydrated, badly bruised and hardly breathing. No one doubted Constantina. She genuinely believed he was Yeorgo. The women rejoiced. The miracle of finding a newborn alive lifted everyone’s spirits. Constantina still had milk. The baby latched on, and the bond was made.’
‘And Yiayá struggled up the mountain trying to save Matthia and Stavro, sure that Petro was dead,’ Angie said.
‘Eventually, Constantina nursed Yeorgo back to health and all the bruises cleared except for the one on his head, which his thick dark hair covered. They simply forgot about it. Babies were kept well dressed in those days. They wore a long flannelette nightgown and a bonnet for the first three months. Nobody knew about Petro’s birthmark apart from Mama, Stavro and the midwife. People were superstitious about such things, the mark of the devil, and so on. They weren’t talked about.’
Angie nodded. ‘And the Nazis hanged the midwife on the road to Pefkos, the next day.’
‘You know so much more than me,’ Poppy said. ‘Mama told us little. I heard tales from Stavro, about a shepherd, and the fleas, and when they cut Matthia, but that’s all.’
Angie slipped her arm around her mother. ‘So Petro grew up as Yeorgo and died in the army after I was born. Ironic, after surviving the massacre. When did Yiayá break the awful news that Yeorgo was your brother Petro?’
‘She didn’t. She told the doctor on that day she saw Yeorgo’s birthmark. However, because I was already four months pregnant, she forbade him to tell me. She claimed it wouldn’t change anything, and we must hope the baby was normal. I can’t imagine her torture while I carried that child.’
‘It’s a wonder she kept her sanity,’ Angie said.
‘When my second child arrived, stillborn, I nearly lost my mind. The doctor said he also had a heart problem and hadn’t a chance. Yeorgo had returned to the army when we had the thirty-day memorial service. Stavro and Mama had a terrible argument in the cottage after church. Neighbours came to me, and told me to go there quickly.’
‘Didn’t she tell you?’ Angie said.
‘No. She yelled all sorts of things at Stavro. He took me back to Constantina’s and I learned the truth. My mother-in-law attacked Stavro; she called him a liar and threw him out.’
‘Constantina went crazy and wasn’t the same from that day,’ Matthia said. ‘Doctor Petrinakis prescribed a drug, an anti-depressant, but she deteriorated rapidly. She seemed to turn into a half-wit and wandered for miles. She didn’t wash, talked to herself and stared at nothing. Then the feud started. Emmanouil said we’d broken his mother’s heart by claiming she’d taken Maria’s baby, and hadn’t she borne enough grief in her life?’
Chapter 42
MATTHIA DELVED INTO HIS POCKET and pulled out his cigarettes again. Angie noticed the frayed edges of his trousers. She glanced down and saw the hems were also on their last legs. She thought of all the food she’d been given: cakes, raki, wine and olive oil to take back to London. Yet her old uncle was in rags.
He opened the cigarette packet, counted the contents and put them away again. ‘Thanassi and Emmanouil blamed us for their mother’s madness. They both hated me anyway, because I was a communist and refused to lick their junta boots.’
Poppy glanced at her brother and then took Angie’s hand. ‘The fight between our families escalated. Someone set fire to our woodpile and poisoned the dog. They accused my brothers of putting sugar in their petrol tank, and poisoning their chickens, and so the nonsense continued. Perhaps Matthia did kill their hens, I wouldn’t be surprised. He’d always been a bit of a devil.’ A smile flickered as she exchanged a knowing look with him.
Matthia shrugged and lifted his hands in a gesture of non-committal.
‘One morning, I found Constantina dead in her bed. She had taken all her pills at once,’ Poppy said. ‘Yeorgo came home for the funeral and Stavro told us the truth. On that day, our hearts were shattered. The man I’d loved all my life . . . my brother. We’d broken all God’s laws.’
Angie realised she was crying. Poppy squeezed her hand.
‘The feud escalated until the motorbike accident,’ Poppy said. ‘Emmanouil blamed Matthia for the death of his wife and unborn child. The situation worsened.’
‘Thanassi told us about Yánna and the beating they gave Matthia,’ Angie said, glancing at her uncle.
Poppy nodded. ‘Yeorgo returned to the army, and I tried to talk to Emmanouil. You know what happened next.’ She brought her bunched fists together and closed her eyes. ‘I shot him. God forgive me.’ She panted for a moment. ‘I can’t remember it, I swear. I’ve tried so hard, but it’s been wiped from my mind. Why would I do such a terrible thing?’ Poppy asked.
‘They threatened to kill somebody in retribution for Yánna’s death, Poppy. You were afraid for Yeorgo,’ Matthia said.
‘I don’t know . . . A few nights before Yánna died, Emmanouil caught me alone and apologised for the way he’d bullied me over the years. I’d put up with a lot from him. He blamed his anger on my choice of husband. He claimed I should have married him. He frightened me, him and his temper. He said he loved me and always would and that I drove him crazy. For a moment, I felt sorry for him, but then he swore if I didn’t go to him willingly, he would take me anyway and kill my family.’
‘He was dangerous, Poppy. You should have told us.’
‘Less than a week later, his wife died,’ Poppy said. ‘Emmanouil had almost kicked Matthia to death, and I’d killed Emmanouil.’ She reached out and took Matthia’s hand. ‘Although I don’t know exactly what happened at his house . . . I remember going there, opening the door . . . but then . . . running away and begging Stavro to lend me some cash. I’ve tried to fill in the blanks, but can’t.’
‘You asked me first, Poppy,’ Matthia said.
‘Asked you what?’
‘For the money to leave Crete.’
‘No . . . I don’t recall,’ Poppy said.
Matthia frowned and glanced about the floor. ‘You telephoned me at the hospital and said you were desperate. You had to get away, urgently, but you never told me why. I refused. I’ve regrette
d it every day since. You knew I had savings for a new motorbike.’
Matthia sighed deeply. ‘You killed him because of what he did to me, and I wouldn’t lend you the money to escape the junta. I’m ashamed of that. How can you not remember, Poppy? You haven’t spoken to me for nearly forty years because of it. Broke my heart it did. I wish I hadn’t been so mean.’
‘Matthia, you’re wrong. I never held a grudge, not for a moment. I’ve missed you. Why didn’t you write? I thought you were angry with me.’ Poppy laughed. ‘You were crazy about bikes. Mama said you shouldn’t go to her for sympathy when you cracked your skull. Still, after what happened to Yánna it’s not surprising she was against you getting another bike.’
Matthia shook his head as if trying to clear his thoughts. ‘But I thought . . . I don’t understand.’
Poppy looked at him curiously. ‘You mean you believed, after all these years, that I didn’t contact you because I was angry that you didn’t lend me the money?’
‘Why else? We were so close.’
Poppy frowned.
Angie glanced at the clock. ‘What happened to Constantina’s family, Mam? I know Thanassi is still alive. He’s coming to the wedding if Matthia will allow it. They told us at the police station that Thanassi had phoned them – not an easy decision for him to shop his nephew. Thanassi saved your life, Mam.’
Matthia spoke. ‘He wasn’t a crackpot like Emmanouil, but they did tell me to stay away from their sister. Agapi was shipped off to the university in Athens. I never heard from her again until she retired and came back.’
Was Agapi her mother? Angie didn’t think so.
‘Stavro gave me the money to go to England on condition I kept in touch,’ Poppy said. She stared at Matthia for a moment, her brow furrowed as if questioning herself before she continued. ‘I made Stavro promise not to tell anyone where I’d gone and I disowned Mama before I left. I blamed her for everything. I was consumed by grief; two dead sons, the man I loved turning out to be my brother, and then killing Emmanouil . . .’
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