To hit your sweetheart on the nose?
Vasilo came after them with her shepherd’s crook, and the girls scrambled, laughing, toward the small white Chapel of St. Nicholas on the western end of the pasture. They ducked into the shadows behind the rounded projection of the apse. They huddled there, making themselves as small as possible, their bodies pressed against the cool wall, listening to their hearts beating. They soon became aware of another sound, muffled but unmistakable. From inside the Holy of Holies, where only a priest could enter, there came the hollow rhythm of slow, dragging footsteps. Back and forth the walker paced. The sound came closer. The girls stared at each other; despite the heat, there were goose bumps on their arms.
Kanta felt a scream welling up inside her and flinched when Glykeria grabbed her arm and whispered hoarsely, “It’s the ghost of Soterina. This is where she froze to death!” With that, they hurled themselves out of the shadows, as if they could already feel Soterina’s icicle fingers clutching at their necks. They nearly trampled Vasilo, who came puffing toward them.
“Run, Vasilo!” Kanta screamed. “There’s a ghost in the church!”
Vasilo seemed unconcerned. “You girls are sillier than I am! I see ghosts all the time up here, and I always tell them a nice ‘Good day.’ ”
Despite Vasilo’s aplomb, Kanta and Glykeria huddled at the edge of the Agora farthest from the chapel for the rest of the afternoon.
While Eleni was busy in the house, Nikola perfected his plan. After lunch, when everyone settled down for the siesta, he began. The earth in the garden just below the house was soft from recent rains, but even so, it wasn’t easy for a six-year-old to break it up with the hoe. Next he took a spade and began to dig. An hour later he stopped, and proudly examined the results. He had created a rectangular hole, as long as he was tall, nearly as wide, and a foot deep—the largest he’d ever made.
Eager to finish before his mother woke up, Nikola found a pail and hurried the dozen yards up the path to the spot where the millstream broadened into a shallow pond. It was hard dragging the filled pail back down to the hole, but he struggled manfully and finally tipped it in, only to see the water disappear into the earth.
By five o’clock, after two hours of lugging water, he had achieved two inches of liquid mud in the bottom. It didn’t look like the swimming pools of his fantasies, but he was hot and tired, and his palms were blistered. It was time to take his enjoyment for all the hours of hard labor. He slipped off the straps of the striped knee pants his mother had made him and undid the button in the front. The only other garment was his short-sleeved knitted white shirt, which also served as a nightgown. Now it would be a swimming costume as well. With a shout like an attacking warrior, he threw himself face down into the swimming pool.
Tsavena, the ancient mother of Marina Kolliou, who lived in the house above the Gatzoyiannias family, woke up with an urgent need to go to the outhouse. From the small veranda she heard a strange noise and looked down at the Gatzoyiannis garden. The top half of a chocolate brown figure was projecting out of the dirt. She thought at once of the evil daoutis, half goat, half child, who frightens the sheep and goats to death during Advent.
“Ooooohhh, Eleni!” Tsavena screamed in a voice that brought everyone in the neighborhood awake with a start. “Run, Eleni!”
As the neighborhood assembled around his swimming pool, Nikola was doing his best at what he thought must be the backstroke. He looked at the circle of faces peering down at him. Every mouth was stretched wide in laughter. His mother was laughing hardest of all. Nikola felt that his efforts were not being properly appreciated. “I only wanted us to have a swimming pool, like in America,” he said reproachfully, blinking back the tears.
The episode of the swimming pool ended with the excited return of Glykeria and Kanta, while Eleni and Olga were still scraping mud off the boy in the basin used for boiling clothes. Eleni paid no more attention to the girls’ encounter with a ghost than she did to Nikola’s plans for improving his swimming pool. But a week later, as she went up to oversee Tassi Mitros’ plowing of their fields for the second planting, Eleni encountered the ghost herself.
She stopped at the chapel to light a candle to her son’s name giver, and as she stood in front of the altar she saw a movement behind the iconostasis. She peered forward into the Holy of Holies and found the white-haired miller Yiorgi Mitros crouched in a corner. “What are you doing here, effendi!” she asked in amazement.
“Hiding from the coming storm, Eleni!” he answered. “Have you seen anyone looking for me?”
“Two men in uniform came around asking for you,” she innocently replied. “But why should you be afraid? You’ve done nothing.”
Yiorgi Mitros’ ruddy cheeks paled and he flung his open hand toward his face, cursing himself. “Damn the day I stood up to speak for ELAS!” he moaned. “Now they’re hunting me down like a hare. And for nothing! I’m heading for Albania right now, Eleni. And for God’s sake, don’t tell anyone you saw me.”
Eleni returned home, wondering sadly at the old man’s plight. She found her brother-in-law Andreas in her house.
“You didn’t happen to catch sight of Yiorgi Mitros up in the fields, did you?” he asked.
“Why? What’s he done?”
“Nothing,” Andreas answered, explaining that Minas Stratis, who was now working for army intelligence in Yannina, had recommended the miller Mitros for mayor of Lia. “But no one’s been able to find him for weeks.”
And that was how Yiorgi Mitros sentenced himself to fifteen years of homeless wandering in Albania and Yugoslavia, while the post of mayor fell to the cripple Boukouvalas, who had recovered enough from his beating in the schoolhouse to take the helm of the village.
For everyone who had aligned himself with ELAS, it was a time of fear and flight. There were rumors of night raids and brutal reprisals in the larger towns to the south. One evening at the hour of dusk, Eleni heard a faint knock on the back door and opened it to find her cousin Antonova Paroussis from Babouri standing in the shadows, her scarf tied close around her face. Antonova begged Eleni to hide her cousin Nikola Paroussis (the young ELAS guerrilla who had welcomed Philip Nind) and his comrade Kosta Tzouras. Nikola’s mother was terrified that they’d be arrested and perhaps killed for their wartime activities. “None of the ELAS houses are safe,” Antonova said to Eleni, “but they’d never think to search here because your husband’s in America and your father is a rightist. Please, Eleni, just for a few days until we see whether it’s safe for them to turn themselves in or if they have to flee the country! Do this thing for his mother and me and someday it will be returned to your own son.”
At first Eleni hesitated. She couldn’t compromise Olga’s reputation by hiding single young men under the same roof, but after all, Nikola Paroussis was her husband’s relative, and the other was the brother of Christos’ close friend in America. Her husband would expect her to help them.
“I’ll send Olga to my sister’s house, and keep Costa and Nikola here,” Eleni finally agreed. “They’ve always been good, God-fearing boys.”
She put the two andartes in the dirt-floored pantry behind the kitchen, and although they spent the daylight hours in the storage space under the floor, in the evenings the young men would tell the children stories and teach Nikola and Fotini how to play jacks with pebbles.
Two weeks later their hiding came to an end with news that appalled every ELAS supporter. The picaresque Aris Velouchiotis, hero of ELAS, who refused to recognize the Varkiza agreement and still rode the secret mountain passes with his band of savage “Black Bonnets,” was denounced as “an adventurist and suspect person” by the chief of the Communist Party himself on June 12, 1945. Aris did not learn of his excommunication until six days later when, trying to escape from an ambush near a village in the Pindos mountains, he ran into two shepherds, one of whom showed him a six-day-old newspaper.
Aris sat down on a rock with the newspaper, told his second in command to s
tay with him and sent the rest of his men on ahead. A few minutes later, a grenade exploded. No one would ever know if Aris and his aide committed suicide or were killed. Government soldiers cut off their heads and suspended them from a double gibbet in the main square of Trikala by ropes strung through their ears.
Aris’ repudiation by the Communist Party and his grisly death left no doubt in the minds of ELAS andartes still at large. No matter what the party said about confronting the authorities, they streamed over the border into Albania and Yugoslavia to save themselves. The two fugitives hidden in Eleni’s house joined the exodus, crossing over to Albania along with Mitsi Bollis and the Skevis brothers. They stayed in a village just over the border, occasionally creeping back after dark; shadowy figures now and then glimpsed by the children who took them for ghosts. In the fall they left Albania for the base of Greek communists in Bulkes, Yugoslavia.
The first letter that Eleni had written to Christos brought a quick reply, overflowing with relief at the news of their survival. He said that four large trunks full of clothing and gifts were already on their way. Unfortunately, an emergency appendectomy and the cost of all the things he was sending had depleted his bank account, but as soon as he had enough to fulfill the legal requirement for bringing the family into the country, he said, he would send Eleni immigration papers.
Christos’ main concern was his daughters’ virtue once they were exposed to the hedonism of his adopted land. “You have no idea how free the girls are here, running with strangers from an early age, without even a brother along to protect them!” he wrote. “It would be best if you make a match now for Olga with a man of good name in the village and marry her there. Then she’ll be safely settled and after the rest of you come to the States, she can follow with her husband.”
Another responsibility, Eleni thought. Christos didn’t understand how hard it would be to find someone with the right family name and reputation who would satisfy Olga as well. But she had to admit she saw the logic in his plan.
The whole family waited anxiously for the trunks to arrive while they threshed the summer wheat, dug the potatoes and celebrated the three-day festival of the Prophet Elias. Finally word came from Yannina that the trunks had arrived. Eleni and Andreas went to bring them back by mule. By the time they entered the Gatzoyiannis gate, the yard was full of neighbors. Everyone stood around the trunks exclaiming. Even the rope that bound them was wonderful! It was American rope, strong and thick as a snake, and they carefully untied it so that lengths of it could be given as gifts—not only practical but full of the glamour of the golden land. There were clothes for everyone, even Kitso and Megali, although Foto Gatzoyiannis’ family did not fare as well as before the war. There were bright dresses and lengths of fabric, exotic shoes, scarfs and silk stockings. All of the wealth of America flowed out of those trunks and some of the mystery too. There was a shiny round pink box with a puff on top and powder inside that smelled nice and made you sneeze. There was a large glass bottle full of bright-colored large round tablets. “Sweets,” said some. “Medicine,” said others.
“Let me test it,” said Kitso Haidis, “before you children poison yourselves!”
As everyone watched in suspense, he bit into one. Under the bright shell was chocolate and a peanut. “Better taste another to be sure,” he said. He kept on tasting until the bottle was empty.
If Kitso got the candy, the girls got the expensive ties that Christos had meant for him. They thought the bright lengths of silk must be fashionable new belts, and wound them around their waists while their girl friends gritted their teeth in envy.
For the three oldest girls there were fine crocodile shoes with funny-looking high heels. They were as tricky as stilts, and Olga broke hers the first time she wore them up the mountain to the brook where the women beat the laundry.
The greatest mystery of all was a large colorful bunch of feathers at the end of a stick. No one knew what it was, but it glowed with tawny hues of orange and red. Eleni found a glass vase and put the thing in the center of the table in the good chamber.
People began to arrive from as far away as Babouri. They were led into the room where the feather duster reigned, upside down in the vase. Like a bouquet of flowers, but it never dies, they said. They think of everything in America.
Eleni found something to fill every visitor’s hands—a pair of stockings, a handkerchief, a length of fabric, or some of the precious aspirins. For days, people came to admire. “What wonderful things, Kyria Eleni!” they all marveled. “You are the luckiest family in the village!” And they would go away clutching a bit of the riches.
Some weeks later, on a day so hot that the dust did not move and the cicadas screamed, Eleni put Nikola on the mule, Merjo, and headed into the center of town to buy some supplies with the money Christos had sent. When she got there, Spiro Michopoulos called out to her from his cafenion. The postman had left a letter for her from America.
Eleni’s sense of good fortune evaporated when she read Christos’ letter, bitter with anger and accusations. Her father, Kitso, had written him demanding five hundred British sovereigns as payment for feeding the family during the occupation, he told her. “I was prepared to take care of your parents for the rest of their lives,” Christos wrote, “which you told me was the agreement you had with your father. I sent them all those clothes and gifts in gratitude, and now he’s demanding a fortune in gold! What kind of trick is this? Why did you get me knitted into such a problem? If I pay him, I’ll be broke and can’t afford to bring you and the children over.”
Eleni’s mind spun. How could her father have written such a letter without telling her? Shopping was forgotten as she led the mule with Nikola upon it toward her father’s mill, where he was living until he got his house rebuilt.
Kitso was unmoved by her rage. Yes, he’d written the letter, he said and shrugged. Rebuilding the house was eating up everything he had. He was an old man—too old to keep working the mill. He wanted to open his own business, a store in the Alonia, and that’s why he needed the sovereigns. “Your husband owes me for what I did for you,” he concluded.
Eleni accused him of exploiting his own daughter and grandchildren to get rich.
“I kept you alive!” he answered brusquely. “Can you deny that?”
She ached to slap him the way he had so often hit her. Choking back tears, she accused him of being a greedy, selfish old man who cared for no one but himself.
Nikola saw how his mother stormed out of his grandfather’s house and swatted Merjo sharply with the switch, a hard, distant look on her face. The animal lurched slowly into a walk. The great white mule, big as a horse, was nearly blind with age; his legs were stiff and scabby and he was always reluctant when the path lay up the mountain.
Eleni did not speak as they passed the ruins of the Haidis house and continued up. She felt caught like a hare in a hunter’s trap between her father and her husband, the metal teeth puncturing her skin, grinding toward the bone. All she had wanted was to keep her children alive, any way she could, and now the two men who should have protected her were both angry at her.
Just below the Church of St. Demetrios, where the narrow path cut between two large boulders, Merjo came to a complete stop. Eleni struck him on the flanks, but he seemed to go into a trance, standing like the rocks on either side, saliva dripping from his lips, his rheumy eyes glazed.
She shouted fiercely at Nikola to slide off, then began beating the stick on the mule’s flanks with all her strength, shrieking curses at him as if he could understand her. The stick splintered, but Merjo’s only movement was to lay back his ears with an expression of malicious stupidity.
Something snapped in Eleni’s mind and suddenly she was sobbing and hurling stones against the immobile white flanks until a trickle of blood appeared. She scrabbled for more stones and threw them blindly.
I backed away, terrified by the sight of my mother suddenly turned into a madwoman, screaming and hurling stones at the old
mule who stood there, immobile as a mountain. The sight of this raging anger coming from the one person who had always given me security and love was more frightening than an unexpected attack from anyone else. I was sure the mule had done something terrible when I wasn’t looking that set her off like this, and I was even more afraid that I would inadvertently anger her too and have that murderous rage directed at me. Too frightened to cry, I ran up and threw my arms around her, begging, “Please stop it, Mana! Merjo didn’t mean it!”
She looked at me in surprise, as if she had forgotten about my existence. When she saw how frightened I was, the anger seemed to drain from her. She collapsed on the ground, burying her face in her arms and sobbing. I could see that the fury was gone and hugged her, trying to console her, but she wept uncontrollably. I began to understand that it was not the mule who had driven her into this frenzy, but something that concerned my grandfather.
Neither my mother nor I ever told my sisters about the moment when she lost control and attacked the mule. Later, guilty about her outburst, she blamed herself unreasonably for Merjo’s fate. When I was old enough to understand the pressures tormenting my mother at that moment, I was surprised that her frustrations didn’t explode more often. Looking back, I was glad that once, during that brief respite between the wars, she allowed herself the indulgence of collapsing.
She was brought up to be dependent on others and was so sensitive that in 1937 she became ill from her unhappiness. But when the world war broke out and her personal problems were overshadowed by the necessity to keep us alive, my mother never allowed herself to break down. And when, after that brief two-year period of tranquillity, civil war erupted, bringing with it torments that drove many others to despair or madness, she would never permit herself to take refuge in weakness again.
A week or so later the family found Merjo on his knees in the stable, unable to get up under the weight of his twenty-two years. His eyes were clouded and he made no sound. They burned straw under his nostrils but he didn’t move. They pried open his great bloodless lips and poured in camomile tea but he wouldn’t swallow. As the sun rose higher, his head sank to the floor. At the end a terrible ague seized him until, like an oak falling, he rolled over dead. Eleni started to cry, and Nikola and Fotini, seeing her tears, began to wail. Olga watched with amusement. “He’s only a mule—an old mule!” she shouted. “What are you all carrying on about?”
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