Eleni

by Nicholas Gage

  The road up to the security-police station was busy with women who came to whisper about the Amerikana: that she had ordered her daughters to wear kerchiefs around their faces to hide them from the eyes of the guerrillas; that she had hidden her husband’s fine American clothes and her daughter’s dowry from the fighters of the Democratic Army. Who knows how much wealth in food and sovereigns she had cached away somewhere? they would ask with knowing expressions.

  Sotiris doggedly recorded each innuendo, but he knew he didn’t have enough to convict the Amerikana or to retrieve his reputation with his superior officers. You couldn’t kill a woman for wearing a kerchief or hiding a jacket. What he needed was proof of a village-wide conspiracy tied to the fascists on the other side.

  Then one day Sotiris received a piece of information that seemed to be the break he had been waiting for.

  It came indirectly from Andreas Michopoulos, who had been on duty at the Church of the Virgin on the night of the escape. Although Andreas was badly frightened by the grillings he received immediately after the flight, he had by now recovered his cockiness and continued to exploit his uniform to impress his friends in the village. He had a crush on a sixteen-year-old village girl named Magda Kyrkas, and one day when he was visiting her house, the subject of the escape came up. “Oh, there are plenty of others who would like to follow in their footsteps!” Andreas said airily. “Just the other day Dina Venetis came up to me and said, ‘Andreas, if someone was to leave the village, what would be the safest route to take?’”

  This remark was overheard by an andartina from the village of Parakalomo who was billeted in the Kyrkas house, and she dutifully went to the security police to report it. Sotiris gripped the desk in excitement. He was certain that Andreas knew more than he had admitted. Sotiris ordered the boy brought back to the police station, and this time made sure that he was beaten thoroughly. Like most bullies, Andreas could not tolerate pain; the blows and kicks of the security police soon had him babbling the names of fellow villagers who he claimed were preparing to leave. Sotiris was jubilant. One by one he arrested the people named and interrogated them, locking them up in the cellar along with the terrified Andreas.

  Under the flexible rods and cleated boots of the security police, each villager swore complete loyalty to the cause and tried to stop the beating by suggesting other villagers who they were certain were harboring thoughts of escape. But after a week had passed, with the number of arrests snowballing, Sotiris despondently admitted to himself that he would have to discard the hope of trapping fascists from the outside. Although the villagers were eager enough to implicate one another, none of them had seen anyone from nationalist territory sneaking into the village to organize subversion. The scapegoats would have to be found among those still in Lia.

  When Sotiris delivered his files on the new arrests and interrogations to Katis, he knew he was in for a painful scene, and the investigating magistrate showed no mercy. He castigated Sotiris for failing to prove anything about a conspiracy or even to come up with any solid evidence. He acidly pointed out that headquarters’ patience had been stretched beyond its limits. Ringleaders and traitors had to be named; a concrete case had to be built against them, and quickly. The Gatzoyiannis women had been walking about the village at liberty for weeks, and instead of serving as bait to trap other traitors, they were only flaunting their treachery, giving the village the impression that the DAG could be defied with impunity.

  Sotiris sat up late that night poring over his files. He had heard whispers that the Drouboyiannis women knew something. The three sisters-in-law all lived in the section of the village near St. Friday, and one of them, Chrysoula, had been part of the escape, taking her two nieces, the daughters of Constantina Drouboyiannis, with her while their mother was at the threshing field. Sotiris ordered both Constantina and Alexandra Drouboyiannis brought in for questioning.

  Ever since the day of the escape, they had been living in terror of being arrested. Alexandra was the dark, irascible woman who came with two of her daughters on the second escape attempt and grew hysterical when the fog spoiled their plans.

  When Constantina, a dull-witted, gregarious woman, was ordered to go to the threshing fields, she had turned her own two daughters over to her other sister-in-law, the childless Chrysoula, saying, “If you can find any way to escape while I’m gone, take the girls with you.” She had heard from Alexandra about the two failed escape attempts. Now Constantina burst into tears at the sight of the guerrillas at her door and wished she had never given her daughters to their aunt. They were free and she would have to pay for their deliverance.

  Disgusted at Sotiris’ failure to produce anything concrete, Katis decided to conduct the interrogation of the Drouboyiannis women himself. The investigating magistrate had set up his office just below the security headquarters in the home of Kostina Thanassis, the grandmotherly old woman who had brought Nikola a treat of marmalade on the eve of the escape. An incorrigible busybody, Kostina liked to eavesdrop near Katis’ door while he questioned prisoners, and she reported many details of what went on there to her neighbors. Now, when she saw Constantina Drouboyiannis being led in weeping, she patted the woman’s arm sympathetically and whispered, “Whatever you know, dear, for God’s sake tell them and it may save you!” Constantina nodded tearfully. She realized she was not very clever and she was terrified of being caught in a web of lies. She decided to cooperate with the guerrillas and reveal whatever she knew, leaving out, of course, the fact that she had begged Chrysoula to take her daughters to the other side. After all, she had been in the threshing field on the day of the escape and no one could repeat what she had said except for Chrysoula, who was now far beyond the guerrillas’ reach.

  A few hours later Katis sent an urgent summons to Sotiris, and the intelligence officer nearly ran down the path to the office of the investigating magistrate. On the way he passed the two Drouboyiannis women, bruised and weeping, being led up toward the jail. The guards told him that Katis wanted them confined in the upstairs rooms, isolated from the other prisoners. Sotiris swore under his breath. If Katis had managed to unearth something that had escaped his own informants, he was in serious trouble. He brushed past the hovering figure of Kostina Thanassis and into the office of the hawk-faced Katis, who sat twiddling a string of onyx worry beads behind his desk, evidently lost in thought. Then the eyes of the magistrate focused on Sotiris with a small gleam of satisfaction and his melodious voice said, “I want you to get the daughter of Alexandra Drouboyiannis, who’s with our company up at Skitari, back here as fast as you can.”

  “You mean Milia?” Sotiris replied, mystified. “But what could she know about the escape? She’s only eighteen and one of the most dedicated guerrillas we have. She was at Skitari on the day they left.”

  Katis produced a smile that made Sotiris’ skin crawl. “It seems that there were two previous escape attempts, before the traitors succeeded in leaving,” he announced. “They started out two times under your noses and turned back, and you never knew it!” He paused momentously. “And the Amerikana was with them! She organized it all. If we can get convincing witnesses to testify to this in public, we have enough evidence to hang her and everyone associated with her!”

  It was at the beginning of August, during the two-week Lent that precedes the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin, when a neighbor, Eugenia Petsis, called Eleni down from her bean field to the deserted mill where Eugenia lived with her daughter. “I’ve just made a skotaria from goat’s intestines,” she said, trying to cheer up Eleni, who had become thin as a rail, with purple hollows under her eyes. “Come, sit down, have some with us.”

  Eleni thanked her and shook her head. “I’m observing the fast,” she said, “hoping that the Virgin will help me.”

  Eugenia, a motherly woman with a face like a russet apple, began to scold her. “Forget about fasting!” she said. “You have to live. You owe it to Glykeria to survive until she gets back from the harvest.”


  Eleni sat down weakly and nodded. “Perhaps I’ll go back to the house and drink a little milk,” she conceded. “The Virgin will forgive me that much, but I won’t eat meat.”

  Before the sun had set, Eleni was back at Eugenia Petsis’ door, her face the color of sulfur.

  “There are three guerrillas at my house, waiting to take me to the police station,” she said, out of breath. She looked at the older woman beseechingly. “If I don’t come back, look after the animals and send me a little milk now and then with your daughter,” she pleaded. She paused for a moment, then seized Eugenia’s hands. “If Glykeria comes back and I’m not here, please take care of her!”

  Before the astonished woman could reply, Eleni was gone.

  Throughout the long summer of 1948, guerrillas and government forces were locked in battle for control of the Grammos mountain range, the main stronghold of the insurgents. By the end of July, the nationalist troops were beating at the central gate of Grammos, the towering mountain called “Kleftis” (“the Thief”), a natural obstacle, over 6,000 feet high, which blocked the western approach to Grammos. As long as the guerrillas held Kleftis, their stronghold could not fall.

  The government forces threw everything they had at the exposed slopes of Kleftis, fighting with guns, hand grenades and bayonets for every rock. At dawn on July 26 they managed to take the summit, only to be driven two hundred yards back down by a daring counterattack from the guerrillas two hours later. Both sides displayed desperate courage. The partisans, including many young women and adolescent boys, fought with heroic determination, believing they were giving up their lives as the final sacrifice before victory. There was no opportunity to bury the dead on the exposed cliffs, and soon the stench of rotting bodies under the scorching sun was unbearable. The Greek generals were determined to take Kleftis at any cost. “Don’t withdraw even half a meter!” General Thrasyvoulos Tsakalotos, commander of the government offensive, ordered his field commanders when they suggested a temporary retreat. “Kleftis will be captured even if it takes the whole First Army Corps.”

  On the last day of July the government forces bombarded the summit of the mountain with 20,000 shells in preparation for a final assault and in the rear positions, King Paul, Queen Frederika, and the chief of the American mission, General James Van Fleet, visited the troops to raise morale.

  At 4:30 A.M. on August 1, Battalion 583 managed to take the summit of Kleftis with a sudden assault. The battalion’s first squads leaped into the trenches of the guerrillas and defeated them in hand-to-hand combat. The gate to Grammos had fallen.

  Within a week, government forces had captured most of the guerrillas’ positions on Grammos. But the rebels continued to resist ferociously, dying to defend every yard.

  Such a determined defense was costly to both sides, but the guerrillas could least afford it because they had no way of replenishing their losses. Nevertheless, the Greek Communist Party leader, Nikos Zachariadis, insisted they fight to the death despite strong criticism from his commander in chief, General Markos Vafiadis. Why were the guerrillas forced to stand and die in droves to hold on to untenable positions? Markos asked. Why weren’t they returning to the tactic that brought them such success at the start of the revolution—hit-and-run attacks? But Zachariadis was inflexible. If his strategy was failing to hold Grammos and drive back the enemy, he charged, “it is because bad Communists have failed in their duty.” Hearing his words, the Communist leadership in the occupied territories began to search in their midst for scapegoats on whom the failure could be blamed.

  THE MONTH OF AUGUST ushers in the harvest season and the Feast of the Virgin on the fifteenth. The overflowing abundance of grapes, figs, melons, tomatoes, corn and walnuts makes it relatively easy for the pious to renounce meat and dairy products during the two-week fast which precedes the holiday of the Holy Virgin. “August, my good month, if only you could come twice a year!” the peasants say as they gather in the bounty of the fields and vines.

  The Feast of the Virgin is a day for miracles. From all over Greece the lame, blind and dying converge on the small island of Tinos in the Aegean hoping to be cured by the famous Icon, which is carried from the church over the prone bodies of thousands of invalids who lie on the streets. Pilgrims who have made vows to the Virgin throughout the year fulfill them on Her day; on Tinos hundreds of women can be seen every August 15 walking barefoot the long distance from the harbor up the steps of the great church, their hair unbound and uncovered, their hands crossed over their breasts. Some of them make the journey crawling on their knees.

  In Lia, Eleni was determined to observe the fast, hoping for a miracle from the Virgin: her salvation. But when she saw the three guerrillas arriving at her gate to take her back to the jail, she was not surprised. For weeks she had felt that the invisible bars holding her prisoner in the village would eventually be replaced by real ones.

  News of Eleni’s arrest spread through the village like a summer grass fire and eventually reached Alexo on the far southern perimeter, casting her into a profound depression. Her daughter, Niki, remembers how, early the following afternoon, Alexo went to the spring to fill a large barrel of water, a heavy load for a woman of fifty-six, and when she brought it back, she sat in silence by the door for the remainder of the daylight, so low in spirits that nothing the girl said could rouse her. Just before dark a guerrilla came to their gate to take Alexo to police headquarters. He was young and he felt sorry when he saw how Niki clutched her mother and wept. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “They only want to talk to her for a few hours.” But both mother and daughter knew he was lying. As the guerrilla led her away, Alexo turned to look back at her daughter standing in the doorway and sighed, “I’m never going to see my house again.”

  For the past days the security police had been filling the jail with new prisoners from Lia, beginning with those implicated by Andreas Michopoulos. The first to be brought in was Dina Venetis. Dina was only twenty-eight, a slender woman with high cheekbones and arched black eyebrows—a face of such dark, exotic beauty that one would have expected to find it in an Athenian actress rather than in a black-kerchiefed peasant woman. Dina was grazing her family’s flock under the midsummer sun when the guerrillas came for her on a still afternoon, heavy with the scent of fruit and broken boughs. “What are you going to do with me?” she asked as they led her toward the police station. “We’re going to slaughter you so it’ll rain,” one of them chuckled. But of all those held in the Gatzoyiannis cellar, Dina Venetis is one of the few who survived to describe the treatment of the prisoners during the summer of 1948.

  Each villager brought in to the security-police station was kept isolated at first in one of the upstairs rooms, left to wonder what crimes he or she was suspected of committing. After a few days of suspense, the prisoner was taken outside to the back of the house to be beaten and interrogated in the garden. Finally, the prisoner was thrown into the filthy subterranean jail, which was becoming more crowded every day.

  Dina Venetis, whose three small children were left alone to wander around the neighborhood begging for food like stray puppies, was kept in solitary confinement for two days before she was led out behind the house to a patch of holm oak, stepping on soft ground pitted with graves, choking at the stench of rotting bodies.

  The young woman was accused of planning to escape in order to join her soldier husband on the government side. While Sotiris interrogated her, several of the security police held her and beat her with the flexible branches of the cornel tree. The first blow cut her hand and split one of her fingernails. Every blow of the switch broke the skin, leaving a ribbon of blood.

  Dina Venetis showed an unexpected defiance for such a fragile-looking woman. Instead of denying that she wanted to escape, she said, “What woman wouldn’t want to be with her husband? But I never made plans to leave—how could I, with three small children?” As they continued to flail her with the rods, she cried, “That’s right, hit me! I deserve it becaus
e I could have escaped and I didn’t! I thought you were human beings!”

  Sotiris ordered the guards to bring Andreas Michopoulos out of the cellar to confront her. He had been beaten much worse than Dina and his head lolled as he tonelessly repeated his statement that Dina had asked him what path would be the safest to follow out of the village.

  “Whom do you expect us to believe,” Sotiris challenged her, with the police standing by, rods in their hands, “you, whose husband is a fascist officer, or this guerrilla who is one of us?”

  Dina looked at Andreas, her face contorted with contempt. “That is a piece of shit!” she said. “And everyone in this village knows it. I don’t even say good morning to that scum, let alone ask his advice! If I wanted to leave, I know the paths out of this village better than anyone else, living where I do.”

  They took Andreas away and continued beating Dina until her body was covered with welts, then they dragged her across the yard. Christos Zeltas, the head of the security police, gave her a kick that sent her flying into the cellar.

  Every day more beaten prisoners were booted into the jail while Andreas Michopoulos crouched behind the door, avoiding the eyes of those he had implicated. Not long after the young guerrilla’s uncle, Spiro Michopoulos, and the cooper Vasili Nikou were brought in, Alexo Gatzoyiannis was thrown through the cellar doorway. The prisoners learned that the Amerikana was in the house, but that she was being kept upstairs, isolated from the others. One young village woman who was brought in several times for questioning, Athena Daflakis, remembers seeing her sitting cross-legged on the threshold of the kitchen.