‘Mr Apostolos died from a heart-attack, the sweetest death of all,’ Roula said. ‘He was close to eighty. Let’s hope we reach that age!’
‘And Stamatis was very sick. He had cancer. He didn’t have long to live,’ Katina added. ‘Thank God there were no deaths as a result of the raid.’
‘Yes, I think it’s a miracle the family in the house opposite the police station survived. Bullets from either side passed through the house and smashed everything to smithereens,’ said Maria.
‘Look, if you’re dead, you’re dead! But what about the three hundred and sixty children the guerrillas snatched from their homes? What about their mothers and their fathers? Loosing a child like this is worse that death,’ lamented Voula. ‘Who knows where they took the poor children and what will become of them!’
‘I bet it was an inside job. The guerillas were local people, hiding in their houses. That’s why they were not spotted coming. They knew exactly what they wanted and how to go about it,’ commented Katina. ‘They wanted to free their jailed comrades before they’re sent to court, because they know what’s coming to them.’
‘My God! My God!’ Stauroula crossed herself. ‘The world’s gone mad! It’s as if we are not from the same race! As if we were not all Greeks! Like wild beasts we devour each other. Only God can intervene and save us.’
The evidence of the raid was obvious throughout the town, particularly on the police complex’s enclosure: it was full of hand grenade and bullet holes. Not a single pane of glass was left unshattered on the windows of the station or the surrounding buildings.
The parents whose children were taken by the guerrillas were running crazed on the streets, cursing gods and demons. In their rage, some were blaming the Slavic-speaking population, the Thracans, the Pontians or any other group of people they had always thought of as foreigners and therefore undesirable and untrustworthy.
A number of well-to-do families took their children, loaded some belongings on carts and took the road to Kozani, a city considered safe because of the large army squad stationed there. A new flight of refugees took place: victims of a most sinister and insane, fratricidal war.
It was mooted the army and police had evacuated a number of villages because the guerrillas had found asylum in them, and had burnt a number of houses. A young woman had given birth two days earlier and was forced to walk three hours in the hot sun to the nearest village with her newborn baby in her arms. She knew nobody in the village and nobody was willing to offer her shelter because they didn’t know about her background.
In some villages populations increased. Some people stayed with relatives or found shelter in the houses of some kind-hearted people who opened their doors to refugees. Other local people, full of fear and suspicion retreated behind double-locked doors. In any case there wasn’t enough food to feed their own family; how were they supposed to feed others?
‘We were better off under the Germans,’ someone said, disgusted.
‘Fascist! Traitor!’ he was rebuked by someone else.
Meantime, the fields were again left uncultivated. Flocks of sheep, goats and cows were decimated. After two carts were blown up by mines on the road to Ptolamais, costing the lives of two drivers and their beasts of burden, the transfer of things like firewood, vegetables and other goods from the villages to town almost came to a standstill.
Only Tasia’s father continued to make the journey every Wednesday, his mules sometimes loaded and sometimes not. Tasia would be waiting for him to arrive, full of concern. No one was sure of anything. A few who found the courage to go to their farms had stepped on mines and were blown to pieces.
Two well-known brothers were ferrying things from their village, each walking beside his loaded mule, one following the other. At some stage Kostas, who was leading, tried to light a cigarette but had problems with his lighter. He stopped for a minute to borrow his brother’s. His mule continued to walk, stepped on a mine and was blown up. Kostas escaped with only a few scratches on his face. He was convinced a guardian angel saved him.
The widespread fear and insecurity was palpable. Only a few teachers — making heroic efforts to boost the morale of the few students who continued to attend classes -had remained active in their positions, having no other place to go and nothing else to do. The school building was guarded each night by a small contingent of defence forces and used by a number of male students as a safe shelter. For the girls, their parents dug holes and trenches under their houses or in the floors of their sheds to hide from guerrilla attacks.
The town of Ptolemais was attacked five times. On five different nights the people lived through hell. The gunshots and explosions shook the town to its foundations. During the final two raids just before the end of the school year Tasia had to hide alone in the cellar. The landlady insisted it was safer that way. After Tasia got in, the landlady would close the trapdoor and place the usual rug over it to disguise the entrance.
‘See? Even you didn’t know there was a trapdoor right there in front of your own door,’ she reassured her.
They fashioned a small wooden platform in the cellar with a rug over it so Tasia wouldn’t have to sit in the mud. She would take a thick blanket with her to wrap around her.
After every new raid more people left Ptolemais. Even Toula’s family packed up and left. Toula was a junior student whom Tasia helped with her school-work and was invited now and then to stay and have a meal with the family.
When the school year came to an end, Tasia had no choice but to return to the village, fully aware of the risks. She locked herself in the house so nobody would know she was there. As an extra precaution her father had dug a trench in the floor of the shed, big enough for her and her brother to sit side by side. He covered it with boards and dirt and made a secret door the children could lock from the inside. They used it only once. When they came out of this grave they couldn’t stand up and their bodies ached from the unnatural way they had been forced to sit for several hours.
I
t was time for Tasia to return to Ptolemais to continue her studies. The whole family felt relieved because she would be safer there, particularly now that a large army unit was permanently stationed close by. In addition, many army convoys passed through the town daily, taking supplies and personnel further north.
The newspaper headlines told of how the communists, due to their own bad planning, had been trapped like rats in the peaks and ravines of the Gramos and Vitsi mountains. Tasia read in the headlines that it was only a matter of weeks before the battle would be over. The guerrillas were no match for the Greek army who were better-trained and equipped with modern armaments supplied by the Americans.
Another event that foretold the defeat of the guerrillas was the sudden closure of their supply lines. Serbia, their ally and supplier, closed its door, abandoning the men and women of ELAS to their fate.
The way things were progressing, the leftists kept their mouths shut. Gradually, most people began to hope this insane civil war was coming to an end. However, the deep-rooted malice between the warring factions continued to simmer. The indiscriminate killing and maiming by landmines had become their worst nightmare. No one would risk working on their land, and over the past two years the fields were left unattended. People were near starvation.
Recently one of the only two aged taxis servicing the province had been blown up, killing the driver and his young passenger. The driver from Ptolemais, only twenty-five years old, was married and with two young children. The passenger was a young teacher on his way to his first job in one of the nearby villages. The teacher’s shoe was found in the fields some hundred meters away.
‘The poor boy! He was hardly twenty-two years old,’ a lady at the water tap said.
‘What a shame! What a waste of his youth,’ Katina agreed. ‘Well, okay, he’s gone. But I truly feel sorry for his parents.’
‘I’ve heard he was an only child. His parents, who are very old, had him late in life. Now they’re c
oming to collect his remains and bury him in their village. How are they going to cope with it? Poor parents!’ said another.
‘What a shame! Cursed be the war! Any war!’ added Stavroula.
‘What can you say? That’s the luck of the draw. I call that fate,’ reasoned Roula.
‘Oh, what nonsense! You call that atrocity luck? I ask you: who planted the mine? Who gave anyone the right to kill and maim fellow human beings? Who gave anyone that right?’ exploded Katina. ‘You know me! I couldn’t kill a fly. Although if I could get my hands on one of these brutes I would pull him apart with my bare hands!’
‘I worry about John’s family: his sick parents, his wife and their two young children. What are they going to do now? How are they going to make ends meet?’ said Maria shaking her head in disbelief.
‘Didn’t we suffer enough under the Germans? Haven’t we had enough? How much more blood is going to be shed? For God’s sake, we’ve had enough! We’ve had enough!’ shouted Stavroula.
John was buried two days later. It seemed as though the whole town escorted him to his last resting place, the convoy resembling a protest march against what was happening. When the cortege passed in front of the high school during lesson break, no eye was left dry.
Meanwhile, the streets of Ptolemais teemed with soldiers. Many army battalions had made camp in several strategic locations, patrolling the town and the surrounding villages. According to some, the communists, sensing their end, continued to commit atrocities reminiscent of the desperate attempt of a dying man to stay alive. For others, the dreaded tagmatasphalites — the paid German collaborators who infil-trated the Greek army — were satisfying their murderous whims, blaming their crimes on the guerrillas. In any case, the presence of so many soldiers around town made people feel more secure. Some even felt brave enough to go and tend their fields.
One Wednesday afternoon as Tasia’s father was leaving, he turned and said,
‘Come and see your mother and your brother on Saturday. They’ve missed you. It’s been months since you were home. Things have improved now with so many troops around. Come in the company of others till the crossing and I’ll try to be on the hill waiting.’
She didn’t need much persuading. On Saturday, straight after morning-school, she passed the inspection at the checkpoint and took the road to the village. A group of five high school young boys marched in front of her from the village of Alpha. This village could be reached by turning left at the tee intersection, five kilometres down the road to her village.
Tasia walked as if in a trance, keeping her mind occupied with some other issues, as the very familiar road held no more secrets for her. The golden wheat spikes in the few cultivated fields, mature and ready for reaping, were swaying gently in the gentle afternoon breeze. An eerie silence dulled her senses, putting her feet into an even more mechanical trot on this familiar road. Suddenly, hurried footsteps from behind jolted her from the sweet lethargy. All her senses went into overdrive, as if responding to the sound of an alarm bell. Inside her chest her heart throbbed wildly. There was someone stalking her. Was it one person or many? Who were they and why were they trying to catch up to her?
Oddly, as the steps got closer, her fear subsided. After all what could she do? There was no point in running. There was no place to hide, no way to escape the inevitable. Freed from the responsibility of deciding what action to take, she felt calmer. Whatever was supposed to happen would happen because, Tasia thought, everything in life was predetermined.
‘Good afternoon,’ a familiar-sounding voice greeted her.
She turned to see her walking companion and almost let out a loud sigh. It was George, the blond student, who had made her heart beat out of control one day in the schoolyard when they almost crashed into each other — George, the young man who had made her feel very warm and peculiar the few times she had seen him pass in front of her open window. But that was a long time ago and she had lived through so many dreadful things since then that she had almost forgotten him. And now, how and why had he appeared all of a sudden in front of her again?
‘Good afternoon,’ she answered timidly, while thinking of her classmates with secret delight.
She could imagine the envy of these girls if they could see her walking and talking to George. His name had always been mentioned in their conversations, supposedly casually or even to criticise him, but their stuttering and blushing had betrayed their true feelings.
‘It’s a bit risky walking to your village alone these days, don’t you think?’ he observed.
‘Yes, it is risky,’ Tasia agreed. ‘But my father will be here soon to keep me company.’
‘That’s good. We’re living through horrific times and you have to have someone close you can trust. You can see what’s happening around. Brother kills brother and father kills son for ideas they don’t even understand.’
He spoke fast and she found his beautifully resounding voice like a divine melody.
‘I remember you from school,’ he said after a short pause, making her feel weak at the knees. ‘You were a small girl then, two or three years my junior. You’ve grown. You’ve turned into a very pretty girl.’
Tasia felt her face, her ears, all her body burn, and her heart was beating wild.
‘When do you finish?’
‘Next year. I hope I’ll finish next year,’ she mumbled shyly.
‘So, you’re getting ready for this year’s exams then. How are you going?’
‘Reasonably well until now,’ she answered.
‘You school girls from the villages have all my admiration,’ he continued. ‘You have such incredible resilience and enough stubbornness to defy the most demanding privations in order to get an education. You and your family deserve the most sincere congratulations, and the genuine respect and gratitude of the whole society.’
‘I don’t think it is any easier for the boys.’
Tasia felt she had to say something not to appear stupid.
‘I agree. But boys are not criticised for living away from home.
People around here still think girls ought to be silent and invisible, the property of parents and of a husband. They don’t want girls to be educated and have a mind of their own. That’s why I see you as trailblazers, as the pioneers of a new era for women in Greece that’s been long time coming.’
Tasia stopped for a moment and looked at him with questioning eyes.
‘I can see you’re surprised! But let me tell you I believe no society can progress and become more humane without educating its women. I see women not only as mothers and wives but the true pillars of family and society.’
As if in a dream Tasia listened enchanted to his incessant chatter. He talked as if he were in a hurry to express all his innermost thoughts, to reveal all his beliefs, to convince her of the rightness of his reasoning. He continued to talk, changing the theme from abstractions and generalities to the concrete and personal.
He had won a scholarship and was presently studying in the academy in Salonica. His dream was to be like some of his teachers — some of whom had also been Tasia’s teachers — he admired for their dedication and commitment. He spoke of them with a lot of affection and gratitude. It surprised her, because she had never thought of them in that way.
‘And where are you going now?’ Tasia asked full of curiosity.
‘I’m going to spend few days with my father, the priest, in village Alpha. While there, I’ll drop in to my old school and say hello to some of my favourite teachers.’
Suddenly he stopped, obliging her to stop also, and only then had she realised they’d arrived at the tee intersection.
‘Unfortunately, this is where our ways part for the time being. We’ve been talking all this time without being introduced. I’m George.’
‘I know, I know …’ she assured him in a hurry, and immediately felt embarrassed.
‘But I don’t know your name!’
‘Tasia,’ she answered in a low voice.
>
‘I’m pleased to meet you; I’m pleased. Have a good journey, Tasia, and we’ll talk again soon. When do you go back?’
‘Tomorrow. About the same time.’
‘That’s fine. Now be on your way. Have a good trip and watch out. We’ll talk again soon,’ he said, increasing his stride to catch up with the other boys who had turned left already on the road to their village.
He walked for a while on that road and then he turned to wave, while she stayed where he had left her.
He was gone but had left his strong presence behind. She felt as if she had been transported to a dimension where everything was bright and lucid. Every way she looked she could see his handsome face pop up, smiling at her. She managed to take a few steps and sit on the side of the road where the ground was elevated, watching his figure melt in the distance. Her brain was spinning and her body felt strange. It took her some time to recover, to get up and continue her journey, lonely, but with feet that didn’t touch the ground.
Gradually, things returned to a familiar shade of reality, but Tasia felt an enormous change inside her. She was convinced some mysterious force had created the conditions for them to meet, and she felt she had arrived at the start of the road she was destined to follow for the rest of her life. Her belief that everything in life was predetermined was once again confirmed.
Night in the village was warm and full of sweet promises. From her open window she could see the stars glitter gracefully on the velvety firmament. The coolness of the night eventually stopped the monotonous cicada screeching and then a dreamy silence fell all around, freeing her spirit and cleansing her mind, while her viscera continued to burn from the inadmissible desires she had managed to keep silent and dormant till now.
A dream she couldn’t remember woke her up. The dawn of a new day was approaching and the cockerels were creating havoc with their crowing. She could see the distant mountaintops painted pink by the first sunrays. A gentle breeze from the open window kissed her face, a signal the day was going to be very hot.
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