Signs of a Struggle

by Tony Kaplan

  Yiannis returns with my coffee. He glances cursorily at the man approaching, but just to see what I am looking at. One look and then he pays the man no further attention. Perhaps he knows him. Maybe it is not unusual. Perhaps it’s none of his business who chooses to walk into the village in a suit with his suitcase behind him when the day has hardly begun. Yiannis busies himself arranging tables. I watch the man in the suit as I eat my breakfast. He is unhurried. I notice him stop a short distance out and survey the village and the bay. He wipes his forehead with a handkerchief, folding it carefully before replacing it in his pocket. Then he proceeds again and soon rounds the bend where the road curves behind the “To Meltemi” and is out of my view.

  He reappears at the entrance to the taverna. He stands and watches Yiannis laying the tables. Yiannis looks up and nods a greeting, goes back to replacing the salt… then he does a double-take and stares open-mouthed at the stranger. “Mavros!” he gasps. “Mavros Epistimos!” The stranger nods slowly, pleased to be recognised, sad to have been missed. He comes forward and he and Yiannis fall into an embrace.

  Mavros has returned from the dead.

  Yiannis remembers my interest in Mavros's story and rushes over to me. “Unbelievable! Un-be-lieve-able! It’s Mavros! Come to meet him. Unbelievable!” He ushers me over to Mavros. “Mavros, this is Tom from London. Yoornaleest. Demosiografos. He make big newspaper story about you!” Then he says this in Greek for his old friend. He pushes me forward and I shake the old man’s hand. He has a firm grip and steely eyes, still handsome in his 70s, although his face is lined and his cheeks hollow. Yiannis chats excitedly to him in Greek. I hear them mention Stavroula and Michalis and intuit that Yiannis is filling the old man in on news of his family.

  “Milate Anglika, Mavros?” I ask when Yiannis pauses for breath. “Do you speak English perhaps?”

  “Yes,” affirms the old man ruefully, “I learned. I spent five years in the kitchen of the Russian Embassy in London in the 1950s.”

  “Wow, can I interview you for my journal?” I ask, excited by what I am sure will be an intriguing story. Where has he been? Why is he back? “I work for New World Order, a weekly in London. Very Left-wing,” I add, hoping my socialist credentials will get his interest.

  He gives me a non-committal head-waggle. Soulla comes to him and kisses him three times on both cheeks. “Kalosirthes,” she says her voice choked with emotion.

  “Welcome home,” Yiannis says in English, for my benefit. Yiannis steers Mavros to a table and we sit, other than Soulla who is delegated to fetch the coffee and loukamadhes. “You know everybody is look for you?” Yiannis tells Mavros. “We thought you was dead, in the bridge! You know what is happen here?”

  “That’s why I came back,” Mavros says. “I know who it was in the bridge.”

  He sighs deeply and frowns. It is obviously painful for him. He gathers himself. He has come back for this moment.

  He looks from my face to Yianni’s. Then he says gravely, “The body in the bridge is my son. It is Eleftherios.”

  “Eleftherios?” says Yiannis, surprised, incredulous.

  “Yes,” Mavros says, “I gave him the badge that was in the hand of the body they found. From Cuba. It was given to me in London by a comrade from the struggle in Latin America.”

  “Eleftherios!” Yiannis exclaims and smacks his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Fiisiika! Of course! Why I not remember?”

  “You don’t remember because it was easier to forget,” Mavros says.

  Yiannis is transfixed by Mavros’s steady gaze. His expression moves from pity to shame and then apology. “I am sorry we don' help you with the boy,” Yiannis says. “I know you suffer with him.”

  “When I was on Macronissos with the other political prisoners, 1970 sometime,” Mavros says, “a few months later, after I was taken, someone tells me Eleftherios was missing from Agia Anna. I thought the army had done with him what they said they would do. Then, when I saw, three weeks ago, in the newspaper about the body in the bridge, every day I look for someone to say this could be Eleftherios. But nobody came forward. No one remembered Eleftherios went missing. Like he never was in the village.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, “Who is Eleftherios?”

  Yiannis turns to me. “It was his son, his first son, the one he came to the island with.”

  “He had another son? How come nobody mentioned him?” I ask.

  Yiannis steals a guilty glance at his old friend. Mavros looks at me sadly. “My son was …” (he points to his head) … “he had mental problems. From the War. He was like a small child. The Greek people here on the island are superstitious about people with problems of the mind. Nobody wanted to know our problems. Even our neighbours,” he looks pointedly at Yiannis, “made like he wasn’t there, to spare us the embarrassment.”

  Yiannis looks down glumly. “Maybe we are ashamed to remember, so we forget,” he says, then he has a thought. “When you first was come Agia Anna, he was okay. Good boy. You remember?” Mavros nods. “Only later, he was taking his clothes off in front of the young womens, and… It was no good, nai, Mavro?”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” Mavros says, “He had the longings of a young man, but the mind of a child. Some of the villagers attacked him. He became frightened. We couldn’t control him. Stavfroula... she....” Mavros shakes his head. “It was better we kept him in his room,” Mavros says disconsolately, “Better for everyone that he should be kept where no-one could see, where he could be forgotten,” he says bitterly.

  “But the police said there were no missing teenagers from then?” I say.

  “We had no papers for him. The police would not have had records,” Mavros says.

  “And his mother?” I want to ask, but it seems insensitive, so I keep this to myself.

  Yiannis says emphatically, “You must go to Stavroula. To Michalis. You have another son. You have grand-daughter. Xanthe. Very beautiful girl.” He tries to sound upbeat.

  Mavros looks down. “I don’t know if I can see them. I never wrote to tell them I was alive. I didn’t enquire about Eleftherio. I am to blame for his death.” His head slumps.

  “Why you not come back before?” Yiannis asks.

  Eventually Mavros answers. “I was ashamed. I thought everyone would know it was me who gave away Aris Lambros, my comrade, my leader.” He pauses, examining his memories. He addresses me, as if I, a foreigner not a compatriot, will understand and forgive him. “Aris Lambros was our ELAS commander on the island during the War. A brave man. A good man. After the War, he stayed true to his beliefs. We were friends. We opposed the military takeover. I was arrested first. I gave him away.” He looks anguished, disbelieving of his treachery, his cowardice. “I knew where he was hiding.”

  His head goes down again as he goes on, his words coming in a torrent. “When they first took me in, they put me in a cell with a young man, one of our fighters - I did not know him - they had already tortured him for days. He knew he would die long before they killed him.” He looks at us pleadingly, asking us to judge him, asking our forgiveness. He clears his throat and then goes on, his tone bitter. “After they had burned the soles off his feet, gouged out his eyes, all he could see, he told me, were his sons’ faces when they told them their father was dead, his youngest not understanding why his father had gone forever, his wife moaning and trembling, her hands over her face. He gave no names – he would never give up his comrades to them – I could have told them that. But once the torture started, it would only finish when the torturers had had enough, when they’d shown the American how ruthless Greeks could be in eradicating the filth of Communism.” He spits this out. He narrows his eyes, his bitterness and sadness smoldering.

  “Once the torture had gone that far, then it was certain the man would die. He knew that. But when they took him from the car, his mouth was numb. He wet himself, the stain spreading and with it his shame, which he tried vainly to hide from the men he knew were watching and judging. I don
’t know for certain he knew that I was there, but I believe he did. They made me watch so I would know what they would do to me.”

  Mavros does not make eye contact with us now. He is immersed in his memory, in his need to tell us of his horror. He goes on. “His legs could not bear his weight and his shoes, loose without the laces they’d taken from him so he would not hang himself in his cell, made a trail in the dust as they dragged him to his place of execution on the wasteland behind the town’s dump, beyond the first ridge of hills. As they pushed him to the ground, he tried to scramble away, slithering on his belly, his fingers clawing the sand. He knew it was no use of course, but I understood his wish to go to his death resisting them, not giving in. A boot on his back forced him down. All of this in silence. The American grinned, his eyes under his dark glasses, hidden. The man, his face pressed to the earth, would have felt the metal of the gun in his neck. The air went out of him. I thought I heard him groan, ‘Eleftheria’, but this may have been what I wished, my prayer for him. Then the explosion, brief, discreet. His body went tense… ena lepto… and then he relaxed.”

  Mavros sighs. “The American shook a packet of cigarettes loose, placed one on his thin lips and offered the pack around. The executioner rolled out the tension from his neck and shoulders, (he executes the movement as he tells us this, his face severe) and took one. His men murmured, each accepted the gift. The American flicked his lighter open and a flame sprang up, the faces of the defenders of Greek purity were lit, as they leaned forward, like a Caravaggio, proud and mean. Then the American, exhaling a thick cloud of fragrant tobacco in my face, offered the pack to me. I am ashamed of it now as I tell you this, but although my hand was shaking, I took a cigarette and allowed him to light it for me.” He looks searchingly, then pleadingly, first at me, then at Yianni.

  “I have carried the ghost of that man on my back for nearly forty years. He never leaves me and I must not desert him. To do this, I must be a wandering spirit. This is how my debt is paid. Greeks, in all their wars, have said Eleftheria i Thanatos. Freedom or Death. There have been many wars. Many people died. Who is free? Am I free? You tell me.”

  He looks at us to receive our judgement. He goes on. “They said if I didn’t tell them where Aris was, they would torture my son, Eleftherio. The boy was a child. I couldn’t let that happen. I tried to kill myself in prison, but they would not allow me to die, they tortured me for the fun of it. Then they brought Eleftherio to me. I had to save him.” There are tears in his eyes. “I had to.”

  Soulla brings the coffee and doughnuts. We sit in respectful silence. “Drink,” Yiannis says softly, shifting a cup closer to Mavros.

  Mavros picks up the cup and takes a sip. He puts the cup down carefully. “I found him. Eleftherios. I found him in the Soviet Union. Many years later, long after the Civil War was over. He was in an institution, a place for orphans. It was a terrible place. He didn’t know me. He didn’t know he had a father who was alive. I found him.” He takes another sip of his coffee. Yiannis offers him a cigarette, but he waves this away.

  “Eleftherios was born in the last year of the War in the Grammos Mountains. 1949. His mother was a soldier like me. Eleni. She gave birth in the snow. That was a terrible winter. We could hardly keep ourselves warm. But she kept him alive. He was so precious. We had lost so much. We knew we were defeated. The Government forces had the support of the Americans and the English. Stalin gave in. We got nothing. Our leaders took pity on the children. We had to send all our children out of the war zone – to the Soviet Union, some to Yugoslavia. Eleni was heartbroken. When she gave the child over to the authorities, it was like something already died in her. She was killed in battle two weeks later.

  “I was one of the last in our battalion. Eventually we retreated. The government forces had closed off our escape route to Yugoslavia over the mountains. So we went the other way, to Bulgaria. We nearly died. We had no food. I had to tie my boots together with cloth. It was so cold. Eventually, we got across the border and were helped by the Bulgarian Army. From there we went to the Soviet Union. To Tashkent. That was where they sent us, the ones from Greece. The refugees.

  “I tried to find news of Eleftherio, but nothing. They said he was probably in Yugoslavia. I worked hard and they found out I could cook. I learned from my mother. We made a Greek meal for a visiting General and he liked my cooking so much, he requested my transfer to the Soviet Embassy in London when he was posted there. I spent five years in London. I liked it there. Highgate, Hampstead Heath. But I never forgot my son. Eventually I got word that he was in Odessa, in an orphanage.

  “So I gave up my job and went to fetch him. When I found him he was dirty and thin. Because he couldn’t do what the other children of his age could do, they treated him badly. Like he was an animal. My boy. His face was like his mother – the shape, the nose and lips. But the eyes - they were my dark eyes. He was dark like me. They sent us back to Tashkent. A doctor friend helped us and Eleftherios started at a special school. He liked it there. I was working in a factory kitchen. As supervisor. It was a good job. We were taken care of.

  “Then I heard through others that my mother was dying. 1960. I wasn’t allowed back into Greece – there was still no amnesty for ELAS fighters. The Communist Party was still prohibited. But I had to see my mother. I had put her out of my mind. But being away so long, now having my son, being a father – I had to see her. So I crossed the border, with Eleftherio, back into Greece, ten years after I had been forced to leave. Of course I had no papers, not for myself and not for Eleftherio – we were illegal aliens. In my own country.” His anger and affront still smolders.

  “I did not know who in my village were supporters and who were traitors, so as soon as my mother died, I left. I went to Thessaloniki. I had names of people there who would help me, help us. I worked for Lambrakis. He was a good man. A politician, but for the people, not for himself. He got me papers, but for Eleftherio, this was not possible. Then Lambrakis got shot. I saw the men who killed my boss. The police came after me. We fled. We ended up on Mythos. My son and I. So much we went through.

  “After the arrest and the torture, after they found Aris, my commander, and executed him too, they sent me to Macronissos – an island for all the ‘political’ prisoners, the ones who were the enemies of the Colonels. Maybe it would have been better if they’d killed me, like poor Aris. I was released from there when the Colonels fell in 1972. I should have come back for Eleftherio. But I was so ashamed. I thought Stavroula could look after him. Better for him not to have a father who was a coward. Now he is dead. How can I face my family now?” He looks distraught.

  “I will come with you,” Yiannis says. “You explain, like you explain now. They will forgive you, believe me.” Yiannis pats Mavros on the shoulder. “They are your family. They show you only love, believe me.” He goes on talking to his old friend reassuringly in Greek. Mavros nods sadly.

  “I’d like to come with, if I may,” I say to Yiannis.

  “No,” Yiannis says, “let him first say hello to his family. Later I will tell you what is happen.”

  He’s right. This first greeting will be a particularly sensitive and emotional event. They won’t want strangers. I’ll go find Antonis and tell him the tumultuous news. Then I should write up Mavros’s story for New World Order. What a story. A Homeric tragedy. “Revolutionary fighter returns from the dead to reclaim his son.” Wonderful for his family. Or is it? But for me, a story like this dropping into my lap, especially if Marsha can get it syndicated, is a godsend.

  It will buy me time to get to the bottom of what happened to Lucy.

  38

  Antonis is a bit disappointed that it was not advanced detective work that revealed the identity of the body in the bridge. Well, it’s not confirmed yet, as Antonis points out grudgingly.

  Together we go over to The Seaview. Agapi is serving a couple on the balcony. Antonis asks her, in a tone which is over-polite and self-important, to direct us to w
here the family is gathered. Agapi looks askance at the Inspector and makes a point of smiling at me, before taking us up to Michalis’ residence above the restaurant.

  Mavros is seated on a couch, looking downcast, with Stavroula at his side but a little apart, her back turned to him. The old lady is crying silently, the hardness in her face cracked open. What must she be feeling, seeing her husband returned from the dead? Michalis hovers, uncertain what to do and how to respond to a father he knew only as a toddler. The old man on his couch is a stranger. Only Xanthe is open with her affection. She strokes her Baba’s hand and looks sympathetically at his handsome face. Mavros’s eyes are empty. Yiannis stands with hands together over his crotch, uncomfortable, embarrassed even.

  Antonis takes it all in and observes a moment’s respectful silence. Then he catches Michalis’ eye, clears his throat and strides forward to introduce himself to the old man. Mavros shakes the Inspector’s hand without enthusiasm. Antonis uses his official tone to explain his presence. Mavros nods. Michalis announces that he and Nitsa will go and procure refreshments for all. Yiannis signals to me with his eyebrows and we go out together.

  “Unbelievable,” he says, “They were not even happy to see the old man. After all this time. Only the grand-daughter was excited. Poor Mavros.” He shakes his head sadly.

  We go next door to his establishment and Yiannis takes two bottles of beer out the cold cabinet. He pops them and hands me one. “I need a drink,” he says and pours half the bottle down his throat in one go. “Stavroula say she think Eleftherios was run away. After the Security Police take away Mavros, Eleftherios disappear. She say she think maybe they also take Eleftherios to Macronissos, to his father. But I know she lies. Must I tell to Mavro this? She did not care for the boy. He was scared from her. He was live in an old hut up in the hills there – for the one who looks after the goats. What is called?”