The House on Paradise Street

by Sofka Zinovieff

  “That went to so-called ‘others’. And the interesting thing is that Stalin kept his word. He never helped the Left in Greece, even though they were desperate and thought he would. He let the British and then the Americans do whatever they liked.”

  I heard Nikitas’ voice emerging through this pretty young woman. And she was managing to keep everything so impersonal. I wondered what they’d had together. Did she love him? Danae lit another cigarette and went banging on about Tsortsil. Apparently Churchill had asked Stalin whether they should destroy the piece of paper, which was evidence of their power games. Stalin replied: ‘That was God’s first mistake – he didn’t ask us when he created the world.’

  “They were playing at God, and enjoying it,” said Danae.

  How enjoyable for her to feel so self-righteous, I thought. I said, “Do you think Nikitas was upset by something in particular? What about his father? Did you find out anything about Kapetan Eagle? He was killed during the Civil War wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. I think I could send you the details about that. After all, it’s in the public domain. I’ll send you an email, if that’s OK. He died in 1947.”

  Danae said she should be getting back to the office and signalled to the waiter for the bill. I insisted on paying and we had the ritualised little argument that is a matter of Greek honour before she submitted and allowed me to get the upper hand. It felt like a very small victory.

  16

  Little Stalingrad

  ANTIGONE

  There are certain memories that circle your mind like vultures. When I think of Markos’ death, the questions are already there waiting. Could I have done something to prevent it? Was I partially to blame? Should I have acted differently afterwards? Each day of that December dragged us deeper into a nightmare. Athens became a war zone filled with rubble and bombed buildings. It was worse than under the Nazis. Electricity lines were cut and the whole city was plunged into freezing cold darkness for days. The English were killing us like birds. They didn’t actually hang their flag up on the Sacred Rock as the swastika had been, but they had guns on the Acropolis, as the Turks had done during their centuries of occupation. The English appointed their own authorities, who were soon backed up by murderous fascist gangs. The jails overflowed with those who supported freedom and independence. Even people who had merely helped the resistance – mothers who sent food to their sons – were locked up. My Uncle Diamantis was shipped to a concentration camp in Egypt, along with thousands of his comrades.

  It was an upside-down world, where right had been turned to wrong. We had no doubts about the justice of our fight, though anyone could see we were losing. English tanks ploughed through our road blocks like a car crushing toys. We were reduced to making our own weapons: Molotov cocktails using old bottles, or tin cans filled with nails. Sometimes our boys put dynamite inside a street tram and sent it rolling down a hill, hoping to damage our enemies. No-Man’s land was up by Omonia square.

  We became accustomed to seeing death. Corpses littered the streets like grotesque caricatures of the living. Passers-by stepped around them without a second glance. Each day was like a throwing of the dice for whether Charos would take you or pass by this time. Perversely, as defeat loomed, the weather was perfect and the ravaged city was bathed in sunshine. Nature remained oblivious to the woes of human beings. Our company was staying in a house in Kaisariani and had been there long enough to establish a few routines – cooking and washing clothes. One fine, luminous morning, several men went outside into the yard to bathe themselves and smoke a cigarette in the sunshine. The sudden attack was far from being the first I had witnessed, but the contrast with the domestic scene was shocking. An English plane flew low, spitting bullets into the streets and, though it didn’t hit the house, several men were killed. Kapetan Iasonas whom I had known since our days in the cave, was split nearly in two. His skull opened up and his entrails spilt on the ground like an Easter lamb’s. We gathered him up as best we could and cursed the monarcho-fascist English. I thought of Johnny – he was definitely the enemy now.

  In the middle of this bloody December, who should arrive in time for Christmas but Mr Churchill himself? He had become obsessed with “the Greek problem” and thought he could come over and sort us out. But by now we realised the English had gone from ally to occupier. It was clear that Churchill’s arrival was an opportunity for us; killing the fat old man with his cigar at the headquarters of the occupying forces, in the Grande Bretagne Hotel, would be a triumph. Markos was involved in the attempted assassination.

  I was at the house in Kaisariani the night before they left for the operation. My brother was as excited as a small child and the two of us talked through much of the night, sitting wrapped in blankets in what had been the kitchen but was now a bare room with a marble sink and two broken chairs. We spoke about Kapetan Iasonas and mourned him, then turned to our childhood, and ended up playing the masochistic game that should never be played when you are hungry, of imagining food. Markos described the smell of the sweet bread that our mother baked for Christmas. Then I joined in with the taste of the roast pork that marked the end of the fast before Christ’s birthday. We always gorged ourselves and then lay full and sated like snakes. In the cold and dark, we even whispered the Christmas kálanda we used to go around singing on the streets, banging our triangles and knocking on doors where they’d give us sweets or a few coins:

  Good evening, my lords, if it is your wish – of Christ’s divine birth I shall tell the tale.

  Markos and his comrades left the house in the unwelcoming hour before dawn. We had only slept a couple of hours and it was freezing – there was snow on the mountains surrounding Athens. Dressed in civilian attire, the boys looked pale and thin – they needed no disguise to look like most other Athenians. Inside their clothes and in a couple of workman’s bags they were carrying explosives. All day I was tense with fear, imagining them crawling

  through the sewage tunnels underneath University Avenue, making their way along to Syntagma and the nerve centre of the English in their smart hotel. Luckily, I was busy myself that day, as I had to walk down Syngrou Avenue to meet with a group of families in Kalithea that was preparing to leave Athens. I was to give them instructions for their exodus and prepare them for the march to Elefsina. On my way back, I was unable to resist the temptation of taking a walk around my neighbourhood, though I didn’t go to Paradise Street, passing instead by the cemetery. Small boys were begging, holding bowls out to the mourners to receive a spoonful of kólyva. It was a shock to notice Spiros among the people lingering outside the gate. He was talking with two men and I looked away, lowering my head. I had heard about how Spiros’ brothers and father ended up and, though every death should be regretted, I can’t say I was sorry that at least a few collaborators faced justice. And then several seconds later, I realised who the other men were: Johnny and Basher Hicks, his old colleague from the early days of the resistance. Perhaps I should not have been surprised, but I was filled with loathing. My fear made me rigid as bone.

  None of the men gave any sign of having noticed me, though I later came to believe they knew the game better than me. I didn’t observe anything as I walked back up the hill to our base in Kaisariani; but the truth is that I didn’t take as much care as I should have. I knew the rules: how to double back and wait, to use the back ways. So why did I lead our enemies as though giving them a gift? I have run through that small hour so many times over the years. I have tried to give myself the comfort of believing there was nothing I could have done. But I am never convinced. I have even tried to persuade myself that it was chance some hours later, when I spotted Spiros walking in the road by our base. Anything, but the likelihood that I led him there. It was not an area someone like him would go to by chance – a fascist would be likely to “disappear” if he went for a stroll in “Little Stalingrad”. I only saw him from behind, moving slowly in the dimming light, leaning into the wall, his hat pulled low. Perhaps it was just s
omeone who resembled him. That comforting thought has come and gone, but the diabolical image has stayed.

  Before I left the house again early that evening, Markos arrived exhausted and stinking like the sewers he had been working in throughout the day. I embraced him, feeling his clothes damp and his hair caked to his head. We scarcely spoke. He nodded as though to say that all was well – that they had succeeded in leaving the explosives in the sewers under University Avenue, near the Grande Bretagne. We assumed that the following day Churchill would be dead. I didn’t tell him about Spiros and Johnny. There is always plenty of time for regrets – you can keep them as long as you like. Of course, the bombing attempt failed. They found the dynamite and Churchill survived, as we all know. But by the time I learned that, there were far worse things to deal with.

  I returned to Kalithea to help the families on their night march to Elefsina. A mass departure from Athens was taking place and anyone associated with the Left was advised to leave before they were arrested or worse. I was to go with them as far as Kokkinia, an Asia Minor refugees’ quarter, where other comrades would take over. It was slow going – mothers were carrying babies as well as bags, children were exhausted, with blisters on their feet. Everyone was afraid. English planes were slaughtering groups like these – they made easy targets during the day – but we made it to Kokkinia without mishap. It was a strange sort of Christmas – it made us think of the Panayia and her arrival with Joseph in Bethlehem.

  “We’re just missing the wise men,” someone quipped, in the chill of a moonless night. “And a warm stable.”

  I slept for much of the day and it was evening by the time I got back to Kaisariani. I was worrying about how I must warn Markos about Johnny and Spiros and I strode along the dirt road, trying to avoid the potholes and puddles, but mud stuck to my shoes, making them heavy and slowing my pace. I was wearing civilian clothes – a thin dress, a coat that was too large and as I had no stockings, a pair of short socks that did nothing to stop the cold creeping up my legs. As soon as I came around the curve in the road, I saw that something terrible had happened. The solid, two-storey house where we’d been staying looked different. At first I thought my eyes had tricked me in the darkness, but then I saw that there was no wall on the street side. It lay gaping like a doll’s house from which the hinged front had been torn off. I could see furniture on the floors above, but the deep silence made it clear nobody was there. Nothing moved. I tried to make my way through the garden to where the back door had been, but it was filled with rubble and burnt rafters.

  “Despinís – Miss,” a voice whispered. “Over here.” An old man was standing hunched by the remains of the outer wall on the road, tapping his forefinger to his lips, indicating he had something to say.

  “What happened? Where did they go?” I held onto his arm. He looked ready to drop.

  “The English came. Just after dawn. We couldn’t believe the noise. Planes and tanks. There were dozens of dead. And not just in this house – the families across the street are grieving their own this evening.” The survivors had been taken away as prisoners and were probably already on a boat for the Middle East.

  “There’s no room for patriots in Greece any more.”

  “What happened to the dead?” I asked.

  “Sometimes they take them to the Royal Garden. It’s become the city’s unofficial morgue. The authorities just dump them there. And families go to search for their own.”

  I didn’t know what to do. It was impossible to go home. But sometimes, in the face of terror, a strange calm descends and your body behaves like an obedient pack animal. I made my way down the hill from Kaisariani, across the Ilissos and into the lower part of the Royal Garden by the Zappeion. It was after the curfew, maybe about 10 o’clock by then, but nobody spotted me. I was a ghost in a deserted city. I thought about Spiros – that he must have betrayed us to the English. And it was already dawning on me that I had possibly played my part in provoking this disaster. I could not bear to think that Johnny was involved. When I heard voices, I edged cautiously towards them, along pathways where families and lovers used to wander on Sundays. In an opening, some people were standing next to row after row of corpses. There was a sickening stench.

  The voices belonged to two men who were guarding the makeshift mortuary and they turned at the noise of my footsteps.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?” Rough voices. I didn’t want to give away too much.

  “I’m looking for a friend.”

  “What sort of friend? What happened?” I only had to mention Kaisariani for him to understand.

  “Ah, the Reds up in Little Stalingrad? Well, your boys aren’t doing so well now are they?” I was not among friends, it was clear. I persevered and asked whether the dead from that day’s fighting had arrived. He gestured with his head as he lit a cigarette.

  “Over there. That’s the new batch. There aren’t any names.”

  “Do you want to smoke?” asked another man with a kinder face. “It helps with the stink.”

  The bodies were covered with sacking and in the dark it was almost impossible to identify anyone. I pulled back the rough fabric at random and just made out a face blackened with dried blood. I could tell from the hair that it was not my brother. I went back and asked the kinder man if I could borrow his matches and, by the flickering flames that went out too soon and burnt my fingers, I eventually found several comrades from the house in Kaisariani. Each time I lifted the hessian I prayed that it would not be Markos. I pictured him escaped and in hiding, or arrested but safe, even injured and in hospital. Anything that would make him not be there. I made silent promises about what I would give. And then I saw him. I didn’t make a noise. I sat down next to him on the dirt path, and held his hand. It was stiff and cold. I felt scratchy dirt on it. His eyes were open and I saw no obvious wound, no blood.

  “Is that him?” said the kinder man. “Condolences. May God forgive him.” He offered me another cigarette, but I didn’t take it. My body was shaking. He said, “You should get out of here. If they find you, they won’t hesitate to take you in. Mourning doesn’t grant amnesty, my girl.”

  “How can I take him?”

  “That’s for the family to arrange, not for us. Some even bury their own here in the park until they can do something better.”

  I left and made my way automatically to my old haunt by the Ilissos – where Markos and I had played as children and where I had gone with Johnny. It was very cold. My dress snagged on plants and nettles stung my legs. When I located the plane tree, I laid myself across the branches as I had done in what felt like another life. Animals passed by – foxes perhaps. They made unrecognisable sounds. I wished it was me lying under the sack in the Royal Garden. I knew I couldn’t go home. They had said I should never return unless I brought my brother, and they did not mean in a coffin. The lines had been drawn. It was obviously impossible to fulfil Markos’ wish of ending up in Perivoli. His desire to be buried “with Hercules”, on the slopes of Iti was a childish dream. But he could not be left “unburied, unwept, a feast of flesh for keen-eyed carrion birds” – in those days I knew most of Sophocles’ Antigone by heart. As the first signs of light emerged behind the shadows of Hymettus, I made a plan.

  I was waiting outside the First Cemetery at 7.30 and, when I saw our neighbour, Kostas Lambakis, arrive, I followed at a distance. I thought of him as old, since he had teenage children not much younger than me, but I suppose he was not even forty. His wife, Kyria Katina, was a vinegary woman – she always found something to complain about. But they were not bad people. Kyrios Kostas’ hefty body had diminished during the war, so he looked deflated and creased, but his expression was kind. He was a comrade – he was friendly with my Uncle Diamantis, though he had never joined the cause. I believed I could trust him. I approached him when he was some way from the cemetery’s offices and could not be seen by anyone.

  “Antigone?” He wasn’t sure if it was me, though he’d known
me since birth. I realised I looked terrible. Having heard me out, he agreed to help, but I had to wait till he got off work. I followed him to a tool shed by the Protestant graves, where he said I could wait, and sat shivering on the floor. I could smell the rust and earth on the spades.

  Kyrios Kostas said, “We’ll take the handcart. Then we’ll bury him somewhere temporary – maybe here with the foreigners – until we can do the right thing.” I asked him not to tell my mother because of Alexandra, who would inform Spiros. I didn’t want to give my future brother-in-law the satisfaction or the idea of hunting me as he had Markos. In the middle of the day, we set off with the cart in the direction of the Royal Garden. As Kyrios Kostas bumped it through muddy potholes and over debris from bombed houses, he told me nightmarish stories. In order to spread propaganda about leftist brutality, he said, criminals were hired to remove the corpses of civilians from the Garden and mutilate them. They were slashed and sliced and had their eyes gouged out before being delivered to the police stations. Some perverted types even managed to gather so many eyes that they filled a bucket. Then they paraded them around for all to see, as evidence of what the “communist bandits” were capable of. Naturally, misinformation as vile as this was extremely effective and attracted the attention of the international press.

  We entered the Garden without trouble and wheeled the cart along the overgrown paths to where I had been the night before. I could now see exactly where this impromptu morgue was – the part that used to be filled with flowerbeds planted in colourful patterns. It was where my parents used to bring us for walks when we were children. There had been a kiosk for drinks in those days, and a few tables and chairs. All that had gone and the metamorphosis was grotesque. The place where Athenians once took strolls had turned into the only place available to lay out their dead. The area was quite busy with people trying to identify their relatives. One family was huddled around a body, their dark clothes covered with dust from sitting on the ground. I found Markos easily the second time and we stood for a moment looking down at him.