Cally's Way

by Jane Bow

Please, if you let the people of Agalini make it into the safety of the mountains in time, I promise I will honour you forever, whatever Father Nikolaos says.

  The frogs start up again and after awhile, seeing, hearing, sensing nothing more, Callisto climbs back onto the path. Can she run safely now across this mountainside and the next, through sleeping Mariou and Asomatos, to the gorge? Geratti lies hidden up behind the mountain on its other side. Her eyes scan the moonlit path ahead, the mountainside, ears straining beyond the frogs and the saw of the grasses against her legs.

  Less than a minute later she stops again. The mountainside is nearly vertical below her here. She slithers down, a prickly bush grazing her shins, rocks sharp under her palms. She finds purchase for her feet. Her heartbeat must surely be shaking the ground. Something has moved, ahead about fifty metres to her left, just above where the path curves around a hip of the mountain.

  Could the Nazi patrol have posted a sentry here? She lies still.

  .No boots come.

  She cannot spend the rest of her life plastered to the side of this mountain. Less than four hours remain before daylight. Cross the path, climb into the rocky outcroppings above it, centimetre by centimetre, higher and higher, that’s what she must do.

  There is no further movement ahead but she now can make out a lump of solid space in the scrub above the road.

  Sentries smoke, move, chat if there are more than one.

  She pushes herself higher up the mountainside, scraping arms and legs, stopping after every move, her heartbeat drowning out every other sound until the thin ribbon of path gleams empty below her in the moonlight. Standing, she sprints, rock to bush to rock, until she is directly above what turns out to be two men hiding in a nest of bushes.

  “Trust no one!” How many times has Uncle Vasilios warned her? Geratti is small and closely knit, but even the closest neighbour down the road can become a collaborator. Still, she can see even from here, from the awkward way they move, that though the two men below her are foreigners, they are not Nazis.

  A few weeks after the German invasion, British ships evacuated thousands of Allied troops from Crete. Stories spread from tavérnas to kitchens across the island about the starving, injured soldiers who marched up over seven-thousand-foot mountains to the remote south-coast village of Chora Sfakion, and about the Cretans’ shallow boats that plied back and forth in silence through the night, carrying fifty men at a time to the ships lying offshore. But only those who made it to the beach in time, and whose names were registered, were allowed to debark. Constant flight, hiding in the mountains that form the spine of the island, and begging for food and shelter have become the life of the men left behind, and those who escaped from the Nazi prison compound on the north shore.

  One of the men below her is lying down, his leg splinted with sticks. The other’s head keeps turning, like an owl. She picks up a pebble, launches it. Cannot help grinning as it strikes its mark. The owl-man jerks around, moonlight whitening his anxiety as his pistol scans the steepness above him. The man lying down does not move. She searches the landscape for danger.

  “Friend.” She puts a hand up to feel her mother’s red silk scarf around her neck and lets the moon smile on her. “I am your friend.”

  How she loves English, the sound of her mother’s voice reading or speaking it to her, using words like “psychology” and “archeology” that connect to the world she knows, and others like “darling,” and “whippersnapper,” and “lickety-split” that open whole new landscapes. Picking her way down the mountainside, she squats beside the men.

  Both are dressed in torn wool pants and Cretan shirts. She smells sweat and fear and the broken man’s fever.

  “I will take you home to my uncle.” She nods toward the gorge. “Over there.”

  “Near Preveli?” She hears hope. The monastery at Preveli is tucked away high on the seaward side of a mountain overlooking the coast, at the far end of the valley below the Kourtaliotis Gorge. A month ago, believing British soldiers were hiding in the valley, the Germans surrounded it and launched the attack from Myrthios. Finding no one, they set up a guard post, but still, three nights ago many dozens of soldiers were taken off Limni Beach, a hidden cove below Preveli.

  “I’m sorry, you have missed the rescue.”

  “Oh.” Bleak disappointment. The soldier looks down at his broken friend.

  “My aunt and uncle will help you though.” Callisto nods toward the fallen man. “Make him better, maybe find you a boat. You wait.” She can run to Geratti in two hours. “I will bring my uncle before dawn.”

  “Efcharistó. Thank you.” The soldier takes her hand, shakes it. “I am Robert MacIntyre, from Scotland. This is Jack. He’s in rough shape, I’m afraid.” His voice has a soft rolling quality. His hand feels warm, dry. “Why is your English so good?”

  Callisto smiles.

  “My mother comes from there.” She tries to see his face in the darkness but there is only the moon glitter in his eyes and the fine line of his jaw. And now a new, melting kind of fear blooms somewhere in the middle of her. Her hair is a mass of tangles, her knees are scraped. The front of her dress is covered in dirt.

  What must she look like to him?

  By the time Callisto, Uncle Vasilios and Romeo return to Robert and Jack on the mountainside outside Myrthios, there is less than an hour left before dawn. They dress Jack in Aunt Ioanna’s Sunday best, compete with shawl, and lay him across the back of the donkey. Good thing he is unconscious, insensible to the pain from the jarring of his broken bone.

  “He will be some time healing,” says Uncle. “Better we take him home than put our friends here at risk.”

  Callisto darts ahead to scout the path. Robert keeps watch from the ditches to the rear, but tucked away up behind the Kourtaliotis Gorge, visible from neither the road nor the river valley to the south, Geratti is no one’s destination at this hour. They carry Jack into the back of Romeo’s stable and cover him with blankets. Aunt Ioanna tries to feed him chicken soup, but the man is sweating, mumbling with fever. Robert sits beside him and takes his hand, whispering.

  Such gentleness. The Scot reminds Callisto of her father.

  He must be ravenous. Aunt Ioanna tells her to bring out last night’s leftover stew and bread and cheese and wine.

  Robert tries to take his time, to show some manners as they watch, but he soon gives up, tearing into the meat. He has not seen more than a few rusks in two days.

  A man who fixes broken bones comes from a neighbouring village. He takes the bindings off Jack’s leg then cuts away the fabric of his pants to feel the wound. Jack cries out in his delirium. The man looks up.

  “You,” he nods at Robert, “bring rakí, lots of it. The rest of you go now.”

  “Is he a doctor?” Robert and Callisto follow Aunt Ioanna into the courtyard. Robert is a soldier, but now tendrils of his fear reach across the space between them.

  “I don’t know, but Uncle says he can fix any living thing, people, dogs, horses.” And if they do nothing, the leg will go bad.

  Romeo snorts into the pre-dawn cool. Callisto squeezes past him to peek behind the bales of straw before gathering the sheep. Snug in fresh hay, both Robert and Jack are sleeping peacefully, Jack with his leg bound to a hoe handle.

  During the days that follow, Callisto hikes the scorching summer mountainsides with Uncle’s sheep, scarcely noticing when Little Nell gambols too close to the edge of a ridge, or what the ewes are up to. Her diary lies unwritten with her picnic as she practises saying Robert’s name with a Scottish accent.

  “R-r-robert. R-r-robert.”

  v

  You’d like Robert, Mummy. He’s a bit taller than Papa, with lovely soft brown hair and eyes …

  — Callisto’s diary

  Where is he today, she wonders, what is he doing? Will he still be at home tonight?

  What does he think of her? If only Georgina, her best friend from home, were here, they would stay up late into the night
devising strategies. Georgina says she is going to be a doctor and that she will have no time for marriage, but she has already kissed a boy.

  Here, the Geratti girls still hold Callisto at arm’s length, though Ana and her baby often come into the courtyard with her mother-in-law Adonia in the evenings, the baby sleeping in a pouch on Ana’s chest, to hear her read to her aunt. Though coffee is difficult to find, Adonia brings a hot drink that tastes very much like it.

  After the poetry book, Callisto gets out Jane Eyre, translating from English, sentence by sentence in the fading summer light, the vine leaves above them rustling gently in the breeze, their bunches of dusky grapes heavy with ripeness as the night gathers around the story of a young girl making her way all alone.

  “Huh, that Mr. Rochester.” Adonia is a stumpy woman whose jaw usually leads the way, and she has sworn to dress in nothing but black until this war is over. “What’s the matter with him? Has he no respect?”

  Ana must have passed the word. Before the first week is out the girl called Maria and her little brother join them. The next evening Maria’s mother comes too.

  “Do you mind, Ioanna?” she asks. “I just want to know what will happen to this poor girl. Our bees have been busy, so I have brought a little honey, is that all right?”

  “Of course, Eleni. You are always welcome.” For the first time since Georgios’ death, Callisto sees Aunt Ioanna relax a little. The next evening a third neighbour and her daughter bring a sweet herb flavoured rakí to go with Adonia’s coffee drink.

  Callisto is still referred to as the girl from Athens who speaks English and runs with the sheep, a strange creature to be sure, but now at least people in church or on the paths nod to her. Some even smile.

  More soldiers are brought into the village and the caves around it. The families in Geratti, a small, isolated community, have been knit close by generations working together, planting and then harvesting wheat, harnessing their donkeys to the circular threshing post at the edge of the village, taking the kernels to the mill, looking out for each other, celebrating, mourning, trying to solve grievances without too many losses, fighting so many wars, one after the other, their lives built on mutual trust as indestructible as the rock that shelters them. Lookouts are posted on all the paths, so Uncle Vasilios judges it safe for Robert to take Pavlos’ place at the table in the courtyard. He stays to listen to Callisto’s reading.

  “I know the general gist of the story and maybe I can pick up some Greek words.”

  She tries to keep her mind on Jane’s perambulations through Mr. Rochester’s mansion, tries not to watch Robert as she painstakingly translates them into Greek. Around her the neighbours comment, chuckle and grumble, but she finds it hard to pay attention.

  How she would love to have him to herself, to converse with him, be in his world, in English.

  Jack’s fever abates. Aunt Ioanna opens his dressings to bathe the wound. Adonia next door mixes a concoction of mountain herbs designed to kill infections and strengthen the body. Auntie makes them into teas which Jack dutifully drinks. Soon, with the aid of Robert’s shoulder and a long straight branch, he is able to join them at the courtyard table.

  Word arrives that there is to be a second rescue from Limni Beach. Guides working with the resistance bring ragged New Zealander, Australian, and British soldiers who have spent weeks surviving day-to-day on the generosity of Cretans to villages in the surrounding mountains. By the end of July, twenty foreigners in Cretan pants and shirts and beards are hiding in Geratti’s mangers and storerooms. British intelligence commandos believe that at least one more rescue is possible.

  It is unseemly for the girls to consort with the soldiers, but Robert often manages to be wandering on the path just when Callisto comes along it, the sheep streaming before her. A fig tree grows out of a crevice in the rocks beside the path, its fruit purple and heavy with ripeness. On this day Robert picks a fig, presents it to her, his own mouth full, and then tells her the news of the rescue.

  “When?”

  No one will know until the time comes.

  She has known this day would come, of course it would. The world is exploding, burning. His job is to find his way back to the fight. She tries to share his joy.

  He looks around, sees that there is no one in sight, and takes her hand. He’ll come back, he tells her. As soon as this wretched war is over they’ll meet in Athens. Perhaps she will show him the Acropolis.

  She doesn’t want to take back her hand, but Mr. Pickwick, distracted by a bumblebee, has bolted off the path and now thinks he’ll stop to graze. She leaves Robert and her own confusion to move in behind him. “Come on, you.”

  The future, the past, any time but right now is too hard to fathom.

  Jack can hobble around well enough to look after himself now, so Robert offers to help Vasilios in the fields or the vineyard.

  “Surely there is something I can do for you?”

  “No, no,” says Uncle, “it is too dangerous.” Even though the village is hidden between the mountains, off the beaten track, Geratti is being patrolled frequently now by the Nazis. Since their attack on the Preveli valley in June, in which they failed to snare any escapees, they have set up a command centre over the mountain at Spili. “You can help here, cleaning the stable or weeding the garden to save my poor old back, or maybe help my wife peel potatoes so we can bake bread with them, to make the flour go further.”

  When the lookouts posted at the Kourtaliotis Gorge and along the paths to the east send warning of an incoming patrol, Robert and the others are taken away to hide in one of the caves high in the mountainsides.

  August’s heat builds. The flowers in the pastures have long since withered and died. The grass turns brown. The Nazi patrols become more and more frequent.

  Has someone tipped them off about the influx of fugitives? They do not know the rescue plan. No one does, except the British commandos.

  Jack is not mobile enough to stay in the village. He must be rowed out to Gavdhos Island, off the south coast, where he will be safe until a boat can take him across to Egypt. Uncle Vasilios dresses him in Ioanna’s clothes again and sends him off on Romeo with one of the village’s younger boys, to Rodakino, down the coast past Myrthios and Sellia, where his cousin has a fishing boat.

  Now, when she brings the sheep home at nightfall, she never knows what she will find. Sometimes patrols of nine, ten, even a dozen soldiers have the gall to cool themselves in the shade of the ancient plane tree outside Geratti’s kafeneon near the church. Laughing, calling for another drink, they impose themselves. Village life pretends to go on as usual.

  Banished to one of the high caves, sometimes Robert and his comrades have to wait for days before they can come back. Each time he has to leave, she wonders whom she should petition for his safety.

  God, of course. Except, is not God responsible for all Creation, which therefore must include the Nazis?

  How about Aphrodite?

  Too specific.

  All of them then: Please, please, please, any god who is listening and has the means, please keep him safe. And please may I see him one more time.

  vi

  Every morning, choosing a grazing ground for the sheep, she tries to guess which cave they are hiding in. Then, sitting in the shade of a tree that has somehow found sustenance enough to spread an umbrella of greenery over the browning meadow, she writes in her diary, glances up now and then. Hopes. But high up on the mountains’ stone skirts, there is never a hint of movement beyond the occasional file of wild goats and the circling of birds hunting.

  “He’s Scottish, Mummy, older than me, maybe twenty—”

  Stones, dislodged somewhere above her, shuffle down the slope.

  Where? She squints, scanning the mountainside. Just above her, something in some bygone epoch stopped the descent, from the mountain’s upper reaches, of a jumble of boulders the size of Romeo’s lean-to. Immediately below them Fiddlesticks is tugging at something under a gorse bush.


  Not another thief, surely? What kind of snivelling, self-serving coward would steal during a war? She puts down her diary, picks up a jagged-edged stone, and gets up nonchalantly.

  “Fiddlesticks, come here, girl.” She moves swiftly toward her.

  The animal raises her head, suspicious, defensive.

  “Oh, for Heaven’s sake, you stupid sheep,” she says in English, “I’m on your side. When are you ever going to figure that—”

  A bare arm reaches out from behind one of the boulders, beckoning.

  Not a thief.

  She looks up the mountain. Pocked by the black mouths of caves, it is accessible only by goat paths that twist up, hugging the ledges, through its rocky folds. The meadow and the path that crosses the mountainside below it, connecting Geratti to the next village, and the whole valley for miles in every direction, appear to be empty in the hot afternoon stillness.

  “It’s all right. It’s me, Robert.”

  Fiddlesticks panics at the sound, bolting away.

  Robert is wedged between the rocks.

  She comes closer, takes a last look around.

  “Stay low. The rest of the boys are in a cave directly above us. They think I’ve gone off to reconnoitre. The cave is as hot as an oven.”

  The rocks form a V-shape just large enough to fit them both. She would be able to feel his heart beating if her own were not kicking up such a riot. His sweat smells musky-sweet. What to say?

  She must stay no more than a minute. Wanting to give him something, she risks pointing south, between the high-peaked mountain directly across from them and Geratti.

  “Limni Beach is through there.”

  Sweat trickles through the dust covering his face as, smiling, he looks from the scenery to her.

  “I must get back,” she tells him. “If anyone should notice—”

  “Wait.” He lifts her hand, covers it with his other one. A strange new heat flushes through her. “If we’re still holed up here tomorrow, will you come back?”