Cally's Way

by Jane Bow

  She tunes her ears to the night sounds: the cicadas starting up again, the muted clap of a bat’s wing, the sheep settling themselves again. Back in her blanket it seems safe enough to doze again. Until, in the darkest hour just before dawn, a sheep’s bell tinkles.

  A leather boot lands in the weeds beside her head in the ruined room. She catches the pungency of a human as the metallic click of a revolver’s safety sounds close to her ear.

  “You will not move or breathe.”

  A Cretan. Thank you, God. She keeps her head on the ground.

  “I am Callisto,” she whispers, “niece of Vasilios in Geratti, shepherdess, and runner.”

  The revolver is removed.

  “The girl who speaks English.” A match scrapes. Light flickers between them, showing her, before it goes out, the fiercest Cretan face she has ever seen — long black moustache, hooded eyes, creased cheeks, hair covered with the black Cretan cap fringed with beads.

  “You see nothing, hear nothing, know nothing today. Understand?”

  Her heart soars.

  As soon as he leaves, she crawls back to the wall. Sees a shadow, another one, then another creeping up through the olive trees below. The fugitives!

  Why are they coming this way?

  Gaining the ruin, they disappear into the storage room. Of course. The grass on its roof must render it indistinguishable from the ground around it through binoculars.

  After the morning sun clears the eastern mountain tops, it is perfectly natural for her to take her sheep and the bucket down to the river. If they are to spend the day here, she will make a small fire, boil some water for coffee.

  Her every move must look natural. Taking the bucket and her sweater out into the shade of a little tree behind the chapel, in front of the storage room, she pretends to dunk the sweater into the water, as if she were washing it. Spreads it to dry on a bush. Picks up the bucket, as if to empty it.

  The interior of the storage room is a sheet of black against the bright morning. There is no movement and she can see nothing. She sets the bucket down just outside it.

  “Efcharistó, daughter. God bless you.” The man with the moustache, she can just make him out as he reaches for the bucket, takes a drink and passes it swiftly to the man next to him. And now her eyes begin to differentiate the outlines of legs, heads, the glimmer of eyes.

  Stretching her back, looking around at the sky as if she were alone, taking a break here in the shade, she whispers to the man about the German night patrol.

  He nods.

  “We were filing down the riverbank. They were at the other end of the path, coming up through the little gorge behind the beach. Our scout heard their voices, thank you, St. John. So these boys spent the rest of the night pretending to be rocks on the hillside. Let’s hope they can sleep a little now.”

  She can make them out now, packed thigh to thigh along the stone benches, can hear the sigh of their breathing.

  Robert? She pleads silently. Can you see me?

  Down in the little meadow by the river, she is sitting under a tree when a whistle light and clear as bird song starts up somewhere in the orange, lemon, olive trees behind her. Stretching forward as if to scratch her shin, she glances back. Cannot disguise a smile as there, crouched in the shadow of a twisted great-grandmother of an olive tree is her dream come true. He must have pleaded the need to relieve himself.

  She must not run to him. Nothing is moving on the mountain road up to Preveli but who knows what spyglass might be trained on her. Languorously she comes to her feet, starts picking hórta, wandering away from him toward the river. Surely anyone for miles around can hear her heart pounding though?

  The bamboo fringing the riverbank on both sides, nine-foot poles grown thick out of long brown reed-like leaves, stands still in the heat. But now here he comes, crazy fool, running past her, crouched low, diving in between the bamboo stalks, making them clatter.

  She checks again, the mountain road to Preveli to the west and the track that weaves around the hillside behind the ruin, the upper valley, the river below. Nothing except her sheep and a donkey laden with grasses and his rider, too distant to matter, moves. She goes on gathering grasses, moving toward the bamboo. Abandons caution finally.

  The river, shallow as running glass, is narrow here. She can see the stones under the water, and weeds bending with the current. Robert has flattened a little hollow on the sandy bank, bamboo thick as walls on three sides. The river is curtained on the other side by more thickly grown bamboo.

  There is no more need to talk or think or make any sound at all as under the climbing August sun they find each other, body to body, heart into heart: the first time for them both.

  Slipping into the water afterwards, bathing each other, both of them cry.

  “You are my love.” He promises her in his lovely accent that when this war is over he will come back to find her.

  She cannot leave the valley. Everything about her has changed. Her clothes and skin are the same, but coming down the mountain she was a girl. Now she is a woman, every fibre awakened, all her gawky girlhood corners rubbed off. When she walks, she flows. Early in the afternoon she herds the sheep over to the east side of the valley, then along a goat path across the mountain scree to climb to the headland meadow. Anyone watching will think she is heading for a shepherds’ hut just over the ridge.

  The night is moonless, the sky close enough almost to touch. Leaving her flock, feeling her way, she creeps up through the ridge’s rocky sentinels to lie flat among the boulders and bushes high above the sea cliff opposite Preveli. It is too dark to see, but her ears pick up the bounce of a dislodged pebble, a breath exhaled, a muttered command from the cluster of men crouched a few yards below her at the brink of the cliff. One of them is Robert.

  The sea stretching out, calm as skin, would be barely discernible were it not for the stars’ reflections undulating as the men soundlessly disappear, one by one down a goat path that must be practically vertical. Waves breaking in the darkness of the little beach far below drown out any other night sound. Once the last of them has climbed down, Callisto snakes down to the spot they have just left and ducks her face into the dirt as the strobe of a searchlight on the opposite headland suddenly splits the darkness, sweeping across the ground around her.

  Oh, dear sweet Mother Mary, please don’t let me give them away. But her skirt and sweater are dark and dirty enough to pass for ground. The light sweeps across the cliff, the empty beach, the sea. The men must be pressed against the base of the rock, shielded by the tamarisk trees, out of the light’s reach.

  The night has grown cold but still she edges closer, taking cover behind a large prickly bush, but the stupid Germans do not use the light again. They do not see the man who finally wades up out of the sea to tie a rope to the giant boulder at the water’s edge. Man after naked man slips into the water, following the rope.

  Please, please, please, whichever dear God is listening, please keep him safe.

  2002

  viii

  “When finally the news arrived that the submarine had delivered one hundred and one men to Alexandria, none of us understood Callisto’s tears.” Time seemed to have stopped, so long had Yannis’ great-aunt Adonia been talking, waiting every few minutes, her rheumy eyes gazing into the story, while Georgia translated. Her home was deep in shadow now, the table with its spotless white plastic cloth and jar of daisies, the hot plate and sink along the back wall, the neatly made bed and armoire, the small plaster Virgin Mary on the shelf below the room’s window barely visible. A single light bulb hung over the table, but no one had turned it on.

  Using the table for support, Theía Adonia levered herself to her feet. Cally watched her feel her way across the room to the kitchen counter. She switched on the heat ring under her little spouted coffee saucepan, and prepared cups and saucers. This old lady had sat with her grandmother Callisto, had known her mother as a baby. She started to get up, to help, but across the table,
Georgia shook her head.

  “She likes to do this.” Georgia dug into her handbag, brought out a package of chocolate-covered cookies to go with the cups the old lady was carrying to the table. Adonia dipped one into her coffee then took it into her mouth. If she had any teeth left, they were not visible. When the cookie was mush she swallowed it, drank some coffee and sat back, her eyes blinking with what Cally thought must be fatigue.

  Georgia smiled at her across the half-light.

  “We’ll come back, finish the story tomorrow afternoon. Is that all right, Theía?”

  1941

  ix

  One Sunday afternoon Callisto is picking figs, imagining the inside of the submarine full of naked men. Some of their shirts and the New Zealanders’ funny brimmed hats that can now be seen on the occasional runner who comes to Uncle, remind her of Robert. She likes to linger in the memory of their moments by the river. “You are my love.”

  Thank God that he is back in his English-speaking world, doing something that counts. Dare she believe that he will not forget her?

  A donkey clip-clips up the track. Its rider, sitting on the priest’s customary red carpet, is tall, a little bent, and his round black hat and grey beard thick with road dust. Not the village priest, whose cassock smells of donkey sweat and a cloying mix of stale incense and decaying meat.

  God’s trash, she always thinks. She is having some problems with Him these days, because what Loving Father in control of this world could possibly sanction what was happening—?

  “Kalispéra, Callisto.”

  “Father Nikolaos!” She puts down her basket, runs to him. Bathes in the smile of the man who had married her parents, who must have come all the way from Chania. Who has not died in the bombing! She takes the donkey’s reins from him, picks up her basket, and leads them to the archway.

  “I will take a drink of water and a rest before the Mass, if I may, Ioanna.”

  “Oh, Father, how welcome you are!” Aunt Ioanna ushers him toward a chair set back in the deep shade against the wall of the house. “Callisto, give the donkey a drink, will you?”

  She does not hear. Why has he travelled all this way?

  “Father? Is there news of my parents—?”

  He smiles.

  “Rest easy, daughter.”

  She tethers the donkey in the shade of the plane tree in the back yard, splashes some water into a pail, hurries back into the courtyard.

  Aunt Ioanna has tipped up the cauldron she has heating on the stove to pour hot water into a pan. Now, kneeling at the old priest’s feet, she is unlacing his boots so that, as is the custom, she can make her guest welcome by bathing his feet.

  “Ah, dear one,” Father Nikolaos has taken off his hat to lay his head back against the wall. “What a saviour you are on this hot day.” Callisto washes the dust off the figs, puts some on a plate to offer.

  He pauses, looking her over.

  “You are older, I think.”

  She feels herself blush. How much can a priest see?

  He reaches into a pocket inside the waistband of his cassock.

  “A gift has arrived for you.”

  A letter, small and square. Addressed by her mother!

  “Oh—!”

  “Take it inside, girl,” Auntie looks around at the shadows. One cannot be too careful.

  Veiled phrases: “… life at work goes on as usual …” Grief at the loss of Grandma and Grampa. Pain, missing her. Hope that, having been spared in Chania, Callisto is keeping safe and well. The strokes of her mother’s pen are nearly too familiar to bear, the words of her love so close she is sure she can hear them.

  She runs two more messages to neighbouring villages for Uncle before early morning vomiting no longer allows her to keep her pregnancy a secret. Uncle Vasilios takes it as a personal betrayal.

  “I should have known,” he rants to Ioanna. “How could she do this to me? I should have chained her to the house.” It’s a good thing the man responsible has fled because Uncle would save the Nazis the trouble of shooting him. First though he would break his every bone, then his head, even if he was an Allied soldier.

  Food becomes scarcer. As the winter wears on, Uncle’s sheep are taken out to pasture by the boy down the lane, but by the New Year, nearly the whole flock has been slaughtered for meat. They eat whatever they can scrape together indoors by the hearth now, silently mostly.

  Poor Auntie, caught between love for her brother’s daughter and guilt about the promise to him that she has failed to keep. Shame has cancelled the evening readings right in the middle of Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

  Callisto pours confusion, love, nausea, fear, and marvel at her ripening breasts and swelling belly into her diary, writing by candlelight in her bedroom as the days grow shorter and colder, both inside and outside the house.

  A few mealy potatoes remain in the bin. Callisto is peeling them for a stew Auntie has bubbling on the hearth fire when a man with filthy hair and a beard like a rat’s nest comes into the courtyard. She tightens her grip on the knife. Trust no one. Seeing her, he stops.

  “Please forgive the way I look. I have been busy in the mountains.” He is Manolis, a friend of Pavlos.

  “Oh!” Auntie has come out to stare.

  “It’s all right, Theía, he’s safe.” A smile appears through the beard. “Better than that.”

  He and Pavlos were seconded to a British battalion last fall. Pavlos was wounded in April, in Macedonia. “Not too badly — broken arm, some shrapnel in the shoulder — but enough to get him flown out with the British wounded, for surgery in England.” Manolis smiles again. He would be quite good looking, Callisto thinks, if he cut off that terrible beard. “By now, he should be recovered.”

  “Oh!” Auntie says again, a hand to her mouth, then: “Parakalo, come in.”

  The man looks around. “Please, may I wash first?”

  Ten minutes later, his hair wet, drips on his beard glistening in the lamplight, he sits in Georgios’ chair. Auntie puts a bowl of stew and a slice of bread down in front of him.

  “Praise God.” He has not eaten in a day and a half. “That’s why I am so dirty,” he tells them. If he had stopped anywhere, people would have been embarrassed not to be able to feed him. “That’s how bad things are.”

  “And you?” Uncle has just come in. “Why are you not with your regiment?”

  “I was, until the rest of them were evacuated from Iraklio … but I am from Agíos Nikolaos, and I am needed here now.”

  Uncle looks at the man, asks a few questions then, finally satisfied, brings the rakí and small liqueur glasses from the sideboard.

  News reaches Geratti in the middle of December that on the other side of the world, the Japanese have bombed American ships in a harbour on Hawaii, and the Americans have entered the war.

  “Thank God,” says Uncle, who is busy every night now as, in spite of hunger and winter’s icy reach, Crete locks itself into a war of stealth and subterfuge with its occupiers. Guerrilla fighters, runners, guides, spies and all those dedicated to unbending resistance, prefer the everyday risk of death over acquiescence to the Nazi propaganda flyers posted in every village square. Food becomes scarcer as the Nazis take what little that people have. Any animal killed is eaten in its entirety, right down to the hooves. Mr. Pickwick gave his life last month, and Little Nell is just a memory. It’s a trade-off though. If you eat the animal, you can no longer have its milk for cheese. Uncle Vasilios’ flour supply has stopped. He becomes a more and more inventive baker, stretching what he has with potatoes, with even the sticky carob beans usually destined for the animals. Mercifully the mountains do not cease to offer hórta and herbs. And snails. As snow whitens the mountain tops, it becomes clear that for some reason known only to God, the lowliest, oldest creature on the island has been madly procreating. Snails appear everywhere, slinking up the walls of houses, sliding across the paths, hiding under dead leaves. Children sent out to find them come home with baskets full for
their mother to bake in a little oil, with some herbs.

  Every Sunday the village gives thanks.

  “Surely,” says Auntie, “it must be a sign from God?”

  Meanwhile, the resistance in Athens is doing everything in its power to disrupt the Nazi occupation, stealing commandeered food to feed the people, spreading news through pamphlets and wall posters, inciting the workforce to go on strike to bring the occupation to a standstill. And they are succeeding! Uncle Vasilios and his comrades in the storeroom break out the rakí the day news arrives, in April of 1942, of the first strike in occupied Europe, organized by the EAM in Athens.

  The day Fiddlesticks is slaughtered, Callisto births a new idea. Her baby is due in May. If Father Nikolaos could get a letter to her parents, they might send for her. Athens is occupied; the fighting over, so surely it would be safe. But who knows where Father Nikolaos is. Spring sunshine is bringing the first pink blossoms to the oleanders across the road when finally she raises her idea with her aunt, after dinner in the courtyard. Uncle has gone down the road. There is a month still before the baby is due, and she knows her parents sent some money with her to help pay for the costs of harbouring her and to bring her home.

  “Can we use it for boat fare Auntie, please? You do not need another mouth to feed, as well as all the trouble, and Uncle does not want me here now.” At home in their cozy Athens apartment, her mother will accept what has happened, make her hot tea and hug her and rub her back, because didn’t she do exactly the same thing, running off with the man she loved? Robert will find her there.

  “Your uncle has to learn that life takes its course,” Aunt Ioanna stops stacking the dirty dishes to look at her. “God is the only one who knows what is right in this world, Callisto, and if this were peacetime, you and Robert would be properly married.”