by Kahn, Denise
Nico left the house in Plaka just before dawn. He turned around and looked at it. He remembered the first time he had seen it, broken and lonely, and how he lovingly rebuilt it stone by stone. He had only been sixteen at the time and after two years he had turned the rubble into the finest mansion in Plaka. Now, twenty years later, he reminisced on the wonderful times with his family, the laughter, the joy, the entertainment with friends, the singing, the music, the drinking, the dancing, the birth of his daughter and the pride in seeing her grow into such a fine young lady. Also the times when things were difficult: the air raids, the lack of food, the loss of their fortunes and the business he loved so much, the misery and fear the occupation wrought, and the constant worry of what the day would bring. Would they be dragged out of their house? Would they be thrown into a filthy prison? Or would they even just simply be killed? Nico couldn’t take it any longer. He was not alone as he had been during the First War, no, he had his family to consider and now he was doing something about it. He blew a kiss toward his beloved house and his family, turned and walked away. He looked up and saw his favorite site. The Parthenon stood majestically above him, carrying centuries of history. If only it could speak and relate all the glorious stories, from its birth to the great battles, he thought. Nico smiled—until he saw the flag. It was not the Aegean-blue Greek flag that rippled in the wind, no, it was the black, red, and white with the swastika. Nico spat on the ground thinking how dare Hitler use the icosagon Hindu symbol for rebirth that had been around for hundreds of years. The Indo-Europeans used it as a mark of good luck. This anti-Christ used it as his own symbol of twisted demonic power. Nico only felt disgust and hatred.
He mumbled and cursed and made his way through the narrow streets of the old part of the city and entered, as instructed, through a side door of the main branch of the Bank of Greece. A distinguished older man in a business suit waited for him. He extended his hand.
“Mister Nico?” The man asked. Nico nodded. “Please, come with me.” Nico followed the man to the back of the bank where only a handful of employees were ever allowed to go. They went to a room that housed an enormous safe and met up with another man. “This is Aleko,” the older man said, introducing them. Nico shook the man’s hand.
“Gentlemen, follow me,” Aleko said. He led them into the safe, which was actually an enormous room. He closed the door behind them and then turned on a light. Nico gasped. Before him stood the entire fortune of Greece. Gold bars adorned every shelf of the room.
“Tonight all of this will be empty. Those bastards won’t rape this country completely,” Aleko said. He was the Prime Minister’s mastermind. An engineer by trade, he had concocted a plan that would save the gold from falling into the enemy’s hands. The plan was simple enough and the execution would be difficult. Failure would be catastrophic and fatal.
Valentina woke up as the sun started to rise. She stretched her body and smiled as she remembered their night of glorious love. She reached out for Nico. Surprisingly he wasn’t there. She opened her eyes and stared at the empty spot on the bed. Her heart skipped a beat. She immediately knew something wasn’t right. The unequivocal bond with the man of her life told her this. Then she saw the note. Her hand trembled as she reached over. She touched it apprehensively, as if she knew it would burn the tips of her fingers. Finally, holding her breath, she picked it up and read it. He was gone. Why hadn’t he just told her? They had no secrets. They weren’t just husband and wife, they were best friends. The note was short and to the point. He had left and didn’t know when he would return. Not to worry about him, it said, he would be back, it was better that no one knew what he was up to. Deep in her heart Valentina had known Nico couldn’t just sit around anymore. He would figure out a way to help the war effort. He was a patriot, loved his homeland with every cell of his body and adored peace and freedom. After all, it was because of these feelings that were so imbedded in him that he fought in the Great War and consequently the catalyst that brought them together at the château-hospital in France.
Valentina sat on the bed with her eyes closed, remembering every moment of their life together and then, just like her mother, she composed herself and empowered her being with the peace that music always brought to them. She sang from her bed, sitting in a lotus position to her absent Pinkerton. The notes rang out and tears slid down her cheeks. When she finished the aria she thought of her man in his WWI uniform: proud, handsome, gallant and charming. She opened her mouth once again and this time she sang for strength, victory and safety to her very own Ramades. “Your Aïda will be waiting for you, my love.”
Verdi would have been pleased by her poignant rendition.
♫
CHAPTER 27
The pungent acrid smell assaulted Nico’s senses and immediately a cold shiver descended from the back of his neck down to his waist. He knew that smell only too well: The mass of dead bodies in Oniraki, the trenches, the soldiers lying in their stench of death, unburied and rotting, unconventionally serene waiting for a giant hand to scoop them away from their macabre resting place. He also knew this ugly memento from his brain would never be erased. He looked up and his certainty was confirmed. Three men walked beside a six-mule team pulling an immense cart. It was filled with dead decomposing bodies. They pulled into a corner of the large basement, next to the vault.
“What the hell is this?” Nico demanded furiously, his stomach tightening agonizingly at the ghastly sight.
“Take it easy, my friend,” Aleko said as calmly as possible, feeling just as wretched as Nico. “These poor souls died of hunger. They are to be buried at sea.”
“But why are they here, at the bank?”
Aleko looked at his compatriot and raised his chin slightly, with some pride. “They are the most important part of this delicate operation and this is their last act of heroism.” He nodded to the men who had just arrived. They came over and shook hands. “Zeeto ee Ellas!” Aleko said.
“Zeeto ee Ellas! Long live Greece!” They repeated. One of the newcomers handed Nico and Aleko a bandana. Nico took his and looked at Aleko. He was tying it around his mouth and nose. Nico did the same without asking any questions and the men went to work.
Nico learned that in their former lives, that is, before the war, the men surrounding him had had very different jobs. One had been a teacher, another a captain of a fishing vessel, the third a doctor. They were all handpicked by Aleko, the engineer. They were in their thirties. Except for Nico, now in his early forties, a book publisher, but more importantly, a covert operations specialist. Nico’s stomach tightened and churned. He kept asking himself why he always found himself in mass graves.
“Doctor, are you ready?” Aleko asked.
“Yes. Start bringing out the gold,” he answered. He turned to the fisherman who was threading a large needle with fishing line. He too was ready. Nico and the teacher went into the bank vault and brought back two bars of gold each. The doctor had positioned two bodies on the edge of the cart and was now making a straight incision down their torsos to the top of their waists. Aleko took the bars and placed two into each of the cadaver’s cavities. The fisherman then quickly sewed them back up and placed the bodies at the rear of the cart behind the horses. They brought two more bodies to the edge, ready to do the procedures over again. Nico and the teacher went back for more bars, but not before the academician lost what little he had in his own stomach. Throughout the day he would gag and vomit several more times.
Piece by piece the men brought out of the gold bars from the bank’s vault. The others lifted the lifeless, almost weightless bodies and moved the corpses from one side of the cart to the other. They did this for hours until they had a mountain of cadavers neatly piled up and filled with what little wealth the country of Greece still possessed. By nightfall they covered the cart with sheets and empty potato sacks. The five men were finished with their backbreaking endeavor and they were exhausted. They hadn’t stopped all day, save for a quick drink of water, a
nd although they knew their bodies were hungry their minds and emotions overrode their craving. Instead, they worked on diligently, keeping their thoughts on their mission and not on the open dead eyes glassily staring at them. They reeked of sweat and death; they were emotionally and physically drained, yet they were pleased with their results and high on their mission. They also knew that the Germans, as meticulous as ever, would still think twice before searching through a pile of cadavers.
The men guided the mules with their heavy load away from the bank and headed toward the port of Piraeus. Nico, Aleko and the doctor sat on the front bench; the teacher and the fisherman each on a corner in the back of the cart. They still wore their bandanas over their faces. They looked like robbers.
Just a few blocks away a German patrol stopped them. “Don’t you know about the curfew?” One of them shouted. They didn’t answer.
Another soldier headed to the men on the bench when the putrid smell hit him. He immediately felt the bile rush to his throat. “Ah, Kadaver,” he mumbled. “It’s alright, let them go. They are exempt from the curfew.” The other soldier waived them on without even bothering to check their papers. The cart took off slowly. Aleko and Nico looked at each other and discreetly smiled.
They were stopped in the same fashion several more times until they finally arrived at their destination. The first rays of light were just coming up over the horizon and Nico, who hadn’t been to the port in a long time, immediately noticed the changes. There weren’t any pleasure boats anymore, no more fancy lacquered wooden yachts with young Adonises and beautiful women dressed in the latest Paris fashions sailing out to the islands. Instead, only a few rundown, battered fishing boats bobbed boringly in the water and the heavy dreaded German naval war machines lined the piers. His stomached tightened in anger and disgust. The country he loved with its bounty of freedom and pleasures was reduced to an occupied land of gray—gray uniforms, gray vessels and vehicles, gray faces, gray mood, gray atmosphere, even the sky was gray from the smoke and the bombs. When would his beloved Greece be its unique blue again? The happy blue of joy and laughter, the rhapsodic blue of the bouzouki’s music, the Aegean blue of the sea and the sky that inundates one’s soul with the confirmation of freedom and most of all the irresistible sensual blue of his wife’s adoring eyes. Nico puffed his chest out like a seal point cat and swore to himself that he would help his country reclaim its rightful color—God’s favorite color, and the color of his flag.
♫
CHAPTER 28
Valentina and Sela were visiting a sick neighbor down the street. They brought hot broth Valentina made with a bone and an onion she had purchased on the black market.
Melina and Rebeka were in the Malandros house, quietly doing their homework, when suddenly there was furious banging on the door. The noise was deafening and the two young girls jumped. Rebeka froze and stood paralyzed. “OPEN THIS DOOR!” The deep German-accented voice screamed. Four German soldiers hammered the door of the house.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Melina shouted, “just a minute.” She pushed Rebeka toward the kitchen. “Hurry, through the window, DIVE! And don’t move, no matter what! Rebeka did. She dove out the window, landed in the plant and was immediately hidden by the foliage as Valentina had carefully and meticulously prepared for such an occasion. The only thing visible was a big thorny bush one wouldn’t even consider venturing close to.
Melina went to the door and slowly opened it. She saw the soldiers. Behind them stood a Gestapo man in crisply pressed civilian clothes which didn’t do much to hide his beer belly. Her gut tightened and the fear started to consume her. Her palms were sweaty and her mouth was dry. The soldiers barged in, almost knocking her over but she regained her footing and held on to the wall behind her. One of them held her arm tightly. Melina moaned and pictured the bruises that would soon show. The men ran by her and went through every room.
“He’s not here,” one of the soldiers said.
It’s not Rebeka they’re after! Melina thought.
“Where is your father?” The man in civilian clothes shouted through puffy red jowls. Melina could see the cold evil in this man’s ugly gray eyes and shuddered.
“I don’t know.”
“I will ask you one more time. Where is he?”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
The Gestapo man slapped her. Melina muffled a cry. “One last time! Where?” The man looked at her hard. Melina did not answer.
“Fine. Let’s go.” He nodded to one of the soldiers. “To headquarters.” The soldier, who had been squeezing her arm the entire time, roughly led her out of the house and shoved her in the ominous black Mercedes waiting outside. Melina shrank into the back seat and tasted the bile that was threatening to explode out of her mouth. But she held it back and wondered what they were going to do to her.
Melina was led by two soldiers to a dark, dank cellar of an old building. They past several doors and then they roughly shoved her into a small room which housed an old wooden stool, a desk with a chair behind it and a naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling. The Gestapo man shoved her onto the hard stool. “If you were smart, you would have talked to me,” he growled and slammed the door as he left the room. She waited and waited, and wrung her sweaty hands as she heard painful tortured screams from the room next to hers. Melina’s heart sank even further. The screams continued and she covered her ears. After a while she heard a whimper and then silence. Was the man dead? Would she be next?
An hour later, a major in an SS uniform walked in. Melina looked at the immaculately pressed clothes and took in every detail of the man. He was the epitome of Hitler’s superior race: Young, handsome, intelligent, blond, blue-eyed and arrogant. Was he the one who had been torturing the man next door? She met his eyes and shuddered. She tried not to tremble as she read the cold meanness in them. They in turn scrutinized the young woman. He moved closer to her.
“You are a very pretty girl,” he said, caressing the bottom of her jaw with the back of his finger. Melina didn’t move or utter a word. The major ran his hand along the welt that was forming from the blow of the Gestapo man. She winced and turned her face away. It was already sore and puffy. He moved toward the table and sat on it in front of her, his authority unquestionable.
“I can be very persuasive and get all the information I want,” he murmured, “but I would rather you just tell me and then you can go back home.” Melina didn’t say anything. His voice was warm and soothing. He did not want to scare this girl. That would not produce the results he was after—yet. “Now, I would like to ask you a few questions.” Still Melina said nothing. “We can do this the easy way, or…”
“Herr Major, I don’t know where my father is.”
“Oh, but I think you do know. My men told me your father was driving a cart full of dead bodies the other night, supposedly to bury them at sea.”
Think, damn it, think fast! Melina’s temper suddenly flared. “It’s your fault!” She screamed. “You have reduced a proud, brilliant, educated man to carrying cadavers. He’s surely just trying to get some money to provide a little food for his family who’s starving. You must feel good about doing that to this gentle man!” What was her father really up to?
The major looked at her. He hadn’t expected the outburst. She was good, really good, or she really didn’t know a damned thing. “Listen, all I want is a little information and I promise I won’t hurt you.”
Melina looked at him and raised an eyebrow. Yeah, right, she thought. “What kind of information?” Melina asked, trying to buy time. She needed to think. How could she get out of there? What were they going to do to her? Why did they want to know where her father was? Was he with the Resistance? She really didn’t know, but would they even believe her?
He leaned forward, his face very close to hers. Melina immediately understood his intentions. He could do anything he wanted to her, and she knew it. They both knew it. It all depended on her answers. My God, Melina thought
, his soul is a black hole. She could see it in his eyes. He was the most loathsome man she had ever met. Melina was forming a plan in her young mind, but she needed a little more time. “You know, Major,” Melina said, willing herself to stay calm, “I believe you. I really don’t think you want to hurt me, so, let me suggest this.”
The Major lifted an eyebrow. Is she really bargaining with me? He thought. “You have a suggestion?” He said, holding back his laughter.
“Yes. I don’t like pain, so I will tell you what you want to know—that is, if I know.”
“Mm, that is good,” he answered, wondering where she was going with this. “And?”
“And, before I tell you anything, I need to eat something,” Melina said, very matter of factly.
The major almost laughed, but instead controlled himself. This one was a little spitfire. And she was so damned cute. It would be a shame to disfigure her. “You are hungry?”
“Yes.”
“So, if I get you some food, you will tell me what I want to know?”
“That’s what I said.”
The major shouted and a soldier opened the door and ran in. A few minutes later he came back with some tea and biscuits. He set it on the table next to the major. Melina looked at the food, but did not move. What she really wanted to do was devour it. Instead, she waited.
“Please, help yourself.”
“How do I know this isn’t poisoned?”
The major laughed. She was still young, this very thin girl. “If it’s poisoned you wouldn’t be able to give me any information.”
“Mm, that makes sense.”