“Most were too afraid. But, uh, my father and uncle thought, well, what if they didn’t? What might happen?” After registering, they and other men were herded into trucks and driven away. When the news reached Stelios and his mother, they threw a few belongings and some gold sovereigns into suitcases and fled the city.
“My father thought we might all have to, you know, get away eventually,” Stelios said. “So he had a plan, I mean a contact in a band of partisans on the mountain.” He and his mother had walked partway up Mt. Hymettus to meet the contact, who’d sheltered them for a few days and relieved them of most of their sovereigns.
“We moved from village to village. So many times we’ve moved—a cave, a stable, a schoolroom. Each time we had to pay someone. There were different groups, but they all charged something and called it a tax to support their work.” His voice caught in his throat. “It’s been hard for Mother.” But there seemed to be a partisan grapevine and because of it, they’d been brought to the empty house of the charcoal maker in this village. “You know the rest.”
Actually, what I didn’t know was vast. I’d had little religious instruction since the school shut down and couldn’t remember what was meant by the word Jew—a word not yet spoken that night. And in places like our village, even grown-ups didn’t fully understand what was happening outside. In time, it would become known that Greek Jews had been rounded up, especially in the city of Thessaloniki, north of here, but also in Athens, stripped of their belongings and sent north to the concentration camps. Some, like Stelios and his mother, fled to the countryside where villagers took them in.
But all I knew then was that Sophia and Stelios were just Greeks like the rest of us, weren’t they? Or were they also spies along with the father and uncle? Was that really why they’d been taken away? I wondered how to ask this without words as I glanced at the plate of discarded shells and thought again of the snails climbing the sides of the jug, forever falling back, click.
“I don’t understand anything,” Takis said.
“It’s not for you to understand,” Chrysoula said. “Just forget it and go get ready for bed.” When he’d gone, she asked Stelios, “Your father and uncle? You’ve heard nothing?”
“No, no. My mother, she recites an old Hebrew prayer for their safe return. It helps her a little, I think.”
“And you?”
“I’m not a believer. I can only hope . . .”
What was the prayer, I wondered, and what did it mean that it was Hebrew? For that matter, what was it that Stelios didn’t believe?
“I’m so sorry,” Sophia said, returning. “Just a bit of indigestion. What were you saying, Stelios?”
“I was telling them about the partisans, Mother. How we gave them some of our sovereigns and they got us here.”
“Oh, yes. We’re so lucky to have found you.”
They still had a few sovereigns and she offered to give one to Chrysoula, saying that if there was any way to use it for provisions, they’d be pleased to help. “You have so little for yourselves, much less for two more.”
Chrysoula refused politely, but not for long. Gold was the only thing that mattered then. Paper currency had become nearly worthless—a pillowcase full of thousand-drachma notes wouldn’t buy so much as a kilo of salt. In the cities, I heard later, people would trade things such as a grand piano or Persian carpets for just a few kilos of rice or olive oil. But our village was not far from the coast and it was known that the small fishing boats called caïques were making illegal runs to some of the islands and even the Turkish coast. People there didn’t have much either, but the fishermen traded for anything they could get and brought it back for sale at exorbitant prices. It was possible to buy a few things such as flour, rice and olive oil, even the occasional fish or two, if you could pay the inflated prices. Somehow these things were smuggled into the village—perhaps with payoffs to the Germans, who could say?
“I am so embarrassed,” Chrysoula said. “Hospitality is a matter of pride in my family. But what can we do in such times?”
So at last we were able to make bread, which, dipped in olive oil, kept us going. And sometimes there were small fish to be eaten with rice. Now, if only we could keep the other villagers from finding out. There was no question of sharing our small good fortune. If luck had come to a different house, that family would have done the same. And secrecy, we found, added a flavor all its own.
CASSETTE 1 Side 2
Sorry about the interruption. I have to remember to watch the little reel before it spins itself out. And while I was turning over the cassette, the neighbors came again about Zephyra, who’d been asking for me, they said. And making strange noises. The doctor and Father Yerasimos had come and gone; there was nothing more they could do. When I got there, Zephyra was sitting up in bed, but her face, well, it had gone all pinched and narrow. Difficult to see in it the girl I’d known so long ago. When I asked how she was, she began to make this sound, “Maaahhh, maaahhh.” I didn’t know what it meant and told her who I was. Her expression slowly changed as she seemed to recognize me. Her eyes filled and she took my hands in hers as she tried to form words.
“Not . . . my fault,” she said with difficulty and then said it again. Before I could ask what wasn’t her fault, she slipped back into making that sound again, “Maaahhh,” like a sheep or goat. This went on for several minutes and I could see her struggling to get it under control. Who can understand what pieces of a life float past the inner eye of the dying?
She let go of my hands and seemed to drift for a bit after that, but then her expression narrowed again and she made that same sound, “Maaahhh, maaahhh.” And I realized that with her face all pinched like that and what with her long nose, she’d actually taken on almost a goatish look. I might not have thought it if she hadn’t gone on making the sound, which she did ever more loudly. “Maaaaahhhhh, maaaaahhhhh, maaaaahhhhh.” And then, well, this is hard to believe, but she actually started to bleat the way a kid does when it gets separated from the rest of the herd. She pawed at the bedclothes.
It wasn’t the first I’d seen of such things. Living so closely with animals as many of us do here means that the creatures seem to get right into our souls. Why, old Yannis, may the earth rest lightly on him, used to blame his donkey whenever the early rains washed out his flax crop. He’d fly into a rage and beat the poor creature, until one day he actually beat it to death. Then a couple of years later when Yannis himself was meeting his own hour, he sat up in bed hee-hawing just like that dying donkey. Deeds can come back to you before you die; they won’t let your soul escape. But what did it mean in Zephyra’s case?
“Calm yourself, Zephyra,” I said, trying to pat her hand, but she went on pawing the bedclothes. I told the women gathered outside her house that they’d better send for the old wisewoman, Aphrodite, from the next village to come and wave her burned herbs and icons over Zephyra. Even if no one believed in such things much anymore, something had to be tried to relieve Zephyra of this misery so she could die easily.
“Her soul can’t get free,” I told them. “Something’s holding it back.”
I saw them later leading Aphrodite past my house on her way to Zephyra’s. They’d brought her over from her village, I supposed, but as always I wondered what it is about wisewomen that they have to look so wretched. Aphrodite—and what a name for her—always looks as if she’s dressed in two or three threadbare rugs, silly woman. And she can’t have washed her hair in years. But she, like me, is the last of her kind in these parts; so the village puts up with us. She’s not so well herself. I could hear her coughing and wheezing as she went past the house. Of course if Father Yerasimos hears that Aphrodite’s around, he’ll be there trying to drive her away, as if his holy water and incense are superior to her icons and smelly herbs. Priests, doctors and wisewomen—if one doesn’t work, just try another. But it’s the lamenter who gets the last word.
Now see, all this has made me lose track again. Have I mentioned the notepad I’d taken to carrying around Chrysoula’s house? I don’t know where I’d found such a thing—writing paper wasn’t easy to come by back then. Maybe one of the Germans had tossed it out. Anyway, I could write down questions I wanted to ask and pass them to others. When I showed Chrysoula that I’d written about our visitors, Who are they really? she just said again that they were Athenian refugees who had to hide until the war was over. Spies? I wrote.
“Oh, dear, no. They’re Jews.” I drew a question mark. “Oh, yes, of course. You wouldn’t have met any Jews before. Well, they’re just like anyone else.”
So why do they hide from the Germans?
She looked out the kitchen window. A spring wind was spinning the last dead leaves of winter. “You know, Aliki, I’m not really sure. Such awful things happen in a war. It gives an excuse for all kinds of hidden poisons to work their way out.”
While I was wondering over this, the card games between Takis and Stelios had turned into drawn-out contests by candlelight. Stelios tried to stop Takis from cheating.
“A card just went into your sleeve, Takis. I mean, there’s no point to the game if you do that.”
“What card?” Takis asked, taking another and putting it on top of his head, then sticking out his tongue. “They’re my cards, anyhow.”
“Oh, Takis,” Stelios said, “what are we going to do with you, little monkey?”
Takis hopped up and loped around the room, simian-style, scratching himself. Anything to entertain Stelios. In time, he would even stop trying to cheat him at cards. His loyalty and affection were shifting. Maybe Takis had noticed that Stelios was paying more attention to me, less to him.
Takis began treating me in an offhand way lately, saying even in my hearing, “Look how stupid she is—she can’t even talk.”
The hurt would heat up my face and Stelios would look embarrassed. Chrysoula would send Takis to his room. When he wasn’t around, Stelios would tell me about books he’d read, such as The Count of Monte Cristo. He made the count, Edward Dantès, sound so real, as if he was someone you might actually know. Stelios promised to get me a copy one day so I could read for myself what the count wrote in his letter to his friend Maximilian, who thought his great love had died.
“I don’t remember it exactly,” Stelios said, “but it’s something about how there’s neither happiness nor misery in the world. I mean, it’s all in the way you think about something, what it adds up to at the time. And only someone, uh, someone who’s felt the deepest grief can experience the greatest happiness.” He said the words with such belief, almost as if he’d written them himself. I was impressed but not sure that I understood. I suppose I’d been happy before the war, but it wasn’t something I’d ever thought about. It was only after the Germans came that the—I don’t know what—the glow just went out of everything. But Stelios seemed to be saying something more complicated. I’d have to think about it.
Sophia passed the time by borrowing sewing things from Chrysoula and patching clothing, theirs and ours. She had a slight tremor in both hands and so made little progress, but she stayed with the task even in the dim light. Sometimes she sang softly as she worked, an Irish folk song she’d heard on the radio years before.
Oh, I wish that we were geese,
Night and morn, night and morn.
Oh, I wish that we were geese,
For they fly and take their ease,
And they live their lives in peace,
Eating corn, eating corn.
It was such a sad song. I could only guess at her fear for her husband and brother-in-law. And there was the life together they’d all lost.
I asked on my pad, Why are the Germans taking the Jews out of Greece?
Sophia looked startled. “Oh, my child,” she said as her left eyelid developed a rapid twitch, “I wish I knew the answer to that. I suppose they need someone to blame for the misery in the world.”
“That’s not it, Mother,” Stelios said quickly. “They need labor for their war factories. All their men are off fighting.”
From the way he said it, not looking at his mother, I suspected that he didn’t quite believe what he was saying. He was trying to calm her. There was an awkward silence. To fill it and change the subject, I scribbled on my pad, What’s it like to live in the city?
Sophia looked relieved as she read this easier question to answer. “Well, Aliki, when you’ve lived in a place all your life, you don’t really think about what it’s like. It’s just what you know.” She sighed.
What do people do in the evenings?
“Let’s see, well, before the war, if the weather was good, we’d often go for a stroll in the National Gardens.” She described dusty lanes lined with oleanders, orange trees and cypresses, where peacocks wandered and nightingales sang in the spring. There were ornamental ponds with goldfish and ducks. Near the big Zappeion Exhibition Hall, where international exhibitions were held, there was an outdoor café. “At night it becomes a cabaret with singers and comedians. Alexis, my husband, always loves anything funny.”
She stopped speaking and her eyelid fluttered again. She rubbed it with her finger until it stopped. But then it started again. “Do you know what else is near the Zappeion?” she asked, trying to ignore it. “The wonderful shadow theater of Karagiozis.”
I drew a big question mark on my notebook.
“You don’t know about the shadow puppets?” Stelios asked. “One day you and Takis will come to Athens and we’ll take you to see them.”
“Yes,” his mother said. “It’s a kind of theater for children. Well, really, for everyone.” The main puppet, Karagiozis, was a poor Greek who lived under Turkish rule, she explained, during the time of the Ottoman Empire, which occupied Greece for four hundred years before the revolution that drove them out. A wily underdog, Karagiozis played the fool in order to outwit the rulers.
Like us with the Germans? I wrote.
“Well, yes, I suppose, in a way.” Shadow theater started in Egypt long ago. Then it spread through Asia and the Middle East, into Turkey and the Balkans.
“Here,” Stelios said, “let me show you what he looks like.” He took my notebook and pencil and drew a hunchbacked man with a big nose and one arm longer than the other. His clothes were ragged and patched and his feet bare. Stelios drew quickly and well, making sketch after sketch in which Karagiozis was dressed as a sea captain or a doctor or a fisherman. He also drew the sultan, the enemy of Karagiozis, a plump man in a robe and turban.
“The characters are moved on poles behind a lighted screen. You see them all as shadows.” He took a shirt his mother was mending, put a candle behind it and cupped his hand into the shape of a bird’s head so its shadow appeared on the other side of the shirt. Stelios’s father had once given him a small shadow theater with ready-made puppets for New Year’s and Stelios sometimes put on shows for friends. “But simple ones, not like the complicated plays at the Zappeion.” The plays always opened with music provided at home by Yannoula, the family housekeeper, who played the squeeze box, a kind of small accordion.
“She’s wonderful,” he said. “Her music is as good as at the Zappeion.”
Takis clapped his hands and said, “Let’s do it. Let’s make the Karagiozis!”
Sophia said, “Hmm, that’s an idea. Well, you know, I suppose we could do a little play. You know a lot of the stories, Stelios, and it might help pass the time. But what would we make the figures from? They’re usually leather or cardboard.”
Takis went to find his mother; surely she would know a way. But at first Chrysoula didn’t think it was a good idea. We heard her tell him, “In these times you want to play theater? You will make a lot of noise and get us all shot.”
“Bang!” Takis said. “Bang, you’re dead.”
“And you’re a foolish ca
bbage. Now let me think.”
Later that day Chrysoula came downstairs and said, “Well, what about pine bark? Isn’t there a lot of it over by your father’s old charcoal pits, Aliki? It’s thin and flaky. Could you use that to make the characters? It would be easy to cut.”
Stelios wasn’t sure if bark would work, but Takis and I went out with a basket to gather some. If anyone asked what we were doing, we were to say that we were going to dry the bark for kindling. While we were gathering it, Takis said that one of the pines was speaking to him. He pointed to the biggest of them, the one with branches so low they swept the ground. I gave him a skeptical glance.
“It says that Stelios likes me better than you,” he said softly, looking away from me. This was clearly Takis’s own wishful thinking.
I wrote, How would a tree know?
“They know everything.”
I had nothing to say to this so we went on picking up bark in silence. After a while, Takis asked me to do my dance again, imitating the men throwing dirt on the cones of stacked logs to keep them from bursting into flame. It was the first time he’d been really friendly to me for a while. He even did the dance with me and we chased each other around, throwing dirt, until Takis tripped and fell and couldn’t get up from the ground, he was laughing so much.
“You’re the dirtiest thing in the world,” he said.
I dumped the basket of pine bark on his head. He looked so startled and funny that I lost control. Takis saw the stream shoot down my leg and that set him off again.
When we got back to the house, he had to tell everyone, the snitch. “That’s enough, Takis,” Chrysoula said. “You can’t talk about Aliki that way. You must be her protector, like a brother. It’s time to start acting like a man.”
My Last Lament Page 4