My Last Lament

by James William Brown

  We had a tense evening with all of us sitting in the basement listening to the shortwave, which continued to talk about the Soviets pushing the Germans back to Europe. If the ones in Greece didn’t leave soon, they’d definitely be cut off at the northern border and trapped here. With the Allies then all over Italy, and British victories in North Africa, there’d be little possibility of escape.

  But the voice of the newscaster seemed to fade from time to time when I thought I heard my father talking again in the background. No one else in the room could hear him becoming more urgent, asking if he’d left an ax in the woods or maybe a hammer. They were borrowed from old Damien, the carpenter, and would have to be returned, he insisted. Was it just my longing for him that was turning into words he might have said? Or was there some kind of border area in life, like the margins on either side of a page, where the dead lived alongside us? If that was true, what did he think of Stelios?

  After Chrysoula put Takis to bed, she and Sophia started a quiet conversation in the far corner of the basement. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but Stelios was nearby, listening and saying nothing. I caught his eye and asked with my own eyes what was happening. He came over and sat beside me.

  “Mother thinks that, uh, she and I should leave. It’s too dangerous for you all to have us here in the house any longer.”

  The events of the day, especially the fact that Stelios and I might have come home when the colonel was here, had convinced her. And she, like Chrysoula, was angry that the two of us had behaved so foolishly. As she talked to Chrysoula, Sophia looked pale and distraught and it was clear that she’d been weeping. She’d told Chrysoula that the village informant was not likely to give up and there might be more than one.

  “Mother wants me to help her make our way into the hills. Beyond where you and I were this afternoon, I mean. She hopes we can find another partisan group who’ll help us the way the others did when we left Athens and came here. We still have a little money left. I mean, they always want money.”

  The thought of his leaving and the role I’d played in it made me feel ill. A wave of nausea shook me. But what do you think? I wrote.

  “Mother’s too weak for the climb into the hills. I’ve already told her that. And what are the chances of our finding a sympathetic group to help us? I think Chrysoula is saying the same thing. And that the Germans are finito.”

  He drew a finger across his throat. They’d start pulling out any day now. And Chrysoula had also pointed out Sophia’s health. With her persistent and worsening cough, which had left her weak and listless, how far would she get in the mountains, even with Stelios to help her?

  “About this afternoon,” he said to me, “don’t blame yourself. Chrysoula was right about my being older and I should have been more responsible. But whatever happened, we both wanted it, didn’t we? And we were lucky, so lucky. Maybe that’s a good sign. Maybe Chrysoula is right and this will all be over next week.”

  Chrysoula and Sophia had stopped talking but it wasn’t clear that anything had been decided. Or if it had been, they weren’t telling us yet. Chrysoula asked Stelios how his new play was coming along.

  “We could use a diversion, I think,” she said.

  “It isn’t completely new,” he said. “There’s an old one called Karagiozis and the Seven Beasts and I’m adapting it. There’ll only be one beast with four heads. You’ll see why. I’ll work on it some more and show you tomorrow night.”

  The next night we gathered in the candlelit room, waiting. I looked hard at Stelios before he disappeared behind the white screen. Could what Chrysoula had told me about what men did with women be true even of him? I wasn’t sure what to think; it made me a little queasy.

  Just before the play was to begin, Takis stomped down the ladder and sat. Earlier he’d said he didn’t want to see the play because he was sure it would be stupid. But there he was, sitting with us in the half-light.

  In the opening scene, Karagiozis danced and sang.

  Trin, trin, trin,

  What a mess we’re in.

  The beast is at the door,

  Soon we’ll be no more.

  Trin, trin, trin,

  What a mess we’re in.

  The sultan appeared and told Karagiozis that it was time to rid the village of the great four-headed beast. Handing him some coins, he said, “Go throughout the village and announce that whoever kills the great beast will win the eternal friendship of the lovely but silent Aliki.”

  Everyone looked at me. I flushed with pleasure and some embarrassment. I suppose Stelios wouldn’t have worked my name in if we hadn’t had our walk together. So something must have felt different for him too, as I’d suspected.

  Next, Karagiozis met the puppet that Takis had named after himself. “That’s my puppet,” the real Takis said. “Who said you could use it?”

  “Ah, Mr. Takis,” Karagiozis said to both Takis and his puppet, “will you help me? Will you help our village?”

  “Ye-e-esss,” Takis said, dragging out the word with reluctance.

  “We must make an announcement,” Karagiozis said. He told the Takis puppet what to say and they agreed to split up so they could cover the village more quickly. They crisscrossed the screen, shouting, “Hear ye, hear ye! Whoever kills the beast with four heads wins the eternal friendship of the silent Aliki.”

  I was to be the prize? Was the play a little valentine Stelios was sending me? A villager came along and said he would do it, he would kill the beast. Did the villager have any coins on him? Karagiozis asked. “The beast has magnets in his mouth and will draw you in for a meal if your pockets are full of coins.” The villager thanked Karagiozis and gave him his money.

  Enter the beast with four heads. In fact, it was a swastika carved out of bark like the other puppets. On each of the four arms was a paper cut-out monster head with open mouth and waggling tongue. Stelios had attached the swastika loosely to one of the bamboo poles so it could rotate as it moved. The beast roared and whirled toward the villager, entangling him and dragging him offstage screaming.

  Sophia and Chrysoula looked at each other. Sophia called out, “Really, Stelios, I don’t think this is funny at all. Couldn’t you . . . ?”

  “What a monster!” Takis called out. “Takis will bomb the monster! Let Takis do it.”

  Other villagers volunteered. With each one, Karagiozis cheated him of his money first, then the whirling swastika came for the villager.

  “Yaaaaaaay!” Takis yelled.

  “It’s only a play, Takis,” Chrysoula said.

  “Eh, Stelios,” Takis called out, “let Takis kill the monster!”

  A new character appeared. From his gangly tallness, we saw that it was a caricature of Stelios himself.

  “For the fair Aliki and for the good of all mankind,” Stelios said in his own voice, “I will do the deed!”

  Enter the monster again, spinning and growling. It went first for Karagiozis. But the Stelios puppet collided with the swastika, ripping off two of its paper heads. It collapsed, bellowing.

  Takis jumped to his feet. “No, no, Takis should bomb the monster!”

  “Sit down, Takis,” Chrysoula said. “Stop interrupting.”

  “Let Takis bomb the monster!”

  “Just be patient,” Stelios called from behind the screen.

  “I hate this play,” Takis said. “It’s stupid. Mine was better.”

  “Then don’t watch it,” his mother said. “Go to bed.” Takis climbed upstairs.

  Sophia told Stelios to stop the play. “It’s too upsetting.”

  He peered over the top of the screen. “There’s more to come about Takis. I’m not leaving him out. I mean, he comes to help me and together we kill the beast and win Aliki’s friendship.”

  “Another time, dear,” Sophia said.

  But there wasn’t to
be one. Chrysoula and Sophia were talking about Takis and probably didn’t hear what I heard: the front door upstairs opening and Takis’s footsteps leaving the house. I was helping Stelios gather everything from the play and he was saying how Takis’s jealousy had ruined the evening. How much time passed? I’ve never been able to remember. Stelios handed me the swastika monster and I was looking at how carefully it had been made. Our fingers touched on the puppet and I felt the same little surge of joy I’d had on our walk before I kissed him.

  There was a hammering at the door upstairs, then boots thumped through to the kitchen. With a shock, I realized the obvious—that Takis probably hadn’t pulled the rug back across the trapdoor before he went out. Down the ladder came Colonel Esterhaus and some of his men, who spread themselves out in front of us. At first they just stood there looking at us, especially at Stelios and his mother. And at the swastika puppet Stelios and I were holding. We’d gone completely still and I saw the color drain out of Stelios’s face. What would the colonel have understood of all this? Whatever it was, he barked a command to his men, who began to herd us together and push us one by one up the ladder to the main floor and toward the front door. Sophia stumbled and fell to the floor coughing. I helped her to her feet, but we were both shaking so badly that if one of the soldiers hadn’t pushed us with the butt of his rifle, we would both have collapsed together. Outside, Takis was crouched beside the fountain. When he saw his mother, he ran to her, but she asked him what he’d been doing.

  “Get back inside,” she ordered. Instead, Takis threw himself at the colonel, seizing his leg. The colonel pushed him away and he fell to the ground. Neighbors were pouring out of their houses.

  “Chrysoula, what is it?”

  “What has happened?”

  “And who are they?” someone asked, pointing to Stelios and his mother.

  More soldiers were there now with rifles, ordering the neighbors back into their houses. A few did go in but not all. Some of the same old women who gathered regularly at the fountain to trade insults with Chrysoula stayed and one of them began a low hiss at the Germans—the old sound meant to shame someone for an unspeakable act. The other women joined her and the hissing grew in size and repetition. It was a strange, frightening sound and the soldiers clearly didn’t know what to make of it. But the women, who would have been more cautious only a few weeks before, were probably worn out and fed up with the loss of sons and grandsons, with eating grass and even dirt. The war was nearly finished and the Germans defeated, so the women continued hissing and hissing.

  Then one of them spat out the words Your shame! The soldiers wouldn’t have understood or even cared what the women were saying or that this carried power in our language. But the disdain in the words was unmistakable. It became a chant. Dropee sas! Dropee sas! Dropee sas!

  Who threw a stone? Who threw another? Just pebbles, no doubt; the street was full of them and soon whole handfuls were hitting the soldiers’ faces. At first they tried to avoid the stones, ducking and turning, but there was no escape; the women were relentless and some of the soldiers’ faces were bleeding. An order was shouted and the soldiers began to shoot.

  In the chaos—screams and shots and everyone running from the rifles, escaping into side streets and lanes—I tried to run, but someone grabbed my hand and pulled me down behind the fountain, where the wounded lay on the ground moaning. In a few minutes the shooting stopped, but there was the sound of a lot of running back and forth. Soon smoke was everywhere and I realized that houses were being torched. But why? Just in retaliation for the stone throwing?

  We heard later that things like this had happened in other places just before the Germans pulled out. Nasty farewell gifts? Perhaps the soldiers would have done such things here anyway, with or without the stones. But if the women hadn’t acted as they did, what would have happened to those of us brought up from the basement? We would never know the answers to these questions and we would never stop wondering.

  I saw it was Stelios who’d taken my hand and was pulling me away, asking, “Did you see my mother? I lost her when the shooting started.” I hadn’t and I’d also lost track of Chrysoula and Takis. We were running from footsteps behind us, but whether they were soldiers or other villagers, we never knew. At the edge of the village, we stumbled into the ditch where my father had stolen the squash, where Stelios and his mother had originally hidden. We lay there for most of the night. It sounded as if the soldiers were going from house to house, setting them on fire and shooting anyone who tried to stop them. Screams rose up from the village along with the shouting of the soldiers and smoke from the burning houses. Stelios beat the ground with his fists and cried out, “She’s dead, I know it.” I covered his mouth with my hands to stifle the sound.

  “Don’t,” I heard myself say quietly. “We’ll find her.”

  Words had finally come from my mouth. The new disaster had released the hold of my father’s death. But I spoke in the cracked voice of an old woman, the voice that has stayed with me all these years, this voice of a crone. I don’t know why, any more than I know why once I had a father and Stelios a mother and then we didn’t. Or why once there was a village and then there wasn’t.

  With all the shouting and screaming, Stelios didn’t seem to notice that I’d spoken. There was also a new noise, one of engines starting up, and the sight of headlights moving away from the village. Were the Germans leaving at last?

  Early the next morning when everything was so quiet that the village seemed deserted, we crept back. Several houses were still on fire, including Chrysoula’s, but where was she? Bodies were everywhere, but there were no soldiers. We stepped over people I’d known all my life—the carpenter my father had once borrowed the ax from, women who came to the lion fountain.

  And then we saw them—Chrysoula and Sophia. They were propped up against the wall of a house, almost as if they’d been sitting there having a companionable chat. Their eyes were still open, their faces expressionless. Kneeling in front of them, Stelios reached out and shook his mother’s shoulder lightly, as if to awaken her.

  I closed Chrysoula’s eyes, this good woman who’d cared for me as a daughter. Sitting beside her, I stroked her hair and thought of the long talks she’d mentioned that now we’d never have. “Talk to me,” I said, though I knew she would never do so again. “Oh, please.” Around us, the few remaining villagers alive searched for their dead, wailing and tearing their hair. But where were the Germans? And where was Takis?

  Stelios was holding his mother and rocking her, muttering words of the song she used to sing, “. . . For they fly and take their ease . . .”

  I don’t know how we managed the next few days. It was as if weights were strapped to my head and limbs and even the slightest movement in mind or body required effort beyond my strength. But effort had to be made. I somehow took my grief and just put it away, pushed it into a little room in my mind and shut the door. It was the only thing I could do in order to get through one day and then another. This wasn’t entirely new for me. I realized I’d done something like it after my father’s death in order to bear the weight of what had happened . . . I know now that time lessens these things as if it takes pity on us when death does not.

  Men from an unharmed village nearby came to help us prepare our dead for burial. From them we heard that the Germans were leaving the countryside everywhere, in fact evacuating the whole country. Ordinarily, we would have celebrated, but instead Stelios and I had to rely on these men to help us bring the bodies of his mother and Chrysoula to my father’s house. It was one of the few that hadn’t been burned, because, we supposed, the colonel had requisitioned it. Now it was empty.

  Placing broad planks between two pairs of chairs, we laid out Sophia and Chrysoula with candles at their heads and feet. I sat with them all night while Stelios paced. He’d stop and stroke his mother’s hair, saying, “You were right—we should have gone. We’d be far
away by now and none of this would have happened. How will I tell Papa when he comes back?”

  I wept for Chrysoula and Sophia but especially for Stelios, as there was no knowing if his father would ever return. Looking at the two women, I couldn’t help thinking, They’re dead, but we’re alive. I felt ashamed of the thought. But then I heard my father’s voice saying, It’s all random, Aliki, who lives and who dies. There’s no sense to it.

  I wasn’t sure what was happening to me, but I felt a kind of wave rise through me, into my chest and then my head, and I just seemed to swoon away. I saw myself entering a room of shadows. On the other side was a door just a bit open with a dim amber light spilling out. I had the feeling there was some truth beyond everything I’d ever known beyond that door. If only I could get it fully open. I tried to move closer, but it seemed my feet were as heavy as blocks of cement. I heard a sound that I would realize later was my own voice. But I couldn’t make out any words. They went on for what must have been a long time. When they finished, I was filled with a sense of well-being, almost of calm.

  Through it, I heard Stelios say, “Aliki, you’ve been speaking!”

  “I have?”

  “So you have a voice after all. But it’s scratchy like an old lady’s.”

  “What did I say?”

  “I didn’t really understand. Something about the earth eating the young and old, mothers of children and the fathers too. I mean, there were lots of sounds that weren’t words, sort of like, oo loo loo.”

  “Oh, the sound that Chrysoula said the flying chickens make.”

  “What?”

  “Just something she said once.”

  The door opened and a few neighbors came in, the only survivors, all in black. Who was lamenting? they asked. Would she lament for their dead too?

  So that was what I had been doing—lamenting. But I was too exhausted for any more and fell asleep there on the floor.