The mass funeral and burial of the dead took most of the next day. So many new graves had to be dug, so many coffins made. We wouldn’t have been able to manage it without the help of the other village. Our priest had survived, but other area priests came to help him as there were more dead than living. And it was said that some villagers had fled when the shooting started and hadn’t returned. I saw Zephyra and her mother walking among the coffins, crossing themselves whenever the priests did. Zephyra’s mother and the few surviving women were talking about what had happened, how it had all come to pass. I felt them staring at me. But where was Takis?
After the dead had all been buried, I saw him for the first time since the events of that night. Crouched at the edge of the cemetery, he was watching, filthy and wild-eyed. When I went over to him, he looked like a dog that expects to be beaten. I held out my hand, but his eyes were so crazy I wasn’t sure he knew who I was. I tried to think what Chrysoula would have done. On a hunch, I turned as if to walk away, then wheeled back around and slapped his face twice. He sobbed and, after a few minutes of this, let me lead him back to the house.
Stelios looked at Takis with incomprehension. Finally Stelios said, “You couldn’t be there for your own mother’s burial?” Takis didn’t reply. Stelios seemed to take in the fact that Takis had become someone other than the boy we’d known. He exchanged a glance with me but turned back to Takis. “And how did you happen to be in the street already when we were all brought out? What had you been up to?”
Takis flew at him, clamping his jaws on Stelios’s right leg. Stelios cried out and tried to slap Takis off but instead lost his balance and fell over Takis onto the floor.
“Get him off me!” Stelios called and I ran to the kitchen, grabbed some bottled water left by the Germans and threw it in Takis’s face. He let go, and I pulled him across the floor while Stelios held his leg and moaned. “What’s wrong with him?”
“Takis, Takis,” I said, shaking him by the shoulders. His eyes were glazed and he trembled all over. I asked Stelios to help me get him onto one of the cots left by the Germans.
“Are you serious?” he said. “I’m not going near him.”
At first I thought Takis had lost his mind out of grief for his mother. They’d killed her in front of him, after all. I managed to hoist him onto the cot and pulled an army blanket over him. This seemed to calm him. He finally turned his face away from us and, amazingly, considering all that had happened, his breathing slipped into the rhythm of sleep. With twine from the kitchen, I tied his ankles together.
Stelios sat on the floor with his pants leg rolled up, examining the bite mark. There was a clear imprint of Takis’s teeth. The skin had been broken and blood was seeping out. I helped Stelios clean the wound and wrap a dry cloth around it.
“You should probably stay off it for now,” I said. “Lie down on one of the other cots, why don’t you? Here, I’ll pull one over.”
“As far from him as possible.”
I pulled two cots next to each other with a small space in between. Then I jumbled all the others in a great pile between us and Takis. If he tried to get to us in the night, he’d fall over the pile and wake us.
Stelios and I lay side by side. He reached across and held my hand until he fell asleep and let go.
I drifted through the night, asking myself the answers to the questions Stelios had asked Takis. I remembered hearing his footsteps upstairs as he left the house. I could guess what had happened, but I pushed it away. The pressing matter was, what would we do with him now? He could be a danger to us and probably was also one to himself. And more importantly, how were we to live? The Germans were gone, but the village was mostly a smoldering ruin. And there was bound to be blaming for what had brought the Germans out that night. I remembered Zephyra’s mother and the others staring at me in the cemetery. It was time to go.
In the morning, Stelios and I peered over the pile of cots at Takis, who was peering back. Some small awareness had returned to his gaze. I asked him how he was.
“I don’t know,” he said in a monotone. “My jaw. It hurts.”
“Not as much as my leg hurts,” Stelios said.
The reference was lost on Takis. He glanced around the room. “Where are we? Whose house is this?”
“It’s my father’s house,” I said.
“You can talk, Aliki. You’re talking.”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t sound like you used to. Has Mother heard you? She’ll be glad.”
Stelios and I exchanged glances. He was about to say something, but I rolled my eyes at him. “What exactly do you remember of the last two days?” I asked Takis.
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t believe you,” Stelios said.
“It’s the bomb. Maybe it went bang.”
“There’s no such thing.”
“Something went bang.”
“You could say that.”
Takis started to weep.
“Enough,” I said. I told them that we needed to get out of there to someplace where there’d be real food. If the Germans were pulling out all over the country, then they might already be gone from Athens. There was nothing to keep us in the village. Did Stelios have a key to his parents’ house in Athens? He said we wouldn’t need one because there was a spare in the courtyard of the Athens house. And the housekeeper, old Yannoula, was living there, looking after the place. She wasn’t Jewish so she hadn’t fled with him and his mother.
“But I don’t know if she’s definitely still there. Anything could have happened.”
We needed to survive until we could figure out what to do next. Or until Stelios’s father came back, if he ever did. My own father’s house would always be here in the village if we needed it.
Stelios shook his head. “I don’t seem to be able to think at all now. I just keep seeing my mother’s face everywhere I look.” He glanced at Takis and asked what we would do with him. Takis had stopped weeping but still seemed glazed.
“He has to come with us,” I said. “We can’t leave him here to starve.”
“Why not? I can think of a few good reasons.”
“Chrysoula wouldn’t have wanted us to abandon Takis. And certainly not in the state he’s in. I’ll look after him and keep him from bothering you.” I surprised myself with the authority in my new old-lady voice. Stelios wasn’t pleased, but I could see he understood how determined I was.
“Do you think we’d walk to Athens?” he asked. “It’s a long way and I don’t know if I can even walk across the room.”
“Try.”
He limped around the room. But to go far, he’d need a cane or crutch of some kind. I untied Takis’s ankles and helped him to wash up a bit.
As we left the blackened village, Stelios broke a board from a fence and used it for a walking stick. Takis kept his eyes ahead and didn’t appear to be taking in much. Even when we passed the cemetery, he looked neither right nor left. Stelios and I glanced at the mounds of raw earth but the sight made us both come unstrung. We turned away, our faces wet, and hurried after Takis, who’d moved on without us.
The road was full of ruts made by the departing German tanks and trucks and we walked in them slowly so Stelios could keep up. At one point, Takis asked over his shoulder, “What’s wrong with your leg?”
“Go to hell,” Stelios muttered.
After a while, we passed the next village, the one whose men had helped us bury our dead. Flags were flying and villagers were shooting off guns in celebration. Banners were strung across the road and tied to olive trees on either side. “Long live free Greece!”
An old man with a donkey cart offered us a ride, saying, “God has enough to spare.” Was it a general comment or was he talking about himself? The three of us sat in the back, our legs dangling off the end, with me in the middle separating Takis and S
telios. We rode for a long time without speaking. Then a group of four or five boys, half-starved and in ragged clothes, crept from behind a boulder. They stared as we went by. Farther along, three girls about my age came up behind the cart and asked if we had anything to eat. I had a single packet of the leathery German rations left and tossed it to them. As it hit the ground they fell on it, fighting each other to tear off the wrapper.
We didn’t know it at the time, but there were bands of such children all over the country. War had left many orphans and they roamed the countryside in packs.
“Where are you going?” one called up at us.
“Athens,” I answered.
“It’s worse there. People starving in the streets. Don’t go.”
“We have to.”
“Don’t go.”
But others said, “Take us with you!” and ran alongside the cart.
“They’re like wild dogs,” the old man said. “My wife, she tried to help them, even took a couple into our house. But they stole anything they could. And then others showed up. You know what they say—if you lie down with dogs, you catch their fleas. I drove them off.”
A little later, we passed a rocky outcrop far above us with a monastery on top. They had plenty of food there, the old man said, “. . . the greedy bastards.” The monks dropped rocks on anyone who tried to climb up to the walls. “One day, though, they’ll have to pay. Every sheep will hang by its own foot on the butcher’s hook, as they say.”
For most of the day, we bounced on the hard boards of the wagon. Stelios stared into the distance behind us and from time to time wiped his eyes. Takis held on to the side of the wagon and kept his face turned away from ours. I tried not to look at either of them, tried to empty my mind and make it ready. For what? I didn’t know. After my father’s burial, Chrysoula told me that the death of someone you love was like a deep cut with a sharp knife. “The real pain,” she said, “comes later when the wound is cold.”
The old man asked me where we were going and why, but I just said Athens. It seemed to me that what had happened to the three of us back in the village had to be secret. It made us different from everyone else and I wouldn’t have known how to explain it anyway. We passed through many towns, sometimes sleeping fitfully on the hard wood, as day became night then day again. The old man stopped at the side of the road for a nap now and then, but soon slapped the donkey’s rump, urging him on. Finally late one afternoon he stopped in the Athenian suburb of Halandri. The streets were full of townspeople waiting to see the British troops, the first Allied forces in Greece, pass through on their way to Athens. People had carried Oriental carpets into the street and scattered flower petals and laurel leaves to welcome the troops. Without a word, Takis clambered down from the cart and wandered off into the crowd. I called after him, but he disappeared. I couldn’t just let him go so I helped Stelios down from the cart and the old man said, “Be brave, and remember—he who slaps his own face should not cry out!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Stelios asked. “He has a saying for everything whether it fits or not.”
“Do you know where we are? Is it far to your house?”
“Quite a ways. We’ll need another ride.”
We made our way through the crowd and climbed up onto the base of a statue of a hero of the War of Independence. From there we watched the British jeeps approach. Flowers and laurel branches rained down on them from the cheering crowds. The smiling and waving soldiers were up to their chests in tributes from the towns they’d already passed through. Jeep after jeep went by, but the crowd never ran out of enthusiasm. People surged toward the jeeps and some ran alongside, trying to touch individual soldiers. A young woman caught up with one jeep and passed the soldiers a pitcher of cold water. Someone else offered up a beaker of red wine. A man held up a sign in English: PLEASE TO MARRY MY DAUGHTERS PLEASE!
Then we saw Takis. He was trying to run with the jeeps but kept falling behind. One of the soldiers reached down and pulled him up. There he sat, our Takis, amid flowers and leaves on the lap of one of the British soldiers. He lifted Takis’s arm and helped him wave to the crowds. Takis quickly caught on and waved hard, as if he had personally brought about the liberation of Greece. Well, I thought, he’s exchanged the Germans for the British. I called out to him, but he didn’t look our way.
“He won’t know how to find us in Athens,” I said.
“Good,” Stelios said.
“Where will he go? How will he survive?”
Stelios didn’t reply and we climbed down from the statue. People were getting into cars and trucks to follow the British jeeps into Athens. We found room in the back of a truck where people were embracing each other and singing the national anthem.
. . . from the graves of our slain,
Shall thy valour prevail,
As we greet thee again,
Hail, Liberty! Hail!
It was as if we were all friends, part of a huge family. The outlying towns seemed to run into each other, one after another, until a sign told us we’d entered Athens and a huge hill right in the middle of the city came into view. A cheer went up and I recognized the Parthenon from postage stamps and drachma notes. But I’d had so little schooling that I really didn’t understand what it was. I asked Stelios if that was where the king had lived before the Germans came. He just laughed.
The buildings were so tall and didn’t look at all damaged. Stelios said there’d been no house-to-house fighting when Greece surrendered to the Germans so most buildings were intact. But they’d taken most all the food, as they’d done elsewhere, and promptly shot both looters and people who’d defaced walls with anti-German slogans.
The streets were full of people embracing and kissing as all the bells in the city rang. When the truck could go no farther, near a place that Stelios said was Parliament, we all climbed down. He took my hand and pulled me along through the crowd, up a wide avenue where electric trolleys—I’d never seen one before—were stranded like islands in a sea of people. We climbed a hill into the area called Kolonaki, where flags were draped from all the balconies of the houses and apartment buildings. People in a square were shouting and waving flags.
Opening a gate just off the square, Stelios led me into a shady courtyard. There was a fountain and orange trees so I couldn’t see the house well.
“It’s all right!” he said. “It looks just the same. We’re home, Aliki!”
From under a stone bench, Stelios took a key and unlocked a door. Inside, the house was narrow but tall. I’d never been in a house with more than one story. This one went up and up, with a marble staircase coiling right through the center and rooms opening off each side. Stelios ran up the stairs, calling out, “Yannoula, Yannoula! I’m home.”
I wandered into a parlor with a chandelier, something else I’d never seen, that threw sparkles of light over the red plush sofas and paintings in gilded frames. I wanted to see more, but I was so exhausted that I wondered if I was already dreaming. I sat down on one of the sofas and fell asleep at once.
Hours later, someone nudged me awake and I thought it was Chrysoula. But it was an old woman in black. She passed me a mug of something steaming—bean soup. Oh, the smell of it, garlic and onions and—could it be? Chicken broth! To use a chicken for broth in those times, well, it was almost a criminal act, but I was grateful for the crime. A bay leaf floated on the surface like a tiny arrow pointing at me.
CASSETTE 2 Side 2
Excuse my hoarseness. My throat’s still sore from the wake last night. Such a gathering—all the women of the village were there, at least those of us who can still walk and talk. At the far side of Zephyra’s parlor, her wooden coffin was supported on chair seats, with the tall brass candlesticks from the church at head and foot. Even from across the room you could make out the Nose.
I went up to the coffin and wept for Zephyra, for all of us, damaged a
s we are, who must bear our damage through and out of this world. The women who’d prepared Zephyra for burial had come across a stash of bottles of raki under her bed. I hope, in life, they gave her some comfort, after all. And they would give us some too before the evening was out.
A pair of Zephyra’s shoes had been placed for me on the floor in front of the coffin. Taking my own off, I slipped into hers. Well, no, slipped is not the word. Forced my feet inside, ouch. I could barely keep my balance and teetered over Zephyra’s body so close I could smell the lemon soap they’d used to wash her. The other women began to wail and call out messages for Zephyra to carry to their relatives on the other side.
“Can you ask Mother where she hid the family wedding shawl? Could she send a sign? Our Frosini needs it for the ceremony.”
“I can’t find the bag of gold sovereigns that Manos left under the floorboards in the work shed. Did he spend it all?”
“Tell Kostas that his brother is still trying to cheat me out of the potato field.”
The cries came faster, along with one higher voice calling out, “For death is the camel, the dark camel that kneels at every door.” We keened and shouted curses on God for taking the living from us. What do we really own, after all, but our bodies and memories? Then the surge of Zephyra started up through my legs and into my chest. In the room of shadows, I moved toward the partly opened door, but when I reached it, my own voice filled the room, saying something I couldn’t follow as the amber light faded and the door was gone.
As I came to I saw that I was on a sofa with the others gathered around me waving spirits of ammonia under my nose and telling me to calm myself. Such eloquence, they said; I’d honored Zephyra with my lament. What had I chanted? Something like this, they told me:
I was Zephyra,
Named for the wind.
But my life fell as rain on hard summer soil,
Cooling not even the sweet basil by the gate,
Not even the goats that ate it
When they’d finished with my soul.
My Last Lament Page 8