I wasn’t sure where to begin. I said that Takis had probably brought the soldiers that night because he was jealous. He seemed crazy enough to do such a thing, though he had no memory of it and denied it. Chrysoula’s house had been under suspicion before that and someone had been informing on her. But it was the village women throwing pebbles at the Germans that brought on the shooting that killed both women and many other villagers. Takis, out of his mind from the death of his mother, had attacked Stelios. He needed help and there was no one to give it, no one to love him. Except me. And I was letting him down.
“What a story! Letting him down? Because of him, my dear Sophia and the others are dead!”
“Maybe.”
When I explained about the orphanage, she said, “Oh, dear, how awful. But if he really is so disturbed it might be for the best. Where’s this base he’s at?” I told her the route I’d taken. “Theo mou, Aliki. By yourself you did this?”
“I couldn’t bring myself to tell Stelios. I want to get Takis out of there. I think . . . I think he could live with us.”
“Really? Is that a good idea?”
“I don’t know. I can’t just abandon him.” My voice quavered and my vision blurred. “I can’t.”
Yannoula came over to sit beside me and put her arm around my shoulders.
“Let me think about this. It’s far more complicated than I realized. I could have a word with Stelios, I suppose. But I’m not sure what I’d say.”
“He’s stubborn.”
“Oh, well. Two women, one stubborn man. It’s the history of the world. Let me think about all this.” She moved back to her bed and finished the wine in silence. Then she yawned and said, “Right now I think I’ve got an appointment with some bedbugs.”
She climbed into bed fully clothed. I got into the other bed. Through the room’s single window the lights of the city had died down and high above in the night sky the stars were like salt shaken from a giant saltcellar. But they seemed to sway. Or was I the one swaying from the wine?
The gunfire continued and was still going on by the time of our performance the next evening. It grew closer as the play unfolded. When Katsondonis was saying good-bye to his wife, a few people in the audience got up and left. Further along, others did the same. Afraid we’d lose the whole audience and have to return their money, we tried to speak our lines faster. Stelios raced through one of the hero’s final speeches.
I say good-bye to you, tall hills, and to you, rocks on high.
You are my witnesses and must to all proclaim
That with a few soldiers, I put thousands to flight.
An explosion nearby was followed by the tremendous noise of what seemed to be a collapsing building. A group of men with rifles charged past the screen, shouting, “Death to fascism!” They disappeared inside the ruined apartment block. By then our audience was gone.
Michaelis took us back to Kolonaki but by an indirect route through side streets and lanes. When we asked why, he said that the day before, December 3, there’d been a demonstration organized by communist groups in front of Parliament in the very place where, only months before, crowds had celebrated the liberation. It was to protest the fact that the British, along with the old government and the Athens police, had demanded that members of the groups turn in their weapons.
“The police got scared—probably thought it was some kind of takeover—and stupidly fired into the crowd. What idiots! Blood everywhere, more than thirty dead and a hundred or more wounded. Now mobs are attacking police stations all over the city. And the British, they’re trying to protect the police, the fools.”
Right on cue we turned into a plateia not far from the house and nearly collided with a British tank coming straight at us. Michaelis tried to back out, but we were blocked from behind by another tank. He shouted out the window in English at no one in particular, “What you want, to kill me? Or better I should do it myself to save you the trouble?”
But the tanks weren’t interested in us. The one behind moved forward and Michaelis was able to back out, turn around and, in a few minutes, rush through the deserted streets. We were home. “Go inside, lock your doors,” Michaelis said. “Don’t go out even if you’re starving.” Stelios invited him to come inside and stay until it was safe to drive back to Piraeus.
“And when will that be, the year after next?” He was gone before Stelios could insist.
The fighting continued the rest of the month. Our neighborhood remained under British control and we were advised not to leave the house except to run a few close-to-home errands. We had enough money from our Piraeus performances to buy the few supplies we needed. To go anywhere else, people had to pass military checkpoints. Anyone who crossed back and forth regularly was suspected of being a spy and could be shot on the spot. We could hear gunfire in spurts from other neighborhoods nearby. Some of the worst fighting was up near the Kaisariani area, we heard. So when Yannoula tried to discuss Takis with Stelios, whether or not to have him in the house wasn’t the point anymore. There was no chance of getting safely up to the British base by then. And, as Stelios said, probably the orphans had already been sent abroad.
It was my fault, I thought; my own indecision was to blame. I should have gone after Takis that day. Stelios might have given in if I’d just shown up with Takis. I was certain I could have looked after him and kept him from exploding again. But it was too late.
I lost all appetite and energy. Even the news that the British were bringing in more troops barely registered. Stelios told Yannoula and me that he’d heard that Winston Churchill himself was here, determined not to see the city fall to communist hands. He was directing the British forces from the steps of the Grande Bretagne Hotel in Syntagma Square. I didn’t care. On Christmas Day, I went to bed and didn’t want to get up. For days I drifted and dreamed and slept and drifted again. Yannoula brought me soup and helped me to the bathroom, where I threw it up.
The place of laments—I recognized it when I drifted into it. Oh, this again, I thought, the door partway open, the light from behind it. What did this place want of me? I sensed no laments. But there were other dead there now. First my father, who didn’t ask me about his missing tools. Did he know I wasn’t in the village anymore? He was still complaining that there wasn’t a decent kafeneion where a body could sit with friends, bothering a string of beads. What’s the point of being eternally dead if you can’t even get a good cup of coffee? Someone was circulating another petition, but he didn’t expect much to come of it. Around here, no one ever learns anything. Everyone’s as stupid as the day they got here.
Chrysoula was there too and welcomed me the traditional way, saying, It is good that you have come, and I gave the formal response, “It is good that I have found you.” She handed me a glass of cool water and some preserved cherries on a spoon. But then she went back to comforting Sophia, who was walking back and forth across the room, pulling her hair, now white, and shrieking. Her husband, Alexis, had still not turned up, Chrysoula said, and they didn’t know what to think. Is he with you? she asked me. Did he come home? Before I could answer, a hot wind rushed up from nowhere, pushing us all against the wall. Sophia’s hair fanned out like a helmet. Have a snail, Chrysoula said to no one in particular. They’re so tasty. “What about Takis?” I asked. Not here, not here, she said. He’s with you. Treat him like a brother always.
From far away, I heard Yannoula. “It’s that boy she’s grieving for,” she said to someone as she helped me out of bed to the bathroom and back again. I drifted off again and then a while after that—hours? days?—I felt myself lifted and I smelled the scent of lemon soap, felt warm water rush over me, or was it rain outside the window?
“It’s New Year’s Eve,” Yannoula said, beside my bed. “It’s almost 1945.” She was wearing a long apron with wet splotches. “I gave you a bath. Hope you don’t mind. Best to greet the new year clean.” She was ho
lding a bottle of yellow liqueur. “Here, drink this.” She tipped it to my mouth. “A little treat for New Year’s.” It smelled like honeysuckle and its sweetness made my teeth ache. She helped me dress and go downstairs.
In the parlor, Stelios was cranking up an old Victrola and putting a record on it when he turned and saw me. “Ah, you’re better,” he said, crossing the room to put his arms around me. “We’ve been so worried.”
He smelled faintly of the honeysuckle liqueur. A waltz started up on the Victrola and he tried to lead me into it but I was too weak and didn’t know how to dance anyway. He got me to one of the remaining chairs, saying that I hadn’t heard the rumors of a possible cease-fire. Churchill had flown to Athens on Christmas Eve and had been negotiating with the local leaders at the Grande Bretagne Hotel downtown. And already the fighting had lessened a bit in anticipation of an agreement expected soon. I realized then that the sound outside was just heavy rain, not gunfire.
“All over the city,” Stelios said, “people are starting to go out and around again.”
“I was able to do a little trading,” Yannoula said. “Just a few things for a little celebration.” She took off her wet apron, revealing that she was wearing one of her old gowns, faded yellow, with a train. Pouring more of the liqueur for herself and Stelios, she offered me some, but I turned it down, still feeling a little dazed. Stelios pulled her into a waltz and they whirled around the room, Yannoula talking all the while.
“My second husband, Manolis,” she said, “used to take me dancing at this wonderful place for New Year’s. Out in Voula, it was, overlooking the water. It had everything—dancing, drinking, gambling. Manolis liked to play cards so he was at it all night, the old fool.”
She told us how she’d run into some old friends from the theater. It had been years since she’d left the stage so they’d started drinking toasts and trading stories. This had gone on until dawn and by the time the sun appeared, they were all drunk, falling over each other, shrieking with laughter. The manager and waiters stood around yawning. It was bad manners and bad business to ask them to leave. It might have brought a year of bad luck.
“Then Manolis appeared and said he’d lost everything—the house, the car, everything. In one night our lives changed utterly. Just imagine.”
“What did you do?” Stelios asked, stumbling on Yannoula’s train as he spun her around.
“Moved in with relatives, but it killed Manolis. In six months, he was dead. Just willed himself to die, you know, from the shame of it all. He wasn’t a bad man, but he had his demons, like all men. Gambling was the worst. What was I to do? That’s when I answered Sophia’s ad for a housekeeper. The very next day after the funeral. I certainly never thought . . .”
The lights blinked once and then went out. The music distorted as the record slowed and stopped.
“This keeps happening,” Stelios said. “Wires down everywhere and no one to repair them.”
“If you can feel your way to the dining room,” Yannoula said, “there are candles. And I’ve made a little New Year’s meal.”
Stelios and I held hands and felt our way along the walls. Yannoula had lit candles in a candelabra in the middle of the dining room table. On a platter, herbed rice had been molded into an odd shape.
“A goose!” she said. “In honor of Karagiozis. Let’s eat it before it runs off with the potatoes and tomatoes. Then we can cut the New Year’s cake and see who gets the lucky coin.” The cake was a sad business, flat on one side and a bit burned because the flour you got these days, Yannoula said, was like sand.
Just as we were sitting down, there was a pounding at the front door. We sat still, looking at each other in the flickering light. Before the cease-fire, a knock on the door after dark might mean anything. Had that really changed? Stelios took a candle out of the candelabra and left the room. Yannoula and I heard muffled conversation and returning footsteps.
Standing in the dining room doorway with Stelios was what looked like a dripping tent under a large British Army hat. An arm appeared from a slit in the side and took off the hat, revealing the head of a very wet Takis. He was in what must have been an army rain poncho, which dragged on the floor and dripped from all sides.
No one said anything for a long moment. Then Yannoula raised her glass of liqueur and said, “Happy New Year.”
I walked unsteadily to Takis, knelt and put my arms around him, pressing my face against his wet neck. “You’re here,” I said. “You’re safe.”
“You’re crying on my neck,” he said.
“Yannoula, this is Takis. He’s from my village.”
“Really? I’ve heard a lot about you, Mr. Takis.”
Takis winced, then said, “But I haven’t heard anything about you.”
“Well, we’ll have to work on that, won’t we? But first you must take off your wet things.” She bustled over to him, yards of her gown trailing after. Grabbing one edge of the poncho and signaling me to take the other, we pulled it over his head. He was still in the too-big uniform with rolled-up sleeves and trousers.
“What am I doing here?” he asked.
“Yes, well,” Stelios said, “that is the question, isn’t it?”
“Have a drink,” Yannoula said. “It’s very warming.”
She wobbled back to the table, poured a glassful and took it to Takis. He had a sip.
“Yuck.”
“We’re all waiting to know,” Stelios said. “Why are you here?”
“I escaped.”
“What does that mean?”
“Actually, I didn’t really escape. I just walked out. No one cared.”
“Come sit down, Takis,” I said. Yannoula and I led him to the table.
“What’s that?” He pointed at the rice goose, which had begun to lose its shape.
“Have some,” Yannoula said. “Let’s all have some.”
We ate in silence. Then I asked Takis how he’d found us and if he’d had any trouble getting there. None at all, he said, there were no neighborhood patrols anymore; you could go anywhere. He’d remembered my directions.
“But why now, Takis?” I asked. “After all the trouble you gave me that day, what made you come now?”
“What trouble?” Stelios said. “What day?”
I explained to Stelios that I’d been to see Takis a month or so before, but he hadn’t wanted to come away with me. Stelios took in this information with a frown.
“They stopped deporting us during the hard fighting. But it’s started up again. I had to go somewhere or be shipped out. They don’t want us around, not now that they’ve found the graves.”
The British had tried to keep it from the orphans on the base, but word got out, Takis told us. The first mass grave was not that far from the British base in the foothills above Athens, row after row of bodies, men and women of all ages. The British soldiers had come back to the camp, talking about the horror of it, and had been overheard. After the riots of December 3, the People’s Committees had rounded up their enemies all over the city, some accused of being collaborators, including men from the Security Battalions who’d staged the bloccos with the Germans. But many were just ordinary citizens possibly subject to old grudges, not always political. Some had been tortured and all had been shot and hastily buried in trenches on the slopes of Mt. Hymettus, just behind Athens. There would turn out to be in all nine mass grave sites discovered there.
“I heard they put out one man’s eyes with their thumbs,” Takis said. “Do you know what eyes look like outside their sockets? Like runny eggs. That’s what they said.”
We put our forks down. Takis went on eating. Stelios left the room.
“He hates me,” Takis said.
“Stelios has always been such a good boy,” Yannoula said. “I’m sure he doesn’t hate anyone.”
“I didn’t want to come here. But everyone
says awful things happen to the Red Cross orphans.” He started to cry, then went to the door of the room and grabbed his wet poncho. I went after him.
“You can’t go,” I said.
“I shouldn’t have come.”
“Stay. I’ll talk to Stelios.”
“It won’t make any difference.” His shoulders were trembling.
“It’ll be all right.”
He cried even harder and sobbed, “I want my mother. I don’t know what happened to her.”
Yannoula came after us and said to me, “Here, let me hold the child.”
I went to find Stelios, who was upstairs in his room. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, head in hands. I sat down beside him. After a minute, he sighed and, without looking at me, said, “What next?” I didn’t say anything. “What are we to do? Send him into the streets? What bothers me is that he talks about these things as if he were talking about, oh, I don’t know, the weather. And that’s not all that bothers me.”
“He’s seen more than any child should ever see.”
“Yes, well, haven’t we all?” He turned to me and said with annoyance, “Why didn’t you tell me you’d been to see him? I mean, I sort of thought you might, after that sergeant told you about the Red Cross and foreign orphanages. But I also thought you’d tell me if you did go.”
“I wanted to tell you. But I . . . lost my courage. Sometimes your anger startles me. And then I blamed myself when I thought we’d lost him.” I paused and then said there was something else he should know and told him about Takis running around naked, talking to trees.
“Theo mou! He should be locked up.”
“You can’t mean that. He’s just a child.”
“Like no other.”
“Well, yes.”
Stelios stood up and walked around his room, looking at the sports pennants in bright primary colors on his walls. “I don’t know why I still have these. They don’t mean anything to me anymore.” He pulled out the tacks that held one to the wall and let it slide to the floor. “Who cares now which team won what game? That was part of another world.”
My Last Lament Page 13