“It was always my left leg that got hurt,” he said. “I’d get it wedged between stones. It never gets better now.”
“Let me look at it,” I said when we were in the bathroom. He seemed so weak, propping himself against the wall. While the bathtub was filling, I knelt and tried to roll up his pant leg, but it was so filthy it stuck to the skin. His shoes were just strips of rubber cut from old tires, tied to his feet with rope and rags. I got him out of them while he fumbled with his belt buckle, the only part of his clothing I recognized. Any shyness I’d felt faded as I helped him. Together we peeled his pants off and I helped him out of his shirt.
“Aliki, are you sure you . . .”
“Shh, just get in.”
I knelt beside the tub and worked shampoo into his hair and beard.
“I feel like a child,” he said.
“Close your eyes so you don’t get soap in them.” I had him stand up and I soaped him all over. I could feel each of his ribs and his pelvic bone jutting out, his badly bruised and swollen leg. Putting my arms around him, I soaked my blouse, so I took it off, along with my other clothes. When he sat back down in the water, I climbed in, facing him.
“Well,” he said, and he said it again. Then he began to soap me as I’d done him: my hair, my breasts, my legs. He made me stand too and stood beside me, rinsing me with water poured from his cupped hands. Then, sitting down again, he put his head up against my belly and kissed me there and also there until I was moaning softly. We stepped out, dried each other and wrapped ourselves in our damp towels. After I’d helped him down the hall to what had been his room, we slid under the clean sheets. With his head resting on my chest and my hand stroking the long line of his back, his breathing slowed into sleep and I soon followed. Sometime in the night, I woke to feel his mouth on my left breast, his beard tickling my skin, and I felt a rush of heat everywhere.
It became stronger as he went on exploring me with hands and tongue. Soon his palms were beneath my lower back, pulling me up toward him. Where had this strength come from in a man who’d seemed so frail just a few hours earlier? I asked. Who knows, he asked, or cares? I helped him in, my old friend, my companion, my love. How much time had seemed to pass in our lives before we’d come to this wonder, this return.
When we lay still at last, we drifted in and out of shallow sleep and then, as the sun lit the window, he began to talk in a rambling way, how the first cave was a dreary place with water dripping onto heads and smoky brushwood fires that reddened the eyes. Lice and other vermin infested everyone’s clothing. At the cave mouth, a stack of brush covered the entrance, where a shepherd in a homespun cape stood guard. Outside it was raining and wind blew into the cave, rippling a tattered banner with hammer and sickle hanging against one of the cave walls. Voices rose and fell as men argued about what to do with Stelios and other captives.
“One of them was saying it would come to no good, this kidnapping of civilians. I think some had escaped and gone to the police, those lucky ones. They’d betrayed hiding places, I guess, so the group had to move regularly. But others said their group was too small now; many comrades had been killed or captured. They needed more men.”
They talked openly about all this, paying little attention to the new arrival. Stelios came to understand that there were other such groups in the mountains, but they were fighting among themselves over territory.
“It was always the same; nobody could agree on anything and every group was out for itself. There didn’t appear to be any overall plan except to harass the government militia and local police. They killed them and left their bodies as warnings; sometimes mutilated. The right hand—they took it as proof of the kill. Or the head.”
They’d interrogated Stelios to find out if he had a family able to ransom him, but after he’d convinced them that he didn’t, they told him he’d have to work if he expected to get fed. That meant carrying heavy loads of supplies up mountain trails, leaping from boulder to boulder. Food was often little more than wild greens or snails boiled over a campfire or eaten raw when the smoke from a fire would have betrayed their location.
“The stupid thing was that they took from villagers who had little to give. And then called this liberating them.”
They hadn’t allowed Stelios to go with them on village raids until the last big one on Easter Day, which had been unplanned. The scent of the food had been irresistible. And they thought they might need extra help as the whole village would be gathered. Other times, usually he and the recent arrivals weren’t trusted enough and were left behind with an armed guard. They were supposed to be “educated,” but only one of the guards had a book, the teachings of Marx. The guard didn’t know how to read and no one else had much interest. Sometimes the others returned with a stolen sheep or goat, which they slaughtered and roasted. Every bit was devoured: entrails, brains, eyes. After a raid, there was constant arguing over spoils.
“They fought over guns and boots. They fought over everything.”
“Did they fight over your tweed jacket?” I told him about the three hanged people.
“It disappeared one night while I was asleep. I never knew what became of it.” The leader of the group, Stephanos, treated Stelios “like some kind of insect at first,” he said, “something he could crush if I tried to escape. At those heights, it was easy enough to lose your footing. A nudge with the butt of a rifle could do the trick.”
I asked what Stephanos looked like, remembering the guerrilla who’d argued with Vasili. When Stelios told me, I said, “I think he’s the one Takis shot.”
“Did he really do that? I heard the soldiers tell the captain that. But it didn’t seem possible.”
I told him about Vasili and target practice with the village boys. Stelios climbed out of bed with a sheet wrapped around him and walked back and forth.
“Was Takis the first to shoot?”
“I don’t know. It happened so fast. But Mitso, one of the other boys, said he’d seen it.” I thought back on it and added, “If he hadn’t shot at all, maybe no one else would have. And no one would have died.”
“But then I wouldn’t be here, Aliki. I’d still be . . . out there.” He paced some more and then started talking rapidly about Stephanos, how his attitude toward Stelios had changed when he found out about Stelios’s knowledge of the Karagiozis plays.
“Ah, this is excellent,” Stephanos had said. “Nights are long and we love stories, even ones for children. But stories must have messages, good messages. Do your stories have messages?”
“You can decide for yourself,” Stelios had told him. He’d set about making crude figures out of pine bark, the way he’d done in Chrysoula’s basement. In the light of a campfire where lentils or beans were boiled for meals, Stelios made shadows dance on cave walls. Stephanos and the others were delighted, laughing and clapping like boys. Here were these hardened mountaineers, as tough as wild goats, reduced to children by Karagiozis and company. Stephanos declared that Karagiozis was a true communist, fighting for the rights of the working class against the sultan and his armies.
“You can read anything into Karagiozis,” Stelios told him. “That’s why he’s lasted so long. He’ll be anything you want.”
“Then this is what I want,” Stephanos said. “Karagiozis, man of the people!”
Some nights, lying awake with the others on the floor of one lair or another, Stelios told stories to them from The Iliad to pass the time. Of course Stephanos said the rage of Achilles against the Trojans was class warfare. It hadn’t done any good for Stelios to point out that the kings and warriors on the Greek side were hardly exploited peasants.
“Never mind,” Stephanos told him later out of earshot of the others. “Some of my men, they know little of these histories. I teach the good lesson when I can in order to give them courage. They need it because we will lose, you know, in the end. The government militia, the fascis
t police in the towns, they are too many for us. But we stay the course. Someday others will follow. We’re like early Christians spreading their new religion, but we’re superior to them because we don’t expect a reward in the afterlife.”
There was a knock on the bedroom door just as Stelios was saying that what he’d learned from Stephanos was that “people fighting for a cause that’s mostly wrong can still sometimes be right.”
From the other side of the door, Takis said, “Aliki, are you in there?” I wrapped a sheet around me, went to the door and opened it a crack. “I’m going to the clinic to see Yannoula,” he said. “Want to come?”
“Yes, yes,” I said, embarrassed that since the night before I hadn’t thought of her even once. “How is she?”
“Her wound is infected.” Takis tried to peer around me.
“I’ll just be a minute,” I said, closing the door. “Meet you downstairs.”
I had no clothes in the room, but I opened the closet and Stelios’s suitcase was just where I’d left it before we’d gone off with Thanasis. While I was pulling on some of Stelios’s old clothes, he got up and opened the door and blurted out, “Takis, is it true that you shot Stephanos?”
Takis must have been partway down the stairs by then, but I heard him ask, “What? Who’s Stephanos?”
Stelios, now out on the landing in his bedsheet, explained, and Takis said, “Yes. Yes, I did do that.” Neither of them said anything for a moment and then Takis asked, “Was that a bad thing to do? Aliki thinks it was a bad thing to do. But everybody else says it was a good thing.”
“It was a good thing, Takis. But I’m sorry it had to be you who did it.”
Takis didn’t say anything for a moment and then he asked, “Why are you and Aliki wearing sheets?”
Stelios didn’t answer but came back into the room and I, now in his clothes, went out and down the stairs to Takis.
“You look silly,” he said.
“They’re Stelios’s clothes. Let’s go.” We went outside and started toward the square.
“He thinks it was a good thing,” Takis said.
“I heard him.”
“And . . . ?”
“I guess I can change my mind if I want to.”
“Are you changing your mind?”
“I’m thinking about it. Tell me about Yannoula.”
Takis walked on in silence, then said, “Why were you and Stelios wearing sheets?”
“Tell me about Yannoula.”
“Tell me about the sheets first.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Why?”
“You’re not old enough.”
He stopped walking, turned on me and said, “I’m old enough to kill a man. Old enough to speak up for Stelios. I saved him. Isn’t that old enough for you?”
Well, no, I thought, not at all; though I was glad there seemed to be some sort of bond between the two of them over Stelios’s release. I suspected this wouldn’t last, but before I could answer Takis’s question, he walked ahead of me, saying over his shoulder matter-of-factly that Yannoula had a high fever by the time he and Theo got her to the clinic the night before. I hurried to keep up with him as he said that her wound was turning septic. I didn’t know what that meant and he said he understood it to be blood poisoning, a serious condition. A nurse had cleaned it out and packed rolled-up towels filled with ice around Yannoula’s head to lower her fever.
I followed Takis to her room, where Yannoula was sitting up in bed just inside the door. Her wounded arm was heavily bandaged and in a clean, new sling. With her other hand, she was fanning herself with a folded newspaper. She didn’t look as if she was suffering from a serious condition.
“Well, I thought I’d been abandoned,” she said. “I don’t even remember coming here. Did you two bring me? They tell me I was off my head.” She pointed to the two other beds with patients in the room. “I must have said something embarrassing because everyone giggles when they pass my bed. Thanks to God I’m almost well, but it’s so warm in here I could die.”
The warm May sunshine was pouring in the curtainless window. Yannoula did look much better than the day before but was so talkative that I wondered what they were giving her.
“Now, is Stelios back or did I just dream that?” she asked.
“He’s back,” we said.
“He and Aliki stayed in the same bedroom last night,” Takis said. Yannoula and I exchanged glances.
“Well, thank you for that information, Takis,” she said, winking at me as I colored. “But that really isn’t your business, is it?”
Takis didn’t say anything.
“Someday up ahead you might want to be private with someone too, and it won’t be anybody else’s business either.”
“I’d like to be private with Aliki,” he said.
“Takis!” I said.
“I think maybe you and I should have a little talk, Takis,” Yannoula said.
“I wish I hadn’t saved Stelios.”
“You saved him?” she asked. “How was that?”
Clearly she didn’t remember much from the last few days. Before we could fill her in, Theo arrived, and just after him, Stelios. Yannoula threw her good arm around Stelios’s neck and said she hadn’t expected ever to see him again, and yes, her other arm was much better. But the nurse had told her they were going to keep her there for another day, just in case. And she’d have to come back from time to time to make sure the wound was healing properly.
“But here we are all together again,” Yannoula said, “like a family, right, Aliki?”
I nodded but thought that though we were all here, the nature of our family was changing now that Stelios and I were together again and Takis thought he was both grown up and a hero.
“And how would this family feel,” Theo said, “about shadow theater again at my café? When you’ve had a chance to settle down, Stelios, and rest, of course.”
“I thought your customers were tired of it,” Stelios said.
“Yes, but some of the families nearby, they ask about it for their children.” He tapped the side of his head rapidly. “They bring them for the fruit-flavored ices now the weather is warm. With Karagiozis, I can sell more.”
“I don’t know,” Stelios said. “I’ve been thinking of something new, but I don’t have much energy yet.”
“Of course not. You’ll rest, then we’ll see.”
“I can do it,” Takis said. Everyone looked at him; Theo raised an eyebrow. “I can, I really can. I mean, Aliki and I. We’ve done it all over the area.”
“It’s true?” Theo asked.
“Yes,” I said. “In Ierapetra, the villages. He’s good.”
“He is,” Yannoula said.
Theo still looked dubious. “Your mind,” he said to Takis, “it is, well, clearer than it used to be?”
“What do you mean, clearer?” Takis asked.
“I mean no talking to fish.”
“They were talking to me, not the other way around.”
“Oh, that makes all the difference.” Theo laughed.
“When he’s working with the puppets,” I said quickly, “Takis is fine. He puts himself into them and he’s better all around. And anyway, I’ve been doing it with him and that seems to work okay.”
“Aliki’s right, Theo,” Stelios said. “Give him a chance. And to tell the truth, I’ve lost interest in Karagiozis and those patriotic histories. There are better stories to tell.”
“Such as . . . ?”
“I don’t know exactly yet. I’ve been working it out in my mind.”
Theo looked hard at Takis, took a deep breath and said, “All right. We’ll try you. For the sake of the sales of ices.”
“Without Stelios?” Takis asked.
“Without Stelios.”
&n
bsp; Takis glanced quickly at me as he said maybe we should practice for a while. It was one thing to perform for village children, but maybe here in the city expectations would be higher. And the puppets needed repairs. Theo said there was no rush; the warmer the weather, the better the sales of ices. So the first week of June was set for Takis’s debut solo performances.
Back at the boardinghouse, we took the puppets out of their battered suitcase and they did look rather sad. After all, they’d been dragged all over eastern Crete and were tattered and faded. The three of us, with glue, tape and paint pots, spent the day touching up their faces and costumes, patching tears, making joints swing freely and strengthening the hinges attaching the puppets to the poles that controlled their movement. The white screen was nearly gray with dirt so I washed it and mended places where it had ripped. Mostly it was pleasant for the three of us to be working so well together. We spent the rest of the month in this happy work while Takis and I practiced.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Takis asked Stelios.
“Not at all. I’ve been thinking up a different story.”
“What kind?”
“I’m not sure how to describe it.”
He’d spent a lot of time thinking about it in the mountains, he told me at night when we lay awake. Our pattern had become to sleep, to make love, to talk and then do it all over again. His work in the mountains, he said, had mostly been forced labor, drawing water from mountain streams, setting traps for hares or wild ibexes, digging for edible roots and bulbs, carrying supplies on his back. Stelios said he had tried to free his mind so as not to trap it in the guerrilla cycle of violence and drudgery, “which,” he realized, “is a story itself, but only one kind.” There were, after all, so many others besides the ones about war and madness. There were the grand ones, the movements of peoples.
“I remembered my father telling me how the Jews wept in exile beside the waters of Babylon when they remembered Zion. And all those other Old Testament stories.” And there were the intimate stories of love and its end, like The Count of Monte Cristo. There were stories that began with a stranger coming to town or the tale of a journey and the return, “. . . which is the story of us all.”
My Last Lament Page 23