To Look on Death No More

by Leta Serafim

  He knew the path the girl had taken was somewhere below and searched for it, working his way down over the rocks one foot at a time. He’d gone about twenty feet when the rock he was standing on suddenly gave way, sending him flying in an avalanche of stones and gravel.

  “No! No!”

  Screaming and clutching at air, he plummeted straight down. He reached out and grabbed at the cliff with his hands, trying to break his fall, tore off his fingernails and skinned both his palms.

  “Oh, God, no!”

  He landed hard on a ledge of rock. Pebbles continued to rain down, gritty dust settling in his eyes and hair. O’Malley spat on the palms of his hands and rubbed them on his pants, nearly weeping from the pain. A near one, that.

  Slowly he fought his way back to the point where he’d started, leveraging himself up the vertical face of the cliff, taking a step and pulling himself up with his hands, burying his bleeding fingers in the loose gravel. The cuts on his palms stung and he had to stop and rub them against his shirt. By the time he reached the cave, he was soaked with sweat. He crawled inside and lay there, panting. He was well and truly fucked. A captive not just of the girl and her comrades, but of this inhospitable land, these malevolent mountains.

  * * *

  O’Malley stared at the ceiling of the cave. After what he’d dubbed, ‘the fall from grace,’ he loathed the place, the rocks, the stagnant air inside the hole.

  He’d foraged for food but found nothing. No matter. He’d eat spiders, dirt if he had to. ‘Starvin’ is part of being Irish,’ his father always said. ‘Part of the heritage like the singing and the faith.’

  O’Malley smiled at the memory. His father had been like that, turning adversity into laughter, a bit of wit, always. An Irish patriot, he’d been furious when O’Malley enlisted. “Are you daft?” he’d shouted. “Have ye no sense at all?”

  “Pa, there’s a war on.”

  “Aye, an English war. ’Tis them you should be fighting, not the Germans.”

  “ ’Tis the Germans, Pa, the Germans this time. Enslaving the world, they are. Don’t you read the papers?”

  It was September 1940 and London was burning. O’Malley knew then he’d have to fight. They all would.

  “Taking orders from an Englishman, you’ll be,” his pa had declared. “Send you to your death, they will. Sooner slit your throat as look at you.”

  “I’d fight in the Irish army if there was one. If de Valera hadn’t decided to sit it out.”

  “Rightly so, he did.”

  And so it had gone until the day O’Malley left—his mother pleading with the two of them to keep their voices down.

  His father drove him to the station, stood there awkwardly while his mother cried, uncomfortable with the leave taking, still angry at him for going. “Remember, Brendan,” he said, softening a little and patting his arm, “ ’tis better to be a coward for a minute than dead the rest of your life.”

  “Aye, stands to reason,” O’Malley replied, making a joke of it.

  He touched the stained rocks above him and closed his eyes. He’d been at war for three years now, fought in Crete and across the deserts of North Africa, been wounded twice and fought on.

  At first the show horse nature of the British operation in Cairo had appealed to him—sending agents like himself behind enemy lines to blow up bridges and the like—but no longer. The major he’d served under had been full of himself and waged war, not out in the field with his wits and a gun, but in a clean hotel room, by sticking pins on maps, as a game almost. He and those like him had gotten men he knew killed with their foolishness. Good men he’d relied on and trusted. Lying there in the cave, he silently vowed he’d not be one of them

  * * *

  Night was falling when the two turned up again. The girl was outfitted like a guerrilla this time with O’Malley’s revolver and army-issue dagger stuck in her belt, his rifle and a bandolier of shiny, brass cartridges slung over her shoulder. O’Malley wondered what had become of his grenades, if she had them secreted somewhere on her person. He most fervently hoped she had them and not the boy.

  She frowned when she saw his wounded hands and shook her head at his foolishness.

  “I told you stay,” she hissed.

  Holding up a roll of bandages, she gestured for him to take his shirt off. He turned away as he undid the buttons, embarrassed at his whiteness, the seeping fissures where the straps of his pack had cut into his shoulders. Working quickly, she rubbed him down with a dampened rag that smelled of rosemary and bound him up. She knew what she was doing, her hands sure. She probed his side and worked her fingers over the gash the rock had left, seeking to piece the torn flesh together. He pretended to be a xylophone, making different sounds as she moved her hands over his ribs, thinking to amuse the boy and take the drama out of the bloody mess he’d become. Laughing, the boy immediately joined in the game, drumming his gut with his fingers and making sing song noises, a crude kind of music.

  As soon as she was done, she stepped away. O’Malley missed her touch, the warmth of her hands on him. It had been a long time since a girl had touched him, held him even briefly.

  She never smiled, he noticed, kept her face averted and never met his eye. Was it shyness, or had she been wounded as women sometimes were during a war? Painfully thin, she reminded him of the feral cats he’d seen in Athens—the way she darted about as if a pack of dogs were after her, a pack of dogs only she could see.

  She signaled for him to hold out his hands, poured water on them and gently wiped them, then bandaged them up as well. Again, O’Malley was struck by her skill.

  After she finished, she handed him a packet of food wrapped up in newspaper. It wasn’t much—a chunk of stale bread and a single, damaged tomato—but he fell on it, licking and sucking the crumbs off the paper until it dissolved.

  Although his hands pained him bitterly, he reached out and touched her sleeve, tried to thank her in Greek. She wouldn’t have patched him up if she intended to betray him. Bandaged or not, he’d fetch the same price from the Germans. Come to the same end.

  The girl jerked away. “Mi,” she said loudly. Don’t.

  “Ela,” she called to the boy. Come.

  “Stay,” said O’Malley.

  “Grigora.” Fast.

  “Stay.”

  She shook her head and was gone.

  * * *

  As soon as it was light, O’Malley ventured down the path. There’d be hell to pay if the Germans caught those two. In the hands of the SS, death would be a blessing.

  He’d watched the girl leave the previous night and made a note of how she’d edged down from the cave, inching along the jutting shelf of limestone that traversed the cliff as if on a tightrope. The wind was brisk and it stirred the brush along the trail, the aromatic clumps of oregano and thyme clinging to the rocks. He could see treetops in the distance, the beginnings of a pine forest, and walked toward it, intending to take shelter there.

  He’d left most of his gear in the cave, thinking that if the Germans captured him, it would go better for him, make the charade of his being a Greek farmer more plausible. A vain hope, he knew. Noting his fair skin and freckles—he was ‘well speckled,’ as they said at home—they’d assume he was English and shoot him for sure.

  Ah, Jesus, the sad irony of it.

  He was almost to the bottom of the slope when he spied the goat caught in a crevice. A large ewe, it hadn’t been milked in a long time, and it bawled when it saw him, the sound echoing eerily off the cliffs. The animal made O’Malley nervous, and he looked around, worried about who it belonged to, if there were partisans operating in the area.

  The goat waggled its head and brayed again, its lifeless eyes upon him. It was a homely creature with little devil horns. Still, O’Malley felt sorry for it, imprisoned as it was, and wanted to do something to help. Milk it, he figured. He’d milked cows in his time. Stood to reason he could milk a goat. After he finished, he’d try and free it. But when he r
eached for a teat, the goat lowered its head and butted him with its horns, catching him in his wounded side.

  “Aw, ye bleeding ingrate, ye skin full of shit!”

  The milk, when it finally came, was thin and bluish. Filling a tin cup, O’Malley poured the foul-smelling liquid into his canteen. Truth be told, he was in no hurry to build an airstrip for the British. Might as well stick around and nursemaid the goat until the girl arrived, milk the beast again as the need arose. From the look of them, those two were starving. A spot of milk would do them no harm.

  He shook his head. A strange kind of soldiering this was turning out to be. Goats and children and naught but milk to drink.

  The goat’s leg was well and truly stuck—the fur bloody where it’d rubbed it.

  O’Malley flashed again on the dead fox, the way it had dragged itself off to die. He’d seen a soldier do the same in Athens—an Australian lying wounded in the street, his gut torn open by mortar fire. Clawing at the pavement, he’d tried to get away. O’Malley would never forget the look on the man’s face when he realized it was too late, that the German tanks had begun to move. The sadness in his eyes.

  He couldn’t bear the thought of another thing dying.

  Getting out his pickax, he began tapping at the rock above the goat’s leg, thinking he’d dig it out. This quickly proved impossible. The infernal beast sought to gore him every time he came near and about deafened him with its cries.

  “Mother o’ God, will ye not be still?”

  As before, his two captors appeared at twilight, the little boy singing as he followed his sister up the path. Hearing the guttural sounds the child was making, O’Malley guessed he must be imitating the Germans in his village. Aye, it was “Deutschland über alles” the kid was singing. The strident melody was unmistakable, Nazi to its very core.

  O’Malley handed him the canteen. “Help yourself, lad. It’ll do you good.”

  Tipping the canteen back, the boy gulped down the milk. “Danke,” he said when he finished, wiping his mouth with his hand.

  “Thinks I’m German, so he does, the little bugger.” Laughing to himself, O’Malley didn’t bother correcting him. There were those in Ireland who’d have approved—considered it better in fact—his own father among them. The greater insult to be judged English.

  He led the girl over to the goat, gestured to the pickax and made a hopeless gesture. The animal cried out when they approached, raised its head feebly and bobbed it up and down.

  The girl’s face brightened and she knelt down beside it. Cooing softly, she stroked its fur and rubbed its ears, appeared to call it by name. O’Malley was about to warn her of its horns when she grabbed the animal’s leg, twisted it and in one smooth motion, pulled it loose it from the crack. The goat shook itself once and ambled off as if nothing had happened.

  She gave O’Malley a triumphant look. “Is no hard,” she said in English.

  She quickly secured the goat, tying two of its legs together with a rope so it could graze, but not run, then marched O’Malley back to the cave at gunpoint. It was a strange procession, the three of them edging up the cliff with a goat in tow, the girl poking him in the back with his revolver, reminding him every step of the way, who was in charge.

  When they reached the cave, she looked him up and down, searching for a way to tether him, too, eventually settling on his boots. “Give them to me.”

  “The hell I will!” O’Malley could almost hear the Australians in his unit, the fun they’d be having right about now. “I’ll warm your ear, I will. Smack you senseless, you try and take my boots. Anyway, they’ll not suit you. They’re far too big. Troughs.”

  “Now.” She raised the revolver.

  “Oh, bloody hell.” Sputtering with rage, O’Malley undid the laces, pulled the boots off and handed them to her. He was willing to die in combat. Aye, that was to be expected. It came with the soldiering. It was another thing entirely to be shot to death by a girl over footwear. Be embarrassing, a death like that. Shameful.

  Tying the laces together, she slung the boots over her shoulder. ““You will stay here. You will not leave.” Her accent was stilted and formal. Learned English from a book, she had. Lessons in school.

  “You hear, Angle? If you leave, I will kill you.”

  * * *

  Not much point in mountain climbing in one’s bare feet, O’Malley soon discovered. He’d tried to get down the path in his socks, but the rocks had been like razors underfoot, and he’d fallen into a mess of brambles—thorny brambles that stuck to him. He’d plucked them out as best he could, but couldn’t reach all of them. A mass of pain he was.

  “Not enough she’s got my guns. No, the sly bitch, she had to take my boots as well.”

  She was carrying a dented kerosene lantern when she reappeared the next night, swinging it back and forth in her hand. She’d brought him food, too—a haunch of rabbit in a clay pot.

  Sitting there in his bare feet, the thorns he’d missed still paining him, O’Malley did not feel particularly grateful. He thought about clobbering her with the pickax the British had outfitted him with, splitting her from—how did the poem go—“her gurgle to her snatch,” but decided against it.

  It would be a Nazi-like thing to do, braining a girl with a pickax. That’s why they’re in the trouble they’re in, everyone in the world against them, cause they go mucking about like that.

  Also, there was the boy. Coming apart at the seams, he was. Any more bloodshed and he’d be done.

  O’Malley had taken off his socks, hoping to shame her into giving him back the boots, and made a great show of wiggling his toes. They were a little bluish, he thought, the color of uncooked chicken. He sat there sullenly, thinking over his options. Without his boots, he hadn’t many. None, when you got right down to it. It had been a stroke of genius on the girl’s part, taking them. Might as well have cut his legs off.

  The boy pulled O’Malley’s parachute out of his drop pack and slipped it on, the silk trailing after him in a long, billowy cloud. Extending his arms, he imitated a plane, running around in circles and buzzing loudly, the parachute drifting in folds around him. A few minutes later, he jumped, fell to the ground, and lay there, then got up and pretended to fly again.

  Kid knows my story, O’Malley realized with start. Had probably watched him drift down and slam into the side of the mountain. Perhaps his first encounter with the two of them had been a form of rescue.

  But then why’d they strip him of his gear and take his boots away? Insist on holding him captive in a cave? It didn’t make sense.

  “Is it the Germans you’re waiting on?” he asked her. “Going to peddle me to the SS? Use me like a poker chip to better your lot?”

  The girl didn’t seem to hear. Keeping her head down, she dug her finger into the butt of the rifle, scratching at the wood with a nail.

  “You can’t keep me here forever, you know,” O’Malley said. “I’m a British officer, Sergeant Brendan O’Malley. Churchill himself set up my group in July of 1940, told us ‘to set Europe ablaze.’ I’m on an important mission. I’m supposed to build airstrips here, arrange supply drops for your people.”

  He had her attention now.

  “You said you were Irish. ‘Irish, in point of fact. Irish, as God made me.’ Irish this and Irish that. So loud you were.” She spoke quickly, rattling off the words as if English were her native tongue.

  O’Malley nodded. “I am that, truly. Born and bred in Ireland.”

  “So why are you working for the British? Burning things for Churchill?” Her voice was full of contempt.

  A good question, given how things had gone. She’d feel right at home with his pa. He wondered where she’d learned to speak English, what her story was.

  He wasn’t sure he was up to explaining how he, an Irishman and a Catholic, had come to serve in Churchill’s clandestine army. How he’d felt like he was doing God’s work the day he enlisted, but didn’t feel that way so much anymore. It wouldn’t
matter anyway if her people were leftists, supporters of the Communist guerrillas in ELAS. British or Irish. It’d be all the same to them.

  “Ireland was neutral and I wanted to fight.”

  “Neutral?”

  “Means sitting it out, not participating in a war.”

  “In Greece, you must fight. There is no choice, no ‘neutral.’ War, always war in Greece. ‘Summer, autumn, war.’ ” Looking over at him, she raised her eyebrows, smirked a little. “Ancient words, from Sparta.”

  Top this, her expression said. Go ahead. I dare you.

  O’Malley didn’t like being patronized, never had. He got up and limped over to where she was sitting and shook his fist in her face. “Damn you and your bloody Spartans. Give me back my boots, you hear?”

  Looking up at him, the girl shook her head, enjoying the wrangling, the power she had over him.

  “How do you expect me to survive without boots? What the hell do you plan to do with me?”

  “I don’t know, Angle,” She smirked some more. “Maybe I hold you for ransom. Sell you back to Churchill.”

  Chapter 3

  O’Malley had resigned himself to staying in the cave. Without boots, he couldn’t climb down from the mountain, nor brave the stony ground underfoot. His wound wasn’t healing properly and he needed to preserve his strength. He’d doctored it as best as he could in the squalid confines of the cave, gritting his teeth and lancing the wound with a scalpel, praying it would drain properly and he wouldn’t die of infection. He remained confused as to what the girl wanted with him.

  Like the witch in “Hansel and Gretel,” day after day, she gave him food. Only she wasn’t fattening him up, no, just the opposite. Last night’s dinner had been horta—grass—as it had been every night for more than a week. Grass and more grass, sometimes with a little splash of olive oil on it, more often, not. A two-legged beast of burden, he was fast becoming. A wonder he didn’t grow hooves.