To Look on Death No More

by Leta Serafim

  A theater troupe appeared one night, setting up a portable stage they’d carried up to the camp on their backs. Not much bigger than a puppet theater, it was made of hinged wooden planks that folded up and had a curtain, a strip of velvet hanging across it. There were five actors in the troupe—three men and two women—and they performed clumsy skits with socialist themes, using the same vocabulary Haralambos used when he got wound up. They also sang songs and told jokes, again with a political theme. The price of admission was cheap: something to eat. An egg or a rusk dipped in oil. Young and enthusiastic, the actors were deeply committed to ELAS, and said they’d been all over Greece.

  One of the men played a hand-held drum, thumping the rim as well as the skin exactly the way Irish minstrels did the bodhran. The dull sound of the thing made O’Malley homesick.

  He recognized two of their songs. ‘Synefiasmeni Kyriaki,’ was about the war. Cloudy Sunday, cloudy like my heart. ‘Saltadoros,’ was another. I jump. The lyrics described people who stole food and cans of fuel off the backs of German trucks.

  When the actors finished their show, O’Malley stood up and took his turn, entertaining the soldiers with songs from Ireland, patriotic songs from the Troubles, shouting out the bitter words, seeking to make the anguish come alive for the men assembled there. The killing sadness.

  “In my country, we call music like that ‘high lonesome.’ ”

  The actors brought word of a massacre near Corinth. Fifty-six people, some of them women, had been sent to the St. George Monastery by the Nazis and executed there, their throats cut.

  After the actors departed, O’Malley wrapped his cape around him and settled down for the night. Stefanos was fast asleep, but Leonidas was still awake, sitting with his back against the ledge, smoking a cigarette.

  “Do you think they’ll try something like that here?” O’Malley didn’t refer to St. George’s. There was no need. They both knew what he was talking about.

  “Probably.”

  So he’d had the same reaction. The thing was heating up. O’Malley had been warned that the average British agent only lasted six months in the field. So far he’d been in Greece for two months, which meant he had four to go. March, 1944. He wasn’t sure he’d make it until then, not if the Germans were slitting throats. Not at all sure he’d get out alive.

  “We’ll go on reconnaissance tomorrow,” Leonidas said. “Find a site for your airstrips.”

  “You know a place?”

  “Yes. It’s to the east of here.”

  * * *

  The sun was rising when the two of them set off, the slopes of Mount Helmos awash with pink light. Reining in his horse, O’Malley sat and watched the dawn, enjoying the play of light across the bare slopes. Clouds were rolling in and they momentarily overran the sky, but then the sun broke through again and revealed itself

  “Aw, sweet Jesus. Just look at it.”

  Like watching the world being born, it was. Being God on the first day of creation.

  A beam of sunlight played across the darkened land like a searchlight, then the clouds shifted and it was gone. The battle continued for a few more minutes, darkness alternating with light. Seemed to sandblast everything, the sun in Greece, expose the world with fresh clarity.

  As always, the beauty of the landscape took his breath away. No wonder the ancients chose this place and their descendants were fighting so hard to keep it. The light alone was worth dying for.

  He was on a spirited horse Leonidas had given him. Not knowing the mare’s name, he’d dubbed her Elektra, it being close to ‘electric,’ which she surely was, throbbing with energy, the sparks just flying off her. Her coat was black, save for a patch of white on her forelock. When she galloped, it was with every fiber of her being, her legs extended like a race horse. Even now, O’Malley could feel her fighting to run. Like Man o’ War at the starting gate, Elektra was a thing possessed.

  He and Leonidas talked a little as they cantered through the trees, the Greek asking him about Ireland, what it was like growing up there.

  “Monotonous. Nuns in school and Mass every Sunday. Even as a lad, I was at it, taking communion, confessing my poor sins to the priest.”

  “Your family was Catholic?”

  “Aye. Defined us, so it did, the faith.”

  Leonidas gave a wry grin. “Before the war, I wanted to be a priest.”

  O’Malley stared at him. He couldn’t imagine Leonidas as a priest, couldn’t see him bowing his head to anyone.

  “What happened?”

  “I became a soldier instead. Now I believe only in myself.” He thumped his chest. “Who I am. What I’m capable of.”

  “An atheist then?”

  “Yes.”

  The casualness with which he said this shocked O’Malley. “Lonely business, that.”

  “My mother wanted me to be a priest. When I was little, she used to say I had a ‘bishop’s hands.’ ” Reining in his horse, Leonidas sat motionless for a moment. “She was very devout. Fasted forty days before Christmas, forty days before Easter. Knew the words to every prayer they chant in church. The Germans burned her alive.”

  O’Malley looked up at the sky, watched the clouds for a time. “Grievous thing what happened to your folks. You having to watch. Grievous.”

  “There’s a Greek saying: ‘Where many die, there is no fear of death.’ ” Leonidas gave a bark of laughter.

  He shifted in his saddle, the leather creaking under his weight. “You said you were a doctor.”

  They were speaking English. A measure of trust, O’Malley told himself. The beginnings of a friendship.

  “That’s right,” he answered carefully. “I’d just hung up my shingle when the war broke out. Pa was beside himself when I enlisted. ‘Never thought I’d live to see the day,’ he said. ‘A son of mine in the English army, doffing his cap when they play ‘God Save the bleeding King.’ ”

  “How’d you end up here?”

  “Volunteered for it, fool that I was. I served as a medic for a time, but couldn’t stand it. Men dying all around and me being unable to save them. I remember seeing a man get killed by a bomb. Sad pigeon-toed kid, name of Devon. Got caught, he did, blown completely apart. Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I hear him screaming still. Him and all the dead men I served with. A chorus, it is, ringing in my head.”

  Leonidas raised his face and something passed between them. He knows, O’Malley thought, seeing the bleakness in the Greek’s eyes. Leonidas knows. He hears them screaming, too.

  He followed him up the hill. Felt good, pounding across the countryside on the back of a horse. Made him feel like a boy again, when speed was the ticket, when it seemed to be the only thing that mattered.

  Ahead lay a vast alpine meadow. Surrounded by mountains on three sides, it was open to the north.

  O’Malley slid off his horse and handed the reins to Leonidas. “Wait here.”

  He paced it out, measuring the length and breadth of the meadow, the incline of the land. He did a rough calculation when he finished. With some help, he should be able to construct an airstrip 1200 yards or longer here. The land was relatively flat, free of large rocks and standing puddles of water. It was protected to a degree from the blistering wind. A plane could approach from the north, fly in and land. Aye, it would do.

  The ground was covered with brown grass and patches of dead wildflowers. O’Malley bent down, took up a fistful of earth, and crumbled it between his fingers. Gritty and light. If he got to work before winter set in and the ground froze, he’d have an easy time of it.

  Maybe he’d make it to March after all.

  Chapter 10

  O’Malley strapped a shovel to the back of the saddle and headed off at first light, eager to start to work on the airstrip. He’d asked for volunteers the previous night, and two men had stepped forward, Lakis and a farmer from Kalavryta named Fotis. They’d promised to come later and help him level off the field.

  He’d been relieved when Haralambos h
ad declined to help. He’d come to hate the sound of the man’s voice, the incessant whine about capitalists like the buzzing of an insect in his ear. The teacher was gaining in stature; the other men stopped what they were doing to listen to him now when he spoke. He encouraged them to come forward and discuss the sins of their neighbors, give him the names of those who’d aided the Nazis. Preparing for future show trials, O’Malley guessed, a day of reckoning after the Germans left.

  As a ‘pawn of Churchill,’ one of Haralambos’ favorite phrases, O’Malley had no doubt he’d be one of the first to get shot. The officer in Cairo had told him there were still independent right-wing groups operating in this part of Greece and that he might want to seek them out, have better luck with them, though he doubted it. There’d been skirmishes the previous year between the two groups, ELAS units forcing the others to join them. When the right-wing soldiers refused, ELAS forces attacked and murdered them. It wasn’t a good time to be in Greece. He could get killed either way he jumped.

  Stefanos had wanted to come with him, but he told the boy to go back to sleep. “Naught for you to do, child. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  Watching over the child had worn him down, and he welcomed the solitude. The fighting in the region had increased. He’d heard mortar fire the previous night and the hushed talk of the men, speaking of a village named Kallithea where the Germans had killed close to thirty. Heating up, it was.

  Snow dusted the upper reaches of the mountain. Not much, but still it surprised him. It was only November. What would befall him come January? He had no gloves, no coat to speak of, save for the awful flokati.

  Seeing how cold it was, the Greeks had offered to steal a German overcoat for him and laughingly measured his shoulders. “A meter,” they said. “Have to be a big German.” But O’Malley waved them off, saying he was fine, unsure that they were playing. Aye, it felt good to be away from them.

  A moment later, something spooked the mare and she took off at a gallop. The dampness in the air made her coat glisten, her mane go all bushy. Bending low, he rode her like a jockey for a few minutes before gradually bringing her to a halt.

  “You’re something, horse, you are.”

  A cloud of mist swept over them as they entered the meadow. Rising from the ground, it quickly covered the airfield, drifting in like smoke borne by the wind. Reining in Elektra, O’Malley watched it engulf the land—the limestone ridge where the camp was, the mountains on all sides—and he reached out a hand to touch it. The mist continued to swirl around, wafting around the feet of the horses. Perhaps it was the earth itself sending it forth, trying to cleanse itself of the blood, the unspeakable events of the war.

  He sympathized with the earth and its desire to be clean again. To be free of the stench of cordite.

  Looking around, he tried to picture the airfield. When he had it fixed in his mind, he dismounted, pulled his shovel loose from the saddle, and began scraping out a crude rectangle in the dirt—an outline for Lakis and Fotis to follow. He was glad that Lakis was coming, welcoming the man’s cheerfulness, his lopsided grin. Fotis he didn’t know well. Quiet, he was younger than most of the men in the camp and kept to himself, never speaking more than was necessary. He’d been wounded at some point—a jagged scar marred his face—and walked with a slight limp. O’Malley took care as he worked, figuring out the angle the plane would come in on, remembering the formula he’d been taught in Cairo. The land was stonier than he’d anticipated, full of rocks deeply embedded in the earth.

  He worked for a couple of hours, digging up stones with his shovel and casting them away, flattening the earth and smoothing it out. When the goatskin cape got in his way, he threw it off, thinking the effort would soon warm him. He looked back over the five or six yards he’d completed. Like farming in Ireland, this was—a struggle with little to show for it.

  When he finished what he’d intended, he leaned against his shovel and wiped his brow. Two weeks it would take him if he kept on like this. Less if he had help.

  The hawk was circling high above him, screeching in protest at his presence. He watched it, wondering where its nest was, if it had a mate or like him was all alone up here. The sun was high in the sky, the mist of the morning long since gone.

  * * *

  When he rode into the camp, O’Malley saw the men standing around Leonidas. At first, O’Malley thought they were listening to the radio, but then he saw the blond-haired man at the center. A young German soldier with his hands tied behind his back.

  “We met a German patrol leaving Kalavryta,” his friend explained. “They attacked us and we fought back, threw grenades at them, everything we had. We found this one after the smoke cleared. Must have lost contact with his unit.”

  The soldier was young, no more than nineteen or twenty years old, wearing a standard-issue Wehrmacht uniform and thick boots. He hadn’t been long at it, judging by condition of his tunic, the luster of his buttons. The emblem on his hat—a spiky flower—indicated he was a mountaineer from General von Le Suire’s unit, the 117th Jäger division.

  Leonidas saw O’Malley eyeing the boots. “Take them,” he said.

  “What are you going to do with him?”

  Leonidas made a gun with his hand, fired off an imaginary shot.

  “You can’t be doing that, Leonidas. He’s a prisoner of war.”

  The Greek’s eyes were bloodshot, his voice charged with anger. “You remember Giorgos? The boy who helped out in the kitchen? Germans caught him today. Burnt him with cigarettes and cut off the soles of his feet. He crawled away on his hands and knees, screaming. Haralambos found him, brought him back to camp on a mule.”

  The German was crying openly now, tears coursing down his face. He’d been beaten, probably dragged a fair distance. He raised his head and addressed O’Malley directly in English, begging him not to let the others kill him. “Please,” he said over and over again. “Please.”

  Another voice for my collection, O’Malley thought. He turned away, unable to listen.

  The soldier’s black leather harness and belt looked new, the brass hooks and D rings unscratched. For some reason, the newness, the untested quality of the German’s gear, upset O’Malley. Poor bugger. Captured on his first patrol.

  “Hold him for ransom, Leonidas. Don’t shoot him. Von Le Suire will retaliate if you kill him, torch more villages.”

  “They will never find his body.”

  Leonidas led the young soldier away a few minutes later, the German still babbling and calling out in English, whimpering for O’Malley to save him. They were heading toward the deep ravine at the south of the camp, the place where the antartes dumped their garbage.

  “Wait,” O’Malley yelled, running after them. He reached around the German’s neck, yanked out the man’s metal identity tag and broke off the bottom half.

  The soldier began to scream then, switching to German in his final moments. “Bitte nicht, bitte nicht!” Falling to his knees, he crossed himself and began to pray. “Gegrüßet seist Du, Maria, voll der Gnade.”

  Leonidas quickly stripped the German of his gear, his boots. Carrying Giorgos in his arms, Haralambos joined him a few minutes later.

  O’Malley couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Don’t be doing this, Haralambos. ’Tis an ugly thing, murder. Nothing to show a child.”

  Giorgos’ bandaged feet were wet with blood; and he, too, was crying, writhing in pain. Leonidas waved his gun at the German, asked Giorgos what he wanted him to do with him.

  “Kill him,” the boy shouted.

  Taking a deep breath, Leonidas placed his gun up against the skull of the German and pulled the trigger. The sound was deafening and reverberated off the rocks. The soldier’s head exploded and he fell to the ground.

  Leonidas doused the body with kerosene and set it on fire, then threw the flaming corpse off the mountain. He spat on it as he kicked it off into space. “Finished,” he said, wiping his hands on his pants.

  O’Malle
y fingered the German’s tag in his hand. The man’s name had been Gunther. As always, the Germans were nothing if not efficient. The top half of the tag was designed to stay with the body, the bottom half to be broken off and collected so that others might learn of his fate.

  Leonidas dumped the German’s hobnail boots down in front of O’Malley. “They’re yours now. Put them on.”

  * * *

  Deeply shaken, O’Malley followed Leonidas back to the camp. “You shouldn’t have done it. Killed him like that. You’re no better than they are.”

  Leonidas grabbed O’Malley by the front of his shirt and shoved him hard. “Stay out of it,” he warned, adding “Englishman,” in case O’Malley didn’t get the message.

  “Or what? You’ll shoot me, too?”

  Making a noise deep in his throat, Leonidas lunged at O’Malley and threw him to the ground, hit him hard in the mouth. “Shut up!” he screamed.

  “You bastard!” Wiping his bloody mouth, O’Malley got to his feet. He took a step toward Leonidas and swung, burying his fist in his gut.

  Clutching his stomach, the Greek staggered back. He turned his head away and vomited a little, sweat beading his forehead, then came at O’Malley again, flailing away at him with his fists.

  After that, they went at it like prize fighters, clawing and biting, wrestling and pounding each other, falling down and getting up again. They went banging and tumbling through the camp, smashing into a pile of wooden boxes and sending ammunition and supplies flying. They upended a jug of wine and the basin full of water the men used for washing.

  The other men stepped back to give them room. “Skotose ton,” one of them shouted to Leonidas. Kill him.

  Dancing back and forth, O’Malley worked to stay out of the larger man’s way. He could feel his ribs throbbing. “The Greeks are in a frenzy now. I go down, they’ll kick me to death.”

  Leonidas might have the advantage of weight, but O’Malley was faster. He darted in and out, landing a punch and backing away. He continued to duck and weave, only drawing close when he saw an opening, where he could smash his fist into Leonidas’ kidneys or groin. Desperate, he fought dirty, digging his nails into the Greek’s eye and grinding his knee into his balls. Yelling, the Greek tried to pin him down, his black eyes full of rage, spittle and sweat flying off him. Moving in, O’Malley grabbed his beard and yanked out a fistful, made a swipe at his ear.