To Look on Death No More

by Leta Serafim

  He’d miscalculated the distance between them, and Leonidas grabbed him. Pushing him up against the rocks, he pummeled him with his fists—left, right, left, right—starting on his face and working his way down. O’Malley felt blood wet his scalp, start to trickle down both sides of his face. One of his eyebrows split, then his cheek.

  Lakis finally intervened. “Stop,” he cried, pulling Leonidas back. “Stop!”

  But O’Malley wasn’t ready to be rescued. Wiping the blood out of his eyes, he took a wild swing at Leonidas. “Kill me, too, will you?”

  His knuckles were raw, both his eyes swollen shut. The blow didn’t connect and he lost his balance. Still he kept swinging, raising his fist feebly in the air. “You’re a dead man, you are. I’ll clobber you good, I will.”

  He’d torn his shirt in the fracas, exposing the scar tissue on his shoulders, the livid welts where the doctor had dug out his decaying flesh. A murmur went up in the crowd when they saw the wounds.

  Leonidas retreated, stood there heaving, panting like an animal.

  Spent, O’Malley sank back down. “They say the British always win the most important battle, the last one. Same thing’s true of the Irish. I’ll beat you yet, Leonidas. I will. Given half the chance, I’ll beat you senseless.”

  He translated this into Greek and the others laughed, nodded. They’d liked the passion O’Malley had brought to the fight, his willingness to brawl in spite of his wounds, his crippled shoulders.

  Dampening a cloth, Lakis tried to staunch the bleeding, gently wiping O’Malley’s face and dabbing at his scalp. Roumelis stepped forward with a flask of ouzo, nodded for O’Malley to take a swallow. One by one the men in the camp did the same, bringing him cigarettes and patting him on the back, sharing their vials of homemade fruit brandy, crusts of bread, and hard-boiled eggs. Even Haralambos paid homage, handing him a grimy pamphlet printed in English.

  Strange. In Ireland no one would give you anything if you lost a fight. Let alone reward you with liquor and hard-boiled eggs. There’d be harsh words said in Ireland at the very least a bit of mockery, a questioning of one’s muscle and blighted manhood. But gifts, never.

  After dinner, Leonidas came and sat with him. “You all right?”

  The fight seemed to have cleared the air between them, pushed back the event in the ravine.

  O’Malley nodded, though it cost him; a wave of dizziness passed over him.

  Leonidas gestured to his shoulders. “What happened? The men in the camp have been asking.”

  “Gangrene.”

  “And the hole?” He touched his sternum.

  “A bullet in Souda. Been warring for a long time, I have. Been at it since the beginning.”

  Leonidas gave him a cigarette and lit it for him. “How many men have you killed?”

  “Lost track.” O’Malley didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to remember.

  A long moment of silence followed. “It ever bother you?” Leonidas asked softly.

  “I’m not a machine. ’Course it does.”

  Might as well tell him. Let him think me a coward. “Worst was in Crete. Time they shot the paratroopers out of sky. Didn’t have a chance, those men. They were dead the minute they jumped out of the plane. Five thousand we killed. I went through the gear of one. I’ll never forget it. Him, lying in the dirt with a hole in his face, all tangled up in his chute.” He fought to keep his voice steady. “No more than eighteen, he was, with hair the color of wheat. I found a photo of him and a girl, both of them smiling. It was well worn, the photo, creased where he’d folded it. They were holding schoolbooks. Schoolbooks.”

  O’Malley’s face tightened. “I wanted to throw away my gun. Quit the war and run away. Then the mortars started up again and the Germans killed a man I knew not far from where I was standing. And I was back at it, blasting away at them with my gun. That’s war, that is. I shoved the body of the yellow-haired kid away so I could aim better, so I could shoot more of them.”

  He flicked the cigarette into the air. It made an arc, a trail of red sparks in the darkness. He felt the weight of the war pressing down on him, the sadness that came over him whenever he thought about the things he’d done, the dead on both sides.

  Aye, he knew what Leonidas was about tonight. “It does no good, brooding about it. You’re a soldier, same as me. Killing the enemy is what we do.” He’d not have killed the man, Gunther, but then he barely knew Grigoris, felt no kinship with him.

  Leonidas made a clumsy gesture with his hands. “I … I ….”

  “Leave off, I say.”

  The camp was quiet, the men lying on the ground all around them. Suddenly, one of them screamed in his sleep. Lakis, it was. It was eerie, hearing him go off like that.

  “Aw, Jesus, Lakis.” O’Malley nudged him with his foot. “Shut up, will ya?”

  Leonidas leaned back against the rock, wincing a little. “You’re a good fighter.”

  O’Malley grinned, welcoming the change of subject. “Irish. Known for it, we are. Brawling is our national sport. Never tire of it. And once we start, we never stop, never. Just keep coming at you. Coming and coming. As long as there’s breath left in our bodies.”

  “Breath? What does it mean, ‘breath?’ ”

  “It means as long as we live. Staying alive, Leonidas. That’s the key, that is.”

  * * *

  The next morning O’Malley inspected himself in the mirror above the communal wash basin.

  “Mother o’ God. I look like I fell out a tree and hit every branch coming down.”

  He turned his head from side to side, taking inventory. His eyebrow, cheek, and lip were all split; and one of his eyes was swollen completely shut. He’d lost the fight with Leonidas, no doubt about it. Napoleon at bloody Waterloo.

  Not wanting to make trouble, he donned the German’s boots and laced them up. No good would come of it, he was sure. Ghost might rise up and take possession of him, drag him off to some beer garden in Bavaria, some sauerkraut-infested hell.

  Before they’d turned in for the night, Leonidas had asked him for the German’s tag. “I’ll write the letter. I’ll tell his people he died in battle and we buried him here, that there’s a cross on the mountainside, marking the place where he fell.”

  He’d help Leonidas put up the cross, O’Malley decided, paint ‘Gunther’ and the date across it. Penance was a good thing, or so the nuns had told him.

  His relationship with the men in the camp improved after the fight. Apparently getting half done to death by one of their own had done the trick, finally made him one of them. A few had approached him during the morning mess and introduced themselves, saying they wanted to help build the landing strip.

  They began to prepare the ground as soon as they got there, O’Malley overseeing the work and making sure they stayed inside the rectangle he’d etched in the dirt. Way things were going—Germans cutting people’s throats—he might need the British to pull him out, the antartes, too, come to that. Be prudent to be prepared.

  A morose lot, for the most part, the antartes labored in silence. Although they dug steadily, the ground was hard and they’d only completed half of the airfield by the end of the day. Working steadily, it took them another day and a half to finish.

  * * *

  Leaning on his shovel, O’Malley surveyed the completed field. The surface was smooth, the soil well packed, even. Day or night, a plane would be able land there. He went from man to man, shaking their hands and thanking them for their help.

  “Bravo!” he declared, patting Lakis on the back. “Fair play to you!”

  When he and the others returned to the camp that night, they found Roumelis roasting a lamb on a spit, the meat sizzling over an open fire. The smell of it kept wafting across the hollow and they quickly grabbed their tin plates and lined up to eat. When O’Malley’s turn came, Roumelis cut off a haunch and put it on his dish, then another for Stefanos.

  “Bon appétit,” he said with a laugh.
<
br />   O’Malley and the boy stood there, eating with their hands. Stefanos grinned from ear to ear, his face shiny with grease.

  O’Malley grinned back at him. “Aw, Jesus. This is heaven, Stefanos, this is.”

  He was in a great mood, ‘riding on the pig’s back’ as his pa would say. The antartes were friendlier than in the past, even Roumelis, the Cyclops. No longer Samson, he was Irlandos to them now. Irishman.

  Once he completed his mission, he’d be free to go back to Kalavryta. Find Danae and finish what they’d started that night in the cellar.

  * * *

  Early the next morning, O’Malley radioed the British liaison officer. After identifying himself as ‘Barabbas,’ he gave him the map references for the airfield. “Finished it, I did. There’s a big opening to the north, clear passage through the mountains. Planes should have no trouble getting in here, landing where I told you.”

  The officer repeated the coordinates back to him and signed off. O’Malley was relieved the man hadn’t asked when he planned to return to Cairo. He wasn’t eager to leave. “See it through, I will. Soldier on a bit longer.”

  He asked Leonidas to keep an eye on Stefanos, then saddled Elektra and rode to the clearing to wait for the plane. If possession was nine tenths of the law, then by rights, she was his. He fed her every night, mostly weeds he pulled from the hillside, and groomed her after a fashion. Watering was harder, requiring a trip down to the river with a bucket and a long climb back up. Still, he was glad of it and rode her whenever he could, galloping across the frozen ground and whooping like an Apache.

  Around noon, he saw a plane pass overhead. It was flying at a high altitude. Bound for Egypt, maybe. Although he waited the rest of the day and well into the night, he saw no other planes. The air drop he’d been counting on had failed to materialize.

  Gathering up some sticks, he built himself a crude lean-to in the rocks above the field and crouched down inside, rubbing his hands together, trying to get warm. Around midnight, it started to snow and the ground slowly iced over, a glass-like sheen that made walking treacherous and landing a plane an act of suicide. He thought it would probably melt when the sun came up and left it, too tired to scrape it away with his shovel. It snowed the rest of the night, huge gusts of white drifting down from the mountains and sweeping across the plain.

  A Stuka buzzed the airfield early the next day, the pilot firing bullets across the rectangle in the dirt before seeking a higher altitude.

  Well hidden in the rocks, O’Malley watched the plane maneuver with a sinking heart. The Germans had obviously spotted the airfield. If the British didn’t come soon, the Luftwaffe would claim possession and land their planes there.

  “Later this week,” he was told when he radioed the British liaison officer.

  Never stirring from the airfield, O’Malley waited three days. But no plane ever came near the clearing.

  He continued to see vapor trails high above the mountain, and once or twice heard aircraft in the distance. But the planes could have been German for all he knew. They were too far off to identify, to make out the markings on their fuselage.

  “Where the hell is the plane?” he shouted when he radioed the officer again. “Airstrip’s in the mountains. It snowed last night. I’ll have to plow you out, you don’t get a move on.”

  “British command vetoed the site,” the man told him. “Another agent is operating to the north of you. He’s afraid your antics will draw the Germans and compromise his supply line.”

  “Antics?” O’Malley yelled. “We slaved building that thing.”

  That pool of whore’s melt.

  Ignoring his outburst, the man instructed O’Malley to abandon the airstrip and construct another farther to the south.

  “South’s where the Germans are,” O’Malley said, furious now. “There’s a whole division down there. The one hundred seventh Jägers. Well established, they are. Been there for weeks now.”

  “To the south,” the man repeated. “Those are your orders.”

  “Are you not hearing me? Where would you have me build the bloody thing? In their mess hall? It’s well nigh impossible what you’re asking for. Mean my death and the death of the men helping me. I won’t do it, you hear? I won’t.”

  He yanked off the headset and slammed it down. Operation Bloody British Airfield.

  Oh, Jesus, sweet Jesus in heaven, what a fool he’d been.

  He felt hard done by. They didn’t care what happened to him. No, they’d sent him off to Greece to get slaughtered without so much as a ‘by your leave.’ Bloody maggots. No wonder field agents only lasted six months.

  “You’re going to hear from me!” he shouted to the heavens. “I’ll join the IRA, I will! Shoot your king. Shoot your bloody king.”

  Chapter 11

  “I quit my post,” O’Malley told Leonidas when he got back to camp. “As of this moment, I’m no longer a member of His Majesty’s Forces. I’m a free agent. Irish by birth and loyal to none.”

  The Greek raised his eyebrows. “You deserted?”

  “Aye. Something like that.”

  O’Malley recounted the conversation he’d had with the British officer, the order he’d been given to abandon the airfield and build another near Kalavryta. The officer’s casual disregard for his safety, the safety of the antartes.

  “I’ll not be speaking to that can of piss anytime soon, that’s for sure. Thick as two planks, he was. ‘Build an airfield in the south.’ ” O’Malley snorted. “Get us all killed, that will.”

  He was glad to be back in the camp, sitting around the fire with the others, his vigil at the airfield finally over. He thought again about the man on the radio: a bigger fool never put his arm through the sleeve of a coat.

  They’d never miss him in Cairo. No, they’d just chalk him up as another dead field agent and move on. Wouldn’t lose a moment’s sleep, worrying about how or why Brendan O’Malley came to be lost. They’d just summon up the next fellow and put him in harm’s way.

  It was one thing to be in the RAF, defending London, or battling Rommel in the sands of Africa. Another thing entirely, soldiering here. What did the British need airfields for anyway? Germans were in retreat, the war in Greece nearly done. He’d stay on and help Leonidas and the rest. He believed in their cause. Was willing to die for it, come to that.

  “A man entering the camp,” the sentry shouted.

  The antartes grabbed their guns and walked out to meet the new arrival. It was Danae’s father, carrying blankets and a bag of food for his son.

  Eager to hear news of Kalavryta, the men crowded around him.

  The German soldier had survived the attack outside the bakery, he reported. Determined to find the person responsible, they’d brought in a local collaborator in a black mask and two Gestapo agents. The owner of the bakery was the first person they questioned. Apparently, the collaborator had seen her son inside at the time of the attack and they were looking for him now, turning the village upside down. All was chaos.

  Danae’s father was worried they’d want to speak to him, members of his family, question them, too. Growing angrier and angrier, he threw open his palm and made an obscene gesture. “Nazistes!”

  Raising his hand, Stefanos mimicked him. “Nazistes!” The Greeks nudged one another and laughed, calling on the boy to do it again.

  “Nazistes!” Stefanos obediently cried. “Nazistes!”.

  Another fool’s errand, O’Malley thought, watching them. Teaching a child to insult the Germans. Get him killed, that would.

  Before Danae’s father returned to Kalavryta, O’Malley cornered him and asked after her.

  “You said the Germans were speaking to everybody in the village. What if they come for her, too?”

  The thought of her being questioned by a Gestapo agent made him sick. He paced back and forth. It was as if his fears had taken on a life of their own, acquired a heartbeat, a pulse.

  “I will see to Danae,” her father said, turning a
way from him. “She is my daughter. She is no concern of yours.”

  * * *

  At first O’Malley had enjoyed looking after the boy, but gradually the kid’s presence began to grate on him. It was hard minding a child who never shut up and found infinite ways to get into trouble. Wore one out, so it did. Like a radio full of static, with no knob to turn it off.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Will you not be still?”

  Planning a solitary ride through the trees, he’d saddled the horse early that morning, but Stefanos had woken up and followed him.

  “Pame!” he yelled. Let’s go.

  “Get back, Specky,” O’Malley said. “Not so close. She’s a skittish beast. She’ll trample you, sure.”

  Ignoring the warning, the boy continued to flick Elektra’s tail with his hand. “Pame!”

  “A right bloody torment you are, Stefanos. As stubborn as the day is long.”

  Reluctantly, O’Malley hoisted the boy up into the saddle and the two of them set off.

  It had rained during the night, and the branches of the pines were beaded with moisture. Stefanos pointed to a cobweb hanging suspended in space, its filaments glimmering with droplets of water. “Arachni!”

  They cantered up to the airfield, Elektra shouldering their weight easily. O’Malley could feel her breathing beneath him, the smooth rhythm of her gait as she charged ahead. She started to gallop when they reached the clearing, dirt flying in all directions.

  Taking his hat off, O’Malley whipped her flanks with it, driving her faster and faster as he rode around in circles, slowly obliterating the airfield he and the antartes had created, erasing the lines in the earth.