by Ben Pastor
It was nearly three o’clock by Bora’s watch when he heard the mongrels restlessly barking up at mesa pharangi. He slipped inside the hut to rouse the women. Despite the complete darkness of the back room, he could tell them apart by the different odour of their sweaty clothes. “He’s coming,” he leaned over and whispered to the American. “Be ready at the door.” Frances Allen stirred out of a deep sleep and – crawling towards the exit – stumbled over the old woman, to whom she was saying something in Greek when Bora went out again. If he strained his ear, he could make out from above the small sounds of one who tries not to make noise but cannot go wholly unnoticed; pebbles clicked and rolled under his feet. Silently, Bora hiked a short distance up the trail to a spot he had kept in mind, where the shrubbery would allow him to wait undetected for another to go by. It would not trick aggressive sheepdogs; still it would give him some space to manoeuvre.
There were no dogs, but Kyriakos was not alone. Two men picked their steps in the dim starlight – the moon had since set, and even across the valley nothing but a sprinkle of campfires flickered far off – and only when they were close did Bora perceive that one of them carried a shotgun. Whether the goatherd had become suspicious because of the change in routine, or the old woman’s neighbour had forewarned him, he’d brought someone along. But he could also simply be travelling with a friend or relative of his.
Bora waited until the men reached the hut, and from the few words exchanged it became evident there was mutual respect between Kyriakos and his great-aunt. An oil lantern was lit, and gave out sprays of uneven glare on those around. On the doorstep, Frances Allen looked like a gorgon, her wiry hair tangled with sleep. She must be wondering where her travelling companion might have gone, but for Bora it would pay not to be found with the others.
Yet, not to appear openly hostile, he called out in English “I’m here” while stepping down to join the group, so the men wouldn’t feel he had tried to catch them unawares from behind.
Kyriakos was the one with the shotgun. He held it so that, if needed, he could let off the contents of both barrels on Bora. “Ya sou,” Bora said in a conciliatory tone. The swap of stares in the broken glare lasted a matter of seconds. Then Frances spoke up. “Kyriakos says we should all go inside,” and, “Where are my sandals?”
Inside the two-room hut, at first all five sat around on the dirt floor in the kitchen-like front space, but after the preliminaries the sleepy old woman went back to lie in the inner alcove. Kyriakos, like his watchdog, was blind in one eye. Big, scarred and shaven-headed like a convict, he kept dully staring at the American and asking the same questions (who were they, what they wanted here, etc.), to the extent that Bora began to think he was mentally unsound. The other fellow, perhaps twenty years of age, could easily be Kyriakos’ own son. Same size, same shorn skull. He meekly squatted there without opening his mouth, looking down like someone ashamed or unused to people.
The lantern had been fashioned out of a can, punched with holes. The speckled light that resulted made all faces into an impressionist play of dots. Across Kyriakos’ knees lay the shotgun, at an angle that still guaranteed he could fire in split seconds and not miss. Bora looked away from it. I’d have to be Buffalo Bill to draw ahead of him. I won’t show I’m afraid by keeping the Browning at the ready, either, so I must accept sitting under aim, though it would blow quite a hole through me.
As long as the questioning came from the goatherd, there was no advantage to the travellers. Frances Allen succeeded at last in probing a sentence or two out of him, but not before a Greek banknote came out of her pocket.
“He says he doesn’t know where the English are. He doesn’t sell meat to the English. He doesn’t sell meat, period. He sells cheese.”
“Well, to whom does he sell cheese, then?”
More cajoling followed. “To anyone who’ll buy it, he says.” Frances Allen spoke, fumbling with her blouse. She seemed to realize only now that buttons had come undone and her cleavage was showing. Bora had been too absorbed to notice, but it was probably why Kyriakos was staring and drooling and the boy was looking down. The proof of it was that once the blouse was buttoned up to her neck, the goatherd snapped out of his spell.
Now that presumably he was no longer aroused, though, he was alarmed. Obviously, he didn’t trust either visitor – especially two frangoi, especially Bora. He took the money, but didn’t want to give any information. Bora suspected he planned to keep them there until daybreak, until reinforcements came or a trap was set. Finding a way out of the impasse would not be easy. He denies dealing with the English, although the British-issue food can I saw at his place suggests he’s lying. But I can’t very well make him drunk and blind his remaining eye with a burning branch as Ulysses did with the Cyclops. Making up my own story is really all I can do. He turned to the American. “Tell him we know he’s been selling to the English, and that the Germans know he’s been doing it. Don’t ask, Ma’am, just tell him.”
An agitated, brief exchange brought a result Bora did not expect. “He says he’s been selling not to the English, but to the Italians.”
Italians this far north? It’s odd, but you never can tell with Italians. They could be scouts as much as deserters. Very odd, but ten to one I’ll be able to buy information from them.
“Wait,” Frances Allen added to her translation. “Kyriakos wants to know how come you know what the Germans know.”
“Say I ran away from them. If he takes us to the Italians, or tells us how to get there, he can have another banknote and two packs of cigarettes.”
“Two packs? One’s plenty.”
“Whatever.”
The negotiation was quick and inconclusive. “Says he’ll think about it and let you know later, when it gets light.”
Risky or not, there was nothing else to do for close to two hours. Between now and then, Bora and Kyriakos sat keeping an eye – the right word as far as the goatherd was concerned – on each other. The boy eventually lay on his side and fell asleep. Frances Allen, too, began to nod after a while, so Bora told her she could retire. She mumbled, “Okay, wake me up if you need me, or something,” and curled up where she was, like Kyriakos’ son.
Bora, on the other hand, had no difficulty staying awake, considering how he could be shot at any time, by Kyriakos or someone else barging in. There was no guarantee they were facing a simple herdsman: he and Allen could have already fallen into the orbit of Satanas’ band; Satanas might have been informed and be already on his way, with or without his British comrades-in-arms. Awake but less than clear-minded, Bora couldn’t rouse himself past regret for having got himself into a trap. What was I thinking? A whore used to live here. Every male around knows the way to this hut. I turned so many corners in the labyrinth, I couldn’t retrace my steps if I wanted to. There’s no magic ball of yarn to follow to the exit. If the mongrels resumed their barking at mesa pharangi, or the watchdog tied to the mandra’s door started howling, it would be an advance sign that strangers were approaching. As it would if the crickets and other insects chirping outside went suddenly quiet. If they capture me, whether they kill me or not, I’ll have failed in my task. And I won’t see Moscow again, won’t ride into Russia. I’ll have thrown away my war in this godforsaken place. No. No. I wish it were godforsaken – there are gods and spirits here, or else I wouldn’t have seen Remedios looking down from the window.
An hour dragged by, and nothing happened. I am twelve, Bora thought, when General von Fritsch becomes head of our Military District IV, Dresden. I am twelve and only two years ago one American dollar was worth 4.2 trillion German marks. I am twelve, and secretly weep for joy when for the first time my stepfather calls me “son” in public.
The musky odour of unwashed bodies, sleepers’ breath, women’s odour stagnated in the hut; a reek less identifiable – but one could well imagine its source – rose out of the porne’s bedding bundled against the wall. Kyriakos’ seeing eye, unmoved, unblinking, made the weary Bora guess
at one point that he was able to sleep open-eyed like a fish. Sitting cross-legged put a strain on his back, but he couldn’t relax for fear of dozing off. As it was, surreal, bizarre images crossed his mind, of maze-like trails, bottomless wells, of the goatherd and his watchdog mangling and blinding each other in a fury. I am twelve, and hear at home that Herr Hitler will ruin the Fatherland.
No external threat materialized. The only distraction overnight was provided when the old woman stirred in the back, stepped through the room like a ghost and went outside, hitching up her black skirts. In the murmur of crickets, there followed the trickle of urine just past the threshold, and her deep sigh.
FRIDAY 6 JUNE
As God willed, the low door looking east took on the colour of mother-of-pearl. No Kapetanios Satanas, no wild cries, no shooting far or near. Leaving behind the three sleepers and the nearly exhausted lantern, Kyriakos stood, leaned the shotgun against the wall, and preceded Bora out of the hut. There he boldly pissed in the morning breeze while Bora – aching with the long immobility – lit himself a cigarette. Strong and foul-tasting, it was what it took to wake a man up. When Kyriakos drew near and grabbed the pack, Bora pretended to resist, before slowly relinquishing the hold on the plain container for mixed “oriental and non-oriental tobaccos”.
Unable to communicate, they smoked side by side under the almond tree, Kyriakos holding the straw-coloured pack to his good eye, Bora looking at the far triangle of the sea glittering like foil. The eastern mountain range delayed the sunrise, but the sky around it was on fire. How did the poets ever come up with “rosy-fingered Dawn”? If dawn had hands, they were ablaze. In the warm light, Kyriakos’ scarred face was both brutal and miserable. Wasn’t it a goatherd who betrayed Ulysses on his return, siding with the suitors? And wasn’t there a muscular beggar at the palace, who wrestled with the disguised hero over food scraps? In hand-to-hand combat, this large and apparently sluggish man would be a dangerous adversary, even for Bora.
Minutes later, hearing Frances Allen’s and the old woman’s voices inside, Bora took out the compact Esbit cooker, little more than a metal reverse trestle that half-opened on its hinges, and used fuel tablets to build a brisk fire in it. He was stirring instant coffee in hot water when his tousled travel companion emerged from the hut.
“Morning.”
“Morning.”
“How do you feel?”
“Rotten. Look, I’ve got to go. Can I have my sandals?”
Bora handed her a full cup. “Sorry, no. Later, when you’re done.”
She snatched the cup, gulped down its contents and tiptoed barefooted around the hut, muttering something that distinctly sounded to Bora like “goddamned Kraut”.
As for Kyriakos, he was thoroughly fascinated by the fuel tablets, but wouldn’t touch the German brew, so different from Greek-style coffee. His barely-awake son, scratching and stretching, was sent lurching down the goat trail to the mandra, presumably to fetch coffee grains and feed the watchdog.
The shotgun was once more at the herdsman’s side when Frances Allen returned from her reduced grooming. She found her sandals by the fire, and before resuming her interpreter’s duty, she grumpily buckled them on.
Bora was impatient. “He promised to let me know when it got light, and it’s light now.”
“It doesn’t work that way around here, Captain.”
In fact, the conversation went nowhere until the younger man brought the essentials to prepare Greek coffee, and the thick liquid filled very small cups. Except for Bora, they all drank, and Frances Allen began to translate.
“Kyriakos says he doesn’t know if you’re English or not. He believes you’re running away from your own, ‘whoever they are’, or you wouldn’t be looking for the Italians. He doesn’t care about that. He doesn’t care what any of us do, English, Italians, Germans. We’re all frangoi and due to leave sooner or later. He says the wild goats will live in Crete long after all the frangoi are gone. Only the mountains will last longer than wild goats in Crete.”
Bora seethed. “That may be his philosophy, but if he doesn’t believe I heard from the Germans that he trades with the English, tell him I saw a can of English food near his mandra yesterday. Tell him I want to reach those who gave it to him.”
“He says a German soldier gave him canned food in exchange for his cheese.”
It was possible: enemy depots had been raided right after the landing. “Well, damn it. We’re back to square one. What about the Italians he deals with – how do I find them?”
Kyriakos listened to Frances’ question. On his haunches by the small fire, he’d maintained an image of passivity, bordering on inertia, throughout the exchange so far. But when his son, who’d been idly standing behind him, leaned over and reached for the cigarette pack, in an unforeseeable reaction he surged to punch the boy in the face, so hard that knuckles met cheekbone with a cracking sound. The boy spun around and – big as he was – fell flat on the ground.
Bora had been refilling his cup. Scalding his fingers with hot water and reaching for his pistol all happened in one fluid move. Right arm outstretched, he sprang up in a firing stance. He saw a bloody froth bubbling from the boy’s mouth where he lay, between the fire and the almond tree, but that he was alive and coming to.
“Christ, if he does it again I’ll open fire on him.”
The line between Allen’s brows deepened like a cut. “You’ll do no such thing. You don’t step between father and son in this country.”
“If he does it again, I’ll open fire on him.”
Notwithstanding the slow return of the Browning to its holster, Kyriakos acted as if Bora’s anger escaped him, or could be safely ignored. He resumed his slack seated position. Like a deflating bag, packed until now with hot air, he relapsed into stillness as though nothing had happened. But his inaction was no longer believable, and neither was Bora’s self-control.
Nothing was said about the incident. Mortified more than hurt, the big-boned boy crawled under the tree, where the old woman wiped his face with the hem of her skirt. “That’s the last time he takes me by surprise,” Bora warned. He was unready for his own wrath, as if frustration about his task (and Waldo Preger) were spilling over to other areas of his life. “Will this beast tell me where the Italians are, or do I have to shoot the three of them?” Frances Allen stared at him.
“Did you hear me? Get him to tell me!”
She showed no more surprise than she had when Kyriakos had struck his son, except that she grew pale under her tan.
Bora read what passed through her mind, and her hesitation, her fear infuriated him. “Get him to tell me where the Italians are.”
She picked her words as slowly as she’d just tiptoed barefoot on the mountainside.
“They keep moving along the slope of the mountain that looks to the south-west, but camp in a place called Meltemi.”
8
“Cripes. Cripes. I think you’re just waiting to get what you want from me, before you do it.”
It took Bora a good hour after they left Kyriakos to convince Frances Allen that he had no intention of killing her. He was far from sincere, but pleasant and trained enough to appear persuaded of his own words. “That’s nonsense, Ma’am. Back there, you understand that I couldn’t afford not to react strongly. He struck the boy without motive, was armed, and had to know we wouldn’t be so meek as to be next.”
“We?”
“Well, you and I are together in this. And you’re from a neutral country; Germany has no quarrel with you.”
“Which is why you locked me up.”
“I assure you, that was because of your husband.”
She shook her head and avoided looking his way, but inwardly leaned towards believing him, Bora knew. It was possible that she was used to quick-tempered men. Didn’t her husband keep an arsenal at home? As for him, his embassy work had taught him to layer a certain polite stolidity over his orders, to let nothing escape he didn’t want to. Friendliness and
impenetrability were his daily bread in Moscow, and today, in front of the American, stood an attaché’s assistant as much as the boy with the secret skeleton key.
When they stopped to fill their canteens where a spring-fed cement tank brimmed with water, she’d already regained her insolence. “Don’t you go thinking I was really scared back there. I criss-crossed this island for fifteen years by myself.” She spoke with a cigarette in her mouth, while using his soap to lather her neck. “And you won’t be the one who gets my goat.”
“I’m not familiar with the expression.”
“It means ‘irritates’.”
Frances Allen was studying him, and Bora let her. He had everything to hide, which was like saying he had nothing to hide. He stared at the broken reflections in the water, where suds created milky eddies. He looked away because the wetness let the hard knobs of her nipples show through the cloth. The place indicated by Kyriakos was distant, unmarked on the map. They’d climbed for the past hour, and were supposed to reach higher: very slow trekking, and circuitous as well. This tank, trough or more likely what remained of a wash house serving forsaken hamlets and huts, was the largest body of fresh water he’d seen in inland Crete. Bora felt his whole body thirsting and uncommonly sensitive, an after-effect of his lack of sleep, or tension. He fought the troubling, fragmentary recollection that had surfaced in his mind when he and Kyriakos had confronted each other in the porne’s hut. I am twelve, and hear at home that Herr Hitler will ruin the Fatherland.