by Ben Pastor
The passage was partly shaded even at midday. Fig trees and yellow-blooming spiny bushes lined it; young oaks filled its bottom. The impression was of unexpected wildness and seclusion. At one point of the track, just as unpredictably, the weather changed as the wind took a southerly direction. In minutes, clouds were racing above the travellers, a swift suspended vapour that trailed a wake close to the ground, like shredded fog or odourless smoke. Bora and Allen found themselves descending into circling whiteness, on unseen ground.
Meltemi is the breeze from Anatolia and it gives the place its name, but this is not a nor’easter. How strange – like Homer’s kingdom of the winds, Bora thought. He sniffed the moisture that rose from below and felt sticky, like a spider’s web on his face.
“It’s somewhere around here,” Allen grumbled at his side. “I don’t know what to tell you; that’s all Kyriakos reported.”
Holding the folded map away from the wind, Bora scrutinized their general location, an area unnamed, unmarked but for the symbol of grottoes or caves.
What now? Calling out in Italian – or any language, for that matter – was imprudent. From a place like this echoes would carry far, to God knows whom. On the other hand, Kyriakos said the Italians moved about, so they might not be within earshot at the moment. And what sort of Italians would they be, anyway? Erring on the side of judiciousness was advisable. Bora balanced on the reduced trail to fish out of his pockets his shoulder boards, cap and identification disc, and retrieved the diary he’d already set at the top of his rucksack. “Please,” he told Allen, “put these away for me for a while.” Last, he moved his wedding ring from his right hand (where Germans wore it) to his left.
They were descending into an opaque funnel where nothing but an occasional leafy twig or fleeting rock formation surfaced from the fog. Villiger’s world of bookshelves, racial categories and bloody death was remote from all this, although as the crow flies none of Bora’s places on Crete – Ampelokastro, Sphingokephalo, Sinclair’s cell, Kostaridis’ office – were more than fifteen minutes away.
A sharp modulated whistle vibrated through the vapour like a needle, a warning signal if ever there was one. Its origin Bora located more or less at a forty-five degree angle above the trail, to his right, where nothing but a rock wall should be. A similar high-pitched sound answered it from below, as if the needle were threading back from an incline lower than the trail, at the bottom of the wooded gully where the fog thinned. Not for a moment would Bora have mistaken them for animal sounds. The next step took the travellers below the reach of the clouds, into a space where they became a suspended ceiling above them. Tapering rock walls pitted by holes and clefts, and moist-leafed shrubs encircled them. The simultaneous click of weapons from ledges all around revealed men who kept them under aim.
Long hair, unkempt beards: these weren’t just soldiers who’d been on the lam for a week or two. The growth and filth of months were on them. Now, what would Italian soldiers – even deserters – be doing here in the mountains in this state, when they’d reached Crete after the Germans? Stared at, Bora stared. Homer’s man-eating giants – what were they called, Laestrygonians? – came to mind, or the mythical guardians of Helios’ cattle, fierce islanders such as Ulysses met once and again at his own risk, lying and bluffing his way through.
Something like a storm of cogged wheels clicked inside Bora, because he had to think fast, fast, figure out things in seconds flat. If not Italians, who the hell are they, and why did the goatherd mistake them for Italians? They’re not colonial troops fighting with the British, either; and they aren’t Cretans.
“Atureu!”
The voice, meant to halt him where he was, did more than that. 1937, different and merciless mountains. Bora felt a second heartbeat start to pulsate in his throat. “Jesus Christ,” he said under his breath – in English or German, he wasn’t paying attention, as he wasn’t paying attention whether Allen heard him or not. Atureu? “Atureu” is not Italian for “Stop there.” And it’s not Spanish, either. “No te muevas” would be Spanish. Remedios, is that what you were telling me without words, from your window at mesa pharangi?
There had been, and there would be, many more occasions for him to risk as much as he did now, throwing himself headfirst into whatever it was that he didn’t fully understand but had to be dealt with. It can’t hurt, and I’d do it even if it did.
“Salud!” he called out.
Practised among leftists in war-torn Spain, the form of greeting was political, hence risky; tempered by the show of both unarmed hands, it would sound less provocative to a right-winger if misunderstood. There was a brief pause before the man who addressed him, still aiming the SM Lee-Enfield rifle but slightly pacified, asked in Spanish who he was.
Bora promptly said, “Soy inglès, y ella es norteamericana.” (“I’m English, and she’s American”; he didn’t know whether, as a Texan, Allen spoke Spanish or not. She did appear confused for the first time.) Thus far, he’d rightly guessed the men’s political leaning: it remained to be seen whether communists or anarchists. It made a difference, since during the civil war they’d cut each other’s throats in Barcelona. And their regional identity mattered too, as it often was an insult for a Basque or a Catalan to be considered a Spaniard, and vice versa. “Ustedes son españoles? Vascos? Catalanes?” Bora scrambled through what he recalled from having had soldiers from Catalonia among his men. “Sou catalans? Jo no entenc català. Parleu castellà?”
No answer. The men muttered to one another, remaining where they were, here and there on the rocky shelves like figures from a nativity scene. “Entonces,” a stocky fellow with the bluish beard of a Moor said in Spanish, “why aren’t you with your fellow ingleses, and how have you come here?”
“I’m trying to reach my fellow Englishmen,” Bora told them.
“What do you want with us, then? And who is she?”
“Quiero señas.” Specifying he was only seeking directions, Bora was all too aware of the appreciative glances going Frances Allen’s way. “Està es mi mujer,” he made up on the spur of the moment. “Ya vivia en Creta. La llevo con migo porque està embarazada.” He added he’d been taken prisoner by the Germans days earlier, and escaped by killing a guard, whose equipment he’d stolen. With a slow gesture, he unholstered the Browning by the grip and laid it on the ground at his feet.
The bluebeard hopped down to recover the pistol; he looked into Bora’s rucksack and took out the first cigarette pack that met his fingers. The others kept their rifles levelled at the newcomers and ready to fire.
“Per què es parla castellà? Por què hablas espanol?”
Of course, they would ask how it was that he spoke Spanish. Determined to get his gun back one way or another, Bora found such a level of cool fabrication, he no longer felt the anxiety of a moment ago.
“I was in Aragon in ’37,” he began, telling the truth. All he had to do was to turn around his experiences and those of the enemy he’d fought over those many months and knew very well. “Above Teruel at Palo de la Virgen, on the Sierra de San Martin, among those of the man they called Felipe.”
“De veras? Felipe who?”
“He was an American, Walton by name. Tall fellow, quick temper. We fought the fascists of Riscal Amargo. Habia un alemàn con ellos.” (Bora was that German, of course.) “Felipe held the line in the calle de Villanueva during the battle for Teruel.”
Again, the men did not respond. They exchanged sentences in a language Bora identified as Catalan: which, as far as he could judge, meant they were most likely anarchists. Better that way; they were less inflexible than the Reds. They kept muttering, glancing at one another, and especially at Frances Allen. Now she is experiencing how uncomfortable it is not speaking the language, not understanding whether what’s being said has anything to do with you. And it’s best if she doesn’t know. Bora shook his head, adding a philosophical consideration to his memories of Spain. “The Republic would have won, had there not been infightin
g.”
Indefinite though it was, the statement called for comments, revealing of his counterparts’ creed. Infighting and the settling of scores had weakened the leftist front, but a Third International communist would insist that a lesson had to be taught to deviationists, while an anarchist by contrast would curse the Stalinist repression.
Clever and suspicious, the Catalans anticipated his question. “Which side were you on?”
Bora thought briefly. As an English volunteer it’s unlikely I’d be a Stalinist; were they of that persuasion, they’d already have shot me if they had taken me for an anarchist. On the other hand, if they size me up as a member of the International Brigades, they could assume I was after all Stalin’s fellow traveller.
“I didn’t wear a boina negra,” he said.
The black beret was a badge of obeisance to Moscow. Bora was hoping his steady-eyed, nearly smiling countenance would convince them he was one of those idealistic strangers who’d simply dived into civil war to protect a progressive Spanish government against fascism. The Anglo-Saxons in the lot were seldom traditional communists: libertarian when not anarchical, they’d helplessly watched Spanish republicans demolish one another in ideological feuds. Typical enough, this disagreement on everything: didn’t Kostaridis say that Frances’ husband would never join Satanas’ men? “I began at the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona,” Bora boldly quoted from George Orwell’s book on his Spanish experience, which he’d avidly read following the civil war. “I joined the militia to reach Teruel. We crossed the Ebro and laid siege around Belchite afterwards, but not under Lister.”
The man who did most of the questioning was not the bluebeard, but a man whose facial hair was scant and fiery. Staring critically at Bora, he objected, “The militia, you say. You don’t look like a member of Partido Obrero.”
“Is there a specific way a member of the Workers’ Party should look?”
“Ya veremos: do you know who the Solidarios are?”
“Buenaventura Durruti’s men.”
“And who killed Durruti?”
“He was murdered by the communists of PCE while fighting for Madrid. I wasn’t in Spain at that time, but I heard that half a million marched at his funeral.”
“Half a million and more.”
Durruti’s death had embittered the struggle between anarchists and PCE communists, causing a bloodbath. Bora caught the ball in mid-air. “Y ustedes son faistas?” He meant “members of FAI,” the Anarchist Federation of Catalonia.
They didn’t say, and continued to sound him out. Having followed his Spanish stint with debriefing in Germany, and refined his study of the conflict at the War Academy, Bora acquitted himself credibly, careful not to be so precise and all-knowing as to seem to have learnt a part. No one asked his name, but that was not unusual. In Spain, Bora had fought as “Douglas”, and everyone around him had been under some kind of cover or disguise.
These were fellows he’d shot at and had been fired on by in the misery of sub-zero winter and the blaze of summer, purely on ideological grounds, and as a Catholic. At twenty-three, being a Spanish Foreign Legion lieutenant was about as glorious as he could imagine. At Belchite as in Teruel, he’d been among the besieged, not the attackers; from Belchite he’d sneaked out with a few companions just before the city surrendered. It was easy to talk about common experiences of hardships; he only had to mind the way he described them, through the eyes of his own enemies of those days. It surprised him to find how much more they shared: idealism first of all, and fierce endurance.
Meanwhile, the bluebeard had presented the Browning to his red-haired companion, who appreciatively hefted it. “How come that you, an English monarchist, served the Republic in Spain?”
Bora rushed to mix truth and fiction. “Well, my mother’s family is Scots: ask the Scots about English rule.” Yes. Yes. That’s believable. Waldo Preger’s resentment about social rank comes to mind, and how it affects his angry idea of the Fatherland. “When your own country doesn’t recognize your legitimate aspirations, you have a right to seek them elsewhere.” My Scots ancestors died against and for the King of England. You wonder what obstacles a hybrid like Lieutenant Patrick Krishnamurti Sinclair must have confronted in his own life and career, remaining stiff-backed and loyal to His Majesty. “Her, too.” Bora glanced at the frowning Allen. “Although she’s American, she’s also been seeking a purpose elsewhere.”
“Why are you looking for the English, then?”
“I mean to take her where they are hiding, so she’ll be safer.”
“And where will you go afterwards?”
“I don’t know. It depends on what the English say, or do.” Which was true enough.
This seemed to satisfy the Catalans for the moment. The travellers were escorted to the bottom of the gully, where no wind or clouds reached. Here there was food, which the men offered in exchange for the cigarettes which they divided among themselves. Cold meat, honey, wine and Kyriakos’ cheese came out. Rice milk, too. Bora shared soluble coffee and lemonade powder. Amused to be smoking what they took for stolen German Army tobacco, they laid out a comfortable place for the surprised Allen to sit.
“We’re faistas,” the fiery head told Bora. “Good thing you put down your gun, camarada, we’d have blown you away if you hadn’t. What’s happening on the island’s north coast?”
Bora had no problem saying it was solidly in German hands.
“We keep an eye on the English,” they told him, “but won’t serve under them. We were among those who signed up back in Syria because we’d have to fight with the fascists if we stayed in the French Foreign Legion. But as far as we here are concerned, our fight is as much against English capitalism as against the fascists.”
Without enquiring further, Bora understood. The Catalans were among the troops transferred by the British from the Middle East to the island at the end of 1940. Clearly, this handful had jumped ship the moment they’d had a chance, and now waited for the opportunity to fight for the revolution; never mind a war that didn’t help proletarians. Altogether, the best possible comrades, unaware of what had gone on since, and ignorant of British units.
“Why don’t you stay with us, ingles, and wait for the revolution?”
Bora nodded towards Allen, meaning his obligations to a wife. “Debo cuidar de ella.”
When he sat next to her and summarized how things stood, she looked up from her roast kid. “I might not know Spanish,” she said irritably under her breath, “but I heard you, back there. Why did you say I’m embarrassed?”
“I didn’t say you’re embarrassed. Embarazada in Spanish means pregnant.”
“Preg – what? What did you just say?”
“Look, Ma’am, I really don’t want to discuss this or other matters, and I don’t care whether you approve or not. I said it with good reason. These are men who deserted the French Foreign Legion. They aren’t used to seeing women in knee-length trousers. They could get ideas. I don’t know about you, but I don’t need it.”
She filled her mouth with food. “This is really egregious! I’m not pregnant and I don’t plan on getting pregnant.”
“You’re ahead of me on planning, Mrs Sidheraki: I only plan to get back alive.”
The time spent with the Catalans at Meltemi trickled like sand in an hourglass. Overhead, the breeze that spared the hideout tore to shreds what remained of the passing clouds, until a jagged cut-out of clear, gold-blue marked the sky under which seven men waited for the revolution to reach Crete. Bora resorted to all he’d observed about the British presence in and around Iraklion, staying credibly vague when it came to the Germans. “It cost them to take the island,” he admitted. He was much more generous when it came to Spanish recollections: he spoke in detail of the Hill of Santa Barbara in Teruel as if he’d been among those surrounding it, not one of its reduced defenders. Although his side had won in the end, he spoke of his worst moments there in order to sound as glum as his listeners were about it. To them – and
to Bora, too – this wasn’t Crete any more. In the eyes of the men around him, it was that other land, fought over tooth and nail, lost and regained, and finally lost. To him, it was all that Spain had meant to him as a soldier and a very young man.
The Catalans didn’t know where the closest Britons might be holing up. They did advise Bora to avoid Krousonas (“Where there are Greeks who shoot on sight, quienquiera que sea”). Although they didn’t speak the local language, they understood from villagers that there was a chieftain called Satanas down there, who sided with the ingleses. All they knew was that a few injured Englishmen, some of them badly injured, were licking their wounds in a place they showed Bora on their crumpled map.
“Se llama Agias Irinis.”
Bora was very interested in this. At last. It was not impossible that Powell might be among them; if not, army medics or local practitioners tending to the lot could be prevailed upon to give further directions. He learnt that peasants provided supplies for most of the runaways, an activity that made them into reliable couriers back and forth. Word of mouth travels rapidly, and Agias Irinis was definitely the next stop.
It took the Catalans two hours to trust Bora enough to send him on his way, although they wouldn’t return his pistol until it was time for them to separate, and only because he left behind his Esbit cooker in exchange.
A stunning afternoon met the travellers at the mouth of the gully. Up there, the wind blew as fiercely as before; it ground the webbed leaves of the fig trees and bent the spiny bushes; southward, clear vistas stretched to other mountains and down towards the plain of Messarà, beyond which lay the Libyan Sea.
If she appreciated Bora’s ploy to guard her from unwanted attentions, Frances Allen did not gratify him with a thank you. She handed him his things back, and listened as they walked to a summary of his conversation with the Catalans. “Agias Irinis is a common place name on the island. Which one are we speaking of?”