Eleni (17 page)

Several villagers remarked that the
andartes
had shown they were just, after all, but when Father Zisis went to see the boy, Antonis snatched the open bag from him and threw it on the floor. His mother quickly gathered up the bills and begged the priest not to report her son’s thoughtless action to the guerrillas.

Except for the unfortunate incident with the Kollios boy, the villagers welcomed the presence of the guerrillas, not only for the new purpose and importance it gave to their lives, but also for the diversions it added to the dull daily routine. On many afternoons, around the hour of five, the church bells would announce a
synkendrosi
—a compulsory gathering—in the Alonia, and the villagers would hurry to the square to be entertained. Even the small children went, and Olga and Kanta begged, unsuccessfully, to be permitted to hide out of sight and peek at the festivities, the way certain less carefully supervised maidens did.

Sometimes the
synkendrosi
would be Prokopi Skevis speaking to the villagers about goals of the struggle. On other afternoons the guerrillas would educate the villagers in the aims of their movement with dancing, singing and skits.

These ELAS convocations loom large in my earliest memories of life in the village. To a small boy they seemed marvelously exciting and entertaining. Although I don’t remember a word of the speeches, I remember the serpentine line of uniformed men, led by Prokopi himself, dancing the slow steps of the
tsamiko
or performing acrobatic leaps and somersaults to the lively rhythm of the dance of the eagles. When the guerrillas raised their voices in the songs of ELAS, even the smallest children like myself would join in, and I’d hear the sweet sopranos of unseen village girls, peering from behind shutters, as they sang the stirring verses:

Even more than the singing and the dancing, we children loved the skits. I joined in loudly cheering the heroes and hissing the villains as Mitsi Bollis, with a pillow under his belt and a huge false black beard, played the swaggering EDES leader, Zervas. Taking pratfalls, he would run to collect sovereigns from Churchill, kiss the boots of the Glücksburg puppet king and then, with a Nazi salute, scamper over to Hitler and whisper military secrets in his ear. When the ELAS warriors tied “Zervas” up and dumped a sack of goat dung on his head I laughed until my sides hurt. It was even more wonderful than the rare traveling shadow puppet shows, and it drew the villagers together in a warm feeling of shared emotion and dedication to the cause of our local resistance fighters. If some of the adults, like my mother, did not join as loudly in the laughter or cheers, if they silently perceived a danger in the propaganda exercises, I was too young to understand.

One day in late May the songs, dances and speeches gave way to a drama of real bullets and blood. Eleni had left the house early in the morning and taken Olga and Kanta up to the high fields near the eighteenth-century Chapel of St. Nicholas to start on the spring planting, leaving Glykeria in charge of Nikola and Fotini, so she didn’t hear the pealing of the church bells calling everyone to the square. It was early in the day for a
synkendrosi
, but the Liotes hurried to the Alonia, expecting to be entertained. As soon as they arrived, however, they realized that something was wrong. Vangeli Poulos was striding up and down, his face flushed with
raki
. Prokopi Skevis stood with a frown like a thundercloud while the uniformed guerrillas whispered together. When the square was full, Prokopi took his bull horn and shouted to the assembled villagers that the time had come to act, to lay their lives on the line. The fascist EDES troops of Zervas had crossed the Kalamas River. They were only ten miles away. Today the
andartes
would take up their scythes and mow down the traitors who blocked the way to the glorious tomorrow they were building.

A babel of excitement arose, but Prokopi shouted it down. This was a moment for action, not words, he said. All the men of the village were to prepare themselves for battle. He would select twelve reservists to take up the dozen extra guns and join his guerrilla band in the front lines, but as soon as more weapons were captured, the rest of the men would be sent for.

Since the day they seized the police station, Prokopi’s small band had grown to more than a hundred men, drawn from the various Mourgana villages. Not all of them shared the Skevis brothers’ vision of a Communist
future for the country, but many had thrown in their lot because they believed that the resistance movement was the best hope of saving Greece from the Germans. Among the non-Communists who wore the ELAS uniform that day were career army officers, the constables from Lia’s police station, teachers, lawyers, and even two priests. In Lia, nearly every able-bodied man, regardless of political sympathies, had signed on as a reservist—150 in all.

Prokopi’s grim announcement triggered weeping among the women, and as he chose the twelve reservists who would go with them, mothers and wives embraced their men and begged God to bring them through the battle alive. The soldiers lined up, trying to look brave, shouldered their rifles and set off down the mountain toward the southeast.

Glykeria was under strict instructions from her mother not to let Fotini and Nikola leave the yard, so she ignored the summons of the church bells, and, annoyed at missing the
synkendrosi
, set out the midday meal for the two smaller children. It was a warm, humid afternoon, and after lunch Nikola climbed to the flat ledge of stone over the gate to the yard, his favorite place to be alone. He was only four years old and because his stomach was full, he soon fell asleep.

Glykeria, feeling very important at being left in charge, sat down on the front step, where she could keep an eye on Nikola, and called Fotini, who was five and liked playing at being grown-up. Glykeria ordered Fotini to comb out and de-lice her silky, yellow hair because she liked the sensuous feeling.

While Fotini was struggling with Glykeria’s hair, Nikola rolled over on the cement slab and suddenly plunged from the top of the gate and fell the eight feet to the stone walk below, landing on the back of his head. He was stunned for a moment, then emitted a terrific wail. Glykeria rushed over to find blood from a gash in the back of his skull trickling down his neck. Nikola cried louder, but the neighborhood was deserted and there was no adult to help. Glykeria felt acutely that she was only ten years old and didn’t know what to do.

“You’re all right. I’ll give you a fig if you don’t cry!” she pleaded and led him into the house, where she grabbed a white pillowcase out of her mother’s dowry chest and bound it around the wound as best she could.

Sucking on the dried fig, Nikola finally stopped crying, and as soon as his sobs diminished, Glykeria regained her poise; imitating her mother, she told him to lie down and go back to sleep. He was nodding already, worn out by his ordeal, and Glykeria left him on the sleeping pallet, went back outside and told Fotini to resume combing her hair.

The battle in Keramitsa began shortly after noon. Prokopi’s band fought bravely, even though vastly outnumbered by Zervas’s EDES guerrillas and their superior weapons, but the ELAS forces were relentlessly pushed back.
When Prokopi finally issued the order to retreat, everyone moved quickly, except for Vangeli Poulos, who had been manning their only machine gun with the assistance of another village boy. Vangeli was drunk with
raki
and courage. He refused to retreat.

The other boy did not share young Poulos’ thirst for martyrdom. They were seen by their comrades arguing fiercely as Vangeli peppered the approaching EDES troops with the last of the ammunition. At twilight, the same hour that he had killed the collaborator, Kontoris, young Vangelis Poulos became the first ELAS martyr from the village of Lia, and the first villager to die in the war. The other boy survived him by a few minutes.

In the fields of St. Nicholas, high above the village, Eleni, Olga and Kanta were near the end of an exhausting day of preparing the newly plowed earth for the spring planting. Eleni was startled by the sound of gunfire, mortars and machine guns bursting out from the southwest. She could see smoke but nothing else. It was the first time she had left Glykeria with the little ones and her mind suddenly filled with scenes of carnage and death, her children in the midst of it all. Terrified, she led the two older girls helter-skelter down the mountain.

She arrived out of breath at the gate to find Glykeria and Fotini happily eating some apricots which they had stolen from Tassos Bartzokis’ tree across the path. “Thank God!” Eleni gasped. “I heard guns! The neighborhood is empty. Where’s Nikola?”

Glykeria stopped eating and frowned. “He’s inside lying down,” she said. “He bumped his head a little, but he’s fine now.”

Eleni’s momentary relief vanished and all her premonitions of disaster returned. She rushed into the kitchen to find Nikola lying with a blood-soaked pillowcase around his head like a turban. At the sight her fears burst out in a terrible scream. When the toddler opened his eyes, she saw that he was still alive, and she managed to control her trembling hands long enough to find scissors, cut off the hair around the wound and clean it with
tsipouro
, all the while crooning to Nikola. She cursed herself for leaving her son, the cornerstone of her life, alone and unprotected.

As soon as the wound was dressed and she got her breath back, Eleni went after Glykeria, who was hovering on the edge of the yard. “You—you black devil, is this the way you look after your brother?” Eleni screamed, reaching down for stones to throw at the girl. Glykeria was already running as fast as her chubby legs could take her, and all the while she was shouting dramatically, “Go ahead! Kill me! I don’t care! I’m ready to die! Come down, St. Demetrios, and take me! My mother is murdering me!”

None of the stones found their mark and Eleni was tripped up in her pursuit by Fotini’s small hands grabbing at her skirt. “Glykeria didn’t do it!” Fotini pleaded. “Nikola fell off by himself! I was doing Glykeria’s hair, just like a big lady!”

“You too?” Eleni shouted, looking at the serious face and trembling lips. “Nikola’s littler than you, and you should have been looking after him!” But
she sank down on the ground, her fury draining from her. Ever since Nikola’s birth Fotini had been a weepy child, who felt cheated of the attention she craved. For that reason Eleni could never bring herself to spank her, although the girl’s whining often drove her to distraction. Nor could she whip Glykeria properly, for the shameless girl, who was now disappearing down the path toward the Bartzokis house, was still shouting to all the saints in heaven to carry her away to her death. The doleful sound of her voice made Eleni laugh in spite of herself. She went back into the house to take her son in her lap, rocking him in the security of her arms.

Glykeria was still missing when Olga Venetis came up the path with the news that Prokopi’s band had been pushed back from Keramitsa and was retreating north to Kastaniani, passing right through the village. She told Eleni the news of the two boys’ deaths, which had already reached their families. Eleni looked down at Nikola, asleep in her lap, his bandage like a lopsided cap. The misgivings raised in her breast by the guerrillas’ actions had been well founded. Sons of her neighbors were being sacrificed under the banner of revolution. She would never give her son up to any cause. She turned to her neighbor. “It’s a blessing that Vangeli’s mother is not alive to suffer this!” she said harshly. “God grant that I die rather than see one of my children taken before me.”

When the news reached Lia that Zervas’ forces were on their way in pursuit of ELAS, everyone, including the Gatzoyiannis family, prepared to flee to the caves, terrified of falling into the hands of the dreaded right-wing EDES guerrillas. But Zervas’
andartes
never advanced closer than Keramitsa, intimidated by the ferocity of Prokopi’s fighters and unwilling to follow them into their own mountains. When it was clear that Lia would not be occupied by EDES, Prokopi’s men returned to the village, and an uneasy waiting period began.

Although they had been defeated at Keramitsa, Prokopi was proud of the way his men had comported themselves in battle when faced with EDES’ superior strength. He had turned his army of tinkers and shepherds into a disciplined fighting unit. But the regional leaders of the Greek Communist Party, which controlled ELAS, could not forgive the defeat. They were convinced that Prokopi’s ELAS group had a fatal weakness: he allowed the Mourgana unit to be directed by a local committee rather than men hand-picked by the party leaders in Yannina. They felt he was giving his group an autonomy that undermined party discipline and weakened its military strength. The party decided to tighten the reins on the Mourgana guerrillas.

The man sent to bring the group into line was a thin, swarthy, balding Macedonian Slav who used the name “Inoes.” The villagers were surprised to see their local hero cower before this stranger. Inoes accused Prokopi of weakness because he had allowed men into his organization who were not true believers.

Prokopi was outraged at the criticism. The village was solidly behind him, he protested. “If we eliminate the local committee and put it all in the hands of the party, we’ll lose some of our best men, who aren’t Communists!” Inoes was not persuaded. The Mourgana group was taken out of Prokopi’s hands and merged into the 15th ELAS Regiment, which was under tight party control. Within a week, as Prokopi feared, a dozen of the unit’s most experienced fighters, including former army officers and the head constable, Kaloyeropoulos, took their boots in their hands and crept out of Lia; they surfaced in Keramitsa, where they joined Zervas’ rival EDES forces.

Prokopi’s humiliations were not over. Using the defections as an excuse, the party removed him from the group he had created and nurtured for two years, and exiled him to a job in a small village in the Yannina valley.