Eleni (59 page)

While the twenty fugitives were navigating the wheat field just below the Church of the Virgin, a group of three guerrillas from the security police station, led by the snake-eyed intelligence officer Sotiris Drapetis, were hurrying across the ravine from the direction of the Perivoli, headed for the Ziaras house. When they reached it, the windows were dark and no one answered their knock. “Break it down,” Sotiris ordered, already knowing what they would find. Under their cleated boots, the door flew open and the three stood silently, staring into the emptiness.

“Mother of God, they’ve done it!” Sotiris muttered.

Within minutes the police were at the nearby lookout post; Sotiris was shouting into the field telephone and cursing the guerrillas around him at the same time. He discovered that most of the sentries had gone to join the party at St. Friday, leaving a skeleton crew. Among those left behind were Andreas Michopoulos and a young guerrilla who swore that he had seen the Mitros and Ziaras families not half an hour before, weeping over the dying baby. “Maybe they’ve taken him to find the doctor,” the boy said, but Sotiris could feel in his guts that it was an escape—a premeditated mass breakout—the very thing he had been sent to Lia to prevent. Koliyiannis would castrate him, he thought as he shouted into the field telephone, “I want two patrols of five men each—immediately—one down the ravine on the west, the other going from St. Friday. Look under every bush and rock, but make sure you get to the place where the paths cross at the Great Ridge before the traitors do!”

Hanging up the phone, his face pasty beneath the stubble, Sotiris muttered, “And I thought Mitros was with us!”

He turned around to face the frightened guerrillas behind him. “Tomorrow the plane tree in the square is going to be hanging with corpses,” he said. “Either the traitors or you.”

Just below the bottom of the wheat field there was a small naked incline leading to a thick grove whose impenetrable black-green shadow would shelter them from the eyes of the lookouts. But first they had to cross a hundred feet of bare dirt, wanlv silver in the light of the newborn moon.
The fugitives tiptoed out of the wheat, still crouching, their shoes in their hands. At the rear Nitsa tripped over a large stone and tumbled down the steep hill, rolling like a barrel. The stone was knocked loose, and as it fell, dislodged a shower of pebbles that tumbled and clattered ahead of her. Tassi Mitros, several dozen feet to her right, heard the sudden burst of noise, the thing he had been fearing ever since they left the house.

“Run!” he croaked in a strangled voice. “It’s the guerrillas!” They all plunged toward the safety of the woods ahead, scampering in every direction, dropping their shoes and their belongings, even their children, in the desperate sprint to save themselves.

Olga and Calliope Mitros were at the back of the line near Nitsa, and they saw what had caused the sound. Curled up in a fetal ball, Nitsa lay on the ground, her hands over her ears, convinced that the guerrillas were upon her. Olga and Calliope turned back as the others disappeared into the woods below. They grabbed Nitsa under her arms and lifted the moaning, pear-shaped figure, dragging her with them down the hill. Nitsa’s shoes were gone and she groaned louder with every limping step she took. The three women plunged into the underbrush and didn’t stop until they were deep in the shadows under a thick, spreading oak tree. They leaned against the trunk and listened, panting hard. Calliope Mitros, who had become rather deaf from a childhood illness, watched Olga and Nitsa for a clue as to what they heard. But there was nothing: only the sound of their own labored breathing and the rustling and murmuring of the trees. No shouts, no pursuing footsteps. They looked at one another in sudden fear. They couldn’t even hear the sound of their own people. They had veered to the right when they entered the forest, instinctively heading downhill and west, toward the ravine. Lukas Ziaras had led the others in a different direction. Now they were lost.

Several hundred yards to the east, the rest of the party came to an exhausted halt in a grove of beech trees. They all stared at Tassi Mitros, who had sounded the alarm. He shrugged, then said, “I didn’t see them, but I could hear them, right behind us.”

“You’re sure it was the guerrillas?” Lukas whispered, his thin body shuddering with the aftermath of his terror. He covered his mouth with the towel to stifle his cough.

“Who else could it be?” countered Tassi.

Suddenly there was a small cry, ragged with fright. “My mother’s not here!” It was Niko Mitros, on the edge of tears. Everyone looked around, trying to make out the faces of the dark shapes nearby. “Where’s Nitsa?” Kanta whispered. “Don’t tell me they got Nitsa!”

“And Olga!” cried Fotini. “Olga’s gone too! She’s dead!” The girl began to sob.

The sound of Fotini’s grief set off Niko Mitros. “We can’t go on without
Mana!”
he cried. “Please, Father! We have to go back and find her!”

“Shut up! Damn that woman!” said Tassi Mitros. “Forget your mother!
We’re better off without her. There’s no turning back now. We’ve got to save ourselves.”

There was a stunned silence, broken only by the quiet sobs of Fotini and Niko Mitros. Nikola Gatzoyiannis listened, amazed, as his hero wept against his brother’s shoulder. Nikola had lost his mother too, and now his eldest sister. The ache in his stomach that had begun two days before was rising toward his throat, but he clenched his teeth, determined not to let anyone see his weakness. He had promised his mother that he’d be brave, and no matter what happened to them that night, he wouldn’t cry. Kanta took Nikola’s hand, and then Tassi Mitros began cursing, quietly but audibly, as the group started to move slowly downhill through the trees. “May the devil fuck her mother and her mother’s mother!” he was saying. “May she rot in hell for what she’s done to me!”

While one patrol of guerrillas went crashing down the ravine, following the route Lukas Ziaras had originally planned to take, the three women who were lost strayed aimlessly through the woods, headed in the same direction. Because Calliope Mitros was hard of hearing and Nitsa was hysterical, Olga realized she would have to lead them or they’d surely be caught. She was terrified of stepping on a mine and tried to figure out where they were, but in the dark there were no familiar landmarks. She could only follow the slope of the ground. Finally, through a clearing in the trees, Olga spied the Southern Cross in the sky and realized they had gone much too far west to come out at the right point, the crossroads on the Great Ridge. She took the older women’s hands and began to lead them back toward the east. Suddenly Nitsa sat down with a groan. “I think the baby’s going to come now!” she cried, clutching her belly. “Christ and the Virgin Mary, don’t leave me to die! I can’t walk anymore! I lost my shoes when we ran and my feet are in shreds.”

Olga took out of her pocket some iodine and a roll of bandages her mother had told her to bring along. She began painting the cuts on Nitsa’s feet, bandaged them, then tore off her aunt’s kerchief and her own and wrapped them around the bandages. “You walk or you die alone!” she whispered. “Now get up!”

Olga led them farther back toward the east and downhill until the land began to slope more gradually. Finally they were stopped by a wide, shallow stream. Nitsa was still moaning that she couldn’t go on. There was a cluster of low, spreading plane trees dipping their branches into the fast-flowing water, so Olga decided to stop there, to figure out what to do next. Pushing and pulling, she got her aunt up into the crotch of the branches of one of the trees, then signaled to Calliope to climb up beside them.

While the women were sitting there exhausted and in despair, some distance to the west a guerrilla patrol searching down the ravine stumbled upon the white roll of bandages that Olga had accidentally left behind. The
five men were led by Vasili Bokas, a guerrilla chosen for the assignment because he came from Lia. “They must be just ahead of us,” Bokas whispered to the others.

Olga, Nitsa and Calliope Mitros huddled shivering in the branches, chilled by the cool breeze, when there was a sound of footsteps creeping through the underbrush and coming toward them. Then they heard a man’s voice. “Fuck their god!” it muttered. “Fuck the mother of their god!”

Olga and Nitsa clutched at each other, but Calliope Mitros heard nothing. “What is it? What’s wrong?” she whispered. Olga clapped a hand over the woman’s mouth and Nitsa began to moan, “They’ve found us!”

The footsteps came closer while Olga sat paralyzed, not breathing. Then she saw something white approaching on the path that passed by the trees. It was a flour bag on someone’s shoulder. She leaned forward, holding on to a branch for support, and saw several smaller figures emerging from the shadows. “It’s Tassi Mitros swearing!” Olga whispered. “I can see his bald head!”

Tassi yelped when a figure came crashing out of a tree directly into his path, and he put up his arms to ward off the bullet he expected to shatter his skull. By the time he heard his son cry
“Mana!”
and understood that it was the missing women, he realized to his deep embarrassment that he had wet himself in fear. Luckily it was too dark for anyone to notice his loss of nerve. “Useless woman!” he muttered at his wife, who couldn’t make out what he was saying. “I’d have been better off if you’d stayed lost!” But Calliope was caught in a bear hug by her two sons as Olga was surrounded by her sisters. “I was so scared,” Olga whispered to Kanta, “that if you cut me, I wouldn’t bleed.”

Nikola watched the reunions silently, not admitting even to himself that he was jealous of Niko Mitros for having his mother back. Standing there, Nikola shivered and swayed against Kanta with fatigue. He had lost his shoes near the wheat field and his feet were badly cut by thistles and sharp stones, but he wouldn’t tell anyone. It was part of the test of his courage.

While the others rejoiced in their luck at stumbling upon the lost women, Lukas Ziaras surveyed the wide stream they would have to ford. It was the last obstacle before they reached the gently rolling foothills and the final lap of their journey to the Great Ridge. He knew that the stream was no more than waist-deep, but the current was tricky. In a whisper he ordered each adult to take a child by the hand and to hold on tight. He would go first and Tassi would bring up the rear.

It was much harder than they had expected, keeping a foothold on the slippery rocks as the current tugged at their legs. Soula Ziaras had seven-year-old George by one hand and the baby on her back, still unconscious. The children whimpered as the icy water enveloped them. Lukas stood on the opposite bank, pulling each pair out of the stream.

Megali was one of the last to cross. Her legs slipped out from under her and with a great, squawk she was carried away, but her voluminous clothes
kept her afloat and she drifted like a black ship down the stream, shrieking for help. “Let her go!” Olga heard herself exclaim, but Chrysoula Drouboyiannis, who was just behind, let go the hands of her two nieces and plunged after the old woman, a resolute giantess cleaving the water. She finally caught up with Megali and managed to drag her back to the point where Lukas Ziaras could help lift her out.

After the excitement of Megali’s rescue the group had walked several hundred yards into the foothills before Soula Ziaras realized that her six-year-old daughter Olympia was no longer hanging on to her hand. The little girl had been staggering with fatigue the whole way, whimpering to be carried. Soula hurried to catch up with Lukas. “Where’s Olympia?” she demanded. “Didn’t you carry her across?”

“I thought
you
did!” he answered.

“I had George and the baby!”

“Well, there’s no going back for her now,” Lukas said. “You’ll never find her, anyway. We have to think of the others.”

But Soula refused to listen, and handing the baby and his pouch to Calliope, she plunged back across the stream while Lukas added his curses to Tassi’s. She searched frantically along the stream bank, then stopped and listened. She could hear a quiet sobbing. Finally she found her daughter huddled under a bush near the edge of the stream, trembling like a shorn sheep.

When Soula returned, carrying the little girl, Lukas was so upset by the several near-disasters that he and Tassi sat down against a tree trunk and lit cigarettes, cupping the match in their hands. “Are you insane?” Olga hissed. “You might as well light a signal fire for the guerrillas!” But the two men ignored her and she could see the embers of their cigarettes shaking in the darkness.

The sodden, exhausted company staggered on through the no man’s land of the foothills like automatons, no longer thinking about the noise their footsteps made or the danger of mines. They blundered into clumps of nettles and thorns, and the children begged to be carried. Their wet clothes clung to them, the underbrush whipped their bare legs and feet. They lost track of how far they had come and how long they had been walking when suddenly Lukas stumbled and fell into a shallow hole.

Everyone stopped as they realized that the ground ahead of them was pitted with the strange craters. “It’s mines!” trilled Olga, her voice tight with fear.

“No, it’s not. They’re from grenades and artillery shells.” said Lukas. “This is where the soldiers shoot, trying to flush out the guerrilla night patrols. Look!”

They raised their eyes, and squinting into the darkness, made out the immense bulk of the Great Ridge looming above them, almost invisible against the night sky.

“We have to stay here and wait for the sun,” Lukas whispered. “If we
come out of the trees, the soldiers will fire on us, taking us for guerrillas.”

“And if we stay here, they may start strafing the trees with grenades and machine guns,” fretted Soula.

“You choose,” said Tassi dryly. “We can turn back into the guerrillas’ arms, walk out into the open and be killed by the soldiers or stay here and take our chances.”

They all sank to the ground amid the thick bushes, huddling close together for warmth. The only one who still had a dry blanket was Arete, and at Nitsa’s insistence she shared it with her. Kanta hugged Fotini and Nikola against her for warmth, and Soula gathered her brood around her. The baby was beginning to stir as the effects of the alcohol wore off.