Eleni (66 page)

Eleni thanked her and shook her head. “I’m observing the fast,” she said, “hoping that the Virgin will help me.”

Eugenia, a motherly woman with a face like a russet apple, began to scold her. “Forget about fasting!” she said. “You have to live. You owe it to Glykeria to survive until she gets back from the harvest.”

Eleni sat down weakly and nodded. “Perhaps I’ll go back to the house and drink a little milk,” she conceded. “The Virgin will forgive me that much, but I won’t eat meat.”

Before the sun had set, Eleni was back at Eugenia Petsis’ door, her face the color of sulfur.

“There are three guerrillas at my house, waiting to take me to the police station,” she said, out of breath. She looked at the older woman beseechingly. “If I don’t come back, look after the animals and send me a little milk now and then with your daughter,” she pleaded. She paused for a moment, then seized Eugenia’s hands. “If Glykeria comes back and I’m not here, please take care of her!”

Before the astonished woman could reply, Eleni was gone.

Throughout the long summer of 1948, guerrillas and government forces were locked in battle for control of the Grammos mountain range, the main stronghold of the insurgents. By the end of July, the nationalist troops were beating at the central gate of Grammos, the towering mountain called “Kleftis” (“the Thief”), a natural obstacle, over 6,000 feet high, which blocked the western approach to Grammos. As long as the guerrillas held Kleftis, their stronghold could not fall.

The government forces threw everything they had at the exposed slopes of Kleftis, fighting with guns, hand grenades and bayonets for every rock. At dawn on July 26 they managed to take the summit, only to be driven two hundred yards back down by a daring counterattack from the guerrillas two hours later. Both sides displayed desperate courage. The partisans, including many young women and adolescent boys, fought with heroic determination, believing they were giving up their lives as the final sacrifice before victory. There was no opportunity to bury the dead on the exposed cliffs, and soon the stench of rotting bodies under the scorching sun was unbearable. The Greek generals were determined to take Kleftis at any cost. “Don’t withdraw even half a meter!” General Thrasyvoulos Tsakalotos, commander of the government offensive, ordered his field commanders when they suggested a temporary retreat. “Kleftis will be captured even if it takes the whole First Army Corps.”

On the last day of July the government forces bombarded the summit of the mountain with 20,000 shells in preparation for a final assault and in the rear positions, King Paul, Queen Frederika, and the chief of the American mission, General James Van Fleet, visited the troops to raise morale.

At 4:30
A.M
. on August 1, Battalion 583 managed to take the summit of Kleftis with a sudden assault. The battalion’s first squads leaped into
the trenches of the guerrillas and defeated them in hand-to-hand combat. The gate to Grammos had fallen.

Within a week, government forces had captured most of the guerrillas’ positions on Grammos. But the rebels continued to resist ferociously, dying to defend every yard.

Such a determined defense was costly to both sides, but the guerrillas could least afford it because they had no way of replenishing their losses. Nevertheless, the Greek Communist Party leader, Nikos Zachariadis, insisted they fight to the death despite strong criticism from his commander in chief, General Markos Vafiadis. Why were the guerrillas forced to stand and die in droves to hold on to untenable positions? Markos asked. Why weren’t they returning to the tactic that brought them such success at the start of the revolution—hit-and-run attacks? But Zachariadis was inflexible. If his strategy was failing to hold Grammos and drive back the enemy, he charged, “it is because bad Communists have failed in their duty.” Hearing his words, the Communist leadership in the occupied territories began to search in their midst for scapegoats on whom the failure could be blamed.

T
HE MONTH OF AUGUST
ushers in the harvest season and the Feast of the Virgin on the fifteenth. The overflowing abundance of grapes, figs, melons, tomatoes, corn and walnuts makes it relatively easy for the pious to renounce meat and dairy products during the two-week fast which precedes the holiday of the Holy Virgin. “August, my good month, if only you could come twice a year!” the peasants say as they gather in the bounty of the fields and vines.

The Feast of the Virgin is a day for miracles. From all over Greece the lame, blind and dying converge on the small island of Tinos in the Aegean hoping to be cured by the famous Icon, which is carried from the church over the prone bodies of thousands of invalids who lie on the streets. Pilgrims who have made vows to the Virgin throughout the year fulfill them on Her day; on Tinos hundreds of women can be seen every August 15 walking barefoot the long distance from the harbor up the steps of the great church, their hair unbound and uncovered, their hands crossed over their breasts. Some of them make the journey crawling on their knees.

In Lia, Eleni was determined to observe the fast, hoping for a miracle from the Virgin: her salvation. But when she saw the three guerrillas arriving at her gate to take her back to the jail, she was not surprised. For weeks she had felt that the invisible bars holding her prisoner in the village would eventually be replaced by real ones.

News of Eleni’s arrest spread through the village like a summer grass fire and eventually reached Alexo on the far southern perimeter, casting her into a profound depression. Her daughter, Niki, remembers how, early the following afternoon, Alexo went to the spring to fill a large barrel of water, a heavy load for a woman of fifty-six, and when she brought it back, she sat in silence by the door for the remainder of the daylight, so low in spirits that nothing the girl said could rouse her. Just before dark a guerrilla came to their gate to take Alexo to police headquarters. He was young and he felt sorry when he saw how Niki clutched her mother and wept. “Don’t be
afraid,” he said. “They only want to talk to her for a few hours.” But both mother and daughter knew he was lying. As the guerrilla led her away, Alexo turned to look back at her daughter standing in the doorway and sighed, “I’m never going to see my house again.”

For the past days the security police had been filling the jail with new prisoners from Lia, beginning with those implicated by Andreas Michopoulos. The first to be brought in was Dina Venetis. Dina was only twenty-eight, a slender woman with high cheekbones and arched black eyebrows—a face of such dark, exotic beauty that one would have expected to find it in an Athenian actress rather than in a black-kerchiefed peasant woman. Dina was grazing her family’s flock under the midsummer sun when the guerrillas came for her on a still afternoon, heavy with the scent of fruit and broken boughs. “What are you going to do with me?” she asked as they led her toward the police station. “We’re going to slaughter you so it’ll rain,” one of them chuckled. But of all those held in the Gatzoyiannis cellar, Dina Venetis is one of the few who survived to describe the treatment of the prisoners during the summer of 1948.

Each villager brought in to the security-police station was kept isolated at first in one of the upstairs rooms, left to wonder what crimes he or she was suspected of committing. After a few days of suspense, the prisoner was taken outside to the back of the house to be beaten and interrogated in the garden. Finally, the prisoner was thrown into the filthy subterranean jail, which was becoming more crowded every day.

Dina Venetis, whose three small children were left alone to wander around the neighborhood begging for food like stray puppies, was kept in solitary confinement for two days before she was led out behind the house to a patch of holm oak, stepping on soft ground pitted with graves, choking at the stench of rotting bodies.

The young woman was accused of planning to escape in order to join her soldier husband on the government side. While Sotiris interrogated her, several of the security police held her and beat her with the flexible branches of the cornel tree. The first blow cut her hand and split one of her fingernails. Every blow of the switch broke the skin, leaving a ribbon of blood.

Dina Venetis showed an unexpected defiance for such a fragile-looking woman. Instead of denying that she wanted to escape, she said, “What woman wouldn’t want to be with her husband? But I never made plans to leave—how could I, with three small children?” As they continued to flail her with the rods, she cried, “That’s right, hit me! I deserve it because I could have escaped and I didn’t! I thought you were human beings!”

Sotiris ordered the guards to bring Andreas Michopoulos out of the cellar to confront her. He had been beaten much worse than Dina and his head lolled as he tonelessly repeated his statement that Dina had asked him what path would be the safest to follow out of the village.

“Whom do you expect us to believe,” Sotiris challenged her, with the police standing by, rods in their hands, “you, whose husband is a fascist officer, or this guerrilla who is one of us?”

Dina looked at Andreas, her face contorted with contempt. “That is a piece of shit!” she said. “And everyone in this village knows it. I don’t even say good morning to that scum, let alone ask his advice! If I wanted to leave, I know the paths out of this village better than anyone else, living where I do.”

They took Andreas away and continued beating Dina until her body was covered with welts, then they dragged her across the yard. Christos Zeltas, the head of the security police, gave her a kick that sent her flying into the cellar.

Every day more beaten prisoners were booted into the jail while Andreas Michopoulos crouched behind the door, avoiding the eyes of those he had implicated. Not long after the young guerrilla’s uncle, Spiro Michopoulos, and the cooper Vasili Nikou were brought in, Alexo Gatzoyiannis was thrown through the cellar doorway. The prisoners learned that the Amerikana was in the house, but that she was being kept upstairs, isolated from the others. One young village woman who was brought in several times for questioning, Athena Daflakis, remembers seeing her sitting cross-legged on the threshold of the kitchen.

Like the others, Eleni was taken outside and beaten with cornel rods while Sotiris shouted that she had organized her children’s escape and was a ringleader in the conspiracy. Despite the kicks and blows and the stinging lashes of the rods on her flesh, Eleni stuck to her story: that Lukas Ziaras and her mother had stolen the children while she was working at the harvest, unaware of the plot. Sotiris was unperturbed by her denials; he knew that Katis had a surprise in store for her.

A few days after her incarceration Eleni was taken down the path to the home of Kostina Thanassis just below, now being used by Katis as his office. Tassina Bartzokis, her old friend and next-door neighbor, watched from her window; not much that happened around security headquarters escaped Tassina’s sharp eyes. And Kostina Thanassis was startled to see her former neighbor being led, bound and bruised, into her house. Inveterately curious, she made sure to overhear what went on between the magistrate and Eleni, and later described the confrontation to other neighbors.

Katis studied Eleni like a collector contemplating his prize specimen and then, with exaggerated courtesy, gestured for her to sit down. Eleni was expecting another beating. She looked at this urbane man with the large nose and small neat ears, and terror crept over her. She remembered him orchestrating the trial of the captured soldier after Operation Pergamos.

“Amerikana,” Katis intoned in his sonorous voice, “you planned your children’s escape from this village.”

“That is not true, as I’ve said over and over again,” Eleni replied. “I knew nothing of the escape. I was working in the threshing fields.”

Katis went on smoothly, “You planned this whole thing in league with the traitor Lukas Ziaras, and you talked other women in the village into joining the escape. What do you say to that?”

Eleni raised her chin defiantly. Now she was on solid ground. She had been scrupulous not to drop the slightest hint, much less tell anyone to join them. The only person she had confided in was Alexo, and Alexo would never betray her.