Eleni (70 page)

Yannoulis was arrested, charged with treason and even accused of harboring rightist sympathies because he had briefly joined a resistance movement at the beginning of the occupation that was not Communist-controlled. After a parody of a trial, the officer’s execution was personally ordered by Lieutenant General Yiorgos Goussias, a former cobbler and a lackey of Zachariadis.

“Confirmation of the sentence is on the way from headquarters,” Goussias announced shortly after the trial. “No point in waiting; shoot him now.”

A
S THE SEVEN DEFENDANTS
from the village of Lia were led, tied together in pairs, down the path from the Perivoli, across the ravine and into the town square, they were wrapped in their own thoughts. At Sotiris’ statement that they were going to have a trial, hope, mankind’s last solace in misfortune, had been rekindled in each prisoner.

Dina Venetis walked toward the square, her dark, heavy-lashed eyes lowered, tied hand to hand with Vasili Nikou. She searched her mind for some promising sign, some indication that the guerrillas did not intend to kill her. The fact that her husband was a lieutenant fighting on the nationalist side would certainly be held against her, she knew, but her main accuser, Andreas Michopoulos, had completely discredited himself by trying to escape, so how could they condemn her on his testimony?

Vasili Nikou stumbled along at Dina’s side. Nikou was the father of four grown daughters—three of them would be watching the trial. Aged by tragedy beyond his fifty-seven years, Vasili Nikou had seen more of war and killing than any of the guerrillas who now held him prisoner. He had fought in the Greek army for nine years, beginning with the Balkan wars in 1912 and ending with the Greek campaign in Asia Minor in 1921. After that he returned to his family in Lia and traveled from village to village eight months of the year—from March to October—working as a cooper.

Nikou had just returned from his annual rounds in the fall of 1947 when he heard that the guerrillas were approaching Lia. He had been a sympathizer of the EDES forces of Napoleon Zervas during the German occupation and he knew that the guerrillas would hold his rightist leanings against him. He fled south to Kostana, but when he woke up the next morning he discovered that the guerrillas had entered the town; he was trapped. He told the guerrillas he had come to join them and asked to be taken to Spiro Skevis, whose eldest brother, Yiorgos, was married to Nikou’s sister Calliope. Skevis gave him a pass to return to Lia, where Nikou, one of the few men left in the village, was put on the committee which administered civilian work details.

As he walked now down the path toward the village square, Vasili Nikou consoled himself with the thought that he had consistently claimed loyalty to the cause since the guerrillas arrived. If worst came to worst and he was convicted, he did not believe that Spiro Skevis would let his own sister-in-law’s brother be shot.

Spiro Michopoulos, the sickly village president, and his nephew Andreas made an odd, silent couple as they walked slowly down the path, the boy staggering because of his recent torture, the older man, a tall, gangly figure, all elbows and knees. Spiro wondered if his nephew had given false testimony against him, as he had incriminated so many others. Spiro was determined to cheat death again, as he had conquered the tuberculosis that left him wasted and a village pariah. Perhaps it had been a mistake to try to distribute work assignments fairly, arousing the hostility of the fanatic Communists in the village, he reflected. But after all, hadn’t he stayed behind to welcome the guerrillas when all the other men had left, and expertly administered the village for them?

Andreas could hardly keep up with his uncle. He ached to the very marrow of his bones from the beatings he had received after his escape and his broken skin burned under the sun as if he had a fever. Nevertheless, he too was nursing hope. He knew the escape attempt would weigh the scales against him, but he had willingly enlisted in the guerrillas’ ranks and then, when they brought him in for interrogation; he had given them all the information they asked for and more. He ran his free hand through his dark, matted hair and thought that it would reflect badly on the guerrillas if they killed one of their own, and an eighteen-year-old boy at that.

Of the seven defendants wending their way toward the village square, the most optimistic was Constantina Drouboyiannis, the round-faced, slow-witted woman who had denounced Eleni in Katis’ office. Constantina was delighted to see she was the only prisoner who had not been tied for the walk. Her hands swung free as she reflected that of all the defendants, they had the least evidence against her. Even though her daughters had been taken to freedom by Lukas Ziaras, she had not come along on either of the earlier tries, and no one could prove that she had told her sister-in-law to flee with the girls. Besides, she had been more than cooperative with her captors, telling them everything they wanted to hear.

Eleni and Alexo were bound hand to hand—the first time the two sisters-in-law had seen each other since they were rearrested ten days before. Although they didn’t speak, Eleni drew solace from the nearness of Alexo, who had always been her comforter in times of crisis.

Eleni concentrated all her energy on having to meet the eyes of the curious with composure. She knew that she was not going to be acquitted—she had already admitted going on the early escape attempts and helping to organize the plot. She also knew that she was the one woman in the village the guerrillas most resented because of her position and her American husband. But she could not stop the tiny voice of hope inside her which
repeated, “I never tried to convince anyone else to escape or spoke against the guerrillas. Perhaps I’ll receive a prison sentence instead. As long as I’m alive, there’s a chance I may see my children again.”

It was ten o’clock on the morning of Thursday, August 19, a brilliant late-summer day, when the villagers were summoned to the town square by the church bells and bull horns of the guerrillas. No one lagged, because they anticipated the drama they were about to witness: the first public trial of civilians from their own village.

The stage was the area under the huge plane tree at the southeast corner of the square; a small table waited with three chairs in a row behind it. The defendants were told to sit on a platform created by the gnarled roots of the huge tree, while the three judges took their places in the chairs facing the audience. As they filed past, the three magistrates, all in civilian clothes, impressed the watching crowd by their physical stature alone. They were all considerably above average height, and the giant who brought up the rear, a man named Grigori Pappas, but called by the villagers “the tall one,” towered half a head above the other two.

The crowd filled the square and stretched up the slopes above it. Children scrambled into the branches of nearby trees to get a better view. The villagers seated themselves on the ground under the sunlight, which flowed like molten lava. The whitewashed walls of the church threw off a dazzling glare, and black-and-yellow hornets attacked the heavy grapes hanging on nearby trellises.

The watching peasants had no idea how the ritual of justice was carried out, but they understood that the three imposing men seated solemnly at the table held the power of life and death over the seven prisoners, and they leaned forward, the better to hear what was to be said.

The silence deepened as a tall, balding, gray-haired man of middle age with a chiseled oval face, large nose, jutting chin, and intense eyes, stood up. He wore a dark-blue suit, which pronounced him a man of education and urbanity, and his long, delicate fingers rested lightly on the table before him. The villagers stirred expectantly. They recognized this man with the mesmerizing eyes as the person they called Katis (“the Judge”) and they sensed that he was in charge of this drama, as he had been at the trial of the soldier captured during the battle of Pergamos.

Katis’ face showed no strain nor did his sonorous voice betray a quaver, but his nerves were coiled. He was the author, director and stage manager of what was to take place, and he felt the combination of exaltation and fear that fills every performer on opening night. As the man personally appointed by Koliyiannis to handle this case, he had a difficult task. It was essential to repair the loyalty of the civilians, which had eroded during the past months. The villagers had at first been overwhelmingly behind the Democratic Army, but they were now tired of work details and of having their food and possessions confiscated. They had grown weary of battles and artillery fire and the increasing brutality of the beleaguered guerrillas. They
objected to giving up their daughters to be
andartinas
and almost unanimously balked at abandoning their children to the
pedomasoma
. Twenty of the leading citizens had boldly fled, damaging the authority of the guerrillas even more.

Katis knew that it was his duty in the orchestration of this trial to intimidate the watching Liotes to the point where no more of them would consider such treachery. Moreover, by marshaling evidence against the defendants, he had to make the villagers despise the accused and rally in support of the guerrillas.

Katis was acutely aware of the eyes of one of the judges sitting behind him, a tall, handsome, mournful-looking man of forty named Yiorgos Anagnostakis. Katis had been appointed president of the court for this particular trial by Kostas Koliyiannis, the political commissar of all Epiros, but Anagnostakis, who was also serving as a judge, was Katis’ superior officer, the chief of the judicial branch of the Epiros Command. Katis resented Anagnostakis. Not only was Anagnostakis three years younger and his superior, with the rank of colonel in the DAG, but he had no judicial experience in civilian life, while Katis had been a justice of the peace in the town of Konitsa. He also knew that Anagnostakis enjoyed the respect and friendship of the third judge, Grigori Pappas, both men coming from the same area in southern Epiros, and Katis was determined to impress his colleagues with the amount of evidence he had amassed and the thoroughness of his prosecution.

Anagnostakis had entered the Communist-led resistance early, after joining the party in law school, and had swiftly become the chief of the judicial branch of ELAS during the occupation with a reputation as an efficient judge who meted out swift justice to the opponents of ELAS in many important trials. Katis came into the DAG after the resistance and he knew he didn’t have the credentials that the younger man did. Katis’ most important case had been the trial of four nationalist officers captured during the battle of Pergamos. Before that trial Anagnostakis suggested freeing one of the officers, a doctor, noting that the guerrillas had greater need of his medical skills than of another execution. But Katis stood firm: no matter how desperately doctors were needed to treat wounded guerrillas, the man had served as an officer with the enemy and must die. In the end Koliyiannis backed him up, Katis was vindicated and the doctor was killed.

Perhaps Anagnostakis was growing soft, Katis reflected. He was proud that Koliyiannis had taken his side against his chief of the judicial branch, and now had appointed him to run this trial in Lia. He was determined to twist the knife blade in Anagnostakis’ pride by demonstrating that he was just as good a lawyer as his superior, and he was aware that Koliyiannis would have several informers on hand to report back to the committee on the handling of the trial.

He paused to choose his opening words. It was essential that the events about to take place be presented to the ignorant peasants before him in just
the right way; they had to leave the trial convinced that the People’s Army was just, and at the same time aware that even thinking about escaping the village would bring deadly consequences.

Katis spoke to the assemblage in simple phrases. He did not need to shout through a bull horn; his voice carried to the farthest edges of the silent crowd. The villagers watched him with expressions of fear and awe, and the prisoners leaned forward in the intensity of their listening.

Katis said that the people of Lia were about to witness a trial of seven defendants from their own village. He announced with a trace of pride that guerrilla intelligence had uncovered the existence of an organization among fascist sympathizers within the village that had been transmitting vital information to the enemy about the guerrillas’ defenses. Furthermore, the organization provided the means for fascist supporters to escape to the enemy. A group of twenty traitors had already left, and more were organizing themselves to follow. The defendants would be tried before the eyes of their neighbors, he said, because the guerrillas knew that every true patriot in the village abhorred this treachery that endangered the brave men who were risking their lives to liberate Greece. This was clear, he added, raising one eyebrow significantly, “because all the evidence about the crimes of these defendants has come from their fellow villagers who are loyal to the revolution.” There was an uneasy stir among the audience and everyone avoided his neighbor’s eyes.