Eleni (72 page)

In an effort to remedy the impression Constantina was making, Katis told her sharply to sit down. He took a paper from the table in front of him. “As is known to the court,” he said, “there was one other defendant who would have been on trial here, but due to the negligence of the security police, she has fled the village. But before she did, she made a long statement and I will now read from it the part regarding Vasili Nikou. The prisoner Marianthe Ziaras was asked, ‘Did Vasili Nikou know about the escape of the twenty before it happened?’ and she replied, ‘Yes, he frequently talked with my father about taking their families out.’ ”

Katis motioned for Vasili Nikou to stand up. He snapped at him, “Isn’t it true that you want to leave here and betray us, that you’ve made plans to flee several times?”

Vasili Nikou regarded him levelly and replied, “No, Comrade Katis, it is not. My relative, Spiro Skevis, is one of your glorious commanders. Why should I want to betray the cause we’re all fighting for? I was on my way to Filiates when I heard that you had arrived and I turned around and came back. And last March, when the enemy was at the edge of this village, Spiro Michopoulos told me, ‘Let’s leave now. We’ll never get a better chance.’ But I didn’t go.”

All eyes suddenly swiveled to the thin, pale former village president who was nervously using his free hand to pick his teeth with a tiny twig he had found. He froze as Katis shouted at him, “Is all this true, Michopoulos? Did you say that to him?”

Michopoulos made a pathetic effort to arrange his face into a crafty smile. “Yes, I did,” he replied. “But only to test him! He never supported our side during the occupation and I couldn’t believe that he was really with us now, so I said it in order to make him reveal himself. If he had agreed with my suggestion, I would have brought him to you immediately.”

The two prisoners locked eyes and glared at each other with naked
hatred. Each was now trying to save himself by sacrificing the other, but Michopoulos’ ploy didn’t work.

“Why didn’t you tell us your doubts, Comrade?” Katis shouted. “Why didn’t you tell us what you suspected?”

Spiro Michopoulos’ face collapsed and he whispered, “I thought it best to test him first.”

“You didn’t tell us because the fact is that you wanted to leave yourself!” Katis exploded.

Michopoulos began protesting so frantically that he wrenched Andreas’ wrist with his convulsive movements.

“I’ve been with you from the start!” he cried. “I supported ELAS when Vasili Nikou was with EDES! I supported the Democratic Army and have worked tirelessly for you since the day you arrived. May I swim in God’s blood if I ever betrayed our cause!”

Katis cut him off. “Sit down, Michopoulos,” he said. “We’ll soon find out how much support you have given the cause.”

He turned to the other judges. “We have a number of witnesses who will show that the statements of loyalty made by Spiro Michopoulos are all lies.”

He called forward Chrisoula Kouka, an old crone all in black, whose house and property bordered that of Spiro Michopoulos. Chrisoula, sixty-five, was notoriously crochety, given to arguments with other villagers over boundary lines and water rights. As she stood trembling, suddenly overwhelmed by finding the entire village hanging on her words, Katis read out a statement made by Chrisoula, charging that Spiro Michopoulos was an enemy of the cause, who favored the fascist sympathizers when passing out work details in order to curry favor with the enemy in case the nationalist forces ever retook the village. Her most damaging evidence against her neighbor was that she had seen him burying a large stock of foodstuffs from his now closed general store in his basement—boxes of soap, cans of oil, which should have been shared with the fighters of the Democratic Army. Katis announced triumphantly that the goods had indeed been found under Michopoulos’ cellar floor: “A king’s ransom of provisions, while our fighters and loyal supporters were suffering from hunger and cold.”

After reading every few lines, Katis would stop and ask, “Isn’t this true, Comrade Kouka?” but the crone, terrified at hearing her words read in public, began to equivocate. “That’s the way it seemed to me,” she muttered. “That’s what I heard. Yes, you’re probably right.”

Katis flushed with anger at her temporizing. Finally he threw down the paper and thrust his hand at her, twisting it like the movement of a snake. “Eh, Comrade Kouka!” he spat. “Not like the eel that slithers away from the knife! Tell it now as you told it to us before.”

The old woman stared at his hand as if it were a live thing, then began to nod her head. “Yes, what you have read is true,” she said, and turned to look at the neighbor whom she had finally humbled.

Spiro Michopoulos could no longer contain himself. He could see that the
eccentric old woman was venting all her rancor against him and was killing him in the process. He clambered to his feet, elbows and knees jabbing every which way. “Not only have I supported the cause since the occupation, I was severely beaten by the fascist police for it!” he cried.

The old woman uttered an explosive laugh, and forgetting her timidity before the crowd, she shook a knobby finger at him. “They beat you because you stole one of their sheep!” she crowed.

Feeling better, Katis read testimony from nearly two dozen villagers against the unhappy former president: that he had unfairly chosen loyal supporters of the guerrillas for work duties, that he had favored the fascist sympathizers, that he had hinted to many individuals that they would be wise to escape the village. As each statement was read Michopoulos’ face grew paler; his long body seemed to fold in on itself, shrinking before the spectacle of death.

The last witness called by Katis against Spiro was Dina Venetis. She stood up, her oval face so pale that the high cheekbones seemed about to break through the skin. Years later Dina Venetis insisted she couldn’t remember anything about what she said at the trial; she was too frightened. But other villagers recall her testimony well.

“Did you pay a visit to the village president, Spiro Michopoulos, a few days after the twenty left?” Katis asked, leading her carefully.

“Yes,” Dina replied in a nearly inaudible voice. “I went to ask him for some corn from the village stores because I had nothing to feed my three small children.”

“And what did he reply?” Katis encouraged her.

No one could hear her answer. “Speak up!” Katis ordered.

Dina raised her voice. “He said to me, ‘I have no corn left. You should have gone with the others.’”

“That will be all,” Katis told her, and she sat down in relief.

When all the testimony against Spiro Michopoulos had been read, the ravine was filled with shadows and the setting sun was sending up fingers of fire on the crest of the hills to the west. Katis announced that the trial would be halted to resume the following morning in the same spot.

The first defendant called forward to be charged the next day was Andreas Michopoulos. The boy stood shakily, still weak from the torture after his attempted escape, as Katis addressed the crowd.

“Two months ago, twenty civilians fled this village. For so many to escape without being observed, and to reach the fascist forces on the Great Ridge, it was necessary for them to know where our patrols were moving and where land mines were planted. All that information was given to them by Andreas Michopoulos, a traitor to the uniform we gave him when we came to this village.

“If there remained any doubt about his complicity in the escape,” Katis went on, “it was erased by the attempt he made to flee the justice of the
people. Realizing his guilt, Andreas Michopoulos is now prepared to admit to his crimes.”

Katis turned toward Andreas, who licked his lips nervously. “Did the traitor Lukas Ziaras come to you as you stood lookout at the Church of the Virgin and on several occasions before the escape ask you about the movements of the patrols and the location of the minefields?”

“He did,” Andreas answered.

“And what did you tell him?”

“We were just chatting, sir,” Andreas began haltingly. “I thought he was with us. I talked about patrol duty and where the patrols usually went. I had no idea that he wanted to leave.”

“If you had known he was going to flee, would you have informed us?” asked Katis, warming to his task.

“Yes, Comrade, of course!”

“Did Dina Venetis ever tell you that she intended to leave the village?” Katis continued.

The boy’s face fell, realizing where he was leading. “Yes,” he muttered.

“What did she say, exactly?”

“She came to me while I was on lookout duty and asked me which was the safest path to take to leave the village.”

“And did you go immediately to your officers to report this conversation?”

Andreas paused, trying to collect his thoughts. “No, not right away,” he said unhappily. “But later, when you asked me, I told you.”

Katis smiled. “Yes, later, after you told others in the village about the conversation and we learned it from them,” he exclaimed. “You shame the uniform you wear!”

He turned to the prisoners. “Dina Venetis will stand up.”

Dina stood, a tiny figure facing the might of the court.

“Is it true that you came to Andreas Michopoulos and asked him how to escape from the village?” Katis demanded

Dina’s black eyes flashed. “It’s a complete lie!” she retorted, turning to glare at Andreas. “I live at the bottom of the village and know the paths out of it better than anyone! I would never ask this man for advice!”

“Then you deny that you wanted to escape, to join your husband who is fighting with the monarcho-fascist forces?”

“I don’t deny that I would have liked to leave, to take my children and join my husband,” Dina replied, meeting Katis’ eyes. “But I do deny planning to escape. It would have been impossible for me to leave safely with three babies. Andreas Michopoulos is a liar, and he has shown how much you can trust his word by trying to flee.”

Addressing the judges, Katis said a bit proudly that Andreas had named twenty-three more Liotes whom he suspected of planning to leave. This confirmed the suspicions of the security police that there was a village-wide conspiracy.

The next witness to be called was Constantina Drouboyiannis, accused
of sending her two teen-aged daughters on the escape with her sister-in-law. She rose, still trembling from the ordeal of testifying against Vasili Nikou, afraid that she would anger Katis even more.

“Did you know that your daughters were going to leave?” he asked.

“No, I didn’t,” she replied miserably. “I was threshing grain for the Democratic Army when they left.” She went on to say that her sister-in-law had taken the girls without her permission and against her will. Katis did not probe, fearing that the dull-witted woman would make another gaffe in front of Anagnostakis. He moved quickly on to the charges against Alexo Gatzoyiannis, who, he said, had sent her eldest daughter on the escape.

Alexo rose and faced him, full of fire. “My daughter Arete has been a married woman for fifteen years and was not under my control,” she said. “The daughter who lives with me is still here. That should be ample proof that I had no knowledge of what the others were planning. If I knew, wouldn’t I have sent my youngest girl along?”

“And if you had no idea that Arete was leaving, why did you allow her to bury five okas of solder in the field behind your house and then show us where it was hidden?” Katis rejoined.

“That solder has been there for months, ever since Arete’s husband left, long before the guerrillas came to this village,” Alexo replied.

“You answer glibly to our accusations,” Katis said, “but we have proof that you are guilty of something much more damaging to the Democratic Army. Your husband has repeatedly sneaked through our lines to visit you and collect information about our defenses. But you are such a loyal and secretive wife that you won’t admit it.”

Alexo lost her temper entirely and began to shout. “Even during peacetime my worthless husband was never around the house. Would he come now? How could he do it without someone seeing him?”

“But he
was
seen,” Katis said triumphantly. He called forward Olga Noussi, a thirty-year-old woman who was thin and yellow from the cancer that was spreading through her body and would kill her a few years later. She, too, had been accused of passing on guerrilla secrets and had been imprisoned for many days in the security-police station while her three children, all under seven years old, begged for food from their neighbors and dug potatoes out of the ground to eat. After she was released, Olga Noussi told several other women that the guerrillas had hung her upside down by the ankles and beaten her with rods. Now, as Katis put questions to her, she hesitantly testified that her neighbor, Alexo, had received a visit from her husband.

“Is it true that Foto Gatzoyiannis paid secret visits to his wife at night?” Katis asked.

“I heard Foto Gatzoyiannis come to meet his wife in the field below their house,” Olga Noussi replied. “I saw her standing by the edge of the cornfield and I saw the cornstalks in front of her moving. Then I saw her talking to him.”

Anagnostakis was suddenly on his feet again. Katis felt a stab of apprehension. “Did you see his face?” Anagnostakis asked the sallow-faced woman. “Did you actually see Foto Gatzoyiannis speaking to his wife?”

There was a long pause as she glanced at Katis. Then she looked down, twisting the fabric of her apron, and muttered, “I didn’t see his face, but I know it was her husband hiding in the corn. Who else could it be?”

Katis quickly dismissed Olga Noussi, covertly watching Anagnostakis’ expression. He called for Foto Bollis to come forward.

“When you were on the other side, on the Great Ridge, before you were able to return to this village, whom did you see helping the monarcho-fascists?” Katis demanded.

“Foto Gatzoyiannis,” Bollis replied in a ringing voice.

“How was he helping them?”

“He was telling the soldiers about the lay of the land, the footpaths, the guerrilla fortifications in and around the village.”

“And how would Foto Gatzoyiannis possess such knowledge?”