Eleni (77 page)

When the group reached the shed in the mountains which Spiro Skevis was using as his headquarters, they encountered one of his nieces who was serving as his telephone operator and assistant. The women from Lia demanded to see Skevis, but the girl insisted that the major wasn’t in. “We’re not leaving here until we see him,” Chrysoula insisted.

The nervous young assistant told her kinswoman to go farther up the hill and she would try to find Skevis. Soon they saw him come out of the shed and climb up toward them.

As a schoolteacher in Lia, Spiro Skevis had been a tense, emaciated figure, vibrating with fanatic devotion for the resistance movement, but now he was even thinner and paler, and his ill-tended beard and burning eyes gave him the appearance of a maddened scarecrow. As soon as he was within hearing distance of the women, Fotina Makou shouted to Skevis, “Is it true, Spiro, that you’re going to kill my brother?”

Skevis stared at the three women from his village, two of them his nieces, and grew red with anger and shame. He and his brother Prokopi had begun their resistance organization in Lia during the occupation afire with humanitarian
ideals and the longing to bring about equality of all men. They had wanted to eliminate the tyranny of the bloodsucking ruling classes. Now it had degenerated into this: the killing of his own relatives.

The knowledge was eating at his heart. Skevis had already gone to Koliyiannis to protest the condemnation of the five Liotes and had discovered that his rank of major, despite his brilliant record, carried no power to sway the political commissar. Skevis was sent away in humiliation with the warning to tend to his own business and not to meddle in civilian affairs. Now his feelings of frustration erupted into anger at the petitioners. “We’re going to kill Spiro Michopoulos, who was one of us!” he shouted “Do you think we can spare Vasili Nikou, who has always been a fascist?”

The older woman began swearing at Skevis, once the pride of the village, universally admired for his learning and his revolutionary ideas. But Skevis swore and shouted even louder than she did. “Leave me alone, for God’s sake!” he cried. “Go away, all of you!” He turned on his heel and strode back to his headquarters while his niece barred the door to her cousins. Silent with despair, the three women set out on the long walk back to Lia.

The desire of the political commissar to improve the image of the guerrillas and smooth over the bad feelings caused by the trial led to a grotesque incident that occurred a day or so after Eleni was led down to show where she had hidden the “treasures” in the bean field.

Since their arrival in the village, the guerrillas had forbidden any religious services. But as Angeliki Botsaris Daikos was caring for her baby boy, born four days before the mass escape, there was a great clanging of church bells. The guerrillas announced through their bull horns that there was to be a mass baptism of all newborn babies immediately in the Church of the Holy Trinity on the village square. “All mothers of unbaptized babies, prepare your children at once!”

About fifteen babies had been born in the village since the guerrillas closed the churches, and their mothers, like Angeliki, were stunned at the announcement. She wondered if it was a new trick of the guerrillas as she searched for something to put on her tiny son. All the baby clothes were in rags, so she took a slip of her own that was still in good condition, left over from her dowry, swiftly cut armholes in the sides and wrapped it around him.

The fifteen mothers and their crying infants assembled in the village square to see the guerrillas leading toward them an archimandrite, the highest rank a married priest can attain in the church hierarchy. He was a gray-bearded man of about sixty-five whom the guerrillas had been holding prisoner in the same cellar as Eleni. “He was either from the village of Moshini or Parakalamo,” Angeliki recalls, “and he looked very solemn.”

The guerrillas provided a small cupful of oil to pour into the water of the tarnished baptismal font, and the archimandrite set about intoning the
familiar ritual. Confused, every woman quickly turned to ask another to serve as godmother for her child. The second baby to be baptized was Angeliki’s son, and she whispered the name she had chosen for him—Constantine—as the priest took him from her arms. One woman handed over her tiny daughter and announced that the child’s name was to be Laocratia, which means “the people’s rule.” The old priest frowned; the Greek church requires that every infant must bear the name of a recognized saint, but he said nothing and lifted the squalling, naked infant three times into the air, then submerged her in the font, chanting, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, I baptize thee Laocratia.”

When the archimandrite finished with the last of the babies, he called all the mothers together and admonished them sternly, “I charge all of you with the solemn responsibility to take care that none of these fifteen infants ever marry one another, because they have all been baptized in the same oil and they are now spiritual brothers and sisters. For any of them to be married would be incest.”

The women were frightened by this unorthodox ceremony led by a prisoner priest, their babies in rags, with none of the usual joy and dancing, tossing of coins and Jordan almonds for luck. They nodded obediently as the priest spoke. Then the old man in his black gown and stovepipe hat was led back toward the prison by his captors. The next day he was executed.

Katis was extremely disappointed with the mildewed linens and few cans of food that had been dug up in the Haidis garden. He had to prove that the Amerikana had hidden enough riches to provoke the envy and resentment of the villagers. After all, many of his informants reported that she had a considerable cache of gold sovereigns concealed somewhere. He ordered that she be put to the torture again.

On the sixth day after Eleni had been sentenced to death, Angeliki Botsaris Daikos was feeding her newly baptized son when the assistant to the head of the security police, a man named Mihalis Hassiotis, appeared at her door. “What a fearsome man he was!” Angeliki says. “Whenever we saw him walk by we made our cross that he didn’t stop for us. But this day he came right to my door and said, They want to question you.’”

Angeliki picked up the baby, hoping that the guerrillas would be more gentle with a mother holding an infant in her arms, and Hassiotis led her up the path toward the Gatzoyiannis house. On the way, Angeliki saw the head of intelligence, Sotiris Drapetis, leading Ourania Haidis in the same direction. Ourania was married to a cousin of Eleni’s who had made a comfortable fortune in the black market during and after the occupation. Angeliki and Ourania exchanged frightened glances. They had both been hidden witnesses to Eleni’s ordeal a few days before when she was forced to show where her daughter’s dowry was hidden.

The two women were led into the security police station. Ourania Haidis
was put in the small dirt-floored pantry behind the kitchen where the window had been securely repaired since Marianthe Ziaras’ escape. Angeliki and her baby were led directly into the good chamber—the office—where she came face to face with Katis.

The balding judge with the doomsday voice began by asking Angeliki her parents’ names, her husband’s family’s names, and then he said, “Are you related to the Amerikana?”

“No, just fellow villagers,” Angeliki replied.

“Then why did she and her family visit your house so often?”

Angeliki felt her throat closing. “It’s the custom here, whether related or not,” she quavered. “We were neighbors.”

Katis leaned forward, fixing her with the eyes of a predator.

“Now I’m going to ask you some questions and I want precise answers,” he snapped. “What day, what hour, did the Amerikana give you three gold sovereigns and what did you do with them? Who did you give them to?”

Angeliki looked stunned. She didn’t know what was happening or what she should answer. “Comrade Katis!” she pleaded. “I never got three sovereigns from the Amerikana!”

“If you lie,” replied Katis, “you will receive the same fate she does.”

Angeliki told him that she did in fact have six sovereigns, which she wore constantly in a leather pouch tied around her neck under her clothing, and that she had six more sovereigns which she had given to her mother to wear in a similar pouch in case one of them was killed. But, she insisted, they had been given to her by her husband, not the Amerikana.

Katis pressed his lips into a thin line which had the hint of a smile. He called in Hassiotis and ordered him to take Angeliki down to the cellar prison, where she could speak directly to the Amerikana.

Angeliki found Eleni sitting on the threshold of the door that led to the cellar. Her legs, black and swollen, were stretched out in front of her, and her blue dress with the three black stripes was open at the throat and filthy. Eleni was blinking in the sunlight and seemed at first not to recognize Angeliki. Hassiotis prompted the prisoner like a director. “Tell us again, Comrade Eleni, how you gave three sovereigns to this woman.”

Eleni’s eyes focused on Angeliki and she made a gesture of recognition. “Yes, that’s right, child. Give the man three sovereigns.”

Panic washed over Angeliki and she began to tremble with anger. She put the baby on the ground and, leaning forward, seized Eleni by the shoulders, and shook her fiercely. “You never gave me any sovereigns, Eleni!” she shouted into her friend’s face. “What do you want to do, take me to the grave with you?”

Eleni made no more response than a rag doll. When Angeliki released her she sat there, her swollen legs extended before her, and her vacant gaze fell on the swaddled baby lying on the ground, reaching with his plump hands for a mote of dust floating in the sunlight. “Oh, if I could only touch them one more time!” Eleni said, as if to herself.

Angeliki was startled. “What did you say?”

“If only I could feel my arms around them one more time before I die!” Tears were spilling silently down Eleni’s cheeks.

Angeliki looked at the wreckage of her friend and fear for her own safety gave way to compassion. She reached out and touched Eleni’s hand. “All right, Aunt,” she said. “I’ll give them the sovereigns they want.”

Eleni did not reply. She just nodded vaguely in Angeliki’s direction.

Hassiotis and the other guerrillas led Angeliki back to the presence of Katis. Still carrying the baby, she took off the pouch of sovereigns from around her neck and dropped it on the desk in front of him. “Take them!” she said.

Katis seized the pouch and threw it across the room at her. “These are not the Amerikana’s sovereigns; these are yours and we know how you got them!” he said, in a tone implying that Angeliki had been rewarded with gold for her services to the British. “A million such sovereigns couldn’t buy the Amerikana’s life,” Katis shouted. “Traitors must be executed! Now tell us what you know of the Amerikana’s sovereigns.”

Katis got up from his chair and walked around the desk to where Angeliki was standing, the baby in her arms. He drew back his hand and slapped her hard across the face. “I must have lost my senses when he did that,” Angeliki says, “because when I opened my eyes, the baby was not in my arms but was being held by a guerrilla. He never stopped crying.”

Katis continued to grill her. “Who did you give the Amerikana’s sovereigns to? What was she paying them for?” But Angeliki kept insisting that she had no sovereigns but her own. Finally they handed the baby back to her and told her to go. Shakily she walked out the door. When she neared the gate, she turned around to see Eleni still sitting in the same spot on the threshold of the cellar.

Angeliki started toward her to explain what had happened upstairs: she had tried to give up her own sovereigns to save Eleni’s life but the guerrillas realized that whatever Eleni had told them about handing over sovereigns of her own—words wrung out of her by torture—was not true. The two guerrilla guards outside the cellar door stepped forward, barring her way, and motioned for her to leave. As Angeliki paused, Eleni raised a hand in farewell and spoke, the clearest words Angeliki had heard from her that afternoon.

“Don’t forget me!” Eleni called after her.

Angeliki raised her hand in response, and stood a moment trying to think of something to say, then she turned silently and went out the gate.

While Angeliki was being questioned, Ourania Haidis, a stocky, high-strung young woman, was kept waiting in the small pantry, surrounded by piles of shoes taken from prisoners who had been subjected to
falanga
and then killed. When Angeliki had gone, Katis ordered Ourania brought in and asked her the same questions: Where were the three sovereigns the
Amerikana had given her? She made the same response—the only sovereigns she had were those her husband had left her.

Ourania and Angeliki were the only women in the village who had gold sovereigns. Eleni must have known it and under the insistence of her torturers, given their names in hope they would come to her aid. But Ourania, like Angeliki, protested that the Amerikana had given her no sovereigns. When Katis slapped her, she became hysterical. They told her they were taking her down to face Eleni. Ourania claims that she and her cousin never exchanged a word. “She seemed to be in a daze and didn’t look at me,” Ourania says, beginning to stammer at the memory and avoiding the eyes of her questioner. “When I saw her like that, I fainted, and when I came to, they sent me home. We never spoke to each other.”

During the final week of Eleni’s life, Glykeria still worked the fields of Macrohori and Vatsounia. She sweltered in the same red wool dress she had worn for nearly three months; her fourteen-year-old body could not keep up with the demands of cutting wheat from dawn to dusk and carrying large stones to build pillboxes for the
andartes
. Because the women from Lia picked on her, hitting her and complaining of her laziness, Glykeria had begun working with the more sympathetic group from Babouri.

Early on the morning of August 28 the women from Babouri, working near the village of Macrohori, had just started the day’s threshing when they were visited by an imposing figure, Lieutenant Alekos, who had been one of the instructors of the
andartinas
taken from Lia. He arrived on a fine white horse and informed the threshers, “You young girls, all those who are unmarried, get ready to leave! You’re finished with the harvest, you’re all being inducted into the Democratic Army today.”