Eleni (78 page)

The girls from Babouri began screaming and crying while the nearby group from Lia, working on an adjacent hillside, jeered. There was such a rivalry between the two neighboring villages that the Babouriote women had always bragged they were spared from being guerrillas because they could cook, clean and care for the troops so much better than the useless Liote women, who were good for nothing but cannon fodder. Now as the women of Babouri wept, Glykeria sat in silent bewilderment. She didn’t know if she was to be inducted with them or not. She stood up and asked the lieutenant and he looked at her strangely. “No, you’re not to go with them,” he said. “You’re going back to your village along with the unmarried girls of Lia.”

Glykeria knew she should have felt relieved—her summer-long ordeal was over—but she was filled with a vague anxiety. There were tears in her eyes as she kissed her friends among the Barbouriotes goodbye. She would never see most of them again. The young girls were so inadequately trained before they were thrown into the last doomed battles of the war that many died quickly.

The journey back to Lia took over two hours, and Glykeria walked under
the scorching sun with some of the other unmarried girls from her village, including Xanthi Nikou, the sixteen-year-old daughter of the condemned Vasili Nikou. Their route led over the mountain peaks, southwest toward Lia, past the hills of Tserovetsi and Skitari. The girls passed the Chapel of St. Nicholas, tucked in the hidden green valley amid prehistoric grave tumuli. Glykeria made her cross and said a silent prayer as they moved on. Just beyond the chapel they came upon a group of guerrillas, some of the dozens who were camped on the peak of the Prophet Elias just above their heads on the strategic height which overlooked the country for miles. They were hard at work digging a large square hole at the lowest point in a field that belonged to Tassi Mitros, just above a small brook. The girls hurried on past them, not stopping to speak to the guerrillas or to wonder what the ditch was intended for.

They quickened their pace as they passed over the flat, verdant nose of the triangle, the Agora, and then stood looking down on their village from the top of the man-made series of terraced stone steps which the villagers called Laspoura, meaning “muddy.” From that point Glykeria could make out her own house in the Perivoli, and the sight of it filled her with an inexplicable fear. She could see half a dozen guerrillas outside the gate.

Glykeria and the rest nearly ran down the path toward the Perivoli. Just above the spring, by the mill of Tassi Mitros, they encountered Tassina Bartzokis. At the sight of the bedraggled girls, Tassina began to cry and threw her arms around Glykeria. It was from Tassina that Glykeria and Xanthi learned their mother and father had been condemned to death and were being held prisoner in the Gatzoyiannis house, pending their execution.

The two girls, fourteen and sixteen years old, ran to the gate of the security police station and learned from the two guards stationed outside that it was true. They began to cry at the top of their voices. “Shush, quiet!” the nervous guards told them. “We’re not going to kill them! They’ll probably get a reprieve from Markos any day now.”

Still weeping, Glykeria and Xanthi sat down in the dust outside the gate and refused to move until they were allowed to see their parents. Soon they were joined by the two elder Nikou girls, Chrysoula and Olga, who had heard the commotion and learned that their sister and Glykeria had come back from the harvesting. They added their pleas to those of the two teen-agers: “We won’t go home until we see them! You have to let us in!”

It was about eleven o’clock and the uproar caused by the four girls drew nearly everyone in the Perivoli to their windows. Inside the police station’s office Katis heard the shouts and cries. He thought in disgust what kind of impression the commotion must be making on the neighborhood. Finally he sent word out to the guards at the gate: Bring in the women; they would be allowed to see the two prisoners. Anything to shut up their caterwauling!

The four frightened girls were led into the good chamber, where Katis stood, his face like a thundercloud. He made a signal to the guards, and soon Eleni and Vasili Nikou were led into the room, both supported by a guerrilla
on each side. The two prisoners were dazed and frightened, nearly unconscious of their surroundings. All they knew was that they had been led out of the cellar and they were certain the time for their execution had come. Even when their daughters began to scream at the sight of them, they didn’t recognize the children. Both prisoners slumped down on the floor, leaning against a wall. Eleni, catching sight of the familiar iconostasis in the corner, murmured, “My poor house! What have you come to?”

Both Vasili Nikou and Eleni were bruised about the face, their lips swollen, their eyes livid from blows. They were infested with lice, and Eleni, in far worse condition than the man, sat with her grotesquely swollen legs in front of her. Wailing, the girls threw themselves on their parents and the commotion in the police station became even worse than before. Katis angrily ordered one of the guerrillas to crank up the gramophone and put on a record full blast to drown out the sounds of their laments. The incongruous melody, a raucous
rebetiko
from the sailors’ bars in Piraeus, blared out in the breathless noonday hush while the guerrillas and Katis moved closer to hear what the prisoners and their daughters were saying to one another.

Glykeria knelt on the floor in front of Eleni and reached for her.
“Mana
, what have they done to you?” she cried. There was no answer and the girl stared in growing horror at her mother’s unkempt hair, unbuttoned dress and ghastly, misshapen legs and feet.

The touch of Glykeria’s hand and the sound of her voice brought Eleni out of her daze and she recognized the daughter she had been praying for every day. “My child!” she said, repeating it several times. Then, speaking slowly to make herself understood, she said, “Don’t worry about me, my soul. Look at you! You’re worn to a husk!”

Glykeria pressed her face against her mother’s breast and cried, “I missed you so! What have they done with the others?”

“The children left,” Eleni replied, stroking her hair. “They’re safe and I don’t care what happens to me now. You mustn’t cry. I just want you to be well. I don’t want to think of you crying like this.”

While Glykeria and Eleni whispered together, the guards taunted Vasili Nikou, who had also recognized and embraced his daughters. He was embarrassed at their tears and at being seen in his wretched condition. “Go home now, girls,” he said quietly. “For God’s sake, go home!”

“Don’t despair, Uncle Vasili,” said one of the guards with a smile. “Now is the moment to tell your daughters anything you have to say to them. If you have any sovereigns hidden somewhere, tell them now.”

The leathery old cooper turned a look on the man which cowed him into silence, despite the prisoner’s black and distorted face.

“Everything I have, my children have,” Nikou said. “If you’ve carried the gun for two years, I carried it for nine. I know about war and I know what you’re going to do to me. I know it all.” Then he turned back to his daughters and said sternly, “Leave now. Go back to your mother.” They did as they were told, but on the threshold Chrysoula turned to Katis and spoke one word: “Vulture!”

“Hold your tongue, Comrade,” said the judge, flushing, “or you won’t leave here.”

Eleni and Glykeria were sitting together holding hands, each trying to stay calm so as not to frighten the other. Eleni told Glykeria she should go home and rest; she looked sick and exhausted. The girl kept asking her mother what she could do for her.

“Rest first,” Eleni told her, “then look to see if there are any tomatoes in the field and bring me one. Go to Eugenia Petsis—she has our animals—and see if she can send me any milk or
shilira
with you.” She touched the girls’ cheek and added, “If anything happens, I’ve left several okas of corn and wheat in the house for you, and there’s the fields and the animals.”

Glykeria started to protest, but Eleni silenced her. “You must save yourself,” she insisted, then she sighed. “Lucky Constantina Drouboyiannis,” she added.

“What do you mean, Mother?” Glykeria asked, bewildered.

“She’s a lucky woman. She saved her daughters and she saved herself.”

Eleni paused and looked at the girl as if struck by an idea. Then she motioned to Katis, who was standing nearby. He came closer in order to hear what she was saying over the blare of the gramophone.

“Comrade Katis,” Eleni said politely, as if speaking to a social acquaintance. “Could I have a word with you in private?”

“Of course,” he said amiably.

Bracing herself on her daughter’s shoulder, Eleni struggled to her feet. She walked with Katis the few steps to the hall that divided the good chamber from the pantry. Glykeria stared after them, but she could hear nothing that Eleni was saying. She saw her whisper to Katis and make a gesture in her direction. Glykeria got the impression that Eleni was begging or bargaining with Katis to spare her daughter from torture or death. The magistrate listened and nodded, then the pair returned to the good chamber.

“Go now, child,” Eleni said unsteadily. “Go and rest and then come back. I want to see you again.” She stood there, looking at Glykeria. Then she touched her cheek again. “My daughter, may you live for me as long as the mountains.”

Glykeria gazed at her mother’s thin face, sorrowful as that of the Madonna on the family’s icon, her eyes filled with hard light, the fine skin of her forehead etched with tiny wrinkles like silk cloth. The dark circles around her eyes made them seem unnaturally large and luminous. She seized Eleni’s hand and pressed it to her cheek, feeling the rough fingers against her flesh, wet with her tears. They kissed, and then Glykeria turned and went out the door. When she turned around, she saw her mother standing, framed by the front door of her house, staring after the girl as if to fix her image in her mind, holding tight to the doorjamb for support. Eleni raised her hand in farewell. Glykeria shouted, “Don’t worry! I’ll be back!” and then she walked toward the gate. Before it closed behind her, she turned again and saw the face of her aunt peering from the cellar
window, her hands clutching the bars. The girl made a sign to her but Alexo seemed not to know her. She was silently shaking her head from side to side.

Glykeria found the Haidis house closed and dark, bare of anything edible. She ran down to where Eugenia Petsis lived in the bottom of the wrecked mill and the kindly old woman insisted that she sit down and eat some
shilira
while she also prepared a plate for Eleni. Eugenia tried to reassure the shaken girl; her own daughter Coula had been taking food to Eleni nearly every day in the prison, she said. Now that Glykeria was back, Eleni’s prayers had been answered. All she wanted was for her children to be well. “Before you go back up to your mother, you must sleep a little,” Eugenia told her. “You can’t let her see you looking like this!”

Glykeria rubbed her eyes, thanked the woman and took the plate of
shilira
back to the Haidis house. On the way she found two ripe tomatoes in the family garden. In the cool darkness of the house, a relief from the blazing noontime heat outside, she lay down on the single pallet where her mother had slept. Eleni’s best dark-brown wool dress hung on a wall peg. Seeing it there gave the girl a comforting sense of her mother’s nearness. She would just close her eyes for half an hour, she thought, and then she would take the food back up the mountainside to the prison. She was still trembling from the strain of her long walk and the shock of seeing her mother so changed by the torture. She fell immediately into a troubled sleep.

It was about two in the afternoon when Glykeria reappeared at the prison, carrying the
shilira
and the tomatoes. As soon as she approached the gate, she knew something was wrong; all the doors, including the one to the cellar prison, were wide open. The guards outside were sitting casually on the ground, chatting. “Where’s my mother?” Glykeria cried in alarm. “Where are the prisoners?”

“They’re fine, they’ve taken them to another prison, a bigger one at Mikralexi, over the mountains,” replied one of the guards. He saw the doubt on the girl’s face.

“I was supposed to bring this food to her and now she’s gone,” Glykeria said, as if talking to herself.

“Don’t worry, she’ll be better off now,” the guard replied, trying to soothe her. “They just took them. Look, if you don’t believe me. Up there.” He pointed. Glykeria followed his arm and saw a procession of tiny dark figures wending its way up Laspoura toward the pass which separated the Prophet Elias from Kastro—the same route she had descended earlier that day. She could see that most of the figures were walking, a few were on horseback. They were too tiny and far off to identify.

“Are you sure she’ll be better off there?” Glykeria asked uncertainly. She didn’t know what to do. They were so far up the mountain, she could never catch up with them now.

“Of course she will,” responded the guard. “Go on home now and don’t worry.”

But Glykeria went a little higher up, to the cool, green place by Tassi Mitros’ mill where her mother and sisters had so often washed clothes, and she sat there in the shade all afternoon, holding the untouched food. Sometime later Giorgina Venetis, descending the path from the heights, found the girl sitting there crying. Giorgina herself was pale and shaking. “What’s the matter, child?” she said.

“They’ve taken my mother and the others up to Mikralexi and I didn’t get to say goodbye to her,” Glykeria answered. “Who knows how long they’ll keep her there?”

Giorgina Venetis looked away, mumbled a few comforting words to the girl and hurried on. She knew where the prisoners had been taken, news that had already begun to spread through most of the village. But Glykeria, feeling better, went slowly back to the Haidis house by herself, ate the food that she had not been able to give her mother, and spent the night lying on the pallet hugging her mother’s brown dress in her arms for comfort, alternately praying to God, St. Nicholas and St. Demetrios. “Whatever I have, I’ll give it to you if you bring her back,” she murmured to her familiar litany of saints, her cheek against the rough brown fabric. She repeated the promise over and over until she fell asleep.