The House on Paradise Street (30 page)

“You don’t need drugs up here,” Eurydice said. We ended up sitting under an apricot tree that was covered with perfectly ripe, golden fruit and pigged out. We threw the stones into the grass and ended up too bloated to move so we went to sleep and got sunburnt on our legs. But it was worth it. As Eurydice said, we had tasted “ambrosia of the gods”.

This is probably the longest letter I’ll ever write. I hope you reply soon.

Yours sincerely,

Antigone Perifanis

A few years ago, some cousins of my husband, Vassilis, told us about a ritual they had recently carried out for a family member. Their aunt, Sophia Vlachou, was born in Dikastro, the same mountain village as Vassilis’ father (a place with many similarities to “Perivoli” in
The House on Paradise Street
). As a young woman, Sophia was active in the resistance during the German occupation. Soon after the war, her partisan husband was executed, and following the Civil War, she went into exile in Romania. For many years, her family didn’t know what had become of her, but in 1962 they got word that she had died, having suffered badly from her war injuries. They were unable to go to her funeral and it was not until over forty years later that her family brought her remains back from Bucharest. They placed her bones in a beautiful wooden box, organised a priest to make a blessing in the cemetery in Dikastro, and laid her to rest permanently in the ossuary there.

This incident moved me and re-kindled my interest in the legacy of the Greek Civil War. I had first become aware of its significance when I was an anthropology student doing research in the Peloponnese. I read Kevin Andrews’ wonderful book,
The Flight of Icaros
, about his travels in a country devastated by war and then ground into despair by hatred and suspicion. Although many decades have passed since those dreadful years, Greeks are still affected by what happened. Some of the problems at the root of the current economic crisis and the intensity of the street protests as a reaction, can be linked back to the oppressive regimes that dominated Greece for so long. Families still carry painful memories of the Colonels’ Junta (1967-74), and for many, this dictatorship was a repeat of what had happened in the 1940s; the same people went back to prison or into exile.

If Sophia Vlachou provided some of the inspiration for Antigone, many other people also contributed elements to what became her story. My aunt by marriage, Xanthe Papadimitriou, told me about her life in Athens before the war. Her family was not unlike Antigone’s, with its comfortable house, good food, servants and high educational aspirations. The shock of losing everything during the war was deeply felt, and Xanthe described the endless search for food, the negotiations with black-marketeers and the increasing presence of death and starvation on the streets.

“We younger children would go and write slogans on walls,” she said. “We were told by the older ones what to write: Down with Germans! Or, Italians – Traitors!

“If the police caught anyone they’d beat them black and blue, but it was more serious if you were older.”

For some women I spoke to, the experiences after the war were even worse than during the occupation. Poppy Voliotou, now in her mid-eighties, lives on her own in a small apartment in Exarchia, central Athens. Everything there is orderly, down to the label for “hand towel” in the bathroom, and the plastic bowl in the basin to save and recycle water. I wondered if she had learned these habits as a prisoner, as she spent many years in Averoff Prison, which stood not far from her current home. A village girl who was married at sixteen, Poppy was put on trial for helping the partisans, and was only spared a death sentence because she was pregnant. Her baby was born with prison guards outside the hospital room and she eventually had her two older children brought to live with her in prison as there was nobody else to care for them. Poppy told me horrific stories about her experiences in Averoff, about women who were pregnant following rape, about a grandmother and her twelve-year-old granddaughter in jail for handing out pro-partisan leaflets. But she also described the camaraderie of this unusual community of women and children, and her energy and optimism and her small, wiry frame all contributed to the character of Dora.

When I met the late Maria Beikou, I was amazed by how much about her life corresponded with what I had envisaged for Antigone. As an attractive, intelligent university student, she had “gone to the mountains” aged eighteen and fought in the resistance. After the Civil War she travelled to Tashkent and she ended up as an announcer on the radio station in Moscow. Unlike Antigone, Maria returned to Greece after the end of the Junta, in 1975. At the time I interviewed her, she was finishing a book about her life and participating in a theatre production of
Mauser
by the German playwright Heiner Muller, organised by the experimental director Theodoros Terzopoulos. She was eighty-three.

“I was never a fanatical communist,” she said, despite having been the Greek voice of communism on
Moscow Calling
for many years. “But I think people will go back to Marx. After the fall of communism I didn’t lose my life. What remained was comradeship, knowledge…” Sadly, she died in 2011, aged eighty-five, but remained active to the end.

Sofka Zinovieff, October 2011

We think of Greece as an ancient country, so it is easy to forget that it only became an independent state in 1830, after the War of Independence against the Ottoman Turks. It wasn’t until much later, following the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, that it acquired the territory that gives it its present shape, and the Dodecanese islands were only ceded from Italy in 1947.

After the First World War, Greece was supported by the Great Powers (especially Britain) in invading parts of Asia Minor and taking control of the mainly Greek city of Smyrna. The debacle that followed became known as “the Catastrophe” by Greeks: the Allied Powers stood by as Turkish nationalists under Kemal Ataturk routed the Greek troops and destroyed Smyrna. The resulting population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923 was the twentieth century’s first example of ethnic cleansing, as 1.4 million Christians (classified as “Greeks”) were forced to leave their homes in Turkey. It was as refugees that they arrived in a Greek “homeland” they had never known (that itself had a population of only 4 million). 500,000 Muslims were expelled from Greece and sent to Turkey.

In 1936, following his coup, General Ioannis Metaxas was made Prime Minister by King George II. Metaxas quickly declared a state of emergency, suspended Parliament and made himself into a Mussolini-esque dictator, and self-styled “Saviour of the Nation”. He banned communism, established prison camps for political enemies, and banned books that didn’t suit the regime’s ideology. His finest moment was when he followed the spirit of his nation and refused to allow Italian troops to occupy Greece in 1940. His resounding “No!” is still celebrated in Greece every October 28th.

Greece’s brave defence and their counter-attack in Albania was a highly significant early victory for the Allies, at a time when the Nazis were sweeping through much of Europe and morale was low. The Greek defeat of the Italians forced the Nazis to step in, defeat the Greek army and join the subsequent occupation of the country by Germany, Italy and Bulgaria. The King, the Greek government and British troops in Greece were forced to flee, making their base in Egypt.

The Greeks suffered particularly badly during the war. Over 250,000 people died of starvation, the Jewish community was almost completely destroyed by the Nazis, and by the end, the country was physically devastated and divided along political lines. British secret agents of SOE (Secret Operations Executive) fought alongside resistance groups during the occupation, but the British army quickly sided with the more right-wing factions following liberation in October 1944. By December the British were fighting the largest, most popular resistance group, ELAS, in the streets of Athens. The seeds of the Civil War had been sown. From 1946-49, the British and then the Americans, supported the National Army in its struggle to destroy the communistcontrolled Democratic army. Much of the fighting took place in the mountains of northern Greece.

Atrocities took place on both sides during the Civil War, but by 1949, the left-wing had been destroyed, its remaining members imprisoned, exiled or forced to flee to neighbouring communist countries. The following 25 years saw a series of right-wing governments, mostly headed by Constantine Karamanlis. These were supported by the US, which also helped reconstruct the country under the Marshall Plan and simultaneously tried to keep “the threat of Communism at bay”. In 1967, a group of military officers, known as “the Colonels”, made a coup d’état and established a military dictatorship. Supported by the CIA, they were signed in by King Constantine, who later made an abortive attempt to oust them and was forced to flee the country.

In 1973, a mass demonstration of students took place in Athens’ Polytechnic, the Junta sent in the army with tanks and many young people were injured and killed. The shock of this brutality, combined with the abortive attempt by the Colonels to instigate a coup in Cyprus in order to get rid of President Makarios (which was followed by the Turkish invasion), led to the collapse of the dictatorship in 1974. Democracy was restored, Constantine Karamanlis returned from exile in Paris as the Prime Minister, and Greece became a republic after a referendum vote rejected the return of King Constantine.

Some political exiles began to return from eastern bloc countries after the end of the Junta, but it was not until 1981 that Greece had its first socialist government since the war. Under the policy of National Reconciliation, the left-wing national resistance during the Nazi occupation was recognised for the first time. It has only been since then – 30 years – that political and social integration has allowed Greece to create a fully functional democracy.

Many of the incidents in this book are inspired by actual events. I am profoundly indebted to those who talked to me about their often difficult experiences during and after the war: Sylvia Ioannidou, Katina Latifi, Maria Beikou, Mairy Aroni, Poppy Voliotou, Yiorgos Votsis, Themis Marinos, Kostas Vlachos, Dimitris Vlachos, Nikos Belloyiannis, Xanthe Papadimitriou and Irini Raya.

I am particularly grateful to two friends: Stelios Kouloglou helped me understand more about the Civil War when I started the project and introduced me to some extraordinary people; and Paul Johnston gave invaluable advice all the way through.

Many books were useful for my research, but several provided crucial details: Olympia Papadouka,
Geinaikeiai Filakai Averoff
(Averoff Women’s Prison); P. Aronis and V. Vardinogiannis,
Oi Misoi Sta Sidera
(Half of Them Behind Bars); Dominiqe Eudes,
The Kapetánios: Partisans and Civil War in Greece, 1943-1949;
Stelios Kouloglou,
Martiries gia ton Emfilio kai tin Elliniki Aristera
(Witnesses of the Civil War and the Greek Left); and for the great title, Akis Gavriilidis,
I Atherapefti Nekrofilia tou Rizospastikou Patriostismou
(The Incurable Necrophilia of Radical Patriotism).

Thank you for a variety of good things to my dear friends, Amalia Zepou, Katya Michos and Tessa Charlton. I would also like to thank Yiorgos Alexopoulos for information about Athenian archaeology, Sotiris Glykofridis for conversations about Parmenides, Yanis Varoufakis who talked about students, Lee Sarafis for information about the Civil War, and Ioanna Haritatou for showing me her inspiring house in Mets. Phivos Karzis helped with some historical tips. Thanks also to my stepmother, Jenny Zinovieff, and to my father, Peter Zinovieff, the only person who read tender parts of work-in-progress.

George Miller, Effie Basdra and Jacoline Vinke gave immensely helpful, intelligent comments on the manuscript. Thank you.

Huge thanks to my editor, Aurea Carpenter. Also to everyone at Short Books.

I am deeply grateful to my agent, Caroline Dawnay, for all her help. Also to her assistant, Olivia Hunt.

Vassilis Papadimitriou, my husband, gave unstinting love and support and helped me believe it was possible. The book is dedicated to our daughters, whose Greek grandparents, Photini and Kostas Papadimitriou, lived through the horrors of the German occupation and the Civil War.

 

Sofka Zinovieff has published two acclaimed works of non-fiction,
Eurydice Street: a Place in Athen
s and
Red Princess: a Revolutionary Life
. This is her first novel. She lives, with her husband and two daughters, in Greece.