The Island (22 page)

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Authors: Victoria Hislop

BOOK: The Island
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Nothing had prepared any of them for the impact of Eleni’s death. Their three-cornered family unit was only meant to be temporary, wasn’t it? For forty days an oil lamp burned in the front room as a mark of respect and the doors and windows of their home remained closed. Eleni had been buried on Spinalonga under one of the concrete slabs that formed the communal graveyard, but she was remembered in Plaka by the lighting of a single candle in the church of Agia Marina on the edge of the village, where the sea was so close it lapped against the church steps.
 
After a few months, Maria, and even Anna, moved beyond the stages of mourning. For a time, their own personal tragedy had eclipsed wider world events, but when they emerged from their cocoon of grief, all continued to go on around them just as it had before.
 
In April, the daring kidnap of General Kreipe, commander of the Sebastopol Division in Crete, added to the state of tension across the island. With the help of members of the resistance, Kreipe had been ambushed by Allied troops disguised as Germans and, in spite of a massive manhunt, was smuggled from his headquarters outside Iraklion over the mountains to the south coast of Crete. From here he was shipped off to Egypt, the Allies’ most valuable prisoner of war. There were fears that the reprisals for this audacious abduction might be more barbaric than ever. The Germans made it clear, however, that the terror they were still perpetrating would have happened in any case. One of the worst waves of all took place in May. Vangelis Lidaki had been returning from Neapoli when he saw the awful burnt-out villages.
 
‘They’ve destroyed them,’ he ranted. ‘They’ve burned them to the ground.’
 
The men in the bar listened in disbelief to his descriptions of the smoke still rising from the ashes of the flame-engulfed villages south of the Lasithi mountains, and their hearts went cold.
 
A few days after this event, a copy of a newssheet published by the Germans found its way to Plaka via Antonis, who had visited briefly to reassure his parents that he was still alive. The tone of it was as threatening as ever:
 
 
The villages of Margarikari, Lokhria, Kamares and Saktouria and the nearby parts of the Nome of Iraklion have been razed to the ground and their inhabitants have been dealt with.
 
These villages had offered protection to Communist bands and we find the entire population guilty of failing to report these treasonable practices.
 
Bandits have roamed freely in the Saktouria region with the full support of the local populace and have been given shelter by them. At Margarikari, the traitor Petrakgeorgis openly celebrated Easter with the inhabitants.
 
Listen carefully to us, Cretans. Recognise who your real enemies are and protect yourselves from those who cause retribution to be brought down on you. We have always warned you of the dangers of collaboration with the British. We are losing patience now. The German sword will destroy everyone who associates with the bandits and the British.
 
 
 
The sheet was passed around, read and reread until the paper was worn thin with handling. It did not dampen the villagers’ resolve.
 
‘It just shows they’re getting desperate,’ said Lidaki.
 
‘Yes, but we’re getting desperate too,’ answered his wife. ‘How much longer can we stand it? If we stopped helping the
andarte
, we could sleep easy in our beds.’
 
Conversation continued long into the night. To surrender and co-operate went against everything that was instinctive to most Cretans. They should resist, they should fight. Besides, they liked fighting. From a minor argument to a decade-old blood feud between families, the men thrived on conflict. Many of the women, by contrast, prayed hard for peace and thought their prayers had been answered as they read between the lines and detected sinking morale among their occupiers.
 
The printing and distribution of such threats might well be an act of desperation, but, whatever the motivation behind them, it was a fact that villages had been razed to the ground. Every home in them had been reduced to a smoking ruin and the landscape around was now scarred with the eerie silhouettes of blackened, twisted trees. Anna insisted to her father that they should tell the Germans everything they knew.
 
‘Why should we risk Plaka being destroyed?’ she demanded.
 
‘Some of it’s just propaganda,’ interjected Maria.
 
‘But not all of it!’ retorted Anna.
 
The propaganda war was not only being waged by the Germans, however. The British were orchestrating their own campaign and finding it an effective weapon. They produced newssheets that gave the impression that the enemy’s position was weakening, spread rumours of a British landing and exaggerated the success of resistance activities. ‘
Kapitulation
’ was the theme, and the Germans would wake to the sight of huge letter Ks daubed liberally on their sentry boxes, barrack walls and vehicles. Even in villages such as Plaka, mothers waited nervously for their sons to return after trips to perpetrate acts of graffiti vandalism; the boys, of course, were thrilled to be contributing something to the effort, never imagining for a minute that they were putting themselves in any danger.
 
Such attempts to undermine the Germans may have been small in themselves but they helped to change the bigger picture. The tide was turning throughout Europe, and cracks had appeared in the Nazis’ firm hold on the continent. In Crete, morale was now so low that German troops were starting to withdraw; some, even, to desert.
 
It was Maria who noticed that the small garrison in Plaka had cleared out. At six o’clock sharp there was always a show of force, a supposedly intimidating march through the main street and back again with the occasional interrogation of someone en route.
 
‘Something’s strange,’ she said to Fotini. ‘Something’s different.’
 
It did not take long to work it out. It was now ten past six and the familiar sound of steel-capped boots had not been heard.
 
‘You’re right,’ replied Fotini. ‘It’s quiet.’
 
The tension that hung in the air seemed to have lifted.
 
‘Let’s go for a walk,’ suggested Maria.
 
The two girls, rather than ambling on to the beach as they usually did, kept to the main street until it ran out. Right at this point was the house where the German garrison had their headquarters. The front door and the shutters were wide open.
 
‘Come on,’ said Fotini. ‘I’m going to look inside.’
 
She stood on tiptoes and peered through the front window. She could see a table, bare but for an ashtray piled high with cigarette butts, and four chairs, two of them tipped carelessly on to the floor.
 
‘It looks like they’ve gone,’ she said excitedly. ‘I’m going inside.’
 
‘Are you
sure
there’s no one in there?’ asked Maria.
 
‘Pretty positive,’ whispered Fotini as she stepped across the threshold.
 
Except for a few stray bits of rubbish and a yellowing German newspaper discarded on the floor, the house was empty. The two girls ran home and reported the news to Pavlos, who went immediately to the bar. Within an hour word had swept round the village, and that evening the square was filled with people celebrating the release of their own small corner of the island.
 
Only days later, on 11 October 1944, Iraklion was liberated. Remarkably, given all the bloodshed of the previous few years, the German troops were calmly escorted out of the city gate without any loss of life; the violence was saved for anyone who was perceived to have collaborated. German troops did, however, continue to occupy parts of western Crete, and it was some months before that situation changed.
 
 
One morning in early summer the following year, Lidaki had the radio blaring in the bar. He was washing glasses from the night before in his customary slapdash manner, sluicing them in a bowl of grey water before wiping them with a cloth that had already been used to mop a few puddles on the floor. He was mildly irritated when the music was suddenly interrupted for a news announcement, but his ears pricked up when he caught the solemnity of the tone.
 
‘Today, the eighth of May 1945, the Germans have officially surrendered. Within a few days all enemy troops will have withdrawn from the Hania area and Crete will once again be free.’
 
The music resumed and Lidaki wondered if the announcement had just been a trick of his own mind. He stuck his head out of the door of the bar and saw Giorgis hastening towards him.
 
‘Have you heard?’ he asked.
 
‘I have!’ replied Lidaki.
 
It was true then. The tyranny was over. Though the people of Crete had always believed that they would drive the enemy from their island, when the moment came their joy was unrestrained. A celebration to end all celebrations would have to be held.
 
Part 3
 
Chapter Ten
 
1945
 
 
 
IT WAS AS though they had been breathing in a poisonous gas and now once again there was oxygen in the atmosphere. Members of the resistance were arriving back in their villages, often after travelling hundreds of miles to reach them, and fresh bottles of raki were uncorked to toast every return. Within a fortnight of the end of occupation it was the feast of Agios Konstandinos, and the celebration of this saint’s day was the excuse everyone needed to throw all caution to the wind. A cloud had lifted and madness descended in its place. Fatted goats and well-fed sheep rotated on spits the length and breadth of Crete, and fireworks crackled in the sky across the island, reminding some people of the explosions which had ripped through their cities and illuminated the skies in the early days of the war. No one dwelt on this comparison, however; they wanted to look forward now, not back.
 
For the feast of Agios Konstandinos, the girls of Plaka donned their finery. They had been to church, but their minds were on things other than the sacred nature of the event. These adolescent girls had few restrictions placed on them because they were still perceived as children and innocence was presumed in all they said and did. It was only later, when their womanliness was already developed, that their parents woke up to their sexuality and began to keep a close eye on them, sometimes rather too late. By then, of course, many of these girls had stolen kisses from village boys and engaged in secret trysts in the olive groves or fields on the way home from school.
 
Whilst neither Maria nor Fotini had ever been kissed, Anna had become a well-practised flirt. She was never happier than when she was in the company of boys and could toss her mane of hair and flash her engaging smile knowing that her audience would not look away. She was like a cat on heat.
 
‘Tonight’s going to be special,’ announced Anna. ‘I can feel it in the air.’
 
‘Why’s that then?’ asked Fotini.
 
‘Most of the boys are back, that’s why,’ she answered.
 
There were several dozen young men in the village, mere boys when they had left to fight with the
andarte
at the beginning of the occupation. Some of them had now chosen to join the Communists and had gone to take part in the struggle against right-wing forces that was brewing on mainland Greece, bringing new hardship and bloodshed.
 
Fotini’s brother Antonis was one of those who had returned to Plaka. Sympathetic as he was to the ideals of the left and the new campaign on the mainland, after four years away he had been more than ready to come home. It was Crete that he had been fighting for, and here he wanted to stay. During his time away Antonis had grown wiry and strong and was unrecognisable from the emaciated figure who had staggered back after those first few months in the resistance to see his family. Now he had not only a moustache, but a beard too, which added at least five years to his twenty-three. He had lived on a diet of mountain greens, snails and whatever wild animals he could ensnare, and endured extremes of heat and cold that had given him a sense of indestructibility.
 
It was the romantic figure of Antonis that Anna had set her heart on that night. She was not alone in that ambition, but she was confident of winning at least a kiss from him. He was lean and slim-hipped, and when the dancing began, Anna was determined to make him notice her. If he failed to, he would be the only man in the village who had. Everyone was aware of Anna, not only because she was half a head taller than most of the other girls, but because her hair was longer, wavier and glossier than all the rest, and even when plaited it reached down to her hips. The whites of her huge oval eyes were as bright as the dazzling cotton shirts which the girls all wore, and her pearly teeth gleamed as she laughed and chattered with her friends, supremely conscious of her beauty under the watchful gaze of the groups of young men who stood about the square, anticipating the moment when music would mark the real launch of the festivities. Anna was almost luminous in the dusk of this great feast day. The other girls were in her shadow.

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