Eleni (50 page)

Eleni had always sympathized with the young coffeehouse owner before the guerrillas made him village president, and she regretted the way the villagers ostracized him because of his brush with tuberculosis. To Eleni, Spiro Michopoulos had always been polite and soft-spoken, excessively eager to please. But she knew that such people often harbored hostility toward neighbors who had been treated better by life.

As he sat in the chair Eleni brought out on the veranda, his long, thin legs awkwardly akimbo, idly clicking his chain of worry beads, Michopoulos looked depressed. But then, thought Eleni, he always looked that way. There were permanent furrows between his eyes; his sallow face was a long, mournful inverted triangle with swept-back dark hair receding at the temples. Although his features were regular, Spiro’s outsized ears and tiny toothbrush of a mustache gave him a slightly clownish look. But today he appeared far more sinister than comical to Eleni, and his visit seemed a bad omen.

She hid her nervousness in the bustle of bringing him some warm milk, then sat down opposite him. “Are you all right, Spiro?” she ventured. “You look like you lost a sovereign and found a drachma.”

His thin chest rose and fell with a deep sigh and he shook his head mournfully. “The
andartes
keep asking me to give them more people for work details, more mules, more supplies, but the villagers want to stay home to protect their families and their fields,” he said. “I understand how both sides feel, but I always get caught between the upper and the lower millstones.” He seemed to droop. “I’ve tried to be fair.

“I know, Spiro,” Eleni replied, wondering what he was leading up to.

“But people don’t want me to be fair!” he burst out. “They want their neighbor, who’s disloyal to the cause, to be assigned more work than they have. And of course everyone is more dedicated to the cause than his neighbor.”

That must be it, Eleni thought. Because her father was a royalist and her husband an American, the villagers were complaining that she should be assigned more work as punishment. She tried to read Michopoulos’ face,
but he was staring out toward the horizon in a melancholy that reached to his fingertips. He turned the cup of milk around in his hands and began talking in a low voice, as if to himself. “At the beginning, when we were fighting foreign invaders it was so simple, and so … right,” he said. “Now it’s all changed.”

He fell silent. Eleni was sure he was trying to trick her into saying something critical about the guerrillas, and didn’t reply.

“It’s going to get worse!” he shouted, abruptly turning on her. “The village is not safe anymore! There’ll be more attacks, more bloodshed. I don’t want to see parents weeping for their children.”

Eleni couldn’t understand why he sounded so urgent and excited. He took a deep breath, collected himself, then said, “It was wise that you moved out of the Perivoli, Eleni. But even here it’s not safe.” He searched her face. “You should go farther down, Eleni! Go down as far as you can. Do you hear what I’m telling you?”

She stared at him, wondering why he was acting so strangely. Was he telling her to move down to the bottom of the village to live with her sister-in-law, farther away from the guerrilla emplacements which would receive the brunt of the enemy fire, or did he mean something else? As she was pondering how to ask him without saying something compromising, he wiped his mustache, leaped to his feet, nervously thanked her for the untouched cup of milk and left. After he was gone Eleni wondered fleetingly if he had been trying to tell her to flee the village altogether, but then she returned to her original conviction that his visit had been an attempt to trap her into saying something against the guerrillas.

In early April the bull horn of the town crier broadcast a summons that spread excitement through the village: “All mothers who have children between the ages of three and fourteen are to report to the Church of the Holy Trinity at once!”

The women hurried toward the town square, whispering questions about what it could mean. The rumor went around that there would be a distribution of food to families with small children. Nikola and Fotini were young enough to qualify, Eleni calculated. Any extra ration of sugar, lard or flour would be a godsend.

In contrast to the warmth of the bright spring day, the dark interior of the church was musty and cool. Ever since Father Theodoros fled the village, there had been no services. The icons and the bishop’s seat were shrouded in dust, but the women entering the church, many carrying babies, automatically made their cross and stopped to kiss the image of the Virgin inside. By habit, they crowded into the women’s section in the back, but a small dark woman, a young
andartina
in uniform with a bandolier of bullets across her chest, motioned the women to come forward. It seemed a good omen that they were to be addressed by a woman.

“Mothers of Lia,” she shouted. “We’ve called you together because your children are in danger.”

The church became very quiet. Someone shushed a crying baby. “The fascist attacks on this village will continue,” the
andartina
said. “If your children are not hit by a bullet or a bomb, they will die slowly of starvation. You know that there’s not even enough food left for our fighters. You’ve all heard your children crying with hunger.”

The women stared at her. They knew that it was true enough, but what did she expect them to do about it? When was she going to get to the part about more food?

“Your children are the reason for our struggle, to make a better Greece for them,” the woman soldier shrilled. “You have to share our ordeal, but it’s not fair to make
them
suffer too. Because of the party’s great concern and love for your children, our leaders have found a way to save them.”

She paused dramatically. “We’ve called you here to announce that the people’s democracies, including our neighbors Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria have opened their arms to your children! They will take all children whose parents sign this piece of paper, care for them, feed them well, give them new clothes and educate them to become doctors, engineers, officers—whatever their abilities permit. And when the war is ended and the Red Flag flies over all of our country, they will return to you, tall, healthy and happy, ready to take their places in the new Greece.”

It took a moment or two for the village women to comprehend what the
andartina
was saying. They exchanged startled looks and unconsciously pulled toddlers closer to their sides. She was standing in front of them with a smile on her face and asking them to hand over their children to be taken away! The women stared at the piece of paper in her hand as if it were a snake.

The
andartina
didn’t seem to notice the reaction. She plunged on enthusiastically. “I want each one of you to step forward and give me your children’s names and ages. In a month or so they’ll be taken to their new life, free from danger, fear and hunger. Now, who will be first?”

The dark interior of the church, under the glowering eyes of Christ the Ail-Powerful on the dome, began to seem intolerably close. Eleni forced herself to stay calm. Her children were safe at home with Nitsa and Megali, and this young woman was only asking for volunteers. Being young and unmarried, she didn’t know what it meant to have a child, didn’t realize what she was asking. After a while, when none volunteered their children, she would see her mistake and let them go home. The main thing, Eleni told herself, was to remain quiet, not to anger the guerrillas or call attention to herself.

Tassina Bartzokis, next to her, learned over and whispered, “If all of us say ‘No’ with one voice, what can they do?”

Eleni gave a small shake of her head.

The young woman at the front of the church saw the movement. “Why
are you hesitating?” she asked. “Is there anyone or anything holding you back?”

Olga Venetis’ voice answered her. “Only our pain for our children,” she said. “Nothing else.”

The
andartina
forced herself to be patient. “You mustn’t cling to your children and let them be killed out of selfish bourgeois sentiment!” she scolded. “Would you rather see them die here or live happily in safety?” She arranged her face again into a smile. “Now I’m going to ask each of you individually,” she said. “Who will show the rest the right decision?”

Nearest her was Xantho Venetis, the wife of the cooper, who was holding her three-year-old son. “Comrade Xantho, will you give your children the chance for a life without fear?”

The gaunt woman spoke without thinking. “None of us will give up our children!” There was a gasp; Xantho had rashly presumed to speak for the whole group. The
andartina
studied her, then wrote something down on a piece of paper. Xantho swallowed, imagining it was her death sentence.

The women waited, hoping that Xantho’s defiance would not unleash the guerrillas’ wrath on all of them. A loud sob broke the silence and they turned to see Calliope Bardaka pushing forward through the crowd. The women exchanged knowing looks. As the security police’s chief informant, Calliope was universally suspected of sleeping with the guerrillas.

“I’m the first!” Calliope wept. “My husband was killed by fascists and I won’t let the same thing happen to my children. I want to be the first mother to place them under the protection of our party.”

She came forward, wiping her eyes. The young
andartina
put an arm around her shoulders as she wrote down the names of Calliope’s two children and showed her where to make her mark.

As Calliope returned to her place, another voice rang out, ragged with desperation: “Take my children, all but the baby!” The women looked around and saw that the speaker was Nakova Daflaki, the last person they would have expected to step forward. Nakova’s husband had been a member of the home guard, MAY, who fled at the approach of the guerrillas to escape certain execution. The DAG took revenge by throwing Nakova and her four small children out of their house and confiscating all their food. Since then, they had been sleeping in a hay shed. Nakova was often seen scavenging in the dirt of the guerrilla’s stables for individual kernels of corn dropped from the horses’ feed troughs. Now she was handing over her children to the very men who had been persecuting her.

After Nakova signed the paper, there was a strained silence, broken only by the sobs of the two women who had volunteered. “These unselfish comrades have led the way,” said the
andartina
. “Who will follow?”

The women shifted from one foot to the other, watching the speaker become more impatient. Finally she said, “I want you all to go home and think hard about what is best for your children. If you truly love them, you’ll let them go.”

Walking out of the church, the women pointedly avoided the two who had signed over their children. Nakova Daflaki was still weeping as she reached the door and blinked in the sunlight. She looked imploringly at the silent women and saw Eleni staring at her with mingled pity and horror.

“What else could I do?” she cried out in desperation. “We sleep in a hay shed! I have nothing to feed them! I can’t just watch them die, can I?”

Eleni didn’t reply. Like the others, she turned away from Nakova and hurried home. That night she woke up several times and reached out in the darkness to make sure Nikola was still there on the pallet beside her.

My mother returned from the meeting in the church white-lipped with anger. She paced up and down, cursing the two women who had handed over their children, “as if they were kittens,” she kept saying in wonder. I studied her, trying to read my own fate, and finally she saw my expression. She leaned over and took my face in her hands. “Some women are sending their children away to Albania because they don’t have enough food to give them,” she said to me, “and because they are fools!”

My mother loved me, I knew, and she was no fool, but I also knew that there wasn’t enough food in our house. The threat of being separated from her and my sisters frightened me so much that I resolved to minimize the danger by eating less, as little as I possibly could.

For as long as I could remember I had been hungry, but now my bones began to grow too fast for my skin, which would crack at the joints, bleeding. I woke at night feeling pains in my legs and the hollow ache of hunger, almost indistinguishable from fear, in my belly. When my mother put food on the table I tried not to look at it, to pretend it wasn’t there, but even when I closed my eyes I could see it.

My clearest memory from that period is the day of the marmalade. Realizing that reasoning with the mothers wouldn’t make them give up their children, the guerrillas decided to try a more primal appeal. We were called together—women and children—in the flat field near a mill on the eastern side of the ravine. I hid behind my mother, peeking out at the proceedings. A guerrilla and the tinker Elia Poulos stood in front of us. Next to them, in a row, were the dozen or so village children who had been volunteered for the
pedomasoma
by their parents. They were all dressed in clean new clothes and, I noticed with surprise, they were all wearing shoes.

There was a table in front of the guerrilla, with a great crusty loaf of bread that seemed as big as a mill wheel, and a two-liter can. The guerrilla opened the lid and air whooshed out with a delicious odor like an orchard of pomegranate trees. He dipped in with a large spoon and brought out a scoop of marmalade, gleaming golden brown in the sun, the color of the finest honey.

What we called “marmalade” was a rich, viscous sweet made of wild fruits or berries cooked with sugar until it was so thick it could be cut
like butter. I watched him scooping out great hunks of the stuff and spreading it on slabs of the bread—white bread—nearly an inch thick with marmalade. I had never seen so much marmalade. Before the revolution, we sometimes bought tiny cans of it from the general store, but since the guerrillas came, none of us had tasted any sweet, not even sugar or honey.

When the guerrilla dipped down for a fat scoop of marmalade and let it ooze back, my mouth flooded with saliva and I unconsciously stepped from behind my mother to get a closer look. With the ceremonious gestures of a priest, the guerrilla cut large wedges of the bread and slathered them so generously with the marmalade that some dripped onto the ground, bringing tears to my eyes. He presented each of the well-dressed children in front of him with a piece of bread, which they devoured like animals, spreading marmalade all over their faces up to their ears and soiling their fine new clothes.