Eleni (75 page)

Meanwhile, the battle-weary guerrilla forces dug into the Vitsi range. Although their orders still bore Markos’ name, they were issued by a supreme war council totally obedient to Zachariadis. That council included Kostas Koliyiannis, head of the Epiros Command.

Out of optimism, desperation or madness, Zachariadis continued to tell his exhausted troops that victory had never been closer; at any minute, brigades of international Communists would come rushing over the border to their assistance. But the officers in the trenches knew better. Zachariadis’ own aide, Yiorgos Goussias, was overheard saying, “It’s all over already, but we’ve got to hang on a while longer.”

Like a bulldog who refuses to loosen his grip even when mortally wounded, Zachariadis would hold on for another year. In that time a great many more Greek men, women and children would die.

T
HE DRAMA HAD REACHED
its conclusion and the seven protagonists were led through the silent throng of villagers, feeling the eyes of their neighbors and families searing their faces. They were numb; the condemned had not yet been able to register the totality of their disaster, and the exonerated still did not believe in their deliverance.

In the yard outside the security prison the two women who had been acquitted—Dina Venetis and Constantina Drouboyiannis—were separated from the rest. In a bizarre gesture of restitution, the head of the security police ceremoniously handed each of them a package containing pieces of dried bread, announcing in ringing tones, “You see, Comrades, the Democratic Army punishes only those who deserve it.” Then the dumfounded women were told they were free to go home.

The five who had been condemned were herded into the jail, the first time Eleni had been incarcerated in the filthy cellar along with the rest. There were about a dozen prisoners already in the room, strangers from other villages.

The knots of people wending their way home from the trial walked in silence, their heads down, avoiding one another’s eyes. As one candle lights another, shame had spread through the village. Not even the most fervent Communists among the Liotes had believed that five of their most prominent neighbors would be sentenced to death.

The judges who carried out the orders of Koliyiannis and condemned the five had been startled at the reaction of the audience during the trial and the unexpectedly unanimous defense of the prisoners offered by the villagers who stood up to speak. They realized that the trial had not been the propaganda success that was intended, despite Katis’ careful planning and the number of accusers. The attitude of the villagers worried them.

Yiorgos Anagnostakis was especially disturbed by the trial. When the other judges signed their names to the execution order he hesitated. Instead of signing it, he took the paper in his hand and set off for the headquarters
in Babouri to discuss his reservations with Kostas Koliyiannis. Many years later Anagnostakis told a guerrilla from Babouri named Mihali Bouris what happened that day.

Koliyiannis, forty-two, was a slow-moving, ursine figure with eyes of glowering hostility behind his dark-rimmed glasses. He had a lush crop of white hair and a sparse mustache sprouted beneath his bulbous nose. A zealous Communist since he left his village outside Thebes to study law in Athens, Koliyiannis had spent the last dozen years of his life either on the mountain or in prison. The commissar was notorious for his lack of humor and his hair-trigger temper, and on that day, August 21, he was in a particularly foul mood.

When Anagnostakis arrived in Babouri and was told to sit in the busy waiting room outside Koliyiannis’ office, he nervously rehearsed the words he would use to explain his reservations about the trial. After some time he was ushered into the great man’s presence, and Koliyiannis glared at him with obvious impatience.

Anagnostakis cleared his throat and began, “We’ve held the trial in Lia, Comrade, and we’ve condemned the five to be executed.” He was rewarded with a curt nod and plunged on, “But the reaction of the villagers was very negative. All those who rose to speak testified in favor of the defendants. Two local women are among those to be killed. I haven’t added my signature to the execution order yet because I believe that a lot of harm might be done to our cause by these executions.”

The commissar’s heavy brows drew together and he contemplated the nervous judge as if he were a pesky mosquito buzzing around his head. Koliyiannis had just been through a very trying week, perhaps the worst since the civil war began. Three days before, Grammos had fallen and it was clear that the guerrillas would ultimately be defeated; it was only a matter of time. Koliyiannis also knew something that few other men on the Mourgana did: the feud between Zachariadis and his commander in chief Markos had finally erupted, spouting disaster. Zachariadis had taken complete charge of the war and was sure to continue his misguided policies.

Koliyiannis knew that soon the guerrilla army in the Mourgana would be forced to retreat into Albania. Already morale was so low that the commanders were having trouble controlling the epidemic of desertions. But there was one small bit of solace in the general debacle. With Zachariadis and Markos at each other’s throat and the army in disorder, the Greek Communist Party would be reduced to chaos. If he played his cards right, Koliyiannis knew, the tidal wave of defeat might cast him up on the heights of the party hierarchy. But he had to use all his cunning to avoid being sucked under with the rest by the disaster.

When the time came to retreat into Albania, it would be up to Koliyiannis to see that all the civilians in the occupied villages went docilely with the guerrillas, along with their animals and provisions. They would be essential for feeding and supplying the army in exile; and from the ranks of these
peasants would come the Communist cadres of the future. Like all good Greek Communists, Koliyiannis was convinced that the Democratic Army would eventually launch another round in their rebellion against the fascists.

But he knew it was not easy to convince peasants to leave their homes and fields behind. The only way he could ensure complete cooperation from the civilians when the day came to retreat was to terrify them into compliance. That was why, in the late summer of 1948, there were public show trials in nearly every Mourgana village of civilians who were charged with disloyalty to the cause. To Koliyiannis, it seemed an effective way to cow the remaining villagers into obedience on that approaching day when retreat into Albania would be inevitable.

There were dozens of occupied villages under Koliyiannis’ command, and it was not surprising, on August 21, 1948, with the war, the fate of the DAG and his very career hanging by a thread, that Koliyiannis was not in the mood to hear quibbles from one of his judges about the condemnation of five peasants in Lia. The village had been a thorn in his side ever since the mass escape there created such an embarrassment for his command. The commissar’s frown deepened. “Twenty people were allowed to walk out of that village under our very noses,” he snapped. “If no one is punished for this crime and we ultimately have to abandon the Mourgana, do you think the villagers are going to follow us meekly or rush over to join the fascists?”

“But if we execute these people, the village will turn against us!” replied Anagnostakis. “They seem to feel these five have done no harm.”

“Whether the villagers follow us out of loyalty or fear doesn’t matter, as long as they understand the consequences of defying us!” Koliyiannis thundered. “I’m busy now. Wait outside in the other room and I’ll discuss this matter with you later.”

Anagnostakis went into the outer room, the execution order still in his hands, and started to worry. He was afraid that Koliyiannis might begin to doubt his own loyalty to the cause; after all, he had been appointed head of the judicial branch by Koliyiannis and had been ordered by him to attend the trial and sign the execution order. He thought about the kangaroo court and snap execution that had snuffed out Colonel Yiorgos Yannoulis only days before.

As grim-faced guerrillas bustled in and out with messages for Koliyiannis, Anagnostakis considered the possible results of his reluctance to sign and became more and more frightened for his own life, which he began to weigh against his scruples. Impulsively he scribbled his name below the other two on the execution order, handed the paper to the guerrilla who was serving as Koliyiannis’ chief aide, and said, “Give this to the Comrade General.” Quickly Anagnostakis disappeared out the door in the direction of Lia before Koliyiannis could call him back into his office.

Anagnostakis never forgot his lapse of courage: twenty years later the
former judge confided the incident to another exiled guerrilla in Tashkent, Russia, and told him that the sudden failure of nerve was “a burden that I have carried through the years. I signed the execution order so that they wouldn’t use it against me.”

Living among refugees in the unfinished house in Igoumenitsa, the Gatzoyiannis family had no idea that there had been a trial. While they waited for news of Eleni to leak from the other side of the battle lines, life took on a kind of normalcy. Even though it was summer, a school was set up for the refugee children. Fotini and Nikola, who had not entered a classroom since before the guerrillas occupied their village, attended it every day, Nikola carrying his new notebooks and pencils. Olga and Kanta found themselves to be the belles of Igoumenitsa, besieged by women acting as go-betweens who wanted to cement a marriage proposal between some male relative and one of the Gatzoyiannis girls. Marrying one of them would be a wonderful opportunity for an ambitious young man, enabling him to receive papers eventually to emigrate from bankrupt, war-ravaged Greece and make his fortune in America. The girls’ grandfather encouraged these suits, but they remembered their mother’s warning: “You’re all to go to your father in America, and if you don’t, my curse will be on you! The things we’ve been suffering here don’t happen in America. In Greece you wouldn’t be safe anywhere.”

Even though the family didn’t have to pay rent, there were expenses in setting up housekeeping in Igoumenitsa. They had to buy plates, pans and wood for the fireplace as well as food, and they soon ran short of money. Olga decided to travel by bus to Filiates to ask for more of the money her father had sent her uncle Foto. When she got there she was surprised to find the small Turkish-style town crawling with government soldiers, military equipment and tanks, which looked to her like large slow-moving swamp animals.

When Olga tracked down her uncle and asked for some more money, Foto rolled his eyes heavenward. “Didn’t I buy all of you new shoes and clothes and pencils and notebooks and pans and I don’t know what all?” he exclaimed. “The money’s gone, used up! What do you think I am, a bank?”

Olga’s cheeks flushed and she told her uncle that she’d write her father what he had said, but Foto, who was as wily as Olga was naïve, managed to talk her out of it. “Any day now your mother will be out of the village and I’ll discuss it with her,” he temporized. “Can’t you see what’s going on here? They’re preparing an attack on the Mourgana with so many men and so much equipment that it can’t possibly fail. The guerrillas won’t stop running until they reach Tirana! Then your mother will be free and we’ll settle these petty matters between us.”

Excited by what she had seen and heard, Olga went back to Igoumenitsa with a light heart and told the others all about the huge military operation that was being readied to liberate their village and free their mother.

The well-intentioned objections about the trial expressed by Judge Anagnostakis to Commissar Koliyiannis at the headquarters of the Epiros Command boomeranged in an unexpected way. While Koliyiannis was pleased when he learned that the judge had regained his senses and quietly signed the execution order, he remembered what Anagnostakis had said about the negative reaction of the villagers to the trial. If the decision to execute the five Liotes was an unpopular one, then it was necessary to discredit the condemned in the eyes of their neighbors; to convince the village that these five deserved to die for their treachery to the rest of the community. The Amerikana, especially, must be stripped of the position of respect that she held in the village. Proof had to be found that she was a traitor and not just a mother trying to save her own children. Koliyiannis scribbled off a message and ordered it sent to Katis in Lia.

Katis had been relieved that the case against the Liotes was completed, but when he received Koliyiannis’ directive, his face clouded. He sat down at his desk with the thick files of statements his intelligence sources had collected and thought hard. The best way to besmirch the reputation of the Amerikana, he decided, was to convince the villagers that she had been living luxuriously on gold sent by her capitalist husband as well as on goods hoarded and kept back from the poor of Lia by her fascist father Kitso Haidis. Katis was aware of the widely held opinion in Lia that the shrewd old miller had squirreled away a fortune in relief supplies during his stint as distributor of UNRRA goods.