Orthokostá (16 page)

We had stayed there, two families. The Makrís and the Koutsoyiánnis families. Yeorghía had left for Kastrí. Yiánnis Koutsoyiánnis went there. Who was the village police sergeant at that time. Now he's retired. He went to get the sprayer from Vanghélis Farazís. On his way there he finds Themistoklís Anagnostákos. Where are you going, Yiánnis? I'm going to get the sprayer, going to spray. Don't go get the sprayer, go and tell your family and the Makríses to clear out. Because tonight they're coming to take us all away. Who said so? Mihális Siouroúnis. Mihális was involved in the Organization back then. Oh, come on, says Yiánnis, and he keeps going to get the sprayer. You stubborn fool, Themistoklís shouts. Turn back. You haven't got time. They're coming any minute to arrest us. I'm locking up and leaving. But there wasn't time for him to lock up. He was tying his shoes when the rebels arrived, and they arrested him. The rest of the story goes like this. We hid ourselves anywhere we could find. I mean the men, our men, went and hid. Koutsoyiánnis came from Ayiórghis. He says, Get ready to leave because Themistoklís said such-and-such. There's two of you, three of us, and the Aryírises are another two. We had just baked some bread. It was Saturday. Nikólas tells him, Who told Themistoklís that? And he says, Mihális, little Mihális. Siouroúnis. He told him, They're going to arrest you tonight, they're going to execute you. That's their plan. They sent a notice from Kastrí. Now who sent the notice, I don't know. Nikólas says to our mother, Give us a loaf of bread. We're leaving. They started whispering. And don't you go talking, no matter who comes here. Of course not, who would we be talking to? Our
parents were protecting themselves too. Out here in the wilderness, who would be talking to us? The men left, they went down along the riverbed. They find Máïnas there. Where are you men going? To catch us some crabs. They came out at the fenced monastery in Mesorráhi, they went and hid in some haystacks. From there they sent word, they arrived outside of Másklina, our relatives came and got them. Máïnas goes back to Ayiórghis. Liás, he says to Anagnostákos. Liás was in charge of Ayiórghis. Liás, those sons of bitches got away. Weren't you on guard? he says to him. And they went up to Kastrí to give them a report. They got away? they asked them in Kastrí. They got away, they said. What do we do now? Burn them down, said Haroúlis. In any case, we knew nothing at all. We were just waiting. They had burned down Ayiasofiá. And as we're there waiting, the next day Máïnas arrives. He had come back from Kastrí. He comes over to us. Do you live down here? We say yes. Yeorghía too? What about Yeorghía? says our mother. Nothing, nothing, Ma'am. They had captured Yeorghía in Kastrí and he knew about that. He says, What are you going to do now? What are we going to do, we'll stay put. He says, If your men don't report to us they'll take you away and burn down your house. They may even kill you. We started shaking. They had burned down Ayiasofiá. Then the Battalions came to Ayiórghis. That's when Kyriákos hit the old lady. He banged the door with the butt of his gun. Trýfonas arrives at that moment. As soon as they saw the old lady, they said, Where's your old man? And Kyriákos gave her a good smack. He pushed her. Why are you hitting the old lady, our brother Nikólas says to him. What has she done? Quiet, he answers. And he smashes in the door with the butt of his gun. The barrel was turned toward him now, it went off, and he fell and died on the spot. In front of Nikólas. Right there in front of him. The others came running, the officer went over, What's going on, Well, it's like this. Did someone else kill him? No, he did it himself. He still had his finger on the trigger. They picked him up, and they stole things off him. They took his watch and his ring. And Nikólas said, He had a watch and a ring on his hand, who took them? They had taken those things themselves. In the end they found them. When we heard that someone had been killed in Ayiórghis
we were half crazy. Meantime, two men appear down below. We're sitting on the threshing floor, down near the mulberry tree. How are you, Auntie, how are you, Tseví? They say to my sister-in-law. And we don't even recognize them, we're so confused. It's me Auntie, it's me Tseví, Spýros Yiatrídis. And I'm Nikólas Petrákos. Did anyone bother you? No, we say, no one. We didn't say anything about Máïnas. They say, Get ready, your men are coming now, they're in Ayiórghis. Soon as they said that Nikólas appeared. I'd hidden the rifle, and I'd hidden the shot and the shells. Yiánnis suddenly shows up. The rifle, he says to me, where is it? I say, Over there. And the cartridges are there, he lifts up a floorboard, You'll find them under there. They tell us, Get ready, we're leaving. And we left everything behind. We got out of there. They brought Kyriákos, we all went to Másklina. They'd put him up on the mule. On the mule, like a slaughtered pig. Nikólas put two boards together, they wrapped him in a sheet. And they tied him. We went to Másklina. Then they say, There's a fire in Koubíla. You could see smoke, we could see it rising. They're saying, They burned down the Makríses' houses, they burned down the olive press. And they destroyed the mill. What could we do? We went there, we found everything in shambles. We picked up the broken things and threw them away. They had burned down both houses. They had emptied the winepress. They'd taken the oil, as much as they could. They'd taken the cheese. We found one head of white cheese still hanging, that's what they left. And one earthen jar, it held fifteen okás
¹
of oil. They'd taken it to another house. Those things were saved. The rest were useless except maybe to bathe in. The wine all spilled. We found a puddle of oil up in the olive press. And the barrels up above, with holes in them, the oil spilled on the ground. Whatever they couldn't carry off. A complete disaster. They took clothes, they took everything. We had some other things, not ours, from the laundering trough.
²
Things from Ayiasofiá and Tservási. Brand-new blankets and linens for dowries. We'd taken them out, we had them in the lower part of the house. We had a laundering trough at the mill. They told us they'd left them piled up outside on a rock. We didn't find anything. A woman from Mesorráhi told us. Yiannákis Galioúris's
mother. Yiannakákis's
³
mother. She told us they were going up and down with lights, all night long. They saw them inside, they saw Yeorghía, Asímos's daughter, coming out all loaded up. Then Kóstas Diamantákos fired a shot. He says, Klaría, I saw the devastation, I saw what was going on then in there and I fired my rifle. I fired a shot and I said, Germans. With the word Germans they ran off every which way. They left. We found out who burned down our houses, we found out years later. They went to Kastrí. Our cousins were hiding in the vineyard. Down below, in Ayía Paraskeví. They were hiding from the rebels. Maria and Olga. Sotíris's girls. And a group of them comes out of Kambýlis's place, with Pótis Lenghéris at their head. The villagers from Karátoula ran into them. They were coming from down below. Where are you going, you men? We're going to burn down Koubíla. And they went and burned it down. That's what they heard, our cousins. A group of them came out of Kambýlis's place, and Kambýlis was with them, Yiórgos himself. He admitted it, he didn't hide it. They took me with them, he said. I did whatever they told me to. He was the one who broke the storage jars. And Kambýlis's wife Evanthía, many years afterward, says to my mother, Konstantína, I'm going to tell you something but you mustn't say another word about it. They had brought some heads of cheese from Koubíla and left them in Tsoúmas's basement. And Rigoúla would go there every so often and cut some, and the whole place smelled so good. But why mention their names now? All they left us was that head of white cheese hanging there.

I dreamt about Dimítris last night. He was laying the foundation for a house with Thanásis Yiánnaros and Old Man Bakoúris. Right on the road, in front of the Biroúlis property. Poor Dína. In the morning she had Martha ask me to go light the oil candles at the Ayiánnis church.

—Martha? I say to her.

She started to cry.

—Our Yiórgos, he's not well, Marigó.

Her voice kept fading over the telephone. That was the bitter cup destined for poor Dína.

When did they burn down the village? It was on Saint Ilías's Day. In 1944. In '44 on July 20. They had burned down seven houses before that. Seven houses four months earlier. In the spring. First off they burned down the two Kyreléis houses. One where Tambákis is now and the other was Anna Kyreléis's. It was their paternal homestead. Seven houses in all and then in July on Saint Ilías's Day.

—When is Saint Ilías's Day?

—July 20. They burned down 170–180 houses.

—Where were you?

—In bed, I was asleep. They came into the house, they broke down the door. Five o'clock in the morning. They took us out and they gathered us at the telephone company. It was an empty lot back then where they kept cars, but there were no cars there, they'd all been requisitioned during the Albanian campaign. Only Galaxýdis's gazogene truck was there. Up above was Old Man Boúrdas's house. And right below was Méngos's kafeneío. And on the floor above a hotel, none better in all of Greece. They'd set up their machine guns there and crowded us all into that empty lot. All the villagers. At five o'clock in the morning. Five-thirty. The smart ones began slowly sneaking away. Because they saw the machine guns, they could see what the rebels' intentions were. Seven-thirty, eight o'clock. They kept us there in the sun until ten. And then they took us to Ayios Panteleímonas.

—How many of you were there?

—All of Kastrí. And people from Mesorráhi and from Karátoula and from Roúvali. They had gathered all the so-called reactionaries.
The reactionaries against the Communist Party. All of them. Under the command of Prekezés and Kontalónis. That's right. They took us to Ayios Panteleímonas, in the middle of a pine wood. But their liaisons and the lookout post saw at about twelve that the Germans were coming from Trípolis. And they gave a signal. They set up a committee then and started to pick out who had or didn't have a brother or a father or a relative in the Security Battalions. And whoever didn't they let go. Meantime the houses were burning, One hundred eighty houses. From five-thirty in the morning. It was six o'clock when they started.

—You mean while they were holding you on the phone company lot?

—First they gathered us there. And first they set fire to Panayótis Háyios's house. Used the same broomstick for Strífas's house. Then Horaítis's place. They burned down Méngos's kafeneío. The best hotel in Greece. And from there, with the same broomstick they torched one house after another.

—Were there any local people in their ranks?

—That seven-member committee did quite a job.

—Who was in the seven-member committee?

—Six men and one woman. The most important member was—I hesitate to say.

—Tell me.

—The woman, the one who voted to burn down the village, was Eléni Gagás. Maiden name Eléni Tólias. She was the one. The others had no say.

—What happened to the others?

—They all died. They were killed.

—Haroúlis?

—Yes.

—Who else?

—From what I was told. Because I was thirteen years old then. Yiánnis Velissáris. Yiórgos Velissáris. I'm not sure about Yiórgos. One of the two. There were seven in the committee. They'd managed to
persuade them, to scare them into voting to burn down Kastrí. But most of the blame was hers.

—Okay, you said that. Do you know about any others?

—Magoúlis, Haroúlis, Velissáris, three. Eléni four. I don't remember the others. It's been forty years. You start to forget, you say to hell with them.

—Then what happened? After the fire?

—When they burned down the houses. They didn't leave anything standing. A hundred and eighty houses. And every household had two or three girls. All the houses had two or three dowries. If anyone still remembers such things. Because before the Occupation every girl had to have whatever she needed for the rest of her life. And she had to make it herself by hand. Sheets woven on the loom, blankets, towels, everything. They had to make it all themselves. A thousand and one things. Even a sewing machine. So that some day when they married they'd be ready to set up house. That's right. Now some had dowries and others didn't, but I know one thing. From Kastrí all the way to Palaiohóri, Kynouría, they had requisitioned all the mules.

—And they'd carry off the dowries.

—Whatever was in the houses. Burned down or not. The houses were looted.

—Did you see the mules leaving from where you were?

—We saw them. After they freed us. Because a signal came that the Germans were coming from Trípolis. With the local men in the Battalions. That's when they let us go. But when the Security Battalions got here the houses were nothing but ashes.

—And
they
burned the rest down.

—They burned three or four houses. In retaliation. But not the same day. They came back later. To retaliate. Against Velissáris, and Mávros.

—Yes.

—Because Níkos Mávros was also a ranking member.

—Kapetán Foúrias.

—Kapetán Foúrias. The worst, the most barbaric of the lot, here in Kastrí. While the Velissáris brothers, we could say by comparison,
they were restrained. One was a lawyer, and the other a soft-spoken type, he had actually finished high school, they kept their distance. But not Kapetán Foúrias. But the thing I remember is . . .

—About the fire?

—About the fire. It's that complete strangers came here, and they had their informants here, and they showed them where my mother or yours or this one or that one had hidden their things, and they'd tell on them, and they went and opened those so-called shelters and took those things. And that's the story of the big looting.