Orthokostá (25 page)

They brought those boys from Tservási up here. Brought them here, and that was that. One was Nikoláou's, the other Christofílis's. They killed them somewhere in Ayiliás. In Ayiliás. First they had them at Háyios's place, they were holding them there. At Pános Háyios's place. And Lenghéris saw them and he said, Why are you holding them here, why are you holding them? And a short while later they got them and they took them to some ravine in Ayiliás. Dakourélis was there, he saw them. And he climbed a tree and hid. Klaría, who still had all her marbles then—she does now too, but she tells such lies now—she's hard of hearing now, and she tells lies, too. She told me that Eléni, Kyámos's wife, Métsos's sister, was in tight with some kapetánios, and he told Vanghélis, Kassianí's husband, he would give him a shirt. And when Vanghélis saw it, he recognized it, it belonged to one of the boys. It had been washed but they hadn't got all the blood out. And he wouldn't take it, poor man, even though he had nothing to his name back then. Yiánnis Christofílis and Kóstas Nikoláou. They killed those boys. The next day those poor women from Tservási went up there and had a hard struggle getting their bodies up the hill, using a blanket. Up to the top so they could bury them. It was God's wrath, all that, there's nothing else you can say.

—A human life wasn't worth much then, that's how things were.

Kóstas Kirkís was my grandfather's brother. On my mother's side of the family. He died before I was born. A gruff sort of character. He was married, had no children. He was infertile. Could be that's what made him like that. Always angry. He was a hard worker. Even though he had no kids, he struggled with the land. A desperate struggle, one that often pitted him against his brother. They would quarrel over the land. They had plots of land in Melíssi, in Ayiórghis, and across from Galtená. And in Xerokámpi. And they were suspicious of each other. Well, at any rate, each of them thought the other was moving the boundaries. That he was moving it a meter or two in his favor. The problem was in dividing up the land of their forefathers. And what land are we talking about? Just strips of dirt. And every tiny ledge in that confined space was important. But in most cases it was stubbornness that drove people to extremes. To beat others or to murder them. Stubbornness more than self-interest. They divided up the land on the spot, strip by strip, drawing lots. Instead of appraising it as a whole and each one taking something from here or from there. So they could save time. The so-called land redistribution is calculated that way today. So the cultivated land is all in one piece to increase productivity. At any rate. They quarreled, and for most of the year they didn't speak to each other. Once in a while this sorry state would give way to enthusiasm, and then they would go out and eat and drink and shed a few tears together, only to start in again with their suspicions and complaints the following year. Or with violence and threats. So they decided to define the boundaries once and for
all. And to do this by sworn oath. Their mutual suspicion finally led them to resort to divine intervention: “Ready are we to be dragged through fire and to swear by the gods,” as the ancient tragic playwright
¹
says. So my grandfather set out with his brother. And they took my mother along with them. With a holy icon in a shoulder sack, a piece of bread, and two onions. They started out on friendly terms, of course, even though they had quarreled in the past. They made what the law calls a kind of compromise, a mutual promise that by a mutually sworn oath they would delineate and define the boundaries, so that the cause of their differences would disappear. They would mark off the boundaries with stones. They would dig a small ditch and place a rock in it, a long, narrow rock in three or four spots. So that the ends formed a straight line. But that didn't prevent either of them from going and moving them in winter or at night or when the other one was working somewhere far away. Just to gain half a meter. It was precisely to rule out such a possibility that they decided to settle things by sworn oath. Religious sentiment was much stronger in those days than it is today. People were respectful and God-fearing. Afraid of divine retribution. So on they went. They went to Ayiórghis. They went to Melíssi, with my mother beside them with her shoulder sack. At every disputed spot they would stop. The boundary's here, no it's there. They'd take out the icon and swear on it, one or the other of them, depending. By noon they reached Galtená. Across from there, I think the place is called Krampítsa. It's all in ruins now. They were going to leave Xerokámpi for the next day. My mother had stayed behind. They passed by a small watering hole, she sat down to drink. Dying of hunger, exhausted from the heat, she fell asleep. She must have been what, then, about twelve years old? All that was before 1907. In 1907 she was married at the age of sixteen. Before 1905. At the beginning of the century. Poor little thing, my grandfather said. And he wanted to go back. Let's finish first, his brother says. We don't have the icon. We haven't got it. He picks up a rock and puts it on his shoulder. That was another way of taking an oath. That meant he was telling the truth. Otherwise, if he was lying, the weight of that rock would eternally weigh on his soul. They finished. They went back,
they found my mother. That night each of them thought he'd been wronged by the other. Both were thinking the same thing. And they didn't continue with the settlement. They didn't go to Xerokámpi. I don't know if they ever divided up their inheritance definitively. In 1923 my grandfather's brother retired to Athens. He came down with partial paralysis there. At any rate, up until his death they were sometimes on good terms and sometimes not.

They set the big fire on July 24. During the first fire they only burned down a few houses. Then came the blockade, in June. And then the big fire. On July 24. More than one hundred houses. In the morning. And in the afternoon the Security Battalions came. Some hotheaded men, and they burned down about ten leftist houses in revenge. Hotheads all of them. The Galaxýdis brothers. Old Yiannákos Prásinos. Old Man Yiannákos. He gave them a light so they could burn down the doctor's house. Mávros's house. Why should that one be spared, he said. So he gave his flint lighter to someone. Réppas came. Réppas in his truck. He brought them there. All this after the so-called blockade. The Germans had masterminded a plan for operations on Mount Parnon and Mount Taygetus. At the same time, but mainly on Mount Parnon. Mount Parnon could provide cover for troops. And that's what happened during the Civil War. It's a soft wooded mountain. A female mountain. The Germans decided to sweep it clean. But their plan was leaked to ELAS. It was stolen from their headquarters in Corinth. Or so we heard. By the time the Germans arrived here the active corps of the rebels had moved to Mount Taygetus. Without a shot being fired. The Germans arrived there from Platána, from Astros, from Dragoúni. And from Voúrvoura. From every direction, converging at the main bulk of the mountain. It was a well-planned operation. One division took part in its execution. Along with some auxiliary weapons. In the end a Battalion arrived here. They came and set up camp here. With three tanks in the yard of the elementary school. I was in Karátoula. I just happened to be at
the mill. With my old man and Aryíris. On the first day we hid in a small cave just above the mill. Above our vineyard. The cave was safe from attack. Nothing could reach us there, neither cannons nor mortars. We could see what was happening from there. We could see the Germans across from there, at Atzinás's chestnut tree. They had a machine gun set up there. Permanently. For twenty or thirty hours. And they kept firing. They were shooting into the dense shrubbery on our left. But most of their fire was toward Stefanákia and beyond. Mainly toward Kavalariá Pétra. Their bullets were well aimed. But there was no one there. At night Aryíris and I left. The old man stayed at the mill. We arrived at Xerokámpi, at Láros's Hole just behind there. In Langáda. We found a lot of people from Karátoula there. And some from Roúvali. At eleven in the morning we saw two Germans passing by. Just across from us, on the other side of the stream. A hundred meters. That stream runs down from high up. It narrows sharply. And Láros's Hole is on the left side. It's twenty meters deep. With a big opening. The Germans walked right by but they didn't see it. There was a maple tree nearby, and by a stroke of luck its shadow hid the entrance from view. Eleven o'clock. The two Germans walked by and kept going toward the mountaintop. We saw them come out at the top. We put a little mirror over to one side, belonging to one of the girls. Marinákos's sisters were there. We set up that mirror, and we could keep an eye on things on both sides. We made sure the Germans had left. Then we decided to come out. To give ourselves up. Someone arrived there and told us that they were letting everyone go free. I had my doubts. I listened but wasn't convinced. And I didn't follow the rest of them. I left with Aryíris and five or six men from Roúvali. We went down to the Langáda riverbed. Tássos Kirkís, and Yiórgos, Marina's husband. I don't remember who the others were. Kyriákos Léngourdas left first with the people from Karátoula. Then he came back to us. Stupid of him. But we didn't know what was happening yet. We kept moving along. I had a blanket over my shoulder. An old blanket to sleep on. The riverbed was hard to walk on, it had small, dried-up waterfalls we had to climb down on all fours. The men from Roúvali knew we'd find some watering holes there. And we
found them in the end. Stagnant water, with a film of dust on the surface. We sat down to eat. As evening came on we heard some garbled chatter coming from up above us. The gorge there picked it up and turned it into a kind of echo, and we couldn't understand what if anything was happening. At night I tell the others, I'm going to the mill. Someone has to come with me. So we can find out what's going on. Because the uncertainty was getting to us. Not knowing what was happening. In the end someone came with me, I think it was Kyriákos. It was impossible to go down through the watering holes. The trail was cut off by a smooth high rock. So we climbed up along the edge and climbed back down again, and came out on the road to Pródromos. We arrived at the mill. The old man was there. What's going on, Father? He didn't know much. Germans had passed by on their way to Pródromos Monastery. And a convoy had passed by with packhorses loaded with ammunition, going from Dragatoúra to Yerakína. We left. We took some hardtack with us, and a little cheese, and we left to go back to the others. To give them news, to see what we should do. The uncertain information that had reached Láros's Hole about the Germans freeing everyone they'd captured was never confirmed. We went back to the watering holes. In the morning we heard the tramping of feet on the road to Xerokámpi that comes down from the so-called Red Threshing Floors. Sheep and people and bells. All mixed up. And the next day at about eleven my sister Marigó started shouting from up above. Kó-o-ost-a-a-as. And her voice echoed as it bounced from rock to rock. Kó-o-ost-a-a-as. It was terrible. Come out, wherever you are. I recognized her voice, it wasn't distorted by the echo, but I had a feeling she was doing that under pressure. That they had got hold of her and were making her shout like that to trick us into giving ourselves up. As for the tramping of feet we'd heard the day before, we'd taken it to be prisoners marching to their execution. It was nothing of the sort. Finally we left at dusk. We went to the mill. There the old man told us that Panayótis Levéntis and Dímos Koútsis, Pítsa's husband, had been killed in Xerokámpi. They were harvesting wheat, and they saw the Germans passing by. And they raised their scythes to greet them. As a friendly gesture. But the Germans
took it differently. And they fired on them from a distance and killed them. Some men from the village went to retrieve them. They had remained where they fell for two days under the sun. We buried them on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. July 29, the patron saints of the village. A service was held, but the usual yearly festival was not. We buried them, and I went off to the mill again. The others had to go up to Kastrí. By order of the Germans. They forced them to, and of course they had arrested a lot of them. There were women they found in their storage huts in Xerokámpi, there were people who'd given themselves up of their own accord. They gathered them in Kastrí, in Ayios Nikólaos. Now who are you, and you, and you? They made their selections. That's when they arrested Tássos Kirkís. After a tip-off of course. They had also arrested Annió, Aryíris's wife. And who are you? Aryíris Kékeris's wife. You can go, Chrístos Haloúlos tells her. Then all of a sudden the Germans left. Just like that. And everyone followed them en masse. The noncombatants. People were scared. They had heard about Braílas's mother and the others. Iraklís had found them. And he said they were still warm. Everyone took off for Trípolis. Aryíris put some soft myzíthra cheese and half a head of hard cheese in his shoulder sack. I tell him, I'm not going with you. I call Liás Atzinás so we can put our heads together. He had a good mind. He'd been taken sick in Athens. And he had a paper from Dr. Proestópoulos. He and about ten other men from Kastrí. The paper was in German.
Kranken toubakoulozoum
. It said they had tuberculosis, that the Germans shouldn't bother them. Tássos Kirkís had one of those papers. But Tássos was actively involved in everything. In the end Aryíris got him off. He wrote a note to Nikólas Petrákos and got him off the hook. Aryíris is now in Kastrí. I notify him to come down to Karátoula so we can talk. To come down to the Kouloúros property. I come up there too from the mill. In the meantime the others left. And Aryíris's shoulder sack with the myzíthra, the half-head of cheese, a bottle of wine, and several boiled eggs arrived in Trípolis. Aryíris came to the Kouloúros property. I tell him, We shouldn't go. What should we do? It was all very worrisome. And I was half-crazy, racking my brain to find a solution. I tell him, We need to find a sheltered place. We'll go
to Kyvéri. We had olive trees there. And we left the same evening. In Trípolis the men from Karátoula were angry. They were very angry, mainly with Aryíris. Aryíris was a sergeant in the army, they had earmarked him for leadership. And in Albania he'd been promoted to sergeant major. The Kékeris brothers betrayed us, they stayed behind. And then there was our family of course, it was well known that our old man was a supporter of Venizélos, so they thought our political leanings were in the other direction. After several days things calmed down somewhat. We couldn't bear it in Kyvéri. With the summer heat and the mosquitoes. We'd run out of food, we couldn't find anything to eat. We left and came back. Then they ordered us to report for duty to Kastrí. Me and Dímos Aloúpis. With two days' worth of bread. We go to Kastrí. They give us each a mule. They had another five or six muleteers. They tell us, Follow your comrade. Our comrade was Tsoúkas from Oriá. Sarantákos. We had no idea where we were going. Our comrade would consult his map en route. And we made our way toward Zygós. In the end we went to Koútrifa. There was a rebel platoon there. They had looted Arapóyiannis's house. Some of them were from Logistics, they had bagged all the grain. The booty was ready. They put us to work loading it. There was one mule left over. They burned down the house. One of the rebels comes over and says, Follow me. We left. Tsoúkas stayed there. I don't know if he was the one who burned down the house. The rebel was in front of us, saying, Follow me, follow me. We had the extra mule. Aloúpis and I took turns riding it, first him, then me. We kept going toward Ayiliás, then we headed farther out, toward Yídas's inn. To bypass Ayios Pétros and get ourselves across to the place they called Sourávla. Just below Ayios Pétros the Germans had killed Nikólas Fotiás. Mítsos Fotiás's brother. And five other men. In a small vegetable patch on the side of the road. The execution had taken place about ten days earlier. During the big blockade. End of June, or early July at the latest. Just before the Germans withdrew. You could still see the imprint, the outlines of their heads. Three of them had fallen backward and three to the front. Right into the freshly watered potatoes. The blood had dried on the ground. That's what happened, in short. We kept going. We came to
Sourávla. Aloúpis was ready to scream. Where are they taking us, those Turks,
¹
those damn Turks. Hey, shut up, they'll hear you. Haven't you figured out where we're going? But he kept at it. The whole way there. Those Turks, those damn Turks. We passed the Malevís Monastery. We arrived in Tarmíri. From there we followed the mule path toward Lepída. Between Tarmíri and Lepída we came upon fresh graves, shepherds' graves. I can't remember the exact number. Anyway, not more than eight or fewer than five. On both sides of the road. Anywhere there was a bit of earth. Earth that their relatives could dig out. In that rocky soil. They'd thrown them in there every which way, with wooden crosses hastily put together. Name unknown. At any rate the people executed in Xerokámpi were a lot more than that. Around forty. The official count was done much later of course. Men and women. They killed them wherever they found them. Or rather no. Because the people they found at the threshing floor in Kokkínis, in Samartzís's storage shed, they didn't harm. This confirmed what had been loudly rumored then. In other words, that a secret line of operations had been plotted out. On paper. It was the carriage route from Ayios Pétros to Meligoú. Anywhere past that route, or the area toward Mount Parnon, was a no-man's-land. That's where everyone was killed. All of them shepherds. Men and women. We kept moving along. We arrived at Plátanos. Some people told us we'd be sent on to Leonídio. Some others would go to Palaiohóri. In the end they gave us something to eat and let us go. They had brought new muleteers there to collect the cargo we had. We went back. And that's when the ELAS rebels burned down Kastrí. In the month of July. On the twenty-fourth. They took up their position in Zygós, set up double patrols, and went down and burned the place. They also burned down some houses in Karátoula at that time. Nikólas Konstantélos's house, Alkídis's place. Alkídis Marinákos. And two or three more. And Kítsos's house in Roúvali. Selectively, to terrorize people. In September the Germans left. In the month of September. And Papadóngonas dug himself in at Trípolis. The countryside remained at the mercy of the rebels. Then a new order came. All men between the ages of eighteen and fifty-five should report for duty to Ayios
Pétros. With bread for three days and so on. We go up to Kastrí. They had their headquarters at Kasímos's house. People with mules and knapsacks and the like. They send us to Ayios Pétros. To enlist, in a large-scale mobilization. Kléarhos was there, he was setting up the 40th Reserve Regiment of ELAS. With no weapons, with nothing. The whole of East Kynouría. It's either all of you or none of you. There he was, Kléarhos with that beard of his, saying, Either all of you or none of you. We were examined by a doctor. Aryíris had hurt his knee. With a sledgehammer. A superficial wound. Dr. Roússos saw him. He tells Aryíris, Posttraumatic arthritis. And he lets him go. Kléarhos says to me. He considered me a colleague. Even though I hadn't finished yet. He says, You're coming along. When we go through Kastrí you'll follow us. And he sent us off. Meanwhile dusk had set in. I tell him, In Oriá they'll arrest us, we need a permit. The men from Oriá had declared war on us. To get to their vineyards in Sayitá, the villagers from Karátoula had to have a permit from the Organization. And they wouldn't give you one. Same thing for the villagers from Roúvali to go to Kápsalos. They were putting pressure on the men from Karátoula. They had refused to join up. To form a local organization. They were the last in the prefecture of Arcadia. They didn't want to join. They'd also been very disturbed by the execution of Márkos Ioannítzis. And they'd been branded as reactionaries. And so had we. We went back to the village. Two days later Kléarhos and some other men arrive in Kastrí. By the time I heard this they had moved on toward Dolianá. I had to go enlist. I go to Dolianá. I find Yiórghis Stratigópoulos there. A fellow student. Older than me. He would have been a great lawyer if he hadn't got involved. Quick and smart. He came to a pitiful end. His son became a drug addict. His only son. And poor Yiórghis was so disappointed. He had married his first cousin. Married her for love. In 1947 he sold everything he had down here and moved to Athens. I lent him some money. He gave it back to me. He opened a five-and-dime shop. He bought it. He had a serious lung disease. When I left to join the army in 1947 I gave him two gold sovereigns. He was coughing up blood. Yiórghis, take care of yourself. His mother was from Kastrí. Their house was near the Tsoúhlos