Eleni (54 page)

They scampered up the ravine, expecting the guerrillas at their heels. When they re-entered the cellar, they lit the lantern and stood staring at the tiny piece of humanity who was destroying them. His face was purple with rage, tears coursed down his cheeks, mixing with the snot from his nose, and his fists and feet pumped furiously as he let out an ascending series of screams.

“Give him to me, I’ll strangle him!” It was Lukas’ raspy voice. Everyone turned to look at him, thinking it was a bad joke, but they saw he was serious. Lukas had anticipated every mishap but this, and now his own son was going to rob him of everything: freedom, money and fame. He reached for the baby but Soula backed away, shielding Alexi, terrified by the distorted face of the man who had always been such a gentle father.

Eleni grabbed his arm. “What are you saying?” she whispered.

“We have to think of the rest!” Lukas muttered, close to tears. “What’s one life measured against fifteen?”

“How could we go on living if we had the baby’s death on our souls?” Eleni asked. Then she spoke loud enough to be heard over his cries. “We’ll just have to go back,” she said firmly. “He’ll never stop crying now. Nothing’s lost as long as we can get home without anyone realizing we’ve been gone. We’ll leave again in a day or two, and next time we’ll give him something beforehand to make him sleep.”

Her words broke the spell of fear that had paralyzed everyone. “Of course!” they all exclaimed, smiling. They’d go home and try again later. Lukas frowned like a ship’s captain who smells mutiny, but secretly he was as relieved as the rest to put the ordeal off until another day.

For Nikola, the second escape attempt two weeks later was infinitely more frightening than the first. The terrors of that first time—the bad omen of the spoon, his grandmother’s moans, the cries of the goats, the screams of the baby and the contorted face of Lukas Ziaras reaching to strangle his own son—had all taken root in his soul and incubated there, growing into a nameless fear that now followed him around, lurking in corners and showing its face as he fell asleep. The threat of the guerrillas surprising them in the darkness had been frightening enough, but the panic of the adults and their helplessness infected him with a far greater sense of dread.

The moment Nikola and his family slipped out of the house the second time, they realized the weather had turned. The air was chill and clammy, and a fog was rolling in from the foothills. Again the animals set up a terrific
bleating as the family picked their way down the ravine, leaving from different spots. Just as they came together above the Haidis mill, they were stopped by what seemed the hand of God Himself. Nikola felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. Half of a huge plane tree had fallen, blocking the path, evidently struck by lightning. In the rising mist it loomed like a wall, the stump of the branch still smoldering sulfurously. Nitsa and Megali began to mewl in fright: “Another bad omen!”

As they circled around the fallen tree, the mist lapped at their feet, curling up around their legs until it enveloped them completely, closing off all senses but touch. To Nikola the fog was the incarnation of the horror that was stalking him. It was worse than the sound of approaching footsteps, for it blanked out all sound; the world seemed wrapped in cotton. He clutched his mother’s hand as they stumbled down the ravine, blindly following the slope of the land. Eleni resembled a ghost, cloaked in white vapor, her hand extended in front of her. Finally they walked directly into the stone wall of the mill and felt their way gingerly around its circumference until they found the door.

They were the first ones inside. There was a soft knock and swirling shapes appeared in the doorway, plumes of white vapor steaming from their clothing and hair. Lukas crept in, trailed by his wife and children. Arete was next. Nikola felt his mother tense and reach for him as still more figures materialized in the doorway; strangers who were not a part of their group. They braced themselves for the sight of guerrillas, but the newcomers were a middle-aged woman and two young girls who were both wailing with fear: “I’m frightened,
Mana!”
they whispered. “I want to go home! We’re going to die!” Their fears infected Nikola, who began to tremble as if he had a fever.

“Plug up your traps or I’ll take a stick to you,” snarled the woman, whom Eleni recognized as Alexandra, the short-tempered wife of the tinker Nassios Drouboyiannis. Nikola saw the fury on his mother’s face as she snapped, “Lukas, I want a word with you outside!”

They disappeared into the suffocating blanket of mist which filled their nostrils and lungs and Nikola followed. Lukas was a faceless silhouette as Eleni turned on him. “What are Alexandra and her daughters doing here?” she asked in a tight voice. “Didn’t you promise you would tell no one?” Nikola was more frightened by her anger than by the fog.

Lukas wheezed with guilt. “Nassos is my best friend!” he whined. “We grew up on two sides of the same house; we shared one door. They’ve already taken his oldest daughter for an
andartina
and they want the other two for the
pedomasoma
. How could I face him if I left his family behind?”

Eleni was silent for several beats, then she said in a voice that came disembodied out of the air, “You may have put us all in the grave. There’s no way we can go tonight in this fog. We’ve got to postpone it again. Alexandra’s got a daughter with the guerrillas; the other two are hysterical. Do you really think they can be trusted, knowing what they do?”

To Nikola, Lukas’ form in the mist seemed to shrink. The defeat in his voice was like a death knell. “Perhaps we’re not meant to get away, Eleni,” he said. “Everything has gone wrong. All my life it’s been the same. It’s my damnable luck!”

Nikola felt his throat closing. If the only man in the group was giving up, he thought, then they were lost. He began to tremble and Eleni felt his fear and pulled him closer.

“You can stay or go as you wish,” she said, “but I’m going to keep trying until we’re either free or dead.”

There was a long silence from Lukas, then a chastened voice said, “I agreed to lead you, Eleni, and I will.”

“As you wish,” replied Eleni. “We have to set out again soon, before it’s too late. Next time don’t bring the Drouboyiannis women or even tell them that we’re going. You can see for yourself they’d ruin us before we got started.”

Out of the white mist came Lukas’ reply: “I won’t tell them.”

He went back into the mill to send the others home and Nikola and Eleni waited outside, wrapped in the fog. Eleni bent down and whispered to the boy, “We’ll make it next time, I promise!”

He believed her. The phantoms in the mist couldn’t touch her, he had seen that. As he walked back up the ravine toward the house, his hand in hers, Nikola realized that the thing that had been stalking him for so many days was no longer beside him.

Angeliki Botsaris came by the house early the next morning with the news that the young guerrilla they called Mermingas had been killed in the night. The guerrillas had taken advantage of the fog cover, Angeliki said, to send out half a dozen raiding parties to harass the nationalist soldiers. Eleni raised her eyes to the corner iconostasis. If they hadn’t turned back, she realized, they would surely have been intercepted. This must be a sign that God was protecting them. The third time would be the charm.

A second visitor arrived at the gate about noon, the elderly, simple-minded town crier, Petros Papanikolas. With two guerrillas at his side, he cheerfully informed Eleni that the People’s Army required a woman from her household for a work detail. The village president, Spiro Micholpoulos, had called for forty women to go to Vatsounia to cut hay and wheat in the surrounding villages. The women were to report to the commissary within three hours.

Eleni held on to the doorframe for support, fighting to hide her panic. “Why so quickly?” she asked. “We’re ready to harvest our own wheat, and whoever goes will need time to make ready. Isn’t tomorrow soon enough?”

“Today,” said one of the guerrillas and watched her a moment before they turned to go.

She fought down the wave of hysteria that was fogging her mind. There must be a solution, if she could just think fast enough.

She called the family together and explained what had happened, looking from one grave face to the next. Her gaze stopped at the swollen figure of her sister. “If you go,” she said to Nitsa. “They’ll send you back as soon as they see your condition and we can still all leave together.”

“Hah!” exploded Nitsa. “I’ve prayed twenty-five years for a child and in the autumn of my life God has granted me a miracle. I should risk my baby so you can save your children?” Overwhelmed by self-pity, Nitsa began weeping, her arms clutching her belly protectively.

Eleni sighed and looked at her mother, who spread her hands in apology. “I’d go if I could,” Megali quavered, “but I’m too old to walk that far or swing the scythe, and if they got angry and beat me, I’d spit out the whole plan for the escape.”

Eleni patted her arm wearily. “That’s all right,
Mana.”

“I’ll go!” It was Olga, who looked nearly as frightened as Megali. “My foot’s well now and I could escape alone from over there.”

“Absolutely not!” Eleni snapped. “If you or Kanta go, they’ll never release you. They’ll make you into
andartinas
as soon as the harvest’s over. Think what the guerrillas would do to you if we escaped!”

Olga bowed her head under her mother’s logic. They all sat in silence, staring at Eleni, then a small voice piped up: “Send me, mother.”

They turned to see fourteen-year-old Glykeria, her round cheeks nearly as red as the scarlet wool dress she was wearing. She returned their stares bravely.

“I’m too young to be an
andartina
and too old for the
pedomasoma,”
Glykeria plunged on. “No guerrilla would want to rape me, and I can escape from over there alone, like Olga said.” She swallowed, remembering how she always fussed about helping with the threshing, complaining that the scythe gave her blisters. She felt tears gathering at the back of her throat and savored the delicious agony of martyrdom and self-pity.

The rest were looking at the girl in astonishment, but Eleni realized it was true. Glykeria, scarcely five feet tall, was too young to tempt the guerrillas. She was so hopeless at manual labor that they would surely send her back as useless. Then they could all escape together. Eleni held out her arms to the daughter who had always caused her the most worry. “My child!” she cried. “It’s the best thing. You’re a brave girl! Don’t worry, we won’t go without you. We’ll wait until you come back.”

Eleni immediately began to prepare her third daughter for the long journey. She combed her hair, braiding it into two golden plaits, and brushed the red homespun dress. The wool was too heavy for summer, she knew, but it was the only presentable dress Glykeria owned. Then Eleni gathered some food into a cloth bag, and, standing the girl in front of the iconostasis, sprinkled holy water on her. She prayed to St. Athanassios to bring her back quickly.

Before the rest could adjust to Glykeria’s new status as a heroine rather than the family troublemaker, she was gone.

During the first weeks of June, the threat of the
pedomasoma
became a reality to the people of Lia as the first group of children were taken away. One day when the mountainsides were gilded with crocuses, those who had been volunteered by their parents were led from the village in a colorful parade. It passed right above the door of the Haidis house as Eleni and her children watched in horror from the windows.

The twenty-odd children ranged in age from three to fourteen. The two “escorts” who would accompany them into Albania from Tsamanta were slightly older village children, self-consciously wearing guerrilla uniforms. As they marched along, singing Communist songs, someone played a clarinet. Spiro Skevis, Lia’s most famous guerrilla, strode at the head of the procession. A flock of weeping women followed behind, one or another occasionally trying to embrace a lagging child. Eleni wept too as the procession of children filed by and Nikola stared, imagining himself among them. The rumor spread that another group would be collected and sent away within days. Everyone began to understand that whether they volunteered or not, Lia would soon be a village without children.

Among the parents who rebelled at the thought were Calliope and Tassi Mitros. Old Tassi’s mill, at the top of the Perivoli, was the only one still operating. The guerrillas kept his family working long hours every day to grind the flour needed for their forces. Tassi’s seventeen-year-old son Gakis had been conscripted as an
andarte
, but had managed to obtain a temporary release because of a back injury. Now the miller learned that the boy was to be the escort for the next group of children, and would probably be conscripted again once he reached Albania. Furthermore, Tassi’s younger son Niko, twelve, the former hero and tormentor of Nikola Gatzoyiannis, was scheduled to be taken with the next group.

The husky, balding, sun-grizzled miller had always considered life a bad joke to be endured with cynical humor, but when it became clear that he was going to lose both his sons, Tassi stopped joking about his miseries and hunted for a way to save his boys. He confided in his brother-in-law Lukas Ziaras, who, when he heard that Tassi was searching for a way to get his children out of Lia, spilled out all the details of his two failed escape attempts.

“You’re lucky they failed!” Tassi exploded. “You’re an idiot to lead them down the ravine! Where it levels out, you would have to cross fields that have just been harvested, and the lookouts would be sure to see you.”

Lukas bristled. “Where do you suggest we leave from, the town square?” he retorted. “Tell me, so that in my ignorance I may learn.”

“From your own house!” the miller replied.

“But we’re fifty yards from the main lookout post. Two dozen people walking out under their noses? Be serious!”

“I was hunting those foothills with Foto Gatzoyiannis before you were born,” Tassi countered. “Directly below your house is a patch of underbrush with gullies in it. And below that is a wheat field that hasn’t been cut yet. Once you’re past that, you’re practically in the forest. And then you’re out of sight and rifle range. I’ll bring my family with you the next time and show you exactly how to do it.”