Eleni (62 page)

Fearing that more villagers would be tempted to follow the fugitives’ example, the guerrillas issued a proclamation: from that day on, everyone living in the southernmost section of the village would be forbidden to stay at home after dark. If they could not find a relative’s house higher up the mountain to sleep in, they would have to spend the nights in the caves above the Perivoli.

While guerrillas were dispatched to the distant threshing fields to bring back Eleni, Alexo and Marianthe, all other relatives of the escapees were called in for questioning. Giorgina Bardaka, daughter of the miller Tassi Mitros, was breast-feeding her six-month-old baby girl when the guerrillas came up the path toward her door. They were seen by Giorgina’s sister-in-law, Calliope Bardaka, the best-known collaborator of the guerrillas and the first mother to give her children to the
pedomasoma
. Although most of the village women regarded Calliope with a mixture of hatred and fear, she was loyal to her relatives and friends, often intervening with the guerrillas on their behalf. This morning, sensing trouble for Giorgina, she asked the men why they were headed for her sister-in-law’s house. As soon as she heard their reply Calliope told them that she would bring Giorgina in herself, and rushed ahead into the house, where she whispered to the young woman,
“They’re coming to get you because your parents and brothers escaped yesterday! Whether you knew they were going or not, tell them you didn’t or they’ll kill you! Tell them if you knew about the escape, you would have gone with them because you want to be with your husband on the other side.”

Shakily, Giorgina walked out the door beside Calliope toward the security station, carrying the baby in her arms.

As soon as the army truck filled with fugitives entered the town of Filiates, it was surrounded by an excited crowd. News of the incredible escape had preceded the refugees, and dozens of men who had fled ahead of the guerrillas crowded around, shouting questions about their families still trapped in Lia.

As the truck moved slowly over the cobbled streets, Nikola’s eyes widened in astonishment. He had never seen a real town before, and he gaped at the trucks and army vehicles, the great Turkish-style villas hidden behind vine-covered walls. There was a whole street of shops, all with large windows that displayed a dizzying variety of goods. The boy was embarrassed at all the attention they were receiving, but he was also excited to find himself in such a grand place.

When the truck stopped in front of army headquarters, Nikola got a better look at the crowd around them. Someone ran off to find his grandfather and Nitsa’s husband Andreas. People were asking where his mother was, and the question brought back the ache of her loss. He ducked the arms of those who tried to embrace him and took shelter behind Kanta, staring down at his bare feet which the soldiers had bound in torn strips of cloth to cover the cuts and blisters.

One by one the adults among the group were led inside to be questioned while the rest tried to satisfy the curiosity of the crowd. Now that they had made it out safely, their adventures took on epic proportions. Each detail was enlarged and embroidered—whoever was speaking cast himself in the starring role. Lukas was basking in the admiration of the crowd, but Olga and Kanta exchanged nervous glances, worried that someone would let slip a detail that could be used against their mother. They tried to silence Nitsa when she launched into her recitation of how, seven months pregnant, she had fearlessly battled her way through hostile guerrilla patrols, but the more she talked, the more fantastic her story became.

Because Kanta had been an
andartina
with the guerrillas, she was one of the first called inside. She was taken to a room where two soldiers had a map of Lia and the surrounding area. They asked her to point out the exact locations of the guerrilla headquarters, major storehouses and fortifications, but Kanta shook her head. “The
andartes
are animals and they’re doing terrible things to the people there,” she said. “I hope you’ll be able to liberate the village. But I’ve left my mother and sister behind, and I
promised them not to say anything that could harm them until they get out too.”

Next the soldiers brought in Olga, who repeated the same sentiments. The other adult women in the group were back out on the street within minutes after being questioned, but when Lukas Ziaras went inside, preening under the admiring gaze of the crowd, he was gone for over an hour. When he returned, Olga whispered, “What did you tell them?”

“What should I tell them?” he answered. “The truth! How everyone in the village is fed up, even the president, Spiro Michopoulos. How despite the first two setbacks, my final plan for the escape worked perfectly.” He was flushed and wheezing with excitement. Nothing he had attempted in his life had succeeded so well, and he was anticipating the free drinks he would collect in the coffeehouses of Filiates in exchange for the tale of his exodus.

Olga shook her head disapprovingly. “What did Mother tell you about careless words harming the ones we’ve left behind?”

Lukas turned on her. “Don’t be a stupid girl!” he snapped. “This is the intelligence branch of the army. Do you think its officers trade secrets with the guerrillas? Everything I’ve told them can only help drive the Communists out.”

Upset by the whispered argument and the threat of danger to his mother, Nikola leaned against Kanta, exhausted, from the long journey. His wounded feet hurt, and the hot sun and noise of the crowd was suffocating him. He searched the onlookers for the faces of his uncle Andreas and his grandfather—a link with the familiar scenes he had left behind in the village.

Seeing the boy’s unhappiness, one of the men in the throng stepped forward and handed him a flat-bottomed waferlike cone topped with a scoop of white stuff. It reminded Nikola of the thick vanilla cream they used to drop into glasses of water, then eat with a spoon on summer days when he was little, a treat that Greeks call a “submarine.” The boy looked at the man, who nodded encouragingly, and then took a big bite, filling his mouth.

He had never tasted anything frozen before and at the first instant, the icy cold seemed a scalding heat. He doubled over and spat the mouthful on the ground. “It burned me!” he cried while the crowd exploded with laughter. Tears of mortification were threatening to overflow when Nikola saw his gaunt uncle Andreas pushing toward him through the crowd. As usual, great emotion made Andreas almost speechless. He put a hand awkwardly on the boy’s shoulder, looked at his rotund wife and muttered, “You’re here.” Olga and Kanta began to cry.

Nikola eagerly hugged his uncle. Nitsa, blushing, pulled her black dress tight against her great belly. “God has granted us a miracle, husband!” she announced. “We’re going to have a child. I’m seven months pregnant!”

Andreas turned pale and swayed so that Nitsa had to reach out to steady him. Then there was a shout and Nikola saw his grandfather shoving his
way through the crowd. The craggy face under the white hair was as fierce as he remembered. Kitso did not embrace his wife, Nitsa or his grandchildren. He stood and glared at them, looking from one to another. Then he said two words: “Where’s Eleni?”

At once they all started explaining how Eleni and Glykeria had been forced to stay behind to harvest crops in the villages near the Kalamas. “But
Mana
and Glykeria are going to escape together from there, grandfather,” Olga cried, “as soon as they get our message that we’ve left.”

A light went out of Kitso’s eyes. He had fled the village without speaking to Eleni, leaving her behind in anger. His desertion of his daughter had been festering inside him ever since, as reports of suffering and brutality filtered out of the Mourgana. When he heard of the miraculous escape of his family, a weight had lifted from his heart, but now it descended again, along with the ancient fear that his children had not finished paying for his murder of the Turkish brigand.

Kitso turned away from his grandchildren and uttered two more words: “Eleni’s lost.”

It was not until two days after the escape—when the villagers of Lia saw Eleni, Alexo and Marianthe brought shackled into the village on foot, led by armed guerrillas—that they knew the fugitives had truly gotten away. The silent procession passed through the village center and up the path to the Perivoli, where the gate of the security-police station closed behind the three women.

During the next days the guerrillas interviewed them individually in the small room next to the main office. While two guerrillas stood by, Sotiris Drapetis conducted the interrogations, his eyes watching each captive like a snake contemplating a frog. The women were asked the same things over and over, to make them admit they knew about the escape plot. Sometimes they were threatened with a gun held to their temple; sometimes they were slapped or their ears twisted when they were slow in answering a question. There were no systematic beatings or torture at first.

Eleni told her friend Olga Venetis some weeks later that the worst moments were when Sotiris said, “We’ve caught all your children and killed them.” She thought it was probably a bluff to break down her defenses, or else Sotiris wouldn’t be so insistent about trying to learn what she knew of the plot.

But each time he said it her tears began, despite her resolution to remain calm. As she wept, Eleni would blame Lukas Ziaras for kidnapping her children.

“Why would he take them away?” she cried. “How could my mother and my sister let him do it?”

She suggested that Ziaras had taken the children for the money he knew he could collect from their father. “My husband was preparing the final
papers for us to go to America,” she said. “Lukas must have convinced them to leave because the papers would lapse if they waited too long, and they’d lose the chance to go.” She spread her hands helplessly. “How do I know what he told them; how he convinced them to desert me? I was working for you, threshing the wheat. I knew nothing of the plot.”

“That’s not what your daughter Olga says,” Sotiris replied.

“I thought you said she was dead.”

Sotiris held up a piece of paper. “She wrote you this letter. We found it in your house. Isn’t this her handwriting?”

“It looks like it,” Eleni admitted. “I’d have to see it closer to be sure.”

“I’ll read it to you,” Sotiris answered smoothly. He read, inserting phrases that Eleni knew Olga would never have written: “
‘Mana
, we’re leaving with Lukas Ziaras and Megali, just as we planned, to go find Father.’”

Eleni shrugged. “If she wrote that, it makes no sense. I knew nothing about any plan to escape.”

Each prisoner was questioned several times a day. Eleni was forced to go over and over such details as how long her husband had been in America, how much money he made, what kind of work he did. Every day she repeated her ignorance of the escape plan. “That devil Lukas Ziaras had no right to take my children,” she would cry. “They were everything I had in the world! Now all I have is Glykeria.”

Marianthe Ziaras insisted that her family had abandoned her. “If my father loved me, he would have taken me with them,” she repeated, wiping her eyes. “But my parents always liked me the least, that’s why they left me behind.”

Alexo stolidly maintained that her daughter Arete never confided in her. “She was a married woman, married fifteen years! She didn’t tell me her secrets; she hardly ever spoke to me, living halfway across the village.”

One of the guards who led the captives back and forth to the interrogation room, a young man with a kind face, whispered to them, “Whatever story you’ve told, stick to it. Be sure not to change a single detail. That way, perhaps you’ll have a chance.”

Eleni, Alexo and Marianthe saw that despite the constant inquisitions, threats and occasional slaps, they were being treated far better than the other prisoners in the police station. The three women, along with Tassi Mitros’ daughter Giorgina and her tiny baby, were kept in the upstairs rooms of the house. They were allowed to walk out in the courtyard and to go to the outhouse at will as long as they didn’t approach the gate.

The women from Lia recoiled from the sight and stink of the prisoners in the basement, whose ghostly faces peered out at them from the small barred windows. They could hear them weeping and moaning, and the screaming when they were beaten. They saw the collected shoes and some clothing, from the dead, covered with lice, stacked in the pantry behind the kitchen. At night they often heard prisoners led outside to be executed
behind the houses. When the women walked to the outhouse, they picked their way between dozens of shallow graves in the yard. The odor of rotting flesh permeated the whole neighborhood.

Eleni and the other three from Lia were occasionally sent, under guard, to collect water from the spring near the mill of Tassi Mitros. On one of these trips, while an
andarte
watched from a distance, Eleni was approached by Vasili Bokas, the guerrilla captain who had pursued the fugitives on the night of the escape. Many years later, after he returned from exile in Poland, Bokas described how he leaned over to drink from the spring and whispered to Eleni that her family had indeed reached the other side safely; he had seen them himself as they climbed the Great Ridge to be greeted by government soldiers. Eleni straightened up, struggling to keep her face under control, and turned eyes full of gratitude on the guerrilla.

Free of the gnawing fear that her children had been captured, she returned to the prison with new strength to withstand Sotiris’ inquisition. She calmly replied to all his questions: No, she knew nothing of the plot, nor of any UNRRA supplies that her father was rumored to have hoarded on his property. The guerrillas were welcome to take everything they could find, she added. She had no more use for possessions, now that Lukas Ziaras had broken her heart by taking her children. All she had to live for was the hope of seeing her daughter Glykeria come back from the threshing fields.

One day the guerrillas brought Alexo’s eleven-year-old daughter Niki, a thin, solemn-eyed child, up to the police station and questioned her in the garden. Eleni peered from the window of the small pantry behind the kitchen; Niki remembers seeing her bite her lip and shake her head as if warning the girl to say nothing.