Fugitive pieces (7 page)

“Our neighbour Aleko revived a man in the middle of Kolonaki with a bowl of milk. Aleko himself didn’t even have a piece of bread to share. But soon when people collapsed in the street they didn’t get up again, they simply starved to death.”

“Kostas and I heard stories of whole families being killed for a case of currants or a sack of flour.”

“We heard of a man who was standing early one evening in Omonia Square. Another man rushed up to him, carrying a parcel, ‘Quick, quick,’ he said, ? have fresh lamb, but I must sell right away, I need to buy a train ticket to return home to my wife.’ The idea of fresh lamb … fresh lamb¡ … was too much for the man on the corner, who thought of his own wife and their wedding supper and all the meals they took for granted before the war. The good tastes he remembered chased all other thoughts from his head and he reached into his pocket. He paid a large sum, all he had. Lamb was worth it¡ And the man hurried away in the direction of the train station. The man on the corner rushed off in the opposite direction, straight home. ? have a surprise!’ he shouted, and handed his wife the parcel. Open it in the kitchen.’ Excited, they stood over the bundle of newspaper and his wife cut the string. Inside they found a dead dog.”

“Athos, you are a brother to Kostas and me. You have known us many years. Who could believe we would ever have such words in our mouths?”

“When the British were still here, we managed to find things. A little margarine, a bit of coffee, sugar, sometimes a little beef¡ … But when the Germans came, they even stole cows about to calve and slaughtered both the mother and child. They ate the mother and threw away the child….”

Daphne touched Kostas’s arm to stop him, inclining her head in my direction.

“Kostas, it’s too terrible.”

“Daphne and I cheered, ‘Englezakia!’ as the English bombs fell in our streets, even as the smoke turned the sky black above Piraeus and sirens screamed and the house shook.”

“Even I learned to recognize which planes were theirs and which were English. Stukas shriek. They’re silver and dive like swallows —”

“And drop their bombs like shit.”

“Kostas,” chided Daphne, “not in front of Jakob.”

“He’s sleeping.”

“No I’m not!”

“Since Daphne won’t let me swear in front of you, Jakob, though you’ve seen so much it’s only right you should know how to swear, I’ll tell you instead that war can turn even an ordinary man into a poet. I’ll tell you what I thought the day they abused the city with their swastikas: At sunrise the Parthenon is flesh. In moonlight it is bones.”

“Jakob and I have read Palamas together.”

“Then, Jakob, pedhi-mou, you know Palamas is our most beloved poet. When Palamas died, right in the middle of the war, we followed another poet, Sikelianos, in his long black cape through Athens. Thousands of us, the whole city, accompanied Palamas’s body from the church to the grave. At the cemetery, Sikelianos shouted that we must ‘shake the country with a cry for freedom, shake it from end to end,’ and we sang the national anthem, surrounded by soldiers¡ Afterwards Daphne said to me—”

“No one but Palamas could so rouse and unite us. Even from his grave.”

“The first weekend of the occupation, the Germans held a procession through the city. Armoured cars, banners, columns of troops a block long. But Greeks were ordered to stay inside. It was forbidden for us to watch. The few who could see anything from home peeked through their shutters while the mad parade marched through empty streets.”

“On street corners, in restaurants, like sideshow acts, black marketeers pulled raw fish out of briefcases, eggs from their pockets, apricots from their hats, potatoes from their sleeves.”

… When it got too hard to find stones flat enough to skip, we sat on the bank. Mones had a bar of chocolate. His mother gave it to us the day we went to the cinema to see the American cowboy Butski Jonas and his white horse. We saved it because we were already planning our next expedition to the river. Inside, under the wrapper, there’s always a card, with a picture of a famous place. We’d already had different palaces and the Eiffel Tower and some famous gardens. That day, we got the Alhambra and folded it and tore it in half and pledged our eternal loyalty like we always did, and Mones kept half and I kept the other half so that when we went into business together we could join them up and pin them on the wall, his half of the world and my half, everything shared right down the middle.

“The night before the Germans left Athens: Wednesday, October n. Daphne and I heard a strange sound, not quite a breeze, very faint. I went outside. There was a tremor in the air, like a thousand wings. The street was deserted. Then I looked up. Above my head, from all the roofs and balconies people were leaning, quietly calling to each other across the city, spreading the word. The city, which had been like a jail only a moment before, was now like a bedroom full of whispering, and also in the darkness the clinking of glasses filled with whatever we could find and ‘yiamas, yiamas,’ to your health, rising like gusts into the night.”

“Afterwards, but before the dekemvriana, the December battles, we began to hear more of what happened elsewhere. …”

“Daphne’s sister in Hania sent a letter: ‘In the middle of a field of freshly ploughed earth, nothing anywhere, you’ll find someone has put up a sign: “This was Kandanos.” “This was Skines.” All that remains of the villages.’”

“Jakob and I also saw signs, marking where villages had once been. All across the Peloponnesus.”

“They say over a thousand villages are gone.”

“Jakob and I were at Kalavrita. Send the tourists to the burned-out chorios. These are our historic sites now. Let the tourists visit modern ruins.”

“Here, people stood in long queues, waiting to bury their dead. The streetcleaners collected bodies. Everyone was afraid of malaria. We heard children singing the German soldiers’ song: ‘When the cicadas shrill, grab the yellow pill….’“

“‘Too many funerals crowded temple gates.’“

“Athos, you’ve taught Jakob well. Pedhi-mou, do you remember where the line is from?”

“Ovid?”

“Very good. Do you remember the rest? Wait, I’ll look it up.”

Kostas opened up a book and read aloud:

“‘Meanwhile the dead were fallen all about me.

Nor were they interred by usual rites:

Too many funerals crowded temple gates … … and none were left

To weep their loss: unwept the souls of matrons, Of brides, young men and ancients — all vanished To the blind wilderness of wind …’“

There was a long silence. Athos crossed his legs and banged the table. The dishes rattled. Kostas ran his hands through his long white hair. He leaned across the low table towards Athos.

“On the day the last German left the city, the streets were jammed, Syntagma was packed, the bells rang. Then, right in the middle of the celebrations, the communists began to shout slogans. I swear to you, Athos, the crowd went silent. Everyone sobered up in a second. The next day, Theotokas said: ‘It only needs a match for Athens to catch fire like a tank of petrol. ‘ “

“The American boys brought food and clothing, but the communists stole the crates from the warehouses in Piraeus. There’s been so much wrong from both sides. Whoever has power for a minute commits a crime.”

“They hunted down bourgeoisie in their beds and shot them. They took away the shoes of democrats and marched them barefoot into the hills until they died. Andartes and Englezakia had fought side by side in the mountains only a few weeks before. Now they were shooting at each other across the city. How could it be, our brave andartiko who blew up bridges and were runners for the resistance across the mountains, who disappeared in one place and reappeared in another, a hundred miles away—”

“Like a needle and thread across fabric.”

“On Zakynthos a communist turned in his own brother, an old man, because once ten years ago he happened to raise his glass to the king¡ The communists are our sons, they know everyone’s affairs just as well as they know the paths through the valleys, the mountain passes, every grove and gorge.”

“Violence is like malaria.”

“It’s a virus.”

“We caught it from the Germans.”

… By the time Mones and I started to walk home it was misty and drizzling and our wool socks were soaked through and our feet were cold as the fish in the Nemen. Our boots were heavy with mud. Each house was connected to heaven by a rope of smoke. We would be best friends forever. We would open a bookshop together and let Mones’s mother mind the store when we went to the movies. We would have plumbing in our houses and electricity in every room. My hands were cold and my back was cold because of the rain and because it was far and I was sweating too under my coat. Broken fences, sagging roads with deep wagon ruts. The tops of our socks hardened into casts. But we didn’t want to get home too quickly. We stood a long time at Mones’s wooden gate. We would be pious like our fathers. We would marry the Gotkin sisters and share a summer house at Lasosna. We’d row through the inlets there and teach our wives to swim….

“Daphne’s cousins, Thanos and Yiorgios, and hundreds of others, anyone they thought was well off before the war, were rounded up by the communists in Kolonaki Square.”

… At Mones’s gate we shook hands like men. Under his cap Mones’s hair was plastered to his head. We were soaked through but would’ve talked longer if it wasn’t dinner time. Together we’ll visit Crinik and Bialystok and even Warsaw¡ Our first sons will be born the same year¡ We’ll never forget these promises to each other….

“Daphne went out to try to buy some sugar, a treat for my birthday. Instead she found Aleko with three others hanging from the acacias at Kyriakon….”

The first morning at Daphne and Kostas’s, I was embarrassed to eat breakfast with strangers. Everyone came to the table fully clothed. However, in the days to follow, Kostas appeared less and less dressed, first without a tie, then wearing slippers, finally in his dressing gown with a belt that had tassels at the end. Athos and Kostas sat at the table each with half the newspaper, reading aloud to each other. Daphne prepared eggs with chives and thyme. She was happy to be cooking for two men and a boy, though the food shortages required inventiveness. Athos complimented Daphne’s cooking at every meal. The luxury of their affection brought feeling to me, my hair tousled by a passing hand, the squeeze of Daphne’s spontaneous embrace. Daphne showed me the difference it made if she placed plums in a green bowl or in a yellow bowl before she set them on the table. She took me into her painting room and made a sketch of my face with fine pencil lines. In the afternoons while Athos was attending to our move to Canada, I helped Daphne clean her paint brushes or prepare dinner, or Kostas and I practised my English in the warm garden where sometimes we both nodded off.

I listened to the ebb and flow of Athos and Kostas’s political discussions. They always tried to include me, first soliciting my opinion, then debating seriously my ideas until I felt like a pundit, a peer.

When I had my nightmares, they all came to me, the three of them, and sat on my bed, Daphne gently scratching my back. They talked to each other until, in the comfort of their low voices, I fell asleep again. Then they wandered down to the kitchen. In the morning I saw the plates from their midnight party still on the table.

Once, Daphne sent me out to fetch some herbs while she was preparing dinner. I was frightened to go out alone, even just into the garden. As I stood at the back door, Kostas noticed my distress and put down the paper. “I need a stretch, Jakob, let’s see what the evening air is like.” And we stepped outside together.

On the eve of our departure for Canada, I sat on the bed and watched Daphne pack for me, Kostas leaping up to retrieve some extra thing to put into my suitcase, a book or another pair of his socks. Daphne patted each item carefully into place. Neither of them had been to Canada. They speculated on the climate, the people, each speculation resulting in the addition of another eccentric item— a compass, a tie clip.

I remember Daphne, on that last night, turning back at the doorway of my room after saying goodnight and coming over to give me one more fierce squeeze. I remember her cool hands on my back under my cotton pyjamas, her gentle scritch-scratch, my mother’s, Bella’s, soothing me to sleep.