The Angry Hills (14 page)

Barba-Leonidas was astounded when he looked up from his work in the field and saw Mike standing over him.

“Anything I can do?” Mike asked.

“Bah!” the giant roared in his normal voice. “Go pick grapes with my old woman. I have to clear rocks and I would not want my Englezos friend to soil his tender hands.” Mike accepted the challenge and went to work beside him. Barba-Leonidas’s fine broad face was a smile from ear to ear.

Yes, Kaloghriani was the end of the world. It was as far removed from civilization as the moon. Mike worked shoulder to shoulder with his host but found it difficult to keep up with the human bear even though he was thirty years younger. They sweated together in the fields during the day and at night they got drunk together. In just three days the bond between them became irrevocable.

Barba-Leonidas found it great sport to tease Mike as the frail little Englezos fellow. Mike was hardly a small man and once was considered a pretty good football player at Cal. They would sneak up on one another and throw wrestling holds. Mike managed to hold his own for a short time—until Leonidas got weary of playing. He would then lift Mike above his head, balance him with one hand and casually flip him into the nearest brush and they would both roar with laughter. Mike often thought of what Cal’s team would have been like with seven men like Leonidas on the line. Although he worked hard and drank hard, Mike had never before had the wonderful, joyous feeling of just being alive as he did in his first few days in Kaloghriani.

Despo, the wrinkled old specimen in her drab black homespun and her one tooth hanging lonesomely from her upper gum, was never at rest. Her prune-skinned hands were in constant motion—alongside her husband in the fields, endless housework, gardening the vegetable plot, tending chickens, churning, searching firewood, spinning thread and weaving cloth. She was at work many hours before the sun rose until many hours after it set.

Each day after working the stony, unfertile land the two men would trudge in to the coffee house. There was no song here. Weary men gathered to sit and drink
ouzo
until the simple meal of bread and lentils was ready at home. There were none of the luxuries here that were found in Paleachora.

Yet here, too, Mike found the quality of generosity. As remote as Kaloghriani was, it was not too remote for hungry men to find. Now and then a stray from the desperate cities would show up in search of food. No man left the village without some wheat, either sold at a fair price or simply given away. On the Sabbath Barba-Leonidas and the other men of the village hunted rabbits to feed those who might venture in. There was none of the venality here that was making other farmers rich. The philosophy was simple. If there are two grains of wheat, one should be shared.

And Michael Morrison learned the legend of the place, a legend as ancient as its hills. He was in “the Village of Thieves...”

For centuries they had tried to scratch a living from the unyielding land and a boy of Kaloghriani growing into manhood learned it was far easier to exist by looting neighboring villages. So, over the years, the men perfected many daring and unique methods of raiding other villages. The sight of a man from Kaloghriani was unwelcome in the entire province. Thievery became an art and a part of the village culture. There was hardly an adult male who didn’t have a prison record.

The village elder, a ninety-nine-year-old named Petros, had spent forty of his years behind bars. Barba-Leonidas bashfully admitted to a few five-year stretches in his younger days—before he mastered his art. The crime was not the stealing but the getting caught. But once caught, a man gained stature in the community by the number of years he spent in prison. And to achieve Averof Prison in Athens—that was the supreme accomplishment. Even Father Gregorios, the priest and only literate person in Kaloghriani, was very vague about ten years he had spent in Canada.

This fantastic breed of hill men must surely have been descendants of the ancient Greek gods, for Barba-Leonidas was a small man among them. Several towered to seven feet and over in height and they lived to be eighty and ninety without a trace of serious illness.

Mike would see them shoot a running rabbit at four hundred yards. Although he was able to work alongside the sixty-five-year-old Barba-Leonidas, he made the sad mistake of trying to outhike him on the day before the Sabbath. The men of Kaloghriani could walk the clock around at a never slackening pace and they could walk uphill as fast as they did downhill, without so much as drawing a deep breath.

The women labored from dusk to dark and were as fiercely rugged as their men, but their beauty faded early. When a child was born, only a few moments after the mother left off working in the field, there was no celebration, no joy. For all things in Kaloghriani—life, death, marriage, disaster—came only as part of another day of work as the Lord doled it out. There was too much to be done for survival to indulge in song or dance or tears.

And so, at the end of the fifth day of Mike’s stay, Barba-Leonidas announced in a very matter of fact way that Mike was his son. “My other son was killed” (a matter of little concern, for life went on) “and God has brought me another.”

There was little Mike could do to dissuade him from this simple logic.

“Bah! If the Allies are winning the war, why do they retreat? Answer that! Why do they retreat? You are stupid, you stupid Englezos.”

“Now don’t forget, most of the free world is not yet in the war.”

“Bah! If you win, you
go
forward—if you lose you go backward. The Allies go backward, they lose!”

“Try to get it through your thick skull, Leonidas, the farther the Germans extend their battle fronts the more difficult they become to supply, and the thinner they spread their forces. Look at Napoleon’s march on Moscow, for example, in 1812.”

“I say, bah! bah! bah! You talk like a woman. If I fight for Kaloghriani and leave it and run to Dadi, I lose—yes or no—yes or no!”

“Aw, for Christ’s sake, Leonidas—pour me another glass.”

The Sabbath came. Mike awoke early and anxiously awaited the arrival of Eleftheria. By mid-morning his anxiety changed to suspicion. Barba-Leonidas became strangely silent. All during the week he had noticed annoyance every time he mentioned the girl to Leonidas. By afternoon he knew full well that one of two things had happened. Eleftheria was going to see that he stayed in Kaloghriani or Barba-Leonidas was going to see to it.

In the early afternoon Mike had reached the breaking point and demanded to know what was going on. Barba-Leonidas, who could not lie with a straight face, refused to answer. He selected a rifle and stomped from the cottage, announcing that he was going rabbit hunting.

Mike turned to Despo. The aged, wrinkled woman looked up sheepishly from her weaving.

“Eleftheria—where is she?”

Despo shook her head.

“Where is she, dammit!”

Mike stood over her. “Dammit! Tell me where she is!”

“She was here!” Despo cried. “She was here in midweek. You were in the fields. Barba-Leonidas sent her away.”

“Why?”

“Because you are his son and you can never leave.”

EIGHT

M
IKE FUMED ABOUT THE
cottage for fifteen minutes. Despo sank back into silence, but her hands nearly flew in nervousness over the weaving machine. Barba-Leonidas had him trapped. He had no way of getting to Dernica—did not even know its general direction. He realized, too, that he’d never get the information from anyone in Kaloghriani. This attempt at fatherhood by the giant was a major problem. Mike had only one choice—to find Leonidas and have it out.

He stormed from the cottage in search of the hunting party. But, given a fifteen-minute lead, it would be almost impossible to find them. They walked nearly as fast as he could run.

Mike traveled away from the village in the general direction of their hunts. For over a half hour he ran about searching vainly. He passed the outermost fields and went into the underbrush. Then, as the land began to rise at the base of Mount Kallidromon, Mike stopped and realized he would have to wait for the hunt to end.

The day was warm and sun-filled and the air was calm and Mike did not feel like spending it in the cottage with the dismal Despo. During the week he had looked up many times from the fields to the mountain and imagined the view was splendid from its peak, so he began to climb.

He started briskly up a time-worn path along one of the slopes and stopped at intervals for a sip of cool spring water and to catch his breath and bearings.

He climbed till afternoon when the mountain began to grow steeper. Mike worked his way to a balding shoulder near the top, crossed a rocky field, and there the peak loomed but a few hundred yards up a sheer wall.

It was strange to Mike. He had always had a dread of heights but now he felt no fear. It seemed as though many fears had vanished in Paleachora and Kaloghriani. He tingled with excitement as he edged his way up the wall toward the top.

A breathtaking sight burst below him as he stood atop the mountain with the thrill of a conqueror. To the east the blue Aegean Sea and her islands and to the west the rippling regiments of hills. He stood for many moments electrified by what his eyes saw and a wonderful feeling swept through him. A cloud passed below and disappeared like a ghost into the mountainside and reappeared on the other side....

Mike stood and looked—and wondered. What was the strange power that had brought him to all this? Who was it that wanted him to see it? What was the hunger he had carried all his life that was no longer a hunger?

He thought of his children. At first their images passing through his mind had tortured him. Then they had begun to fade as the days passed. They became distant and lost shape and became foreign. He knew he loved them above all, but he knew too that his mind had adjusted to their loss.

Now he saw seventeen men at elegant desks, or working at files, or attending cocktail parties or hobnobbing with German officers. The British were probably desperate for these seventeen names. Had he failed? Or had he done right? Perhaps he had been overcautious in wasting weeks. He didn’t know. But leave the hills he must. Bullying Leonidas would be no simple chore. Only yesterday Leonidas led the village in burning a German order for wheat allotment.

The only clear plan he could formulate would be to send Eleftheria to Athens to contact Dr. Harry Thackery. Even this was a bad risk. She wasn’t the world’s brightest and if there was any trouble she’d never be able to cope with it.

Do I have the right to make a pawn of her—risk her life? he asked himself. Many people have already died because of the Stergiou list. Life was a small thing in the struggle to find the names. Then, Mike argued with himself, Eleftheria would want to go to Athens if she knew what was at stake.

One cold fact remained. Her life or his was unimportant in the ultimate delivery of the seventeen names.

Mike took one last look at the view and started down the mountainside.

It was dark when he reached the cottage. Barba-Leonidas was pale when Mike entered. Then, upon seeing Mike, his face broke into an expression of relief which belied his effort to pretend he was unconcerned.

“You stupid Englezos. I was about to go out and look for you. Do not go roaming the hills without me in the future.” The giant sat down for his meal. Mike stood over him.

“Tomorrow you go to Dernica and get Eleftheria.”

“Sit down and eat and don’t talk so much.”

Mike grabbed Leonidas by the shirt and lifted his two hundred and fifty pound hulk from the chair. “You go to Dernica or I go.”

Barba-Leonidas looked to Despo and shrugged. “Mad—he’s gone mad.”

Despo edged toward the door, ready to leap out.

“Sit down and eat, I say. If you need a woman that bad, I get you one after dinner. I get you a dozen, take your choice—you can even use my bed.”

Leonidas sat and dunked his bread in the bowl of lentils then slurped it into his mouth.

“All right, then. I’m going—right now.”

He looked up slowly and stared at Mike with an expression of hurt written all over his bearded face. “What is the matter with you, Jay?”

“Believe me, my friend, I have great love for you, but I must get to Athens.”

Leonidas fiddled with his bread, then flipped it down and scratched his beard. “You—you want to leave? You really want to leave?”

“I must leave.”

“Why you talk so crazy?” the giant said in a half cry. “Why must you leave?”

“I’m a soldier. It is my duty.”

“Bah! What kind of a soldier are you? What you think you are going to do? You can’t hit a rabbit at fifty meters with my best Englezos rifle.”

“I’ve seen one village burned to the ground because of me.”

“So they burn this stable down. I and my old woman will live in the bushes. We have done so before, many times. I sometimes think I was happier than trying to raise wheat in these rocks. No, Jay, better you stay with us always.”

Mike walked slowly to the little table beside his bed and picked up his possessions. Two pipes, two pistols and the roll of drachmas. He peeled off a million drachmas for himself and set the rest on the table for Leonidas then walked toward the door.

Leonidas arose from the table and blocked him.

“Sit down!” he roared.

Despo knew that tone and fled the cottage.

“You’re in my way, Leonidas. Don’t make me hit you.”

“Sit down or I kill you.”

Leonidas rushed to the fireplace and lifted a huge poker and stood before the door and his mouth poured rage. Mike slowly lifted the pistol from his belt and leveled it.

Outside the cottage, the village assembled. A delegation rapped on the door and requested that the pair of them shut up.

For many moments the two men stared at each other. At last, Leonidas turned and threw the poker to the floor. “Like my own son,” he mumbled. “How far will you get, Jay? Have you ever seen a blond Greek come from these hills?”

Mike did not answer.

Despo, who rarely showed any emotion of any sort, had re-entered and she wept openly.