A Saint for the Summer

by Marjory McGinn

  Most of the congregation were middle-aged or older, women to the left, men to the right. The papas was also old, with a grey beard and dressed in a gold and red embroidered robe. At the door, an icon of Saint Dimitrios was placed on a carved wooden stand, surrounded by a thick garland of flowers.

  Leonidas led the way, dropping not a coin into the wooden donations box near the entrance but a folded banknote, as would befit his status here. He lit a candle and kissed the icon. Angus followed him and they sat to the right with the other men. When it was my turn to (air-kiss) the icon, I noticed it was similar to my own icon from the taxi, but bigger: a jaunty character perched on his horse; a caped crusader with an inscrutable expression, part stoical, part mischievous.

  Polly and I sat on the women’s side and I scanned the men’s side, looking for Dimitris Maneas. I was expecting to see someone grey-haired and tall, slightly distinguished-looking, from the photo we had been given by Pavlos. I could see no-one who came close. These men were either much older or smaller, or fatter. As I studied the men, I caught Leonidas’s eye. There was a faint flicker of his eyebrows, as if he might have been thinking the same thing.

  The service was a sombre affair, as I’d expected. Now and then the papas turned towards the congregation and swung his censer. Great billowing clouds of sweet-smelling incense filled the air and rose to the vaulted ceiling. The service ended with a queue down the centre aisle for the consecrated bread. As I waited for my turn, behind Angus, I glanced around the men’s section again and noticed a tall, thin man, who had previously been obscured by a stout column. He was stepping down from one of the high-backed wooden chairs against the wall. Beside him was a younger man. Angus was also watching and he gave me a meaningful look.

  It was not until we were all outside that Leonidas told us he would go and talk to him. There was a buzz of activity at the front of the forecourt near a van parked on the road. Two men in aprons were standing before a trestle table carving into a hunk of roasted meat on a wooden platter, placing slices on paper plates. Women from the congregation were ferrying the plates over to the tables set up outside the church, where bowls of salad and baskets of bread were also being distributed.

  “Where did all this food come from?” I asked Angus, wondering how a village with so few people could have organised such a feast.

  “Vans go around on these kinds of feast days with spit-roasted pork. They go from village to village. It’s a big thing in the Mani and this is one of the biggest feast days of the year.”

  I marvelled at the way Greeks could mobilise events quickly, especially for the feast days. It was all strangely reassuring. The congregation rushed to each of the tables to claim one for their family group, and Polly did likewise, though with slightly more grace in her sprint than the others. She picked a table under an orange tree, where only two other churchgoers had so far settled. In the distance, at the edge of the forecourt, I could see Leonidas talking with the tall man. After a few minutes, he steered the man to our table.

  “I’d like you all to meet Dimitris Maneas and his friend Yiannis, who has brought him here from Kalamata this morning,” said Leonidas. Dimitris gave a tentative smile.

  I felt a wave of relief wash over me that all this effort had yielded something. Angus looked happier than I’d seen him look for weeks. We all shook hands and Leonidas invited the pair to join us at our table. Dimitris was 85, but looked good for his age, with a fresh complexion and thick grey hair. He also spoke near-perfect English, with an American accent from his years living there, whereas his friend seemed to speak no English at all. Dimitris didn’t say much to begin with and looked at Angus and me with a curious expression. I wondered what Leonidas had already told him. The poor guy thought he was coming for a pleasant Greek celebration, and here we were planning to plunder his past.

  Polly helped to serve the food and poured everyone a drink from the wine carafes. When I looked around at the diners I noticed the shopkeeper Pavlos. He gave me a muted wave and returned to his lunch. He was sharing a table near the church door with the two chanters and the papas, who was now wearing his everyday black robe, and holding court. Several people had sauntered past our table and stopped to wish Dimitris ‘many years’ on his name day. While he was distracted, Leonidas whispered to Angus and me, “I only had time to tell Dimitris that you were both interested to know about life in the village when he was a boy. I didn’t say why, and that perhaps he could make time for you after the lunch is over. So let us just enjoy a nice meal for now.”

  “Thanks, Leo, for your tact in all of this,” said Angus.

  Leonidas shrugged lightly. “It is nothing, but I hope this is what you want. Dimitris might have a story to tell that none of us will want to hear.” Leonidas caught my eye. His look gave nothing away. I wondered what he meant exactly. How could any of us have known then that this would be a day that would change our lives immeasurably?

  Conversation over lunch was light and we decided we would all speak in English to make things easier. Dimitris seemed more comfortable talking English, in any case, because of his time in America. He was affable and chatted about his life in Chicago and his work, running his own real estate business. We also learnt that he still had the apartment in Athens that his father had bought in 1952, just three years before the family migrated to America. He told us he still liked to return to Greece roughly every five years − just as Pavlos had said − sometimes alone, as his wife had now passed away, and other times with one of his children. This year he had come alone and he confessed that each time the trip became more tiring.

  “I can’t deny that the economic crisis has made my time in Greece more upsetting. I see the demonstrations in Athens and it takes my mind back to other eras of Greek history I’d rather forget,” he said, with a mournful expression in his light brown eyes. Angus and I exchanged quick looks. Here we were, about to take him back to the difficult era of the war.

  “But I can’t come back to Greece and not make the journey to Platanos, at least to honour the rest of my family who have gone now. It’s a kind of pilgrimage, but I am thinking this year will probably be my last, or else I’ll need to be dropped here by helicopter by the time I’m 90,” he said, laughing lightly, showing good strong teeth despite his years, courtesy of American dentistry, no doubt.

  “You can’t imagine how much this yiorti has diminished over the years. Once when there were many people in the village, this whole area here would be crammed with tables and the festivities would last for hours. Few of us make this trip now, and the village itself is practically empty, especially in winter. If this place was in America it would be a kind of museum, with someone charging admission.” He laughed again, though the mirth never quite reached his eyes.

  Angus didn’t say much through the meal and he drank a lot of wine. Polly was in good spirits and I was glad to have her along. She had the subtle gift of being able to take control of a difficult situation without it seeming that way. Despite her dig at Leonidas in the car, she got on well with him, and it was rather amusing the way she seemed to flirt with him as well, just slightly. I wondered if she had ever entertained her own fantasies about Leonidas, like the Kalamatan women she had alluded to the day we sat in the square. When Leonidas left the table for a moment, I asked her what their Greek conversation in the car had been about.

  She smiled. “About him going to England. He is being very coy about the whole thing, my dear. He says he doesn’t talk about it too much because he fears people will condemn him as a traitor.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, leaving Greece in crisis, when everyone is suffering. I’ve seen this a lot. Many Greeks don’t want to say they are leaving until they are practically on the plane. But in his case, I think it is probably more complicated,” she said, with a meaningful look.

  The lunch seemed to wind up as quickly as it had begun, with some of the congregation folding up the tables and stacking them with the chairs in a small outhouse at
the back of the church. Most people were in a hurry to get back down the hillside and, one by one, the cars departed. We adjourned to the pantopoleio. We huddled around two metal tables outside that we pushed together, while Pavlos went off to make Greek coffee. Angus was the only one wanting ouzo, however. Leonidas must have offered to drive Dimitris back to Kalamata because the young man he came with bade him farewell.

  While we waited for the drinks, Leonidas explained to Dimitris the real intention of our visit that day, and our recent meeting with Orestes, when he spoke about the shooting of the British soldier. Dimitris smiled at the mention of his boyhood friend, whom he had not seen for many years, but I imagined that the reminiscences we were seeking would give him no joy. He rubbed a hand over his eyes, as if to collect his thoughts. I had no doubt he didn’t want to talk about the war today.

  He turned to Angus and me. “My friends, I am sorry to hear that the poor young soldier who was shot may have been a relative of yours, and if he was, then I am very honoured to meet you both. We kept him hidden in our house for about three weeks, and during that time he was like one of our family. I don’t know if I can tell you anything useful about who he really was. It’s a long time ago and some of it I have put out of my mind on purpose and have never talked about, beyond our close family. Some of it is difficult …” He stopped for a moment, looking pained, as if he felt this was all too much of an imposition, on his name day, of all things.

  Then he added, “But you know what? I think maybe it’s time I did talk about it properly. I’m old. I may not get another chance.”

  I could hear Angus beside me exhaling with a deep sense of relief. And so Dimitris began to tell us his own remarkable story…

  Chapter 22

  Road map to the past

  “I was the one who originally found the young soldier, hiding in a cave on the ridge behind our house,” Dimitris told us. “He was with another soldier then. It was the beginning of May. They looked real scared and hungry. I remember that so well, and how young they seemed. They told me they were Inglesi, English, one of the few Greek words they knew. I figured that naturally they had just escaped from Kalamata after the Germans occupied the city, but why they came so far up the mountains to Platanos, I couldn’t imagine. I went home and told my father, and at dusk we went back up to the cave and brought them to the house.

  “To Greeks, the allied soldiers were heroes. They started out as liberators, even though the Germans overran them in the end. Many Greeks felt that supporting the allies, and even hiding them, was a huge act of defiance against the German occupation.

  “We hid them in the basement of our house, where we kept our donkey and some of the small goats at night behind a wooden partition. It was a cold, stuffy space and the boys had to sleep on the hard earthen floor on blankets. That was all we had for them. We were poor farming people and the house was old with few comforts, no electricity in those days and water came only from the spring nearby. The other boy left after a few days. We didn’t know why. We couldn’t communicate with them properly, of course. We had no other languages, apart from Greek, but somehow, with a lot of effort and hand signs, we got some kind of message across. The other soldier, I think, changed his mind about the mountains. He seemed uneasy and wanted to go back down the coast to look for a boat. The one who remained wanted to stay a while and then make his way through the mountains to the southern part of the peninsula. Or so we imagined.

  “He spent most of his time in the beginning in the house. We had heard the Germans were searching the Mani for fugitive soldiers and many had already been rounded up and taken prisoner. The soldier ate with us and sat with us round the fire at night. He retreated to the basement if anyone came to the house. After a while he became restless and begged us to let him out during the day to roam on the hillside above as long as he was careful. What could we say? He was young and energetic and seemed unafraid; he liked being outside. Although we were at the remote end of the village and you only came near our house if you were using the kalderimi, the track down the mountainside, we prayed that no-one else would see him.

  “The villagers in the Mani were mainly sympathetic to the allies, as I said, but sometimes villagers would let slip certain things to the small number of other Greeks who may not have been as trustworthy. The Germans put out regular edicts after the Battle of Kalamata, saying that no Greek could associate with or help an allied soldier – or they would be shot. Anyone hiding a soldier would be shot and their house burnt. So, of course, we didn’t want anyone to know the soldier was with us. Also the Germans had put a bounty on the heads of allied soldiers. There were plenty of villagers in the region desperate for money for food who would happily betray them. These were terrible times, my friends,” said Dimitris, squeezing together his large wrinkled hands and stopping to gather his thoughts.

  Angus took advantage of his brief lapse in concentration. “The soldiers said they were English, but did they ever tell you where they came from? Or rather, did they ever tell you they were Scottish rather than English?” I knew Angus had latched onto that issue the moment he’d heard the word Inglesi.

  “Well, we assumed they were both English. I don’t think we even knew where Scotland was then. I am sorry. It was all the same to us then,” he said, smiling bashfully.

  “Do you remember his name?” I asked, rushing to the question that must have been on everyone’s lips.

  “He had an English name, of course, but we couldn’t pronounce it, and I certainly don’t remember it now.” I could hear Angus sigh with disappointment. “But we gave him a Greek one,” Dimitris added. “It was easier, safer too, and I do remember it. Kostas.”

  Angus gasped. “My father was called Kieran, so that’s one small co-incidence, a Greek name starting with a ‘K’. Does Kieran sound familiar perhaps?”

  Dimitris shook his head. “I wish I could say it did, but I’m afraid not.”

  “Please continue, Dimitris. We are very grateful for anything you can remember,” I said, gently urging him on, but I did feel a glimmer of optimism with that one piece of information.

  “We didn’t know a whole heap about the soldiers because they had nothing much with them when I found them in the cave, apart from their army clothes, a small rucksack each, a rifle, some ammunition, and not much else. If they had identification with them, I don’t remember seeing it. After the other boy left, I spent a lot of time with Kostas and took him around the hillside at the back, sometimes a bit further on. He was a swell kind of guy. We felt for his predicament and wanted to keep him safe. We gave him some of our clothes so he’d look like everyone else: old baggy trousers and a jacket, and an old woollen shepherd’s bag. We thought from a distance, with his dark hair especially, he might almost pass as a Greek.” Dimitris beamed at this recollection, one of the few times he smiled throughout his narrative.

  Angus shot me a look at the mention of ‘dark hair’. I could tell he was getting more buoyed-up. His hand trembled slightly and the ice cubes in his ouzo glass tinkled like chimes every time he took a sip. That’s when I remembered the photo in my bag. I reached in and pulled it out and showed it to Dimitris and said quietly, “Is this the Kostas you remember? It’s a picture taken in Scotland of my grandfather a few years before the war.”

  Dimitris held it in his hand, staring at the image of Kieran sitting on a rock on the edge of a loch. Everyone around us was eerily silent, watching him. Dimitris sighed and finally looked up at me, and then Angus. His eyes glimmered with the start of what looked like tears.

  “Gee! This guy here is damned handsome, just as Kostas was, and the dark thick hair, too. He could be Kostas … but I have to be honest, it’s been decades and I knew him for just a short time. I just couldn’t say for sure. I wish I could bring back to mind that exact image of the Kostas we knew. But, folks, I can’t.” He gave me a sorrowful look as he handed back the photo. I left it on the table in front of him, hoping it might jog his memory later.

  “It’s okay
, Dimitri. It was a long time ago, you’re right. Not a part of your life you wanted to remember, I imagine,” said Angus.

  “No, and not when I tell you the rest of my story.” He stopped to gather his thoughts again, and then continued. “More and more, my father let Kostas roam about the hill but told me to keep an eye on him. He spent time also in the cave Orestes mentioned. Only the villagers knew about this place. It was quiet, out of sight. I wondered how he could spend so much time there. It was a cold, lonely spot, yet he was the kind of young man … how can I explain … who seemed happy with his own company, who liked to be with nature. He had a small notebook, I remember that, and he liked to draw …”

  Angus cut across him, gripped by renewed optimism. “That’s incredible, Dimitri! My father loved the outdoors. He loved to walk the Scottish hills and he also loved to draw. My mother told me that.”

  “Angus, let’s hear the rest, shall we,” I said, feeling that we were merely clutching at straws as long as we didn’t have a positive identification. Angus frowned and fell silent again.

  Dimitris continued. “Kostas liked to sit on the hill in a certain clearing, where you can see the whole Taygetos range. I sat with him there a few times while he was drawing in the notebook. He wrote notes in it too, like a diary, though I never read them, of course. English was as foreign to me then as Chinese. We told him as best we could that if he ever suspected the Germans were nearby to hide his notebook somewhere and also to go down the ravine on the other side of the ridge because there were smaller caves there, where he could hide. I had shown him one or two. But, as you know from Orestes’ story, Kostas didn’t get that far on the day the Germans came to our village.