Island of Secrets

by Patricia Wilson

  I carried the pail to our vegetable patch but, before I emptied it, a scream came from behind the house. My heart leapt. I dropped the bucket and raced to the back plot. Stavro and Matthia were a tangle of limbs rolling in the dirt. I wanted to smack them both.

  ‘Stop it! What are you doing?’

  ‘He put a snail down my vest!’ Matthia, almost five, pointed at his brother.

  ‘I did not!’ Stavro said.

  ‘Act your ages and get on with your chores or you’ll have no dinner.’ They were acting their ages, of course.

  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and I didn’t expect to see one before late October. Until then, every drop of water was precious. I poured the contents of the bucket into a hollow of pale earth, hard and cracked, around a spindly tomato plant. The soil sucked down the scummy liquid. Three heavy tomatoes, bigger than my fist, hung from the vine but the fruit needed a few more days to ripen. I licked my lips thinking of the feast: chopped tomato on rusks with wild oregano, olive oil and salt. I hoped the soldiers wouldn’t find them and reminded myself to keep a few pips for replanting. About to turn back to the house, I noticed the heel of Matthia’s shoe sticking out of the dirt.

  ‘Matthia!’ He trotted to my side. ‘Look, why is your shoe in the ground?’

  ‘They’re too small, Mama, they hurt. If we water them they might grow like the tomatoes.’

  My tension lifted. ‘It won’t work, son. I’ll put a piece of wet sack inside each one, to stretch them. You go and see if you can find any eggs.’ Our hens suffered from the heat but, if we were lucky, we found an occasional egg. Perhaps Saint Stavro would bless one of the fowl today. I returned to our back plot and showed Stavro how to dig a trench in the hard earth with the skapáni. I had decided to plant half the dried beans.

  ‘I’m going to search for herbs,’ I told him. ‘Take care of Matthia while I’m away.’

  ‘I’ll try, Mama, but you know he’s a little devil. Don’t blame me if he gets up to no good.’

  ‘I will blame you, Stavro, so watch yourself, son.’

  Petro slept soundly. With my folding knife, cold in the palm of my hand, I slunk behind the houses to the nearest olive grove. Wild greens and snails, if I found them, would supplement the small amount of food we had. The Germans forbade us to venture outside Amiras, but I had three growing boys to feed. Around the trees, dandelions and nettles grew in the watered circles, where the rest of the September landscape lay barren. Like the Italians before them, the Nazis confiscated our goat’s milk and most of our potatoes and vegetables.

  I hurried down to the village road and then turned up into an olive grove. A clump of sow thistle beckoned me. Lush and green, both roots and leaves were tasty when boiled. Such a small find, yet it thrilled me. I dug my knife into the soil, cutting around the base of the stalk. At that moment, with my nose close to the ground and my behind in the air, I heard an unusual sound. At first I couldn’t make it out, a pounding, more of a vibration than a noise. Although hardly louder than the cricket chirruping somewhere near my feet, the strange clattering worried me.

  I tugged at the plant and stood, recognising the ‘whoomp-whoomp’ as studded jackboots slamming against the metalled street. The thud grew more powerful with each heartbeat. I peered between the trees, horrified. I had never even seen a full German platoon. This was countless soldiers marching along the main road that ran above our village. For over a year, we only had two or three soldiers in our area, the ones that took our food. This sounded like thousands.

  In the crystal-clear morning air everything seemed intense – the noises and colours, the words of my children, the smell of the earth in the grove. A couple of ravens passed overhead screaming their black-hearted croak, then the strangest thing happened. One bird half closed its great wings and rolled onto its back, as if dead in the road, but still sailing horizontally across the sky. I had never seen anything like it and knew I had witnessed an omen, a most terrible warning. What did it mean? A drop of sweat trickled past my eye and I realised I had crushed the herb in my tight fist.

  A double stamp of feet crashed my attention back to the soldiers, and then . . . silence, for a second almost tangible. I panted, my mouth dry. Had they seen me? The platoon waited – what for I couldn’t imagine. My belly knotted and then I heard, from far away, another steady rhythm breaking the hush.

  More marching boots approached our village from the west. I stretched my neck, peered through the trees and across the rooftops. Distant noises grew louder and then lines of soldiers loomed up on the opposite ridge. They stood for a moment, before pouring down onto the houses like ants from a disturbed nest. We were surrounded. Why?

  My neighbours told us truckloads of Nazis had arrived in Viannos the previous day. Two thousand, they claimed. One Nazi came into Amiras on a motorbike with a sidecar. He stuck a poster on the kafenion window and then continued to the next hamlet. The notice said nobody would be harmed if we stayed inside our village. Anyone found outside the boundary would be executed.

  I had broken their rule!

  A breeze rustled through the grove. Trees swayed, their dark shadows performing a hideous dance around me. The ravens circled back, flying devils that ate our precious corn. I wanted to screech a warning but kept quiet, afraid of capture and terrified of the consequences.

  The soldiers stopped below the olive grove, the road between my children and me. I cowered behind a stout tree, trembling like a dog, looking for a way out but scared to move. The men stood to attention, filling the street, three abreast and at least thirty deep. Their white faces cold, eyes with the emotionless stare of Charon. The captain gave orders, foreign words, dull as a funeral bell.

  In the kafenion the day before, Andreas the shepherd had told of a battle in the neighbouring village of Simi. Enemy soldiers had fought Cretan Andartes, our self-appointed freedom fighters. Many locals referred to them as renegades and draft-dodgers, others claimed they were heroes. Men had died in the fight but details were vague. Our elders warned us to prepare for reprisals. I didn’t understand what ‘reprisals’ meant. Perhaps they would take more food, or threaten to shoot somebody. But I doubted they would go that far, not in our small community, yet a feeling of dread overcame me.

  My precious boys!

  Thinking of them spurred me into action. I dashed to the next tree, following a back route to the house, lifting my heavy skirts from the dragging vegetation. I staggered, my legs hobbled by intense fear. In the name of God, please, don’t let my children see anyone shot.

  The Nazis were marching again. They turned towards me. I dived behind another wide trunk, afraid they could hear my thumping heart. They came too close. I dared not move, if they saw me . . . The church bell rang a warning knell. I pressed my back against the rough bark and crossed myself. Saint Stavro protect us. The enemy were almost upon me.

  If they kill me, who will take care of my boys?

  Invading forces continued to pour into Amiras. The sound of a gunshot rattled me, and then another echoed around the mountains. My knees buckled. I tripped on the front of my skirt, fell hard on the ground, pushed myself up and stumbled onward, glancing across the village and then down to the road. They were still coming, endless streams of uniforms.

  I wondered if the entire German army had invaded Crete. My stomach rolled and I’m ashamed to say my bladder emptied before I could squat. Hot urine ran down the inside of my thighs, tears sprang in my eyes and my mouth tasted gun metal. Amiras was in trouble. Where were our soldiers? My boys needed their mother. What kind of fool would disobey the regulations and go out of the village?

  Because our house and the olive trees were above the main street, I could see the events happening below the grove. The heady scent of thyme, oregano and rosemary was gone. The air now reeked of cordite and fear.

  I quickly realised these were not the German soldiers that we knew and tolerated. These men were the evil Nazis. They stomped past me. I peeked from behind the tree and watched them
force their way into the lower village houses. They dragged the occupants out.

  Women shrieked, their husbands, sons and fathers shouted. A bedraggled hen ran down the road, squawking and flapping outstretched wings. A dog gave chase. Evangelia, a respected elder of Amiras, tried to talk to the militaries. They knocked her to the ground with a rifle butt to the face.

  I had never seen anything so shocking. Her walking sticks clattered across the street and blood streamed from her nose. I wanted to reach out, help her up, the noble old lady. A machine gun fired into the air. The rattle echoed from every mountainside and valley, petrifying us all. A second of silence followed before the chaos continued.

  I had worked myself up into a terrifying conviction that if I didn’t get back to my boys right then, something terrible and irreversible would happen. I ran, thighs chafing from the friction of pissed fear, frantic to reach little Petro in his nightgown, and Matthia and Stavro attending to their chores.

  My legs shook so badly I could hardly stand. I had no time to make sense of things. Instinct told me to protect my boys at all costs. Hide them from the approaching evil. I sensed the troops were closing in all around us. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the Nazis advance. More screaming and shouting followed them. Old women fought strong young soldiers.

  Children cried. Dogs barked. The roosters were silent. Bewildered men and boys, pulled from the houses and forced together, were marched up the road like a gang of convicts.

  I ran back up the grove, took a shortcut through my neighbour’s garden and found Stavro and Matthia behind our cottage, hugging each other, confused by the ruckus. The Nazis were already at the end of our street. The commotion in the village below grew louder.

  ‘Get inside the house!’ I yelled, running frantically towards my boys. Go to the appothiki!’ Baby Petro bawled in his hammock over the bed. We raced past him to the third room. I ripped the top off the buried urn.

  ‘Climb in, and don’t make a sound, no matter how long. Stay quiet until I come for you. Do you understand?’ They nodded but Matthia started crying. ‘Shush!’ I said sternly, my heart breaking. I wanted to comfort him but knew if I put my arms around the four-year-old, I would be unable to let go.

  I dragged the lid and sack back into place and shovelled goat droppings over the top, hoping they had enough ventilation. For good measure, I picked up the goat’s bucket and slopped a little water over the dung. Nobody would investigate that slimy heap.

  After throwing the wooden shovel to one side, I dashed to the bed and lifted Petro from the hammock.

  Where could I hide? The dry ditch next to our plot! I wished I had thought of that earlier, for my boys. We could have escaped along the gully. As I passed the window, I saw the Nazis, now only metres away.

  Too late!

  I backtracked, sat on the wooden bed-steps, pulled out my breast and clutched Petro to my teat. If we were quiet, perhaps they would pass the house. The child, always hungry, latched on and guzzled. His small pink hands opened and closed against my skin. He gazed up, the innocence in his wide brown eyes tugged at my maternal instincts.

  For a second I forgot the danger and ran a tender hand over his head. His soft dark hair already covered a liverish birthmark on his scalp. The midwife called it a stork mark although it appeared to be an eagle with outspread wings.

  The door crashed open and my mind snapped to the present. Soldiers barged into the house.

  ‘Your boys and men, where are they?’ the captain demanded in poorly pronounced Greek.

  I stammered, confused, unable to answer. My sons were all I had. My husband, my father, and my father-in-law were in the army, fighting Italians in Albania. The Italians had changed sides a few days back, but we didn’t understand if that would affect us.

  Terrible dread rose inside me. My children were too young to work at the Nazi barracks. They couldn’t take my boys. Vassili would say I did right to hide them.

  Enemy soldiers charged through the house, filling the rooms, barging for space while they delved into every conceivable hiding place. They pulled cupboards open, tipped drawers out, and even looked up the chimney. I feigned unconcern but, demented, begged the Fates to keep my precious sons safe. When the soldiers stomped through to the appothiki I prayed Matthia had stopped crying.

  The soldiers returned empty handed and I struggled to hide my relief, but the nightmare continued. A Nazi leader, his expression as nasty as gangrene, suddenly pulled Petro roughly from my breast. Embarrassed, I was quick to cover myself but the milk, still squirting from my nipple, made a dark wet patch on the front of my cotton dress. A young soldier laughed, his face flushed, twitching, nervous.

  I reached for Petro but hard white hands slapped my arms away.

  ‘Name?’ the leader shouted.

  ‘Petro.’ Paralysed by fear, I could hardly shape the word. What did they want with a baby? I stretched out for him again.

  The Nazi threw Petro to another soldier. His little limbs jerked out stiffly before he started yelling.

  ‘No, damn you all – give him back to me.’ I launched myself at them, pulling at their stiff uniforms, frantic to hold my baby Petro. They could kill me for saying such things but I didn’t care, feeling, somehow, I would be more powerful dead. A vicious push slammed me to the ground.

  When I struggled to get up, a rifle butt bashed me hard in the shoulder and sent me sprawling. I scrambled onto my feet, fought a scream of pain, and caught an apologetic glance from the last soldier as they marched away. His eyes were wide with thinly disguised anguish.

  ‘Why?’ I shouted after him. He turned away.

  I hurriedly fastened my dress buttons before I ran after the soldiers. I wondered if my shoulder was broken; the pain was barely tolerable. I grasped the top of my arm and held it against myself.

  The road was packed with mothers, wives and daughters following the herded males. Women tugged at my clothes in an attempt to get in front of me. In the frantic shove of desperation down the narrow street, the rough stone walls grated skin from my cheek and elbow. Everyone yelled the names of their men and boys, and so did I.

  ‘Petro! Petro!’

  The grandmothers tried to keep up, their walking sticks knocked away in the surge. Several clutched their chests and collapsed onto concrete doorsteps. They stared, futile and defeated, after their doddering husbands and bewildered sons.

  I had to find my baby and get him back.

  Ahead of us, two Nazis dragged crippled and bedridden Philipo out of his house. His sunken eyes, wide; his false teeth exposed in a ghoulish grin of confusion. They yelled at him to stand. He couldn’t. The Nazis pulled him around the corner, out of sight. His legs, like empty trousers, flapped in the dirt behind them. A pistol fired and the soldiers returned alone. Only a warning shot . . . surely?

  I didn’t dare to think what had happened to the old man.

  As the street inclined, I saw a Nazi ahead with two small babies. One might have been Petro, I couldn’t be certain. He held them in each hand, by the wrists. The infants hung at his sides like a child’s empty mittens threaded on elastic. Should I go after him, the Nazi with my baby, or return to my terrified children in the buried urn?

  Caught in the throng of village women, unable to turn, I followed that macabre procession. Pleading with the Nazis, like screaming gulls behind a fishing trawler, we begged for our men and boys.

  Pelagia seized my arm and yanked me around, her face inches from mine, breath hot, eyes wild.

  ‘Where’s my Yianni . . .? Yianni, have you seen him, Maria? He’s six, what could they want with him?’

  ‘No, but Petro, did you see who had my baby, Petro?’

  She released me, shook her head and continued yelling, ‘Yianni! Yianni!’ Panic-stricken, she attempted to shoulder her way through the mob of daughters, wives and mothers.

  The street narrowed. Everyone shoved, desperate, somebody up front shrieked. Women at the back pushed. Something crunched underfoot and I stumbled
on softness. I peered between a sea of hips and legs and caught a glimpse of old Kiriea Anna, the cobbler’s grandmother. Trampled beneath our feet, her eyes screwed closed and her nose ran with blood. I realised I’d stepped on her hand and felt the snap of brittle bones through my worn-out shoes. I couldn’t stop for the love of God and the force behind me. Blessed Jesus please forgive me. Petro was more important. At that moment, I would have trodden on my own mother to rescue my son.

  The soldiers stopped on a rise at the village perimeter. They forced the men to stand together. The able-bodied, pale with fear, supported the old and infirm. I stretched my neck, searching among the terrified group of men for my Petro. A young boy called out, his frightened bleating drifted from between the surrounding males.

  ‘Mama, Mama!’

  Pelagia screamed out from behind me, ‘Yianni! Oh, God, it’s my Yianni.’ And then I caught an unmistakable sound, my baby’s cry. My womb cramped, the distant echo of a labour pain.

  The Nazis held us back.

  ‘Please, I must get to my baby. I’m begging you!’ I cried, but they wouldn’t let me through the guards. I ran around the perimeter of soldiers again and again, like a worried dog herding sheep.

  ‘Petro!’ I shouted, but I couldn’t see him. His cry addled my brain and madness overcame me. I made a plan to charge through the uniforms, then through our men, grab Petro, drop to my knees and somehow escape from the other side. I hauled in several deep breaths, rocked back and forth, ready to launch myself.

  Someone grabbed me from behind: Kiriea Joanna, the baker’s wife.

  ‘They’ll kill you,’ she said, her mouth pressed against my ear, her hair smelling of sweat and yeast. ‘Don’t let the men have to see that.’ I couldn’t get free of her arms, their incredible strength gained from years of dough kneading.

  ‘I have to try,’ I sobbed. Tears raged down my face as I struggled against the weight of her. ‘My little one, Petro, is in there with the men. He’s crying, frightened, he needs me . . .’