The Eagle of Spinalonga

by Nike Azoros

  ‘If you want to take a good look at that beauty spot then you are going to have to help me take these clothes off.’

  ‘Of course, and I will have to spend a lot of time down there taking a very, very good look.’

  Spinalonga bloomed like the love of Angela and Lukas and like Maria with the baby of Lyras inside her. With Pavlos gone their wedding had turned Spinalonga into a mini Riviera. Nikos had been the best man and their wedding crowns were made from the lemon blossom from Athena’s tree. Maria even had a ring.

  When he had heard that there was to be a wedding Ikaros had gone to see Maria. She had always been kind to him and shared her food or cooked fish for him. He loved her like the sister he had left behind.

  ‘You look so happy Maria. I want you to be happier. You need rings.’

  ‘Oh I don’t care Ikaros, even we make them out of paper.’

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little package of rags, he peeled them back to reveal the contents. Maria peeped in and saw there were two gold rings.

  ‘Where did you...?’

  ‘Don’t ask, just take them and be happy.’ There was no way he was going to tell her that the gold came from the teeth of a dead man. He left quickly before she asked more questions. She didn’t need to know that when he help to bury the poor soul who drowned trying to catch a fish to eat he had reached into his mouth and pulled out his gold teeth. The guy had five! He must have been rich in his former life. Ikaros had been saving them to trade them for a gun but changed his mind when Pavlos starting getting more vicious. He would have stolen it and killed everyone.

  He was considering buying a little caique for safer fishing but he didn’t think he would be permitted to keep in case they thought he was trying to escape and spread the disease. So the gold teeth stayed hidden until Father Manoussos confided in him about the wedding plans as a precaution so he could keep Pavlos preoccupied. They had yet to learn that Pavlos would no longer be a problem.

  Ikaros had gone to the blacksmith patient, ‘Could you melt these down and fashion them into rings?’

  ‘I have no anvil or tongs, we could send them with the boatman maybe?’

  ‘No I do not trust him.’

  ‘Well then we will have to improvise. You go to other side of the island to the ruins of a hut and build a fire in there, keep it blazing hard, feed it a lot of fuel, dry branches, there are plenty of those here. I will go see what I can find.’ The blacksmith went to the infirmary and said to the assistant on duty he needed some medication for sleeping. He went to get something for him and the blacksmith snuck into the lab and found a few tools that he could use to do the job. ‘Stop right there! Just what do you think you are doing?’ Angela had caught him. ‘Speak up, don’t just stand there. How dare you steal from us? We are here to help you.’

  ‘Forgive me Nurse Angela, I just wanted to borrow some tools so I could make wedding rings for our engaged couple.’ He placed the gold teeth and the tools on her desk. She picked them up and handed them back to him, ‘Oh for goodness sake, just ask next time.’ So there high over an island leper colony using the teeth of a dead leper, symbols of love were fashioned. Maria and Lyras never found out the origins of their wedding bands but they would have approved.

  Chapter19: Theodora

  The wedding was glorious. The weather was perfect, the groom was handsome and the bride looked lovely. Nikos was the best man and he and Artemis had hunted for three days to provide all the fish for the wedding feast. Maria, with the extra pension money had ordered a fine bed with pale blue sheets and a sofa. She felt as fulfilled as any new housewife setting up her first home. But she was getting very weak. She was struggling with the demands the life within her was making of her body. Doctor Lukas ordered Maria to full bed rest in the infirmary as her time to deliver drew nearer. ‘You may stay with her Lyras, we will organize a bed for you and you can play your music.’

  Nikos was a daily visitor too. ‘Please Lukas tell me the real situation.’ The doctor signaled for Nikos to follow him into his office and gestured for Nikos to sit down. Angela brought them coffee and pie. She left them in private to discuss what she already knew.

  ‘Nikos, even if Maria was not carrying a child her time has almost come. The fact that she is pregnant will actually speed things up. She might not even survive the delivery.’ Nikos stared at the floor for several moments before he spoke. ‘My eyes might be troubling me but I am not blind. I can see my sister has become very frail. Does Lyras know?’

  ‘Maybe. Maria seems to feel it and she is always telling us to ensure her baby survives.’

  Doctor Lukas had other things to discuss too. ‘Nikos, the child?’

  ‘The child has me. I know there is Lyras but he will retreat into his music. The child has me. Fear not.’

  ‘I thought as much.’

  Maria went into labor on a warm night with a full moon. Lyras was right by her side but as her moans got louder he left the room and started playing his lyre. Angela and Lukas took over. Eva came to help as did Aliki. The birth was long and at one point Maria had passed out but the contractions woke her up again. At seven in the morning after fifteen hours of labor Maria gave a final push and Theodora was born.

  She held her in her arms while Lyras cradled them both. She inhaled the sweet new baby scent of her perfectly healthy daughter. The tests were run immediately and a beaming Doctor Lukas pronounced her to be in full good health. Maria was so tired she could barely see her beautiful girl. Lyras was a blur to her and she couldn’t seem to hear what anyone was saying. Through the buzzing she did hear Lyras whisper in her ear, ‘I love you.’ She saw her beloved brother cradling his baby niece and smiling at her, telling her what an amazing thing she had done. She had brought another wonderful Theodora into the world, and there in her full happiness Maria slipped away having fulfilled all her dreams.

  Chapter 20: Operation Mercury.

  On mainland Greece the prime minister of Greece, Ioannis Metaxas was trying to do exactly what Nikos had done on Spinalonga, restore order and dignity to a ravaged country and a people exhausted by much turmoil.

  In Germany another man was also trying to rebuild a weakened country and wanted to make it bigger and more powerful than ever, the most powerful country in the world. He was a young soldier so desolate after Germany lost the First World War that he turned to politics and joined the national socialist Workers party known better by its acronym, the Nazi party. His name was Adolf Hitler.

  He was poor and he was dull, the result of a sadistic father and a doting mother. He was a lazy dolt at school and failed his medical exams for the army but reapplied for a smaller less demanding unit and got accepted. He had few interests except polemics but he did enjoy painting and for some still unknown reason had built up an obsessive hatred of Jews whose only crime was that many of them were good at commerce and owned lovely homes of the type he never could afford.

  The other natural talent he did not know he had until he joined a political party was the ability to give a stirring speech. With its focus on the well being of the average German worker along with the bankruptcy of the country and the ensuing massive unemployment of Germans the time for the Nazi party had come. They won the elections and Hitler for the obvious rhetorical reasons had been made its leader, making him the legally voted Chancellor of Germany. An unstable man with a grudge and a big ego became the leader of a country out to build an empire.

  Metaxas declared Greece to be a neutral country which desired to be left alone for a while to rebuild itself after finally liberating itself from the crushing Ottoman occupation and the many wars that followed. Greece was tired. Next door in Italy, Mussolini had other ideas. He had allied himself with Hitler and declared he wanted to use Greece as a thoroughfare for carrying out his plans for empirical expansion. When Metaxas famously advised the response of Greece was a definite NO! Mussolini declared war against Greece.

  Hitler was against the idea, telling Italy, his axis partner, that the
ir main goal was Russia not a tired little non threatening country. He wanted to get in there before the winter took hold. The only people who could handle a Russian winter were Russians. Hitler correctly believed his Axis soldiers would not be able to sustain a fight in such conditions. There was no time to waste. Mussolini told Hitler the facts as they stood. His country had four times the population and ten times the money of Greece and had not been under long occupation as the Greeks had been. In his opinion these were a weakened people with little to no resources. It would be a walk in the park. On the 28th of October in 1940 Italy invaded Greece.

  But in Greece, Metaxas had readied the Greek people by calling them to arms. He knew the enemy would be coming from the North through Albania and had ordered that the northern front be lined with trenches and fortifications and that every available citizen prepare to fight for their country using whatever they had. This front was known as the Metaxas line.

  He demanded window boxes and flowerpots be stripped of their blooms and replanted with edibles instead. Everywhere across Greece planters, instead of geraniums and daisies, sprouted beans and spinach, tomatoes and herbs. It was over in a few weeks. Greece not only crushed the Italians but drove their line so far back they had taken over almost half of Albania and they had done so with archaic weaponry and an army of peasants, elderly and children bearing pitchforks and sticks. It was one of the greatest defeats in military history and a deep humiliation to the Axis. Hitler had no choice but to deviate from his plan and teach Greece a lesson. Every radio blared, ‘The Germans are coming!’

  Mainland Greece had put up a fierce resistance, the fiercest civilian resistance the Germans would ever encounter. Hitler had known they would so he had sent advance warning to the Greek people that their formidable reputation as tough fighters would work against them. Every act of resistance would be met with fifty reprisals.

  Greece was ravaged as the Germans carried out their promise with relentless savagery. The allied armies of Britain, Australia and New Zealand retreated while Greek people gave up their lives protecting them as they exited Greece leaving the people to continue the battle solo with the Nazi juggernaut. The allies retreated to Crete.

  Hermann Göring Commandant of the Luftwaffe adjusted his new uniform before he popped his morphine pill. He liked to look sharp at all times and this new uniform was cut well. He turned sideways to look in the mirror. Yes, his big barrel of a stomach did not look as protuberant as normal. Too bad the mirror only showed from waist up, he would have seen that the beige suit together with his porky legs made him look like a walking strudel. He popped another morphine pill, the first one had started to induce the haze of happiness he liked to feel. He picked up his jewel encrusted baton and headed off to the important meeting he had requested with the Fuhrer. He wanted to put forward his plan to both punish the Allies and gain a valuable base in the Mediterranean.

  ‘Invade Crete from the air you say?’

  ‘Yes, using my method we could quickly place our men on the ground. Paratroopers Mein Fuhrer. We will fly them in and then parachute down to directly where we want them.’

  Hitler eyed Göring up and down. The fat show pony was wearing yet another new uniform and the baton was sheer affectation, but he was a ruthless and meticulous operator which was the exact reason he had chosen him as his successor. ‘This is quite an audacious plan. Fortunately I am partial to audacity.’

  Hermann Göring breathed a sigh of relief. His proposal had been accepted. After The Battle of Britain had gotten them nowhere and then the cancellation of Operation Sea Lion he and his Luftwaffe had to regain credibility in the eyes of the world and also in the eyes of his Fuhrer. Being the subject of his annoyance was not a position he wanted to be in any longer.

  Hitler looked up from his maps.

  ‘I seek your absolute reassurance that this operation, what have you called it?’

  ‘Operation Mercury, Mein Fuhrer.’

  ‘That this Operation Mercury must be rapid and ruthless and it must in no way whatsoever cause any hindrance to Operation Barbarossa.’

  ‘You have my absolute assurance Fuhrer.’

  Hitler went back to his maps,

  ‘Vorgehen Proceed!’

  The allies retreated to Crete because that was where the Royal Navy had its fleet. The many harbors and the strategic position of Crete in the middle of the Mediterranean made it very covetable. The Germans were coming for it and to attack the Royal Navy. All the while on Spinalonga the patients could only sit and listen to what was happening to the world and their country. Their unusual isolation had previously been a source of despair. Now it had become a guilty sanctuary. Unlike so many on the mainland they were fully abreast with the situation.

  ‘It’s an eerie feeling knowing our countrymen are suffering and here we are getting government supplies sent over twice a week as if nothing was wrong.’ Nikos had a worried frown on his face as the men gathered in the square as they did everyday to listen in on the radio.

  ‘It was a good idea to install a radio system at the same time the cinema was installed Nikos.’

  ‘I was merely being logical at the time. We needed to be able to be in touch with the mainland in case of emergencies. I could never have envisaged that we would be hearing the types of things we are hearing.’ All the men nodded solemnly. Every single one of them secretly wished they were in full health so they too could join the resistance and defend their motherland. ‘Who would have thought we would now be needed by Elounda? How life can change eh?’

  ‘Well as long as we are able to receive Greek news and tune into other channels as well, like the BBC and even intercept the occasional German message as we have it is our duty to pass the messages on to the boatman so he can keep the others informed of what is happening.’

  ‘I know Makis but we need someone who can understand them. I know some English but I don’t know German and I don’t know anyone who does. If they come down here from the mainland then our supplies might get cut. We have a lot of work to do.’ Maki chewed on his cheese pie, ‘The Germans are not as smart or thorough as they like the world to believe. They go to the trouble of creating codes but the British break them. If the Germans are going to head down this way, we will learn it in plenty of time.’

  ‘Nikos, are the Germans going to kill us?’ Aliki asked him while he was sitting at the cafe.

  Old Barba Christos said, ‘Let them come and kill us, what do we have to fear.’

  ‘Well my friends, the brotherhood has to prepare itself that is for sure.’

  Aliki put her hands on her hips, ‘We are playing our part gentlemen. Just so you know we of the domestic domains have been implementing certain measures since we have had more food made available to us. We have been so deeply affected by the hunger we went through in the past that we always order extra food. We keep the storage rooms full at all times. We make pasta and trahana. We have so many jars of preserved fruits and vegetables that we need more shelving. We have olives and oil and spices. We have enough stored food to last a winter.’

  ‘Well done Aliki. You could not have given me better news.’

  ‘Don’t thank me Nikos. It was the idea of Athena. She is the one you must thank.’

  ‘Oh, oh yes of course. In the meantime do you think you could double your efforts? I fear this war. If our pensions are cut because of infrastructure breakdown or any other reason we will be in big trouble. Keep storing as much food as is possible.’ Aliki smiled and saluted him and strode back to the laundry where the women were working. She kept smiling as she walked along and thought to herself, Nikos Lambrakis you are the most stupid smart man I have ever met. Like most stupid smart men you cannot see the real treasure you have right in front of you.

  Ikaros called out from inside the café next to the cinema where the radio system was housed. ‘Our radio has picked up much information. Invading Crete is an ego trip for the Luftwaffe. The British beat them off in a battle and the commanders of the Luftwaffe had put an
audacious plan forward to Hitler to allow them to attack Crete. Hitler liked audacity but warned them it must not interfere with Operation Barbarossa.’

  ‘What is that?’ whispered Ikaros.

  ‘Why are you whispering, they can’t hear us.’

  ‘I’ve heard that name before, Barbarossa, it is the code word for their plan to invade Russia.’

  ‘On the mainland they have been bombing all the airfields to make it impossible for the allied forces to land planes or to fly out they will try to do the same here.’ It was Nikos’ turn to man the radio station, the others took in shifts, and even Father Manoussos would come in to relieve the operators just in case any special news came through.

  Since the loss of Maria little was seen of Lyras. He would come to eat, occasionally he would play with little Theodora or take her for a ride on Xanthus. He spent the rest of his time playing his music. His self imposed silence meant that nobody knew he had been sent to study in Germany for over two years. He had always wanted to serve in the diplomatic corps and relished the thought of working alongside a great statesman like Venizelos. His studies in Germany had been terminated when he was recalled to the village. The vendetta had resulted in yet another senseless murder of one of his relatives and he was needed to help with the crops and the animals. But in those two and a half years he had learned more than enough German to reach an adequate level of fluency.

  At mealtimes he had overheard what the men were doing with the radio system. It ate at him that he could help them but how could he let them know without sacrificing his music time, and he might even have to speak. At the next mealtime he sat next to Nikos. Little Theodora sat next to her father playing with her pen and pencil and proudly showed him how she could now write her name. Lyras was so moved at the sight of his girl who looked so much like her mother that he picked her up and held her close. She was worth the sacrifice. He pointed to the pencil and paper and held out his hands. She understood and passed them over to him.