Eleni

by Nicholas Gage

  Going uphill they struggled against the weight and often came to a full stop, swaying on their feet for a few seconds before they could get their legs moving again. On the down slopes their thigh muscles knotted with the effort not to run, to keep the stretcher level and moving slowly. If the man was heavy, the most the women could cover was several hundred yards before they had to stop and rest, breathing in gasps. They moved grimly in lock step, surrounded by the smell of blood and other fluids seeping from the wounded body. If the victim was conscious, he would often thrash and swear, mistaking them for the fascist soldiers. And every wounded man or woman repeated the same piteous refrain: “For god’s sake, water! Water!” The cry kept pace with their steps as they slogged on, a constant torment because no amount of water could ease such thirst. The pain of the body the women carried seemed to pass through the handles of the stretcher and up their arms. Often the cursing and weeping and cries of “Water!” ended abruptly and they knew that the guerrilla’s soul had left his body. Nevertheless, they didn’t stop but staggered on toward their destination, crossing themselves with their free hand and uttering a silent prayer for his soul.

  Eleni had done a great deal of praying since Kanta disappeared from Lia on the day after Christmas. She stopped often at the Church of the Holy Trinity in the square to light a candle and ask the saints to protect her daughter and send news of where they had taken her.

  One day Eleni and three other women were assigned to take a wounded guerrilla all the way to Vatsounia. There was an empty hole where his left eye had been, and the blood matted his curly black hair into a sticky mass. Eleni sighed as she lifted the back right-hand pole—after ten minutes they would change sides. She knew the journey to Vatsounia and back would take most of the day, so she had tucked a crust of bread, two hard-boiled eggs and a piece of cheese in her pocket for the return trek.

  The guerrilla was still alive when they entered Vatsounia, coming over the mountain from the north. Far below, beyond the square, Eleni saw the schoolyard filled with two lines of figures marching in formation. She heard the sound of a shouted “One-two! One-two!” and nearly dropped her corner of the stretcher. As soon as the women delivered their burden to the guerrilla doctor, Eleni hurried down toward the square. First she recognized the tall figure of Rano, then the smaller one of Kanta at the front of the line. She gasped at how thin her daughter had become and felt in her pocket for the food she had brought—at least she could give her that.

  The andartinas were in the middle of rifle drill when Kanta heard her name called and looked up to see her mother standing on the mountainside, about a thousand feet away. At the vision Kanta bolted from the ranks of the other girls, running toward the figure in the brown dress and black kerchief. One of the guerrillas stepped in front of her and grabbed her by the shoulders, pushing her back until he shoved her against the wall of the school, knocking her head with a loud thud. “Who do you think you are, kouchiko? Someone special?” he shouted. “Get back to the drill!”

  Eleni ran toward her daughter, but another guerrilla stopped her descent. “What do you want?” he demanded.

  “Only to give this bit of food to my daughter.”

  “No one is allowed to speak to the recruits,” he snapped. “They are being well fed. Go back where you came from”.

  Eleni could see Kanta pushed against the schoolhouse wall, her head bouncing off the stone. Across the distance, their eyes embraced over the shoulders of the men who held them apart. Eleni wanted to fight the hands that held her, but it would only make trouble for Kanta. She stayed where she was until the girl rejoined the ranks of the marching women. When Eleni couldn’t stand to watch any longer, she turned away.

  With the weary tread of a beaten woman, she began to retrace her steps over the spine of the mountain range. When she reached the Chapel of St. Nicholas, high above Lia, Eleni went inside. Watched by the dim eyes of the saints on the ancient frescoed walls, she knelt before the altar and talked aloud to St. Nicholas, asking him to bring her daughter home safely, as he brought sailors back to port out of the storm. She promised him, in exchange for her daughter’s return, a can of oil for the chapel’s lamps. It was a solemn oath and one that she would carry to the grave, for she never had time to honor it.

  Even after her death she returned in dreams to those who survived, reminding them of the unpaid debt, but by then the chapel lay in ruins, and there was no way her children could put her soul at peace by fulfilling the vow.

  When Kanta saw her mother driven away, without even a word or touch exchanged, she felt her last tenuous hold on hope give way. The loneliness and exhaustion became worse, and her stomach was swollen with malnutrition. Kanta resigned herself to the fact that she was going to die.

  For the next few days the temperature dropped close to zero and Kanta ached with the cold; one of her two sweaters had been taken from her by the guerrillas because it wasn’t fair for the Amerikana’s daughter to have two when others had none. One night, as she sat outside the schoolhouse with two other girls, huddled around a fire, trying to get some warmth out of one burning log, Kanta looked across the village square to see smoke rising from the chimney of a small stone house. There was warmth there, and perhaps food. The will to live dies hard at fifteen, and Kanta realized that she wanted to survive and that the only one who could save her was she herself.

  She reached for her unloaded rifle and slung it over her shoulder. “Bring your guns and come with me,” she said to the two other girls. “And don’t say anything. Let me do the talking.”

  The two girls, who were both several years older than Kanta, looked at her in surprise, then obeyed. Silently, empty rifles on their shoulders, they crossed the square. Kanta beat on the door of the small house with her rifle butt. A quavering voice from within said, “Who is it?”

  “Open the door,” Kanta ordered.

  “I can’t,” the voice replied.

  Kanta beat louder. “Open the door in the name of the Democratic Army of Greece!” she demanded.

  The door opened a few inches and two eyes peered out. “What do you want, my child?” said the shaky voice, sounding surprised at the sight of the small, fierce girl.

  Kanta put her foot on the door and shoved, holding her rifle in both hands. Inside, she saw to her satisfaction a roaring fire and two nearly identical old women, their white hair covered with black kerchiefs.

  “Have you got any wood, grandmothers?” Kanta snapped, walking in. “We need wood!”

  “Yes, children, take some wood,” said the one who had opened the door. Her sister hurried to gather it from the neat pile by the hearth.

  Kanta felt dizzy as hunger washed over her. “You got bread? Bring us bread!” she ordered. The first old woman disappeared and returned with a round, crusty loaf.

  Heartened by her success, Kanta plunged on. “You got milk? You got potatoes? Bring the milk and throw the potatoes in the fire.”

  “Yes, my girls,” quavered the crone. “Whatever we have is yours.” She made a sign to the other, who tottered away, returning with three potatoes, and placed them on the burning coals. While the young andartinas waited for the potatoes to roast, they drained the bowl of milk. When she couldn’t wait any longer, Kanta signaled for the potatoes to be brought to her and gathered them in her handkerchief. Then, with a sign to her two comrades, she headed for the door. As soon as the andartinas were outside, they heard the bolt being shot into place. By the time they crossed the square, Kanta was doubled over with laughter, while the other two stared at her open-mouthed. “If the guerrillas find out about this, they’ll put us in front of a firing squad!” said one.

  “They won’t find out!” Kanta retorted, with more conviction than she felt.

  They sat down around their fire, and Kanta tore open the handkerchief and stuffed one of the hot potatoes into her mouth. The oldest girl, who was Stavroula Yakou’s sister, looked at her in horror. “You must have gone crazy!” she whispered. “Do you know what you just did?
The same thing that the guerrillas did to our families!”

  But Kanta wasn’t listening, her whole being concentrated on the taste of the plump, charred, half-cooked potato in her hands.

  • • •

  On the eighth day of training in the village of Vatsounia, at the afternoon indoctrination session, all three instructors stood before the recruits and Kanta realized to her surprise that Nikola Paroussis was with them. She hadn’t seen him since the night they walked to Vatsounia. Lieutenant Alekos began to address the women about the guerrilla offensive, which he had been reporting in edited form since their arrival in Vatsounia.

  “You know of the glorious battle we have been waging on two fronts,” he said. “Although General Markos did not take Konitsa, he inflicted great damage on the enemy there; they’re counting their dead in the hundreds. At the same time, the attack of the monarcho-fascists on our own divisions in the foothills below the Mourgana has been totally repulsed, and they have fled back of the Great Ridge with their tails between their legs.” He paused momentously. “Your training period is now nearly at an end,” he went on with pride, “and within days you will be assigned to companies on both fronts. The time has come to separate the wheat from the chaff, to eliminate those among you who lack the strength and commitment to fight beside our brave warriors. The following women will step forward.”

  He looked at a list in his hand and began to read: “Athanassiou, Rano. “Ziarras, Marianthe. Gatzoyiannis, Chryssoula.” Kanta flinched, but it was her cousin who was called. Eight more names. Kanta waited, her mouth dry. Alekos’ eyes ranged over the silent women and stopped at her. “Gatzoyiannis, Alexandra.”

  Slowly Kanta stood up and joined the row of frightened girls. Alekos looked at them for a moment with distaste. “Get your things, you’re going now,” he ordered. Seeing their faces, he added, “You’re to leave. Go home!”

  Kanta realized that her mouth was open and abruptly shut it. She tried to think what to do. This must be a new kind of test, and failing it could be fatal.

  “We don’t want to go!” she said quickly. “We want to fight! We want to help liberate our country.” The other girls joined in, chorusing their devotion to the cause.

  Alekos looked at Kanta accusingly. “You’re too young, too weak! You can’t handle a gun properly. In a battle like Konitsa, your incompetence could cost a comrade’s life.”

  “I’ll do better!” Kanta pleaded. Then she saw Nikola Paroussis standing directly behind Alekos. He caught her eye and moved his head sideways, pressing his lips together. He was telling her not to argue, but to shut up and go while she had the chance.

  Kanta began to tremble. Was it possible that she was really being set free, just like that? Then she realized that Alekos was still talking to her. “Maybe next year, when you’re older,” he was saying, more kindly. “From today, you’ll be in the reserves, and if the army needs you, you’ll be called back. But for now, you’re too young to fight.”

  “I don’t want to go!” cried Chryssoula Gatzoyiannis suddenly. “I want to fight with my comrades.” Kanta turned to stare at her cousin. She knew that Chryssoula, just seventeen and emaciated, was as miserable as she was. She tried to catch her eye, to tell her it wasn’t a trap; she should go quickly. But Chryssoula was looking beseechingly at Alekos. “I won’t go home!” she insisted. “Please give me another chance!”

  He shrugged. “As you wish.” Chryssoula returned to the ranks of the sitting women.

  “I’m not too young,” Rano said with a challenge in her voice. “Why are you sending me home?”

  Alekos glared. “We know where your family’s sympathies lie!” he shouted. “You pretend to be with us, but you’re black inside. We don’t want any fifth columnists in the Democratic Army. You’re more dangerous than the ones who are weak and inexperienced.”

  Rano bit her lip and said nothing. Frightened by his anger, still afraid it was a trap, the women who had been eliminated handed over their rifles to Frixos and headed back to the schoolhouse to change into the dresses they had arrived in. Before they set out for Lia, Kanta took her cousin Chryssoula aside. “Why on earth aren’t you going with us?” she whispered. “This is your chance to save yourself!”

  Chryssoula looked away. “If I went home, I’d only be another mouth for my mother to feed,” she replied. “But if I stay here and convince them I’m loyal, then my family may get better treatment from the andartes back in the village.”

  Kanta stared at her, realizing that she was right, and her joy gave way to guilt. Perhaps it was her duty, too, to stay an andartina, to improve her family’s poor standing with the Communists. But then she remembered the corn mush and the unwashed tin plate, the fear, exhaustion and humiliation, and she knew she couldn’t do it. She wanted her mother too much. She gave her cousin a quick kiss and turned away. Chryssoula Gatzoyiannis was killed in battle six months later.

  Eleni was kneeling on the bank of the washing pond, beating some wet clothes, when she heard a shout from below and saw her neighbor Marina Kolliou running toward her, waving her arms. “Quick, Eleni!” she cried. “Some of the andartinas are coming over the mountain!”

  Eleni left the washing where it lay and ran up the ravine until she could see the path winding down between the peaks of the Prophet Elias and Kastro. She could make out about a dozen figures, too far away to identify. Pushing her way through the underbrush, she hurried up toward the plateau where the village danced on the Prophet’s feast day. As she entered one side of the flat area, the girls were just arriving at the opposite edge of the clearing. Splashing through the small, icy stream that divided them, Eleni ran, her kerchief flying off her hair, her arms reaching out until she held her daughter.

  All the way down to the house, Eleni kept touching Kanta’s face in disbelief, wiping away the girl’s tears while her own flowed unnoticed.

  Kanta emerged from her guerrilla training even more high-strung than she had been before. Despite her sisters’ questions, she refused to tell what had happened to her during those weeks. But Olga noticed that some of the other returned andartinas had changed in a different way, including her best friend Rano. While Olga still hid in the house, emerging only with her kerchief wrapped around her face, Rano wore hers daringly back on her hair and moved about the neighborhood with a new assurance, even exchanging greetings with some of the guerrillas she passed on the road. If Olga didn’t know Rano so well, she would suspect that she was flirting.

  One day she saw Rano coming out of her gate, her red cheeks glowing, her hair carefully combed, wearing her best dress. She was off to the guerrilla’s commissary, she said, with a bowl of eggs that her sister Tassina had given her, to see if she could coax the guerrillas into exchanging them for soap to bathe the babies.

  Sometime later Olga was sitting in the Gatzoyiannis kitchen with her mother, Megali, Nitsa and the two closest neighbors—Anastasia Yakou and Marina Kolliou—gossiping over glasses of mountain tea, when Rano burst in, clearly upset. “Aunt Eleni,” she whispered, “could I have a word with you?” As the other women exchanged glances, Eleni followed her into the garden.

  When they were out of earshot, Rano told Eleni what she had overheard just as she was about to knock on the door of the commissary: the voice of Hanjaras, the quartermaster, shouting over one of the field telephones. “Yes, sir, I’ll see to it right away,” she heard him say. “Tonight, if you want. We’ll turn the Amerikana’s house inside out.”

  “The minute I heard that, I started running,” said Rano, still holding the bowl of eggs. “Before they come, you can hide whatever you want in our house. As soon as you have a chance, wrap everything up and throw it over the fence into our garden. I’ll put it under my father’s mattress, where they’ll never think of looking for it, not with him lying on top of it.”

  Immediately Eleni thought of Olga’s dowry, the most valuable thing the family possessed. If the guerrillas took the rugs, blankets and linens she had bought with the last money Christos s
ent her, Olga would never find a groom. There were also some fine American suits and shirts Christos had left behind. Eleni hugged Rano and agreed to give her the things as soon as her visitors left. When she returned to the kitchen, her mother asked sharply, “What did Rano tell you to make you turn so white?”

  Eleni repeated what Rano had told her, and Marina Kolliou stood up nervously. “If they’re searching your house,” she said, “they may search ours too. I’ll warn my mother and hide some things.”

  Anastasia Yakou took the news more calmly; she had nothing of value to tempt the guerrillas, anyway. But she left to go down to her house and found her daughter there, come to complain, as usual, about the tyranny of her mother-in-law. Anastasia swore Stavroula to secrecy, then told her what had just taken place in the Gatzoyiannis kitchen. Stavroula shrugged. “If you ask me,” she said, “the Amerikana has been the luckiest woman in the village. Her husband’s not fighting, the way mine is. She managed to keep Olga out of the andartinas by a trick and got Kanta released while my sister’s still in there—and now she’s got the neighbors to hide Olga’s dowry!”

  “Bite your tongue,” Anastasia scolded. “That’s jealousy talking! Hasn’t Eleni always been the kindest woman to us in the whole neighborhood? Didn’t Olga embroider your wedding breads and Nikola sit on your dowry chest? Why are you begrudging them a little luck?”

  Stavroula didn’t answer. Since her marriage had proved a disappointment and her baby son died, the privileges of the Amerikana, denied to poor families like her own, had begun to rankle in her heart. With the Communists promising a new order that would eliminate privilege, Stavroula intended to make up for her bad luck in the past. Although her husband was fighting with the national forces, Stavroula believed the guerrilla propaganda. The old order was going to be overturned, and she was determined to be on the winning side. She had been the poorest girl in the village, but she had beauty and intelligence and intended to use them to become the most influential woman.