Eleni

by Nicholas Gage

  Eleni didn’t reply. Like the others, she turned away from Nakova and hurried home. That night she woke up several times and reached out in the darkness to make sure Nikola was still there on the pallet beside her.

  My mother returned from the meeting in the church white-lipped with anger. She paced up and down, cursing the two women who had handed over their children, “as if they were kittens,” she kept saying in wonder. I studied her, trying to read my own fate, and finally she saw my expression. She leaned over and took my face in her hands. “Some women are sending their children away to Albania because they don’t have enough food to give them,” she said to me, “and because they are fools!”

  My mother loved me, I knew, and she was no fool, but I also knew that there wasn’t enough food in our house. The threat of being separated from her and my sisters frightened me so much that I resolved to minimize the danger by eating less, as little as I possibly could.

  For as long as I could remember I had been hungry, but now my bones began to grow too fast for my skin, which would crack at the joints, bleeding. I woke at night feeling pains in my legs and the hollow ache of hunger, almost indistinguishable from fear, in my belly. When my mother put food on the table I tried not to look at it, to pretend it wasn’t there, but even when I closed my eyes I could see it.

  My clearest memory from that period is the day of the marmalade. Realizing that reasoning with the mothers wouldn’t make them give up their children, the guerrillas decided to try a more primal appeal. We were called together—women and children—in the flat field near a mill on the eastern side of the ravine. I hid behind my mother, peeking out at the proceedings. A guerrilla and the tinker Elia Poulos stood in front of us. Next to them, in a row, were the dozen or so village children who had been volunteered for the pedomasoma by their parents. They were all dressed in clean new clothes and, I noticed with surprise, they were all wearing shoes.

  There was a table in front of the guerrilla, with a great crusty loaf of bread that seemed as big as a mill wheel, and a two-liter can. The guerrilla opened the lid and air whooshed out with a delicious odor like an orchard of pomegranate trees. He dipped in with a large spoon and brought out a scoop of marmalade, gleaming golden brown in the sun, the color of the finest honey.

  What we called “marmalade” was a rich, viscous sweet made of wild fruits or berries cooked with sugar until it was so thick it could be cut like butter. I watched him scooping out great hunks of the stuff and spreading it on slabs of the bread—white bread—nearly an inch thick with marmalade. I had never seen so much marmalade. Before the revolution, we sometimes bought tiny cans of it from the general store, but since the guerrillas came, none of us had tasted any sweet, not even sugar or honey.

  When the guerrilla dipped down for a fat scoop of marmalade and let it ooze back, my mouth flooded with saliva and I unconsciously stepped from behind my mother to get a closer look. With the ceremonious gestures of a priest, the guerrilla cut large wedges of the bread and slathered them so generously with the marmalade that some dripped onto the ground, bringing tears to my eyes. He presented each of the well-dressed children in front of him with a piece of bread, which they devoured like animals, spreading marmalade all over their faces up to their ears and soiling their fine new clothes.

  “You see, mothers of Lia!” the guerrilla shouted. “If you send your children to the people’s democracies, they will eat like this every day! And any child who steps forward at this moment to join the rest will be given as much bread and marmalade as he or she can eat. Here it is for the taking!”

  Mesmerized, I took another step forward, filling my eyes with the sight of the snowy bread dripping with the glossy, seed-speckled marmalade, so thick that it dripped over the side of each slice onto the deep golden crust. I took one more step and was brought up short by my mother’s hands gripping my shoulders and jerking me sharply back against her. When I realized what I had almost done, I was frightened and mortified. The hollow pain under my ribs, where the hunger was, began to spread through my body to my arms, legs and heart.

  More than thirty years later I had dinner with an Athenian couple, two former children from Lia about the same age as myself, who were taken that summer in the pedomasoma, first into Albania, then to Rumania, where they grew up, married, then returned to Greece ten years after they left.

  They never saw marmalade like that again, they told me, as they began reminiscing. In the barracks in Albania, they survived mostly on soup made of leeks and on raw dandelion greens, which they scavenged from nearby fields. Their “play” was devising races with their body lice on the barracks floor. But things improved when they were moved on to Rumania a year later, they said, for it was there, in their dormitory, that the matrons set up the first Christmas tree they had ever seen. Their faces, now middle-aged and well-fed, lit up at the memory of that vision. On the wonderful tree were hung bright, paper-wrapped candies, one for each child.

  As the guerrillas increased pressure on the women of the Mourgana to give up their children, Eleni decided to go to Babouri to find out how the women there were reacting to the pedomasoma. She set out alone to visit Antonova Paroussis, the wife of her husband’s cousin, who was known to be a strong supporter of the Communists.

  Although the two women were almost opposites in temperament, Eleni had always liked the outspoken young woman. It was her affection for Antonova that had made Eleni consent to her pleas to hide Nikola Paroussis and the other ELAS guerrilla in her house just after the occupation.

  Despite their different personalities, Eleni and Antonova had much in common. They were both married to men considerably older than themselves who had made their money in America. Antonova’s husband spent more than a decade working in the factories of Worcester, Massachusetts, before he came back to Babouri in 1932 and married the high-spirited sixteen-year-old girl who was famous for her sharp tongue, fine complexion and the kind of large-boned, buxom figure that was considered the epitome of feminine beauty.

  Paroussis was one of the wealthiest men in Babouri, having converted most of his American savings into gold sovereigns and real estate, and like Eleni in Lia, his wife found herself the mistress of the largest house in the village, envied by all her friends. But unlike Eleni, Antonova was able to take advantage of her husband’s indulgent nature and weak health to do exactly as she pleased, and she soon gained a reputation as a firebrand. During the occupation Antonova was so moved by the ELAS speeches that she took up a gun and joined the guerrillas in the battle of Lista, an adventure that scandalized the villagers of Babouri. “Imagine a married woman with three small children going off to fight with men while her husband sits home!” the women whispered. Antonova took no notice of what anyone said about her and no one dared criticize her to her face, including her husband.

  Eleni knew that Antonova was sympathetic to the guerrillas, so she was surprised to hear her friend nearly stuttering with indignation about the pedomasoma. “It’s unbelievable, asking us to give up our children!” the young woman fumed. “When I heard that, I tell you, Eleni, I parted company with them. I’m turning from red to black!”

  Antonova was not shy about using her influence to sway village opinion. She told Eleni that she had warned the women of Babouri, “‘The first mother who hands over her children will have to deal with me personally.’” She added, “We have to present a united front. We have to tell them with one voice to go to hell!”

  Eleni looked around nervously to see if anyone had heard this outburst. She admired her friend for her defiance, but she knew that Antonova’s outspokenness was likely to get her into trouble. She thought again of the woman and girl Kanta had found lying in the ravine.

  “Hush, cousin, someone will hear you!” Eleni whispered. “You mustn’t go around the village talking this way.” She looked at Antonova’s flushed face and wondered how she could make her understand. “Think what pheasants do if a fox approaches their nest,” Eleni said. “The male puffs up his bright fea
thers until he looks twice his size, and screams at the fox. The female, the color of dried grass, gathers her chicks and slips away. Which one is more likely to survive?”

  Antonova looked at her without comprehension.

  “God gave us brains to measure danger and choose the best way of surviving,” Eleni elaborated. “If we’re cornered, there’s no choice but to give in, but the guerrillas say their program is voluntary. Let each mother make her own choice! Your first responsibility is to your own children. If you stand up and speak against the program, the guerrillas can say you’re betraying the cause, and make an example of you. That would leave your children helpless and frighten the other mothers into submitting.”

  Antonova tossed her black braids. “The guerrillas know I’m not a fascist,” she insisted. “Didn’t I fight like a man at Lista? Haven’t I turned over half my house to them? I’ve been as loyal to the cause as any woman in Babouri, but this is an insane idea and somebody’s got to tell them!”

  Eleni left Babouri disturbed by her cousin’s words. She hoped that Antonova’s protest would have an impact on the guerrillas, but she was afraid it would only harden them. For herself, she would not risk speaking out publicly against the pedomasoma. There were too many people in Lia who would use her words as a weapon against her. But Eleni knew she could no more give up any of her children than cut out her own heart. She prayed the guerrillas would be satisfied with the number who had been proffered for the pedomasoma so far and leave the rest alone.

  Despite house-to-house visits by the propaganda representatives of the guerrillas, only a dozen children from Lia had been volunteered for the relocation program by the end of April. This was an embarrassment to the political officers of the DAG, and when the central committee looked at the number of children signed up from the Mourgana villages, it would be even more embarrassing to Kostas Koliyiannis, the political commissar for the Epiros Command, who had the ultimate responsibility for ensuring the cooperation of the civilians.

  One day while the rest of the family was in the house for the afternoon siesta, Nikola went out to his secret sanctuary, the bean field below the Haidis house. He loved to lie on his back on the warm red earth, alone among the even rows of broad beans spiraling up the poles toward the sky, imagining himself in a silent forest. All around he could hear the tranquil sounds of the village, the braying of a donkey, the complaints of his grandmother’s rooster, the hollow music of the goats’ bells high above on the mountainside. The yellow-green walls of the bean rows seemed to set him apart as he drowsily gazed up at the sky, watching a hawk soaring, clouds melting from one shape to another. Since the coming of the guerrillas ended his two years of schooling, Nikola found himself brimming with questions, but whenever he asked adults, they became impatient and shooed him away. How did God tell a bean to grow into a bean plant and not a squash vine? How did the plant know when to stop reaching toward the sun and sprout beans? Why were the cocky blue-and-yellow wagtails too clever to enter his traps, while the crows were not? Nikola lay very still, imagining that if he was quiet enough, he could hear the beans growing.

  He was beginning to doze off under the caress of the sun when he heard the sound of horses. He could tell the difference between a horse and a mule by the hoofbeats, and horses were rare in the village. Nikola peered between the bean rows and saw two shapes approaching from the direction of the square, following the path that ran across the bottom of the bean field, only yards from where he lay.

  As the riders came closer, he recognized one as Sotiris Drapetis, the cold-eyed intelligence officer who had evicted them from their house. The other man was a stranger, but Nikola could tell by the deferential way Sotiris was listening that it must be an officer of importance, probably from the guerrillas’ headquarters in Babouri.

  The boy rose to his knees to follow the progress of the two men as they passed just below him, only yards away but shielded by the bean rows. The officer seemed to be scolding Sotiris. “A dozen children from Lia is simply not acceptable,” he was saying. “The success of this program is of the highest priority! Not only are the party leaders fully committed to it, but the prestige of all the countries in the Eastern bloc is at stake.”

  Nikola began creeping along his bean row, keeping his head down, hurrying. It seemed vital to hear what they were saying.

  “We’ve tried everything, even holding food under their noses as an incentive,” Sotiris replied. “But these are ignorant peasant woman. They won’t listen to reason. Even if they were drowning, they wouldn’t let go of their children.”

  “Whether they want to give up their children or not is irrelevant,” snapped the officer. “They’re going to give them. And it’s up to you to make them, no matter what you have to do.”

  Nikola stopped before the end of the bean field and threw himself down on the musky earth. The officer’s words were the confirmation of the nightmare that had been haunting him. They were going to take him away by force.

  When the sound of the horses’ hoofs faded away, Nikola began running toward the house, the dirt rising in puffs under his feet. Even before he was inside he was crying: “Mana! Mana!” Eleni sat up from her pallet, startled.

  “They’re going to take me, Mana,” he cried, throwing himself into her arms. “I heard them! They’re going to take me whether you give me or not!”

  It took her a while to calm him down enough so that she could understand what he was telling her. He was clutching her, his head burrowed against her breast, repeating the same words over and over. When Eleni finally understood what Nikola had overheard from the two men on horseback, she knew her prayers had failed. It was what she had dreaded from the moment of the gathering in the church. She had tried every way she knew to appease the guerrillas and keep her family intact, but now she understood that they were going to be destroyed. She could no longer yield, but had to defy them.

  Eleni put her cheek on the boy’s head as she held him to her and there was resolution in her eyes.

  “Quiet, my soul,” she said. “Forget about what you heard. You mustn’t be afraid; no one’s ever going to take you away from me.”

  She pulled him deeper into her embrace and spread the fingers of her hands, covering his shoulders and the back of his head as if trying to shield him from invisible blows.

  Although the guerrillas had managed to repell two major attacks on the Mourgana, they were vastly outnumbered by the nationalist troops in both men and arms, and their success couldn’t continue much longer.

  After failing twice to take the “citadel” of the Mourgana, the Greek army turned its attention to the guerrillas in the mountains of central Greece, who had no Communist country at their rear to supply them. On April 15, 1948, the government forces launched Operation Dawn on the spine of mountains dividing the trunk of mainland Greece. Aided by a freak snowstorm, three successive waves of soldiers battered the insurgents. Government squadrons of LOK mountain commandos were reinforced by regular units who traveled at night to launch surprise assaults at sunrise, catching the guerrillas off guard.

  The 2,500 rebels in the mountains of central Greece were outnumbered five to one. After a month Operation Dawn ended in defeat for the DAG, with 1,300 insurgents captured, another 650 killed, and the rest retreating toward the main guerrilla base in the Grammos mountains.

  Operation Dawn was a turning point in the war. The battered Communist leadership began to consider a negotiated settlement. On May 31, the provisional government of Markos Vafiadis broadcast a call for a cease-fire through the rebel radio in Belgrade. While still denouncing “foreign imperialists and Greek traitors,” the Communists declared themselves ready “to accept and encourage any initiative which would help Greece return to a state of peace.”

  But Nikos Zachariadis, the volcanic secretary general of the Greek Communist Party, did not appear to agree with his commander in chief. When an emissary from Athens arrived in the Grammos mountains, Zachariadis announced, “We will not entertain discussion
s until the members of the Athens government are put on trial as war criminals.”

  The Greek prime minister, eighty-eight-year-old Themistocles Sofoulis, wanted to know who was speaking the true feelings of the rebels—Zachariadis or General Markos—and decided to use the explosive issue of the pedomasoma as a test. He sent a telegram to the governments of Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia, demanding the repatriation of all Greek children taken so far from the occupied villages.

  “This is … a certain way of learning the intentions of the Soviet Union’s satellites, as well as testing the sincerity of Markos’ proposals,” Sofoulis said. “If the various governments reject the Greek demand or, indeed, do not reply at all, that will mean that they did not intend to restore relations with Greece, and that Markos’ proposals are nothing more than propaganda tricks without any meaning.”

  Within a week, both Poland and Hungary turned down his request. The gathering of children, which had begun as a propaganda ploy, had become a political hot potato, and in order to save face and prove to the world that the people of Greek mountain villages were, in fact, eager to send their children behind the Iron Curtain, the guerrillas set about with new urgency to collect greater numbers of children for the pedomasoma.

  THE CONVERSATION OVERHEARD by an eight-year-old boy hidden in a bean field on an April afternoon in 1948 would change the lives of everyone in the Gatzoyiannis family forever. As Eleni tried to calm her son with soothing words, she realized she was at the crossroads she had been trying to avoid for so long.

  However grim the circumstances, it is a reflex of human nature to believe in one’s own survival no matter how many others die. “If I just keep quiet, do what they say and don’t make myself conspicuous, then they’ll let me live another day,” thinks the inmate of the ghetto, concentration camp or occupied village. “This can’t last forever.”