Eleni

by Nicholas Gage

  Accompanied by Kitso and Andreas, the family left Filiates behind, traveling by bus to Igoumenitsa, on the west coast, just across from Corfu. They were luckier than most refugee families; because of the number of people in the group, they were lodged on the top floor of an unfinished house that was being built for civil servants. The rooms were bare, the walls unplastered. A spiral metal outside staircase led precariously up from the ground floor, where another family of refugees was living.

  In their new quarters there was a small room which the children were told would be a bathroom. They surveyed the mysterious pipes and the hole in the floor for an indoor toilet, exclaiming at the thought of having such an unsanitary fixture right inside the house. They were glad that it had not yet been installed and made do with a small drainage ditch outside the house that filtered down toward the sea.

  The children felt more at home in Igoumenitsa than they had in the winding cobbled streets of Filiates. The town was built on a steeply rising cove of land cupped around a natural harbor, and their house was high on the hill. It was like being back in the Perivoli, with the world falling away below them, only now their vista stretched down not to the valleys and foothills far below but toward a shining immensity which was the sea.

  As soon as they were settled, Nitsa went, at the insistence of her mother, to visit the doctor who was treating the refugees. Nitsa was now huge with child and she had never been examined during her pregnancy. The pinch-faced medical student had seen many ailments among the refugees—malnutrition, goiter, rickets and tuberculosis were the most common—but when he examined Nitsa he was nonplused. He had read about hysterical pregnancies in women who wanted a baby so much that their bodies imitated every symptom right down to the labor pains in the ninth month. Patiently he tried to explain to Nitsa that she wasn’t pregnant at all; there was nothing in her stomach. Once she accepted that fact, the swelling would disappear. But Nitsa looked at him as if he were speaking Chinese. Finally, rolling his eyes in exasperation, he shouted, “There’s nothing in there but wind! It’s a wind pregnancy!”

  Nitsa’s face lit up with comprehension and she crossed herself. “The wind!” she said. “And me a decent, God-fearing woman!” The doctor shook his head as she hurried off.

  Nitsa returned to the house in great excitement, saying that the children must go search in the woods and fields at once and find her a tortoise. Bewildered, they did as she told them, and Fotini soon returned with a large hissing specimen that peered balefully from its tessellated mud-colored shell. Nitsa mercilessly threw the tortoise into a pot of water boiling on the kerosene stove, and when it was cooked, wrenched open the shell and began to devour the meat.

  “It’s the only counterspell to the daouti,” she explained to the wide-eyed children. “The doctor said it was the wind that got me with child, but I know it was the Shadowy One. I must have fallen asleep when I waited for the candle to burn all the way around the church, and the monster saw me and was aroused by my beauty. Thank God I found out in time! Imagine giving birth to a child with cleft hoofs and the horns of a ram!” She sliced the slippery flesh into pieces as the children watched queasily. “Not a word of this to Andreas!” she whispered. “He’d say I did something to encourage the Evil One, but no one is safe from him. I’ve seen it happen to sheep and goats, and the poor animals swell up within days.” She finished the tortoise meat and waddled off to a local witch to buy a charm containing dog’s droppings and a dried snake’s head. That night Nitsa went to sleep early, and the next morning her abdomen had already begun to deflate, like a balloon punctured by a pin. When, within a day or two, Andreas asked in bewilderment what had happened to the miraculous pregnancy, Nitsa blushed and said it had been no more than the result of having nothing to eat in the village but beans. “You know what they say,” she told him. “He who eats beans bears witness to beans!”

  On one of the first days after the family was settled in Igoumenitsa, Nikola decided to explore. He wandered down below the house where soldiers were putting up corrugated-iron Quonset huts to house the increasing number of refugees. Then he followed the path past the small wooded area which he had chosen as his new “thinking place.” Continuing down the hill, the boy found himself at the harborside, which was bustling with the arrival and departure of small motor-driven caïques and flat, bargelike ferryboats plying the route from Igoumenitsa to Corfu and Brindisi, Italy. The vastness of the sea left him silent with awe; he had never imagined such an infinity of water. He walked to the edge of the dock and looked down into the dirty green depths where schools of small silvery fish flickered.

  Nikola fingered the 10-drachma coin in his pocket that his grandfather had given him and began to walk west along the harborside. He crossed the road to the shops that lined it and stood mesmerized in front of one which bore the legend “Patisserie.” In the window were huge trays of pastries cut into neat squares and diamonds; one tray was enough to feed the entire population of Lia. They were the traditional honey-drenched sweets made of hundreds of leaves of crisp golden fyllo pastry layered with ground nuts, thick sweet cream and custard, sprinkled with cinnamon, bristling with shredded coconut. The tray that caught the boy’s eye held reveni a heavy confection like a pound cake, doused in honey. He felt for the silver coin in his pocket, then went in and managed to negotiate the purchase of one square of reveni wrapped in a piece of greased paper.

  Stuffing the cake into his mouth, Nikola walked along the harborside toward the west, enjoying the sense of being a city dweller. He left the commercial area as the road turned into a shady avenue bordered by spreading plane trees which came together over his head like the roof of a cathedral.

  Proud of his success in navigating the metropolis, Nikola continued along the road. The sea, now lapping against a sandy beach, winked at him between the trees. He saw people playing on the beach and went closer to investigate. A number of teen-aged boys, wearing colored shorts which Nikola imagined to be the underwear of city dwellers, were splashing in the waves, throwing rubber balls to one another. He crept down onto the warm sand and saw people moving through the water by churning their arms. He remembered his attempts to build a swimming pool. If only his mother were here now to see that the reports his father had given were true! These people were swimming and Nikola decided to do the same. He shed his muslin shirt and his short trousers with the suspenders, standing in the undershorts that his mother had knitted for him. The older boys laughed at the figure he made, but he ignored them and plunged into the water.

  It was a cool, sensuous embrace, cleansing him of the dirt and heat. Nikola pushed on until the water was up to his chin. He saw a boy near him dive into an oncoming wave and begin swimming. It looked easy—the water must buoy him up like a rubber ball, he reasoned. Nikola imitated the older boy and threw himself headfirst into the green, glassy sheet. Suddenly he was sinking to the bottom, fighting the heaviness that dragged his limbs down. Burning water filled his nose and throat. He couldn’t find the surface and flailed about, knowing he was lost. As he opened his mouth to cry out, the vile liquid poured into his stomach and lungs and he began to lose consciousness. Suddenly his head popped above water and before the next wave slapped him under, he managed to scream: “Mana!”

  Eleni started out of her dream, finding herself sitting up on the pallet, drenched with sweat. She had heard Nikola calling her and knew he was in danger. Sometime later that afternoon Athena Haramopoulos, a neighbor from the Perivoli, passed by the Haidis gate and found her sitting on the threshold, weeping.

  “Come now,” said Athena kindly. “All that time you were in the jail you didn’t cry, and now that they’ve let you go you’re carrying on like this!”

  “I dozed off,” Eleni murmured, “and my little Fotini came to me with her hair all tangled and unbraided. Then I saw Nikolaki calling to me in fear. And just now I realized that today is his birthday. He’s nine years old!”

  “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself!” Athena scolded. “Go and fi
nd him! Just follow that path and go.”

  Eleni shook her head and explained that she had to wait for Glykeria. Athena leaned forward and put her hand on Eleni’s knee. “You can’t wait, Eleni,” she whispered. “They’re killing our own people now, like Easter lambs! Last night they killed Antonova Paroussis from Babouri behind your house. Everyone in the Perivoli heard her screaming.”

  Eleni’s face turned ashen as Athena told her what nearly everyone else in Lia already knew. Nine days before, Eleni’s fiery young cousin had been sentenced at a public trial in the churchyard of Babouri, watched by the whole village, including Antonova’s husband and young children. She was accused of spreading defiance among the mothers of Babouri, convincing them not to send their children with the pedomasoma.

  Antonova’s wealth and position, her Communist sympathies and sharp tongue were no longer enough to protect her from the consequences of her defiance. She was sentenced to death and told that she would be held in Lia’s prison for three weeks to await a decision on an appeal to General Markos for clemency. Her grieving husband had to sign a paper acknowledging her guilt and begging for mercy. She was dragged forcibly up to the cellar of the Gatzoyiannis house, her best blue American-made suit filthy with mud, her fine chestnut hair in disarray as she fought her captors and screamed with every step, “People! My people! What have I ever done to you? Why are you killing me? Have pity on my children!”

  After only nine days, long before her family could have received Markos’ reply, Antonova was taken out of the cellar at night and made to stand in a grave dug in back of the Gatzoyiannis house. Marina Kolliou had seen many such nighttime executions. Her eyes had become accustomed to deciphering the shadows below, and she would stand at the window watching, memorizing everything she saw. Marina Kolliou appointed herself the sexton of the unmarked graveyard around the prison. Many years later, the aged grandmother with a face like a skull would direct strangers and villagers to the exact spot where they would find the bones they were hunting.

  Ten years after her death, Antonova’s husband and children identified the buttons of her suit and her gold teeth. Marina said she saw many executions, but she never again heard screams like those of Antonova Paroussis on the night she realized that the guerrillas who had been her comrades really were going to kill her.

  For hours after Athena Haramopoulos left her, Eleni sat on her step pondering Antonova’s death. Her warning to her cousin had come true: Antonova had made herself too conspicuous and the guerrillas were forced to make her a scapegoat. Now the children she had refused to give up would be sent away to Albania, carrying the memory of their mother’s face at her trial as her own townspeople testified against her and her husband stood by in silence. Eleni mourned her friend’s bravery and her futile death. Antonova had lost her life and her children’s freedom as well, but, Eleni consoled herself, four of her own children were safely out of reach. And unlike Antonova, she could not be charged with ever speaking a word in public against the guerrillas.

  After Antonova’s execution, the number of villagers willing to greet Eleni on the path dwindled rapidly, especially when word got around that the security police were following her to find co-conspirators.

  Soula Botsaris, whose house was used as a bakery by the guerrillas, was warned one day by Christos Zeltas, the burly head of the secret police, “Be careful of the Amerikana. Observe her carefully. Tell us where she goes and whom she talks to. There’s an organized conspiracy in the village and more are going to try to leave. They’re watching her to see who else is in it.”

  Soula nervously thought of the time she had lent Eleni some salt. She hurried down to see Tassina Bartzokis, who had been Eleni’s next-door neighbor and close friend. “If you should see Eleni coming up here, tell her to turn back,” Soula implored her. “Even though she means no harm, they’ll use her visit against us.”

  Eleni also remembered the favor of the salt, and one day in late July, having picked more beans than she could possibly use for herself, she set out for her old neighborhood to take some to Soula Botsaris in return for her charity. As Eleni passed the old washing pond above her house, Tassina saw her and began walking along beside her, speaking under her breath. “How are you?” she asked uneasily.

  “As you would expect,” Eleni replied. “I’m taking Soula some beans for her children.”

  Tassina looked nervously about and whispered what Soula had said. “It’s better for you to go back home, Eleni, and not to visit her,” she urged.

  “Thank God you told me,” Eleni said sadly. “I didn’t mean to do her harm. Here, you take the beans for your children. I won’t come up again.”

  Tassina hesitated, torn between her fear of being implicated and her need for food to give her family. She was silent for a moment, then said, looking rather shamefaced, “Perhaps you’d better walk by the other side of the house and throw the bag into the courtyard as you pass. I’d rather not be seen taking anything from you.”

  Tassina remembers that Eleni turned away without a word. When Tassina returned home she found the sack of beans lying in her yard. She picked it up with a mixture of relief and guilt and never spoke to Eleni again.

  As Eleni walked about the village, avoiding former friends and neighbors for fear that she might do them harm, watching women she had known all her life turn away from her, she was struck by the irony of her position. She had always scrupulously obeyed the rules of village behavior while secretly feeling like an outsider. Now she couldn’t leave, and she was stunned by the hostility that surrounded her. Perhaps she really was an alien and everyone had realized it at last. She was reminded of the baby chicks, dyed a brilliant scarlet, which were sometimes sold by traveling peddlers during the Easter season to amuse children. They rarely survived for more than a few days unless they were kept isolated in a cage, because the ordinary fowl, outraged at their unconventional plumage, would peck the bewildered fledglings to death.

  Nikola was pulled out of the sea by one of the boys who had laughed at his hand-knit underwear. They held him upside down and shook him, then kneaded his stomach. When he finished retching and lay embarrassed on the sand, he looked up at his rescuers, and for lack of anything else to say, murmured, “Why does the water taste so bad?” They shouted with laughter. “Because it’s salt, bumpkin!” one of the boys exclaimed. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you the sea is salt?”

  Chastened, Nikola got dressed and headed back up the hill toward the unfinished house, determined not to tell anyone about his near-drowning. He had imagined that swimming would be as natural and pleasant as flying is to a bird, but now he had acquired a fear of the ocean that he would never quite conquer.

  He returned to find the family in great excitement. “Where have you been?” Olga scolded. “We have to go at once to the refugee office! They’re going to give us a relief payment.”

  The bureaucrat who handed each member of the family 150 drachmas picked his ears with the clawlike nail of his little finger and delivered a lecture as he put the paper money in Nikola’s hand. “This is yours, and you can spend it any way you want,” he announced, “but you must buy something sensible that you need—food or clothing.”

  Nikola nodded solemnly. He was quickly calculating in his head: with 150 drachmas he could buy fifteen pieces of reveni or several of the rubber balls the boys had been playing with, or some more school books or several pairs of stockings. But what he really wanted was something to take the taste of the sea water out of his mouth. As soon as he could, he returned to the waterfront, clutching the fortune in his hand. He stood for a long time in front of the shop window full of pastries before finally moving on to a candy store nearby where a huge box of white, sugary cubes of loukoumi—Turkish delight—caught his eye. The box cost nearly 100 drachmas.

  Nikola bought the whole box and carried it to the tree stump in his secret thinking place. One cube at a time, he ate the loukoumi: the sweetest of all confections, the synonym for feminine beauty; a gelatinous, ch
ewy candy, crunchy with chopped almonds, covered in thick snowdrifts of confectioners’ sugar. Each melting bite seemed to mask the bitter salt-bile taste of the sea and lessen the emptiness inside him. But then he stopped and the acrid taste of salt and the hollow ache of loneliness returned. He wished he were back in his house in the Perivoli with his mother. But no one had loukoumi in Lia. He reached for another piece.

  Eventually, as the sun was beginning to set, his uncle Andreas found Nikola sitting on the ground, leaning against the stump, clutching his stomach. The empty loukoumi box told its own story. Gently Andreas carried the boy back to the house. After Nikola was repeatedly dosed with camomile tea and began to think he might survive, his sisters scolded him for squandering his relief money on a box of candy. Then they laughed at his prank and wrote about it to his father, who sent back a letter of stern reproach to his son for his irresponsibility. The boy was abject; he desperately wanted to please the father he had never seen, and now he had made him angry. Nikola spent more and more time down by the tree stump brooding and nursing his loneliness.

  By the end of July, Eleni, Alexo and Marianthe had been free for nearly a month, but the guerrillas shadowing them had not found a shred of evidence that they were conspiring with one another or meeting with fascists from the other side. Sotiris could feel the noose tightening around his neck and redoubled his efforts to justify his conspiracy theory by calling in more informants from the village. There was no lack of women willing to give testimony against the Amerikana. They resented seeing Eleni walking about the village alive and well after her whole family had succeeded in slipping through the guerrillas’ fingers. She had always had privileges and an easy life, the village women muttered, and it was time she was toppled from her high horse.