The Lace Tablecloth

by Anastasia Gessa-Liveriadis

  On Monday afternoon she sat in her usual place in front of her open window, knitting and taking in the beautiful evening. That’s what she always did this time of day, and not because she was curious to see who was crossing the street. Then she saw George coming and her heart thumped while her whole body tensed. But she didn’t have the courage to stick her head out the window to see which way he was going. In any case, she didn’t care and it was none of her business what George was doing and why he was in her street. Maybe he had moved house and was now living around here. Or maybe he was going to a meeting with people of his own persuasion: perhaps communists who had lately stopped meeting in public places or marching on the streets waving red flags.

  Aliki — no longer wearing the provocative red kerchief but a black one — passed the tap with her head bent low.

  ‘They’ve arrested Tasos, her first cousin, a well known communist leader, and sentenced him to death. He was married to a girl from Grevena and lived there in his wife’s house. All members of his wife’s family were in hiding but the police found them and now they are rotting in some forsaken island in exile,’ Katina whispered to the other women.

  ‘Good! Good! That’s what they deserve. It serves them right. They’re not humans; they’re pests. The seed of Satan, that’s what they are,’ said the pompous Roula, full of self-importance. ‘They don’t even believe in God. They call religion the opium of the mindless masses. I say kill them all. Put them to the wall like dogs and shoot them. Get rid of them. That’s what they deserve.’

  After fierce and bloody fighting, the army started gaining the upper hand. The rightists — also called nationalists or monarchists — now feeling in control, lifted their heads high. The leftists stopped singing glorious revolutionary songs and spreading propaganda. Keeping their mouths shut, they disappeared, hiding like mice in their holes. Some, scared their nationalist neighbours would inform on them, took to the mountains. In fact, there were widespread rumours that a rightist would name as communist someone with whom he had had personal grievances, to see him sent to prison or into exile.

  In the midst of all this upheaval, the school year had ended and Tasia had no option but to return to the village before she had had time to find out if George was her neighbour, or to what side he belonged. The conditions in the village were worrisome.

  The guerrillas were constantly raiding their houses to replenish their food supplies, and stock up on animals and bedding. They put pressure on the peasants to leave their homes and join their fight against the dark forces of capitalism, naming it the new form of fascism. Some people welcomed the communists as friends and liberators. Others considered them the worst of Greece’s enemies, naming them Anti-Greeks, Bulgarians or Bolsheviks. Some people looked with suspicion and animosity at their long-time neighbours, friends and confidants whose home language was predominantly Slavic, calling them Bulgarians and traitors.

  ‘If they were Greeks, they’d speak Greek!’ they said. ‘But they’re not Greeks. They’re Bulgarians and the best thing they could do is go back to their own country.’

  Many Pontians had also left for the mountains, and others, as rumour had it, were assisting the guerrillas. Whichever way you turned, you could see hatred and dissension. No one could say for sure who his friends and enemies were. Fear was widespread and few were brave enough to leave home and go to work. The fields were left unattended, uncultivated, unharvested, neglected.

  Tasia’s father would leave for work in the morning and they would all wait anxiously to see him return safe in the evening. He was the only breadwinner now. He didn’t want to expose his wife and daughter to danger with so many strange men hiding in the caves and ravines. And so for Tasia, this summer passed slowly, full of ennui, deprivations and fear.

  When she returned to Ptolamais an the beginning of the school year, Tasia found her room full of sacks containing wheat, corn, legumes and other dry foodstuffs. The smells made her chest feel tight and breathing was difficult, but she had to endure it, because she knew this food was their security for getting through the winter. The number of guerrillas in the area was increasing daily and with it their needs for food and other supplies.

  ‘From now on we’ll depend on you for our daily bread.’

  Her father tried to make light of the situation.

  ‘I’m sure our food is more secure here than in the village. And don’t you dare get the idea to visit us. You’d be asking for trouble.’

  ‘Why? How?’ Tasia wanted to know.

  ‘They now have a new tactic. They abduct children and transport them to Russia, to Serbia and other communist counties.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘To bring them up as true communists, they say. What else are we going to see? I don’t understand what’s happening But don’t you worry. Sunshine or rain, snow or hail, I’ll always come to bring you whatever I can.’

  The war was now in full swing. The Greek army managed to uproot the guerrilla forces from the mountains and valleys of Peloponnisos and Central Greece and was pushing them towards the northern provinces. The guerrillas retreated towards the north-west border to the steep mountain slopes of Grammos where their commandos had set up their control centre. On their way there they spread terror and destruction. During daytime they’d hide in caves, ravines and forests. By nightfall they’d come out of their hiding places to raid nearby villages, get supplies and, under the threat of guns, force young men and women to follow them up the mountains. According to rumour those the communist informers had branded fascists were put through lay-court, their houses were burnt, and they were executed.

  It was also said the army and security forces had informers in the villages they passed through. On entering these villages, they would pick up all those named by their informers as communists or communist supporters and collaborators, and send them to prison or exile. It was thought both the guerrillas and the army officers were supplied with names of undesirable members, so as to ensure they were silenced one way or another.

  While people had felt secure to voice their opinions after the oppressive German occupation, they had now become mute.

  They could no longer trust each other, not even the members of their own family.

  As the town of Ptolemais lay in the middle of a flat and open plateau far from mountains and forests where the guerrillas could hide during the day, residents assumed they were safe from guerrilla attack. They reasoned there was not enough time for the guerrillas to leave the mountains at dusk to cross the plains unobserved, to enter, attack and retreat to their hiding place before dawn. As a further deterrent, the district police — supported by a small army unit — constantly patrolled the outskirts of the town. For extra security they had placed a double barbed wire fence all around the town, filled in the space with mines, and left only a number of controlled points for people to enter and exit. Everyone and everything passing through these points was thoroughly checked, with extra attention paid to the quantity of foodstuffs leaving the town, to prevent it reaching guerrilla hands.

  Extra precautions were also taken around the police complex on the main street in the centre of town. The fenced enclosure surrounding it was reinforced and built taller, with barbed wire on top. In addition, round armoured guardhouses were built on every corner of the complex. The police arrested people daily, and rumour had it the jail housed within the police complex was full to bursting.

  Some mornings, as Tasia passed in front of the police station on her way to school, she could hear loud voices, swearing and beating sounds, moaning and crying. It made her feel very upset and sick in her stomach. She could imagine what was going on behind these tall walls, and could not understand how the police — whom she regarded as decent family men — were capable of hitting and torturing their fellow human beings, even if that was orders. Could it be the good and the bad, the humane and the beastly, the moral and the immoral coexisted in every human being, waiting for a chance to be expressed?

  The villages on
the east side of the plateau were now swarming with guerrillas who were destroying families, even their own relatives. When six final-year students from an eastern village failed to return to school after the weekend, it was alleged the guerrillas had taken them by force. This was during the time Greek Populous Freedom Army (ELAS) announced the establishment of an ‘Interim Government of Free Greece’ with its base in Northern Epirus. The main objective of ELAS was to liberate the country from the American-appointed phoney government. It first had to liberate the province of Western Macedonia and eventually the whole of northern Greece.

  The news spread like wildfire, terrifying a great number of the residents of Ptolemais. The rich, whom the communists used to call fascists and capitalist pigs, took their children, locked up their businesses and houses and left for the big cities. Others sent their children away to relatives in places considered safe.

  As the guerrillas retreated towards the Yugoslavia border, their number was steadily increasing and the raiding of villages was constant. They used some villages as their bases where they planned and executed their raids to get supplies, and took young children sending them to communist countries: freeing them, as they claimed, from hunger, poverty and exploitation.

  Those who felt persecuted by the country’s legitimate forces (which included many tagmatasphalites, it was rumoured) were happy to have the guerrillas around. The opposing faction took their goods and their children and moved to other places, even to Ptolemais, whose only defence at the time was the double barbed wire surrounding the mines, the small police force and the army unit.

  One morning, a farmer who lived in the eastern outskirts of Ptolemais walked a very long distance to pass through the designated checkpoint on his way to his vegetable plot. This plot was outside the barbed wire fence next to his home. When he arrived he discovered he had forgotten to bring a necessary tool. He felt very annoyed with himself and decided to crawl through the wire fence rather than walk back to the checkpoint. His decision proved fatal as he stepped on a mine and was left there between the wires groaning and moaning — his insides spilling out — until he passed away. His petrified wife and neighbours stood by helplessly watching, unable to get any closer. His broken lifeless body was lying out in the hot sun until a group of ammunition experts came and collected it.

  George and his whereabouts had been far from Tasia’s mind until one afternoon when she realised he must no longer be in Ptolemais as she had not seen him around for a very long time. He had finished high school and, perhaps, he was now studying at a university in Athens or Salonica. On the other hand he could have been a soldier or a guerrilla fighting up in the mountains. In those troubled times nobody could be sure about anything and anybody. Besides, George’s whereabouts had nothing to do with her. The whole world was on edge, and no one knew if they would still be alive tomorrow. Thinking about George was almost insane.

  What was of real concern to Tasia was her inability to understand what was happening, what was making people so fanatical and so angry with each other to the point of brother killing brother, son killing father. The more she puzzled about it the more she became confused, blaming herself for behaving as if she were retarded, or as a person unwilling to commit herself and accept responsibility for her decisions. The whole scenario paralysed her.

  Lately, for some reason, Katina, her neighbour from across the road had tried to befriend her, making Tasia feel very suspicious about her motives. Tasia had in fact stopped one day to ask what on earth she was doing kneading fresh cow dung with straw, taking handfuls of the mixture and throwing it to stick on the mud wall.

  ‘That will be the only fuel I’ll have to do the cooking,’ Katina answered. ‘We have no money to buy coal.’

  From then on Katina would often stand in her front yard waiting for Tasia to pass on her way back from school and invite her to come in and have coffee with her. But Tasia declined thinking she’d have to reciprocate, which she was unable to do because of her landlady’s conditions. But she also didn’t want anybody to know about the sacks of food stored in her room.

  ‘We are neither with the rightists, nor the leftists,’ Katina explained to her one day. ‘I trust you and that’s why I’m telling you. Both sides are cheats and traitors. Both are the puppets of foreigners. The monarchists are puppets of the English and the Americans who installed our government. As for the communists, they are the puppets of Russia and Bulgaria. We are the only true Greeks. We love Greece for the Greeks. We believe in democracy and want the people to freely choose their own leaders, to have our own democratically elected government. That’s why we can’t stand what either side is doing.’

  Tasia was amazed.

  ‘But, Katina, how did you find out about all this? Where did you read about it? she asked with genuine interest.

  ‘Me? Read about it? I can’t read. I’m lucky because my husband explains everything to me.’

  Tasia was woken by the sound of thunder. Well, that’s what it initially seemed like. On opening her eyes, she could see the shadow of the laced curtain on the wall opposite her window every time the ‘lightening’ momentarily lit the room. Then she realised it wasn’t lightening but gunfire. She could hear a machine gun almost outside her window and the answer of another one from the opposite side. In no time at all the gunfire and the explosions were so numerous she felt numb; she was covered in a cold sweat.

  She stayed still, holding her breath so as not to betray her presence, worried that her wild heartbeat could be heard by whoever was outside her window. If the gunman were to turn his machine gun he would blast her to pieces. So what? She had nothing to lose. If she were to die, then the quicker the better, but without suffering, without pain, she hoped. And the guerrillas must not find out there were food supplies hidden in her room.

  She couldn’t move. She shut her eyes with every new explosion, the light flooding the room each time. What would she do if someone could get into the house and come into her room? What would she do? What could she do? Nothing, absolutely nothing! She didn’t have the luxury of choice. She had to accept with dignity whatever was coming her way: even if it meant she had to follow them up into the mountains with a gun in her hand, or end up in some communist country like Serbia or Russia.

  Suddenly, her door opened wide. Instinctively, Tasia shut her eyes as if this would preclude her facing up to her fate. Hurried steps moved towards her bed.

  ‘Quick! Quick!’

  She heard her landlady’s alarmed voice. She got hold of Tasia’s arm, forcing her to get up, and pulled her towards the door.

  ‘To the basement! To the basement! Up here they’ll shoot us. Sit down! Be quick!’

  She could feel the hands of the old woman pressing her shoulders to force her to sit down in the corridor just outside her room. Searching with her hands the old woman got hold of Tasia’s thighs, put her arm underneath them and lifted them till Tasia’s feet were hanging over a void. Searching again in the darkness, the old lady found Tasia’s right foot, and placed it on a steady platform.

  ‘Careful! Now place your other foot on the first step. There are four steps. Hurry up before they kill us!’

  With one foot steady on the first step, Tasia searched with the other to find the second and then the third, with the landlady following hurriedly, her knee touching Tasia’s back. Tasia found the fourth step but as soon as she stepped on it, it buckled under her weight, forcing her to fall flat on her face in cold, watery mud, with the landlady on top of her.

  They stayed there rather confused, trying to find their bearings. The machine guns could be heard even closer now, almost above them. The piercing cold and the dampness made Tasia’s teeth chatter uncontrollably. Crawling through the mud, they both moved till they found a wall to lean against, and held their legs against their chests. From above, the explosions and the gunfire sounded like hell, every new explosion making them jolt with fear.

  Her landlady placed her right arm around her shoulders and pulled her gently to
her bosom. She kept her there, rocking her, like a mother trying to comfort her scared offspring.

  With the first dull daylight entering the basement breaking the impermeable darkness, the explosions and the gunfire gradually abated and then stopped completely.

  Tasia’s body, feeling like an over-stretched cord, relaxed. As if searching to find comfort, she dived even deeper into the bosom of the old lady, who was rhythmically patting her back as she burst into uncontrolled sobs. Patiently the old lady continued to rock Tasia till she calmed. And then, crawling in the mud, with joints stiff and painful from the enforced immobility, they climbed the steps up to the corridor. With the muddy waters dripping from their wet clothes and staining the corridor floor, they stopped for a moment, looking at each other, before disappearing silently into their respective rooms.

  The wet clothes had stuck to her body like a second skin and it took great effort to get them off. She was shaking with cold as she tried to wipe off the mud with a wet washer. Outside it was absolutely quiet but the sounds of the explosions were still ringing in her ears. Her eyelids were heavy; tiredness stopped the wandering of her mind; her only concern was how to get warm, covered as she was in her cold bed. The grey dawn gave way to the light of day but nothing proved capable of breaking the complete silence. Tasia couldn’t hear the crow of the rooster, the mooing of the cow, or the singing of the birds welcoming the new day. The complete silence freed her from the angst and the tiredness, pushing her mercifully into the depths of the most restful sleep.

  When eventually she managed to wake up and look around Tasia wasn’t sure if it was afternoon or morning, or even what day it was. She got up and went out, trying to figure out if what she had lived through was real or just a dream and was relieved to see life continuing as usual.

  At the water tap, where the water was running thin like a thread, a large queue of women waited their turn. The mournful bell of St. John’s church nearby was conversing with the mournful bell of Holy Trinity. Tasia moved over to the tree to read two funeral notices stuck on its trunk. She didn’t know the deceased men.