Sophie ran to be at Mama’s back.
The commander said, “I tried. I couldn’t stop it.”
Petros remained where he stood. Many mistakes happened, but what Petros saw was no different from the things he’d heard about over the radio. He couldn’t accept this apology.
There were no tears in Sophie’s eyes. In the end it may have been the hatred Sophie didn’t hide that convinced the commander.
Or it may have been Elia, who came to the back door and stood silently, waiting to be invited in. A long moment of no one speaking, no one moving, followed his appearance.
Elia’s grandmother broke this silence, coming through the front door without knocking. She wore her black dress for mourning. She believed Stavros to be dead.
She put her arms around Mama, saying, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry for your loss.”
This by itself was kind and courageous. But especially the scowling look she gave the commander for bothering the bereaved family convinced him.
Mama gave Petros and Sophie a nervous glance. What could she say but what Petros had told them after running home?
Only Petros knew what Elia had seen, and even he didn’t know what Elia thought of it.
Mama looked relieved to see Papa’s truck turn into the yard and stop quickly, gravel spitting out from under the tires. She met him on the veranda, but the commander had already stepped outside. All she could say was said with tears.
“How’s the boy?” the commander asked.
“He lived for an hour,” Papa said. This was a smart lie, Petros realized, because no one in the village knew otherwise. But some people might know he hadn’t died right away.
The commander apologized all over again, his voice breaking over the words the boy’s death. For some reason, these words tore a sob from Petros’s chest.
Mama did her part, pulling Petros into her arms so forcefully he couldn’t have resisted. Still, Petros felt the way the commander watched them, listened, his attention enough to take the breath away.
“I took my older son with me when I drove the body to my brother,” Papa told the commander, “and I left my son there to help with his grandmother.”
“About the man we’re looking for …,” the commander began.
“Lambros has been mad since boyhood,” Old Mario said. An impressive lie. “The family didn’t know where he is.”
Papa went on, saying, “He’s been away for many years.” Petros hadn’t known his father or Old Mario were capable of such excellent lies. He pulled away from Mama’s shoulder.
“I know the rumors,” Papa said. “But it does the boy and his grandmother a great wrong to think they’d hide him. I tell you the truth, even though it endangers my children to anger you.”
The rest of the Lemos family came across the road several minutes later, afraid still, crossing the veranda with slow steps. Luckily they didn’t ask any questions, perhaps because the commander stood nearby.
“I—” the commander began.
Petros saw it in the commander’s face, he wanted to be one of two men. And yet he had to remain the commander. He clicked his heels together and bowed his head a little. “I leave your family to your sorrow.”
The first few minutes were awkward. The men talked among themselves in low voices, gathered in one corner of the kitchen. The women were quiet, more than was usual, even at such a sad time. No one wanted a careless word to be overheard by the commander.
Two more families came, still in work clothes. The men didn’t go to the veranda but went into the garden with rakes and shovels, seeing the day’s work done. The women went to the kitchen and prepared to fry the fish.
They made things ready for death as usual, if such a thing were possible. Mama and Sophie changed into old dark dresses. Petros put on a black suit that used to belong to his brother. He’d grown so tall that his wrist and ankle bones showed.
After dinner Papa and the other men sat and smoked on the veranda. There was no card game, no talk. They were noticeable only as red points of light in the darkness.
Five days later the commander informed them the officer from the Gestapo had gone back to Athens. He said it in a manner that suggested this wouldn’t even interest them, and yet his eyes told a different story.
Three more days passed, little more than a week after Stavros had been carried to the mountains, and Zola came back. He whispered to each of them the news: Uncle Spiro had returned. Stavros had arrived at the mountain camp safely and was healing well.
A few weeks after that, Uncle Spiro brought Auntie to the house for a visit. “Hello,” he called out. Auntie wore her black, but then, she had been dressed for mourning for years.
Uncle Spiro brought his well-traveled donkey cart right to the veranda so Auntie had very little way to walk. The commander helped her to a seat, then retired to his room behind the shutters.
Everyone on the veranda listened to her stories of Stavros as a little boy, much the same as she would have told if he had truly died. The family cried as if there were an agreed-upon moment. Sophie clung to Auntie like a sesame seed to a honey cake.
All eyes glanced quickly at the shuttered windows and away again, then briefly all around, sharing the secret that Stavros lived on.
They moved their solemn little party into the kitchen, where they might speak more freely. Mama told Auntie she should come to live with them. This had already been decided earlier in the day.
The old woman said the least expected thing. “I’ll return to the farm with Spiro.” She went on to say Spiro’s house was a shambles. His garden untended. He thought of nothing but music and his animals. “Lucky it is for the animals the music doesn’t ask to be fed, or they’d starve waiting for the music to finish.”
Somehow, she didn’t really seem to mind this.
Mama served the evening meal early, a stew of goat’s meat and tomatoes over rice. Only when the commander’s door opened, and the scrape of his tray was heard by all, and the door closed again, did Uncle Spiro whisper the story of a fine joke that had been played on the Germans.
On a mountain not far from the Needle, where the wind blew without ceasing, a kite made of a Greek flag flew. It could be seen in two villages, and the soldiers felt the insult. When a few of them were sent out to find it, they returned empty-handed.
The next day the kite danced on the air, finally reaching a height where it was merely a dark speck against the blue. A few more soldiers rushed to a distant hillside to capture the kite flyer. They couldn’t find him, and the kite still flew. The string was oddly invisible against the sky.
Rifle shots didn’t touch the kite. It flew proudly for several days, irritating only those who wore a German uniform.
The villagers worried the kite was growing a little ragged, buffeted about by the winds that blew so strongly at that height. But still it looked good.
Finally the kite broke or was cut loose. But when it might have been expected to fall, the wind snatched it and carried it away. Uncle Spiro smiled at everyone around the table. They understood the joke in this, but who could laugh with the commander next door? Who could cheer?
Listening to this story, Petros pictured Stavros flying the kite. He felt the warmth of sunlight on his shoulders, stood against the wind in his imagination as if it ruffled his own hair, imagined the world spread out below him, the way only someone standing at the top of the Needle could really see it.
Petros met Zola’s grin with his own.
PRONUNCIATION GUIDE
Petros—PEH-trohss
Zola—zoh-LAH
Stavros—STAH-vrohss
Elia—ih-LEE-uh
Panayoti—pa-na-YO-tee
Lambros—LAHM-brohss
Popi—POH-pee
AKILA COULOUMBIS
(1932–2009)
one author’s note
(about the other author)
War Games is a true story. It’s my husband’s story.
Akila was born in Utica, New York, in 19
32. His parents had settled in America in the twenties as small-business owners and returned to the farm in Greece when it seemed the only way to weather the Depression. He was six months old then.
In the late thirties, as his parents prepared to come back to the States, war was declared in Europe. England was at war with Germany, and boats traveling between continents were being sunk by German submarines. The family couldn’t travel safely.
In 1941, the Germans occupied Greece because they wanted to control the Suez Canal. It was a serious situation for Greek citizens. It got worse fast because the Greek army, returning home to their families, began to do things to hamper the Germans’ progress. They cut down the telephone lines, causing many fathers and older boys of a family to be assigned by the Germans to guard the phone lines in front of their homes and farms. If these men and boys were not successful at keeping the Greek army from cutting the lines, their own family members could be, and often were, shot dead.
It was in this scary atmosphere that a high-ranking German officer was installed in Akila’s home. Because Akila’s father feared for his children, who had dual citizenship, he hadn’t followed the edict to register the family with the German authorities as American citizens. But he hadn’t anticipated this development. They were an American family living in close quarters with the enemy, their lives endangered until the Germans withdrew in 1944.
Akila and I touched on many other hardships of the occupation: food was scarce, money was worthless, radios and farm implements that could be used as weapons were taken away, people were not allowed to go out of their homes after dark. But Akila remembers most of these events as a time of great adventure.
He grew closer to his family, appreciating his mother’s cooking and the security of his father’s farm. There was a more exciting element to the usual marble games and kite making and boyish pranks. There was real danger in the true events we’ve incorporated in this story. But boys being boys, it all seemed part of a larger, meaner game being played by men.
If you were to sit and talk with Akila, he would tell you the stories that make up our chapters actually happened several months apart. We’ve condensed these events into the early days of the occupation because we thought it would be more enjoyable to read a story that happens all at once.
Also, you’d learn that several commanders lived in his home, one at a time, over the course of the war. One of them guessed the family’s secret, but he didn’t report them. We like to think he’s the commander we’re writing about.
We based our main character, Petros, on Akila. Zola is an idea guy like Akila’s brother, Peter, and Akila’s sisters are rolled into one girl named Sophie.
Because we set the story when the Germans first arrived, there’s a happy ending we didn’t tell. In 1945, the Allies won the war and Akila’s family returned safely to New York.
Akila and his family in their joint passport photo, when they returned to the United States after the war. From left to right, Akila, Aspasia, Mama Nicky, Peter, Papa Fotti, Minerva. Akila was twelve years old.
acknowledgments
The authors thank Linda Sue Park, who shared childhood stories with Akila at a book fair in Rochester, New York. Both of them went away with story ideas, and for Akila, it was a first encouragement to think of his as a book.
We also thank Richard Peck, who asked Audrey, at a supper with Teri Lesesne, are you going to write his story? And Jesse Perez, who, midway through the chaos, made the difficulties of writing the multisided events of a childhood sound like something that could be smoothed out like a wrinkled map and read with ease. And Y York, who, as we approached the finish line, teased out more story and encouraged us to work just a little harder.
Last but not least, we thank Jenni Holm, who talked childhood stories with Akila while she cooked for us in Hudson, and then said, “Why, that’s a story you have to write! They all are. Kids would love these stories. You’d start at the kite string, don’t you think?” She set us on the road to here.
We started at the kite string, and over several years of working, in between life and other projects, we started several other ways, too, until we had a story line, whittled down to the fewest number of weeks possible, and had used up most of the energy we had for climbing over the remaining stumbling blocks. Which is why we are so grateful to our agent, Jill Grinberg, for seeing the value in this work, and to our editor, Shana Corey, who supported us with her insight and excellent questions through the last labors. Also thanks to our art director, Ellice M. Lee, and our copy editor, Renée Cafiero.
We thank those family members who recalled the reasons why, reminded us of something nearly forgotten, related the story of, debated the details of, knew the fact of or the name of or the how it worked, and just generally jogged the collective memory of a life lived several decades ago in another country. We know this isn’t perfectly how it was, but we’ve done as well as we can with a bigger story told on a smaller scale.
We thank Fotti, Nicky—Akila’s parents—and his siblings, Aspasia, Peter, and Minerva. Their memories and contributions made this book possible.
We also thank cousins Fotti, Aspasia, Efthemios, Vivi, George, and Sofia for lively conversations, in person and over the phone. Many thanks to Mema for research. And to Mema and Katingo for an enjoyable afternoon trip through memories and old artifacts, and special thanks to Vasso.
Much love and remembrance to Akila’s cousins, and Gerasimos (who is Stavros in our story and who died resisting the occupation), and Zola, and Nicholas Drosos, who spent those cold nights in the well.
about the authors
AUDREY COULOUMBIS’s first book for children, Getting Near to Baby, won the Newbery Honor in 2000. Audrey is also the author of several other highly acclaimed books for young readers, including The Misadventures of Maude March, which was named a Book Sense 76 Pick, a New York Public Library 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing Selection, and a National Parenting Publications Gold Award Winner; and Love Me Tender, a Book Sense Children’s Summer Pick. She is married to Akila Couloumbis.
AKILA COULOUMBIS was born in New York and spent his childhood in Greece. During World War II, German officers boarded in his family’s parlor. This is Akila’s first book. Akila and Audrey live in upstate New York and Florida. They have two grown children.
Text copyright © 2009 by Audrey Couloumbis and Akila Couloumbis
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Couloumbis, Audrey.
War games / by Audrey and Akila Couloumbis. —1st ed.
p. cm.
“Based on a true story.”
Summary: What were once just boys’ games become matters of life and death as Petros and his older brother Zola each wonder if, like their resistance fighter cousin, they too can make a difference in a Nazi-occupied Greece.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89302-5
1. World War, 1939–1945—Underground movements—Greece—Juvenile fiction. 2. Greece—History—Occupation, 1941–1944—Juvenile fiction. [1. World War, 1939–1945—Underground movements—Greece—Fiction. 2. Greece—History—Occupation, 1941–1944—Fiction. 3. Brothers—Fiction. 4. Cousins—Fiction.] I. Couloumbis, Akila. II. Title.
PZ7.C8305War 2009
[Fic]—dc22
2008046784
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