Secret Passages

by Paul Preuss

  They took shelter in a shepherd’s mandra and spread their cloaks on stone beds, huddling beside a brushwood fire to eat bread and cheese and oranges, tucking potatoes into the coals to roast for later. Their drink was cold water from a jug. Before he was finished eating, Manolis was asleep again.

  For the second time he awoke to the sight of Elpida’s face floating over him. The old rug over the door behind her kept out all but a few pencils of mote-spangled sunlight, crowning her with rays. He experienced such pleasure in the sight that he knew without question that he wanted this sight upon his every awakening for the rest of his life. “You look at me so fiercely,” he whispered, touching her curling hair. “Like a goddess.”

  “I wonder what the great thinker is thinking.”

  He grinned wickedly. “I am thinking how desolate and miserable I would be if I had never met you.”

  She frowned and punched him hard in the arm. “Liar.”

  “And what are you thinking?”

  She leaned away and released her piled-up hair from its pins. It fell over her shoulders. She inclined her head and pulled at the tangles. “Tell me about England. Tell me what you did there.”

  “England is dark and cold and wet and crowded with people and motorcars and bicycles. As for what I did there…I thought about you.”

  Her eyes glittered. “Don’t be clever. You’ll make me angry.”

  “All right, I confess that I spent more time thinking about mathematics and science. It was my job to learn. But I thought about you a great deal.”

  “With all those English girls about! They are said to be very free with their affections.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said archly. “I certainly had no time for them.”

  “Not even time to visit Mercy? Whom you so admire?” Her black hair lay loose and shiny on her shoulders and breast; she continued to comb it through her long fingers.

  “Miss Money-Coutts lives in Oxford,” he said reasonably. “I was in Cambridge.”

  “Sir Arthur lives near Oxford. You had time to visit him.”

  “Yes, I had time for Sir Arthur.” He paused. “How do you know all this? What do you know of Oxford and Cambridge?”

  “You wrote letters to the Hutchinsons. The Squire showed them to Uncle Manolaki, and I…” She let her words dwindle.

  “You’re a spy!” He laughed.

  “Why did you come back? Surely you were happy in England.”

  He grinned, knowing what she was fishing for. “That I have no family doesn’t stop me from loving my homeland.”

  “Your homeland.” She swung her arm as if to indicate the invisible mountains. “Oh yes, these are very lovable rocks.”

  “When I left I learned how lovable they are,” he said seriously. “In England, no matter what I achieved, I was never anything but a foreigner. I persuaded my English schoolmasters to persuade the Greek government to give me a commission. The Greeks assigned me back to the English, and I soon began to realize how little we matter to the Brits—although we are, or were, their only ally in all of Europe.”

  “We matter to John.”

  He snorted. “You know where the British army put him first? In the cavalry. Fine terrain for cavalry charges, Crete.”

  “Still, they had the sense to send him here.”

  He fell silent. He reached out and carefully took her hands. “Have you heard anything about him?”

  “Nothing. The day after the Germans came he left Iraklion by the Hania Gate.”

  “Yes, I heard that too.” He drew a great breath and let it out slowly. He looked at her hands, not her eyes; he held them more tightly. “I was hoping you had heard something more.”

  “Have you heard that I love you?”

  His surprise was so deep that he was sure she was teasing him. “When could I have heard that?”

  “I suppose you couldn’t have. We in the underground have very good security.”

  He laughed. “That must be why you never heard that I love you too.”

  “Is that why? All this time I thought it was a German trick.”

  He leaned toward her green eyes. “No joking: I love you, Elpida, and I want us to be married. John will be our koumbaros, if we can find him and make him stand still for a minute.”

  “This is a most irregular proposal,” she said archly. “Our representatives haven’t discussed your meager prospects, or my nonexistent dowry, or…”

  So it was her turn to be funny. “Alas, you don’t consent.”

  “Who will represent me? Who will represent you, if we can’t find Pendabri? Given your famous affection for priests, who will crown us in marriage? A schoolmaster?”

  He knotted his brows as if perplexed. “You’re right, it’s impossible. We can never be married. I apologize for asking.”

  Maybe she wasn’t being funny after all, because she didn’t go along with the gag. “We can be married without all that nonsense,” she said. “We can be married now.”

  “You mean secretly?” She had confused him more profoundly than she’d intended.

  She freed her hands and gripped his fingers, moving his hands to her breasts as she leaned into him. “I mean now.”

  He pulled her down beside him onto the stony bed and they lay kissing in a tangle of clothes, their hands moving urgently through folds of black cloth that had the scent of sweat and wild herbs and woodsmoke deep in them, unbuttoning buttons, unbuckling buckles, untying tapes, pushing at wrinkled masses of cloth. When he had opened all the buttons of her high-buttoned dress she sat up long enough to shrug it over her head and pull her white cotton undershirt after it. She wore nothing else except darned black stockings that ended below her knees; for the rest of her length, she was all white against the skirts of the black dress now beneath her.

  But she was impatient with him, who had gotten no further than removing his shirt and loosening his trousers. “You are not allowed to be shy with me, husband,” she whispered, and she stood up and pulled him to his feet and turned him around, wrapping her arms around him from behind, pushing her heavy breasts into his pale muscular back, her hard nipples like coins between them, and hooked her thumbs in his waistband and pushed his pants down around his bare feet. She would not let him turn around until she had tested the rigidity of his desire, softly mauled him with her long fingers, meanwhile biting the curls at the nape of his neck, growling and laughing into his fragrant skin—until he turned upon her, made impatient by her play, and they stumbled onto the stony bed.

  Daylight was gone before they noticed. Reluctantly they dressed, each dressing the other as if they were playing with dolls, and both doing badly at it, not unintentionally.

  They found the potatoes in the cold ashes of the fire, crusted black but warm and creamy inside. After their meager supper they shouldered their bags and pushed the rug over the door aside, watching and listening to the night.

  “Wife,” he said, and kissed her cheek.

  “Husband,” she said, and leaned into his arm. A moment later she let him go and went out of the hut, among the silvery peaks and the starry sky.

  They made their way over the pass above Kaminaki and down into Lasithi, striking out across the flat fields, avoiding the villages that encircled the plain. Rich odors of cultivated earth thickened the air, and pale windmills, their sails hanging limp, gleamed like night flowers; the stars trembled like drops of liquid on the verge of falling out of the sky. Although the dusty lanes were at right angles to one another and their path was often crabwise, they made good time on their march; Manolis had recovered the spring in his step, and Elpida kept up with him easily, smiling to herself. They saw no one, and nothing disturbed them before they reached Georgios Siganos’s house in Tzermiado.

  Manolis ran to the door and knocked on it softly. The village dogs set up a racket. After a long time a muffled voice spoke from inside. “What do you want here in the middle of the night?”

  “Kyrie Georgio! It’s Manolis Androulakis.”

 
; The door opened and Georgios reached for Manolis. “Come in, my child. Quickly.”

  “This is my…I mean, this is…”

  “Inside, both of you!” Georgios was fully dressed, wearing a white shirt and a dark wool suit. When he had closed and bolted the door behind them, he turned to Elpida. “Who did he say you were, child?”

  “I’m Elpida Pateraki, kyrie, from Knossos,” Elpida said, “and I think my dear Manolis was trying to explain that he and I are engaged to be married.”

  “What good news! Well, well! Come, come, sit by the fire. We must lift a glass of raki.”

  The coals were glowing on the hearth. Manolis and Elpida took chairs beside it, exchanging a questioning glance when Georgios addressed the shadows beyond the arch. “Pavlo, come out and meet our guests. A young genius just back from England. And his bride-to-be. We will make him tell us all about it.”

  A tall man leaned into the half-light. His full black beard was streaked with gray, and his baggy trousers and high boots and broad sash were those of a mountain man. He clutched the barrel of a Mauser in his left hand; the callused fingers of his right were wrapped around an unlit pipe.

  Siganos said, “This is Pavlos Papalexakis, a brave fellow who has just now returned from Kastro.”

  “Your health, sir,” Manolis said, with a bob of his head. “What is it like in the town?”

  “It’s wreckage, and it stinks.” Papalexakis sat down heavily beside the hearth, leaning the Mauser against the wall. He picked up a burning stick and drew fire into his pipe. “The Germans put us to work digging graves, but there were too many corpses,” he said between puffs. “The sewers are broken too. They bombed everything.” Pavlos looked at Manolis warily. “What kind of uniform is that?”

  “British. I’m Greek army attached to the British.”

  “Huh. There are no more British.”

  “This is Manolis Androulakis. He’s a good man, Pavlo,” Siganos said. “Pendabri himself sent him to study in England.”

  “Mm, Androulakis. Pendabri told me about him,” said the guerrilla, sucking his pipe.

  “And from him I heard many stirring tales of Papalexakis,” said Manolis. “I wonder if you have any news of him.”

  “Siganos my friend, do you have any more of that excellent raki?” Papalexakis asked.

  “Let me fill you a glass,” said the schoolteacher.

  Papalexakis thoughtfully rolled the glass in his grimy fingers before tossing it back. “They say Pendabri is dead. I talked to a woman who said she saw him die.”

  Elpida cried out, but quickly covered her mouth. Papalexakis stared at her balefully.

  “John is dead?” Manolis had to force the words from his dry throat. “How did he die?”

  Papalexakis raised his bushy eyebrows and looked at Siganos.

  “Tell him what you know,” said the schoolmaster. “This lad was like a son to him.”

  “This is what I heard. The day after the Germans came, Pendabri went out the Hania Gate. He was riding in a car that Georgios Drosoulakis was driving. They didn’t get far. More parachuters were coming down, right there in Kaminia, so they had to get out and fight. They fought off the Germans, but Drosoulakis was killed and Pendabri was shot up. A chest wound. That was near where Drosoulakis lived, and later the Germans found Pendabri lying there and dragged him into Drosoulakis’s house. This was an accident, the Germans didn’t know whose house it was. And Drosoulakis’s wife took care of him. A German doctor came and dressed his wounds. But then Drosoulakis’s wife and her sister were taken off to the prison camp. And then other Germans came, the ones who wear black uniforms. And they dragged Pendabri outside and stood him against the wall. ‘Where are the andartes?’ they shouted, and he shouted, ‘I will never tell you,’ and they shouted, ‘Tell us or die,’ and he shouted, ‘No, no, no,’ and they shouted, ‘Attention,’ and then they shot him in the chest and the head, and they left his body there.”

  For a long moment everyone was silent, as if waiting for Papalexakis to continue. But he had no more to say.

  “Tell me again. Who told you this?” Manolis asked quietly.

  “I heard this from Kalliope Karatatsanou and Aristea Drosoulaki, the same day I escaped from that camp at Tsalikaki.”

  Again there was no sound but the creak and sputter of the coals, until Elpida spoke up. “For their sakes and ours, you must tell no one what you heard.”

  Papalexakis turned his bearded face toward her, as if replying to a woman who gave orders cost him an effort.

  “That is only what I heard from those foolish women. What I know is this: Pendabri is alive in the mountains. With his glass eye he sees everything. He will make the Germans suffer.” He pulled on his pipe. “You think I am not serious, woman?” When she did not answer, he said, “I am serious.”

  21

  Manolis and Elpida were officially married on a hot Saturday afternoon in July, under giant kerm oaks in Yannitsi, a village of a few stone houses on the high Katharo Plain above Lasithi. Manolis wore his uniform; Elpida wore a borrowed dress of white cotton. The priest, a member of the underground, came up from Kritsa.

  Pavlos Papalexakis stood in for the missing Pendlebury as koumbaros, waving marriage crowns of twisted vine shoots three times over the heads of the couple while the priest chanted the blessing. When the chants finally came to an end, the onlookers shouted gleefully and hurled fistfuls of almonds at the newlyweds. Lute and lyra made a sweet racket; everyone whirled in the dance. Guns went off as if there were no such creatures as Germans within a thousand miles.

  In those days there was still food in the remote villages, and Yannitsi, in the shadow of Mount Lazaros, Dikti’s third and easternmost peak, was one of the most remote. Lamb chops and stuffed sheep guts and boiled beans and peas graced the trestle tables under the oak branches, along with sweating jugs of wine. A round loaf of freshly baked sweet bread, brushed with sugar water and garlanded with orange slices and tiny orchids, served as a wedding cake.

  But in the midst of speeches and toasts the wedding party fell silent; boisterous voices suddenly trailed off as everyone turned to stare at the strangers who were coming toward them across the fields of ripe wheat. One was an old man some of them knew from Ayios Konstandinos in Lasithi, but the other two were strangers wearing ragged uniforms, who limped painfully as they walked. The wedding guests reached for their guns. Bolts slid and hammers clicked.

  Manolis raised his hand. “Wait here. I’ll speak to them.”

  He walked slowly toward the men and when he reached them, bent his head to talk. Then he took their hands and gripped their arms and turned to lead them to the banquet. “Lower your weapons, friends, and welcome our guests. This old man has brought us some English.”

  Before the war, when Pavlos Papalexakis was a small-time smuggler operating a caïque out of Iraklion harbor, John Pendlebury had occasionally engaged him in drinking contests during which he dropped hints of British largesse to those who were prepared to resist the fascists—rifles and boots and gold for mountain men, and for captains who knew the coasts of the islands not only gold but the opportunity to do a little trading on the side.

  But on unlucky Tuesday Papalexakis’s boat was sunk in the harbor, and he fell into German hands. Within days of his escape, having decided that English rifles and boots would have to substitute for the black market, he was back in the mountains of his birth, organizing his relatives into a band of andartes.

  All over Crete the Germans did their best to help the formation of the resistance, by committing bestial atrocities against noncombatants—thus expressing their disappointment that the Cretans had not welcomed them as liberators.

  Manolis was Papalexakis’s second-in-command. They were as different as vinegar and oil—Papalexakis could not read; Manolis had never stolen anything worth mentioning—but they blended well. Two days after the British stragglers arrived at Papalexakis’s camp, a runner from the west brought a letter.

  “Last week a British
submarine surfaced at Preveli Monastery in Rethymno nome,” Manolis read aloud. “An officer came ashore to organize the evacuation of the stragglers to Egypt.”

  “What’s that to do with us?” Papalexakis sat at a plank table, busily spooning soup into the opening in his black beard. The late-afternoon sun shone through the heavy oak branches, dappling the stone walls with orange light.

  “The next landing will be at Tsoutsouros two nights from tonight. We can put our Englishmen on that one.”

  “What’s the hurry? Just now the Italians are practically offering to give away the weapons they don’t know how to use.”

  Like ravens flocking to a kill, the Italians had landed in Sitia on the last day of the battle for Crete, and the Germans, eager to get on with the conquest of Russia, had given them the eastern part of the island.

  “We can make fools of the Italians whenever we want, Pavlo, but we can never liberate Greece without the help of the British.”

  “Well, you are a great friend to the British. But if they can send submarines to rescue their foot soldiers, why can’t they give us what we need to fight their battles for them?”

  Manolis leaned forward, resting his hands on a low oak branch overhead. “Let me have one man. Old Siphis, if he agrees. We’ll take the English to the submarine. I’ll talk to the officer and make sure that we get our supplies.”

  “Endaxi.” Papalexakis stood up and turned away toward the house. “Bring back more English promises. While you’re gone I’ll see if the Italians have something real to offer.”

  “Good hunting,” Manolis said.

  “A shame you won’t be with us,” Papalexakis said sourly.

  A village boy ducked into the house where Manolis and the English were packing their sakoulis. “Kyrie Manoli,” he said excitedly, “more English are coming.”