To Look on Death No More

by Leta Serafim

  “Come now.” She was all business. “We go to Kalavryta.”

  She helped him on with his boots and laced them up for him, then draped the blanket around him. Gasping for breath, he fought not to vomit in front of her.

  Putting her arms around him, she helped him down the path, the boy running along behind. O’Malley longed to explain himself to her. To have her understand what the last three weeks had meant to him. His lonely youth as an only child on an isolated farm with naught but a dog to play with. How he’d longed for company his whole life, brothers and sisters. Only to find them now in this place with the two of them, to find them now as he was dying.

  Half-delirious, he rambled on about Ireland as they walked. The breath of the horses on a winter’s morning and the great wash of green in the spring. The sheep, all burly, on the hillsides, their coats like patches of dirty snow.

  He kept losing track of his thoughts. “ ’Tis the fever,” he muttered to himself. “Rendered me useless, it has. Like whiskey, it’s gone and loosened my tongue while melting my poor brains.

  “Where are you taking me?” he kept asking, growing more and more confused, uncertain now as to where he was, what language he was speaking. “Where are you taking me?” he asked again.

  Later he remembered grabbing her hand, and kissing it again and again.

  * * *

  O’Malley didn’t know how long it took them to get down from the mountain, but the sky was full of light by the time they reached Kalavryta. Every now and then the girl would stop and let him rest, his shoulders throbbing with pain. He longed for a word of comfort from her—evidence that if he died of his injuries, he’d be missed, grieved over even—but she said nothing,

  He tried not to cry out, lest he scare her or the boy, but it took more effort than he was capable of, and he moaned and gibbered like a fool. He called for his ma like a child afraid of the dark. But mostly it was Danae. Dark-eyed Danae he wanted, Danae he cried for.

  Worried, the little boy grabbed him and tried to prop him up. “Siko! Siko!”

  O’Malley sought to reassure him, but found he couldn’t get his mouth around the words. “And me an Irishman.” He wondered if this was death come to take him, this silencing a part of dying.

  His shoulders were sticky with blood, and he kept slipping in and out of consciousness. He could see the town clearly now. One more stony rise and they would be there.

  The girl climbed up on a rock and watched the sleeping village with a strange expression on her face, intent, like a dog waiting for the crackle of gunfire, its quarry to fall from the sky. The rifle was lying on the ground within easy reach, but O’Malley let it be. No point now.

  A thick fog was rising from the river, and it wafted across the lowlands, the fields and orchards surrounding the town. The mist gave the village a dream-like appearance, clouds of it washing over the cobbled streets and gray stone houses and making them gleam like pewter. Soon only the bell tower of the church was visible. O’Malley rejoiced when he saw the fog; it would give them cover.

  The girl didn’t cross the fields as he’d expected, but headed north toward the gorge. She took her time, staying well hidden in the trees as she led them forward. A few minutes later, they reached a railroad bridge high above a boulder-strewn glade. A light rain was falling, and overhead the metal trestles were glossy with damp. Secreting themselves beneath the pilings of the bridge, they stayed there until nightfall, the water coursing at their feet.

  O’Malley was grateful for the cold, the way it eased his suffering and seemed to lessen the fever. Seeing him shivering, the little boy pulled off his sweater and laid it across O’Malley’s shoulders. The child had quieted down since leaving the cave and kept looking around, obviously frightened.

  The girl roused them a little while later. Walking single-file, they moved from stone to stone across the river, taking care to leave no prints in the mud. It continued to rain, red clay washing down from the banks like rivulets of blood.

  Seeing it, O’Malley was reminded of the River Styx and the ferryman who transported the dead across it for a fee. Stories of Hades he’d learned in school. It was somewhere here, he remembered, that ancient hell, somewhere here in this part of Greece.

  The girl nodded when he asked her about it. “Before Jesus came, people said hell had three doors and this place was one.”

  Hidden in shadows, it was as dark as night in the gorge, the roaring of the river the only sound. He could hear the wind howling outside, but nothing stirred at the bottom of the gorge where he was. The air was utterly still. Aye, it was easy to imagine hell here.

  He guessed she’d come this way because it was easier for him; the ground was level and there were no cliffs to climb. They left the gorge, passed through a strand of rain-washed olive trees, and rested there for a few minutes, the gray-green leaves fluttering above them like clouds of mica.

  He looked around. The fog was starting to burn off. They’d have to hurry.

  * * *

  The girl pushed open the door of the shed. “Fast,” she whispered.

  O’Malley stumbled inside and collapsed on the floor. The place was filthy—moldy feathers and chicken shit encrusting the wooden walls and cobwebbed windows. Although the chickens were long gone, the ammonia-like scent of them lingered in the air and made O’Malley’s eyes sting. Germans must have passed through and taken them, God knows what else. Hopefully, that had satisfied them and they’d let him be, let him die in peace.

  Trying to help, Stefanos fussed about, tucking the sweater around him and feeling his forehead. “Eisai kala?” he kept asking. Are you all right?

  O’Malley pushed him away. “Stop your rabbiting about. Get along with you.”

  Danae returned a few minutes later with a middle-aged woman.

  The woman recoiled when she saw O’Malley and took a step back. “What’s wrong with him? Typhus?”

  “No,” the girl said. “His wounds got infected.”

  Taking care to keep her distance, the older woman walked around, inspecting O’Malley.

  He watched her with a sinking heart. As if I’m a leper, a bleeding leper, lying at her feet.

  “How do you intend to feed him?” the woman asked in an aggrieved tone.

  Hands on her hips, she stood there in her apron, stout and implacable, rooted to the earth like a tree. An old farm horse, O’Malley judged, taking her in, the massive legs and heavy haunches. The kind bred to pull wagons.

  “He can have my share,” the girl said.

  “No, no. You’ve got to get him out of here. It’s too dangerous.”

  “He’s sick.”

  “I don’t care. Let him be sick somewhere else.”

  * * *

  The woman let the door slam when she left the coop. The boy had taken care to stay out of her way, backing himself into the corner and staying there. He’d seemed diminished by her presence.

  “My father’s sister,” Danae said after she left. “My theia, Aunt Toula, from America.”

  “She’s in charge here? The one who looks after you?”

  “Yes. She came to live with us after her husband died.”

  “Seems a right dragon.”

  Using his last ounce of strength, O’Malley propped himself on his elbows. “I heard what you said about the food, that you’d give me your share.”

  “I will. Stefanos, too.”

  Closing his eyes, he lay back down. “Be wasted on me. I’m a goner, Danae. Might as well stuff your faces.”

  * * *

  O’Malley closed his eyes. He could feel his shoulders burning, the heat coming off them. He wanted to be home. He didn’t want to die in Greece among strangers.

  Later that night Danae reappeared with her father and another man. The latter brought a lantern with him and a leather bag with a flat bottom full of medical instruments.

  The doctor peeled off what was left of O’Malley’s bandages and washed out his wounds with alcohol, then signaled the other man, who gav
e O’Malley a little bottle and nodded for him to drink it. “Ouzo,” he said. Alcohol. It burned on the way down with a familiar whiskey-like fire that took the edge off the pain. After he finished, the man gave him another. “Drink,” he said in English.

  The two men then stood by for a few minutes, watching O’Malley and whispering in Greek. O’Malley fought to stay awake, unsure what they planned to do with him. He was deeply frightened. Afraid the gangrene was too far gone and they’d have to cut off his arms.

  The doctor gave him a wet sponge, motioned for him to bite down on it, then tied a gag around his mouth. He removed the cover of the lantern and set it down on the floor, close to O’Malley’s right shoulder. The kerosene hissed as it burned, smoke rising in threads from the burning oil. O’Malley watched the exposed flame for a moment, fighting not to be sick.

  “God Almighty,” he screamed. “Here it comes.”

  When the doctor nodded, the girl’s father knelt down and gently straddled him, his weight pinning O’Malley to the floor. He grabbed O’Malley’s arms and held them down while the girl did the same to his ankles. The doctor got a scalpel out of the bag and passed it back and forth over the flame, then dug it deep into the wound on O’Malley’s right shoulder.

  O’Malley bellowed and cried. He could smell his flesh burning, feel the heat of the hot scalpel cutting into him. The girl and her father fought to hold him down, wrestling to keep him still. The doctor continued to work, first on one shoulder, then the other, passing the scalpel back and forth in the fire, then pressing it into O’Malley’s infected flesh, searing away the gangrene and cauterizing the wounds.

  O’Malley bellowed and sobbed, his mouth all stopped up with rags.

  Chapter 5

  When he awoke, he was lying on a cot, his shoulders swaddled with crisp white sheeting. He lifted first his right arm, then his left, tears starting in his eyes. Wiggled his fingers.

  He bowed his head and thanked God, thanked Him again and again. He’d do right when he got back to Ireland, buy something for the church, candlesticks or a statue, put coins in the poor box. From this day forward, he’d be the son his mother always wanted. A holy Joe.

  He kissed each of his hands in turn, what he could reach of his upper arms. The pain was terrible, like he’d been skinned alive, but he didn’t care. He’d been spared. He’d not have to spend the rest of his life with hooks, frightening children, no hope of a wife.

  O’Malley glanced around, wondering where he was. The room had a low ceiling and no windows. The walls were crumbling in places; and the air smelled of mildew and damp earth. The room had no door, naught but a length of burlap strung up on a rope. What light there was came from beneath it.

  A cellar, it looked like.

  He dozed off and on, waking and dropping off again. The doctor returned at some point and changed his bandages. He seemed well pleased with his work and told O’Malley in Greek all had gone well. He’d been lucky. The pain was diabolical. O’Malley couldn’t turn without setting it off again, great waves of it, so intense it made him sick to his stomach. “Lucky?” Yes, he supposed he was.

  A jug of water had been left for him. It tasted sweet, as if it had sugar in it or perhaps honey, and he gulped it down, only to vomit it up a few minutes later. After that, he sipped more slowly, taking his time, fighting to keep it down. The jug continued to be refilled, though he never saw who did it. Someone also emptied the chamber pot beneath the cot. Later food began to appear. Meat, which surprised him, on a battered metal dish. Like the cot he was lying on, the dish looked to be army-issue.

  It was strange how the jug refilled itself, food came and went. When he soiled his sheets, he’d wake up to find they’d been changed. His clothes, too. Almost as if sorcery was involved. He seemed to remember a fairy tale where the same thing had happened, but he couldn’t recall the ending, whether it had gone well or badly for the people involved.

  Lying there on the cot, unable to tell if it were night or day, O’Malley lost track of time, how many days it had been since his surgery. Three, he guessed, maybe four. The first forty-eight hours had been a blur, every move he made pure agony, the torn flesh in his shoulders paining him to the point of paralysis. He’d longed for oblivion—alcohol, opium, anything that would take him there—and begged the doctor for it. “We’ve nothing,” the doctor told him. “I’m sorry. You’ll just have to bear it.”

  O’Malley remembered the sounds he’d made, so loud they’d woken him, pulled him back to consciousness. “What’s that?” he remembered asking, only to realize it was him—he was the one screaming like a pig on its way to the slaughterhouse.

  The doctor continued to slip in, so quietly O’Malley would look up and be surprised to see him there. He’d smile at O’Malley, inspect the wound, and leave.

  O’Malley saw no one else. Stretched out there in the shadows, he sometimes felt as if he’d been buried alive.

  He got up from the cot and walked around the room, holding on to the wall for support, then pushed aside the burlap and looked out. A shallow passageway led off to the right, as narrow as a mine shaft. It had an earthen floor and didn’t lead anywhere, only to a wall about ten feet away. O’Malley paused for a moment and listened. Hearing nothing, he ventured on. At first he’d thought the wall was whitewashed stone like the rest of the cellar, but soon discovered it was wood, carefully disguised with paint. It rested in a groove in the floor and proved easy to move. Pausing now and then to catch his breath, O’Malley slid it away. He could hear the wind blowing outside and feel the cold. Like a horse set free in a pasture, he would have galloped off if he’d been able to, neighed even.

  Bracing himself, he took a step and then another. He was outside now, standing in a depression on the side of a house. He recognized the shed in the distance and the ruined garden he’d passed through with Danae.

  He leaned his head back, letting the sunlight wash over him. He was in the same clothes he’d worn in the cave, but they’d been washed and ironed. He touched his face, his hair, sniffed at himself. Someone had cleaned him up as well. His arms were painted up and down with mercurochrome or iodine, something streaky and orange. He sank down on the ground and sat there, watching the clouds pass overhead, their shadows moving rapidly across the fields, and gazed at the distant mountains. He found himself crying at the sight of them.

  “Not right this. Not manly.” But still he cried, sniffling and wiping his nose on his sleeve.

  Knackered, he was. Broken down entirely.

  It was growing dark when O’Malley returned to the room, taking care to put the wall back in place, leave it as he’d found it. The space was a priest’s hole, he’d decided, albeit a modest one. Probably dated from the time of the Turks. There’d been such places all over Ireland, where people would gather in secret and take communion, celebrate the rituals of their outlawed faith, where priests could hide from their English persecutors.

  He wondered what the Greeks had used theirs for. Probably something similar, the Ottomans being what they were—the Germans of their day.

  * * *

  Danae slipped into the cellar that night. After O’Malley’s walk, his shoulders had begun to burn and he’d been unable to fall asleep. He turned and looked at her. She was dressed in a white shift with a crocheted shawl over her shoulders, cloth slippers on her feet. She stood there for a moment, watching him, trembling a little from the cold.

  “Evening, Danae,” he whispered.

  “Evening, Angle.”

  “Good to see you.”

  “Good to see you, too.”

  “Why’d you come so late?”

  “My aunt doesn’t want me here. Doesn’t want Stefanos and me anywhere near you.”

  “Why? ’Twas only gangrene plagued me. Nothing contagious.”

  “She thinks you’ll bring us trouble.”

  O’Malley thought it over, nodded sadly. Aye, he very well might.

  “I just wanted to see how you are.” She sounded embarrassed. Gi
ven her aunt’s antipathy, she must be the one who’d refilled the jug while he slept, caring for him all these days. A guardian angel of sorts. A guardian angel with neither feathers nor wings.

  He motioned her over. “Come sit with me for moment. I’m perishing of loneliness.”

  She stayed where she was, even drew back a little. “You were very sick. The doctor said you might die.”

  “Gangrene’s a nasty business. Saw a lot of it in North Africa. Shrapnel wounds.”

  He could barely see her in the darkness, the whiteness of her dress and shawl the only indication of her presence. He wondered if her hair was loose, undone for the night.

  “Doctor said another week and he’ll take the bandages off.”

  “Then what? I go back to the cave?”

  Wrapping the shawl more tightly around her, she continued to stare at him. “I don’t know,” she said. “They’re talking about taking you to the antartes, sending you back to war.”

  * * *

  After Danae left, O’Malley lay awake, wondering what he should do. Part of him wanted to call it a day, find his way to the coast and be shipped back to Egypt. Another part of him wanted to see it through. To stay in Kalavryta and feast his eyes on Danae, play the fool with her little brother. He’d arrange for the British to drop food in for them. Be a hero of sorts, Father Christmas.

  Might not be worth the risk, however. If the Germans found him, they’d shoot him for sure. Be a shame after all the patching up the doctor had done—the stitches and the surgery, the days he’d spent lying here, recovering—to land in German hands, get done to death now. His ghost to roam these infernal hills, damned to speak Greek for all eternity, damned never to be understood.

  Not to mention the destruction it would bring on Danae and her family. The trouble he’d bring in such a case would be biblical. They might not salt the land, rain frogs and plagues down upon people, but the Germans were more than equal to the rest of it.

  “Be best if you don’t get captured.”