by Leta Serafim
Tightlipped, her aunt gathered up the dishes. “You should be glad for what you’ve been given,” she said, aiming her remarks at O’Malley. “Vinegar for nothing is as sweet as honey.”
There was nothing at all for dinner.
Later O’Malley asked Danae why they didn’t kill one of the rabbits.
“My father won’t let us. He says they are our—how you say—protection, in case things get worse.”
Worse than this, they’d be eating their shoes, same as Chaplin did in the movie. Twirling the laces on his fork as if they were spaghetti.
* * *
The rain continued on through the night. O’Malley stacked up the flokatis and lay down on top of them. After eating the trahana, Danae and the other two had disappeared. Probably sleeping in the back room. No point in trying to do anything in this weather.
O’Malley didn’t know how long he’d been asleep when he heard the first sound. A dull thud, it rattled the dishes in the cupboard and made the floor shake. His heart pounding, he lay there in the dark, trying to figure out where it had come from. Ach, you’re dreaming, he told himself finally, rolling over and going back to sleep again.
He’d just dozed off when the sound came again. This time there was no mistaking it or the voices that followed. Mixed up in it, O’Malley thought he heard a motor start somewhere close by. He crept to the window and peered out, wiping the moisture off the glass with his sleeve. Nothing.
The brazier had gone out and the stone floor was as cold as ice.
Worried, he shook the flokatis out and spread them on the floor as Danae’s father had instructed, then opened the trap door in the kitchen and climbed down the ladder as fast as he could, two steps at a time. He sensed rather than saw the people, the mass of them crowded into the small space at the bottom. He could see their eyes shining in the weak light, their faces glimmering faintly as they looked up at him. There was a woman with a baby, an older man with a bandaged head, and five or six others. O’Malley smelled the dampness on their wool coats, the wet dirt they’d carried in with them. They didn’t move. Just stood there and watched him like a herd of deer. Foolish the same way deer were. As if their stillness would make them invisible, protect them from bullets.
O’Malley could sense their fear. Clinging to them, it was, like the rain on their clothes.
Danae’s father came forward, pushing his way through the throng. “Go back to bed,” he said. “This doesn’t concern you.
“Who are they?”
“People the Nazis are after.” He spoke rapidly in Greek to the group. It broke the spell and everyone started talking at once. “They don’t want you here,” he told O’Malley a few seconds later. “They’re afraid you’ll betray them.”
“Tell them who I am. Why I’m here.”
“They don’t care. All they care is you’re a stranger.”
Stung, O’Malley climbed back up the ladder. The noise must have been the false wall, sliding back and forth, the people talking as they took their places in the cellar beneath him. Danae’s father had waited until it rained to move them into the house. Thought the bad weather would protect them from Germans.
Pure foolishness, that. Like lobbing rocks at tanks.
* * *
The next morning O’Malley questioned Danae about the people. They were in the ruined garden, sent there by the aunt in search of food. The rain had stopped and mist was rising from the damp earth, wisps of it drifting up between the trees.
“Where’d the people come from?”
“I don’t know. At the beginning, they were Jews. Children from Salonika. A man from Vrestena was helping them escape. Spiliakos, his name was. He’d go to the Jewish part of town, take them and lead them out of the city.”
“How’d he get them past the Germans?”
“By acting drunk. ‘Oh, papa,’ the children would scold, pretending to hold him up. ‘Not again. Mama’s going to be so mad at you.’ He rescued dozens that way. The Germans never caught on, never realized that every time they saw him, he was with a different group of kids.”
She recited this as if it were nothing, this saving of children. As if it was a routine matter.
“What happened to them?”
“I don’t know. All I know is they got away.”
Brushing the hair out of her eyes, she went back to searching for food. “The people who come now aren’t Jews. I don’t know who they are or where they come from. All I know is that they have to get away.”
“Who’s helping him? Your aunt involved?”
“No. She hates what he’s doing. She wanted to charge them money for staying here, for the food. The rotten tomatoes we feed them.”
“Are the partisans a part of this?”
She glanced at him, suspicious now. “Why do you care?”
“I’d like to be a part of it. It’d be better than building an airstrip, helping the British colonize this place after the Germans leave.”
“You won’t be here.”
“How do you know?”
“I heard my father talking. They’re taking you away next week.”
Stefanos was kicking his raggedy ball across the field. Made of cloth, it was so heavy with mud, it barely moved. “Ela,” he yelled to O’Malley. “Ela, Angle.”
O’Malley held up a hand, signaling for him to wait his turn.
“He’ll miss you.” Danae nodded to her brother.
“What about you? Will you miss me?” O’Malley kept his voice light.
“I don’t know.” Keeping her head down, she returned to her digging. “Maybe.”
* * *
When O’Malley crept down the ladder that night, the people were gone. He was impressed by the smoothness of the operation. He hadn’t seen them go, hadn’t heard a sound. As a clandestine mission, it had been flawless, a bloody magic act.
The father had to be part of a network, probably similar to the one that had rescued him in 1941, the farmers who had passed him from one place to another before finally spiriting him across the Libyan Sea to Egypt. He imagined he’d travel the same route as the people here when he left Kalavryta.
He looked around the empty room again. The air still smelled of rain, their wet wool clothes.
“God speed,” he said aloud.
Chapter 7
O’Malley woke to the sound of men shouting in German. He bolted for the cellar and stayed there huddled down in the dark, his heart in his throat. Judging by the sound, it was a large patrol, twenty men at least. He inched over to the false wall, thinking he’d throw it down and run if they came for him. For once, he welcomed the gloom in the cellar, the impenetrable dark.
He pulled the wall open a notch and watched them go by. They were marching in a tight formation, a seemingly endless line. His initial estimate had been wrong. There must be fifty men out there.
“Partisans blew up a bridge south of here,” Danae’s father told him. “The Germans are searching for them.” He handed him a lantern, cautioning him only to use it when the sun was up. At night, the light would attract the Germans and reveal his hiding place.
Over the next few days, German patrols continued to pass back and forth in front of the house. Always in a hurry. Always with their helmets on and their weapons on display.
O’Malley stayed in the cellar. The cot was still there as was the jug of water, the one that had filled and refilled itself after his surgery. If they threw a loaf of bread down to him occasionally, he could probably last out the war.
The father had given him a chamber pot, too, saying his sister would collect it twice a day and empty it for him. The aunt never spoke to O’Malley as she went about this task and made a great show of her distaste, holding the chamber pot as far away as she could.
O’Malley chuckled to himself. Lady Muck and her bucket of piss.
Dressed to the nines, she’d swept out the cellar the previous day, questioning O’Malley as she went about the chore. How big was the farm he grew up on? Did his father ow
n a car, his mother a proper washing machine? She spoke sentimentally of her time in America, how well off she’d been, describing the fur coat her husband had given her one Christmas.
O’Malley thought at first the questions were her way of taking his measure. People did the same in Ireland. As a stranger, you expected it. But when the questions continued, he decided it must be something more. A way of distancing herself from where she had ended up, of letting him know she hadn’t always lived here in this slum of a house, that she’d been somebody once.
The Greeks who’d cared for him in Pylos had questioned him, too. Mainly to see if he could be of use to them, if he had anything they wanted. He’d doctored a few relatives, even looked in on a sick cow. He assumed it was the same with this woman. For all her time abroad and her fancy airs, Danae’s aunt was at heart the same as those others.
He answered her as truthfully as he could, though it made him uneasy. Danae stayed in the background, listening. Making faces behind her aunt’s back, sashaying around and mocking her when she wasn’t looking.
As the days passed, the aunt grew friendlier and friendlier. Even going so far as to make jokes about not being seen in public with O’Malley. “A handsome man like you,” she said, nudging him with her elbow. “People in the village would talk.”
As if this were peacetime, their only worry the gossip of neighbors.
For the most part, Greek women kept their eyes averted in the company of men, never stared at them the way she was doing. Perhaps this was a style she’d picked up in America, the red lipstick she insisted on wearing and the brazen manner, a bit of foolishness she’d brought home with her.
She was a woman who would say anything, his ma would have said. Mass in church if she were allowed.
Later, Danae told him her aunt was the same with everybody and that it had gotten her in trouble. “The other women don’t trust her. They think she’s a harlot.”
“Why’d she come back? From what she said, she had a good life in America.”
“Her husband died and she was alone.”
“But why here? You said she had money.”
“My father asked her to come after my mother died. She always wanted children. Taking care of Stefanos when he was a baby was like having one of her own.”
One, he noted, not two. “You don’t like her very much.”
Her expression was bleak. “She only loves Stefanos. She’s never been a mother to me.”
* * *
Danae’s father took the boy with him to Kalavryta two days later to search for food. They’d been gone about four hours when the child came bursting into the house. “O Germanos pethane! Pethane, pethane!”
O’Malley felt a chill. Although his Greek was poor, he understood what the child was saying. Died. The German died.
The father’s voice was grim. “Someone shot a German soldier in front of the bakery. I was in the shop next door, but Stefanos was right there when it happened. He saw the rifle in the doorway and heard the shot.”
“Anyone see him?”
“The woman who owns the bakery. ‘The rifle? It was no one I knew,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to think my family had anything to do with it.’ She offered Stefanos a loaf of bread, wanted to buy his silence. But I wouldn’t let him take it. ‘You insult me, you insult my son,’ I told her. ‘He knows what’s at stake. He will never speak of what he saw today.’ ”
He said all this quietly, only the slight tremor in his voice betraying his fear for his son.
Together he and O’Malley secured the wall of the cellar, then the front door, replacing the burlap with a ratty length of wood. They nailed the shutters closed and ordered the women and boy to stay out of sight.
If it hadn’t been so pathetic, O’Malley would have laughed out-loud.
As if any of this would protect them. If the Germans wanted in, they’d come in. More rocks at tanks, this was. Toy guns and cardboard shields. They needed to take action, to spirit Stefanos away from Kalavryta and be quick about it.
“Germans won’t rest till they find the killer,” he told the boy’s father. “Stefano is a witness. You need to get him out of here. They’ll be going from house to house soon. You don’t have much time.”
Danae’s father seemed to make up his mind. “Tomorrow, then.”
The plan was simple. They’d travel as a family group, all five of them, with their belongings and a herd of sheep, act like they were refugees, intent on resettling elsewhere. If the Germans stopped them, they’d probably lose the sheep, but the animals were necessary, would disguise their true purpose.
“We’ll leave you and Stefanos in the cave,” Danae’s father said. “I’ll get word to the antartes and let them know you’re there and they’ll come for you.”
* * *
“Why didn’t your father let Stefanos have the bread?” O’Malley asked Danae when she brought him his supper that night. “What harm would have come of it? He’s a sickly child. He needs to eat.”
“If people saw, they’d think Stefanos was a part of it.” Her tone was unemotional. They were at war. Everyone had to make sacrifices.
“But he’s a child.”
“Makes no difference.”
They were alone in the cellar. Above him, O’Malley could hear Stefanos crying, unsettled by the events of the day, and his aunt soothing him, trying to settle him down. Danae’s father had gone into town and wouldn’t be back until morning.
“He’s a hard man, your pa. Hard.”
He’d grown up believing hardness was a good thing in a man, especially in wartime. Now he wasn’t sure. To deny a starving child a loaf of bread. It seemed wrong to him. Cruel even. Like the Spartans leaving the broken babies out to die.
“Never mind my father,” Danae said.
She seemed in no hurry to leave and lingered there, grinning at him, her eyes full of mischief.
Reaching for her hand, he pulled her toward him. “In olden times, a lady would give a soldier her colors to wear when he headed into battle. I’m a soldier. What will you give me?”
Watching her all the while, he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it, letting his mouth linger on her skin. He untied the ribbon that held her hair back and buried his face in it, then undid the buttons of her blouse one by one. Gently, he caressed her, drawing her closer and kissing her neck, her mouth.
“Oxi,” she said, laughing and struggling a little. “Oxi, Angle.” No.
“ ’Tis wrong calling an Irishman, ‘Angle.’ ’Tis an insult.”
He wouldn’t let go of her even when she pulled away. He kissed the palms of her hands, each of her fingers in turn. “Danae,” he said hoarsely. “Danae.”
“Angle,” she said, mocking him. “Angle.”
He ran his hands all over her, kissed that long length of neck and buried his face in her hair. He could feel her trembling beneath him, her eyes shining in the darkness as she watched him expectantly. They fell to the floor and rolled over and over, laughing softly. She soon lost her shift, her naked breasts exposed, the whole of her.
“Danae?!” her aunt called. “What are you doing? Get back up here!”
O’Malley stood there for a long time after Danae left. He felt as if he’d been branded, a fresh scar searing his flesh where he’d touched her with his hand and felt the beating of her heart. He looked up at the darkness. Imagined her sleeping above him. He touched his lips with a finger, remembering the taste of her skin, the briny flavor of her. Wanted her more than he’d wanted anything in his life.
He began to sing softly, ‘The Rose of Tralee,’ the saddest ballad he knew. A song of love, longing:
The cool shades of evening their mantle were spreading
And Mary all smiling was listening to me
The moon through the valley her pale rays was shedding
When I won the heart of the Rose of Tralee.
Though lovely and fair as the rose of the summer
Yet, ’twas not her beauty alone that won me<
br />
Oh no! ’Twas the truth in her eye ever beaming
That made me love Mary, the Rose of Tralee.
“I’ll have you yet,” he said to the shadows. “You hear, Danae? Have you and have you and have you.”
* * *
It was still dark when the father shook O’Malley awake. “It’s time.”
After settling O’Malley down on a stool in the kitchen, the aunt set about dyeing his red hair, combing out each strand and dabbing it with a brush. She then painted his beard and eyebrows in turn, his eyelashes and the hair on his arms, chest and legs.
Homemade, the dye stung his skin. “Burning me, you are,” O’Malley cried. “Killing me with your woman’s poison.”
Danae’s aunt handed him a mirror without a word, glad to be rid of him. She’d have made him drink the foul brew if she’d had any say, buried him afterward out in the field.
He turned his head from side to side, inspecting himself. The business with the dye hadn’t made him look Greek, only filthy to the point of unhealthiness. The liquid had trickled down and stained the skin of his face, made it look moldy. The glass in the mirror was cracked, cleaving his image right down the middle. The two halves didn’t match up, which was about how he felt.
“It’s the business,” he said, trying to make the best of it. “My own mother wouldn’t know me.”
The aunt had been against the plan from the start, saying a cave was not a fit place for a child. “He’s the one who’ll cause us trouble,” she’d said at one point, nodding in O’Malley’s direction. “Him and only him.”
O’Malley wondered if she’d heard them in the cellar last night, if she knew what had gone on between him and Danae. It didn’t matter. Too late now—too late for everything.
Stefanos showed O’Malley his suitcase. Made of lacquered cardboard, it was a small thing, not much bigger than a metal lunchbox. He’d wanted to bring the broken kite, too. “Fere ton aeto.” But there hadn’t been enough time to get it down from the tree. He seemed eager to be underway, happy even.
In the kitchen, O’Malley and Danae quickly divided up whatever food the aunt had seen fit to give them and stored it in their packs. The girl surrendered his grenades and watched as he secured them to his belt, then retrieved his rifle and revolver from the cupboard.
