by Leta Serafim
O’Malley waited until nightfall, then saddled up Elektra and took off with the boy. He could see the lights of Kalavryta to the west and he rode toward them.
“You can’t tell your pa we came here tonight, Specky, you hear? You gotta keep it a secret. He’ll have my guts for garters he finds out.”
They tethered the horse by the river and walked back through the field to the house. Danae was still up and they threw pebbles at the window to get her attention. She motioned for them to be quiet, laying her head on her hands to show her father and aunt were asleep.
She crept out of the house a few minutes later. “What are you doing here?” she asked O’Malley.
He pushed the boy forward. “Lad wanted to see you,” he said, self-conscious in front of her, as always.
Stefanos buried his face in her apron. “Danae! Danae! Mou elipses!” I missed you.
The three of them ended up on the back of the horse, riding along the banks of the river. Elektra’s hooves beat a steady rhythm in the sand. It was close to midnight and the glade was very dark—the only illumination, the moon breaking through the clouds. They forded the river and galloped across it to the other side, water splashing high around them, silver in the moonlight.
O’Malley was in the middle, holding Stefanos with one hand, Danae behind him with her arms around his waist.
“Where’d you get the horse?” she whispered in his ear.
“One of antartes gave it to me.”
“What’s her name?”
“I don’t know her given name. I call her Elektra, ’cause she’s a wild thing, full of energy. Fastest horse in the camp, she is. Maybe in all of Greece. It’s like flying being on her. Flying.”
He told Danae to close her eyes and imagine they were leaving the earth behind, that Elektra was bearing them up into the sky, the way Pegasus did in the stories. “Feel the wind there? That’s her wings beating the air. The dampness? Those are the clouds we’re passing through.”
Throwing her head back, Danae laughed and laughed. “I love this!” she cried.
O’Malley returned two more times with Stefanos to see her, always late at night after her father and aunt were in bed. They spent many hours on the back of the horse, thundering across the moonlit fields. Once they stayed out until dawn and watched the sun come up over the mountains, Stefanos falling asleep in O’Malley’s arms as the sky slowly filled with light.
* * *
Returning to camp was always hard after he and the boy had been with her. Stefanos would cry and say he wanted to stay at the house, that he didn’t want to go back to the barrel. O’Malley did his best to quiet him down.
The situation with the POWs remained unresolved, and three days later, Leonidas asked him to accompany him to German headquarters, to try to negotiate together in person. “Might be good if von Le Suire knows the British have an interest.”
O’Malley nodded. “You’re right. Might count for something, that.”
Before the two of them left, O’Malley asked Roumelis to cut his hair. “I can’t be sitting down with a man like von Le Suire looking the way I do. No, sir, I am a representative of the British Government and His Royal Highness, King George, the seventh.”
After Roumelis had finished barbering him, O’Malley boiled a bucket of water and set about washing himself. It was a desperate kind of bath, standing outside with his feet in the bucket, splashing water up and down the length of him. The water was soon cold and he had neither soap nor a towel. The Germans watched him from inside their barbed wire enclosure and made fun of his pasty nakedness, the size of his shriveling man parts, holding up their index fingers and thumbs with barely an inch between them.
O’Malley splashed water on them. “Away with you, you bloody Krauts.”
Undeterred, the Germans went on jeering. They’d gotten to know the men in the camp over time, and a reluctant camaraderie had sprung up between them. One of prisoners, a fresh faced youth named Hans, had studied ancient Greek at the University of Heidelberg and used it to converse with Leonidas, translating in turn for the rest of the POWs. Everyone in the camp found this hilarious, charming. The antartes dubbed him Homeros—Homer—and sought him out every chance they got. Most of the POWs were from Alsace and had been pressed into military service against their will and were—or so they claimed—unwilling pawns of the Nazis.
Lions and lambs lying down together, though who was the lion and who was the lamb was hard to say. The antartes were far more ferocious than their German counterparts, especially their commanding officer—the man named Reiss—who’d remained as he’d been that day in the gorge, bewildered and sickly, totally unsuited for the position he found himself in. His men ignored him, preferring to laugh and joke with their captors. It wasn’t quite as it had been during the First World War, when the German and English soldiers had thrown down their arms and sung ‘Silent Night’ together on Christmas Eve, but it wasn’t the battle of Stalingrad either.
The man who spoke Greek had offered to teach Leonidas and him some rudimentary German, a few words to smooth the way with Ebersberger and von Le Suire. They’d spent the previous evening going over various German expressions. Leonidas had balked at Sieg Heil so they’d compromised on “Guten Morgan, Lt. Oberst. Wie geht es Ihnen?” Good morning, Lt. Colonel. How are you?
O’Malley remained hopeful about the POWs. The Germans had had time to ponder the situation. Surely they didn’t want their men to die. It was in their best interest to negotiate. Aye, it would all work out. He was convinced of it.
He wrapped the goatskin around his waist and went in search of a uniform. From what he’d seen in Cairo, officers were a breed apart, preferring to socialize in their own mess, drink with their own kind. Given a choice, they’d only have spoken to one another, never the enlisted men under their command.
He assumed the Germans were the same. He’d need braid on his shoulder if he were to impress von Le Suire. Proper garb.
He spoke to Fotis, who was in charge of such things and told him what he needed.
The Greek was hard at work, building another barbed wire corral for the POWs. It was located near the barrel where Stefanos was hiding, the area the antartes used as a latrine. Fotis said he planned to move the Germans there as soon as he finished. Give the Greeks more space.
O’Malley chuckled. Poor Germans. Smell was bound to get to them. Be a hardship they’d not soon forget.
Digging around in a wooden crate, Fotis pulled out a khaki uniform and handed it to him. It was too short all around. O’Malley could see his wrists and ankles sticking out a good two inches.
Too tall by half.
He sighed, remembering how his mother had despaired of him, “Second time I’ve let out these pants,” she’d said when he was fourteen. “Will you not stop growing for a week at least?”
She’d be scared if she knew what he was about and urge him not to go. His pa would be another story. He’d be proud of the courage his son was displaying, marching into the German headquarters as bold as brass, pretending to be a British officer. Doing his best to save the German POWs, as great a thing as he had ever done.
Idly, O’Malley wondered what had become of the British soldier whose uniform he had on, if he was still alive. Or like the boots he was wearing, it had belonged to a dead man. The thought depressed him. Suited up from top to bottom in the garb of corpses. Pure folly, this.
Leonidas was beautifully kitted out in a sheepskin hat and black leather tunic, boots that reached the knee. He’d tucked his pants into the boots, Russian-style. Like a member of the Red Army, O’Malley thought. Politburo.
“Be quoting Marx and Engels to me now, will ya?”
The Greek had also trimmed his beard, given the ends of his moustache a bit of a twirl. The tunic was tight across his chest, his powerful shoulders. It did little to alter his slouching homeliness—the sad, dark look of him.
O’Malley straightened his own uniform. “Not bad, eh? In Ireland, girls see a fine figure of
a man such as myself, they’d be lining up, wanting to give him the business.”
Leonidas actually laughed. “An ass thinks an ass is a pretty fellow.”
“What rank in the British Army should I be giving myself?
“I don’t know.” Leonidas’ mouth twitched. “Corporal.”
O’Malley fingered one of the buttons on his uniform. He was looking forward to playing the fool in front of the Germans, pretending to be a British officer. Braying and carrying on like something out of Kipling. He’d even gone so far as to practice his speech, aiming for exactly the right tone—that astounding mix of aristocrat and imbecile that had characterized his British masters in Cairo.
“Forget all that,” Leonidas said when he told him. “Don’t talk.”
“Away with ya. Won’t we do better if von Le Suire thinks I’m a decorated personage, a peer of the realm?”
“He’ll never think that, you open that Irish mouth of yours.” He lit a cigarette and inhaled. “If you’re not careful, von Le Suire will hang you.”
“I can’t just stand there,” O’Malley said, unwilling to give it up. “I’ll look stupid.”
Leonidas went on smoking. “Stupid, yes, but not dead.”
“How about I say I’m Australian, a representative of the British Commonwealth?”
“You keep quiet, that’s what you do.”
* * *
Not sure when he’d return, O’Malley fed Elektra and filled her bucket with water. After he finished, he shouldered his rifle and filled his pockets with ammunition.
Stefanos’ voice startled him. “Pou pas?” he asked sleepily, crawling out of the barrel.
“I’m heading to German headquarters with Leonidas. Got some business to tend to.”
“Pame mazi.” Take me with you.
“Can’t, child. There are a lot of soldiers where we’re going. Worse than here. Place is infested.”
O’Malley steered him back to the barrel. “Go on now, off with you. Go back to sleep.”
The boy hesitated. “Panagia mazi sou.” May the Madonna protect you.
“And you, Specky,” O’Malley said, touched in spite of himself. “And you.”
* * *
He and Leonidas left on foot. Worried von Le Suire might detain them, the Greek hadn’t wanted to risk losing the horses. He had a canvas ammunition bag slung over his shoulder with a captured Luger inside and a handful of German bullets—proof positive that he had the POWs and was negotiating in good faith.
They were almost to the path when the cook, Roumelis, came chasing after them. He begged them to add sheep to the deal as the camp was running out of meat.
“Germans will never take us seriously if we do that,” O’Malley told him. “A man’s a man. A sheep’s a sheep. Can’t go trading one for the other.”
Roumelis argued for a few minutes, then turned on his heel and left. “I peina kastra polemaei kai kastra paradinei,” he bellowed over his shoulder.
“What’s that mean?” O’Malley asked Leonidas.
“Wars are lost to hunger.”
“Hell, he’s a cook. What does he know?”
Chapter 14
O’Malley took his cap off and shoved it in a pocket so he wouldn’t lose it to the wind. Not snow, he judged, studying the gathering clouds. Rain.
They had hiked north along the cliff, following the course of the river. “Beyond the monastery is a railroad bridge,” Leonidas said. “We’ll cross there. It’s better than wading across.”
O’Malley nodded. Danae had taken him across the same bridge when she’d brought him to the cave. He scanned the walls of the gorge, searching for signs of movement. They’d be totally exposed once they started down the path, pinned against the cliff with no place to hide.
He regretted he hadn’t done a head count of the prisoners. “You get all of them the night they ran away? The guns they stole?”
Leonidas frowned. “One’s missing.”
Shit. They’d made a dog’s dinner of it. O’Malley slowed his pace. German might already be dead, come to that, slaughtered by the antartes that night. If not, he’d be up ahead, roaming the territory they’d have to pass through, roaming it with a gun.
Evidently, the same thought had occurred to Leonidas, who slowed down and began to move more cautiously. He took his time when they reached the path, inching down with his back against the rocks, gun in hand. O’Malley followed close behind, flattening himself, too, against the face of the cliff.
“I’ll speak to the monks,” Leonidas said. “They keep an eye out. They’ll know if anyone passed this way.”
“Sure. Talk with them. Be prudent.”
Leonidas said the monastery was called Mega Spileon and that it dated from the fourth century AD. It had been rebuilt many times, most recently in the 1930s after a powder magazine from the War of Independence exploded and burned the place down.
Ammunition in a church? O’Malley chuckled. Would that the Irish fathers had been so brazen.
A monk in a gray habit greeted them and bade them enter. Fingering his beard, he said the others were in the refectory eating and insisted O’Malley and Leonidas join them. It was a humble meal: lentils and bread, a carafe of homemade wine. Although the wine was rough, O’Malley welcomed it, the momentary peace it brought him, the quieting of the buzzing in his head. He drank and drank, recounting stories from Ireland that Leonidas translated as well as he could for the monks, who looked at one another, shocked by O’Malley’s loudness.
Still talking, O’Malley lit a cigarette. “Ah, tobacco, soothes you, so it does. I was but eight the first time I smoked a cigarette and didn’t I go and set myself ablaze with the thing? Pants were smoldering, smoke pouring out of my skivvies. Pa heard me yelling and came running. Quick as a wink, I stuffed the cigarette down in the sofa—burning all the while, mind you—so he wouldn’t know what I’d been up to. My mother’s prized possession, it was, that sofa, held pride of place in the family parlor. Torched it good and proper, I did. In a panic, I picked up a pillow and began batting at the flames, took out the lamp next to it and their wedding picture. My pa was ready to eat me.”
“My friend talks like a woman,” Leonidas said drily. “He has an electric tongue.”
O’Malley pretended to take offense and they clowned around for a moment, the monks laughing timidly.
The two of them visited the church before they left. The smell inside reminded O’Malley of the Catholic sanctuaries of his youth, the tallow and lingering trace of incense. All of it was deeply familiar. Facing the altar, he knelt down and crossed himself, prayed for the success of their mission.
An elderly monk walked out of the church with them, and he and Leonidas lingered on the steps for a minute, talking. He was wearing a stiff, conical hat with a heavy black cloth draped over it, similar to the wimple nuns wore, only with a much higher crown. Worried, the monk kept pointing to the monastery, repeating something over and over.
When they were underway again, Leonidas explained the cloth was a symbolic veil, designed to prevent the monk from seeing the world. “It’s called kalymafki.”
“He seemed pretty stirred up. What was he going on about?”
“What they should do if the Germans come.”
“What’d you tell him?”
Leonidas’ smile was grim. “I told him to get away as fast as they could.”
What a sight that would be. The monks holding on to their hats as they ran, their black cloaks flapping in the breeze. Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. He wondered what the Germans would do—if they’d hesitate at killing holy men, if the monks’ vocation would stop them.
* * *
“How we going to keep von Le Suire from killing us the minute he sees us?”
“He goes by the rules. We’ll be all right.”
“What about your lot? From what I’ve seen, they’re not big on rules. Chasing hither and yon. Like something out of the Dark Ages, you were, the night the Germans got away. Had the blo
odlust in your eyes, you did. You should have seen yourselves. Burn ’em alive, they will, I thought, same as they did the heretics during the Inquisition. All your lot needed was kindling and a match. If they kill those POWs while we’re negotiating, we’re done for.”
“They won’t kill them. They gave me their word.”
Wasn’t much, but it would have to do. O’Malley didn’t know what the word of a Greek was worth. In Ireland, it meant a great deal, a man judged poorly, shunned even, if he didn’t abide by it. He prayed the Greeks were the same.
The two of them walked on in uncomfortable silence, reaching the railroad bridge a few minutes later. Spanning the river, it was smaller than O’Malley remembered. It had started to rain and the river was rising. They’d have to walk on the tracks of the bridge, he saw; there was no place beneath it that was dry enough.
“We’ll have to wait,” Leonidas said. “It’s dangerous to cross the bridge when the trains are running.”
Holding their hands over their heads, they sprinted toward the bridge. The slope was already slippery, thick with mud, and they clutched at each other for support. They sat down under the bridge, clinging to the metal pilings with their hands, a few feet above the raging water. The rain continued to drum down.
O’Malley could see the monastery in the distance, the path running like a scar up the cliff behind it. The cliff was streaked with rain, the white limestone shiny and glossy with damp. Aside from the path, there’d be no way to traverse it that he could see. You’d have to climb it same as you did a mountain, banging out toeholds with a hammer.
As always, the land was the Greeks’ greatest ally, far better than an army at keeping the enemy at bay. It made him feel better, knowing Stefanos was there; the Germans would never get him, not up there.
“The cliffs are impassable,” Leonidas said, following his gaze. “The only way around them is along the river. That day with the trucks is the only time I’ve ever seen the Germans attempt it. That man commanding them, he didn’t know what he was doing.”
