by Leta Serafim
A few of the refugees had horse-drawn wagons, but most were on foot. O’Malley had drawn guard duty, assigned to the butte above the road. He spent the day watching the exodus, the slipshod caravan of people and animals filing out of Kalavryta. Every now and then a car would seek to get past the horde, its owner honking and shouting at people to get out of his way,
The refugees had packed in haste, stowing leaking tins of olive oil on top of their bed linens and clothes. For the most part, it was a motley collection, the things they’d chosen to take—icons and painted crockery, rolled up rugs—little that would be of use to them on the trip ahead. Every now and then a toy would show itself, a child’s bicycle, its wheels spinning aimlessly, or a china doll. The villagers led cows, too, if they had them, and goats and sheep. A couple of people had chickens in ramshackle cages strapped to the backs of their donkeys, and the hens’ squawking added to the sense of chaos.
The people’s trudging had an air of finality about it. They kept looking back as if trying to fix the village in their mind. Many of the women were sobbing.
“We’re heading to Sparta where we have relatives,” one woman told O’Malley. “Hopefully there’ll be food when we get there.” She had a little boy with her, clutching at her skirts.
“What about Danae Papadakis and her father?”
“As far as I know, they’re still in Kalavryta.”
“Peino, mama.” Her son tugged at her arm. I’m hungry.
“Siopi.” Hush.
The child continued to cry. Embarrassed, his mother bade O’Malley good night and walked on with her son. O’Malley could hear the boy weeping as they made their way over the hill. “Peino,” he kept saying, the words echoing over the darkened landscape long after he and his mother had disappeared from view.
The antartes continued to search for Kimon, seeking to learn where he and his brother had thrown the corpses. Leonidas had instructed the men to destroy any evidence they found. Disinter the bodies and burn them. Do whatever was necessary to obscure the fact that the wounded men in the hospital had been murdered.
The old woman had also disappeared.
O’Malley seethed whenever he thought of her. Not the hag in Skye, that one. No, what she’d been was far darker, the angel of death.
If von Le Suire discovered the bodies of the wounded men, he’d remember those seventy-seven others, the ones long dead on the mountain. That many, he’d be forced to take action.
* * *
“I’ll be careful. I’ll ride like the wind and get Danae. You won’t even know I’m gone.”
O’Malley and Leonidas had again drawn guard duty and were up on a bluff, watching for German patrols. A pair of hawks hovered above them, riding the currents of air. The birds made O’Malley anxious, and he watched them out of the corner of his eye, circling above him. At least they weren’t vultures, he told himself. Not yet anyway.
Snow covered the lower flanks of Mount Helmos. If he and Danae were to leave, they needed to go now, before more snow came and blocked the pass through the mountain.
He had thought this was as good a time as any to tell Leonidas he was going and was surprised at the vehemence of his friend’s response.
“Are you crazy? You can’t leave, not now!” Leonidas shouted.
Setting the binoculars down, O’Malley turned and faced his friend. “Say what you will. I need to get her out of Kalavryta. Get her to safety.”
“Safety? Take a look around you, my friend.” Leonidas pointed to Kalavryta, the mountains that surrounded it. “There’s no safety here. You’re a soldier in a military unit that has neither ammunition nor food. Outgunned and outmanned by the enemy. When the Germans attack, we have exactly enough bullets to hold them off for a day, maybe two. No more.”
“I’ll take her away then. To Mani.”
“Mani’s a long way off. People see you, they’ll think you’re a German soldier and she’s your whore. Greeks in the countryside think the devil has red hair, ‘Red like the flames of hell,’ they say, and they throw stones at them. The way you look, you won’t last a week. You saw what happened to her brother. You want her to get killed, too? To get shot dead in a field somewhere?”
“No. I’d sooner die than see her harmed.”
“Then leave her where she is, safe in her father’s house.”
“How long you talking?”
“Until the end of the war.”
“Go on outta here.”
“I’m serious. The Germans are on the run. Even if they do try and attack Kalavryta, they’ll never make it through the mountains. ELAS has men guarding every pass. They’ll never get by them.”
“Do they have bullets, these ELAS men of yours?”
“More than we do. Enough to hold them back.”
O’Malley looked away. He didn’t share his friend’s optimism. Again, he thought of Kalavryta and the fist. Wondered if his friend had forgotten the Germans had planes.
Chapter 20
After the initial exodus, the number of people leaving Kalavryta slowly dwindled. Perhaps it was the cold keeping them home, O’Malley thought sourly, beating his arms against himself.
It had been three days since the attack at the hospital, far longer since they’d thrown the POWs off the mountain. Although he and the others still kept watch on the village, there was less urgency now when they took up their positions. Von Le Suire hadn’t found the bodies. There was no reason to think he ever would.
Not exactly peace in our time. A truce, more like it. O’Malley prayed it would hold and that he’d be able to spend Christmas with Danae. Just that morning, he’d questioned Leonidas about the custom in Greece, whether her father would take it amiss if he bought her a ring. The Greek just laughed and shook his head.
“Ehei trelathei apo tin agapi tou,” he said. Crazy from love.
For the time being, O’Malley had abandoned his plan to spirit her away. Leonidas was right. She was better off staying where she was. He’d do her up proper when the war was over, marry her and take her away in a shiny new car. A convertible maybe, with a horn he’d blow like the trumpet of Gabriel.
They’d spend their honeymoon in Ireland. First to Cork, of course, to see his folks, then on to Glengarriff, where they’d swim in the phosphorescent water, the fiery sea. His ma had always wanted a daughter. Danae’s presence would be like a gift to her.
Three times he’d snuck into town to see her, waiting until well past midnight and taking his rifle with him. He’d left Elektra behind and walked there, hidden in a ditch at the bottom of the hill and ventured on. Crossing the field at a run the night before, he’d nearly slammed into a donkey. Scared him half to death, it had, and set his heart pounding.
The donkey had barely stirred. Shying away, it had only flicked its ears and given a swipe of its tail. The grass had been stiff beneath him and he’d lain there for a few moments before taking off again, pausing in the shadow of a village doorway before making his way to her house. He always hesitated once he got there. Then, gathering up his courage, he’d throw a handful of gravel at her window.
She opened the shutters and peered out. Her hair was loose, reaching almost her waist. Breathtaking, it was, the heavy length of it stirring in the air like ravens taking flight.
“Angle?”
“Aye. I came to see how you’re faring.”
She snuck out of the house a few minutes later. She hadn’t bothered to change, just thrown a shawl over her nightdress. He’d brought a blanket and they sat out in the field. The clouds had lifted and the sky was bright with stars.
They spent the night there, talking softly.
At one point O’Malley pointed to the sky. “Once, on St. Stephen’s Day, I made a mask out of a brown paper bag. Seven, I was at the time, and eager to parade in the street with the older boys, all bedecked as they were in a straw costume and ribbons. The bag was ripped in places, and when I put it over my head, I saw these tiny pinpricks of light. Being a smart lad, I concluded stars must be
much the same: holes in the broken parts of the sky where the light of heaven shone through. My pa laughed when I told him, said I’d never be a scientist. My ma, however, was greatly pleased.”
“ ‘You’re right, son,’ she’d said. ‘God’s glory is all around. Waiting for us up there in the sky, waiting to bathe us in holy light.’ ”
For some reason, O’Malley felt like crying. “She’s a good woman, my ma.”
He’d expected Danae to laugh at him, but she just touched his face with a kind of wonder. Murmured his given name.
“We sang that day in Cork, laughed and sang and celebrated Christmas.”
The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,
St. Stephen’s his Day was caught in the furze;
And though he is little, his family’s great,
So arise, good lady, and give us a treat.
Sing holly, sing ivy.
He sang softly to her for a moment and stopped. The words seemed foolish in this place, a mockery even. He’d not be the same boy his ma knew when he got back to Ireland. The one who’d made masks and paraded with the other lads in the street. Who thought heaven was all around, just waiting to be seen. No, he was gone forever. Lost to the war like so much else.
He thought again of Stefanos, lying in the field with his eyes open. Those wounded, unseeing eyes, a dead echo of sky.
At some point he’d taken the flokati off and draped it around Danae’s shoulders, but she’d pushed it away, insisting they share. Although she was very near, lying in the crook of his arm, he hadn’t reached for her. He’d been content to just lie there with her, to watch over her, if only for a time.
“You got food?” he asked. “Enough to eat?”
“Yes. My father is bringing us a goat and we’ll butcher it when he comes, so we will have meat.”
She was making her pa a gray vest with cables, she said, knitting it under her Aunt Toula’s tutelage. “If I have any wool left over, I’ll make you one, too.” She picked at the flokati with her fingers, made a gesture of distaste.
“Now don’t go maligning my cape. Served me well, it has.”
“Baa,” she said softly. “Baa.”
A shooting star pierced the darkness. “Make a wish,” O’Malley said.
Danae shook her head.
“Come on.”
“All right.” Throwing her head back, she mumbled something. It sounded too long to be a wish, more like a prayer.
“What’d you wish for?”
“I wished the star hadn’t fallen, that it was back where it belonged up in the sky, that everything was the same as before.”
Although she hadn’t said her brother’s name, O’Malley knew she meant Stefanos.
* * *
After leaving Danae, O’Malley had retreated to the bluff with his gun, watching over the plains of Kalavryta. Leonidas always referred to guard duty as ‘shepherding the wind,’ but O’Malley saw it differently. Standing there on the rock, he felt like he was the captain of a ship, a guardian of sorts, steering the village through a stormy sea. Messengers reported there’d been German troop movement in and out of Patras, but so far he’d seen nothing.
Von Le Suire was withdrawing, had to be. By Christmas, it might well be over. After the initial panic, life in the camp had slowly returned to normal, the main worry now no longer the murdered POWs, but food. All the chickens had been eaten and the antartes were living on olives and puckered figs gleaned from the fields. Although the woods were full of quail, Leonidas had forbidden the men from shooting them, saying they needed to conserve their ammunition and the sound might alert the Germans in the area to their presence. O’Malley, for one, was ready to disobey that order—kill the first quail crossed his path. Bite off its head and eat it, feathers and all.
There’d been talk of marching into Kalavryta and bartering for provisions. Again, Leonidas had dissuaded them, saying they’d lose their advantage if the Germans attacked, that it would be better if they kept to the high ground. Judging by the talk he’d overheard, the antartes were ready to mutiny. O’Malley doubted his friend could hold them back much longer.
A middle-aged man was climbing up the path toward him. Unlike the other refugees, he carried no suitcase, led no donkey or mule.
“I came to warn you,” he said. “The Germans found the bodies.”
“When?”
“A few hours ago. They brought grappling hooks and fished them out of the well, laid them on the ground. You could see the wounds in their throats, what Kimon had done to them. Von Le Suire was there, walking back and forth and shouting orders. ”
“Where was the well?”
Let it be far, he prayed. Far, far away from this place.
“To the north of here. About a fifteen minute walk from Kalavryta.”
Two days later, the same man returned. “They found more men,” he said. “High up in the mountains. All broken apart and dressed in German uniforms. More than seventy of them. My cousin’s a shepherd. He watched the soldiers carry them down.”
O’Malley felt like he’d been hit by a wave, washed out to sea. “How they’d know they were there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a pilot spotted them. Von Le Suire had a group of Greeks with him and he ordered them to put the dead in coffins. They had been on the mountain a long time and animals had been at them, my cousin said, so it took the Greeks a long time. After they finished, the Germans lined them up and shot them.”
“Do you think that was the end of it?”
“No.” The man’s voice cracked. “They won’t stop until they kill us all.”
The man said the mayor planned to meet with the German officers when they arrived. Explain that the people of Kalavryta had nothing to do with any of it. It had been the antartes who’d thrown the soldiers off the mountain, kids from another village who’d knifed the POWs in the hospital.
“He’s forming a committee to welcome the Germans. A fucking committee.”
O’Malley looked back at Kalavryta, his face full of longing.
“Ach, Danae,” he said in a strangled voice.
* * *
She was standing outside, hanging wet sheets on a line with her aunt, a basket of wet clothes between them. Both women were wearing black dresses and kerchiefs, tsokara, cheap leather clogs, on their feet. The grass was damp and their ankles were splattered with mud.
“The Germans are on their way,” O’Malley shouted. “You’ve got to get out of here.”
Toula Papadakis waved him off. “Bah, they’ve been saying that for weeks now.”
She gathered up a sheet and threw it across the line, wrestling with it against the wind. The sheet swelled with air, beating against the rope that held it like a sail. Danae’s aunt had let herself go since the death of Stefanos, O’Malley noticed, abandoned her lipstick and dyed hair, an inch of white now showing at the roots. A rank odor clung to her and there were lines of filth in the folds of her neck.
“Put your laundry away, woman,” he yelled. “Did you not hear? Von Le Suire is coming. He’ll take down this place and slaughter the lot of you. In Crete, Germans destroyed a village named Kandanos. Massacred everyone there. Women and children, it didn’t matter. Salted the earth and poisoned the wells. I was there. I saw. It’ll be worse here in Kalavryta. Far worse.”
“Danae’s father is bringing the goats down from the mountains. He won’t be back until Thursday.”
Two days from now.
Bending down, she began going through the wet clothes as if searching for something she couldn’t find, her hands shaking.
Danae gently took the basket from her. “Come on, Theia. We’ll pack the suitcase and leave as soon as Baba returns from the mountains. We’ll go to your cousin’s house in Coroni.”
O’Malley helped the women get the suitcase down from the attic and stood over them, watching them pack. The aunt quickly folded up her dresses, then went to the closet and retrieved some of Stefanos’ things, which she placed in the suitcase on top of
the rest. His little bag, a couple of sweaters. As if the child would be traveling with them.
As if he wasn’t gone.
Danae she left to fend for herself.
After they finished, O’Malley carried the suitcase to the door and set it down. Before he left, he warned them again to get away as soon as possible; with the Germans on the move, they were in terrible danger.
Sprinting across the field, he started back toward the camp. He needed to find Leonidas and warn him, figure out some way to save the village. Judging by what the man had told him, the Greeks didn’t have much time.
Danae came running after him. “Angle! Wait!”
Out of breath, she handed him a piece of paper. “It’s my cousin’s address in Coroni.”
Grinning from ear to ear, O’Malley fingered the paper. A commitment of sorts, this was, there was no denying it. “Ah, Danae, Danae. My summer’s day, my bit of light. Does this mean you’ll have me then?”
As always, she soon put an end to his malarkey. “It is only an address. A way to find me.”
“Good Lord, but you’re a stubborn one. Is it my red hair that’s putting you off? My feckless Irish ways?” The note made him bold. She was his and he knew it.
“I am afraid for you,” Danae said, touching his sleeve. “I wish you could come with us.”
“Can’t. Got to fight the Germans.”
“I know.”
“You got no cause to worry though, not on my account. The Irish, we’re invincible. ’Tis the freckles protect us. Keep the bullets from penetrating.”
Bad luck to be talking this way, but he didn’t care.
He didn’t want to remember her crying. He’d enough of that back in Ireland, his ma clutching at him and sobbing. Women’s tears weakened a man and he needed to be strong now.
“When will you come?” Her eyes were wet.
“As soon as the Germans turn loose of this place. I’ll ride my big horse and come fetch you like in a fairy tale, bear you away and make you my wife. It’ll be grand, so it will. You’ll see. I’ll wear my flokati and you’ll wear your ma’s wedding dress and all the people we love will be there, pelting us with rice and shouting ‘halleluiah.’ ”
