To Look on Death No More

by Leta Serafim

  “Fagito,” Leonidas shouted when they reached the village. Food.

  The women quickly emerged from their huts and formed a circle around the horses, waiting for the food and begging the men to hurry. Their hunger was so all consuming, they’d have braved a bullet to eat.

  “No need to ration yourself,” O’Malley told them as he tossed the boxes down. “There’s more where that came from.”

  He radioed the British agent again later that day and arranged for him to drop some toys and bags of candy for the children as well. Unused army jackets and bedrolls for the women. Whatever they could spare.

  “Headquarters was appalled by your report, Barabbas,” the man said. “I’m not sure we could have saved Kalavryta, but you were right, we should have at least tried. You can count on me, count on all of us here. We’ll help you in any way we can.”

  Leonidas contacted Aris Velouchiotis on his own and asked him not to dynamite the train, then radioed the Red Cross and requested that their representative negotiate with the Germans and get permission to use the train to deliver supplies on a one-time basis to the village. Two days later the Red Cross representative radioed back to say he’d succeeded and a train full of food would be forthcoming.

  O’Malley rejoiced when he heard the news. With any luck, the women would have enough food to make it through the winter.

  The supplies arrived as promised, an entire boxcar full of food. The women gathered when they heard it coming and waited patiently while O’Malley unloaded the boxes. He had volunteered for the task, telling Leonidas he didn’t need to send extra men; he’d see that the parcels got delivered.

  Leonidas was off by himself when O’Malley returned to the camp that night. Setting the gun he’d been cleaning aside, he signaled for him to come and sit beside him. “Red Cross train come?”

  “Yup. Had the devil’s own time unloading it.”

  “The village is going to be swimming in food. The agent radioed. They scheduled another drop at the airfield.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “They say what they’re sending?”

  “Toys for the children. Everything you asked for.”

  * * *

  The sun was setting when O’Malley and Leonidas arrived at the airfield, a bright line of red across the horizon. O’Malley panicked at first when he saw it, the fiery play of light across the sky, thinking it must be the Germans, that they’d torched another village. But then he realized it was only the end of day.

  Sadly, he wondered if the time would ever come when a sunset would be just that, not a reminder of firefights and death. If he’d ever leave be able to forget the war.

  They tethered their mounts to a tree and sat down to wait. Around ten, O’Malley heard a plane approach and hastened to ignite the flares. The air was very damp, and the lit flares were soon haloed with humidity.

  The Dakota touched down a moment later. But the whine of the propellers frightened Elektra and she reared up, tearing herself loose from the tree

  “Stop!” O’Malley yelled, charging after her.

  Leonidas ran to help and together they rushed to grab her reins and pull her to safety.

  Unaware of what was happening, the plane continued to roll forward, circling around before coming to stop on the far side of the field. The men on the Dakota quickly threw out the boxes, which thudded when they hit the icy ground and split open, the wood shattering on impact.

  Hearing the sound, Elektra grew more and more frightened. She rose up on her hind legs and whinnied, the whites of her eyes showing, then galloped away. She ran and ran, trailing the loose reins, but she couldn’t see her way clear in the dark and stumbled into the broken boxes. Neighing frantically, she tried to get up, but fell back down again, her leg shattered, the bone white and exposed.

  “No!” O’Malley screamed. “No!”

  Distraught, the crew of the plane threw down a bedroll to staunch the bleeding, but the wound were grievous and O’Malley knew she was lost. The horse’s eyes were open, beseeching. She nuzzled his hand as the life ebbed out of her.

  Like all of us, he thought, she’s afraid to die.

  Leonidas offered to shoot her, but O’Malley refused.

  “No, she’s mine. I’ll see to it.”

  Closing his eyes, he raised the gun to her head, pressed it against the bone and pulled the trigger.

  He insisted on burying her there in a field. Along with the parcels of food, the crew had thrown out tools—shovels and pickaxes—which he and Leonidas used to move the frozen earth. Leonidas had proposed butchering the animal and taking the meat back to the camp, but O’Malley wouldn’t hear of it. It took until morning and their hands were raw by the time they finished. The horse was too heavy to lift and they had to drag her over with ropes and lever her into the hole.

  O’Malley began to scream then. He went on screaming for a long time, picking up icy clumps of dirt and throwing them into the grave.

  Leonidas watched him, but didn’t interfere. He seemed to understand that it wasn’t just the horse, it was all of them O’Malley was grieving for.

  * * *

  Saying he’d return to retrieve the food parcels, Leonidas left the airfield and went back to the camp alone. It had begun to snow again, a layer of white slowly covering the newly dug grave. O’Malley couldn’t stop crying, blubbering and wiping his nose on his sleeve.

  “A horse, for pity’s sake.”

  As long as he lived, he’d not forget the sight of her down on her knees, her eyes full of terror as the blood poured forth and drowned her.

  Another innocent lost.

  Leonidas returned a few hours later with some other men, who quickly loaded up the parcels and rode off again. O’Malley said he’d be along later, that he had something to attend to. Seeing how distraught he was, the Greek didn’t argue and left him there, standing alone on the snowy airstrip.

  “Don’t linger,” Leonidas warned, wheeling around on his horse. “More snow is coming. You’ll freeze to death.”

  Chapter 27

  Reaching for his drop pack, O’Malley stowed his bedroll inside. The women would have meat, he’d see to that, and afterward he’d heed Leonidas’ advice and get the hell away. Roasted goat would be better than the poor scoff the Red Cross was handing out—the tins of sardines and powdered eggs—and if the women wanted to keep a few of the goats for milk, so much the better. It would be a blessing, it would. His last hurrah.

  He shouldered his pack and set off at first light, relieved to see the back of the camp. The antartes’ mood had darkened since the massacre in Kalavryta. Unable to move out because of the snow, they’d begun to turn on each other, the more bloody-minded bullying the rest and pushing them around. It didn’t take much to set them off, and there’d been fist fights over cigarettes and space around the campfire, about whose allegiance to ELAS was suspect and whose family had profited the most from the war.

  Increasingly paranoid, Haralambos spoke continually of collaborators and black marketeers, what ‘the people’s justice’ would do to them once the Germans withdrew. The British were omnipresent, according to him, Churchill actively working to undermine the efforts of ELAS and occupy Greece once the Germans withdrew. His agents were everywhere.

  “Just a few people playing games,” Leonidas had told O’Malley when they’d discussed it.

  O’Malley wasn’t so sure. Haralambos had been on him again about his loyalty in a way that frightened him, making it clear that he no longer considered him a comrade-in-arms, but an agent of the British government and as such, his mortal enemy.

  He’d caught the school teacher watching him the previous night with a scowl on his face.

  “What are you looking at?” O’Malley had asked, keeping his tone light.

  “You.”

  “What is it about me that has caught your eye this fair evening?”

  “I’m wondering why you are here.” Pushing his glasses up, the school teacher had
studied him through narrowed eyes. “What your true purpose is.”

  “Fighting Hitler, same as you.”

  Haralambos turned away without answering.

  “I’m my own man,” O’Malley shouted after him, “I’ll not take the King’s shilling and betray you. Grass on a fellow soldier.”

  The rest of the men fell silent. They’d all been listening to the exchange.

  “You there, you gawking at me?” Collaring the man closest to him, O’Malley pushed him away. “You’ve got no cause to be staring. I’ve been here since 1941. Been shot and nearly died defending your friggin’ homeland.”

  He thought at the time that would be the end of it, but he remained uneasy.

  No one in the camp ever spoke of Kalavryta, the focus of discussion instead being on the British landing in Salonika and what it meant and how Athens was now under martial law. Many of the antartes continued to assist the women in the village, chopping wood for them and repairing their houses, but if they did so, it was as individuals, not as a group. The collective will was elsewhere.

  Leonidas had withdrawn completely and no longer played much of a role. He rarely spoke to anyone, save O’Malley and then only when the two of them were alone.

  “Remember that war I told you about?” he told him late one evening. They were hard at work, seeing to the horses, bringing them water and scattering hay on the ground for them to eat. “The one you have no place in? Well, it’s starting. You need to leave.”

  O’Malley set his bucket down. “For the love of God, Leonidas, where would you have me go?”

  “I can get you as far as Mani, and from there you can take a boat to Cyprus.”

  “But the Germans haven’t surrendered. The war’s not done.”

  “For you it is. Even if you wanted to go on fighting, you’re no good to them the way you are. You scream in your sleep and they’ve seen you crying.” He touched his arm as he said this, his voice gentle. “I’ve heard them talking. They say you’re loxos.” He fluttered his fingers at the side of his head, the Greek gesture for mentally ill.

  O’Malley could hear the horses ahead of him, their hooves on the ground as they moved about. Settling in for the night, they were milling around in the shadows of the trees.

  “Loxos?” he repeated softly. “Aye, maybe I am. Maybe I bloody well am.” He’d never felt more alone.

  “The British and ELAS will soon be at each other’s throats.” Leonidas’ face was hard to see in the darkness. “Which side will you choose?”

  “Yours, of course. The Greek one.”

  “They don’t trust you. You’ll only get yourself killed.”

  The stars were out—so close O’Malley could almost touch them, bat them about with his hand—the mountains, angular shadows against the sky. Such beauty to be had here and yet so much pain. Even after all this time, he couldn’t decide which quality best defined Greece.

  He blew on his hands and knocked his feet together in an effort to get warm. He could see his breath, feel the dampness collecting in his bones. He wanted to bed down close to the fire like the other men, but was afraid to now.

  “I’ll go, since you say I must. But there’s one thing I want to do before I jump ship. Danae’s father kept a herd of goats in the foothills here. I aim to find them and drive them down to Kalavryta.”

  “Goats, eh?” Looking back at the camp, Leonidas kept his voice down. “You know where he kept them?”

  “Got a fair idea.” They’d not be far from where he found the ewe, O’Malley thought, dilly-dallying on those same rocks. It’d go all right. He’d keep an eye out for the Germans, hide if he heard anything.

  Leonidas seemed to read his thoughts. “With that hair of yours, it’ll be the Greeks you need to watch out for, not the Germans. The villagers who think you’re the devil.”

  A stranger in a strange land. So he was and ever would be. Leonidas had no need to remind him.

  O’Malley gestured to the men asleep around the campfire. “Don’t you go telling them, you hear? They’ll eat those goats alive, I swear they will, and me along with them.”

  Like being hit in the face with a wasp’s nest it would be, if the antartes found about the goats. They’d swarm all over him and claim possession. Never mind feeding the women. Never mind anything, save their ravenous hunger.

  They were maggots, all right. “You hear me, Leonidas? It’s on me, this thing. On me and me alone.”

  Herding goats was about all he was good for, come to that. Kalavryta had undone him, undone him entirely. There was no denying it. The shooting and hellish landscape after the fire.

  And Danae. Oh God, Danae, Danae.

  He closed his eyes, fought to get a grip on himself.

  With any luck, fetching the goats would set him to rights. He’d round them up and drive them to the village. Shoot off his revolver and whoop like a cowboy. The women would rejoice and all would be well again.

  It would be good, that. Him, Brendan O’Malley, bloody Father Christmas.

  * * *

  Leonidas had written out a list of names and starred their locations on a map. “Some are ELAS supporters,” he said, “others are my relatives. You’ll be safe with them. They’ll feed and house you, tell you when it’s safe to move out. Take my horse,” he urged. “You’ll cover more ground.”

  O’Malley shook his head. He was done with horses. Elektra was the last one he would ever ride. He was polite about it, said he preferred to walk, that it would be good for him, clear his head.

  Leonidas let the lie stand. He’d caught up with O’Malley not long after he set off, had come charging up over the rocks, shouting his name. The little mare he was riding was trembling all over, her coat damp with sweat.

  Pitying the animal, O’Malley pulled a blanket out of his pack and rubbed her down a little with it. He didn’t welcome the task.

  “Take it easy on her,” he warned Leonidas. “Way she’s heaving, she’ll take sick, you’re not careful.”

  After he finished, he stowed the blanket back in his pack. “Well, I’m off then.”

  “Brendan ….”

  “No need to linger.” Shouldering the pack, O’Malley started down the path. “I can see my way out.”

  And with that he was gone. He could feel the Greek’s eyes on him, but he didn’t look back.

  * * *

  Unwilling to pass by the monastery again, the reeking cliffs, O’Malley headed up into the hills. He planned to circle around and approach the cave from above. The area was unfamiliar to him and he got his compass out. At some point, he heard water running and searched for the stream, thinking he might know it and that the landmark would anchor him.

  After the claustrophobic life in the camp, it felt good to be out in the open. He’d sleep rough and accept food from Leonidas’ contacts only if he had to. They’d not know what to make of him, the natives, and though polite, would surely keep their distance. Wouldn’t be the red hair kept them at bay, not this time, no. It would be the sad state of him, his bloodstained flokati and God-awful stench, the rank odor of fire and death he carried with him. Aye, he was a ruin, all right. Same as Kalavryta. A ruin entirely.

  Perhaps if he gave himself a good scrub, it would go better.

  He found the stream, stripped his clothes off and waded in, set about scrubbing his skin with twigs. Dipping his head underwater, he came up, roaring like a savage. “Jaysus, almighty cold, so that is.”

  Grabbing his flokati, he dragged it over and wetted it, rubbing the fur with his fingers to get the blood out. It was a hopeless task, the icy water running red down his arms and chilling him anew. All he succeeded in doing was spreading the stain. Shivering, he got dressed again and walked along the streambed.

  A covey of quail exploded from the underbrush a second later, rattling the sky as they rose. The sound startled him and set his heart racing. Afraid something had set them off, he flattened himself against the ground and stayed there. But all was quiet, save for the raucous clamor
of the birds.

  “Must have been me spooked them.”

  He thought he’d kill a few and roast them for supper, but he was too slow and the quail had disappeared. They were surprisingly graceless in flight, their wings small and seemingly misplaced, the feathered tufts on their heads jiggling like flimsy crowns. Hares were also in evidence, the dirt underfoot soft from their tunneling. After Kalavryta, the land seemed impossibly lush, awash with abundance.

  The birds continued to caw, and O’Malley wished he had been more careful. Stupid, that. Give him away, it could.

  He headed up into the rocks, keeping a look out as he climbed. The wind was merciless, so cold it made his eyes run.

  “Got its back up, it has.”

  He paused to catch his breath. He was standing in a strand of olives trees, shaggy and overgrown. Unpicked olives dangled from the branches, thick bunches of them, so evenly spaced they might have been hung by a human hand.

  A man planted them for his sons and grandsons, Leonidas had said. It takes a generation for them to bear fruit. Old patriarchs, the trees before him were majestic. Mute testimony to a man’s belief that he and his kind would endure.

  O’Malley wondered what had happened to the people who owned them—if they had perished in the war, leaving the grove abandoned.

  As the shadows lengthened and night came on, the sky grew more and more radiant, the moon emerging from a bank of marbled clouds. ’Twas like a vast mussel shell, the sky, he thought, awash with silvery light.

  Ahead was a hamlet of sorts, a smattering of houses on the spur of the mountain. A teenage boy was herding sheep through the tall grass, the animals’ wool coats bright in the fading light. A woman called from a doorway, telling the boy to hurry; it was getting dark.

  O’Malley hid in the trees and watched them. He could smell meat cooking, onions. The simple domesticity of the scene stirred him, the thought of a family, untouched by the war, sharing a meal.

  He wondered if the woman was aware of what had happened in Kalavryta, what she and her son had been spared. He, for one, would never tell her. Let her stay as she was, watching her son drive the sheep home for the night