To Look on Death No More

by Leta Serafim

  Coming out from behind the trees, he stood where the woman could see him. “I’m a British soldier. I mean you no harm. I got separated from my unit.”

  The woman stayed well back. Believes I’m a German, he decided, seeing the expression on her face, the fear in it.

  “I’ve been fighting with Velouchiotis.”

  The woman recognized the name and nodded. “ELAS,” she said.

  She volunteered that she herself was from Athens and had fled here after the Germans came. It was bad in the city, she said. People were dying in the streets.

  “They shot twenty men in my neighborhood,” she told him in Greek. “Usually they roll up the clothes of the men they kill and throw them on their families’ doorsteps like newspapers. But the last time, they stripped the bodies, put the clothes in a room and made the women go through it. A neighbor of mine found her son’s jacket. After that, I left.”

  Her hair was cut short, marceled in tight waves, her brows so thin they might have been drawn with a pencil. A city girl, he thought. Knows more about shellacking her hair than bringing in a harvest.

  “Where do you come from?” she asked.

  “Ireland,” he said.

  She continued to question him. Who else had he served with, where in Greece had he been? What brought you here? she seemed to be saying. Why are you troubling me tonight?

  He wished she’d leave off. Talk didn’t come easy to him anymore. He seemed to have lost the knack.

  Reluctantly, he described his parents and the farm he’d grown up on, trying to give her a sense of himself. Told her a story that had always brought laughter at home.

  “Had a dog, name of ‘Connor,’ was supposed to see to a herd of sheep we had. But he was a blackguard, old Connor was, and mauled a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses who came calling, seeking to convert us. Bit ’em and bit ’em. Aw, the puss on them when Connor did that. You should have seen it. ‘ ’Tis to be expected,’ my pa said. ‘Connor’s an Irish dog and they were Englishmen, so they were.’ ”

  The woman didn’t get the joke. After she went back inside, O’Malley stood there for a time, staring out at the darkness. It wasn’t just being foreign, he told himself. No, he could deal with that. It was what he’d seen in Kalavryta that was distancing him from human life. His grieving heart, a wall around him.

  * * *

  The storm broke near midnight. O’Malley kept moving, afraid he’d freeze to death if he paused to rest. He thought about returning to the hamlet where the woman was, but decided against it. She didn’t want him there. Her seeming curiosity, the questions she’d asked, had only been a way of making sure he was who he said he was, not an enemy soldier in disguise. There was no shelter to be had in her house, not for him, no warmth.

  Pulling the goatskin over his head, he plunged forward through the sleeting rain.

  As the night wore on, it grew colder and colder, the rain slowly changing over to snow.

  Still damp from the washing, his goatskin slowly froze as the temperature dropped, moisture clinging to it and weighing it down until he felt encased in ice. O’Malley grew more and more frightened. If he didn’t find refuge soon, he would die out here. He heard water roaring in the distance and stumbled toward it, thinking it must be the waterfall at the head of the gorge. The cave was somewhere above it. He’d find it and wait out the storm inside.

  Flushed with rain, the river was a raging torrent, leaping and flashing as it poured over the rocks like a monstrous school of salmon. Climbing on all fours, he started up the cliff toward the cave, pausing now and then to wipe the snow from his eyes. He’d lost all feeling in his fingers, and his hair and beard were beaded with ice.

  He thought of Stefanos and Danae as he battled his way forward through the storm, remembering the hours they’d spent in the cave. He could still hear the child’s manic laughter and see Danae’s face in the gloaming. Gone now, the both of them.

  He paused when he reached the entrance.

  Just a place now, he told himself. A place like any other.

  Chapter 28

  O’Malley thought at first it was his flokati, the snow magnifying the rankness of the thing, but then he noticed the droppings on the floor. So the goats were here, just as he’d anticipated. The brush he’d gathered with Stefanos lay undisturbed, stacked up neatly by the entrance. He used it to start a fire. He found the jug of water, poured some into a pan from his kit, and set it out to boil, thinking to make himself some tea. His fingers stung as the feeling returned to them and water trickled down his neck from the melting snow in his hair. He shook off his cape and laid it out next to the fire. Within minutes, it was steaming like a geyser, the ends of the fur slowly curling as they dried.

  He removed his rifle and laid it down, thinking he’d have little need of it here. Germans would never venture up to the cave. It was too hard to get to, for one thing, and once here, they’d be trapped. It was no good for their purposes. He prodded the fire with his boot. He could hear the wind howling outside, the storm raging still.

  He wondered how the goats were faring in the blizzard. In medical school, he’d seen a cat that had frozen to death, its body arched in death, its mouth frozen in a silent scream. He’d leave the goats where they fell, if that had been their fate. Let the vultures take them. Unrolling his bedroll, he made ready to sleep, threw a last log on the fire.

  The log slowly caught and the fire grew in strength, the shadows of the flames leaping and dancing on the walls of the cave. The movement unnerved him. Haunted, this place was. Haunted and always would be.

  * * *

  He awoke when the fire went out, the cold wrapping itself around him. Below, the rocks were covered with snow, a vast blanket of whiteness disturbed only by fallen branches and the hieroglyphics of birds. He could see the river in the distance, gleaming where the snow bled into the water.

  He relit the fire and drank his tea, ate a pack of biscuits from the Red Cross. When he finished, he pulled his cape around him and exited the cave. Outside all was quiet, the snow muting even the cry of the birds.

  The goats had weathered the storm well. Spread out along the base of the cliff, they had sought out crevices and fissures in the rock and stood huddled there, keeping their heads buried in the fur of their chests. A few watched him approach, their eyes leaden.

  As he drew nearer, they started to shy away, the huge unmilked udders of the ewes swaying from side to side as they sprinted up the rocks.

  “Where you bound, you bloody scuts?”

  It was a peculiar dance, they did, galloping off, only to turn back and stare at him. There was no challenge in the look they gave him, no intelligence whatsoever. They changed their tactics a moment later and charged him, intent on pushing him off the cliff.

  Swinging a stick, O’Malley hit as many as he could. “Back, you trotters! Back, you puddles of dog piss! I’ll kill you, I will!”

  But the goats kept coming. In an instant they were upon him, a tidal way of goats. Falling on the old billy in the lead, he grabbed the animal’s horns and twisted hard, brought him down the way a cowboy does a steer. The other goats stopped dead in their tracks. Like Germans, they only knew one game, apparently, and it was follow the leader.

  The old goat got to his feet and shook himself off. He charged again, but weakly this time, the horns never connecting, the pawing of the ground a bit of male bravado, the animal’s way of having the last word.

  * * *

  Whenever the billy goat lagged, O’Malley nudged him in the anus with the stick. He’d discovered the technique by accident and been astounded at how well it worked. As long he kept the goat in his sights and prodded him in the rear with a stick, he could control the herd and keep it moving. He didn’t understand it, but there it was.

  Adept only at scaling rocks and soiling the earth, goats didn’t amount to much that he could see. What energy they possessed was focused mainly on eating. Their appetite was prodigious, and their teeth were surprisingly human. Reminiscent
of the dentures his granny had kept in a glass, they were square and yellowish, and the goats displayed them often. He’d have thought they were grinning at him if he hadn’t known better.

  What was it the Irish said of goats? ‘More beards than brains.’ O’Malley chuckled. If he’d been Noah, he never would have let them aboard.

  The goats were relentless as they trotted through the empty fields of Kalavryta, yanking up everything in their path and gulping it down. Their gluttony reminded O’Malley of the Germans, the way the soldiers had overrun the village and taken everything

  Aye. They belonged on the streets of Berlin, all right.

  * * *

  The hawks still occupied the rocky highlands, their high-pitched screams echoing across the wintry hills. Frightened by the sound, the goats drew together, climbing atop one another, instinctively seeking safety in numbers.

  Would that he and the antartes had done the same, O’Malley thought, watching them. Rallied ’round one another when a predator threatened instead of abandoning the lesser among us, the way we did the people of Kalavryta.

  He could see heat rising from the makeshift chimneys in the distance, a faint shimmer against the gray sky. A few women were toiling outside, waif-like in their black clothes. There were far fewer than he remembered, and they stopped what they were doing and watched him, shielding their eyes from the sun.

  O’Malley gave a half-hearted whoop when he reached the square, mimicking a cowboy at the end of the trail, but his heart wasn’t in it. The town was no longer a living place; it was a butcher’s yard, an abattoir. All was blackened and stank of fire. The very stones that bound it together seemed awash with loss.

  Yesterday’s storm wasn’t cleansing as sometimes occurred in Ireland—raindrops sparkling on blades of grass, the sky aching in its purity. Here it had only wetted the ash and coated the ruins with scum.

  He distributed the goats as fairly as he could, giving them out to the women with children first, then the others. He counseled the women not to kill them outright, but to save them for milk. They would slaughter three of the animals later, he told them, and deliver the meat to those who were elderly, wounded, or sick. The rest would be shared, cheese to be made and given out.

  Waving their aprons like bullfighters, the women shooed the goats toward their hovels, a horde of unkempt, giggling children tagging along behind. As ever, the goats went where they wanted, scampering to the top of the festering piles of rubbish and peering down, feinting and bucking and bleating all the while. Nearly as sure-footed, the children went climbing up after them, roped them and dragged them down. The roundup went on for some time, everyone enjoying themselves.

  It was the first time O’Malley had heard the women laugh since the massacre and the sound cheered him. A Christmas of sorts, this.

  They didn’t thank him. Just took the goats and left.

  “A word of gratitude never broke anyone’s teeth,” he muttered under his breath, watching them go. He was nothing to them, he knew. Perhaps not a proper member of ELAS, he was a soldier nonetheless. And soldiers they’d had their fill of.

  He’d roped two goats himself, planning to take them to Danae’s house and leave them there in case she returned. He couldn’t bear the thought of her going hungry.

  * * *

  He led the two goats down the road and deposited them in the field behind Danae’s house, erecting a barrier of tree branches to hold them there. Goats took it into their heads to leave, they’d leave. Nothing he could do about it. They were a force of nature, goats, locusts with hooves. He gathered up leaves and threw them in after them, dragged over a fallen poplar tree, thinking it’d keep them for a time. They could eat snow if they got thirsty. They’d be all right.

  He studied the land around him, the looming mountains to the east and west. He could see the firebreak in the distance, the place where blackened forest gave way to green. It made a line around Kalavryta and probably would have reached here, had it not been for the stream.

  Caught up in his memories, he walked toward it, remembering the hours he’d spent on its banks with Danae and Stefanos. He was startled to see that the rabbit hutch had survived.

  “Poor Bobo and Foufou. Who will look after them now?

  If the rabbits were still alive, they might stand a chance in the wild. He tramped through the underbrush, determined to turn them loose.

  The ground in front of the hutch was mossy and damp, the reeds ticking with moisture. The glade where it was buried was pooled with shadows, burnt pine needles and ash collecting along the surface of the water, washed downstream from Kalavryta.

  He heard a faint, rustling sound. Not rabbits, something else.

  Cautiously, he inched toward it.

  His breath caught in his throat. “What the devil! Who’s there?”

  He feared trickery, witchcraft even. Could be another girl, he told himself, his grief playing tricks on him. Still he let himself hope.

  Raising herself up on her elbows, the girl turned and looked at him.

  Aye, it was her all right.

  Danae.

  * * *

  At first, he could only stare at her. She’d been badly hurt, a cut on her head edged with fresh blood. The part of her arms that he could see were mottled with burn marks, tiny blisters seeping pus. The smell she gave off was cloying and unhealthy. Her eyes were terrified, her body poised for flight, every muscle tense and on guard. Pity filled him as he watched her struggle, fight not to run away. She was dressed in a man’s coat, same as she’d been the first time he laid eyes on her. Khaki, it was this time—the fabric, like her skin, burned all over.

  “Lord God, girl, what happened to you?”

  Her eyes filled with tears and she shook her head.

  As gently as he could, he helped her down from the hutch. She’d lost weight, probably weighed less than eighty pounds, but her eyes were as he remembered. Amber. Aye, amber when held up to the light, amber all shot through with gold.

  She was too weak to stand and collapsed against him.

  “Danae. Oh, my sweet girl, Danae.” O’Malley grabbed her fingers and felt them, touched her skin, her hair, marveling when he felt her breath on his hand, unable to believe she was real.

  He couldn’t keep the tremor from his voice. “ ’Tis a wonder, this. A wonder entirely.”

  Fetching his backpack, he laid out his medical instruments and quickly set about dressing her wounds. Although a four-inch clump of hair was missing, he was relieved to see the gash on her head wasn’t deep. Only a scalp wound, it might have bled copiously, as such injuries were prone to do, but would heal in time. He dipped a cloth in alcohol, cleaned the area and bound it with a cloth, then bandaged up her arms. The flesh here had been seared in places and was scabbing over now, burgeoning scar tissue evident on both of her hands. She’d probably suffer a slight crippling in the future as the skin tightened, but it’d be a minor thing, and there was no evidence of infection or gangrene. Something eased in his heart. Danae would not die of her injuries.

  A neighbor woman had been looking after her, she said, bringing food and water to the hutch. “The rabbits kept me warm.”

  “Sailed close to the wind, you did, I’ll not deny it. But you’ll be all right. Your wounds will heal in time.”

  “I don’t want them to.” Her voice grew stronger. “I want everyone who sees me to know ….”

  He touched her cheek. “To know what, Danae?”

  “What they did to us.”

  * * *

  Bearing a bowl of soup, the neighbor turned up not long after. Like the rest of the women in the village, she was dressed entirely in black, her hair covered by a soiled kerchief. She was very old, her skin crosshatched with lines like the neck of a tortoise. Tortoise-like, too, was her pace.

  O’Malley wondered what her age was, how far she’d come this day to bring food.

  Just another old crone haunting these mountains.

  Talkative, she described how she’d been fet
ching water in the river when she’d heard someone groan. “Then I saw the hutch.”

  A cagy old peasant, she shifted her eyes and took a step closer, not wanting Danae to hear. “Papadakis is dead, I thought, the boy, too, from what I heard. Who’s going to know if I take a rabbit for my supper? Then I saw her lying there. At first I thought she was dead. She was burned, poor thing. Panagia mou, how she was burned. Half her hair was gone.”

  She’d fought with her sister and brother-in-law, who’d taken her land and left her with nothing. Consequently, she’d withdrawn from village life and lived out here, just over the hill, kept her own counsel.

  She seemed a cantankerous old biddy, full of rancor and spite, a type familiar to him from Ireland, who kept track of their grievances, grew them in a dim kind of garden like poisonous toadstools.

  That’s why none of the others had known about Danae. The old hag hadn’t told them.

  Together she and O’Malley half walked, half carried Danae to the train station, the old crone yammering the whole time. Given the damage to the town, it was the only place O’Malley could think of to go. It’d do until he could rebuild her house. It had a little ceramic stove he could feed wood in for heat, a bench along the back wall where she could sleep. Other women, too, as the need arose. Aye, it’d be fine, the depot. He’d turn it into a clinic, a hospital of sorts.

  Before they left, he opened the cage to set the rabbits free. A majority of them were dead, the few that remained, so sickly, they could barely hop. They backed away when he undid the latch, working their noses, their whiskers, unwilling to leave the hutch. Reaching a hand in, he pulled them out, one by one, by the scruff of the neck and set them down on the ground. “You get along now, you hear? Don’t stay out here in the open. Hawks will get you. Eat you, sure.”

  He pitied the starving creatures, doubted they were long for this world.

  The neighbor told O’Malley she knew a short cut to the train station and led them across a field that smelled of horses and up a shallow rise. She had a rolling sailor’s gait and used a staff to support herself, digging it into the ground and pulling herself forward. Her clothes had been recently dyed, and the fresh black that had pooled on the fabric gave off a faint chemical smell. She didn’t speak of what had befallen her family, and O’Malley didn’t ask. He was growing used to this world without men, populated only by grieving women.