Chapter 5
Take the village of Oriá. They hated anyone from Karátoula, so much hatred between those two villages. And you know what I think. It’s one thing to have your differences, to have different interests, but to carry things that far, I mean, why? Why to such extremes? It was our cousin Paraskevás who marched our brother Kóstas up along the river. He took him to Ayios Pétros. It was him, it was Voúlis,1 and he took in Loukás too. And they beat him. Beat him real bad. Pantelís told me that. I had him working for me, he did two days. That’s when they rounded them up. They took them to Dragálevo. They tell them, You have to join the Organization. They say, We won’t join. And they gave it to them good. They beat the daylights out of Antonákos — his legs never healed. They beat them so bad. And then someone says to them, I congratulate you for your strong convictions, but now go join the Security Battalions, there’s no place for you here. They would capture them, then indoctrinate them, try to make them join the Party. My sister Evrydíki got out, it was Aryiróyiannis who helped her, God rest his soul. Kyriazís’s brother-in-law, because he cared for her back then. And he went and got her out, he brought her back. He was killed in Megalópolis. And I had my own narrow escape. They had me make a dozen or so berets. I put the insignia in the front. I was good with my hands then, had been from early on. But with my miserable little brain, I didn’t know much, I put two crossing Greek flags and above them, right in the middle, a crown. And all the men who wore those berets, they didn’t realize that it should have been a hammer and sickle. At some point the rebels come to the school, the head men. And the men from Karátoula show up too, in their berets, they go over there. As soon as they see them they say, Hey, look at this, who made these berets, who made them? And there I am in the yard. Our men didn’t know what to do, they said, Who knows what will happen now? The priest signals me to leave. He wasn’t a priest then. He says, Get out, go hide. I sneak off and leave. Imagine that. I leave, and the others say, The girl didn’t know, some old women showed her, they didn’t know either. That’s how they covered up, somehow they did it, and it was over. I stitched them a flag with a crown. Those rebels wouldn’t think twice about it, they’d call you a reactionary, and that was the end. And me a fifteen-year-old girl.
Chapter 6
They arrested us in 1944. At first it was just Chrístos Kaprános, myself, and Stavróyiannis. It was in June. I don’t remember the date. It was during the big blockade. We were ordered to leave. Word had got out that the Germans were coming, and we had to leave. We went up to Malevós. Lots of people there. When we got there Dr. Karavítis ordered us to go fetch a lamb from a certain shepherd. Chrístos was superstitious. He believed he was going to die. The thought had gotten into his head. He had dreamt that his sister-in-law was getting married. His brother Charálambos’s wife. He saw her as a bride.1 We went to the shepherd’s as the doctor ordered us to. You fellows from Kastrí? he asked. From Kastrí, we answered. And he began apologizing. Saying he’d done us wrong. It was back in 1922. He had killed Menélaos Méngos. Menélaos Méngos was an authorized Singer service dealer, Chrístos’s first cousin. He used to travel around the villages on Mount Malevós and repair sewing machines. Spare parts and money in his briefcase. When Chrístos heard this he tells us, I told you, something’s not right with me. Imagine coming face-to-face with my cousin’s murderer. He slaughtered the lamb, and we took it. Suddenly there was an alarm. The Germans, the Germans. We were at Megáli Lákka. We went someplace else, we hid the lamb. We piled tree branches on top of it in case we got back in time to recover it. We just took out its liver. We wrapped it up in a kerchief. Megáli Lákka was all in bloom, the sage plants in bloom. We split up. Our thirst was getting to us. In the evening we went down to the wells at the village of Sítaina. We spent the night in a ravine. At daybreak we lit a fire, singed the liver, and ate it. Then we reached the wells. We threw a rock inside. The water level was low, and we had no way of getting any out. I was wearing some Greek Army leg wraps. I took them off, we tied them together, and we tied a kerchief at one end. The one we had wrapped the lamb liver in. We lowered this until it was soaked through, then we wrung it into our mouths. Then Chrístos remembered he had his wallet with him. I made a ring around the top with twigs, and fastened them with some string. It was like a small bucket. And we’d lower it, we drew up a lot of water, we drank and drank. We were very thirsty. The following day we left there. We came to a clearing. So we wouldn’t be too close together and be an easy target we said we’d follow different footpaths. Some Germans appeared up above coming down from across the way. There would be Greeks with them, for sure. Did they see us? Or didn’t they? They started machine-gunning. They started throwing hand grenades. At which point it was every man for himself. I call out to Stavróyiannis, we threw ourselves into a ravine. There were some shepherds there. But they didn’t bother with shepherds. After that we lost track of Chrístos. I think he stayed there during the skirmish. They found him there, killed. Who found him, I don’t know. We looked for a way to escape. We headed for the Sítaina woods. West of there were some high rocks; we climbed them. We found two rebels hiding there. With the sun beating down on us all afternoon. And not a drop of water to drink. The four of us agreed, finally, to slip out of there during the night. To look for a way out, to escape from the Germans. But things turned out differently. In the evening, as we were leaving, a patrol heard us. They fired two flares; we hit the ground. We waited. One rebel comes over, he points his pistol at us. You stay right here, he says, or I’ll kill you. So we wouldn’t cause any trouble. They knew their way around. We didn’t. Okay, we’ll stay here. And we spent the night there. We were parched. We would put out our tongues and lick at the rocks to get a little moisture. Day broke; the wells were above us. The Germans had taken possession of them. Yiánnis and I decided to surrender. We got up, we raised our hands. Luckily for us, they must have been Austrians. Kom, kom, they say to us. We understood that they wanted to know where we were from and all that. We say to them, From Kastrí. Nichts Kommunist, I say to them. Nichts. Nichts Partisán. We asked for water, they brought us a bucketful. We drank till we burst. Then they took us away. They didn’t give us food. A platoon picked us up, we said, That’s it. We saw a place where mules were urinating, there were flies swarming around, we thought they had killed people there. At any rate, we kept walking. Them with their machine guns and us up ahead. We spent the night in Sítaina. The next day they took us to Kastánitsa. That’s where their headquarters was. And there they interrogated us. Yiánnis didn’t have his police ID with him, he had lost it. Mine was in order, it had been officially stamped and approved in Hoúria. Yiánnis didn’t have his. Why don’t you have it? We left in a hurry, he said. That was the excuse he gave. Then the verdict was announced. We would be taken to Vrésthena, and they would release us there. One more rebel had been added to the force. The same platoon escorts us. On the way the rebel is up ahead. Up ahead with a mule, like a guide.