Chapter 9
Anéstis Poúlios was a neighbor of ours. A neighbor of our Aunt Anna’s. Anna Mikroliá. My father’s sister. She lived on the outskirts of Mesorráhi. As children we used to go there and play with our cousins. Aunt Anna was the one who built the Church of the Transfiguration. A chapel, really. She donated her entire property, and she took up a collection. Gave everything she owned. She went out panhandling too. That’s how she built the church. Down there, near Poriá. About five hundred meters from her house. The Church of the Transfiguration. Anéstis lived just above us. A leftist, from the very beginning of the rebel uprising. I couldn’t have ended up in worse hands. Anéstis Poúlios, Nikólas Pavlákos, and one of the Tóyias men. Vasílis Tóyias. All of them from Mesorráhi. Papadóngonas came down to Trípolis. In March I think. For the precise dates I’d have to ask my brother. Kóstas was the head of the 2nd Bureau. He could give out information. And help a lot of people regarding pensions. With those so-called certificates of “Recognition” for services rendered.1 He knows all the details. Regarding Petrákos and Haloúlos, he could provide answers. They were his subordinates. Chrístos Haloúlos was in his office. In the 2nd Bureau. The Intelligence Bureau of the 2nd Gendarmes Corps Headquarters. That was the official designation. And Petrákos was posted somewhere around there. As sergeant major back then. He was killed in 1946 or ’47 during some battle at Aíyio, then promoted to second lieutenant post mortem. They say a nephew of his killed him. His sister’s child. He had nephews in Aíyio. Or someone who knew him, at any rate. Someone he knew well. An execution, in other words. Kóstas had left for Athens in the fall of 1943. Everybody had left. Chrístos Haloúlos, my brother Kóstas, the Kyreléis men. Anyone who had any kind of involvement with the Resistance. To get away from the pressure on them. The pressure to join EAM was unbearable. After the Yiannakópoulos agreement on Mount Taygetus. Chrístos Haloúlos was killed during the December Uprising in Athens.2 We left Trípolis for Spétses with Papadóngonas. We were disarmed at Mýloi3 and we went to Spétses. About eight hundred of us had started out, but only about three hundred arrived there. Most had slipped away. We stayed in Spétses for three or four weeks. Life was quiet. The Koryalénios College buildings were our barracks. Kaloyerópoulos was mayor, a son-in-law of the Hasapoyiánnis family. He came from Astros. He helped us. The local people likewise. They were all right-wing nationalists. The defections continued daily. That’s when Chrístos left. Some sort of romantic involvement drew him to Athens. We never saw him again after that. He went to live with his sisters in Athens and was killed during the first days of the December Uprising. Before he had time to find his bearings. To join a group for his own protection. There were several organizations. The royalist X,
4 for instance, and others. It seems he didn’t pursue that option, maybe he didn’t care to. Love sometimes leads to inertia. I knew the woman in question. We ran into each other some years ago at the Lárissa train station. She recognized me. A little hesitantly. Yiánnis, she called out. She introduced her four sons to me. Four sons, tall as could be. I named one of them after Chrístos, she told me. She was the person who’d drawn him to Athens. And I think he just didn’t have the time, or didn’t want to join up. They went and arrested him. They took him away, and after that he disappeared. His body was never even found. His sisters claim they recognized his comb on a cadaver. A decomposing cadaver. That was all. Nothing else was found. And it was the same story with Yiánnis Pavlákos. No relation to Nikólas Pavlákos. Maybe a distant relative. Yiánnis was a plant pathologist, one of the best in Greece. He did research for the Kanellópoulos Fertilizer Company. He was from Eleohóri. He was also a trade unionist. All the workers loved him. A great fellow. He was unmarried, his mother was his only relative. Not married. Another one who went to waste. They went and got him from his house in his pajamas. That was in Athens. His mother went looking for him; she found nothing. Back when they took those men hostage and were dragging them toward the town of Króra. He was in that convoy of hostages. We’d go and search in the town dumpsites. I went with his mother, that is, twice. The stench of decomposing bodies still haunts me. At any rate, Papadóngonas had gone down to Trípolis. Kóstas had enlisted. No other men from Kastrí had joined yet. Kóstas was in the 2nd Bureau. And there were some men from the surrounding area, but not many. There was a Yiórgos Yeroyiánnis from Parthéni, an artillery officer. Lýras was in charge of the 2nd Bureau. I think he was from Astros. An army captain. From the Lýras family. Kanákis from Vlahokerasiá. A man called Karatzás, who was later executed, chained up with others, and bound. But I don’t remember any other men from Kastrí. Nikólas Petrákos, of course. A noncommissioned officer. Chrístos Haloúlos, also an NCO. And the notorious Kotrótsos, Kotrótsos the animal. He was a sergeant during the Albanian campaign, Reserve Officers Academy. Picked himself up a uniform, pinned a star on it, who would ever check him? He presented himself in Trípolis as a noncommissioned officer. And he roared around on his motorcycle. He was Kóstas Kotrótsos, the big shot, the one and only. Who never left anyone alone. Then something happened that stunned us. The Germans were about to execute some people. They had them in jail. There was a schoolgirl among them. During those months two or three schoolgirls had been executed. People were saying, Papanoútsos is responsible for what was happening to the girls. Papanoútsos, the director of the Teachers Academy. They took those people from the jail and stood them up against the wall. The young girl, in patent-leather shoes and white socks, as if she were going to take communion. The Germans had pressed a Greek platoon into escorting the condemned, as an execution squad. Under reservist Varoutsís, the son of Major Varoutsís from Trípolis. This horrified us. It was one thing for the Germans to do the killing. But not us Greeks. Then something happened that disappointed us beyond words. We would listen to the BBC every day. To get the news. About the expected Allied landing on the coast of the Peloponnese. So one evening we heard that the government in the Middle East had outlawed the Security Battalions. Another great blow to us. One day at about that time Papadóngonas, whether out of obligation or as a political maneuver, congratulated Hitler on having survived the plot against him. He congratulated him, he sent him a cable. We discussed all this. There was a place, like a club. We all met there. I was sometimes in uniform, sometimes not. I had a uniform; I wore it when I went out. The Germans in the neighborhood knew me. They would salute me, and I’d salute back. I had a woman I used to visit, there were restrictions and a curfew. Somehow I had to obtain the password. The password and counter-password. I would get them from Chrístos Haloúlos. Chrístos was in charge of codes; he had the files. Chrístos. A short while later we advanced on Kastrí. But at this point things become blurry. I don’t remember exactly why this happened. They had burned down the village. People from Kastrí had made their way down, and we heard about it. The arson took place on the twenty-third or the twenty-fourth of July. After the Feast of Saint Ilías.