2 hanging over his arm. He wasn’t a Communist either. How he became one I don’t know, why he did I can venture a guess. So they split us up, they put nine of us in one cell. Eight of us from Eleohóri and Mítsos Karazános. I don’t remember if they gave us anything to eat. They must surely have given us something. In the morning they got us up to collect firewood. Some of our men were reluctant to go. I was more than willing. I wanted to have as little attention as possible paid to me. To get through whatever was in store for me easily. I had heard, and it turned out to be true, that during interrogations they performed what was called the Torture.3 I mean beating you on the feet. They beat the soles of your feet with clubs or knotted rope. Just about crippled you. Well, I took the sharpest saw. They didn’t give us axes, only saws. We might have found other uses for the axes. We climbed high up, we started cutting the wood. Mostly fir trees. We would cut them down, then cut the wood into pieces, some others would carry it away. Up until noon. Then they’d take us farther down to a clearing. And they trained us ideologically there. They also told us that we would remain there to await trial by the rebel tribunal. In the detention camp there were about seventy prisoners, as far as I can figure. From all over Arcadia, but mainly from the prefecture of Kynouría. Astros and around there. Dolianá. I don’t remember anyone else from Kastrí. But there must have been others. And of course there were the ones from Eleohóri I mentioned, those seven. And from Ayiasofiá. From the whole prefecture. We heard there was another detention camp to the north of there. I wasn’t able to learn exactly where. Whether it was in Elóna or at the Karyés Monastery.4 At any rate it’s certain that it existed. Because that whole camp followed ours at the beginning of February. When the Communists learned that the Germans were coming. That they were conducting operations on Mount Parnon, expressly to locate and liberate those two detention camps. Then an order came to move us to the Zíreia area. That happened during the third week of our detention. Up until we went on trial we did nothing. Almost nothing. Just the odd chore. We had nothing, we had no life. We were waiting for the arrival of the rebel judges. Anxiously awaiting them. To condemn us and put us to death in order to thin out the detention camp. Their purpose was not punishment but thinning us out to make room for new lodgers. Around that time I also found out what charges had been made against me. In addition to guilt by association with my brother. They told me that on my name day5 I shouted Long live the Germans. On my name day I was having some wine with Yiánnis Daskoliás, who was also celebrating his name day. Daskoliás was in charge of EAM. We were at his house. As patriots and fellow villagers from Eleohóri. Of course he knew, he suspected that I wasn’t a Communist. He knew that my brother was in Athens, for self-protection. And we were talking and discussing things. In fact he had entrusted his heavy pistol to me for a day. He had a heavy Browning pistol, and I had it for almost a whole day. So there we were talking things over. I had no reason not to talk, and he was testing me or something, I don’t know what he was doing. Sounding me out. So this German walked in, drunk, and he started shouting, Partisano, partisano.6 He had an automatic Steyr rifle, and he pretended to be shooting, killing rebels. That was the offense, and instead of charging the man whose house this happened at, they charged me with it. And claimed I’d said to the German: Over there, a partisano. A big fuss over nothing. Well, that was the charge. During our stay at Orthokostá we dug various trenches. Some said they were trenches for defense against the Germans, something that was unlikely, foolish, and impossible, others said they would simply be used as graves. We also brought water into the monastery garden. The spring was outside the yard, some ways off, about three hundred meters. And because we all wanted it, wanted that convenience, especially me, we said, Let’s do it. We knocked down some old cells, we built ourselves a duct with roof tiles, and we brought water there. And that saved me. I had a habit from before of taking a cold shower every morning. So I would get under the spigot and wash myself. It wasn’t exactly a shower, but I did at least bathe my head and my chest. To maintain my body’s tolerance to cold. And that saved me, with all that snow, all that dampness. Our cell was damp. It was a dome and it had snow on top, and the cold would get in. And we slept with our bedding on the floor. In the detention camp there were four or five young women. A certain Alíki Maloúhou from Trípolis, she was my age, twenty-six. Alíki Maloúhou. She wasn’t pretty, she wasn’t particularly appealing, and she wasn’t involved in any anti-Communist activities. I never understood why they took her. Why they sent her to the detention camp. Of course she was from a good family. They arrested her in Trípolis and they took her away from there. The Communists were organized, they had connections, they could do anything. And they did, including executing one or two women, if I remember correctly. I can’t quite recall, but I do know one, they executed her for selling herself to the Occupation army. There were women then, and everyone knew this, who would do anything for a scrap of bread. So they could survive. And they executed one of them, right there on Taxiarhón Street. In broad daylight. A woman, she was just a girl. It was about that time that they captured Alíki. Alíki Maloúhou. And also Yiánnis Koïtsános from Parthéni. He was a ground air force major, he survived, he had a permanent commission, and he rose to the top, all the way to squadron leader. He was being held at the detention camp as a reactionary, and one of his sisters was with the rebels. The Koïtsános family has quite a history. Thanásis Koïtsános is a story in himself. He went so far as to wear a German uniform. He wasn’t in the Battalions, he had nothing to do with the Battalions. He had enlisted in the German armed forces. The third brother, I can’t think of his name, a tall fellow, was working for the Ministry of Health. And there were two more sisters, both schoolteachers. They were all right-wing in their convictions, in other words anti-Communists. Except for the youngest sister, the rebel. She had spoken out, obviously under pressure, who knows. She had spoken out against her family. Death to my brothers. Death to my father. Death to this, and death to that. We had those women with us in the detention camp. They always slept in a special cell. As for food, of course there was some, usually beans, usually spoiled. Full of insects. Give us better food, some of us would say. Give us meat. They made bread in the monastery. Yiánnis Xinós, a prisoner, was put in charge of baking. A second cousin of mine, a cousin by marriage. One day they brought me a shoulder sack. It had a bottle of oil, a carton of one hundred loose cigarettes, even though I didn’t smoke, and a loaf of bread. And olives. Sent from Astros. From a friend. An anonymous one, for obvious reasons. Although I searched repeatedly later on, I was never able to find out who sent those things. Maybe because he didn’t survive the turmoil. I could say that we had it quite good in there. If it weren’t for the agony over the rebel tribunal. The waiting. At night we used oil lamps for light. Small lamps, they didn’t hold much oil. They would last until midnight. Yiórghis Katsarós would take care of them. The waiter. He served people in the detention camp too. One of his duties was to keep the lamps supplied with oil. Every night. And we would ask him — we all knew Yiórghis Katsarós. Everyone from Eleohóri knew him. And especially me. And we would ask him to please put extra oil in our lamp. So we’d have light after midnight. In the cell we all slept on the floor, and the light was a comfort to us. Light from oil. The cell was a dome, as I said before, and there was snow on top of the cell. It wasn’t very cold, but it never stopped snowing. And it was very damp in there. The damp and the snow. One evening there was a knock on our door. It was late, it must have been almost midnight. At any rate the oil lamp was still burning. When we heard that knock everyone jumped up. Because it was always midnight when they took people, if they were supposed to take someone. Dránias, I heard Kolokotrónis say from outside. Trying hard to make his voice sound hard and tough. Poor fellow, he wasn’t tough or hard. He was just a short, mild-mannered man. In high school he was one of the good students — and a good friend. I jumped up. Come here, come outside. Should I get dressed? No need. Should I take anything? No need. Of course we didn’t wear pajamas. We didn’t take off anything, not even our shoes. We slept like that, in our clothes. But can I just throw something over me? Come out here. I went outside. There was another cell on the right, and farther along to the right was a door where there were stairs that led to the courtyard. Four stone steps. Walk in front, he tells me. And I did. I walked. And I walked. When we passed the stairs I stopped. I thought, we’re not going outside. We’re not going to an execution. I’d had a bad fright, so had the others. Midnight. Keep going. I kept going. We came to a corner in the hallway. And we arrived at the guest quarters. The refectory, in other words. The fireplace was also there. I saw the fire. A big fire. I thought, we’ll have an interrogation now. Get ready for the Torture. I took a few more steps. I could make out some shadows around the fire. I saw Yiánnis Xinós. He was holding a shallow copper mug. Come here, Cousin, he says to me. I sent for you. So you could have some tea. Tea, I say to him. My knees buckled under me. He slept early. And he had gotten up early to bake the bread. He was getting ready. After a while Kolokotrónis came back. He was standing in the doorway. He might even have been listening in. Let’s go, Dránias. Because the others must be scared out of their wits. And he took me back to the cell. As soon as I stepped inside they all breathed a sigh of relief. And I did too. Only then. Horrifying. That game of theirs, Xinós and Kolokotrónis. Xinós was a prisoner, but he knew everyone. He’s dead now. As for Kolokotrónis, our guard, I don’t know if he’s still alive. I never saw him again after that. There were ten other guards. Or fifteen. Three of them stood out somehow. But which of them was the chief and which wasn’t, you couldn’t tell. They would just strut around. They had good voices too. They said that one of them had graduated the seminary in Corinth. That he was on his way to a career as a clergyman. And he had taught the others. They would chant often. They knew the liturgy. They would chant in jest, of course. But I think there was nostalgia in their voices too. A feeling of loss. But they had no respect for books. They would tear them up and use the paper for cigarettes. To roll cigarettes. Someone had gone to Ayios Andréas and brought back a bag of fine-cut tobacco. Very good tobacco. And a goatskin full of wine. It was just a day or two before we left, no more. Before the order came for us to leave. We still didn’t know the Germans were coming. And they let us have tobacco, they let us have wine. Among the prisoners there was an employee of the Prefecture. I don’t know what part he played in everything. But he was a communications specialist. He had installed a telephone in a watchtower. To the north, on the upper slopes of the monastery grounds. And later on, farther down, for the villages. And for Astros. Always with an escort. He worked every day. Every day he went somewhere, to connect the lines. He was the one who alerted us. He got the telephone and he said, The Germans are coming. We moved out around the end of January. The twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, or thirtieth of January. The thirtieth. The chiefs tell us, Time to move. Get ready, take whatever clothes you have, whatever you can take and let’s go. They didn’t tell us where. But we could tell from what we were doing that we were changing location. That something was up, in other words. The next day we learned that the Germans were really coming. We had left the monastery. There was a road there that we had come on. But we didn’t take it. We walked in a different direction. And just at the bend of a large gully we ran into the other detention camp. The one to the north. Now I’m certain that they weren’t from the Karyés Monastery, as they said, but from the Elónas Monastery. The rebels always used monasteries as concentration camps. And that one was bigger than ours. Because monasteries suited their purpose. Both for lodgings and for keeping us under guard. It was a larger detention camp, and it had a mixed population. Adults in their prime, of course. But also old people and very young children. They were from the Sparta area. From the prefecture of Laconía. And there were also laggards. A certain Kostákis. Kostákis Mémos, the village alderman of Mýloi. He’d lag behind because of the beatings during the Torture. He couldn’t walk at all so they’d put him up on a mule. And so we arrived at Háradros. In the area around Háradros. Places I’d heard about. In this same area they had executed the man who was county prefect at that time. We found that out from overhearing the careless chatter of the rebels escorting us. I think they leaked certain information on purpose. How they killed him, how they pulled out his nails with a pair of pliers. To make him reveal where he’d hidden the gold sovereigns. They had arrested him and accused him of selling food belonging to the Prefecture. He had sold it and didn’t give it to the people when the Occupation forces were moving in. I’m in no position to know what happened. But those were the charges, and that’s why they executed him. Then we made our way up the neck of the mountain. We bypassed the town of Háradros. By now it was clear that we were heading toward Galtená and Stólos. Our own villages. The winter lodgings of the villagers from Kastrí. We arrived in Galtená at night and ended up at Diamantákos’s olive press. Both detention camps. A hundred and sixty-six people, including children and the elderly. In the morning they took us outside. The weather was beautiful. It was the day of the Presentation at the Temple. The second of February. We could see the festivities across the way in the Community of Platánas, and there we were sprawled out, squashing lice. Out in the sun in the delightful warmth of February. That’s when we received notice that the Germans were coming. Then Kléarhos arrived. He came from Astros. He was in charge of that area, and he came to take over as chief of the two detention camps, and to take us to Zíreia. Then word got out that the escape routes were closed and that there was an order for our execution. For both detention camps. On the same day Yiánnis Velissáris also passed by with a small group of men. That reinforced the rumors about execution. Yiánnis, the Farmakídis boy said to him. Stávros Farmakídis. The nephew of Yiórghis Farmakídis, the short one. Yiánnis was like a brother. We had grown up together. If there was a loaf of bread to be had, our families would share it. Yiánnis wasn’t a Communist. But he felt he had failed as a lawyer and maybe his disappointment led him to that. Twenty-six years old, just like me. At any rate he came to Galtená. Yiánnis was unarmed, as usual. He hated guns. Even during the Albanian campaign he avoided them. He would tell us stories about the army, about his captain. His reservist captain, also a lawyer. Kalathás. Lots of stories. Yiánnis, Stávros Farmakídis says to him. Let’s get Dránias out. They were just passing through. And Yiánnis says, After all he’s done, let the son of a bitch die. He called me a son of a bitch, me. They shot him later by order of a military court. He refused to renounce his former allegiance. He was stubborn. He wouldn’t renounce his allegiance like his superiors did. Níkos Delivoriás and the others. Sworn Communists. They signed a paper. It was just another foolish government practice. But it gave them the right to ask for a pardon. Because th