Chapter 25
Pavlákos was present at the execution of Vasílimis. It was a brother of his who killed Vasílimis. A brother of his, and Bouraímis. Mihális Bouraímis, who now receives a pension for being in the Resistance. He killed the man and he’s getting a pension. They captured Yiánnis Vasílimis, a big, tall man. Nice-looking man, good-looking. With young children, a son and a daughter. They arrested him with his father. His father went over to them. He tells them, Hey, you fellows, what did Yiánnis ever do to you? Then someone bashed him, we don’t know who, and threw him down in some tall bushes. But the old man lived, he didn’t die. They took Yiánnis up a ways, to a place they call Spathokomménoi, it’s farther up, on the road from Koúvli. It was Koúvli where they arrested him. His brother, Pavlákos, and the others. And they killed him in Spathokomménoi. The old man got himself out of those bushes, he went to his daughter-in-law. Miliá, Miliá, he shouts to her. They killed Yiánnis, you poor girl, go and collect him. Miliá took my sister-in-law Electra and they went up there and found him. My sister-in-law said he was beaten so bad he’d kicked up a foot’s-length of dirt, that’s what she told me, he was buried in that dirt. Seems he was beaten a lot before he died. I don’t know if they knifed him or not, I don’t know about Pavlákos, but that other fellow, the one from Galtená, went to prison for quite a few years. They had him in some prison somewhere. And now they say he gets no sleep, that bloodshed still hounds him.