— He’s named after his late uncle. We gave him that name.
Chapter 35
That’s the way things were. Nothing you could do about it. We’d hear the dog barking at night and we’d tremble. In the spring we’d go outside and sleep five hundred meters from the storage shed. A thousand meters, in any old hole. My old man was afraid someone would come and arrest him. Mostly he was afraid of that Vasílis Tóyias. He was mean as they come. A diehard Communist. Some time later on they got him from Mesorráhi and took him to Kastrí. To Mángas’s place. For an interrogation, they told him. Anyone went there for an interrogation never came back. They got him and took him to Mángas’s place. Velissáris was there, and Mavromantilás. Vasílis, what are you doing here? Vasílis was older by then. Maybe forty-five. He pointed at Tóyias. The kapetánios brought me here, he says. You? Yes, me. Go to Doúmos’s place, and we’ll let you know when you can leave. They sent him to Doúmos’s place so the others wouldn’t see him hanging around the square. Okay, I’ll leave, but I want a permit. To be away for a month. They gave him the permit and he left. Mavromantilás and Velissáris, they arranged all that. He went to Athens, he stayed there for a while, and avoided all the trouble. My brother-in-law Yiánnis was there too. Kalosynátos. Yiánnis, not Yiórgos. They arrested Yiórgos later — in place of the others. Tóyias himself. He was the one that took our animals. He brought them right through the square here. To feed the rebels. I’m taking them to Malevós, he said. He’d take them there and they’d eat. Our mules too, everything we had, food, everything. Everything. They came and took stock, wrote everything down in case we hid anything. They took my mother-in-law to Ayios Pétros, an old woman, eighty years old. Just because Yiánnis and Vasílis had left. That’s when they caught Yiórgos. Yiánnis left because he had English pounds, or so they said. And he should have handed them over for the cause. One five-pound note, that was all he had, poor man. And I know that from Vasílis. Like I said, Pavlákos had a bit of decency in him. The Aryíris family had been kind to him. At night when they were about to take in Kalosynátos, Vasílis walked past them. Nikólas Pavlákos and the rest of them. And right away they stopped talking. Good evening, Good evening to you, too. Nothing else. My old man realized that they were on their way to arrest Yiánnis. He hurried past them and went to warn him. By the time he got there, Pavlákos had already been there. He left the others, saying he had to go take a leak. And he went and told him, Yiánnis, get out, they’re coming to arrest you tonight. And he upped and left, he went to Kotsóni, walked all night to save his life. And that’s how Kalosynátos left and went to Athens. That was how they forced them, one by one, into leaving. He wasn’t with his second wife yet. He had no children from his first wife. He had children later on. And the one he’s with now is his third wife. I’m telling you that some people were forced into things, then they’d find themselves in over their heads, and once the current pulls you downstream that’s it. There’s no going back. And later on, much later, when my children were in Athens, going to school there, and Pavlákos got out of prison, he found out that Vasílis was there and he went to see him. Nikólas, why are you staying here, why don’t you come to the village? I’d gladly come, Vasílis, he said, but what will I live on? Here I can keep myself fed. If I come down to the village, I’ll just fill up on beatings. That’s why he never went back. I’m not sticking up for Pavlákos, whatever happened happened, but he wasn’t all that mean.
Chapter 36
The men from Karátoula joined the Battalions in 1944. The December Uprising in Athens took place that same year. Because we weren’t here for Christmas.
— Don’t say anything you shouldn’t.
— No, stop it. In 1944 the Germans arrived. In June. The rebels came here, they said, Leave your houses, all of you. Whoever stays in the village will be executed. And the Germans dropped leaflets. Stay in your homes, no one will harm you. We had no choice but to leave. We went to Xerokámpi. All the women and children were there. In Samartzís’s storage shed. In Kokkíni. And we were harvesting wheat. The Germans came and arrested us. They brought us to Kastrí. At Kastrí they picked out some men they wanted and let the rest of us go free. Because of the rebels we couldn’t find shelter. We went down to Trípolis.
— It was that long before you went to Trípolis?
— Yes, it was 1944. In November the Germans left. They had also come here in June. For the big blockade. There was all that time in between. We went down to the Battalions. Then the head men, Antonákos and Dínos Yiánnaros, sent us away. They say, Go to the village, we’ll be coming to form a company there. We came back. We wake up one morning. We hear gunfire. From Ayios Nikólaos. We get up and head for Kastrí, we look around, Mávros’s house was in flames. The rebels had set fires, they were burning down the village. Then they come down to Karátoula. Right here to Karátoula. They burn down three houses. Nikólas Konstantélos’s house, Sokrátis Marinákos’s and Alkiviádis Marinákos’s houses. They were in the Battalions, those men, it was for revenge. They didn’t burn down Chrysoyénis’s place. They looted it. Took everything and left. The next day Pavlákos shows up. I had gone to Oriá with our men. Pavlákos arrests me and sends me to Ayios Pétros, escorted by Voúlis Paraskevoulákos. Voúlis takes me there, they put me in jail. I find four other men from Karátoula there. Vasílis Logothétis, Mítsos Panayotoúros, Vasílis Kounoúfos, Yiánnis Chrysoyénis. In the morning someone comes and shouts, Douénis. I say, Here. He says, Interrogation room. They take me for interrogation. They ask me to hand over my machine gun to them. I say, I don’t have a machine gun. They tell me, On the night the rebels went to burn down Kastrí, men from your village were firing at us. We had two old.45 revolvers. We’d make hansa cartridges for them. We’d cut off the tip of the bullet so it would fit into the cylinder, to make it work. And that’s what we fired with. It was Vasílis Konstantélos who was doing that. We were together. Vasílis Logothétis, Panayótis’s son, me, and Mihális Marinákos. And also Vasílis Pantelís. In the end I never gave anyone away. I tell the interrogator, The Germans captured us, they took us to Trípolis, to the Security Battalions. And we escaped, we came back. We had a little too much wine, we started shooting. That’s all. In the end they sent me back to the detention room. The other men from Karátoula were going to leave. They were setting them free. I tell them, Hey, you men, why don’t you help me out too? They couldn’t be bothered. The next day they bring Kyriákos Bakoúris from Ayiasofiá. He was wearing a Battalions band on his arm. He had sheep, he’d graze them, and when the Germans saw that armband they wouldn’t bother you. The rebels arrested him, with his wife and their two children. And they brought him in. They brought someone else in too, man named Thodorís Lambíris. They took them for interrogation. Someone named Nikólas Farmasónis comes to see them, a fellow villager. Nikólas, what about my children, Kyriákos says. And Nikólas tells him, You made your bed, now lie in it. That’s exactly what he said. Two days later they take us to be executed. They marched us toward the bridge. On the way we meet Pétros Lagoumitzís. From Ayios Pétros. He sees me there with the others, he says, This one’s a goner. And he spread the word that they’d killed me there. A little further along a kapetánios from Pýrgos starts hollering. What has this poor man done, what has he done? Talking about me. I don’t remember his name. I can’t remember it. But the man who was in charge then was Mavróyiannis. In the end they sent me back. That was on September 13. The night before the Feast of the Elevation of the True Cross.