1 those damn Turks. Hey, shut up, they’ll hear you. Haven’t you figured out where we’re going? But he kept at it. The whole way there. Those Turks, those damn Turks. We passed the Malevís Monastery. We arrived in Tarmíri. From there we followed the mule path toward Lepída. Between Tarmíri and Lepída we came upon fresh graves, shepherds’ graves. I can’t remember the exact number. Anyway, not more than eight or fewer than five. On both sides of the road. Anywhere there was a bit of earth. Earth that their relatives could dig out. In that rocky soil. They’d thrown them in there every which way, with wooden crosses hastily put together. Name unknown. At any rate the people executed in Xerokámpi were a lot more than that. Around forty. The official count was done much later of course. Men and women. They killed them wherever they found them. Or rather no. Because the people they found at the threshing floor in Kokkínis, in Samartzís’s storage shed, they didn’t harm. This confirmed what had been loudly rumored then. In other words, that a secret line of operations had been plotted out. On paper. It was the carriage route from Ayios Pétros to Meligoú. Anywhere past that route, or the area toward Mount Parnon, was a no-man’s-land. That’s where everyone was killed. All of them shepherds. Men and women. We kept moving along. We arrived at Plátanos. Some people told us we’d be sent on to Leonídio. Some others would go to Palaiohóri. In the end they gave us something to eat and let us go. They had brought new muleteers there to collect the cargo we had. We went back. And that’s when the ELAS rebels burned down Kastrí. In the month of July. On the twenty-fourth. They took up their position in Zygós, set up double patrols, and went down and burned the place. They also burned down some houses in Karátoula at that time. Nikólas Konstantélos’s house, Alkídis’s place. Alkídis Marinákos. And two or three more. And Kítsos’s house in Roúvali. Selectively, to terrorize people. In September the Germans left. In the month of September. And Papadóngonas dug himself in at Trípolis. The countryside remained at the mercy of the rebels. Then a new order came. All men between the ages of eighteen and fifty-five should report for duty to Ayios Pétros. With bread for three days and so on. We go up to Kastrí. They had their headquarters at Kasímos’s house. People with mules and knapsacks and the like. They send us to Ayios Pétros. To enlist, in a large-scale mobilization. Kléarhos was there, he was setting up the 40th Reserve Regiment of ELAS. With no weapons, with nothing. The whole of East Kynouría. It’s either all of you or none of you. There he was, Kléarhos with that beard of his, saying, Either all of you or none of you. We were examined by a doctor. Aryíris had hurt his knee. With a sledgehammer. A superficial wound. Dr. Roússos saw him. He tells Aryíris, Posttraumatic arthritis. And he lets him go. Kléarhos says to me. He considered me a colleague. Even though I hadn’t finished yet. He says, You’re coming along. When we go through Kastrí you’ll follow us. And he sent us off. Meanwhile dusk had set in. I tell him, In Oriá they’ll arrest us, we need a permit. The men from Oriá had declared war on us. To get to their vineyards in Sayitá, the villagers from Karátoula had to have a permit from the Organization. And they wouldn’t give you one. Same thing for the villagers from Roúvali to go to Kápsalos. They were putting pressure on the men from Karátoula. They had refused to join up. To form a local organization. They were the last in the prefecture of Arcadia. They didn’t want to join. They’d also been very disturbed by the execution of Márkos Ioannítzis. And they’d been branded as reactionaries. And so had we. We went back to the village. Two days later Kléarhos and some other men arrive in Kastrí. By the time I heard this they had moved on toward Dolianá. I had to go enlist. I go to Dolianá. I find Yiórghis Stratigópoulos there. A fellow student. Older than me. He would have been a great lawyer if he hadn’t got involved. Quick and smart. He came to a pitiful end. His son became a drug addict. His only son. And poor Yiórghis was so disappointed. He had married his first cousin. Married her for love. In 1947 he sold everything he had down here and moved to Athens. I lent him some money. He gave it back to me. He opened a five-and-dime shop. He bought it. He had a serious lung disease. When I left to join the army in 1947 I gave him two gold sovereigns. He was coughing up blood. Yiórghis, take care of yourself. His mother was from Kastrí. Their house was near the Tsoúhlos property. And his father was from Ayios Andréas. Take care of yourself, Yiórghis. Yiórghis was never prosecuted. They never found anything against him. He was never charged with anything, never put in jail. But he cut short his studies. I found them in Dolianá. From Dolianá we made the next risky move. We went down to Rízes. Still unarmed. Where were we headed? Wherever they were taking us. At Rízes the telephone lines were buzzing. We found out that negotiations were taking place in Trípolis. Between Aris, Kanellópoulos, and Tsiklitíras. In the meantime back in the village they were setting up more marching columns with the women and children. Then word got out that if fighting broke out the rebels would put those unarmed columns out in front. The unarmed reactionaries. So that the other side wouldn’t fire on them. And finally the shooting started, bang bam bang. We said, They’ve been captured. But nothing had happened. The shooting was to celebrate the agreement, shots of joy. An agreement had been signed. Bang bang bang. The agreement was this: Anyone from the Battalions who wanted to go back home could go back. And anyone who didn’t want to could follow Papadóngonas. With their weapons, as far as the coast. To Makriyiánnis’s mills. From there they would get onto boats that would ferry them across to Spétses. They said that Aris accompanied them up to that point. To prevent any trouble. But that isn’t true. Their transferal took place under Kanellópoulos’s supervision. They arrived at the mills, they surrendered their weapons and got into the boats. We headed out from Rízes toward Trípolis. Grouped together but in loose formations. And still unarmed. At Ayios Sóstis we ran into the men from Karátoula. The men who’d enlisted. Most of them were going back. Antonákos, Mihális Theodorópoulos, the Pantelís brothers, and five or six more. And about the same number from Ayios Nikólaos. They saw us from a distance, all of us mobilized. But they got scared. They turned off, they went into the fields. To play it safe, just in case. They passed us about two hundred meters to the right. And then someone shouted from the column, They’re from the Battalions, the Battalions. But he was the only one. We arrived in Trípolis. The agreement was signed, the ceremony was over. We settled ourselves on an empty plot of land. I find my brother Aryíris. I find Marigó. And maybe Dóxa, I don’t remember. They had brought them down with those unarmed marching columns. To celebrate the capture of Drobólitsa.2 I find Dínos Yiánnaros. Dínos was in the Battalions, still in uniform. I tell him, Take that uniform off. I ask Aryíris, What do you hear? They had taken them to Áreos Square. It was filled with people, from all the provinces. Kanellópoulos gave a speech. A puzzling one. First Antónios spoke, as the supreme head of EAM in the Peloponnese. Then came the bishop of the prefecture of Helis. Then Tsiklitíras spoke. And Aris. Tsiklitíras, the military commander of ELAS. But Aris had the final say. A woman named Koïtsános spoke, from Bertsová. With her ammunition belts strapped across her breast. Death to my father, death to my brothers. From the balcony of the Hotel Maínalon. On a day of truce she was out to kill people. Kanellópoulos, the minister, the representative of the government-in-exile in Cairo. His speech was puzzling, Aryíris told me. Very puzzling. He had gone to Kýthira with his followers. Then he went to Kalamáta. He met Aris there, they talked. He passed through Megaloúpolis,3 saw what happened there, he passed through Meligalás, saw things there, too. But he said nothing. He didn’t go to Gargaliánoi. Stoúpas was there. They had to fight there. There was a battle. There was no execution. Stoúpas was last. He probably killed himself. Aryíris had his doubts about the way things were developing. Let’s go to Kolokotróni Square. The 40th Reserve Regiment had disbanded. And recruiting was now done normally. They had set up some tables on the terrace of the Hotel Semirámis and they were writing down names. Of anyone who wanted to join ELAS. There was no pressure. Kléarhos, known as Aías, Kapetán Aías and his 40th Regiment. I watched. Kapetán Kléarhos sees Vasílis Pantelís. We used to call Vasílis Powderkeg, he was always getting into fights. And who are you? Pantelís, Vasílis says. Antónis’s brother? Antónis, Yiánnis, and Liás, all three brothers in the Battalions. Well, well, four jackasses. Isn’t there one of you wants to fight for his country? Kléarhos says. I do, Comrade. They didn’t pressure him. Only indirectly. And that’s how Vasílis joined them. He was killed in the December Uprising that followed. Things calmed down. The 40th Regiment disbanded itself, so to speak. Without weapons, without anything. Just a mass of people. We didn’t sign up. I didn’t want to. We spent the night in the Homatá Hotel. We decided to leave. Things would just keep on like that. We went back to the village. Aryíris still full of doubts. I tell him, Let’s head down to Kyvéri. Things don’t look good. We go to Kyvéri. It was early in the season, no olives yet. Aryíris says, If we stay here I’ll send for Annió. So there’s someone to cook for us at least. Trípolis fell, the rebels got Papadóngonas’s cannons. Thirty-six cannons. At the last minute they removed the bolts from four of the cannons and threw them into a well. Just before they surrendered them. With those cannons they attacked the Sparta Battalion in Mystrá. And attacked Athens later on. During the December Uprising. They began taking them there, we could hear the rumbling. Because the road was in terrible condition. The British tanks had gone over it as they retreated. Those that made it out, that is, and quite a few did. Then the German tanks followed in pursuit. They arrived in Kalamáta. And later after another order from von List, who was in charge of operations in the Balkans, commander of the 17th Army Corps, they left Kalamáta and proceeded north to Bulgaria. And through Bulgaria straight to the Russian Front. So the road was in a sorry state, it was full of potholes. And we heard the cannons, coming from Lykálona down along the Kolosoúrtis mountain road. We heard them in Kyvéri, in among the olive trees where we were hiding out. The thudding and the noisy rumble of those cannons. Cannons being dragged, on wheels without tires. In November, toward the end of the month, I had prepared a barrel of oil to take to Athens. In Argos on the bus we find out that the Uprising had begun. I cancel my ticket, or no, I didn’t, it got lost. And I went back to Kyvéri. I found shelter there.