Chapter 40
I saw Sophia in the summer. She came to her nephew’s wedding. She came from Kefalári, by herself. I tell her, Do you remember it all, do you remember when you hid Loukás in the trunk? And she started to cry. Poor thing, she’s an old lady now, all shriveled up.
Chapter 41
Rebels had come here to Xerokámpi. And some people from the village went and gave them a list of seventeen people to execute. From Perdikóvrisi. An uncle of mine had married a woman from Mánesi. He was also named Nikoláou, a field watchman. Nicknamed “The King.” One day he goes to his wife’s village, Pávlos Bouziánis was there. All of this back in 1944. Bouziánis tells him, Come here. We have a list here to execute some people from Perdikóvrisi. Perdikóvrisi, used to be called Tservási. Should they be executed, he says to him, or is it unjust? And the King, the field watchman, tells him, No, it’s unjust to do that. Among the seventeen were two brothers of Christofílis, my father, and me. The King comes back, he tells us this. We leave immediately then. We go to Eleohóri. The Battalions were there. In 1944 I was twenty, twenty-two years old. Just married. I was born in 1922. My wife was pregnant. I left her behind. We left for Eleohóri. The rebels come down, as they had planned. They come down to the village, they don’t find us seventeen men there. They find Christofílis’s brother Yiánnis. Yiánnis had been drafted in 1941. And they find a first cousin of mine, Kóstas Nikoláou. Also about twenty years old. They didn’t find me and my father, they set fire to our house. Ours and someone named Baziános’s. Burned them down. In the meantime they took my cousin and Christofílis to Kótronas. Two rebels from somewhere else, strangers. In Kótronas they found a stream. They were good souls, those rebels. They left the others and sat down to wash their feet. Our men could have gotten away, but they didn’t. My cousin had a brother-in-law, a man called Kakaviás. From Ayios Yiánnis, he was a kapetánios. A Party cadre. He felt safe.